The Red Horseman jg-5 Read online

  Silence. It dragged for several seconds. “No. Is there such a report?”

  “The day I left to come over here General Brown said he was going to write one. We found the bugs a day or so before. Both he and I suspected they were planted and monitored by our friends at Langley, suspected for some very good reasons, but we had no rock-solid proof. One of the things my aide and I had discussed where it could be overheard by those bugs was the death a year or so ago of Nigel Keren, the British publisher. We thought we had some indications that someone from Langley might have killed him with binary poison.”

  Jake paused for a moment. Land said nothing.

  “Are you still with me, sir?”

  “I’m here.”

  “General Brown’s death might also have been caused by binary poison. Since he apparently didn’t write that report of those listening devices, I suggest you ensure that there will be an autopsy, a damn good one.”

  “Just what were you and General Brown working on, Admiral?”

  “We were discussing Nigel Keren, how he died, who might have killed him. I don’t want to go any further into that on this telephone, sir. The KGB is probably eavesdropping. Still, this telephone was preferable to using the embassy communications systems. And I request that you don’t use the telephones in your office, car or home to discuss this matter.”

  More silence, then a slow, “I think I see what you’re driving at.”

  “I don’t know what is going on, General, but something is and I’m on the edge of it. So I need some help.”

  “What?” That one-word response was pure Hayden Land. No beating around the bush, no questioning of his subordinate’s assessment of the situation or demands for further information, just a straight, quick trip to the heart of the matter.

  So Jake told him. The two officers talked for another twenty minutes before they spent a few minutes discussing what they were going to tell the Washington Post to explain this curious method of communication. Their answer — nothing at this time.

  Jake straightened his uniform and put his shoes back on and locked the door behind him.

  He found Toad Tarkington and Jack Yocke in the bar drinking espresso and gobbling pretzels. They both stood as Jake walked toward them.

  “Thanks a lot, Jack,” Jake said.

  “He called you?”

  “Yes.”

  “One word?” Yocke looked incredulous. “That’s all you’re going to give me?”

  Jake grinned. He extended his hand and the reporter took it.

  As Toad and Jake were walking toward the main entrance, Yocke called, “You owe me a steak when I get back to Washington.”

  Jake lifted his hand in acknowledgment.

  * * *

  Out in the car Toad asked, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking about that Yegor Somebody killing?”

  “Not the Russians’ style, you told Yocke. You can’t hand Yocke a bone like that with meat on it, Toad — he’s too smart.”

  “Yeah. I’m sorry.”

  “The whole thing looks like a classic in-your-face Mossad hit. Like Paris, Rome, Frankfurt, and a dozen others you could name. The KGB makes you disappear, the Mossad makes you a wire-service example.”

  “Maybe the Russians are changing tactics.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Then again…”

  For a while Grafton rode silently, looking out the window. Then he said, “Say the Mossad decided to wipe a struggling young Hitler protégé and dropped a hint to someone in the Yeltsin government. Maybe some of Yeltsin’s lieutenants thought the idea up. Whatever. Someone thought that Kolokoltsev’s departure to Communist heaven wouldn’t be an unmitigated disaster and called the cops off. That much is obvious, yet there’s no way in the world to prove a damn thing on anybody. None of these clowns are ever going to breathe a word. Yocke is wasting his time asking embarrassing questions through an interpreter who is trying to keep from wetting his pants. All he’ll do is irritate people who don’t like to be irritated.”

  Tarkington grunted. He was thinking about General Brown, smacked like a fly. “Are you just speculating about the Mossad, Admiral, or was that a power think?”

  Jake Grafton growled irritably. “I don’t know a damn thing.”

  “I don’t like any of this.”

  “Write a letter home to mama,” Jake told him.

  At least Judith Farrell is somewhere in Maryland, Toad told himself. She’s mowing grass and watching baseball games on television and going to the theater on Friday nights. But even as he trotted that idea out for inspection he threw it back — he didn’t believe it. He had seen her in action once, eliminating a terrorist in a Naples hotel. That memory came flooding back and he felt slightly ill.

