Stephen Coonts - Jake Grafton 5 - Red Horseman

by Red Horseman (lit)

  Gee-whiz." "Yes, sir." Toad threw himself into a chair. He sighed deeply, then said, "Y'know, I really wish you and I had a nice safe job back in the real world-like bungee jumping or explosive ordnance disposal on a bomb squad. Something with a future." Jake Grafton didn't reply.

  Albert Sidney Brown dead. Damn, damn and doubledamn!

  Well, it was time to call a spade a spade.

  The odds that Brown's ticker picked this particular time to call it quits were not so good. Ten to one he was poisoned. Murdered.

  By the CIA, or someone in the CIA.

  Christians in Action.

  If the CIA really did it he and Toad were living on borrowed time.

  Perhaps they had already been served half of the binary chemical cocktail. And any minute now Herb Tenney or one of his agents might get around to serving the chaser.

  "You and I are going on short rations as of right now," Jake told Toad.

  "Go down to the kitchen and get us some canned soda pop and some food that we can eat right out of the can." "What do I tell the cook?" "Tell him we're having a picnic. I don't know. Think of something.

  Tell him I'm sick. Go on." After Jake delivered his report to the message center for transmission, he went up to his room.

  The door that led to Toad's room was open and he was standing in it.

  "Someone was in here today," Toad said.

  "You sure?" "No, sir. But my stuff is a little different." Jake felt in his pocket for scratch paper.

  On it he wrote, "Look for bugs." It took fifteen minutes to find it. They left it where it was.

  "Are you hungry, Admiral?" "No. Jake took off his uniform and lay down on the bed. He turned off the light.

  Two minutes later he turned it back on, got out of bed and checked the door lock, then asked Toad to come in for a moment. With Tarkington watching, Jake took the Smith and Wesson from his bag, checked the firing pin, snapped the gun through all six chambers, then loaded it.

  No doubt the bug picked up the sound of the dry firing.

  Well, that was fair warning. If anyone came in here tonight Jake Grafton fully intended to blow his head off.

  "Night, Toad." "Good night, sir." Sleep didn't come. Jake tossed and turned and rearranged the pillow to no avail.

  The problem was that he was totally alone, and it was a strange feeling.

  Always in the past he had a superior officer within easy reach to toss the hot potatoes to. Everyone in uniform has a boss-that is the way of the profession and Jake Grafton had spent his life in it. Now he had nowhere to turn.

  He should have, of course. He should be able to just walk upstairs and get on the encrypted voice circuit to Washington. In just a few minutes he would be bounced off a satellite and connected with the new acting head of the DIA, or the Chief of Naval Operations, or even the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Hayden Land. The problem was that the CIA might be monitoring the circuit.

  Not the CIA as an organization, but whoever it was that had a grubby hand on Tenney's strings. The agency was so compartmentalized that a rogue department head might be able to run his own covert operation for years before anyone found out. If anyone found out.

  If the man at the top took reasonable care and kept his operation buried within another, legitimate operation, it was conceivable that it might never be discovered.

  The more he thought about it, the more convinced Jake was that he had tripped overjust such an operation. Who controlled it, what its goals were, how many people were involved-he had no answers to any of these questions.

  So the encrypted voice circuits were out. A commercial line? Every phone in the embassy was monitored.

  And if he found a circuit, who was he going to talk to?

  If these people could casualty squash a three-star general, no one was beyond reach. The ambassador? That Boston Brahman, that man of distinction in a whiskey ad? Yet he had to trust someone.

  The military was built on trust. Trust and communications. In today's world of high-tech weapons systems and instant communications everyone in the system was merely a moving part. Amazingly, none of the moving parts were critical. As soon as one wore out, was wounded or killed, it was replaced. And the machine never paused, never faltered as long as the communications network remained intact.

  Herb Tenney was a soldier too. Staring at the ceiling, Jake told himself he must not forget that fact.

