The Red Horseman (17 page)

“No hot water?”

“Hot? No.”

For an American naval officer who had spent
half his adult life aboard ship where men were forced
to live together in close quarters, this barracks was an
appalling sight. The men who lived here must be
constantly sick.

The mess hall was even worse. It was filthy,
without refrigeration facilities or hot water.
Jake asked how the dishes were washed and was told that
each man dips his plate into a large drum of
cold water. He was shown the drums.

At the hospital he wandered the corridors and
looked at the soldiers in the beds. They stared back
at him. He peeked into one empty operating room
with little equipment.

“Where do you sterilize the instruments?” They are
boiled, he was told.

There was a sink in the anteroom, the taps
dripping, He turned them on full and
let them run.

Uh-oh.

“Hot water?”

“Hot? No. Want see X-ray machine?”

Stunned, Jake left the dimly lit building
meekly when an officious person, presumably the
administrator or doctor in charge, fired a
volley of Russian at their escort and pointed
at the door.

“The sewage treatment plant … I want
to see the sewage treatment plant.”

The translator had great difficulty understanding the
request. Toad got into the act. Finally Jake
realized that there was no sewage treatment plant.
Eventually it became clear that the sewage was piped
straight to the local river. The translator led
them to the bank where they could look down upon the discharge
pipes.

And nearby was the garbage dump. Above ground,
The wind brought a whiff of it to where Jake and Toad
and the translator were standing. Some small creature
darted toward the pile, birds wheeled above, clouds
of flies . . .

For all these years, Jake thought savagely, we
have been told about the vast capabilities
of the Soviet military machine. And it’s all a
lie.

The shiny missiles and pretty tanks are the
whole show. The men who must operate these weapons are
poorly housed, in ill health, live in
unsanitary conditions and eat food a Western
health inspector would send to a landfill. It’s all
a lie.

What was it General Brown had said? The
Soviet Union is a nation in total social and
economic collapse. Nothing works. Nothing!

He was in a subdued mood when he boarded the
plane for the return flight to Moscow. General
Yakolev made some comment but he paid no attention.

Toad Tarkington had a drink in each hand, and
he held out one to Jake Grafton, who looked but
didn’t reach.

“It’s Scotch on the rocks,” Toad said.
Seeing the look on Grafton’s face, he added,
“I broke the seal on the bottle myself and poured
it.”

Jake accepted the glass and tried to grin.

“I know,” Toad said.

Around them the Fourth of July reception at
Spaso House, the United States”
ambassador’s residence, was in full swing.
Jake Grafton estimated the crowd at four or
five hundred people. They were everywhere, in every room, in
every hall, running into one another, taking
delicacies from the trays of passing waiters, and
drinking champagne by the gallon. In one corner a
combo played light music by American composers.
The light from the chandeliers cast a warm, soft glow
over everything.

Ambassador Owen Lancaster was mixing and
mingling.

Agatha Hempstead hovered discreetly, ready
to whisper a name into the ambassador’s ear yet far enough
away that she was not a party to his conversations. It was a
delicate balancing act but she seemed to pull it
off without effort.

A few minutes ago Jake had seen Herb
Tenney talking to the British Army officer,
Colonel Jocko West. In rumpled civilian
clothes that somehow didn’t quite fit, West looked like
the caterer’s husband dragged away from the television
to help with the snack tray.

On the other hand Colonel Reynaud, the
French officer, looked like a millionaire standing in
the casino at Monte Carlo waiting for the
baccarat tables to open. He was impeccably turned
out in full dress uniform with medals. Just now he
seemed to be discussing a wine with one of the embassy
staffers-he was holding the glass up to the light, now
sniffing it, paying close attention to what the State
Department employee had to say.

Colonel Galvano, the Italian, was in a
corner with a Russian diplomat.

They were deep in conversation but weren’t grinning.

“Jack Yocke here yet?” Jake asked
Toad.

“Not yet, sir. Dalworth is waiting for him
at the door,” Toad reached out and flicked a
piece of lint off the left shoulderboard of
Jake’s white dress uniform. With medals and
sword. Toad was similarly decked out. He
squared his shoulders and adjusted his sword.

