The Red Horseman (5 page)

It’s 1932 in Germany all over again. Now you people
in the CIA seem to think that if the Communists get
back in power, in some magical way this nuclear
weapons control problem will just disappear.
Bullshit!”

Schenler’s tone sharpened. “I think you owe me and
my staff an apology, General. We have
said no such thing here.”

“You’ve implied it. You just stated that we have
to keep our lines of communication open to the Commies,
treat them as legitimate contenders for power.”

“We’re not suggesting the United States should
aid their return to power.”

Brown cleared his throat explosively. “Then
I apologize.

I’ve become so used to double-talk and new age
quackspeak from you people, I’m easily confused. Perhaps
today we can dispense with the bureaucratic mumbo jumbo
and get down to brass tacks.”

Schenler paused for several seconds as he
looked at the page before him.

He had an apology and a challenge. He
decided to accept the apology and return to the
agenda items.

Brown’s outburst was the only bright spot in the
meeting, Jake Grafton found to his sorrow.
These weekly strategy sessions, “strategizing” the
civilian intelligence professionals called it,
were usually exercises in tedium. Today was no
exception. No facts were briefed that hadn’t already
circulated through the upper echelons. Most of what
ended up on the table were policy options from
CIA analysts, career researchers who were
theoretically politically neutral. Jake
Grafton didn’t believe it-the only
politically neutral people he had ever met were dead.

So the items discussed here were really policy
alternatives that had made their long, tortuous
way through the intestines of the Central Intelligence
Agency, perhaps the most monolithic bureaucracy
left on the planet. Like General Brown, Jake
Grafton looked at these nuggets without
enthusiasm. Larded with dubious predictions and
carefully chosen facts, these policy
alternatives were really the choices the upper
echelons of the CIA wanted the policyrnakers
to adopt. The researchers gave their bosses what
they thought the bosses wanted to hear, or so Brown and
Grafton believed.

Alas, these two uniformed officers well knew
they couldn’t change the system. So they listened and
recorded their objections.

Schenler sometimes argued. Most of the time he just
took notes. Grafton never saw the notes.
About fifty, with saltand-pepper hair and an ivy
league education, Schenler was an organization man
to his fingertips.

“I’ll bet the bastard hasn’t farted in
twenty-five years,” General Brown once
grumbled to Jake.

Jake also took occasional notes at these
soirees, doodled and watched Schenler and his
lieutenants perform the usual rituals.

Today, when he finally concluded that General Brown
had given up, he went back to doodling. He used
his pencil to doctor up his copy of a reproduction
of a current Russian anti-Semitic poster that
had been handed around before Brown fired his salvo. The
crude drawing depicted two rich Jews-they had
to be Jews: guys with hooked noses wearing
yartnulkes–counting their money while starving women and
children watched. In one corner a man with a red star on
his cap observed the scene. Jake penciled a
swastika on his chest.

“What is this?” Jake held up a piece of
paper and waved it at Toad Tarkington.

“Ah, Admiral, if you could give me a little
hint “You put this here, didn’t you?”

Jake Grafton had been going through his morning
mail pile when he ran across Toad’s
masterpiece, a summary of everything in the computer about
the demise of Nigel Keren. It was short,
only one page, but pithy, full of facts.

Toad knew the admiral was partial to facts.

“Oh,” Toad said when Jake held the paper out
so he could see it, “that’s just a little thing I put together
for your information.”

The admiral stared at him with humor. “I know
everything I want to know about Nigel Keren.”

Toad had rehearsed this, but looking at Jake
Grafton, his little speech went out the window. “I’m
sorry,” he said contritely.

“I know how he was killed,” the admiral said.

Toad gawked.

The admiral put the paper on the desk in
front of him and toyed with it.

“A publishing mogul alone on a large yacht,
no one aboard but him and twelve crew members,
all male. The ship is three days out of the
Canaries when he eats dinner alone-the same
food that all the crew was served-and spends the rest
of the evening walking the deck, then goes to his
stateroom. The next morning the crew can’t find
him aboard. Two days later his nude body is
found floating in the sea. A Spanish pathologist
found no evidence of violence, no water in the
lungs, no heart disease, no burst blood
vessels in the brain, no evidence of suffocation.
In short, the man died a natural death and his
corpse somehow went into the sea. None of the crew
members knows anything. All deny that they killed
him.”

