Stephen Coonts - Jake Grafton 5 - Red Horseman

by Red Horseman (lit)

  unless you have become one of them, a man-without conscience, a man to whom the end justifies whatever it takes to get there. If so.

  The general rumbled on. "But no stories. Old men tell too many stories, stories of a dead past that are of little interest to the young, who think their own problems unique." "And I am too young," Jake Grafton said.

  General Yakolev's eyes searched his face.

  "Perhaps.

  Your youth..." He shook his head. "You Americans turn out your officers to fatten in the pasture so very early, just when they grow old enough to have a bit of wisdom, just when they are old enough to understand all the things that they are not, all the things that they can never be, will never be. Just when they are old enough." Jake sipped his tea. It wasn't like American tea, weak and insipid. He liked it.

  "What do you know of Russia?" Jake drank the last of the tea and set the cup in its saucer. "The usual, which is not much... the bare essentials, twenty years of reading intelligence briefs, a few books." "Toistoy?" "A little. Chekov I liked. Andreyev's The Seven Who were Hanged was too Russian," Oops! He should not have said that! "Solzhenitsyn.

  . was What could he say about Solzhenitsyn's descriptions of hell on earth?

  They had horrifled Jake Grafton, painted communism as one of the foulest evils ever perpetrated by man upon man. "I have read him," he finished lamely.

  "Hmmm," said Yakolev, his face a mask.

  "Dinner tomorrow night, yes? The military observers from Britain, Germany, France and Italy will also be here. You know them, yes?" "No, sir. I've never met them." "I will send my car for You at the embassy. About eight.

  "May I bring my aide, sir?" "If you like. We will take the time to learn to know each other better.

  I will be interested to learn where you draw the line between Russian and too Russian. Jake was led back through the long cold hallways with their dim lights and dark oil paintings that could barely be seen. Herb Tenney was standing near the door, waiting.

  Outside the summer sun of the Kremlin grounds made Jake squint. The contrast between inside and outside hit him hard. He held his hat on his head as he climbed into the car.

  Culture shock, Jack Yocke decided.

  He felt depressed, alone, listless.

  He could count on one hand the number of people he had met who spoke English. The constant fumbring with the paperback Russian-English dictionary frustrated him. The heavy, fatty mystery meat and greasy comvegetables were clogging his bowels.

  Culture shock, he told himself, hoping that sooner or later he would adjust.

  How good it would be to be back in the Post newsroom, talking on the phone to someone who spoke American, understanding the nuances of what wasn't said as readily as he captured the intent of what was.

  Oh, for a bacon and egg breakfast, with eggs from a lovely American chicken and crisp fried bacon from a handsome American pig! To 90 across the street to the Madison coffee shop for a hot pastrami on rye! And an American beer, a tall cold American beer in a frosty glass with foam spilling over the top.

  He was gloomily contemplating the difference between American beer and the Russian horse piss product when the motorcade came around the corner into view. Three vehicles. Black. Limos.

  He was stuck off to one side of the platform where the speakers were going to address the rally. Perhaps a thousand people, mostly men and babushkas, milled around the square and luxuriated in the sun, rolling up sleeves to brown their white arms, drinking juice from glass bottles.

  The few children were messily eating ice cream bars sold by a sidewalk vendor, who was doing a land office business today. Apparently the vendors, for the city sidewalks seemed crammed with them, were something new, fledgling capitalists trying the new way right here beside a Communist rally. The irony of it made Yocke smile.

  The paper's Russian stringer translator was sucking on a foul cigarette and chatting in Russian with his counterpart from the New York Times.

  The Times reporter was on the other side of these two and busy scribbling notes, no doubt literate political insights that would form the heart of an incisive think piece. Damn the Times!

  Jack Yocke took off his sports coat and hung it over one arm. He wiped the perspiration from his forehead. And damn these Commies! Why can't they hire a hall like politicians in more civilized climes?

  The senior Post correspondent was over at the Kremlin today buttonholing Yeltsin lieutenants, so Yocke was stuck covering this rally of nationalistic Commie retrogrades, people who thought that the Stalin era was Russia's finest hour.

  Yes, there were still live human beings on this planet who believed that, and here were some of them, waving red flags and posters with slogans. Some of them even wore red armbands, but the red flags were the grabber: to Yocke's American eye the blood red flags looked like an image straight from a museum exhibit. That there were still people who firmly believed in the gospel of Marx, Engels, and Lenin was a fact that he knew intellectually, yet seeing it in the flesh was a jolt.

  These people were obviously committed. Just below the platform four older men were arranged in a circle, shouting at one another. No, it was three against one. Yocke couldn't understand a word of it and thought about asking the stringer what it was all about, then decided against it.

  He thought he already knew the answer.

