The Red Horseman

7

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 pocket-knife 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.

“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.

“Kill Herb Tenney.”

“That,” 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’lsta.” Please.

“Yaw-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!’”

“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—”

“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 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-be dictators preach anti-Semitic, 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.”

“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…,” 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 hole 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 keep changing them all the time. This ain’t good ol’ Iowa, Frogface.”

Toad grinned at the admiral and jerked his thumb at Yocke. “You may find this hard to believe, but I’m beginning to like this guy.”

Yocke wasn’t paying attention. Already he was trying to figure out how to explain this to his editor. He looked at his watch. It was 2 A.M. in Washington. He would call Gatler at home again. Mike was going to be thrilled.

“Let’s get something to eat,” Toad suggested. “For some reason I’m hungry.”

Jake nodded.

“Well, there’s a good hard currency restaurant with big prices up the street at the Savoy and a slightly more modest one here at the Metropolitan. It’s all Russian grub and the city water system is contaminated, unfit for human consumption. It’s Russian roulette — radioactive beef and milk and vegetables full of heavy metals — spin the cylinder and pull the trigger.” He sighed. “I know you want to treat, so you pick.”

“Here,” Jake said. Toad killed the engine and they climbed out. “But we call your editor first.”

“Let me get this straight, Admiral. You want me to call Hayden Land right now, at two-twenty in the morning, and ask him to come to the Post to call you in the morning?”

Mike Gatler’s voice was remarkably clear — the miracle of modern communications technology — and the amazement and disbelief seemed about to leak out of the telephone. Apparently Yocke’s call had roused him from a sound sleep.

“No, sir. Tell him you want to meet him at the guard’s shack in front of the river entrance to the Pentagon at 8 A.M. There you ask him to call me at this number in Moscow as soon as he can. He can use a phone in your office or a pay phone. This is important, Mr. Gatler—no other telephones. Have him call me here at this number in Moscow. Have you got that?”

“Put Yocke back on the line.”

Jake handed the telephone to the reporter, who mumbled into the instrument and listened intently. After a bit he said, “Admiral Grafton came over to the hotel this morning and asked for this favor… No…he hasn’t said. He won’t say… Yes.”

Yocke turned and eyed the two naval officers. “Gotcha,” he told the telephone. “I understand…how did you like my story about—” He bit it off and replaced the instrument on its cradle.

“I’m not to call him again at home in the middle of the night unless I’m dead. And I’m supposed to guarantee you absolute confidentiality.” He sat down beside Jake Grafton on the bed. “You’ll be deep background, never quoted or even referred to. I’m supposed to wring you out like a sponge.”

Jake Grafton grinned. He had a good grin under a nose that was a size too big for his face. When he grinned his gray eyes twinkled. “Think Gatler will do it?”

“Yeah. The one thing you gotta have in the news game is curiosity — Mike Gatler is chock full of it. He’s a helluva newspaperman. I don’t know if Hayden Land will agree to see him, but I guarantee Mike will try.”

“He’ll see him all right. If Gatler uses my name. Now let’s go get some food. I’m starved.”

“Don’t they feed you guys at the embassy?”

“Stove isn’t working right,” Jake muttered and led the way through the door.

“Hayden Land, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,” Yocke said cheerfully as he trailed the naval officers down the hall. “This is big, huh?”

“So how long you guys been in Moscow?” Yocke asked after they had gone through the buffet line and were picking at the watery scrambled eggs and sampling the fatty sausage. They had a table in the middle of the room and were surrounded by businessmen and here and there pairs of tourists. Over near the buffet line sat eight Japanese businessmen drinking orange juice and coffee and eating grapes. For twenty U.S. dollars a head. The Russians, Jake Grafton decided, have capitalism all figured out. Charge every nickel the traffic will bear until they quit coming, then drop the price just enough to get them back.

“Couple days.”

“So what do you think?”

“I think a twenty-dollar breakfast is one hell of a way to start a morning,” Jake replied. He managed to choke down his first bite of fatty, greasy sausage and shoved the rest of it to the side of his plate. He tentatively sipped the coffee. It was hot and black, thank God!

“Twenty and ten percent tip,” Yocke said cheerfully. “Twenty-two American smackeroos to get past that squat lady at the door.”

“These bastards bypassed capitalism and went straight into highway robbery,” Toad mumbled as he stared at the mess on the plate in front of him. “No wonder Marx was appalled. Twenty-two fucking dollars! Jeeezus!”

