The Red Horseman

21

General Shmarov is dead,” Tom Collins told Jake.

“Are you kidding me?”

“Nope. Apparently had a heart attack last night. Died in bed. At least that’s what I hear from the Defense Ministry and Yeltsin’s office. Of course, someone might have taken him for a ride last night and pumped a lead slug into his chest. Lead poisoning is a leading cause of heart attacks among the upper echelons in this neck of the woods.”

“Humph,” Jake Grafton replied, trying to visualize how Shmarov’s demise fitted in. “So what is CIA up to today?”

“Nothing, as near as I can tell. Toad escorted Herb Tenney upstairs right after breakfast this morning. Harley McCann”—McCann was the ranking resident CIA officer—“went to his office and did the usual. I think he’s still there.”

“At nine-thirty at night? He’s got to know we have Tenney under lock and key.”

“Well, even if he’s the worst spy we have, you’d think he’d find an event like that hard to miss. We’ve had armed marines guarding your apartment all day.”

“Shmarov had a heart attack.” Jake Grafton shook his head. “What’s the ambassador want?”

“He’s been on the phone to Washington all day. Probably has some instructions, wants to know what happened at Petrovsk…”

“I’ll have a little visit with Herb first. Then you and I will go see the ambassador.”

“Yes, sir.”

“In the meantime get the marine, Captain McElroy, and have him stand by outside my apartment. Have him wear his sidearm.”

Herb Tenney’s color wasn’t good when Jake entered the apartment. His shirt was wet with sweat and his forehead was shiny. He looked as if he hadn’t shaved in days.

“Where’s Toad?” Jake asked Jack Yocke.

“In the bedroom with Rita.”

“Ask them to come out here, will you please?” Jake pulled a chair around to face Tenney, who was still on the couch.

While the reporter knocked on the bedroom door, Jake ripped the tape from Herb’s mouth, wadded the strip up and tossed it toward a wastepaper basket. He missed. Rita and Toad came out of the bedroom holding hands.

“I want to go to the bathroom,” Herb said belligerently.

Jake weighed it for two seconds, then nodded. Toad and Jack hoisted him to his feet and carried him. When they got their guest settled on the throne with his pants down, Toad came out and shut the door.

“It went okay today. He hasn’t said a word, we haven’t questioned him. He’s eaten a little and had a couple naps. Maybe I misread him, but I thought he looked slightly stunned when the gate guard called and said you and Rita were back. I told Yocke, and Herb had trouble controlling his face. I thought.”

“No questions today even when you had the tape off?”

“No, sir. The man knows how to keep his mouth shut.”

“A truly rare talent in this day and age. Find anything in his room?”

Toad took the pill bottle from his shirt pocket and handed it to Jake. “There’s four of each left in the bottle — eight pills.”

“Get my pill bottle from my bag.”

Rita asked, “Admiral, do you want me here?”

“Yep. You and Toad and Jack and Spiro Dalworth. But everyone keeps their mouth shut, no matter what. Toad, take Jack into the bedroom and tell him if he says one word, he’ll be ejected. Then rig up Jack’s cassette tape recorder just out of sight under the couch.” Toad went and Jake turned to Rita. “Call Captain Collins and ask him to send Dalworth up.”

“Aye aye, sir.”

In the bedroom Toad delivered the message to Yocke, who merely nodded. Toad popped the magazine from the Browning and removed a handful of cartridges from his pocket. He pushed the shells into the clip one by one.

“Why didn’t you have your pistol loaded today?” Yocke asked.

Toad was tired, emotionally drained. His mind wasn’t working fast enough to come up with a quip, so for once he told Jack Yocke the unvarnished truth. “Jake Grafton wanted him alive. Sitting there looking at him with a loaded gun, waiting…I don’t know if I could have resisted the temptation to kill him.”

Yocke watched as Toad finished loading the magazine and snapped it into the handle of the pistol. He worked the slide, thumbed the safety into position. Then he slid the pistol into the small of his back.

“Why are you loading it now?”

“Maybe I’ll get lucky.”

