The Red Horseman jg-5 Page 10

  Jack Yocke took off his sports coat and hung it over one arm. He wiped the perspiration from his forehead. And damn these Commies! Why can’t they hire a hall like politicians in more civilized climes?

  The senior Post correspondent was over at the Kremlin today buttonholing Yeltsin lieutenants, so Yocke was stuck covering this rally of nationalistic Commie retrogrades, people who thought that the Stalin era was Russia’s finest hour. Yes, there were still live human beings on this planet who believed that, and here were some of them, waving red flags and posters with slogans. Some of them even wore red armbands, but the red flags were the grabber: to Yocke’s American eye the blood red flags looked like an image straight from a museum exhibit. That there were still people who firmly believed in the gospel of Marx, Engels, and Lenin was a fact that he knew intellectually, yet seeing it in the flesh was a jolt.

  These people were obviously committed. Just below the platform four older men were arranged in a circle, shouting at one another. No, it was three against one. Yocke couldn’t understand a word of it and thought about asking the stringer what it was all about, then decided against it. He thought he already knew the answer.

  Yegor Kolokoltsev was their guru, a man who could rant anti-Semitic filth that would have been too raw for Joseph Goebbels and in the next breath extol the glories of Mother Russia. As Yocke understood Kolokoltsev’s message, the Communists never had a chance to purify the Soviet Union and make her great because the Jews had subverted them, stolen the fruit of the proletariat’s labor, betrayed the revolution, sucked blood from the veins of honest Communists, etc., etc.

  So now he stood sweating as the motorcade drew to a halt and burly guards jumped from the cars and began opening a pathway to the platform. Idly Yocke looked around for soldiers or uniformed policemen. There were none in sight. Not a one.

  The bodyguards in civilian clothes had no trouble clearing a path. The crowd parted courteously, as befitted old Communists. And these were mostly old Communists, workers and retired grandmothers. Here and there the mix was leavened by better-dressed younger men, probably bureaucrats or apparatchiks who had lost or were losing their jobs under the new order. Some of the waving signs and red flags partially obscured Yocke’s vision of the arriving dignitaries.

  The lack of policemen and soldiers bothered Jack Yocke slightly, and he turned to his translator to ask a question about their absence when he heard the noise, a sharp popping audible even above the sounds of traffic from the street.

  An automatic weapon!

  There was no mistaking the sound.

  The crowd panicked. People turned their backs on Yegor Kolokoltsev and his guards and tried to flee. The urge to leave hastily seemed to enter the head of every living soul there at precisely the same instant.

  More weapons. The sharp popping was now the staccato buzzing of numerous weapons, but it was strangely muffled by screams and shouts.

  Yocke grabbed a handhold on the rail of the speaker’s platform and pulled himself up a couple feet so he could see better.

  Four people with automatic weapons were shooting at the guards, most of whom were now on the ground. One or two gunmen were pouring lead into the middle limousine.

  With all the guards down, two of the gunmen walked toward the car. They were dressed in the usual dark gray suits and wore hats. The crowd was dispersing rapidly now, everyone fleeing for their lives. Several of the elderly were sprawled on the pavement. One or two of them were struggling to rise.

  One of the gunmen opened the car door and the other emptied a magazine through the opening from a distance of three feet.

  Yocke looked around wildly. The stragglers from the retreating crowd were rounding the corners, probably running down the streets that led away from the square.

  The gunmen dropped their weapons and walked away without haste.

  No sirens. No more screams.

  Silence.

  Yocke looked around for the other reporters and their Russian stringers. Gone. He was alone, still clinging to the side of the speaker’s platform.

  He released his grip and dropped to the pavement. The whole thing had been like a slow-motion film — he had seen everything, felt everything, the fear, the horror, the sense of doom descending inexorably, controlled by an unseen, godlike hand. Now if he could only get it down!

  How much time had elapsed? Minutes? No — no more than forty or fifty seconds. Maybe a minute.