Jake looked slowly around at the huge, splendid room in which they sat with the businessmen and tourists, eating nervously. There were just no Russian restaurants that served food a Western stomach could tolerate — none. “This place is a boom town, like San Francisco during the gold rush. There’s no price competition right now.” He shrugged. “Maybe it’ll come.”

Yocke tried to change the subject. “What are you guys here for?”

Jake Grafton eyed the reporter and this time his gray eyes didn’t twinkle. “Give it up, Jack.”

“You gotta admit, Admiral, this whole thing is curious as hell. The embassy has gotta have enough communications gear to put you in touch with Slick Willie Clinton snarfing gut bombs in a McDonald’s.”

Yocke shrugged, then leaned back in his chair and assumed his philosophical attitude: “This whole darn country is curious. Everything is falling apart, nothing works right, yet everybody you meet is a literature expert, a music scholar, or an authority on eighteenth-century Russian poetry. Not a solitary one of them owns a screwdriver or a pair of pliers or even knows what they’re for. So the commodes don’t work, the light bulbs are burned out, the furnace in the basement crapped out last year, the pipes are busted — and they sit amid the rubble and talk about the nuances in Dostoyevski, the genius of Tolstoy. The whole place is a nuthouse, one giant pyscho ward, some psychiatrist’s wet dream.”

“They must have something going for them,” Jake said as he smeared jam inside a croissant. “They kicked the hell out of Hitler. They’re tough, resilient people. They’re survivors.”

Jack Yocke rubbed his head and thought about it. He was having trouble getting the right perspective, having trouble seeing the human beings hidden behind the body armor they all wore. “Maybe,” he muttered. “Maybe.”

“So what stories have you been working on while you’ve been here?” Toad Tarkington asked this question.

“Been wandering around trying to get a feel for the place, for the people. They’re desperate. It’s a scary situation. The people seem to just have no hope. And the Commies are playing to their fears. The anti-Semitism is right out in the open and it’s ugly.”

Toad glanced at Jake Grafton, who was looking out the window at the street, now bathed in weak sunshine, as Jack Yocke rambled on about the more prominent Communists and their stump rantings. When the reporter finally paused Jake asked, “How ugly?”

“What?”

“How ugly is the anti-Semitism?”

“They’re prosecuting Jews for hooliganism, profiteering and hoarding. Throwing them into jail. Everyone is doing it but the only people being prosecuted are Jews charged before they changed the law. The persecution is even more blatant outside of Moscow, out in those little provincial towns nobody ever heard of where old Communists are still running the show. To hear some of the Commies tell it, they never had a chance to run this country right because the Jews screwed up everything. It’s Hitler’s big lie one more time.”

“It worked before,” Jake murmured.

He looked at his watch. Almost eleven. Five or six hours to wait. Maybe Toad could spend the afternoon with Yocke and he could get some sleep in Yocke’s bed. He managed only an hour or two’s sleep last night. Jet lag. He felt hot and dirty and tired. Or maybe he had caught a dose of that desperation that everyone here seemed to be infected with.

And this would be a good time to call Richard Harper, his private computer hacker, to ask if he had made any progress finding the money. If someone was buying nuclear weapons, then someone was getting paid.

But what will you do when you know?

Hayden Land was the first black man to hold the top job in the American military. A highly intelligent soldier and top-notch political operator, he also had the ability to think very straight when everyone else was panicking. This quality had served him well during the Gulf War several years ago when his sound leadership made him a national hero. Those in the know in national politics even mentioned him as possible presidential timber in 1996, when presumably he would be retired.

Jake Grafton had worked for Land in the past, so the general’s calmness on the telephone was no surprise. Hayden Land never lost his cool.

“What did you want to talk about, Admiral?”

“Sir, I understand General Brown died a few days ago. I wonder if you have the autopsy results.”

“Well, I don’t even know if an autopsy will be performed,” General Land said. “I thought he died at home of a heart attack.”

“One more question, sir. Have you seen a report from General Brown about listening devices being found in the DIA office spaces?”

Silence. It dragged for several seconds. “No. Is there such a report?”

“The day I left to come over here General Brown said he was going to write one. We found the bugs a day or so before. Both he and I suspected they were planted and monitored by our friends at Langley, suspected for some very good reasons, but we had no rock-solid proof. One of the things my aide and I had discussed where it could be overheard by those bugs was the death a year or so ago of Nigel Keren, the British publisher. We thought we had some indications that someone from Langley might have killed him with binary poison.”

