The Red Horseman

11

As Jack Yocke dressed the following morning his mood was gloomy. The euphoria he felt last night had completely evaporated. He had managed only two hours sleep and spent the rest of the night tossing and turning.

At about four in the morning the implications of being sought out by Shirley Ross finally sank in. Why Jack Yocke? He wasn’t a famous personage, not a known face. And how had she known to find him at the Metropolitan? Now the significance of her evasion of that question grew. Maybe this was a setup.

He was in way over his head, chasing an impossible story. He didn’t speak the language, he didn’t have an ongoing professional relationship with a single, solitary soul in this goddamn hopeless Slavic morass. He was a foreigner in a country deeply suspicious of all foreigners. He didn’t know the politics in a capital where politics was the staff of life, played for blood and money. Nobody would talk to him. Nobody would trust him to tell the truth. Nobody.

Except Jake Grafton, and he didn’t count. He wouldn’t know beans about the Soviet Square killings. Even if he did and were willing to share it, Yocke couldn’t print it. He needed something he could publish.

Gregor was standing beside his battered tan Lada when Yocke came out of the hotel. The sixty-degree morning air was heavy with pollution and the sky looked like rain. The best the reporter could manage in reply to Gregor’s cheerful hello was a nod. He sagged onto the passenger’s seat and stared morosely through the windshield at a beggar woman arranging herself for a day on the sidewalk while Gregor got himself situated behind the wheel and coaxed the car to life.

“Sleep well?” Gregor asked.

“Not really.”

“Where would you like to go this morning?”

Yocke sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “Police headquarters.” No, on second thought, the district attorney was the place to start. What did they call the prosecutor over here? “Make it the public prosecutor’s office.”

“No interview with Yeltsin? Well, maybe tomorrow.”

“Boris will have to wait. Tomorrow we do Gorby’s proctologist.”

“Procto…?”

“Can the corn and drive.”

The foyer was crowded with reporters. Yocke’s heart sank. He looked around for Tommy Townsend, the Post’s senior correspondent, and didn’t see him. At least a dozen people from the international press crowded around the desk man, who was grunting surly Russian and scowling. A television team had lights on and a camera going. What a way to start a day!

Gregor elbowed his way to the desk, and in two minutes came back with the word. A press conference in fifteen minutes. Jack Yocke stared at the TV reporter putting the final touches on his hair and nodded. If Townsend showed up, Jack was going to have to make a critical decision since the Soviet Square Massacre was now Tommy’s story. Should he share the Shirley Ross tip with Tommy?

Thank heavens he didn’t have to. Tommy never showed, even though the press conference started late, as do most things in Russia. It went about as Yocke expected. In the glare of the television lights the prosecutor’s spokesman made a statement about the ongoing investigation — no leads yet on the identities or whereabouts of the killers that could be announced publicly, no arrests imminent, the Russians had asked for Interpol assistance. The questions from the floor were asked in a respectful tone, merely for clarification of the spokesman’s points. No one asked about anything he had not mentioned. Yocke edged toward the door behind the podium and pulled Gregor along.

When the farce was over he buttonholed the spokesman on his way out, a husky man who tried to breeze by.

“I need to speak with the prosecutor for one minute.”

Through Gregor came the answer: “He is busy. He cannot see you.”

“The Washington Post has a story about why the police left the square that the prosecutor needs to confirm or deny.”

The spokesman eyed him suspiciously. “Wait,” was his answer.

Yocke waited. The other reporters drifted out, the television crew packed up lights and extension cords and cameras and departed, Gregor lit a cigarette and lounged against the podium. Yocke looked at his watch.

Fifteen minutes had passed when he looked again. Gregor was on his third cigarette.

The prosecutor bustled into the room. “Washington Post?”

“Yes.”

“What is your story?”

Yocke took a deep breath and stared the man straight in the eye. He had but two lousy bullets to fight the war with and here goes shot number one: “The police were pulled out of Soviet Square by a transmission over the police radio system.” He paused for Gregor to translate.

The prosecutor’s eyebrows knitted, but that was his sole reaction.

Yocke continued: “The police left because three KGB agents appeared in police headquarters and demanded that the police be removed from the square.”