  He looked at the backs of the fleeing people. The last of the crowd was hobbling around the corners. Some people had apparently been trampled in the panic; six or eight bodies lay around the square.

  Yocke stood and watched the last of the gunmen disappear around the corner where the motorcade had entered the square. A half mile or so down that street was Red Square. The entrance to the metro, the subway that would take them anywhere in Moscow, was only a hundred yards away.

  He was alone with the dead and dying. He walked toward the cars. The guards — he counted the bodies…seven, eight, nine. He walked from one to the other, looking. All dead, each of them shot at least six or eight times. Blood, one’s man’s brains, intestines oozing into congealing piles on the stones of the square.

  The middle limo was splattered with holes, the door still standing open. Yocke looked in.

  The big man was Yegor Kolokoltsev, or had been just a few minutes ago. Now he was as dead as dead can be. Two of the bullets had struck him in the head, one just under the left eye and the other high up in the forehead. His eyes were still open, as was his mouth. Somehow his face still seemed to register surprise. A dozen or more bullets had punched through his chest and throat. There was little blood.

  Facing Kolokoltsev was another corpse. The driver of the limo sat slumped over the wheel.

  The other two cars were empty. Empty shell casings lay scattered on the street.

  Alone in the midst of the vast silence Jack Yocke bent and picked up a shiny shell casing. 9mm.

  One of the weapons lay not five feet from him. He merely looked. He couldn’t tell one automatic weapon from another.

  He turned and looked again at Kolokoltsev. Then he gagged.

  He staggered away.

  His mouth was watering copiously and his eyes were tearing up. He paused and placed his hands on his knees and spit repeatedly. He had to write this too, capture all of it.

  Now the sensation was passing.

  He walked, working hard at walking without staggering, without succumbing to the urge to run, which was building.

  The urge to run became dire. He began to trot. Faster, faster…

  He saw a narrow street leading away from the square and ran for it. People were standing on the sidewalks looking into the square, but he ran by them without slowing down.

  Telephone! He must find a telephone.

  * * *

  “Mike Gatler.” Mike was the foreign editor. He sounded sleepy, and no doubt he was. It was one-thirty in the afternoon here, but five-thirty in the morning in Washington.

  “Mike, Jack Yocke. I just witnessed an assassination.”

  “Terrific. Send me a story and I’ll read it.”

  “Right in Soviet Square, Mike. Right in front of Moscow City Hall. They gunned a big Commie weenie when he arrived for a political rally. Crowd there and everything.”

  “You woke me up for this?”

  “Gee, Mike. It’s front page, for sure.”

  Gatler sighed audibly. “What happened?”

  “They killed Yegor Kolokoltsev and eleven of his guards. Five gunmen with automatic weapons mowed them down.” The words came faster now, tumbling out: “It was the goddamnest thing I ever saw, Mike, a cold-blooded execution. First the guards, then the politician. I’m sure some of the bystanders in the crowd were shot too. Just their tough fucking luck. Like something from a movie. That was my first thought, like something from a movie. Something staged, unreal. But it was real all right.”

  “Are you okay?” Gatler sounded genuinely concerned. The contr
ast between the irritation in Mike’s voice at first being awakened and the concern he was now expressing hit Yocke hard.

  “I guess so, Mike. Sorry I bothered you at home.”

  “It’s okay, Jack. Write the story. Take your time and do it right. Kolokoltsev, huh? The Russian nationalist?”

  “Yeah. Bigot. Anti-Semite. Holy Russia and all that shit. A Nazi with a red star on his sleeve.”

  “You write it. Do it right.”

  “ ’Night, Mike.”

  “ ’Night, Jack.”

  He hung up the phone and stood in the lofty, opulent hotel lobby at a loss for what to do next. Over in the corner a pianist was playing, and the tune sounded familiar. Yocke’s heart rate and breathing were returning to normal after the half-mile jog to the hotel, the only place he would find a telephone with a satellite link to call overseas. The Russian phone system was a relic of Stalin’s era and couldn’t even be relied upon for a call across town. But Yocke was still shook. The surprise of it as much as anything…damn!