  “The Russians have their own rules,” Jake Grafton said. “The language is different, the heritage is different, the mores are different, they don’t think like we do. It’s hard to believe this is the same planet we live on.”

  * * *

  Jake Grafton had listened for over twenty years to stories about all-male Russian dinners and vodka celebrations. They were always thirdhand or fourthhand, and the parties described sounded rather like something one might find in a college fraternity house on a Saturday night after the big football game.

  And that, he thought ruefully, would be a good way to describe the festive atmosphere of which he was a reluctant part.

  The problem was quite simple — he hadn’t had this much to drink in years. He was sweating profusely and feeling slightly dizzy.

  Across the table from him Nicolai Yakolev was telling another Russian joke, one about a high party official and a simple country girl. He had to tell it loud to be heard over the noise of the piano.

  Jake had told a few of these jokes himself earlier in the evening, before the level of the fluid in the vodka bottle had gone down very far. He had never been very good with jokes — couldn’t remember them long enough to find someone to tell them to — but he did recall several of those crude riddles that had been popular years ago, the so-called Polish jokes. So he transformed the bumblers into Communists and delighted the general and his guests with questions such as, How many Communists does it take to screw in a light bulb? Twelve — one to stand on the chair and hold the bulb, eleven to turn the chair.

  Before dinner he had had a chance to meet the allied officers one on one.

  Lieutenant Colonel West of the Queen’s Own Highlanders was a deeply tanned trim man, about five feet six inches, with dark hair longer than U.S. military regulations allowed. He seemed quite relaxed with the Russians and Jake heard him murmur a few phrases in the language.

  “Delighted to see you, Admiral,” West said when they shook hands. “Met you one time in Singapore years ago. No reason you should remember. Think you were a commander then.”

  Jake seemed to think he did recall the man. “A party with the Aussies?”

  “Righto. About ten years ago. Jolly good show, that.”

  Now he remembered. Jocko West, a specialist on guerrilla warfare, terrorism and jungle survival. “You seem to have picked up a little of the local lingo, Colonel.”

  West leaned closer and lowered his voice. “Afghanistan, sir. A bit irregular, I dare say. Sort of a busman’s holiday. These lads were the oppo.” He sighed. “Well, the world turns, eh?”

  The Frenchman was Colonel Reynaud, impeccably uniformed. He spent dinner chatting with two Russian officers in French. Prior to dinner, when he and Jake were introduced, he used English, which he spoke with a delicious accent. “A pleas-aire, Admiral Grafton.”

  “How did you manage to wrangle a trip to Moscow in the summertime, Colonel?”

  “I am a student of Napoleon, sir, you comprehend? Think, had Napoleon arrived in the summer, perhaps history would have been so different, without these Communists. I came to see where it went wrong for him, for France. So I will do a little of work, a little of the seeing of the sights.”

  “The people at my embassy told me you are an exp
ert on nuclear weapons.”

  Reynaud smiled. “Alas, that is true. I study the big boom. In a way it is unmilitary, n’est-ce pas? The nuclear weapons will make la guerre so short, it will not be la guerre. They leave us without honor. It is not pretty.”

  Jake managed to shake hands with Colonel Rheinhart, the German, and Colonel Galvano, the Italian, but he didn’t get to visit with them until after dinner. They both impressed him as extremely competent officers of great ability. Rheinhart was the smaller of the two, a man whom the American embassy said had a doctorate in physics from the University of Heidelberg.

  “Herr Colonel, or should I address you as Herr Doctor?”

  The German laughed easily. One got the impression that Rheinhart would be a valuable officer in anyone’s army.

  Galvano was not as easy to read, perhaps because Jake had difficulty understanding his English. Still, he looked fit and highly intelligent, as all four of the colonels did. Their nations had sent the best they had, Jake concluded, and that best was very good indeed.