In the bathroom Jake filled a dirty glass with water and examined the white tablets from Herb’s bottle. He selected one marked Aspirin on both sides and dropped it into the water.

It all came down to this. If Herb knew Jake had substituted aspirin for half the binary cocktail, he was too many steps ahead for Jake to catch him now.

He held the glass up to the light and swirled the water as the tablet slowly disintegrated. Into a pile of white powder.

Aspirin.

Thank God!

Out in the living room Herb Tenney was back on the couch. Jake Grafton emptied the pill bottle onto the table. He picked up each tablet and examined the markings. When he was finished he had two small piles of tablets.

“General Shmarov died last night,” he remarked conversationally. “Tell us about that.”

Herb had watched Jake examine the white tablets. Now he looked at the faces of the other people in the room, then back at Jake. “I don’t have anything to say.”

“Tenney, I don’t think you understand how tight the crack is that you’re in. You are going to talk or we’re going to force these pills down your throat. All of them.”

“Now you listen, Admiral. I don’t know what the fuck you think you’re doing, but I know my rights. I have the right to an attorney and I have the right to remain silent. You’re an agent of the government.”

“You think there’s going to be a trial? You’re joking, right?”

Jake Grafton hitched his chair closer to Tenney and leaned forward so his face was only a foot or so from Herb’s. “Let me say it again — either you answer my questions with God’s truth or I’m going to stuff these pills into your mouth and tape it shut. The pills will dissolve in your mouth even if you don’t swallow.”

Herb Tenney looked at the tablets and he looked at Jake Grafton. He was perspiring. Everyone was looking at him except Jack Yocke, who was staring at the tablets on the table.

Herb cleared his throat. “Get these other people out of here.”

“They stay.”

“All this is classified.”

“Yeah, and if you tell me your pals will have to kill me. I’ve heard that crap before.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Who made the decision to kill Nigel Keren?”

Herb Tenney licked his lips. Sweat formed a little rivulet down his cheek and a drop coalesced on his chin. Then it fell away.

“Who?” Jake repeated. He picked up a tablet and examined it. Finally he placed it back on the table and stood up.

“Toad, Spiro, hold him down. Rita, get the tape and tear off a strip.”

Toad came flying across the room like a linebacker. He slammed into Tenney and knocked him flat on the couch, then sat on his chest. Dalworth was just a step behind. Rita charged for the bathroom to get the tape roll.

Herb tried to scream. He couldn’t get air with Toad sitting on his chest. Then Jake held his nose until his mouth popped open. Herb’s skin was slippery with sweat and he was still trying to scream. Jake stuffed the tablets in as Herb bucked and writhed, even with Toad on his chest and Dalworth on his legs. Jake used both hands to hold his jaw shut.

“Where’s the damn tape?”

“Jesus H. Christ, Grafton!” Yocke’s voice, from somewhere behind.

“Let me in there,” Rita said, elbowing her way into the pile. She slapped a strip of tape over Tenney’s mouth. Then they released him.

The naval officers stood back, breathing hard. Herb was snorting through his nose, his eyes wild.

“Can you feel them dissolving, Herb?” Jake leaned over until his eyes were only a few inches from those of the CIA agent’s. “The poison will be absorbed through the sides of your mouth into your bloodstream. You know more about the effect than I do. How long will it take? How long before your heart stops? An hour? Five hours? Twelve? Maybe you have a whole day. I hate to see you die like this, Herb, but it was your choice.”

Tenney was moaning in his throat.

Jake let him moan. Now Herb managed to get into a sitting position. He was bobbing his head.

“You want to talk now?”

Tenney’s head bobbed vigorously.

Jake reached over and ripped the tape away from Herb’s mouth.

Herb spat the pills onto the floor. He sobbed convulsively. Then he vomited.

“Who?”

“Let me wash my mouth out.”

“Who?” Grafton roared savagely.

“Schenler.”

“Harvey Schenler? Deputy director of the CIA?”

Herb Tenney nodded.

