The Red Horseman (16 page)

When Herb Tenney slipped in and dropped into an
empty seat, Toad came wide awake. Herb
looked none the worse for his ordeal and sat listening
as if he could actually understand this technical mumbo
jumbo.

Toad tried to ignore Herb, which was difficult.
He well knew that some people could sense when they were being
watched, and he didn’t want Herb to get
the idea that he and Grafton were responsible for his
recent unpleasantness, at least not for a while.

Still, when the break in the presentation came and he
saw Jake Grafton angling through the crowd for
Herb, Toad managed to be within earshot.

“Herb, I thought you were going to be here this morning,”
the admiral said.

“I’m sorry, sir. Something came up
unexpectedly.”

“This is important,” Grafton replied.

“I’m aware of that.” Toad thought this reply had
just a trace of disrespect in it, which would be typical
of the Herb Tenney he had come to know and love.

“We’re supposed to be working together on this, Mr.
Tenney,” Jake said, his voice so low Toad had
to step closer to catch the words. “I don’t know what
else you have going on here in Moscow and I don’t
really care, but if you can’t give this assignment the
attention required then I’m going to have to report you
to Washington. I expect you to be at official
functions clean and sober and on time.”

“It won’t happen again,” Tenney replied
matter-offactly, without a trace of rancor.

“Fine,” Jake said, and walked away.

That evening back at the embassy Toad
Tarkington dug into his luggage. A couple years
ago at a Virginia pawnshop he had purchased
a Walther PPK, a slick little automatic in
.380 ACP caliber. It had probably once
belonged to a cop who had used it as a hideout gun
because it had a spring-steel clip spot-welded onto
the left side of the slide.

The clip allowed the pistol to be slipped behind the
waistband in the small of the back and hooked onto the
top of the trousers. It rode there quite nicely, such a
small package that it would usually escape
notice, yet it could be drawn easily with the right
hand.

He had brought along only enough shells to load the
magazine once, so he did that now and slipped the
magazine into the pistol. He cycled the slide
to put a round in the chamber, then lowered the hammer.
He tucked the pistol into the small of his back,
checking carefully to make sure the clip engaged his
waistband, then fluffed his shirt out over the protruding
grip.

It wasn’t much of a gun. Still, it felt good to have
it.

He had brought more gun along, a 9mm Browning
Hi Power, but it was too bulky to tote
around unobtrusively.

Toad got out the Browning and cycled the slide and
sat on the bed thinking about Herb Tenney and his little
white pills.

He pointed the gun at the mirror above the
dresser and squeezed the trigger. The hammer fell
with a metallic thunk.

He lay back on the bed and closed his eyes.
Now he remembered the little square of paper he had
found in the

when he unfolded it this pocket of the shirt he was
wearing p where morning. He fished it from his wallet
and held it u he could read it.

Your touch, your kisses open the pathways to my
heart Rita was fond of writing little love notes
and putting them where he would find them at a moment when
he least expected it. He wondered when she had
written this one.

Perhaps when she was ironing the shirts, the afternoon he was
packing.

Or days before.

Rita …

Funny, but when he was dating and playing the field
he man. Or had never realized how much he could
love a wo how much a woman could love
him.

Strange how life reveals its mysteries. Just
when you think you have the game scoped out, that you know all
the rules and all the intricacies, all it has
to offer, a new rich vein of truth reveals itself.

Rita is what you have to lose, Toad
Tarkington. Death is not the threat. That’s coming
sooner or later any way you cut the cards. The
richness of life with Rita and the extraordinary gift
of what might be-that is what Herb Tenney and his
little white pills can deprive you of.

He held the Browning up where he could see it.
Without realizing it he had eared back the hammer.

He pulled the trigger and listened again to the thunk as
the hammer slammed down.

The embassy residents were at dinner when Herb
Tenney dusted his bathroom sink with fingerprint
powder. Yes, there were fingerprints there, most of them
smeared but a couple fairly nice. He used
tape to lift the best ones and placed the tape on a
white file card.

Back at his desk he compared the prints to those on
the fax he had received an hour ago on the CIA’S
private com equipment. One of them was a perfect
match.

So Jake Grafton had personally searched the
place. That dweeb Tarkington was probably with him
when he did it.

The fax also supplied him with a copy of
Tarkington’s fingerprints, but developing more raw
prints for comparison hardly seemed worth the effort.
Herb Tenney sighed and stowed the bottle of powder
and the brush and tape in the fingerprint kit.

That arrest this morning had been a farce. They had
stopped his car a block from the embassy and handcuffed
,hm. Then a Russian had driven him and his car
to KGI3 Headquarters. There he was escorted to a
cell and stripped and X-rayed.