Now the prosecutor’s eyes widened in surprise. He spewed Russian. “Where do you get this story? We announce nothing. Who talk to you?”

Yocke had counted on the man being a novice at dealing with Western reporters. He was new at the game, all right. Yocke decided to try a shot in the dark.

“Why have you relieved the police chief from his duties?”

The attorney’s face darkened a shade. He chewed on the back of his lower lip while his eyes scanned Yocke’s face. The reporter tried to remain deadpan, but it was difficult. “We are investigating,” the prosecutor finally said.

Jack Yocke bit his own lip to keep from smiling. “Will he be prosecuted?”

The man shrugged. “Maybe.”

“For obeying the KGB?”

“Who has talked to you? No one should talk during an investigation.”

“Was the police chief in conspiracy with the killers?”

“Certainly not.”

“But he should not have obeyed the KGB?”

The prosecutor took a deep breath and adjusted the jacket on his shoulders. He frowned. “This is a complex matter with many facets. We want no stories written just now. Surely you can understand that an accusation not later supported by facts would do great damage. To people’s rights. To human rights. To right to a fair trial. Surely you see that, Washington Post.”

Jack Yocke couldn’t believe his luck. He had expected stony denials and the prosecutor had denied nothing. And he had implicitly confirmed that the police chief had obeyed the orders of KGB officers, technically now Ministry of Security officers. The reporter decided to fire his last bullet and pray for a hit.

“Was Nikolai Demodov one of the KGB officers?”

The reaction was an explosive “Nyet.” Gregor translated the rest of it. “That’s a lie. Who told you this lie?”

“It was just a rumor. But you deny it?”

“Absolutely. It’s a lie.”

“Who is Nikolai Demodov?”

But the prosecutor was leaving. He turned his back and stomped away.

Jack Yocke whipped out his steno pad and furiously began taking notes.

In the car he asked Gregor, “Who is Nikolai Demodov?”

“Big man in KGB. Deputy to General Shmarov.”

“And who is Shmarov?”

“Number two man, I think. Little is printed about top Ministry of Security officers. They are Old Guard, old Communists loyal to the past. No-goodniks, most of them.”

“Shmarov is a no-goodnik? That means he’s anti-Yeltsin, antidemocratic, doesn’t it?”

The Lada squealed loudly as Gregor braked to a stop at a red traffic light. He sat hunched over the wheel staring at the red light on the pole. “I want more money,” he said with finality. “You told me you wished to write stories about life in Russia. Human being interest. You must pay me more.”

Jack Yocke rolled down the passenger window and dragged a half-bushel of pollution down into his lungs.

“You have no idea what it means to be Russian,” Gregor remarked.

The light changed and he popped the clutch and revved the tiny engine of the little sedan. Beside the car an army truck kept pace and poured noxious fumes through Yocke’s open window. The American gagged and hastily spun the crank.

“Where are we going?” he asked Gregor.

“I don’t know. You haven’t told me.”

Soviet Square, Yocke decided, and informed his colleague. Gregor just nodded.

It was a broken-down car with the hood up that gave Yocke the idea. Cars with open hoods and the drivers bent over engines that refused to run were commonplace in Moscow. In a society without spare parts, without mechanics, without garages, without service stations, you either fixed it yourself on the side of the road with parts from junked vehicles or you left it there to be mined for parts by other motorists.

He explained what he wanted to Gregor, who again demanded more money. Yocke explained about his editor’s parsimony and getting the expense approved in Washington, Moscow on the Potomac. Reluctantly Gregor agreed to help.

As they neared Soviet Square on Gorki Street Gregor turned the ignition off and let the car coast to the curb. Both men got out and raised the hood. Gregor disconnected the spark plug leads and took the top off the air filter. They put their elbows on the fender and their butts in the air and waited.

A policeman in gray uniform and white hat, carrying a white traffic baton and wearing a brown leather holster from which the butt of a small automatic protruded, arrived in three minutes. Yocke got busy under the hood and Gregor did the talking. Two minutes later, when the policeman wandered away, Gregor summed it up in a short sentence. “He was on duty in Red Square the day of the assassination.”