“Answer me, goddamnit!”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I don’t think—”

“I don’t give a fuck what you think! Why?”

“Keren was giving the Israelis money to get Soviet Jews to Israel. The Arabs don’t want them there. We’re trying to stabilize the Mideast.”

“So you poisoned Nigel Keren. How’d you do it?”

Tenney rubbed his mouth, then bent at the waist and wiped his tongue on his trousers. When he straightened he looked from face to face. “It was in his aspirin bottle,” he said finally.

“You murdered a man and stabilized the Mideast. Everything’s okay down at the corner gas station. Congratulations.”

“Now look here, Admiral,” Tenney said heatedly. “The world is a cesspool and you know it. We need oil. The Arabs have it. We have enough troubles with the ragheads without idiots like Nigel Keren using their fat wallets to cause more. The situation is volatile.”

“Albert Sidney Brown? Did he stick his fat wallet somewhere it didn’t belong?”

“I don’t know anything about General Bro—”

“Don’t lie to me!” Jake thundered. He could really roar when he wanted to; this time he rattled the windows. “You are one answer away from the grave. I’ve killed four men today, maybe five, and believe me, I won’t lose any sleep if I have to kill you.” Jake Grafton paused, then shook his head with annoyance. “In his aspirin bottle! Well?” he demanded.

“Brown was about to cause serious problems.”

“What kind of problems?”

“He sent a written report of the bugs to Schenler. Demanded an investigation. There was no other way to cork him.”

Jake changed direction. “General Shmarov — why’d you kill him?”

“I am not—”

“Sit on him, Toad.”

Tarkington stiff-armed Tenney on the shoulder and he toppled. “No,” he sobbed. “For Christ’s sake, no!”

“Answer the question.”

“Shmarov set up the weapons sale to Iraq. He arranged everything, the transfer of the money, the reactor explosion — everything. He was in the junta but he was hedging his bets, showing the American delegation KGB files, files that they shouldn’t see, just in case Yeltsin came out on top after all.”

“Didn’t he bribe the deputies?”

“Yeah, but you know how it is. Those kind of swine won’t stay bought.”

“What kind of files?”

“You’re so fucking smart, you tell me.”

Jake opened his mouth to say Toad’s name, but he refrained. Another episode with the pills and Tenney might indeed die, even if one-half the binary cocktail were aspirin. Perhaps he already had the missing chemical in his system.

“Okay,” Jake said slowly. “The CIA and the KGB have cooperated on numerous matters in the past. Those were the files Shmarov was going to hand to the senator and the people with him. Those files would inevitably lead the Americans to Harvey Schenler and his cronies, people like you, people who have been running their own foreign policy within the CIA. So Shmarov had to die. And all along I thought you were just trying to poison me. Ha! You were sent here to make sure Shmarov didn’t spill the beans either. How many people in Moscow were on your shit list, Tenney?”

“Kiss my—”

“Richard Harper.”

“Who?”

Jake Grafton bent down and began picking up the tablets from amid the vomit on the floor. Several of them were soft but intact.

“Don’t fuck with me, Tenney. I’m out of time and patience.”

“We caught Harper in some of the computer files and tracked him down,” Herb Tenney said, his voice rising slightly. “He wasn’t a very good hacker, nowhere near as good as he thought he was.”

“He found the money trail, didn’t he?”

“What money trail?”

“The money trail, you simple shit.” Jake Grafton unzipped a large chest pocket on his flying suit and extracted an envelope. He removed the contents. “Here is a letter to me written by Richard Harper. Look at it. It’s in Harper’s handwriting. Look at it!”

Tenney looked.

“Harper sent it to my wife,” Jake continued, his voice like broken glass. “She took it to Hayden Land and he sent it here by diplomatic pouch. You got to Richard Harper too late!”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“I’m talking about Saddam Hussein’s three billion dollars. I’m talking about the Mideast Palm Oil Import Corporation, a CIA front. I’m talking about J. W. Wise Organic Commodities, Inc., another CIA front. I’m talking about seven more corporations controlled by the CIA that shuffled Saddam Hussein’s money back and forth all over the world until it ended up in Moscow — in the hands of General Shmarov and his allies in the military and in the legislature. Money for nuclear weapons. Money to buy friends. Money to overthrow Yeltsin. Blood money! Tell me about that money!”