When Jake fell silent Toad added, “Then his
media empire broke up.

Apparently large sums of money, hundreds of
millions, may have been taken. If anyone knows,
they aren’t saying. Keren’s son says the deceased
father just leveraged deals and the worldwide recesmade too
many sion caught them short.”

The admiral merely grunted.

“Perhaps there was a stowaway aboard the yacht,”
Toad suggested. “Or a small vessel
rendezvoused with the yacht and an assassin team came
aboard.”

“No. The British checked with every ship in the
vicinity and interrogated the crew thoroughly. And if
he was assassinated, how was it done?”

“You tell me,” Tarkington muttered.

“Remember that top secret CIA progress
report that went through here a couple of months ago
on the development of binary chemicals?”

Toad nodded once.

“When I saw it then, I thought of the Keren
case,” Jake Grafton continued, “but I forgot
all about it until the other day when I was staring at that
photo Judith Farrell donated to the cause. And
I confess, I used the computer yesterday after you
left to reread the Keren file.” He smiled at
Toad.

“It would have occurred to you sooner or later.”

“Binary chemicals.”

“That’s right. The poisons of the past-arsenic,
strychnine, that kind of thing-all had a couple of
major drawbacks. If given in sufficient
quantity to do the job they killed very quickly, before the
killer had a chance to leave the scene of the crime. And
there was always the problem of killing too many people, anyone
who ingested the poisoned food or drink. Binary
chemicals remove those drawbacks. You give your
victim one chemical, harmless in itself, perhaps serve
it in the punch at a party. Everyone drinks it and no
one is the wiser. It’s absorbed by the tissues and
so remains in the body for a lengthy period, at least
several weeks. But it’s benign, produces no
ill effect.

Then at a later date the assassin serves the
other half of the poison, also quite benign
by itself, And the second half of the brew combines with the first
half in the body of the victim and becomes a deadly
poison. The victim goes home and goes to bed
and the chemical reaction takes place and his heart
stops. No one will suspect poison. Even if
they do, investigation will reveal that everything the victim
ate and drank was also ingested by other people.”

Jake Grafton turned his hand over.

“So Keren could have been given the first drink of the
chemical at any time in the preceding few weeks,”
Toad said.

“Correct. At a party, a luncheon, a
dinner, whatever. it could have been in anything he ate
or drank. And that everyone else ate or drank.”

“Then aboard ship . .

“The second chemical could have been in the food
when it came aboard, maybe in the ship’s water
tank. Probably the food, which would be consumed or
thrown away. When Keren had ingested a sufficient
dosage and chemical reaction was complete, his heart
stopped. And no one aboard the ship knew anything
about it. They were all innocent.”

“Wouldn’t this stuff still be in his body?” Toad
asked “Probably. If the pathologist had known
what to look for. Zero chance of that.”

con”But why did the body go into the water?”

“That’s a side issue,” Jake Grafton
said. “Nothing in life is ever neat and tidy.
Someone panicked when they found him dead. You can
make your own list of reasons.

Maybe the British found out who threw him
overboard and kept quiet to protect the dead
man’s reputation. Extraordinarily wealthy man,
Pillar of the community, why smear him after he’s
dead? The British think like that.”

“But later they said Keren committed suicide.
That’s certainly frowned on by the upper crust.”

“if you have a corpse floating in the ocean and no
proof of murder, what would you call it?”

“He was a Jew from the Levant,” Toad said
carefully.

“Emigrated to Britain as a young man. Poor
as a church mouse.”

“Then he made hundreds of millions and the
Mossad was right there when he died to snap a photo
of a CIA agent.

Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” Toad said,
eyeing the admiral.

“Not me,” Jake Grafton said with finality.
“I have no reason to go Prying into someone
else’s dirty little business.

