Red Horseman

by Stephen Coonts

  Over twenty million human beings were liquidated, possibly as many as forty million. Only God knew the real number and He had kept the secret.

  World War II—the raging furnace of war, famine and disease consumed another twenty-five million Soviet citizens. Twenty-five million!

  The numbers totaled eighty-five million minimum. Jake Grafton added the numbers three times. It was too much. The human mind could not grasp the significance of the numerals on the back of the tattered envelope.

  Eighty-five million human lives.

  It was like trying to comprehend how many stars were in a galaxy, how many galaxies were in the universe.

  “Jake?” His wife stood in the doorway. “Amy and I are going to the Crystal City mall. Won’t you come with us?”

  He stared at her. She was of medium height, with traces of gray in her dark hair. She had her purse in her hand.

  “The mall…”

  “Amy wants to drive.” The youngster had just received her learner’s permit and was now driving the family car, but only when Jake was in the front seat with her. Callie had announced that her nerves were not up to that challenge and refused the honor.

  Jake Grafton rose to his feet and glanced out the window. Outside the sun shone weakly from a high, hazy sky. On this June Saturday all over America baseball games were in progress, people were riding bicycles, shopping, buying groceries, mowing yards, enjoying the balmy temperatures of June and contemplating the prospect of the whole summer ahead.

  The envelope and its numbers seemed as far away from this reality as casualty figures from the Spanish Inquisition.

  “Okay,” Jake Grafton told his wife.

  He eyed the envelope one last time, then slid it between the pages of the book. With the book closed the numbers were hidden; only the top half inch of the envelope was visible.

  Eighty-five million people.

  But they were all long dead, as dead as the pharaohs. The earth soaked up their tears and blood and recycled their corpses. Only the numbers survived.

  He turned off the light as he left the room.

  Toad Tarkington called after the Graftons returned from the mall. Callie invited him to dinner. Five minutes later she answered the phone again.

  “Jack Yocke, Mrs. Grafton. I’m leaving for an overseas assignment on Monday and I wondered if I could stop by and chat with your husband this evening.”

  “Why don’t you come to dinner, Jack? Around six-thirty.”

  “I don’t want to put you to any trouble.”

  Callie was amused. She enjoyed entertaining, and Jack Yocke, a reporter for the Washington Post, was a frequent guest. Jake habitually avoided reporters, but Yocke had become a family friend through an unusual set of circumstances. And he had never yet turned down a dinner invitation. Friends or not, he had the most important commodity in Washington—access—and he knew precisely what that was worth. Callie undoubtedly knew too, Yocke thought: she was perfectly capable of slamming the door in his face if she ever thought he had taken advantage of her hospitality.

  “No trouble, Jack,” she told him now. “Where are you going?”

  “Moscow! It’s my first overseas assignment.” The enthusiasm in his voice was tangible.

  Callie stifled a laugh. Yocke had been maneuvering desperately for two years to get an overseas assignment. Other than a short jaunt to Cuba, he had spent most of his five years at the Post on the metro beat covering police and local politics. “Good things come to those who wait,” she told him.

  “Actually,” Yocke said, lowering his voice conspiratorially, “I got the nod because our number two man over there had a family emergency and had to come home. My biggest asset is that I’m single.”

  “And you’ve been asking for an overseas assignment.”

  “Begging might be a better word.”

  “Moscow? He’s going to Moscow?” Jake Grafton repeated when his wife went into the study to give him the news.

  Callie nodded. “Moscow. It’s dangerous over there, I know, but this is a big break for him professionally.” She left the room to see about dinner.

  “He’ll certainly have plenty to write about,” Jake Grafton remarked to himself as he surveyed the piles of books, newspapers and magazines strewn over the desk and credenza.

  He was reading everything he could lay hands on these days about the Soviet Union, the superpower that had collapsed less than two years ago and was now racked by turmoil. Like a ramshackle old house that had withstood the winds and storms long past its time, the Communist empire fell suddenly, imploded, shattered like old crystal, all in a heap. Now ethnic feuds, runaway inflation, famine and a gradual disintegration of the social order were fueling the expanding flames.