Jake paused for a moment. Land said nothing.

“Are you still with me, sir?”

“I’m here.”

“General Brown’s death might also have been caused by binary poison. Since he apparently didn’t write that report of those listening devices, I suggest you ensure that there will be an autopsy, a damn good one.”

“Just what were you and General Brown working on, Admiral?”

“We were discussing Nigel Keren, how he died, who might have killed him. I don’t want to go any further into that on this telephone, sir. The KGB is probably eavesdropping. Still, this telephone was preferable to using the embassy communications systems. And I request that you don’t use the telephones in your office, car or home to discuss this matter.”

More silence, then a slow, “I think I see what you’re driving at.”

“I don’t know what is going on, General, but something is and I’m on the edge of it. So I need some help.”

“What?” That one-word response was pure Hayden Land. No beating around the bush, no questioning of his subordinate’s assessment of the situation or demands for further information, just a straight, quick trip to the heart of the matter.

So Jake told him. The two officers talked for another twenty minutes before they spent a few minutes discussing what they were going to tell the Washington Post to explain this curious method of communication. Their answer — nothing at this time.

Jake straightened his uniform and put his shoes back on and locked the door behind him.

He found Toad Tarkington and Jack Yocke in the bar drinking espresso and gobbling pretzels. They both stood as Jake walked toward them.

“Thanks a lot, Jack,” Jake said.

“He called you?”

“Yes.”

“One word?” Yocke looked incredulous. “That’s all you’re going to give me?”

Jake grinned. He extended his hand and the reporter took it.

As Toad and Jake were walking toward the main entrance, Yocke called, “You owe me a steak when I get back to Washington.”

Jake lifted his hand in acknowledgment.

Out in the car Toad asked, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking about that Yegor Somebody killing?”

“Not the Russians’ style, you told Yocke. You can’t hand Yocke a bone like that with meat on it, Toad — he’s too smart.”

“Yeah. I’m sorry.”

“The whole thing looks like a classic in-your-face Mossad hit. Like Paris, Rome, Frankfurt, and a dozen others you could name. The KGB makes you disappear, the Mossad makes you a wire-service example.”

“Maybe the Russians are changing tactics.”

“Maybe.”

“Then again…”

For a while Grafton rode silently, looking out the window. Then he said, “Say the Mossad decided to wipe a struggling young Hitler protégé and dropped a hint to someone in the Yeltsin government. Maybe some of Yeltsin’s lieutenants thought the idea up. Whatever. Someone thought that Kolokoltsev’s departure to Communist heaven wouldn’t be an unmitigated disaster and called the cops off. That much is obvious, yet there’s no way in the world to prove a damn thing on anybody. None of these clowns are ever going to breathe a word. Yocke is wasting his time asking embarrassing questions through an interpreter who is trying to keep from wetting his pants. All he’ll do is irritate people who don’t like to be irritated.”

Tarkington grunted. He was thinking about General Brown, smacked like a fly. “Are you just speculating about the Mossad, Admiral, or was that a power think?”

Jake Grafton growled irritably. “I don’t know a damn thing.”

“I don’t like any of this.”

“Write a letter home to mama,” Jake told him.

At least Judith Farrell is somewhere in Maryland, Toad told himself. She’s mowing grass and watching baseball games on television and going to the theater on Friday nights. But even as he trotted that idea out for inspection he threw it back — he didn’t believe it. He had seen her in action once, eliminating a terrorist in a Naples hotel. That memory came flooding back and he felt slightly ill.

“The Russians have their own rules,” Jake Grafton said. “The language is different, the heritage is different, the mores are different, they don’t think like we do. It’s hard to believe this is the same planet we live on.”

Jake Grafton had listened for over twenty years to stories about all-male Russian dinners and vodka celebrations. They were always thirdhand or fourthhand, and the parties described sounded rather like something one might find in a college fraternity house on a Saturday night after the big football game.

And that, he thought ruefully, would be a good way to describe the festive atmosphere of which he was a reluctant part.

The problem was quite simple — he hadn’t had this much to drink in years. He was sweating profusely and feeling slightly dizzy.

Across the table from him Nicolai Yakolev was telling another Russian joke, one about a high party official and a simple country girl. He had to tell it loud to be heard over the noise of the piano.