They tried it again around the corner. The cop this time smoked one of Gregor’s cigarettes and offered mechanical advice. They finally got the engine running and drove away waving.

“He heard the transmission over the police radio. He was one of the ones that left. The name of the policeman in charge of the radio is Burbulis.”

“We’ll make a reporter of you yet. Police station.”

It took a lot of talking and cigarettes all round from the Marlboro carton, but Gregor and Yocke got in to see Burbulis. He was a chain smoker with steel teeth. He eyed Yocke suspiciously.

“I write for the Washington Post, a great American newspaper,” Gregor translated. “I am following up a report that your chief is in trouble with the prosecutor because of the Soviet Square killings.” While Gregor translated this, Yocke tried to decide how much Burbulis liked the chief of police. He was praying for a little professional loyalty even if Burbulis loathed the man personally.

“Not his fault. I know the men. Good KGB men. We have worked together many times.”

“Names and addresses,” Yocke told Gregor, trying to keep the excitement out of his voice. “Get names and addresses.”

They got three names and one address. And a lecture about the duty of the police to cooperate with the proper authorities. “This questioning of police doing their duty by the prosecutor would never have happened in the old days,” Burbulis summed up, and sneered. “Yeltsin has no courage. No respect. He understands nothing.” Burbulis smashed his fist on the table and glowered.

Out on the street Yocke carefully wrote down the names as Gregor spelled them in English. The address was merely a street. “Do you know this street?”

“Yes. Off Arbat.”

He had it! A sure-fire page one barn burner that implicated the KGB in the murders of Communist ultranationalist Yegor Kolokoltsev and his henchmen! He jabbed his fist in the air and let out an exultant shout. The story would be picked up by the wire services and papers that reprinted Post stories and run worldwide. By Jack Yocke. Send the best, fire the rest!

He ignored the staring pedestrians and did a little hot-damn shuffle.

He had it all right, but first he had to write it. And if these KGB Commie assholes got a whiff of what was going down, he would write it ten years from now when he got out of the gulag in the middle of the Siberian winter.

He dove into the passenger seat of the Lada. “Back to the hotel, James, and don’t spare either of your beasts.”

Up in his room he packed the laptop in its padded case and confirmed that he had his passport and travel papers. He added a change of underwear to the case and his toothbrush and razor. He decided an extra pair of socks wouldn’t hurt and stuffed them in. Then he zipped the case closed and stood staring at the rest of his stuff, taking inventory. His wallet and credit cards were in his pocket. He had a couple hundred on him. The rest of his cash and travelers checks were in the hotel safe; they could stay there.

He made sure his two suitcases were unlocked. If and when those guys came to look, he didn’t want them breaking the locks.

He looked at his watch. Ten minutes before two. He had had no lunch. He wasn’t hungry. Too excited.

He rode down in the elevator with a smile on his face. He even sang a few bars to himself in the mirror, a little James Brown: “I feel good, da da dada dada da, like I knew I would, da da dada dada da.”

Gregor unlocked the trunk and Yocke laid the computer on top of a pile of engine parts and fan belts.

“We gotta go find these three KGB guys and see if they’ll finger Demodov.”

Gregor sat behind the wheel and stared at him. “Then what? Will you want to go see Demodov? In Dzerzhinsky Square?”

“I’ll just call him, or try to anyway. He’ll deny everything. Not worth the wear and tear on your car.”

“Idiot.”

“His denial in the last paragraph of the story will be the icing on the cake. Every last living soul will know he’s guilty as hell.”

“Idiot,” Gregor repeated.

“Hey, this is the Washington Post, not the Slobovia Gazette. We always run the denials. About one time in a hundred the asshole is telling the truth, then we’re covered. The lawyers like it like that.”

Gregor put both hands on the wheel and sat staring stonily ahead.

“Come on. Let’s go.”

“I don’t know what hole you will dive into when the story is printed, but I live here. I don’t have any holes.”

“I told you I would talk to my editor about a raise. I meant that.”

Gregor snorted.