  Yegor Kolokoltsev was their guru, a man who could rant anti-Semitic filth that would have been too raw for Joseph Goebbels and in the next breath extol the glories of Mother Russia. As Yocke understood Kolokoltsev's message, the Communists never had a chance to purify the Soviet Union and make her great because the Jews had subverted them, stolen the fruit of the proletariat's labor, betrayed the revolution, sucked blood from the veins of honest Communists, etc., etc.

  So now he stood sweating as the motorcade drew to a halt and burly guards jumped from the cars and began opening a pathway to the platform.

  Idly Yocke looked around for soldiers or uniformed policemen. There were none in sight. Not a one.

  The bodyguards in civilian clothes had no trouble clearing a path. The crowd parted courteously, as befitted old Communists. And these were mostly old Communists, workers and retired grandmothers.

  Here and there the mix was leavened by better-dressed younger men, probably bureaucrats or apparatchiks who had lost or were losing their jobs under the new order.

  Some of the waving signs and red flags partially obscured Yocke's vision of the arriving dignitaries.

  The lack of policemen and soldiers bothered Jack Yocke slightly, and he turned to his translator to ask a question about their absence when he heard the noise, a sharp popping audible even above the sounds of traffic from the street.

  An automatic weapon!

  There was no mistaking the sound.

  The crowd panicked. People turned their backs on Yegor Kolokoltsev and his guards and tried to flee. The urge to leave hastily seemed to enter the head of every living soul there at precisely the same instant.

  More weapons. The sharp popping was now the staccato buzzing of numerous weapons, but it was strangely muffled by screams and shouts.

  Yocke grabbed a handhold on the rail of the speaker's platform and pulled himself up a couple feet so he could see better.

  Four people with automatic weapons were shooting at the guards, most of whom were now on the ground. One or two gunmen were pouring lead into the middle limousine.

  With all the guards down, two of the gunmen walked toward the car. They were dressed in the usual dark gray suits and wore hats. The crowd was dispersing rapidly now, everyone fleeing for their lives.

  Several of the elderly were sprawled on the pavement.

  One or two of them were struggling to rise.

  One of the gunmen opened the car door and the other emptied a magazine through the opening from a distance of three feet.

  Yocke looked around wildly. The stragglers from the retreating crowd were rounding the corners, probably running down the streets that led a
way from the square.

  The gunmen dropped their weapons and walked away without haste.

  No sirens. No more screams.

  Silence.

  Yocke looked around for the other reporters and their Russian stringers.

  Gone. He was alone, still clinging to the side of the speaker's platform.

  He released his grip and dropped to the pavement.

  The whole thing had been like a slow-motion film--he had seen everything, felt everything, the fear, the horror, the sense of doom descending inexorably, controlled by an unseen, godlike hand. Now if he could only get it down!

  How much time had elapsed? Minutes? No-no more than forty or fifty seconds. Maybe a minute.

  He looked at the backs of the fleeing people. The last of the crowd was hobbling around the corners. Some people had apparently been trampled in the panic; six or eight bodies lay around the square.

  Yocke stood and watched the last of the gunmen disappear around the corner where the motorcade had entered the square. A half mile or so down that street was Red Square. The entrance to the metro, the subway that would take them anywhere in Moscow, was only a hundred yards away.

  He was alone with the dead and dying. He walked toward the cars. The guards-he counted the bodies... seven, eight, nine. He walked from one to the other, looking. All dead, each of them shot at least six or eight times. Blood, one's man's brains, intestines oozing inffcongealing piles on the stones of the square.

  The middle limo was splattered with holes, the door still standing open.

  Yocke looked in.

  The big man was Yegor Kolokoltsev, or had been just a few minutes ago.

  Now he was as dead as dead can be. Two of the bullets had struck him in the head, one just under the left eye and the other high up in the forehead. His eyes were still open, as was his mouth. Somehow his face still seemed to register surprise. A dozen or more bullets had punched through his chest and throat. There was little blood.

  Facing Kolokoltsev was another corpse. The driver of the limo sat slumped over the wheel.

  The other two cars were empty. Empty shell casings lay scattered on the street.

  Alone in the midst of the vast silence Jack Yocke bent and picked up a shiny shell casing.

  9mm.

  One of the weapons lay not five feet from him.

  He merely looked. He couldn't tell one automatic weapon from another.

  He turned and looked again at Kolokoltsev.

  Then he gagged.

  He staggered away.

  His mouth was watering copiously and his eyes were tearing up. He paused and placed his hands on his knees and spit repeatedly. He had to write this too, capture all Of it.

  Now the sensation was passing.

  He walked, working hard at walking without staggering, without succumbing to the urge to run, which was building.

  The urge to run became dire. He began to trot. Faster, faster.

  He saw a narrow street leading away from the square and ran for it.

  People were standing on the sidewalks looking into the square, but he ran by them without slowing down.

  Telephone! He must find a telephone.

  "Mike Gatler." Mike was the foreign editor.