  “Plenty,” Grafton muttered listlessly.

  Yocke’s enthusiasm for his new adventure set the tone at dinner. Almost thirty, tall and lean, he regarded his new assignment as a great challenge. “I can’t stand to go into that District Building one more time. This is my chance to get out of metro once and for all.”

  His chance to get famous, Jake Grafton thought, but he didn’t say it. The young reporter oozed ambition, and the admiral didn’t hold that against him. Ambition seemed to be one of the essential ingredients to a life of great accomplishments. Lincoln had it, and Churchill, Roosevelt…Hitler. Josef Stalin.

  Grafton played with his food as Jack Yocke talked about Russia. Toad Tarkington seemed preoccupied and quieter than usual. Tonight he listened to Yocke without comment.

  “It’s hard to imagine the Russian empire without a powerful bureaucracy. The bureaucracy was firmly entrenched by 1650 and became indispensable under Peter the Great. It was the tool the czars used to administer the empire, to run the state. The Bolsheviks just adopted it pen and paper clips when they took over. The problem at the end was that the bureaucracy lost the capability of providing. The infernal machine just ground to a halt and nothing on this earth could get it started again without the direct application of force.”

  “Not force,” Jake Grafton said. “Terror.”

  “Terror,” Yocke agreed, “which the leadership was no longer in a position to supply.”

  “Where did they go wrong?” Callie asked. “After the collapse of communism and the dissolution of the Soviet state, everyone was so hopeful. Where did they go wrong?”

  Everyone at the table had an opinion about that, even Amy. “No one over there likes anyone else,” she stated. “All the ethnic groups hate each other. That isn’t right. People shouldn’t hate.”

  Toad Tarkington winked at her. Amy was growing up, and he liked her very much. “How’s the driving going?” he asked when there was a break in the conversation.

  “Great,” Amy said, and grinned. “Except for Mom, who sits there gritting her teeth, waiting for the crash.”

  “Now, Amy…,” Callie began.

  “She knows it’s going to be bad—teeth, hair and eyeballs all over the dashboard.” Amy sighed plaintively. “I’ve decided to become a race car driver. I’m going to start in stock cars. I figure in a couple of years I’ll be ready for formula one.”

  “Amy Carol,” her mother said with mock severity. “You are not—”

  “Talent,” Amy told Toad. “Some people have it and some don’t. You should see my throttle work and the way I handle the wheel.”

  After dinner Jack Yocke asked to speak with the admiral alone, so Jake took him into the study and closed the door. “Looks like you’ve been doing some reading,” the reporter remarked as both men settled into chairs.

  “Ummm.”

  “This is my big break,” Yocke said.

  “That’s what you said when the Post let you write a column during the ’92 presidential primary campaign.”

  “Well, that didn’t work out. And it wasn’t a column—it was just a signed opinion article once a week.”

  Jake reached for a scrapbook on a bookshelf and flipped through it. “Callie saved most of them. I thought some of your stuff was pr
etty good.”

  Yocke shrugged modestly, a gesture that Grafton missed. The admiral adjusted his glasses on his nose and said, “Let’s see—this was written in January, before the New Hampshire primary. You said, ‘Now Bush admits that he didn’t know the country was in a recession. He’s the only man in America who hadn’t heard the news. The man’s a groundhog who only comes out of his hole every four years to campaign.’ ”

  “Acceptable hyperbole,” Yocke said and squirmed in his seat. “A columnist is supposed to be interesting.”

  “ ‘If George Bush had been president during World War II, allied troops would have stopped at the Rhine and the Nazis would still be running Germany.’ ”

  “Well…”

  Grafton flipped pages. He cleared his throat. “ ‘The American people don’t want George Bush and Clarence “Coke can” Thomas deciding whether their daughters can have abortions.’ ” Grafton glanced over his glasses at Yocke. “Coke can?”