He had spent three hours sitting stark naked in
an isolation cell before they returned his clothes.
Throughout the entire experience no one had asked him a
single question.

Not when they picked him up, during the ride to the
prison, nor while they were holding him.

After he was dressed, a man in a blue suit
led him through the corridors to an office. Sitting
behind the desk pawing through the stuff that had been in his
pockets was General Shmarov.

“Find anything interesting?”

Shmarov held up the white button that
came off yesterday’s shirt and looked from it to the
CIA officer. “Maybe the cleverest transmitter
I have yet seen, Tenney.”

Then he grinned and tossed the button on top
of the currency and passport lying there. “Sorry for the
inconvenience today.”

“Was this supposed to be funny? Should I laugh
now?”

Shmarov shrugged. “You know how these things are. I
was asked to do a favor by a very high officer in the
Defense Ministry. He wanted your passport
checked. How could I refuse? He had been asked
to do this by an American naval officer.”

“Rear Admiral Grafton? He was here?” of
your

“Yes. Grafton. With an aide. Did he
leave any seams intact?”

Tenney found a chair and dropped into it. “I
think I caught a cold in your dungeon. I never
realized how drafty these damned places are.”

“They searched your car and took the keys that were in
your pocket. They brought them back a few minutes
ago.”

General Shmarov displayed the keys and placed them
beside the button on top of the rubles and
dollars. He lit a cigarette, took a deep
drag, and filled the room with smoke.

Then he said, “Want to tell me what this is
about)”

“I’m as mystified as you are, General,” Herb
Tenney told him.

Shmarov displayed his gold teeth in a grin and
puffed some more on his cigarette.

t Kolokoltsev9″

“Who rubbed out The golden grin disappeared.
Shmarov stubbed out the cigarette and stared through the
dissipating smoke at his visitor.

“Someone who wanted to make a lot of trouble.

They succeeded.”

was Hard to believe that something like that could happen here
in Moscow, almost under your nose. Soviet Square
is what, a half mile from here? A kilometer?”

“What do you know about it, Tenney?”

Herb Tenney got up and approached the desk.
He picked up his things and placed them in his
pockets. Then he put his knuckles on the desk
and stared into Shmarov’s face.

“I think it looks as if you people killed your own
guys SO you could set up Yeltsin. They’ll think
that over at the KremLin. They’ll think it
in Washington too. Whoever pulled the cops out of that
square really screwed the pooch.

“We are not that stupid.” u I’d find

“I’ll tell them that at Langley. But if I
were yo someone to hang it on, and damn quick.”

The ringing phone woke Jake Grafton. He
had thrown himself on the bed and just dozed off.

“Grafton.”

“Admiral, this is Jack Yocke.”

“Hey. I I

“I was wondering if you could come over for a drink.”

“Well, I don’t think-was

“See you within an hour, Admiral, in my
room.” And Yocke hung up.

Jake cradled the receiver and swung his feet over
onto the floor. He looked at his watch.
Eleven at night. He was still fighting the jet lag
and hangover and he felt lethargic, unable
to concentrate. He put on his shoes and splashed some
cold water from the sink onto his face.

Yocke’s room was on the fourth floor of the
hotel. He opened the door at Toad’s knock.
“Come in.”

When he had the door closed Yocke said,
“General Land called a little while ago.
You’re to wait here with me.”

“For what? Another phone call?”

Yocke shrugged. “I just take messages and
deliver them.

Jake sank into the one stuffed chair.

“How’s the foreign correspondent these days?”
Toad asked Yocke as he dropped onto the bed.

“He’s right in the middle of the biggest story in
Russia and he can’t make heads or tails of
it,” Yocke replied, stating at Jake
Grafton.

“Can’t print it either.”

“I guess assassins can be tough to interview if
you can’t find them.”

“That isn’t the story I meant. Anyway, my
editor took me off that and gave it to the senior
man. I’m doing political stuff. Y’know,
“Today the Russian Ministry of Economics
announced a new stabilization policy for the ruble.”
Drivel like that.” He sighed. “Other than that, the
food here is barely edible and grotesquely
expensive, the vodka tastes like rubbing alcohol,
my bed is lumpy, the pillow’s too big, and I
had a devil of a time yesterday getting a roll of
toilet paper from the maid.

Had to give her a U.s. dollar for it.

I’ve got to find an apartment by next week and
get out of this hotel or the bean counters at the Post
are going to get testy. What’s new with you?”

Tarkington just made a noise and stretched out on
the bed, In a moment he said, “This pillow is too
big.”

“Would I lie to you?”

“I don’t think the bed’s lumpy though.”