  As he began to go over it all for the third or fourth time, his frustration got the better of him. He climbed from the bed and went to the window. The sun hadn't set yet. He tried to visualize what the city must look like in the snow, for snow was the norm.

  The mean annual temperature here was minus two degrees centigrade. These long, balmy days were but a short interlude in the life of the city and those who inhabited it. In spite of the sun's golden glow he could see buildings in a gray winter's half-light amid the snow driven along by the wind. He could feel the cutting cold.

  The Russian winter had killed tens of thousands of soldiers in the past three hundred years, he reflected. No doubt it could kill a few more.

  HE WAS GOING TO HAVE TO TAKE SOME CHANCES, RUN some risks that were impossible to evaluate. As a young man he had learned to stay alive in aerial combat by carefully weighing the odds and never taking an unnecessary chance, so now the unknown dangers weighed heavily upon him.

  And back then he had only his life at stake, his and his bombardier's.

  Now.

  But there was no other way.

  When Toad came to the room this morning Jake sent him to get a car.

  "You'll drive it," Jake told him. "Bring the blanket off your bed." He put on his short-sleeved white uniform shirt and examined the ribbons and wings insignia in the mirror. All okay.

  Three blocks away from the embassy Jake told Toad to stop. They searched the car as traffic whizzed by and the exhaust fumes wafted about them. Not much wind today, drat it.

  They opened the hood and examined everything as a crowd of pedestrians gathered, probably attracted by their white uniforms. The two naval officers ignored the curious Russians. It took them five minutes to identify all the wires of the electrical system to their satisfaction.

  They opened the trunk and lifted out the spare tire and scrutinized every square inch and cranny. Toad put the blanket on the pavement and wormed under the car while Jake opened his pocketknife and took off the door panels. He probed the seat cushions and sliced open the roof liner. They peeled back the carpet on the floor.

  Nothing.

  When they started the car again they sat staring at the traffic zipping by and the onlookers on the sidewalk, who were drifting away one by one.

  con"You'd think if there was a bug in this thing we'd find it, Toad said with disgust in his voice.

  Maybe." You could never prove a negative to a certainty. All you could do was try to determine the probability.

  "Miserable goddamn country," Toad growled.

  After a few moments Jake said, "If anything happens to me, I'd like you to do me a favor." Toad waited.

  con'Kill Herb Tenney." ,ccThat," Toad said with heat, "will be a real pleasure." Better be quick about it. I've got a feeling that if I die you're going to be knocking on the pearly gate very soon thereafter." Toad put the car into gear and pulled away from the curb.

  They parked in front of the Hotel Metropolitan amid the taxicabs, right around the corner from Red Square.

  Jake left Toad with the car and went inside.

  "I wish to speak with one of your guests, an American named Jack Yocke." And since the man nodded politely, Jake added, "Pashah'Ista. was Please.

  con'allyaw-key?" "That's right." Jake spelled it.

  As the desk attendant consulted his files Jake surveyed the lobby. He had visited the embassy public affairs office earlier that morning and had gotten the name of Yocke's hotel from the file. He had looked it up himself so the clerk would not see what name he wanted. He felt foolish, paranoid.

  "Here it is,
" the desk man said, straightening from the files. "I will telephone him." The clerk looked natty in a dark suit and tie.

  Apparently these folks were going after those hard dollars with a vengeance. Jake nodded and went over to one of the plush chairs on the other side of the room to wait. Several of the tourists in line at the counters stared at him. A white uniform certainly had an effect.

  Three minutes later the elevator door opened and Jack Yocke stepped out.

  He was visibly surprised when he saw Jake Grafton. He came over smiling and stopped in front of Jake with his hands held out to his sides.

  "Clean and sober, Admiral. In the flesh." He shook Jake's outstretched hand. "How goes the war effort?" "Off the record?" Yocke laughed. "You're the last man on earth I expected to see around here." "I came to see Lenin. I hear they're selling the body to some outfit in Arizona." "Yep. Gonna put the old boy on display right near the London Bridge in Lake Havasu City. Five bucks a head.