“I don’t—”

“If you tell me you don’t know just one more time we’re gonna do the pills. This time the tape stays on.”

Tenney shook his head and sweat flew. “I didn’t know he wrote a letter.”

“I guess not. If you had, my wife would be dead now, huh?”

“Listen, Admiral. We—”

“So now Saddam Hussein has nuclear weapons? Is that right?”

“We helped possible friends in high places in crucial nations with money! Okay? We’ve done it before. We’ll do it again. Jesus, where do you think you are? Oz? Never-never land? We—”

“Answer my question!” Jake roared. “Saddam Hussein has nuclear weapons?”

“Israel has them. Russia is in meltdown. We need a stable government in Russia or the world is facing a new dark age. Hussein wants to be a regional power. A couple dozen nuclear weapons — shit! We have tens of thousands. He knows that. So he can be a big frog in a little pond and we can make damn sure he doesn’t get out of line.”

“You think you can control him? What about the Gulf War?”

“Let’s call a spade a spade, Admiral. We can control him or kill him. America needs a stable government in Russia. That’s priority number one. With Russia on its feet and in our corner, the two of us can keep Saddam on a short leash or knot the noose.”

“So you let Shmarov and Yakolev murder a half-million Russians. No, let me rephrase that—you helped them murder a half-million Russians!”

“We didn’t—”

“Harper found that the money went through CIA dummy corporations, didn’t he? That’s why you killed him.”

“You make it sound as if we’re the bad guys. We aren’t. We’re trying to keep the peace in an unstable world. Surely you can see that? We had no choice. Yeltsin is failing: he’s doomed. He can’t possibly succeed, not a chance in a million. Either we have an in with his successors or we get the door slammed in our faces. That’s the only goddamn choice we have.”

“How long have you and Schenler been running your own foreign policy?”

“Huh?”

Jake’s voice was almost a whisper. “How long has the CIA been running its own foreign policy? That’s a simple question.”

Tenney looked bewildered, as if he didn’t understand what was being asked. And then the truth dawned on Jake. Presidential administrations came and went but the professional spies soldiered on regardless. The CIA had been doing what the CIA leaders believed necessary for as long as there had been a CIA, almost fifty years. It still was.

“All you people, you bottle-sucking lollipop amateurs—fucking around in national security matters,” Herb raved, becoming more and more infuriated. “You’re all gonna die! This ain’t a fucking football game. This is real, for keeps. America is at stake here.”

He’s coming apart, Jake Grafton decided. He’s been through too much.

Jake averted his eyes as Tenney ranted on: “Those ten-cent codes you use on the scramblers — they’ve been reading the messages thirty minutes later. They even fax me hard copies. They know what the fuck you traitors are up to. They know!”

Jake and Toad taped Herb Tenney’s mouth and put him in the bedroom. When the door was closed, Toad asked, “So he wasn’t trying to poison us?”

“Sure he was,” Jake muttered. He put the tablets into the bottle and dropped it into his shirt pocket.

“What are those tablets, some kind of suicide pills?” Spiro Dalworth asked.

“Binary poison,” Toad told him. “It’s medicine for people you don’t want to see anymore.”

Jack Yocke sat over in the corner with his chin resting on one hand. He glanced at Jake Grafton, who was staring at the floor, then leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.

Toad reached under the couch for the cassette recorder and pushed the rewind button. When the rewind was complete, he placed the recorder on the table and pushed the play button. He thumbed up the volume. Several minutes went by as they listened to feet shuffling, someone coughing, then finally Jake Grafton’s voice: “General Shmarov died last night. Tell us about that.”

The little machine had caught it all. The confusion and muffled comments as they poisoned Tenney were brutally plain, as was the sound of Tenney retching afterward. The listeners studiously avoided looking at one another.