Jake had told a few of these jokes himself earlier in the evening, before the level of the fluid in the vodka bottle had gone down very far. He had never been very good with jokes — couldn’t remember them long enough to find someone to tell them to — but he did recall several of those crude riddles that had been popular years ago, the so-called Polish jokes. So he transformed the bumblers into Communists and delighted the general and his guests with questions such as, How many Communists does it take to screw in a light bulb? Twelve — one to stand on the chair and hold the bulb, eleven to turn the chair.

Before dinner he had had a chance to meet the allied officers one on one.

Lieutenant Colonel West of the Queen’s Own Highlanders was a deeply tanned trim man, about five feet six inches, with dark hair longer than U.S. military regulations allowed. He seemed quite relaxed with the Russians and Jake heard him murmur a few phrases in the language.

“Delighted to see you, Admiral,” West said when they shook hands. “Met you one time in Singapore years ago. No reason you should remember. Think you were a commander then.”

Jake seemed to think he did recall the man. “A party with the Aussies?”

“Righto. About ten years ago. Jolly good show, that.”

Now he remembered. Jocko West, a specialist on guerrilla warfare, terrorism and jungle survival. “You seem to have picked up a little of the local lingo, Colonel.”

West leaned closer and lowered his voice. “Afghanistan, sir. A bit irregular, I dare say. Sort of a busman’s holiday. These lads were the oppo.” He sighed. “Well, the world turns, eh?”

The Frenchman was Colonel Reynaud, impeccably uniformed. He spent dinner chatting with two Russian officers in French. Prior to dinner, when he and Jake were introduced, he used English, which he spoke with a delicious accent. “A pleas-aire, Admiral Grafton.”

“How did you manage to wrangle a trip to Moscow in the summertime, Colonel?”

“I am a student of Napoleon, sir, you comprehend? Think, had Napoleon arrived in the summer, perhaps history would have been so different, without these Communists. I came to see where it went wrong for him, for France. So I will do a little of work, a little of the seeing of the sights.”

“The people at my embassy told me you are an expert on nuclear weapons.”

Reynaud smiled. “Alas, that is true. I study the big boom. In a way it is unmilitary, n’est-ce pas? The nuclear weapons will make la guerre so short, it will not be la guerre. They leave us without honor. It is not pretty.”

Jake managed to shake hands with Colonel Rheinhart, the German, and Colonel Galvano, the Italian, but he didn’t get to visit with them until after dinner. They both impressed him as extremely competent officers of great ability. Rheinhart was the smaller of the two, a man whom the American embassy said had a doctorate in physics from the University of Heidelberg.

“Herr Colonel, or should I address you as Herr Doctor?”

The German laughed easily. One got the impression that Rheinhart would be a valuable officer in anyone’s army.

Galvano was not as easy to read, perhaps because Jake had difficulty understanding his English. Still, he looked fit and highly intelligent, as all four of the colonels did. Their nations had sent the best they had, Jake concluded, and that best was very good indeed.

As he surveyed these officers at dinner he had wondered about his own selection. He was certainly not a weapons expert or diplomat. Could he get the job done? Looking at the foreign officers, he had his doubts. Then his eyes came to rest on Herb Tenney and the doubts evaporated. He had met a few slick bastards in his career and he thought he knew how to handle them, or at least get them sidetracked where they wouldn’t do anyone any harm. He reached for his glass and had it almost to his lips when he remembered General Albert Sidney Brown. His hand shook slightly. He lowered the glass to the table without spilling any of the liquid.

Two hours after dinner General Yakolev still seemed fairly sober considering how much he had had to drink — at least two for every one of Jake’s. He was sweating and having some trouble forming his English words, yet he looked pretty steady nonetheless.

A miracle.

Right now Jake Grafton felt like he was going to be sick. He excused himself and made for the rest room, where he found Toad Tarkington.

“What in hell do they put in that Russian moonshine anyway?” Toad demanded. “It tastes like Tabasco sauce.”

Jake upchucked into a commode, then used his handkerchief to swab his face with cold water. His hands were shaking. Fear or vodka?

“You okay?” he asked Toad.

“About three sheets to the wind, CAG. I’m ready to blow this pop stand anytime you say.”

“A red hot night in Po City, huh?”

“I’m ready to go back-ship.”

“Give me another fifteen minutes or so. In the meantime get out there and mix and mingle.”