Before Yocke could think of a reply, Jake
Grafton asked, “How would you like to tag along with
me and Toad for @u while?”

The question startled Yocke. Toad opened his eyes,
sat up and stared wide-eyed at Jake for a few
seconds, then flopped back on the bed and
groaned. comsort of like Washington a couple of
years ago, eh?”

Yocke said with a grin. “Same rules?”

“Well, not exactly.” Jake frowned. “I
guess I don’t know precisely what the rules
should be. So I’d want some sort of promise that
you won’t print anything on any subject without my
okay.”

“I assume that you’re working with the Russians. Do
they know I’ll be there? A reporter?”

“I’ve talked to General Yakolev about it. I
told him I could trust Y.”

Toad groaned again. “Spreading it a little thick,
aren’t you, sir? I’d trust Jack the Hack with
parking meter money, but .

“Yakolev? Isn’t he the chief of staff for the
new Commonwealth Army?”

“That’s the guy. Nicolai Yakolev.
“Soaks up vodka like a sponge,” Toad tossed
in.

“I agree.” Yocke grinned broadly and
offered Jake his hand. After the admiral shook it,
he grabbed a steno pad and a pencil and plopped
onto the edge of the bed, forcing Tarkington to scoot
over. He flipped the pad open to a fresh page and
said, “Shoot.”

con’ationo notes. None.”

“I have to take notes. I got a good memory
but it ain’t Memorex. Only way to ensure
accuracy later on when I write the story.” so
Yocke steamed on.

Grafton appeared unmoved, e Alfalfa
“We’re talking the Washington Post here, not this
County Clarion.” Yocke added confidentially,
“I’ll use my own private shorthand.
No one can read it but me.

Honest.”

“Not even if you write in Swahili.”

Tarkington chortled.

Yocke tossed the steno pad on top of the
dresser. “No notes.”

“The other part of it is that the CIA may try
to kill you.”

Yocke’s mouth fell open. He glanced at
Toad, then back at Jake. “The CIA? Our
guys? You’re kidding, right?”

“No.”

“I can’t write a story if I’m dead.”

“That thought may occur to them too.”

“Them? The whole CIA or a couple of bad
apples or who?”

“I dunno.”

Yocke lost his temper. “Jesus Christ,
Admiral! You don’t give a guy much. What
say we do this the conventional, tried-and-true
traditional way? You tell me whatever you want
to tell me and I’ll write and publish it, just like a
real working reporter. You’ll be an anonymous,
reliable source, an unnamed high government
official. I won’t reveal your name
to another living soul, even if they throw me in
jail. I’ll stay alive and out of your hair.
Anytime you want to talk, just give a shout.”

“Be like having your own psychotherapist on the
cheap, CAG,” Toad said unctuously, “but you could
skip the messy details about your sex life unless
you wanted our modern Dr. Freud to make you
famous.”

Jake Grafton shook his head. “Won’t work
that way,” he told Yocke. “You either come along
for the ride on the chance that someday you may get to write
a story or you stay at home. It’s up to you.”

“Just what do you get out of this arrangement?”
Yocke demanded.

“I get an independent observer who has the
power to reach the American public. I’m not sure
what that will be worth because I don’t know how things will
shake out. But … if Toad and I get killed and
you somehow manage to live to tell the tale, it might
make very interesting reading in some quarters. I don’t
know. Too many ifs.

I just don’t know.” He eyed Yocke. “At the
very least you’re an unknown quantity added to the
equation.” He shrugged.

A knock sounded on the door.

“Well?” Jake asked. “Yea or nay?”

“I’m in.”

Yocke went to answer the door. The man who
came in was wearing a suit and overcoat and had a
hard case that looked as if it contained a
videocamera handcuffed to his wrist. The case
displayed a diplomatic tag.

“Admiral Grafton?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Master Sergeant Emmett Thornton.
I need to see your ID, sir.”

Jake took out his wallet and extracted his
green military ID card.

Thornton gave it a careful look, then handed it
back. “Thank you, sir.”

He extracted a piece of paper from his inside
coat pocket and held it out. “Now if you will just
sign for this equipment, it’s all yours.”

Jake scribbled his name. “How much is this going
to cost me if I lose it, Sergeant?”

“About a hundred grand.”

Toad snapped his fingers. “We’ll put it on
our Amoco card.”

Thornton glanced at Yocke.

“He’s okay,” Grafton told him.

Thornton laid the case on the bed and used a
key to open it. They gathered around for a look as he
began unpacking items. “What we have here is a
TACSAT’-TACTICAL satellite–com unit
with built-in encryption device. The signal
goes right up to the bird, which rebroadcasts it to the
Pentagon com center. Nicad batteries and a
universal recharger.