  Soviet Square…in front of that statue of Lenin as The Thinker…with a Pizza Hut restaurant just a block up the street where they serve real food to real people who have real money in their jeans. Hard currency only, thank you. No dip-shit Russians with only rubles in the pockets of their Calvin Kleins…

  The clerk behind the counter was staring at him, as were several of the guests queued up at the cashier’s counter. Now the clerk said something in Russian. A question. He repeated it. He seemed to have lost his English.

  Jack Yocke shrugged, then headed for the elevator with the clerk staring after him. He should have made the call from the phone in his room. If he had thought about the effect of his conversation on the clerk, he would have.

  As the elevator door closed Yocke recognized the music, Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five.” He began laughing uncontrollably.

  At the American embassy Jake Grafton spent a few minutes with the ambassador, then was shown to a small office that was temporarily unused. There he began his report to General Brown on the conference today. He wrote in longhand and handed the sheets to Toad to type.

  “It went well?” Toad asked.

  “Maybe.” Too Russian. Jake, you could screw up a wet dream.

  He had about finished the report when there was a knock on the door and Lieutenant Dalworth stuck his head in.

  “Admiral, I have a message for you,”

  Dalworth held out the clipboard with an envelope attached. “Just fill in the number of the envelope and sign your name, sir.”

  Jake did so. As Dalworth left the room Jake ripped open the envelope, which was marked with a top secret classification. It had of course been decoded in the embassy’s message center.

  FYI LTGEN A.S. Brown died last night in his sleep. News not yet made public.

  FYI — for your information, no action required. Without a word Jake passed the slip of paper across to Toad Tarkington.

  “Just like that?” Toad asked with an air of disbelief.

  “When your heart stops, you’re dead.” Jake Grafton folded the message and placed it back into its envelope. It would have to go back to the message center for logging and destruction. He tossed the envelope onto the corner of the desk. “Just…like…that.”

  “For Christ’s sake, CAG, we’ve got to—”

  “No!”

  “We can’t just—”

  “No.”

  Toad turned his back for a bit. When he turned around again he said in a flat voice, “Okay, what are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” Jake said.

  What could he do? Write a letter to the president?

  “What did Herb Tenney do today, anyway?”

  “He went out this morning after you left,” Toad told him. “Came back about two or three.”

  “He’s got an office?”

  “He’s in with the other CIA types. They’ve got a suite just down the hall and their own radio equipment and crypto gear. They don’t use the embassy stuff.”

  “Who are the other spies?”

  “Well, there are about a dozen, near as I can tell. Head guy is a fellow named McCann who has been here a couple years. I met him at lunch. One of those guys who can talk for an hour and not say anything. A gas bag.”

  It was impossible, a cesspool of the first order of magnitude. “Shit,” Jake whispered.

  “Yessir. My sentiments exactly.”

  “Have they got a safe in their office?”

  “I suppose so. I haven’t been in there.”

  “Go in tomorrow morning. Look the place over.”

  “If I can get in.”

  “Tell Herb you want the tour. Gush. Gee-whiz.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Toad threw himself into a chair. He sighed deeply, then said, “Y’know, I really wish you and I had a nice safe job back in the real world — like bungee jumping or explosive ordnance disposal on a bomb squad. Something with a future.”

  Jake Grafton didn’t reply.

  Albert Sidney Brown dead. Damn, damn and doubledamn!

  Well, it was time to call a spade a spade. The odds that Brown’s ticker picked this particular time to call it quits were not so good. Ten to one he was poisoned. Murdered. By the CIA, or someone in the CIA. Christians in Action.

  If the CIA really did it he and Toad were living on borrowed time. Perhaps they had already been served half of the binary chemical cocktail. And any minute now Herb Tenney or one of his agents might get around to serving the chaser.