  Old ladies from Moline in stretch polyester and tennis shoes will be filing by the coffin whispering, 'Well, I never!" his "Toad's out in the car. How about coming outside for a minute or two for a chat?" You had to hand it to Yocke. He didn't even blink.

  "Sure," he said.

  "So how's the foreign correspondent gig going?" Toad asked Yocke when they were seated in the car.

  "I don't know how I'm holding up," Yocke said sadly.

  "Every day three or four beautiful women, not less than a quart of vodka, meals fit for a czar or local party chief, a ballet or-was "We've got a little problem," Jake said firmly, interrupting the litany, "that we thought you might be able to help with. It's an I'll-never-tell type of problem." "No story?" "Not even a whisper." Yocke snorted. "Do you know how damn tough it is to get a story in this Cyrillic borsch house?

  I've had exactly one, yesterday, when someone snuffed Yegor Kolokoltsev." "We heard about that. Five gunmen in Soviet Square?" "I was there on the fifty-yard line, six rows back, Just lucky, I guess.

  I've been upstairs writing it up for the Sunday paper, three thousand sensitive, powerful words that would melt the heart of a crack salesman.

  The story is what I saw and a bunch of denials from the Russian cops, No, they did not know Kolokoltsev was going to speak. No, they did not keep the police away. That's about it. Lots of on7scene detail and a bunch of denials." "So," Jake asked curiously, "were they in on it?" "Something smells, that's for sure. No police or military in the square. Five gunmen drill Kolokoltsev and all his bodyguards. They looked like they were shooting an army qualification course. Just pros punching holes in a professional manner. Then they dropped the guns and walked away. No haste, no waste." "It's the wrong feel," Toad objected. "The Russians don't do things that way." He was about to add something when Grafton silenced him with a glance.

  The admiral asked Yocke, "What about that big story that you were so full of back in Washington? People stealing nukes and selling them?" "Can't smoke it out. The people who were supposed to know something just laughed when I showed up with my letters of introduction and asked.

  All rumors. So I'm doing features and listening to would-be dictators preach antiSemitic, fascist poison. I was just lucky to witness a rubout that would make a great movie. BFD.- Jake knew what that meant-Big Fucking Deal.

  "Jack, I need to ask a favor. Call your editor and have him deliver a message in person to General Land." con'This is supposed to make me laugh, right?" "No joke," Jake told him. "Obviously I don't want to use any of the telephones at the embassy, encrypted or otherwise. Nor the embassy's message circuits. And I don't want General Land talking on a telephone in his office, home or car." "Why not?" "Yes or no." "Want to tell me about it?" "No, Jack, I don't. I just want you to say yes." "Who don't you want listening in? The overseas lines all bounce off the bird in the sky. Great connection-sounds better than the phone at home-but the people in the telephone office are undoubtedly KGB to a man. You can bet your ass they tape every call.

  Of course the KGB has a new name, the Foreign Intelligence Service, but a turd by any other name is still a turd. Ten dollars against a ruble they'll be routing a transcript in Cyrillic around Dzerzhinsky Square before you get back on the sidewalk." Jake said nothing.

  "So you want to be overheard, huh? By the KGB. Or you don't care." Yocke writhed in his seat. He glared at both of them. "You knew I'd say yes, Admiral.

  Now figure out what I'm going to tell my editor." Jake Grafton pursed his lips. "I'm assuming that this will be a tight little secret over at the Post." "Like Ted Kennedy's spring vacation plans," Yocke replied sourly. "You realize that if the KGB wants to know more they will pay me a visit and sweat me." "if you have your health... was Toad Tarkington said, and gave Yocke a wide grin. "Jack, I'll never understand you, Where's your sense of adventure? The KGB might put you against a wall and shoot you. You'll be famous, If they just rip out all your fingernails and throw you out of the country the Post will probably give you a raise." "You macho pinhead! These Russians don't do walls or blindfolds or last cigarettes. No melodrama. They snatch you on the street, strangle you in the car and stuff you into a hote someplace out in the woods so no one else on God's green earth will ever know what became of you.