  He sounded sleepy, and no doubt he was. It was one-thirty in the afternoon here, but five-thirty in the morning in Washington.

  "Mike, Jack Yocke. I just witnessed an assassination." "Terrific. Send me a story and I'll read it." "Right in Soviet Square, Mike. Right in front of Moscow City Hall. They gunned a big Commie weenie when he arrived for a political rally. Crowd there and everything." "You woke me up for this?" "Gee, Mike. It's front page, for sure." Gatler sighed audibly. "What happened?" "They killed Yegor Kolokoitsev and eleven of his guards. Five gunmen with automatic weapons mowed them down." The words came faster now, tumbling out: "It was the goddamnest thing I ever saw, Mike, a cold-blooded execution. First the guards, then the politician. I'm sure some of the bystanders in the crowd were shot too. Just their tough fucking luck. Like something from a movie.

  That was my first thought, like something from a movie.

  Something staged, unreal. But it was real all right." "Are you okay?" Gatler sounded genuinely concerned.

  The contrast between the irritation in Mike's voice at first being awakened and the concern he was now expressing hit Yocke hard.

  "I guess so, Mike. Sorry I bothered you at home." "It's okay, Jack. Write the story.

  Take your time and do it right.

  Kolokoltsev, huh? The Russian nationalist?" "Yeah. Bigot. Anti-Semite. Holy Russia and all that shit.

  A Nazi with a red star on his sleeve." "You write it. Do it right." "Night, Mike." "Night, Jack." e hung up the phone and stood in the lofty, opulent hotel lobby at a loss for what to do next. Over in the corner a pianist was playing, and the tune sounded familiar.

  Yocke's heart rate and breathing were returning to normal after the half-mile jog to the hotel, the only place he would find a telephone with a satellite link to call overseas. The Russian phone system was a relic of Stalin's era and couldn't even be relied upon for a call across town. But Yocke was still shook. The surprise of it as much as anything... damn!

  Soviet Square... in front of that statue of Lenin as The Thinker.

  with a Pizza Hut restaurant just a block up the street where they serve real food to real people who have real money in theirjeans. Hard currency only, thank you. No dip-shit Russians with only rubles in the pockets of their Calvin Kleins.

  The clerk behind the counter was staring at him, as were several of the guests queued up at the cashier's counter.

  Now the clerk said something in Russian. A question.

  He repeated it.

  He seemed to have lost his English.

  Jack Yocke shrugged, then headed for the elevator with the clerk staring after him. He should have made the call from the phone in his room. If he had thought about the effect of his conversation on the clerk, he would have.

  As the elevator door closed Yocke recognized the music, Dave Brubeck's "Take Five." He began laughing uncontrollably.

  At the American embassy Jake Grafton spent a few minutes with the ambassador, then was shown to a small office that was temporarily unused.

  There he began his report to General Brown on the conference today. He wrote in longhand and handed the sheets to Toad to type.

  "It went well?" Toad asked.

  Maybe." Too Russian. Jake, you could screw up a wet dream.

  He had about finished the report when there was a knock on the door and Lieutenant Dalworth stuck his head in.

  "Admiral, I have a message for you." Dalworth held out the clipboard with an envelope attached. "Just fill in the number of the envelope and sign your name, sir." Jake did so. As Dalworth left the room Jake ripped open the envelope, which was marked with a top secret classification. It had of course been decoded in the embassy's message center.

  FYI LTGEN A.s. Brown died last night in his sleep.

  News not yet made public.

  FYI'-F6R your information, no action required. Without a word Jake passed the slip of paper across to Toad Tarkington.

  "Just like that?" Toad asked with an air of disbelief.

  "When your heart stops, you're dead." Jake Grafton folded the message and placed it back into its envelope. It would have to go back to the message center for logging and destruction. He tossed the envelope onto the corner of the desk. "Just... like... that." "For Christ's sake, CAG, we've got to-was "No!" "We can't just-was "No." Toad turned his back for a bit. When he turned around again he said in a flat voice, "Okay, what are we going to do?" "I don't know," Jake said.

  What could he do? Write a letter to the president?

  "What did Herb Tenney do today, anyway?" "He went out this morning after you left," Toad told him. "Came back about two or three." "He's got an office?" "He's in with the other CIA types. They've got a suite just down the hall and their own radio equipment and crypto gear. They don't use the e
mbassy stuff." "Who are the other spies?" "Well, there are about a dozen, near as I can tell. Head guy is a fellow named McCann who has been here a couple years. I met him at lunch. One of those guys who can talk for an hour and not say anything.

  A gas bag." It was impossible, a cesspool of the first order of magnitude. "Shit," Jake whispered.

  "Yessir. My sentiments exactly." "Have they got a safe in their office?" "I suppose so. I haven't been in there." "Go in tomorrow morning. Look the place over." "if I can get in." "Tell Herb you want the tour. Gush.