They went to Gregor’s tiny Soviet sedan and shoehorned themselves in. Sitting there with his knees jammed against the dashboard, Yocke said, “Why don’t you drop the krulak act and stop feeding me bullshit?”
“Why don’t you stop acting like stupid Yankee billionaire looking down his nose?”
“I will if you will.”
Gregor inserted his key in the ignition, then glanced sideways at Yocke. “Standing in Soviet Square while gunmen shoot bullets was the most grotesque”—he had to search for words—“the most dumbest stupid thing I have ever in my life seen. Everyone ran because those who shoot don’t want anyone to see their faces. We stupid Russians think of that real quick.” He bobbed his head once and snapped his fingers. “Even if stray bullets don’t kill you the gunmen will if you stand there like you are watching old men play chess. And you hung there on the side of the speaker’s platform, an ape in the zoo. You weren’t shot — a miracle, like an immaculate conception. Truly there is a God and he looks after grotesque stupidly Americans.”
Jack Yocke’s embarrassment showed on his face. “Well, that was sorta…”
Gregor pointed at the prison. “In there, you shot your mouth.”
“Shot my mouth off.”
“Yes. Off. Shot mouth off. Can warden speak English?” Gregor shrugged grandly. “Was the office bugged by people who tape and listen?” He shrugged again. “Can the people who tape and listen speak English?” Another shrug. “Will the warden tell something he has been told not to tell to you, an American reporter to write in your glorious important foreign newspaper God knows what?” He lifted his hands and raised his eyebrows.
“Rub it in.”
“Okay.” He used his knuckles to rub Yocke’s head. “There. It’s rubbed in. You Americans!”
“So what happened to Yakov Dynkin?” Yocke asked as he tried to smooth his hair back into place with his fingers.
“We could spend the afternoon thinking possibilities. He is dead. Moved to another prison. Maybe sick. Maybe released. Maybe in Siberia. Maybe used to clean up mess at Chernobyl. Whatever, for us he is no more.”
“Then why did the warden say no Jews were here? Most liars don’t expand the tale beyond what is necessary.”
“Oh?”
“Why tell a whopper if a little lie will do? If Dynkin’s dead—”
“I don’t know.” Another shrug.
“Let’s try to find Dynkin’s wife. I have her address written down here someplace.”
Gregor turned the key and the engine caught after only three seconds of grinding.
The apartment building was one of dozens in a sprawling area outside the second Moscow loop. They all looked alike, five stories high, splotchy plaster, flat roofs, not a tree in sight. They found the one they wanted because it had a number painted on one corner.
Yocke looked it over and began to compose his story in his head. The adjectives, nouns and verbs came effortlessly as he looked at the appalling, dreary buildings and tried to imagine what it would be like to call one of these concrete cell blocks home.
But he kept his thoughts to himself. Gregor probably lived in an apartment house like this. Or wished he did.
When Gregor parked and killed the engine, Yocke laid a hand on his arm. “Let’s see if we can reach an understanding between us. I’m a foreigner, a stranger. I’m here because the American people are interested in Russia and my newspaper wants to print the stories. All I want to do is understand. If I can understand what is going on, I can write it. But I need to get the truth. I need to get it anyway I can.”
Gregor stared straight ahead. “In Russia there is no such thing as truth. There is only what you write, and it is good for someone and bad for someone else.”
That comment seemed to give Yocke no opening, so he attacked in another direction. “Are you for democracy?”
Gregor considered. “Maybe.”
Yocke frowned. Aloud he said, “For democracy to work, people have to know what is really happening. My job is to find out.”
Come on, Jack! You sound like a candidate for county sheriff. Even you don’t believe that treacle. You are employed by the owners of the newspaper to make them money, to write stories that sell newspapers. To keep the long green flowing they aren’t too picky about who they screw, an attitude they share with hundred-dollar, have-a-nice-day hookers. Now that is truth as red, white and blue as a Harley tattoo.
“This isn’t America,” Gregor explained patiently, damn him!
The reporter grasped his door handle and pulled. “It’s a hell of a lot closer than you think,” he muttered through clenched teeth.
* * *
Jake Grafton and Toad Tarkington sat in General Yakolev’s car in the alley behind KGB Headquarters while they waited for the driver to return the keys. Toad was in the front beside the driver’s seat. He stared at the cut-stone walls morosely. Herb Tenney was in the belly of the beast and that was a good place for him, he told himself. Unfortunately Herb would be out dancing in the sunbeams in about an hour.
Jake Grafton had properly rejected his spur-of-the-moment proposal to send Herb on to his next incarnation. The complexities of the proof problem troubled Toad not a whit: he knew Herb was guilty — but there undoubtedly were other people involved in Herb Tenney’s slimy little mess; there had to be. Maybe as few as three or four others, maybe the whole damned CIA, all sixteen thousand of them slopping through kimchi right up to their plastic photo ID badges. As usual Grafton was right. Why trade the devil you knew for heaven knows how many you didn’t?
And just what was Herb’s mess? If the CIA were merely squashing billionaires like stinkbugs, that could be forgiven as some kind of kinky weekend sport, sort of like tennis with live grenades. If they switched to American billionaires they could probably get a TV contract and sell tickets. No, if that were the game they wouldn’t be so twitchy.
So what was going on?
Keren was a newspaper mogul, wasn’t he? Perhaps his papers had uncovered something the CIA didn’t want uncovered. Now that made sense. Arms for Iran? Cocaine for guns? Maybe something to do with the last American election.
But all of this was pure speculation. He was trying to guess what the puzzle looked like after getting a fuzzy glimpse of one small piece.
Toad glanced over his shoulder at the admiral in the backseat. He too was looking at the grim secret police headquarters and the grotesquely ugly buildings across the street, but his face showed no emotion.
You’re never gonna be an admiral, Toad-man. Never! You don’t have the cool for it.
His mind turned from that happy subject to his serious contemplation of the murder of a fellow human being. He had been serious, he reminded himself guiltily. What if Grafton had said yes? Then it would have been his responsibility. No, Toad told himself, then it would have been the responsibility of both of you.
Are you that frightened of Herb, Toad asked himself.
Yes!
In spite of the mild temperature, Toad Tarkington shivered.
* * *
Toad almost went to sleep in the afternoon briefing, a technical seminar on how properly to dispose of nuclear warheads. The speakers were physicists and chemists and weapons designers, all of whom were in love with their subjects as far as Toad could tell.
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 sorr
y, 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-of-factly, 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 pocket of the shirt he was wearing when he unfolded it this morning. He fished it from his wallet and held it up where 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 had never realized how much he could love a woman. Or 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 him. Then a Russian had driven him and his car to KGB 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?”
“Yes. Grafton. With an aide. Did he leave any of your 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.
“Who rubbed out Kolokoltsev?”
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.”
“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.”
“I’ll tell them that at Langley. But if I were you I’d find 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 was wondering if you could come over for a drink.”
“Well, I don’t think—”
“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 h
is 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, staring 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 a 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.
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