  As he surveyed these officers at dinner he had wondered about his own selection. He was certainly not a weapons expert or diplomat. Could he get the job done? Looking at the foreign officers, he had his doubts. Then his eyes came to rest on Herb Tenney and the doubts evaporated. He had met a few slick bastards in his career and he thought he knew how to handle them, or at least get them sidetracked where they wouldn’t do anyone any harm. He reached for his glass and had it almost to his lips when he remembered General Albert Sidney Brown. His hand shook slightly. He lowered the glass to the table without spilling any of the liquid.

  Two hours after dinner General Yakolev still seemed fairly sober considering how much he had had to drink — at least two for every one of Jake’s. He was sweating and having some trouble forming his English words, yet he looked pretty steady nonetheless.

  A miracle.

  Right now Jake Grafton felt like he was going to be sick. He excused himself and made for the rest room, where he found Toad Tarkington.

  “What in hell do they put in that Russian moonshine anyway?” Toad demanded. “It tastes like Tabasco sauce.”

  Jake upchucked into a commode, then used his handkerchief to swab his face with cold water. His hands were shaking. Fear or vodka?

  “You okay?” he asked Toad.

  “About three sheets to the wind, CAG. I’m ready to blow this pop stand anytime you say.”

  “A red hot night in Po City, huh?”

  “I’m ready to go back-ship.”

  “Give me another fifteen minutes or so. In the meantime get out there and mix and mingle.”

  Jake led General Yakolev over to a corner where they wouldn’t be so easily overheard. “General, you impress me as a professional soldier.”

  Yakolev didn’t reply to that. His smile seemed frozen. God, his eyes seemed completely hidden behind those brows!

  “I think you have brains and balls,” Jake added.

  “The balls yes, but the brains? I have doubts. Others have doubts also.”

  “I have a little problem that I need some help with,” Jake said as he fought the feeling that he wasn’t handling this right. Why had he drunk those last two shots of vodka? This just wasn’t going to work! He turned away with a sense of defeat, then turned back. What the hey, give it a shot. “I’d like to ask a favor.”

  Yakolev made a gesture that might have meant anything.

  “I’ve had too much of your vodka. I’m having a little trouble saying this right. But I honestly need a favor.”

  The general looked as foreign as an Iranian ayatollah. Jake pushed out the words. “I want you to have a man arrested tomorrow.”

  Now he could see Yakolev’s eyes. They were locked on his own. “Let’s go into my office,” the Russian said. “It’s quiet there.”

  The following day was overcast and gloomy when the contingent of foreign military observers gathered in the large room adjacent to General Yakolev’s office where they had dined the night before. None of them looked the worse for wear, Jake thought as he surveyed them through eyes that felt like dirty marbles. He tried to slow the rate of blinking and swallowing, but he couldn’t seem to affect it much.

  The six aspirin had helped. At least he felt human again. Last night around midnight he had cursed himself for being a damn fool. After he and Yakolev had closeted themselves in the general’s office, the old Russian had produced another vodka bottle from his desk drawer.

  The last thing Jake remembered was a promise from the general that he would talk to the Foreign Intelligence Service, a name that gave the general a good laugh. Jake had laughed like hell too because he was drunk.

  Stinking drunk. God, how long had it been since he got so stinking, puking, deathly drunk? Fifteen…no, almost seventeen years. Make that eighteen.

  Toad had driven him back to the embassy. He had passed out by then. He woke up in the bathroom hanging over the commode.

  This morning he tried to pay attention as the Russian Army briefing officers used maps and charts to explain how the tactical warheads were being shipped to the disassembly site at an army base on the eastern side of the Volga river.

  Herb Tenney was supposed to be here, but he wasn’t. Jake and Toad had skipped breakfast and driven to the Kremlin in their own car, one of the black Fords the embassy used. Toad said Herb was coming on his own.

  The briefing was an hour old when a soldier slipped into the room and handed General Yakolev a note. He read it, then interrupted the briefers and suggested a pause. He motioned to Jake.

  “As you requested, your friend has been arrested.”

  “Where is he?”