“We look sorta sPiffally, don’t we,
sir? What say you go stand over next to that South
American general or policeman or postal
inspector and let me get a photo for posterity.”

“Dalworth know what to do?”

“Yessir. I briefed him. Stick like glue
all evening.”

“Even in the head.”

“All evening,” Toad repeated. Jake wanted
Herb Tenney and his CIA colleagues to see
Yocke and learn who he was, but he didn’t
want them moving in on him. So Spiro Dalworth
had been carefully briefed.

“Okay,” the admiral said. Toad wandered off.

Dalworth seemed like a bright, capable junior
officer.

Just how the navy managed to keep attracting
quality young people was one of the modern mysteries. It
wasn’t the pay or career opportunities, not in
this era of red tape, budget cuts, Politically
correct witch hunts and reductions in force.

Jake was sipping his drink and musing about the
hundreds of men like Dalworth he had known through the
years when the ambassador rendezvoused on his right
elbow.

“Good evening, Admiral.”

“Good evening, sir- Are all the Fourth of
July whingdings like this?”

was Well, this is my first, and the staff said I was
going to be surprised. I think for a lot of the
Russians the invitations were a welcome relief from
the ordinary. I don’t think we’ll have many
leftovers, if you know what I mean.”

Jake knew. He had already glimpsed several
Russians by the hors d’oeuvre table
surreptitiously wrapping food items in
napkins and pocketing them. He had pretended not
to notice.

tw Haven’l had a chance to chat with you the last day
or o. Everything going okay?”

Jake Grafton nodded thoughtfully.

“So far.”

“Anything I or my staff can do … What do you
think of General Yakolev?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

“He’s as Russian as Rasputin. When you
figure him out, I’d be interested to hear what you
think.”

“Yessir. If I may ask, who are these four
or five Americans that arrived this afternoon?”

“Eight of them, I think,” Lancaster said.
“They’re investigators who are going to go through the
files of the KGB, the Apparat . . .”

Lancaster waved vaguely. “When Yeltsin
invited the Americans over to look at the files,
we took him up on it. They’re FBI, CIA,
some military investigators, one each from the House
and Senate Foreign Relations
Committees.”

“Will there be anything left in the files to find?”
Jake asked, musing aloud.

“Depends on how hard they look,” Lancaster
said sourly. “I doubt that shredder technology has
arrived here yet but the Russians have matches and
garbage dumps.

Still, one never knows. A lot of these people thought they were
in the vanguard of the march of history and wanted
to preserve their place in it with written records.
Then there’s the bureaucratic imperative, what I
believe you military types crudely refer to as
CYA.”

CYA–COVER Your Ass. Jake Grafton
knew about that!

“Is Yeltsin here yet?” he asked the
ambassador.

“No. He didn’t come last year either, which is a
diplomatic faux pas that no European prime
minister or president would ever commit. But this is
Russia.”

Agatha Hempstead brushed against the
ambassador’s elbow, and he raised one eyebrow
at Jake. Then he was on his way to the next
group. Jake smiled at Agatha as she
passed and got an expressionless nod in return.

He looked at his watch. What was the time in
Washington? About ten in the morning. If it were not a
holiday Callie would be at the university holding
office hours. She had an eleven o’clock class this
semester.

Amy was on summer vacation, going swimming and
flirting with the Jackson boy, who had long hair and
pimples and a learner’s permit. Since it was a
holiday, they had probably gone to the beach. Jake
wished he were there with them.

General Yakolev was here tonight with his boss,
Marshal Dimitri Mikhailov. The head of the
Russian military looked every inch a curmudgeon
used to getting his own way. He was playing with a
champagne glass and listening to. an interpreter
explain what the British ambassador was saying.

Apparently not that enthused with diplomacy,
Yakolev wandered to the buffet table and helped himself.
Soon Ambassador Lancaster had him cornered,
but the Russian was eyeing His. Goodbody
Hempstead as he munched Swedish meatballs.
Hempstead favored him with a demure smile.