“What are they going to do to you? Is this your fault? Are you a reporter? You just drove me around and translated, for Christ’s sake! Yeah, they may sweat you a little, and you can tell them everything. You have absolutely nothing to hide or apologize for. You’re an interpreter! Then what? They’ll let you go. You know that and I know that. The world has changed. Joe Stalin is rotting in some hole in the ground.”

Gregor started the car and put it in motion. “I wish I were driving a taxi in Brooklyn with my wife’s cousin.”

It took an hour and a half to find the only address they had, one for a KGB agent named Ivan Zvezdni. His apartment was on the top floor of a ten-story building and they had to walk up. The smell of grease and dirt and cabbage hung like a miasma in the crumbling concrete stairwell.

The woman who opened the door was in tears. Gregor had barely gotten out Yocke’s identity and profession when she began to wail. “They took him away. Just minutes ago,” Gregor muttered to Yocke. “Men from the public prosecutor’s office.”

Yocke eyed the only soft chair and eased himself into it. He wasn’t leaving until he had it in spades.

It took half an hour to get the whole story, but it was worth it. Two mornings ago Zvezdni received a telephone call from Nikolai Demodov ordering him to go to police headquarters and tell the chief to pull the officers out of Soviet Square. Zvezdni knew it was Demodov because he knew his voice. Demodov specialized in political matters.

Although Demodov didn’t explain the order, Zvezdni told his wife that the boss probably didn’t want the police presence tarring the Old Guard with the wrath that Kolokoltsev’s message usually brought forth from Yeltsin’s aides, especially since Yeltsin’s people had denied Kolokoltsev a rally permit. Mrs. Zvezdni didn’t pretend to understand any of it, and she claimed her husband didn’t. Ivan was a good officer, a loyal servant of the state. He always did as he was told, she said.

Whatever Ivan Zvezdni thought of Demodov’s reasons, he obeyed orders this time too. He did, however, take two other agents along to protect himself. Mrs. Zvezdni named them. Now he was under arrest. For doing his duty. For obeying orders. Life was just not fair. Mrs. Zvezdni was reduced to silent tears.

It was damn thin, Yocke thought, but looking at Mrs. Zvezdni he bought it. Well, if you were a KGB agent and your boss called and gave you an order, wouldn’t you obey it?

The apartment was crowded but neat. There was no refrigerator. The family’s food supply sat on a sideboard under a window. The furniture was old, scarred and spotlessly clean. The carpet was clean and threadbare.

“Make sure,” Yocke told Gregor, “that she understands I write for an American newspaper.”

“She knows that. She does not care.”

He wanted to touch her arm, pat her head, but he refrained. She was using a scrap of white cloth to wipe her tears. “Tell her I am sorry,” he said.

He was going to have to work fast. This story was too hot to wait. On the way to the car he told Gregor, “Find a phone.” Gregor didn’t protest.

Gregor made the call to the KGB. After repeated waits and spurts of Russian, he motioned to Yocke and handed him the receiver. They were standing at a pay phone on a sidewalk somewhere near Arbat Street. The phone was mounted on a wall and had a little half booth arranged around it.

“Hello. My name is Jack Yocke. I’m a reporter for the Washington Post.”

The voice on the other end said “wait” in a heavy accent. At least it sounded like “wait.”

Another minute passed before a guttural voice pronounced a name: “Demodov.”

“Mr. Demodov, do you speak English?”

“Yes.”

“My name is Jack Yocke. I’m a reporter for the Washington Post. We have a story that we are going to run that says that three National Security agents went to police headquarters this past Tuesday and asked the police chief to pull the police out of Soviet Square. The chief complied and Yegor Kolokoltsev was murdered minutes later. According to our information, you were the person who sent them to police headquarters. Do you wish to comment?”

Silence. Finally the voice again. “I did not do that.”

Yocke scribbled the answer in his private shorthand.

“Have you been questioned by the public prosecutor about this matter?”

“No.”

“Are you aware that Ivan Zvezdni, one of your subordinates, was arrested by men from the public prosecutor’s office just about an hour ago?”

“No. How do you know all this?”

“Do you wish to make any other comment about this story?”

“I know nothing about it. What more can I say?” And the connection broke.

Yocke replaced the phone on the hook and turned to Gregor.

“We got it. He denies everything.”