When Tenney got out Harvey Schenler’s name, Jake motioned to Toad to turn off the tape. “Get the senior chief and fire up the TACSAT,” Jake told him. “Send that tape to General Land.”

“You heard Herb, CAG. They’ll crack the code.”

“Send it. Use the TACSAT. In the meantime we’ll deliver a message of our own to Harley McCann.”

“What about the ambassador? He wanted to see you.”

Jake glanced at his watch. “The night’s young.”

Jake was still in his flight suit when he entered the ambassador’s outer office and encountered Agatha Hempstead. She sniffed gingerly, no doubt slightly appalled at Jake’s aroma, then opened the door to Lancaster’s office.

The ambassador looked coldly across the top of his glasses at Jake Grafton and said, “I asked to see you when you returned to the embassy, Admiral.”

“Yessir. I apologize. I didn’t have much to tell you two hours ago, except to report that Lieutenant Moravia destroyed the weapons at the Petrovsk facility and a transport that was probably Iraqi. We were intercepted by four Russian fighters on the way down there.”

“But you evaded them. Obviously.”

“Yessir. Is Senator Wilmoth still in Moscow?” Wilmoth was the U.S. senator who wanted a peek at the KGB files.

“He’s staying at the embassy, but he’s leaving tomorrow. The KGB slammed the door today after Shmarov died. I’m afraid Yeltsin doesn’t have a lever big enough to pry it open.”

“I might be able to help. Could you ask the senator to come here to your office now? I have a tape I would like for you both to listen to. Then we’re going to have to have a lengthy chat.”

Lancaster looked dubious, but he picked up the telephone. Jake took the cassette player from his pocket and sat it on the desk. Hempstead helped him find a plug.

When Wilmoth arrived, Jake started the tape. He had to stop it at numerous places and explain. Lancaster wanted to know what in the world Admiral Grafton was forcing into Herb Tenney’s mouth, so Jake displayed the two pill bottles, even dumped the tablets onto Lancaster’s polished mahogany.

After the first run-through, Jake played the tape again without interruptions. Then a third time at Senator Wilmoth’s request.

It took some digesting. The fact that the Old Guard junta had blown up the Serdobsk reactor infuriated Wilmoth, who swore in a manner that Jake Grafton found most gratifying. Finally he said, “Wait until the president hears this!”

“I suspect he’s listening to it right now, sir,” Jake told him. “I’ve already sent this via a TACSAT unit to General Land at the Pentagon. He said he would take it to the White House immediately.”

“What about Harley McCann?” the ambassador said. “Was he in on this?”

“Captain McElroy has him outside in your waiting room. Why don’t you ask him?” McElroy had taken four marines with him to the CIA spaces. They had found McCann and his deputies merely sitting at their desks, waiting. “Apparently after Toad snatched Herb Tenney this morning, they talked it over and decided that they didn’t want any part of whatever was going down. They appear to be quite ready to talk.”

“I have a few questions to ask them,” Wilmoth said heatedly.

“I suggest, Senator, that you send a team of your investigators to the CIA office and impound the files. I don’t know what the CIA puts on paper, but some of that stuff might be interesting reading.”

Wilmoth grabbed for the telephone.

Lancaster reached for the white tablets on the desk and examined them. Finally he put them back on the desk next to the pill bottle.

When Wilmoth got off the phone, Jake said, “Perhaps, Mr. Ambassador, tonight would be a good time for President Yeltsin to call on the American Embassy. We can make a duplicate tape for him to keep. He might be able to find a good use for an artifact like that.”

Lancaster nodded. “And?”

“Well, I need a plane to get to Saudi Arabia. I need to get there without being intercepted and attacked by Russian fighters. Perhaps after Yeltsin listens to the tape, we can discuss that problem with him.”

“On the tape you said you killed four men today. Who?”

“We were intercepted by fighters. Rita and I are still alive.” Jake Grafton shrugged.

Lancaster grinned wolfishly. “I’m beginning to understand why General Land holds you in such high regard, Admiral. Agatha, while we’re talking to Mr. McCann, would you see if you can get President Yeltsin on the telephone?”