  “There was a mix-up on that. That comment should not have gotten into the paper. I wrote that as a joke to give the editor something to shout at me about and somehow he missed it. He and I almost got canned.”

  Grafton sighed and flipped more pages. “Ahh, here’s my favorite: ‘Even if Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton is absolutely innocent, as he claims, of having an adulterous affair with bimbo Gennifer Flowers, that by itself would not disqualify him to be president. America has had two presidents this century, perhaps even three, who were faithful to their wives. A fourth would not rend the social fabric beyond repair. It’s an indisputable fact that such dull clods rarely seek public office in our fair land and almost never achieve it, so if one does squeak in occasionally, once a generation, how much harm could he do?’ ”

  “A parody of David Broder,” Yocke muttered with a touch of defiance. “A satire.”

  “Everything written in our age is satire,” the admiral said as he closed the scrapbook and slid it back into the bookshelf. When he looked at Yocke he grinned. “You should be writing for Rolling Stone.”

  “The Post pays better,” Jack Yocke said. “Y’know, I’ve written a lot of stuff through the years, yet I still have to spell my name for the guy at the laundry whenever I drop off my shirts. And he’s seen me twice a week for five years, speaks English, can even read a little.”

  Still wearing a grin, Grafton took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Your stuff’s too subtle. You should try to give it more punch.”

  “Words to live by. I’ll remember that advice. But we have a hot tip that I’m going to try to chase down when I get to Russia. The story is that some tactical nukes are on the open market. For sale to the highest bidder.”

  “You don’t say?” Jake Grafton said. He pushed his eyebrows aloft. “Where’d you hear that?”

  Yocke crossed his legs and settled in. “I know you won’t confirm or deny anything, and you won’t breathe a word of classified information, but I thought I’d run this rumor by you. Just for the heck of it.”

  Jake Grafton ran his fingers through his hair, pinched his nose, and regarded his guest without enthusiasm. “Thanks. We’ll look into it. Be a help if we knew the source of this hot tip, though.”

  “I can’t give you that. It’s more of a rumor than a tip. Still, if it’s true it’s a hell of a story.”

  “A story to make you famous,” Jake agreed. “And to think we knew you when. All you have to do is live long enough to file it.”

  “There’s that, of course.”

  Jake stood and held out his hand. “If worse comes to worst, it’s been nice knowing you.”

  Jack Yocke looked at the outstretched hand a moment, then shook it. He got out of his chair and smiled. “One of your most charming characteristics, Admiral, is that deep streak of maudlin sentiment under the professional exterior. You’re just an old softie.”

  “Drop us a postcard from time to time and tell us how you’re doing.”

  “Yeah. Sure.”

  Jack Yocke opened the door and went out, and Amy Carol came in. She carefully closed the door behind her. “Dad, I have a question.” She dropped into the chair just vacated by the reporter.

  “Okay.”

  “It’s about sex.”

  Jake opened his mouth, then closed it again. Amy was growing up, no question about that. She had filled out nicely in all the womanly places and presumably had consulted with Callie about plumbing, morals and all that. Under his scrutiny she squirmed slightly in her seat.

  “Why don’t you ask your mom?”

  Amy shot out of the chair and bolted for the door. On her way down the hall he heard her call, “Toad, you owe me five bucks. I told you he’d duck it.”

  After Yocke said his good-byes, Jake and Toad Tarkington took coffee into the study and carefully closed the door.

  “You’re not going to believe this, Admiral, but last night at the Kennedy Center Judith Farrell walked up and said hi.”

  Jake Grafton took a while to process it. It had been years since he’d heard that name. “Judith Farrell, the Mossad agent?”

  “That’s right, sir. Judith Farrell. Now she calls herself Elizabeth Thorn. She had a Maryland driver’s license.”

  “Better tell me about it.”

  Toad did so. In due course he got to the message. “You remember Nigel Keren, the British billionaire publisher who fell off his yacht a year or two ago while it was cruising in the Canaries?”