Jake led General Yakolev over to a corner where they wouldn’t be so easily overheard. “General, you impress me as a professional soldier.”

Yakolev didn’t reply to that. His smile seemed frozen. God, his eyes seemed completely hidden behind those brows!

“I think you have brains and balls,” Jake added.

“The balls yes, but the brains? I have doubts. Others have doubts also.”

“I have a little problem that I need some help with,” Jake said as he fought the feeling that he wasn’t handling this right. Why had he drunk those last two shots of vodka? This just wasn’t going to work! He turned away with a sense of defeat, then turned back. What the hey, give it a shot. “I’d like to ask a favor.”

Yakolev made a gesture that might have meant anything.

“I’ve had too much of your vodka. I’m having a little trouble saying this right. But I honestly need a favor.”

The general looked as foreign as an Iranian ayatollah. Jake pushed out the words. “I want you to have a man arrested tomorrow.”

Now he could see Yakolev’s eyes. They were locked on his own. “Let’s go into my office,” the Russian said. “It’s quiet there.”

The following day was overcast and gloomy when the contingent of foreign military observers gathered in the large room adjacent to General Yakolev’s office where they had dined the night before. None of them looked the worse for wear, Jake thought as he surveyed them through eyes that felt like dirty marbles. He tried to slow the rate of blinking and swallowing, but he couldn’t seem to affect it much.

The six aspirin had helped. At least he felt human again. Last night around midnight he had cursed himself for being a damn fool. After he and Yakolev had closeted themselves in the general’s office, the old Russian had produced another vodka bottle from his desk drawer.

The last thing Jake remembered was a promise from the general that he would talk to the Foreign Intelligence Service, a name that gave the general a good laugh. Jake had laughed like hell too because he was drunk.

Stinking drunk. God, how long had it been since he got so stinking, puking, deathly drunk? Fifteen…no, almost seventeen years. Make that eighteen.

Toad had driven him back to the embassy. He had passed out by then. He woke up in the bathroom hanging over the commode.

This morning he tried to pay attention as the Russian Army briefing officers used maps and charts to explain how the tactical warheads were being shipped to the disassembly site at an army base on the eastern side of the Volga river.

Herb Tenney was supposed to be here, but he wasn’t. Jake and Toad had skipped breakfast and driven to the Kremlin in their own car, one of the black Fords the embassy used. Toad said Herb was coming on his own.

The briefing was an hour old when a soldier slipped into the room and handed General Yakolev a note. He read it, then interrupted the briefers and suggested a pause. He motioned to Jake.

“As you requested, your friend has been arrested.”

“Where is he?”

“KGB Headquarters. The soldier waiting outside will drive you there.”

KGB Headquarters on Dzerzhinsky Square was an imposing yellow building — the Russians seemed fond of yellow on public buildings. No doubt it made a nice contrast with the red flags that had hung everywhere in the not too distant past. Still, even with the cheerful yellow facade the building seemed to dominate the naked pedestal and traffic in the square below.

The driver steered the car to an entrance in the back and showed a document to the uniformed gate guard. Parked in the semidarkness under the building under the scrutiny of several armed soldiers, the driver remained behind the wheel of the car.

Jake and Toad were escorted through endless dark corridors by a slovenly man in an ill-fitting blue suit. The corridors had a smell, a light, foul odor. Jake was trying to place it when they went around a corner and there they were — the cells. They were small, dark. Some of them contained men. At least they looked like men, shadowy figures in the back of the cells who turned their backs on the visitors.

Terror. He had smelled terror, some evil mixture of sweat, stale urine, feces, vomit and fear. Looking at the forms of the men behind the bars and trying to see their faces, Jake Grafton felt his stomach turn.

He was perspiring when the guard opened a door at the end of the corridor, and unexpectedly they were in an office. There was a man in uniform behind the desk, the green uniform of the Soviet army, only this one wasn’t in the army. He was a KGB general. He didn’t rise from behind his desk, although he did look up. The escort left the room and closed the door behind him.

“Admiral Grafton.”

“Yes.”

“I am General Shmarov.”

Jake Grafton just nodded and looked slowly around the room. A large framed print of Lenin on the wall, which had once been green and was now merely earth-tone dirty. There was a window behind the general and it was even dirtier than the walls. Three padded chairs in poor condition. The desk. A telephone. And the KGB general.