All you do is set the encryption code and use it
like a twoway radio.

General Land wanted me to remind you that the codes
were generated by the National Security Agency.”

Jake examined the switches and buttons on the
device.

We’ll need a brief and the codes.”

“Yessir. I’ll come to that. This other item is
simpler. It’s a tape recorder with an encryption
device attached. You merely record a
message, anything you want up to thirty minutes.
Then you punch up a six-digit code in this window
here. Find a telephone, call the party you want,
and when they are ready, you hit the play button. The
garbled sound goes out at high speed. Takes about
sixty seconds to play a thirty-minute
message. If the other party has a
message for you, you then put your machine on record
and hold it up to the phone. Later on you can play the
message and the machine will decode it into plain
English. This thing works with telephones or
TACSAT.”

The TACSAT came with a set of codes on
water-soluble paper. Since it was possible the
codes could fall into the wrong hands, “unauthorized
personnel” was Thornton’s phrase, each
authentic message should start with a code word that the
admiral was to make up. Now. After a moment’s
thought Jake wrote a word on a matchbook and showed
it to the sergeant, who then burned the matchbook in the
wastepaper basket.

“The code for the telephone encrypter is a little more
difficult. If you other gentlemen would like to step out
of the room for a minute?”

“No, Sergeant,” Jake told him. “Let’s
you and I go for a walk.”

Out on the sidewalk in front of the hotel the
evening breeze was picking up. The sergeant
explained: “General Land suggested this code.
Take the date, multiply it by the year in which you were
born, then divide by the hour of the day in which you sent the
message.” He produced a sheet of
paper. “Try it. Today is the second of July
here so write that as seven oh two. And use local
time in the military format, It’s now twenty-three
fifty, so use twenty-three hundred.”

Jake got a pen from his shirt pocket and did the
math.

“I get five nine three point six four
seven-something.”

“You were born in 1945, right?”

“Yes.

“Okay, Admiral. You would just punch that
six-digit number into the encrypter and place the
decimal in the proper place. Always start with a
positive integer and carry out any fractions so that
you have six digits. Add zeros to the right of the
decimal as necessary.”

“Who has this code, besides you and me?”

“Just General Land.”

“We’ll always use Moscow time?”

“Moscow date and time.”

“Okay. Come upstairs and give Toad and me
a complete brief on the gear and we’ll be all
set. Did you just get in from Washington?”

“I came here straight from the airport, sir.
They re waiting to take me back.”

“Long flight.”

“I’m used to it. I sleep on the plane.”

Jake Grafton stared at the communications
devices with a sinking feeling. After a moment he
screwed up the courage to ask, “Just how secure
is this techno-junk?”

The sergeant faced him squarely. “Admiral,
this stuff is like a padlock on a garage. It’ll
keep honest people honest.

But with a good computer a competent cryptographer
could break any message in a couple hours.”

All Jake Grafton could manage was a
grunt.

“The good news,” the sergeant continued, “is that the
ruskies don’t have many good computers. They do most
of their crypto work by hand, so it’ll take them a
couple weeks. Then one hopes the report will get
routed here and there through the bureaucracy and a couple more
weeks will pass before it lands on the desk of someone
who may or may not decide to believe it.”

“A couple hours. With a good computer.”

“That’s about the size of it, sir.”

And the CIA has the best computers in the world,
Jake Grafton took a deep breath and thanked
the sergeant for his trouble. Being an army
man, the sergeant saluted.

THE PLANE WAS THE PERSONAL
TRANSPORT OF THE MINIS-TER of defense and
still the rest room smelled like an outhouse and no
water came out of the sink taps. No paper towels.
So much for personal hygiene!

Jake opened the door and stepped out into the aisle
that led to the cockpit. There was no cockpit door and
he could see the instrument panel between the pilots.

The warning placards were in Cyrillic and the
instruments had funny labels. He stood there
looking over their shoulders for several seconds before the
pilot realized he was there and looked over his
shoulder. He said something in Russian and Jake
replied in English.

“Good morning,” the pilot managed.

“Good morning,” Jake echoed. “Nice plane
you got here.”

When the pilot tapped his watch and made half a
circle on the face with his finger, Jake nodded
sagely and returned to his seat.

General Yakolev was in a seat across the aisle
conferring with his aide.

They were going over documents. Toad sat in the
next row with Jocko West, who was
broadening the American’s horizons. Behind them
sat the other foreign military representatives.

Today they were making a trip to a Russian
nuclear weapons depot to see how warheads were
disassembled. The name of the base they were going to was
Petrovsk, on the Volga watershed. Jake
glanced at the map again.