And no levers to pry with even if I were foolish enough
to try.” He tossed Toad’s summary at him.
“Put this into the burn bag and let’s get back
to work.”

On Friday evening Jake took Callie and
Amy to a movie.

Afterward they stopped for ice cream. It was a little after
eleven before Amy wheeled the car into the driveway and
killed the engine. Jake got out of the passenger seat
and held the rear door open for Callie.

“Well, Mom, what’d'ya think?” Amy
asked.

“You drive too fast.”

“I do not! Do I, Dad?”

“Wasn’t that a great movie?” said Jake
Grafton.

“Dad!” Amy exclaimed in anguish.
“Don’t avoid the issue. Oooh, I just hate
it when you do that!”

From the porch–this rambling three-story brick
built in the 1920’s still had its porch-Jake
waved to the federal protective service guard standing
on the corner under the light, then opened the door with his
key.

“You two are just so narrow bandwidth,” Amy
continued, “so totally random.” Still talking in a
conversational tone of voice, she made for the stairs and
started up. “It’s like I’m stuck in an uncooled
fossil movie, some black-and white Ronald
Reagan time warp with all the girls in letter sweaters
and white socks and the boys in duck’s ass
greasecuts-was

“Amy Carol,” Callie called up the
stairs. “I’ll have none of that kind of language in
my house.”

Her voice came floating down. “I’m the last
kid in America growing up with Ozzie and Harriet
. . .”

“You’re very narrow bandwidth, Harriet,” Jake
told his wife, who grinned.

“What does that mean?” she asked softly.

“I don’t know,” her husband confessed. He
kissed her on the forehead and led the way to the kitchen.
After Callie made coffee and poured him a cup,
he took it upstairs to the study.

He flipped on the light and started. A man was
sitting behind the desk.

Another sat on the couch.

Automatically Jakes eye went to the
door of the safe. it was still closed.

The men were in suits and ties, The man on the
couch had blond hair and spoke first. “Come in and
close the door, Admiral.”

Jake stood where he was, “How’d you two get
in here?”

“‘Come in and close the door. Unless YOU
want Your wife and daughter to hear this. Jake
obeyed.

“Want to tell me Who YOU are?” he said.

Now the man behind the desk spoke. “You haven’t
hit the right question Yet, Admiral. Ask us why
we’re here.”

Jake remembered the coffee in his hand and sipped
it as he examined the visitors. Both under forty, but
not by much. Short hair. clean-shaven, reasonably
fit.

was Get out of my

chair,” he said to the man behind the desk.

“Admiral, that confrontational tone is not going
to get us anywhere. Why don’t You sit down and
we’ll

Jake tossed the remainder of the coffee

at the man’s face.

The liquid hit the target, then some Of
it splashed on the desk. The man grunted, then
wiped his face with his left hand. He Stood UP
slowly. As he got fully erect the blond man
on the couch uncoiled explosively in Jake’s
direction.

Jake had been expecting this. He smashed the
coffee into the side of the blond man’s face with his
right hancdu-p the cup shattered-and followed it
UP with a hard left that connected with the man’s skull
and jolted Jake clear to the elbow. But then the man
had his shoulder into Jake’s chest and slammed him
back against the bookcase. The other man was coming around
the desk.

Jake tried to use a knee on his
assailant’s body. No. He tried to chop with
both hands at the back Of the man’s neck. He
succeeded only in getting himself off balance, so his
blows lacked power.

The man from the desk drew back a right and
delivered a haallymaker to Jake’s chin.

The admiral saw stars and lost his balance
completely, When his vision cleared he was on the
floor, the blond standing and the other man kneeling beside
him. Blondie was using a handkerchief on the side
of his face. When he withdrew it Jake could
see blood.

“You’ve had your nose in a matter that doesn’t
concern you, Admiral.

You’re not Batman or Jesus H. Christ.
This visit was just a friendly warning. You’ve got a
wife and kid and it would be a hell of a shame if
anything happened to them. Do you understand me?”

“Jake?” It was Callie’s voice. She was
outside the door.