Shmarov’s bald head gleamed. Even with his mouth shut you could see that his teeth were crooked. Now he spoke again and Jake caught the gleam of gold. “General Yakolev asked for a favor, so I was glad to help.”

Grafton couldn’t think of a thing to say.

“Nicolai Alexandrovich is a friend.”

“Thanks,” Jake managed.

“Here is the passport.” The Russian held it out and Jake took it. It was a U.S. diplomatic passport. He flipped it open. Herbert Peter Tenney. Jake thumbed the pages, which were festooned with entry and exit stamps. Tenney certainly got around. He passed it back to the general.

“Now if you’ll just check it to see if it’s genuine.”

“But of course.” A flash of gold.

The door opened and the escort in the blue suit was there waiting. Shmarov nodded his head. Grafton returned the nod and wheeled to follow the escort. Toad trailed along behind.

The room where the two Americans ended up contained only a table and a few chairs. On the table were clothes and shoes, a coat, a briefcase.

“His things,” Blue Suit said, and gestured.

“Everything?” Toad asked.

“Everything. He is being X-rayed. To see that nothing inside, then back to cell.”

“Thank you.”

Blue Suit gestured to the table, then pulled up a chair and sat down to watch. He took out a cigarette and lit it.

Jake took the briefcase while Toad started on the shoes.

The briefcase was plastic, with a plastic handle. It was unlocked, so he opened it and removed the contents, a legal pad, paper and pencils. Nothing else was inside. He examined the pens, cheap ballpoints, then disassembled them.

The padded handle of the briefcase showed wear but seemed innocuous. Jake used his penknife to cut it open. Nothing. Then he used the knife to slice out the padding that coated the interior of the case.

Their escort left the room for a moment, then returned with pliers, a screwdriver and a magnifying glass. Jake used the screwdriver to take off the tiny metal feet of the case.

Finally he turned his attention to the shoes. The laces, the heels, everything was examined closely and minutely with the magnifying glass.

When Toad began looking at the case, Jake turned his attention to the clothes — trousers, shirt, underwear, socks, tie, jacket and coat. He felt every seam and probed every questionable thickness with his pocketknife.

The suit wore a label from Woodward & Lothrop, a well-known department store in the Washington, D.C., area. Jake shopped there himself on occasion. The belt was cut from a single piece of cowhide and had a hand-tooled hunting scene on it. The buckle was a simple metal one. A Christmas or birthday present, probably. After scrutinizing every inch of it as carefully as he could with the glass, he began leafing through the contents of the prisoner’s pockets, which were contained in a cardboard box. A couple of keys, a wallet, a handful of loose ruble notes and American dollar bills, a fingernail clipper, a piece of broken shoelace, an odd white button that looked as if it was off a dress shirt, a key very similar to the one in Jake’s pocket that probably opened Herb Tenney’s room at Fort Apache — that was the crop.

Toad watched him examine everything under the magnifying glass, then helped him spread the contents of the wallet on one end of the table. Driver’s license, credit cards, a library card, a folded Far Side cartoon torn from a newspaper, several hundred American dollars in currency, a receipt from a laundry in Virginia.

Toad perched on the edge of the table. “Agent 007 always had a pocketful of goodies. I’m disappointed in our boy.”

“What should be here and isn’t?”

Toad glanced at the Russian. “What do you mean?”

“Is there anything you would expect to find him carrying around that isn’t here?”

Toad surveyed the little pile, then shook his head. “I can’t think of anything. Except maybe an appointment or memo book with some phone numbers. A bottle of invisible ink, a suicide pill, I don’t know.”

“All his phone numbers are in his head.”

Jake picked up the keys, held them where the Russian could see them, then stuck them in his pocket.

“Let’s go do the car,” he told Blue Suit as he handed back the magnifying glass and hand tools. “We’ll keep the keys and bring them back in a few hours.”

The man nodded and pulled the door open.

Back at Fort Apache one of the keys opened the door to room 402. The room number was right on the key. Jake Grafton turned on the lights. “Go find Spiro Dalworth. I want screwdrivers, pliers, a magnifying glass, a big sharp knife from the kitchen. My pocketknife is too small.”

“Yes, sir.” Toad left.

Jake went into the bathroom and picked up all the toilet articles. He spread them out on a table and examined each of them.

The problem was that he didn’t know what form the binary poison would be in, if it were here at all. A liquid would be the easiest to administer but the hardest to transport. Pills or powder would be easier to carry and almost as efficient. But any water-soluble solid would do, he thought, so even an object like a button or a pencil eraser might be the object he sought.