The place was a hundred miles or so north
northeast of Volgograd, formerly Stalingrad,
where the Soviet army shattered Adolph Hitler’s
ambitions.

Jake Grafton hadn’t even been born then,
but Yakolev was a young soldier in the Soviet
army. Once again Jake pondered the twists of
fate that had lifted Yakolev to the top, wondered
again about the man who wore that uniform.

The window was scratched from being repeatedly wiped with
dirty rags, but Jake managed to get a look
through it at the land sliding by thirty thousand or so feet
below.

Forests, occasional small villages, roads that
followed the contours of the land.

It just didn’t look like America, or even
western Europe.

Those landscapes had their own distinct
look that an experienced air traveler would
recognize at a glance. Part of the problem, Jake
decided, was that Russia was just too big.

Great distances were the blessing that caused Napoleon
and Hitler to founder and the curse that had stymied
generations of Communist economic planners.

Soon Jake heard the power being reduced and
felt the nose drop a degree or two as the
pilot began his descent.

All this talk about weapons . . . it would be good
finally to see some of the damned things.

The weapons were being disassembled in a makeshift
clean room that didn’t look any too tight. This
was the scene of Yakolev’s show-and-tell session.
The Western visitors gathered in front of a
plate-glass window and watched white-robed
technicians use mechanical arms to manipulate
the warhead parts while an interpreter translated
Yakolev’s comments, which were in Russian.
Amazingly, when they entered the facility no one had
offered them film badges to record the level of
radiation to which they might be exposed, nor was anyone
working here wearing one.

Beside the general stood a man in civilian
clothes who looked nervous.

Jake assumed he was the manager of this
facility. Occasionally Yakolev asked him a question
and pondered the reply, but the interpreter didn’t
translate these exchanges.

From the clean room an army truck took the party
to a large hangar where row after row of missiles sat
on their transporters, Against one wall were stacked
wooden crates of pallets-nuclear warheads. The
small party stood in silence taking it all in.

Yakolev stood beside Jake. Finally he
spoke, in English.

“Impressive, yes?”

“That it is.”

“Russia shook the world with these missiles,”
Yakolev said. “And now we take them apart.”

Jake Grafton searched the older man’s
impassive face.

“We become another poor country without a
voice in the world’s affairs,” the general continued after
a moment, still looking at the row upon row of missiles
decorated with huge red stars. “The television
brings us news of the great things that are happening in
Washington, New York, London, Paris,
Bonn … We learn the thoughts of the great men of our
age. The world’s leaders ponder the future
of mankind and debate how much money to give
Russia while we eat our potatoes and
borsch.”

Yakolev slapped Jake on the back. “That
is progress, no? No more bad old Communists!
Now Russians buy televisions and watch CNN
and the BBC and bet on world cup soccer and tennis
matches at Wimbledon. They worry about stock
prices in Tokyo and London and New York.

No more bad old Russians! They are just like
us.”

Yakolev turned away and Jake Grafton
watched his retreating back. Then he stood looking
at the missiles.

General Yakolev excused himself for a few hours
work, so Jake asked for a tour of the base. This
disconcerted the civilian interpreter, but within a few
minutes a military guide-interpreter was
provided. “What want to see?” the man asked with a
heavy accent, wearing a perplexed look.

“The enlisted barracks, the mess hall and the
hospital,”

Jake told him.

The guide Was in uniform, with a rank designation
that Jake didn’t recognize, and now he
looked around in bewilderment, Jake guessed that he
was in his early twenties.

Seeing no one handy to voice his concerns to, yet
unwilling to refuse the request of this important
foreign visitor in the strange uniform, he slowly
led Jake and Toad out the door of the hangar office
and set a course across the packed dirt toward a
distant building. comWhat’s your name?”

“Mikhail Babkin, sir.”

Jake Grafton mouthed “You speak excellent
English .

tie easily, without a twinge of con the
complimentary n all other languages, he science.
English is different that reflected. Most
Frenchmen listening to badly spoken French will
pretend that they cannot understand or ignore the offender
entirely. Yet any American meeting a
goatherd in sub-Sahara Africa or on the
windswept steppes of Mongolia who knows a word
or two of pidgen English will comPliment that worthy
on his command of the language The barracks was of
concrete construction, the usual Russian mix of
too little cement, too much sand. The soldiers lived
in one large, smelly, musty room with wooden
bunks without springs. In the middle of the
room stood a wood stove with an exhaust pipe
leading to the roof. The bathrooms were communal, with no
seats on the filthy toilets and one large shower with
five drippy heads. There was no hot water
heater. The smell …