  Jake nodded. “Found floating naked in the ocean.”

  “Stone cold dead. That’s the guy, Nigel Keren. Then his publishing empire went tits up amid claims of financial shenanigans. But nobody could ever figure out how Keren got from his stateroom aboard the yacht over a chest-high rail into the water while wearing nothing but his birthday suit.”

  Jake sipped coffee. “He was a Lebanese Jew, wasn’t he? Naturalized in Britain?”

  “Yessir. Anyway, ol’ Judith Farrell says the CIA killed him.”

  “What?”

  “That’s the message she wanted you to have, Admiral. The CIA killed Nigel Keren. Oh, and this photo.” Toad took the envelope from his pocket and passed it to the admiral, who went to his desk and turned on the desk lamp to examine it.

  “I know who this is,” he told Toad.

  “Yessir. I recognized him too. Herb Tenney, the CIA officer who is going to Russia with us. If we go.”

  Jake got a magnifying glass from his desk drawer and examined the photo carefully as he tried to recall what he had read of Keren’s death. The financier had been alone on the yacht with its crew until he turned up missing one morning. Several days later his nude body was fished from the ocean. All twelve crewmen claimed ignorance. The Spanish pathologist had been unable to establish the cause of death but ruled out drowning, due to an absence of water in the lungs. So Keren had been dead when his body went overboard. How he died was an unsolved mystery.

  Finally Jake laid the glass and the photo on the desk and regarded it with a frown. “Herb Tenney reading a newspaper.” He sighed. “Okay, what’s the rest of the message?”

  “You got it all, Admiral. ‘Tell Admiral Grafton that the CIA killed Nigel Keren and here’s a photo and negative. Bye.’ That’s all she said.”

  Jake used the magnifying glass to examine the negative. It appeared to be the one from which the print was made. Finally he put both print and negative back in the envelope and passed the envelope back to Toad. “Take these to the computer center on Monday morning and have them examined. I want to know where and when the photo was taken and I want to know if the negative has been altered or enhanced by computer processing.” He doubted if the negative had been altered, but Farrell had offered it as evidence, so it wouldn’t hurt to check.

  “Yessir. But what if word of this gets back to Tenney?”

  “What if it does? Maybe he can tell us about the photograph.”

  “If the CIA killed Keren and Tenney was in on it, maybe they won’t want anyone to see this picture.”

&n
bsp; “Toad, you’ve been reading too many spy stories. We’ll probably have to ask Tenney about that picture. Farrell knew that. She probably wants us to question Tenney.”

  “Then we shouldn’t,” Toad said. “At least not until we know what this is all about.”

  Jake Grafton snorted. He had been on the fringes of the intelligence business long enough to distrust everyone associated with it. The truth, he believed, wasn’t in them. They didn’t know it. Worse, they never expected to learn it, nor did they care. “Take the print and negative to the computer guys,” he repeated. “Stick a classification on it. Top secret. That should keep the technician quiet.”

  “What about Farrell?” Toad demanded.

  “What about her?”

  “We could get her address from the Maryland department of motor vehicles and try to find her.”

  “She was told what to say and she said it. She doesn’t know anything.”

  Toad Tarkington flicked the envelope with his forefinger, then placed it in an inside pocket. He drained the last of his coffee. “If you don’t mind my asking, what did Yocke want?”

  “He’s heard a rumor that some tactical nukes are for sale in Russia to the highest bidder.”

  “Shee-it!”

  “I know the feeling,” Jake Grafton said. “The most sensitive, important, dangerous item on the griddle at the National Security Council and Jack Yocke picked it up on the street. Now he’s charging off to scribble himself famous. Makes you want to blow lunch.”

  2

  Richard Harper was a priest of the high-tech goddess. He spent his off-hours reading computer magazines and technical works and browsing at gadget stores. He thought about computers most of his waking hours. There was something spiritual about a computer, he believed. It was almost as if it had a soul of its own, an existence independent of the plastic and wire and silicon of which it was constructed.