“Start scribbling.”

“Scribble what?” Jack Yocke was down on his hands and knees with a sponge and a bucket trying to clean Herb Tenney’s vomit from the carpet. He leaned back on his heels and looked up at Jake Grafton.

“How the Old Guard blew up the Serdobsk reactor and murdered a half-million human beings. How the Old Guard sold nuclear weapons to Saddam Hussein. How they used the money to bribe elected Russian politicians to vote Yeltsin out. That story. Write it.”

“An agent of the U.S. government tortured for information can hardly be quoted as a ‘reliable, high-placed government source,’ ” Yocke pointed out acidly. He dabbed at the wet place in the rug. “I don’t know if there was a single word of truth in what he said.”

“I thought you were a red-hot reporter.”

Yocke threw the sponge in the bucket and got to his feet. He sat down in the chair he had occupied during Tenney’s interrogation. He dried his hands on his trousers. “I don’t want to write it.”

Grafton gazed at Yocke for a moment, then found a chair. “Maybe you’d better explain.”

“The world is full of bad people. I write about them every day. They rob, steal, cheat, take drugs, bribes, beat their kids to death, kill their spouses in drunken rages or gun the bitches on the courthouse steps when they’re stone-cold sober. Those people I can understand. They’re human. These people here, people like Tenney, Shmarov, Yakolev…” Yocke’s voice trailed off.

“They’re human too. Their crimes are just worse.”

“No. They aren’t human. They are evil. They have no humanity.” Jack Yocke shuddered.

“They’re human all right,” Jake Grafton told him. “If anything, too human. What you don’t want to face is that everyone has a little Hitler, a little Stalin in him. Given the means and motive, a lot of people could become absolutely corrupt. What’s the difference between killing a man and ordering his death? What’s the difference between ordering one death or a half-million? Or a million? Or five million. Or ten million. With a stroke of a pen you can kill all the Jews — all the educated people — all the rich people — all the poor people — all the homosexuals…whoever. Evil and sin are exactly the same thing — you just need to convince yourself that the ends justify the means. Every human alive is capable of that little trick.”

“I don’t want to write it.”

“You don’t have a choice. I’m making the decisions around here. Get out your computer and plug the damn thing in. If necessary, I’ll write the story for you.”

“Just who the fuck do you think you are, Grafton?”

“I’m a public servant trying to do his job. You are a newspaper reporter who wants to get famous by writing the truth. We’ve got a bucketful of truth here and you are going to write it because people need to come face-to-face with it. What they do with the truth is beyond my control: I’m not taking responsibility for the human condition. But by God they are going to see it smeared all over the front page of every newspaper in the world. Then if they refuse to face it they are just as evil and just as guilty as the men you’re writing about.”

Jake Grafton stood. “You’re going to have to name names. Lancaster is in his office right now playing the tape for Yeltsin. Put that in your story.”

Jack Yocke gnawed on a fingernail as he thought about it. Finally he said, “You want me to say how you got the information from Tenney?”

“You can do it like an interview, if you want. Don’t mention binary poisons. I think that little problem is going to solve itself. Just quote Herb. Don’t forget to mention that the interview was recorded and the president got a copy of the tape.”

“ ‘That little problem is going to solve itself.’ Goddamnit, Admiral, shit is shit! If we’re going to nail the Commies to the cross we ought to nail our own bastards up there with them.”

“Oh, we will, Jack. We will. But one set of bastards at a time.”

“Who authorized you to release this story? The president?”

“I authorized myself.”

Yocke couldn’t think of a reply, which infuriated him since he had known what Grafton’s answer would be before he asked the question.

“Wake me up in two hours,” the admiral said, “and let me read your story. I’m not much of a writer but maybe I can help you with the commas.”

And with that Jake Grafton stretched out on the couch. He turned so his back was to Yocke. In moments, as Jack Yocke stared, he was breathing deeply and regularly. By the time Yocke got his computer plugged in and running, Jake was snoring lightly.