  “KGB Headquarters. The soldier waiting outside will drive you there.”

  * * *

  KGB Headquarters on Dzerzhinsky Square was an imposing yellow building — the Russians seemed fond of yellow on public buildings. No doubt it made a nice contrast with the red flags that had hung everywhere in the not too distant past. Still, even with the cheerful yellow facade the building seemed to dominate the naked pedestal and traffic in the square below.

  The driver steered the car to an entrance in the back and showed a document to the uniformed gate guard. Parked in the semidarkness under the building under the scrutiny of several armed soldiers, the driver remained behind the wheel of the car.

  Jake and Toad were escorted through endless dark corridors by a slovenly man in an ill-fitting blue suit. The corridors had a smell, a light, foul odor. Jake was trying to place it when they went around a corner and there they were — the cells. They were small, dark. Some of them contained men. At least they looked like men, shadowy figures in the back of the cells who turned their backs on the visitors.

  Terror. He had smelled terror, some evil mixture of sweat, stale urine, feces, vomit and fear. Looking at the forms of the men behind the bars and trying to see their faces, Jake Grafton felt his stomach turn.

  He was perspiring when the guard opened a door at the end of the corridor, and unexpectedly they were in an office. There was a man in uniform behind the desk, the green uniform of the Soviet army, only this one wasn’t in the army. He was a KGB general. He didn’t rise from behind his desk, although he did look up. The escort left the room and closed the door behind him.

  “Admiral Grafton.”

  “Yes.”

  “I am General Shmarov.”

  Jake Grafton just nodded and looked slowly around the room. A large framed print of Lenin on the wall, which had once been green and was now merely earth-tone dirty. There was a window behind the general and it was even dirtier than the walls. Three padded chairs in poor condition. The desk. A telephone. And the KGB general.

  Shmarov’s bald head gleamed. Even with his mouth shut you could see that his teeth were crooked. Now he spoke again and Jake caught the gleam of gold. “General Yakolev asked for a favor, so I was glad to help.”

  Grafton couldn’t think of a thing to say.

  “Nicolai Alexandrovich is a
friend.”

  “Thanks,” Jake managed.

  “Here is the passport.” The Russian held it out and Jake took it. It was a U.S. diplomatic passport. He flipped it open. Herbert Peter Tenney. Jake thumbed the pages, which were festooned with entry and exit stamps. Tenney certainly got around. He passed it back to the general.

  “Now if you’ll just check it to see if it’s genuine.”

  “But of course.” A flash of gold.

  The door opened and the escort in the blue suit was there waiting. Shmarov nodded his head. Grafton returned the nod and wheeled to follow the escort. Toad trailed along behind.

  The room where the two Americans ended up contained only a table and a few chairs. On the table were clothes and shoes, a coat, a briefcase.

  “His things,” Blue Suit said, and gestured.

  “Everything?” Toad asked.

  “Everything. He is being X-rayed. To see that nothing inside, then back to cell.”

  “Thank you.”

  Blue Suit gestured to the table, then pulled up a chair and sat down to watch. He took out a cigarette and lit it.

  Jake took the briefcase while Toad started on the shoes.

  The briefcase was plastic, with a plastic handle. It was unlocked, so he opened it and removed the contents, a legal pad, paper and pencils. Nothing else was inside. He examined the pens, cheap ballpoints, then disassembled them.

  The padded handle of the briefcase showed wear but seemed innocuous. Jake used his penknife to cut it open. Nothing. Then he used the knife to slice out the padding that coated the interior of the case.

  Their escort left the room for a moment, then returned with pliers, a screwdriver and a magnifying glass. Jake used the screwdriver to take off the tiny metal feet of the case.

  Finally he turned his attention to the shoes. The laces, the heels, everything was examined closely and minutely with the magnifying glass.

  When Toad began looking at the case, Jake turned his attention to the clothes — trousers, shirt, underwear, socks, tie, jacket and coat. He felt every seam and probed every questionable thickness with his pocketknife.