And there was Herb Tenney, handing them champagne from
a tray. Herb Tenney, champagne
waiter … Those CIA guys had all the social
graces.

Jake looked at the drink in his hand. What if
Tenney slipped his damned stuff into the embassy’s
water purification system? Spaso House’s
system? Moscow tap water was heavily polluted
and the Americans ran it through a purifier before they
made it available for human consumption.

Perhaps the kitchen staff uses tap water to cook
with.

People brush their teeth with it. Ice cubes are
made from it.

He had had what?-one or two sips?

Hell, Jake! Quit sweating it. This stuff
is safe as holy water until Herb slips you the
second half of the cocktail.

But it was no use. Even if he were dying of thirst
he wouldn’t touch it. He put the glass with its two
ice cubes on the table behind him, on a magazine so
it wouldn’t leave a ring, and stuffed his hands into his
pockets.

There was Yocke now, escorted by Spiro
Dalworth. He came wandering over to where Grafton
was parked and waggled his eyebrows in greeting.
“How’s the booze?”

“Free.”

“Jack Daniel’s and water, a double,” the
reporter told Dalworth. “And anything you want
for yourself.”

After a glance at Grafton, Dalworth turned
and headed for the bar.

“So what’s new on the Soviet Square
murders?”

“Damn if I know,” the reporter replied.
“They had me chasing human interest today. Tommy
Townsend, our senior guy, took over the
assassination since it’s so hot, but the poor bastard
is probably hanging out at the Kremlin waiting
for a press release. The cops over here won’t
tell you diddley squat. I’m going to try to milk
them tomorrow.”

“What human was of interest today?”

“Yakov Dynkin, a Jew that these enlightened
democrats stuffed into a crack for selling a car for
more than he paid for it. Funny thing, the warden of
Butyrskaya Prison says he isn’t there.
No Jews are there, according to him. And I can’t find
Dynkin’s wife.”

“You have her address?”

“Yeah. One of our people interviewed her a
couple months ago. But the people at her apartment house
say they never heard of her. Someone else has her
apartment.

No forwarding address. The people at the post office
look at me like I’m a terrorist spy. The
concept of giving a Russian’s address to a
foreigner doesn’t compute.”

Jake Grafton rubbed his eyes.

Jack Yocke looked around at the expensive
furniture and original art on the walls and the
cheerful people sipping champagne and Perrier. A sour
look crossed his face. “I wish to God I was
back in Washington on the cop beat, back looking
at street-corner crack dealers shot full of
holes and interviewing their parents — even covering
the District Building.”

“Well, look at all the material standing here
tonight.

Bring your notebook?”

“Tommy Townsend’s here. Though maybe I can
go down to the kitchen and get enough for a Style section
piece on how they do the canap6’s with a Russian
twist….

Say, isn’t that General Yakolev standing over
there ogling that broad?”

“That’s him.”

“I hear he wants to get rich. He signed a
book contract the other day with a New York
publisher to write a nonfiction treatise on the
former Soviet armed forces. For a cool half a
million. Dollars. That ought to keep the old fart
in rubles until the middle of the next century.”

“Hub!”

“Yep. They’ve signed up Yakolev and about
six other old Commies. One of them’s in the
KGB, one in the Politburo, a couple of
Gorbachev’s old lieutenants, a former
ambassador to the United States and an
ex-foreign minister.

This time next year we’ll know more about the goings on
in the Kremlin than we ever knew about the Reagan
White House.

“Money talks.”

“It sings, but I don’t have any to salt around.
If I ever paid a nickel for an interview the
Post would have my coi6nes.

“I didn’t know reporters had ethics,”

“Ha ha ha and ha. I ask my little questions and
Smile brightlally and these Russians look at me
like I’m some sort of low-life slime.”

“Good luck.”

“Thanks.”

Dalworth returned with Yocke’s drink, and with the
lieutenant at his elbow, the reporter drifted off
to mix and mingle.

Jake Grafton had just greeted the naval
attached, Captain Collins, when a face he
recognized from Time magazine approached,
Senator Wilmoth from Missouri. “I thought I
recognized you, Admiral. You’re Grafton,
aren’t you?”