  “You and I are going on short rations as of right now,” Jake told Toad. “Go down to the kitchen and get us some canned soda pop and some food that we can eat right out of the can.”

  “What do I tell the cook?”

  “Tell him we’re having a picnic. I don’t know. Think of something. Tell him I’m sick. Go on.”

  * * *

  After Jake delivered his report to the message center for transmission, he went up to his room. The door that led to Toad’s room was open and he was standing in it.

  “Someone was in here today,” Toad said.

  “You sure?”

  “No, sir. But my stuff is a little different.”

  Jake felt in his pocket for scratch paper. On it he wrote, “Look for bugs.”

  It took fifteen minutes to find it. They left it where it was.

  “Are you hungry, Admiral?”

  “No.”

  Jake took off his uniform and lay down on the bed. He turned off the light.

  Two minutes later he turned it back on, got out of bed and checked the door lock, then asked Toad to come in for a moment. With Tarkington watching, Jake took the Smith & Wesson from his bag, checked the firing pin, snapped the gun through all six chambers, then loaded it.

  No doubt the bug picked up the sound of the dry firing. Well, that was fair warning. If anyone came in here tonight Jake Grafton fully intended to blow his head off.

  “‘Night, Toad.”

  “Good night, sir.”

  Sleep didn’t come. Jake tossed and turned and rearranged the pillow to no avail.

  The problem was that he was totally alone, and it was a strange feeling. Always in the past he had a superior officer within easy reach to toss the hot potatoes to. Everyone in uniform has a boss — that is the way of the profession and Jake Grafton had spent his life in it. Now he had nowhere to turn.

  He should have, of course. He should be able to just walk upstairs and get on the encrypted voice circuit to Washington. In just a few minutes he would be bounced off a satellite and connected with the new acting head of the DIA, or the Chief of Naval Operations, or even the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Hayden Land. The problem was that the CIA might be monitoring the circuit.

  Not the CIA as an organization, but whoever it was that had a grubby hand on Tenney’s strings. The agency was so compartmentalized that a rogue department head might be able to run his own covert operation for years before anyone found out. If anyone found out. If the
man at the top took reasonable care and kept his operation buried within another, legitimate operation, it was conceivable that it might never be discovered.

  The more he thought about it, the more convinced Jake was that he had tripped over just such an operation. Who controlled it, what its goals were, how many people were involved — he had no answers to any of these questions.

  So the encrypted voice circuits were out. A commercial line? Every phone in the embassy was monitored.

  And if he found a circuit, who was he going to talk to? If these people could casually squash a three-star general, no one was beyond reach. The ambassador? That Boston Brahman, that man of distinction in a whiskey ad? Yet he had to trust someone.

  The military was built on trust. Trust and communications. In today’s world of high-tech weapons systems and instant communications everyone in the system was merely a moving part. Amazingly, none of the moving parts were critical. As soon as one wore out, was wounded or killed, it was replaced. And the machine never paused, never faltered as long as the communications network remained intact.

  Herb Tenney was a soldier too. Staring at the ceiling, Jake told himself he must not forget that fact.

  As he began to go over it all for the third or fourth time, his frustration got the better of him. He climbed from the bed and went to the window. The sun hadn’t set yet. He tried to visualize what the city must look like in the snow, for snow was the norm. The mean annual temperature here was minus two degrees centigrade. These long, balmy days were but a short interlude in the life of the city and those who inhabited it. In spite of the sun’s golden glow he could see buildings in a gray winter’s half-light amid the snow driven along by the wind. He could feel the cutting cold.

  The Russian winter had killed tens of thousands of soldiers in the past three hundred years, he reflected. No doubt it could kill a few more.

  7

  He was going to have to take some chances, run some risks that were impossible to evaluate. As a young man he had learned to stay alive in aerial combat by carefully weighing the odds and never taking an unnecessary chance, so now the unknown dangers weighed heavily upon him. And back then he had only his life at stake, his and his bombardier’s. Now…