Now he sat looking at some tablets. A small plastic aspirin bottle with a child-proof lid contained the usual small white pills. He counted them. All of them had the word aspirin impressed into the surface. On one side. No, wait a minute. Some had the word on both sides. Huh! He separated the pills into two piles. Eight one-side-only and six both-sides, fourteen tablets total.

He put them back into the bottle and slipped the bottle into his pocket.

When Toad and Lieutenant Dalworth arrived, he put them to searching. “I want to see any pills or powder or liquid you can find. Anything that might form a hidden container. Look carefully.”

Dalworth looked puzzled, but he asked no questions.

An hour later they decided that everything had been examined by all three of them.

“Mr. Dalworth, thank you for your help. We’ll sort of straighten everything out and lock the door when we leave. Of course, I’ll appreciate it if you would keep this little adventure to yourself.”

Dalworth’s eyes went to Toad, then back to Jake. “I don’t suppose this would be a good place to ask questions.”

“You’re very perceptive, Spiro,” Toad said.

When the door closed behind him and Toad had checked to make sure that Mr. Dalworth didn’t have his ear against it, Jake removed the aspirin bottle from his pocket and spread out the tablets on the desk. “Take a look at these, Toad.”

Tarkington used the magnifying glass. “Well, they look like aspirin, but I dunno.”

“I have some aspirin on the bathroom sink in my room. Will you get them, please.”

They filled a tumbler with water and dropped one of Jake’s aspirin in it. In twenty seconds the tablet had dissolved to a mound of white powder. After thirty seconds had passed they swirled it and the powder covered the bottom of the glass. After a minute it was still there.

Now Jake took one of the tablets with the double-sided label and dropped it into a fresh glass of water. It too dissolved rapidly, but without leaving the powder residue. The entire tablet went into solution.

“Thank God for the scientific method,” Toad muttered. “When I was a kid I got a microscope one year for Christmas.”

Jake saved six tablets from his bottle and dumped the rest down the toilet. Those six he put in Herb Tenney’s bottle. Herb’s five remaining pills went into Jake’s bottle.

As they folded clothes and replaced them in the suitcase and dresser, Toad said, “He’s going to know someone was in here.”

“I suspect so.”

“Dalworth may blab.”

“He might.”

“You sure you got this figured out, CAG?”

“No.”

Toad touched Jake’s arm. “You’re betting both our lives, you know.”

Jake just looked at him. “I’m aware of that,” he said finally. “If you have any ideas I’m always open to suggestions.”

Toad went back to straightening the closet. After a moment he said, “I suggest we shoot friend Tenney and find a hole to stuff him and his aspirin bottle into.”

When Jake didn’t respond, Toad added in a tight little voice, “Of course you have carefully calculated all the possible reasons why there were two less of those pills marked on both sides than there were of the other kind.” His voice was sarcastic. “No doubt you’ve weighed it, pondered on it, considered every possible aspect and come to some intricate, subtle conclusion that a mere junior officer mortal like me couldn’t possibly appreciate.”

“What do you want me to say?” Jake replied patiently. “That Herb probably took two for a toothache? We both know he probably fed them to us. Us and half the people in this embassy.”

“We really oughta take this guy out into the forest and make him dig his own hole. I kid you not.”

“KGB Headquarters must have really gotten to you.”

“Yes, sir. It sure as hell did. I admit it. I about vomited all over that fucking general’s desk.”

“Hurry up. Let’s get this done. We have to get back for the afternoon briefing.”

“How do you know,” Toad asked, “that those are all the binary pills Herb has access to?”

“I don’t.”

“He could have some in his desk in the CIA office, he could have some stashed in any hidey-hole he thought handy. He can just ask Langley for more.”

“What a deep thinker you are! Let’s hope he doesn’t find out we took a few.”

“What if he runs short? What if he’s embarked on a major urban renewal project?”

“You ask too many questions.”

“You and I are going to end up dead,” Toad said sourly.

“Sooner or later,” Grafton replied. What was there to say? Herb and his colleagues must have killed General Brown so that he wouldn’t make waves. The job was only half done as long as Jake and Toad were wandering around upright.

“The whole fucking CIA can go to fucking hell for all I care,” Tarkington said crossly. When he got no reply, he muttered something to himself that Grafton didn’t catch.