  Without muss or fuss you just cease to be. Cease to be anything! These people have ruled this country with terror for seventy years and they are real goddamn good at it. If you aren't pissing yourself when you think about them you're a congenital idiot. There ain't no rules but theirs and they get a story in this Cyrillic borsch house? I've had exactly one, yesterday, when someone snuffed Yegor Kolokoltsev.

  "We heard about that. Five gunmen in Soviet Square?" "I was there on the fifty-yard line, six rows back. Just lucky, I guess. I've been upstairs writing it up for the Sunday paper, three thousand sensitive, powerful words that would melt the heart of a crack salesman. The story is what I saw and a bunch of denials from the Russian cops. No, they did not know Kolokoltsev was going to speak. No, they did not keep the police away. That's about it. Lots of on-scene detail and a bunch of denials." "So," Jake asked curiously, "were they in on it?" "Something smells, that's for sure. No police or military in the square. Five gunmen drill Kolokoltsev and all his bodyguards. They looked like they were shooting an army qualification course. Just pros punching holes in a professional manner. Then they dropped the guns and walked away. No haste, no waste." "It's the wrong feel," Toad objected. "The Russians don't do things that way." He was about to add something when Grafton silenced him with a glance.

  The admiral asked Yocke, "What about that big story that you were so full of back in Washington? People stealing nukes and selling them?" "Can't smoke it out. The people who were supposed to know something just laughed when I showed up with my letters of introduction and asked.

  All rumors. So I'm doing features and listening to would combe dictators preach antiSemitic, fascist poison. I was just lucky to witness a rubout that would make a great movie. BFD." Jake knew what that meant-Big Fucking Deal.

  "Jack, I need to ask a favor. Call your editor and have Will deliver a message in person to General Land." "This is supposed to make me laugh, right?" "No joke," Jake told him. "Obviously I don't want to use any of the telephones at the embassy, encrypted or otherwise. Nor the embassy's message circuits. And I don't want General Land talking on a telephone in his office, home or car." Why not9" "Yes or no." "Want to tell me about it?" "No, Jack, I don't. I just want you to say yes." "Who don't you want listening in? The overseas lines all bounce off the bird in the sky. Great connection-sounds better than the phone at home-but the people in the telephone office are undoubtedly KGB to a man. You can bet your ass they tape every call.

  Of course the KGB has a new name, the Foreign Intelligence Service, but a turd by any other name is still a turd. Ten dollars against a ruble they'll be routing a transcript in Cyrillic around Dzerzhinsky Square before you get back on the sidewalk." Jake said nothing.

  "So you want to be overheard, huh? By the KGB. Or you don't care." Yoc
ke writhed in his seat. He glared at both of them. "You knew I'd say yes, Admiral.

  Now figure out what I'm going to tell my editor." Jake Grafton pursed his lips. "I'm assuming that this will be a tight little secret over at the Post." "Like Ted Kennedy's spring vacation plans," Yocke replied sourly. "You realize that if the KGB wants to know more they will pay me a visit and sweat me." "If you have your health... was Toad Tarkington said, and gave Yocke a wide grin.

  "Jack, I'll never understand you. Where's your sense of adventure? The KGB might put you against a wall and shoot you. You'll be famous! If the country the Post will probably give you a raise." they just rip out all your fingernails and throw you out of "You macho pinhead! These Russians don't do walls or blindfolds or last cigarettes. No melodrama. They snatch you on the street, strangle you in the car and stuff you into a hole someplace out in the woods so no one else on God's green earth will ever know what became of you.