The Red Horseman

8

Butyrskaya Prison looked like something from a Kafka nightmare, Jack Yocke decided, and jotted the thought on a blank page of his notebook as he sat in the waiting room.

The Russian interpreter sitting on the bench across from him was as nervous as a pickpocket at a policeman’s ball. He gnawed on a fingernail already into the quick, then stared at the sliver of nail still remaining. He pushed on the raw quick experimentally and grimaced. He crossed and recrossed his feet and stared morosely at the filthy paint on the wall and the dirty floor. He carefully avoided looking at any of the other people slumped on the wooden benches.

Yocke wondered about this desire to avoid even eye contact. After sweeping each of the other eight people in the room, his gaze returned to the uncomfortable interpreter, Gregor Something, Gregor followed by five or six Slavic syllables that sounded to Yocke’s American ear like a pig grunting. Two days ago Gregor jackrabbited away from Soviet Square, yet the following morning he showed up at Yocke’s hotel as if nothing had happened.

Still glowing with the virtuous warmth of his new-found heroism and curiously eager to make this gutless wonder squirm a little, Yocke asked, “Why did you run?”

“My wife was ill.”

Gregor didn’t blink or blush, didn’t look away, even when Yocke sneered.

To be able to lie outrageously and shamelessly was an asset, Jack Yocke told himself, one that would of course stand Gregor in good stead here in this workers’ paradise of poverty and desperation, but it would also be a cheerful bullet for his résumé even in brighter climes, such as the U.S. of A. Across the pond in the land of the free and home of the brave he could lie like a dog to clients and customers, cheat on his spouse, steal from his employer, write creative fiction for the IRS, and in the unlikely event he ever got caught he could fool the lie detector and skip away with a happy smile. This multilingual grunter would fit right in, as red, white and blue as a telephone solicitor hyping penny stocks to shut-in geriatrics. Once he got his fastball high and tight he could even become a politician.

This morning in the waiting room of Butyrskaya Yocke asked Gregor, “Have you ever thought of emigrating to America?”

“My wife’s cousin lives in Brooklyn.”

Yocke stared.

“Brooklyn, New York.”

“I’m trying to recall if I ever heard of Brooklyn. It’s out west, isn’t it? With cowboys and Indians and tumbleweeds?”

“Perhaps,” Gregor said softly. “I don’t know. My wife’s cousin drives a taxi and earns many dollars. He likes America.” He shrugged.

“America is a great country.”

“He drives a Chevrolet. Only five years old.” He glanced at the other people in the room to see who was listening. One or two had glanced up at the sound of a foreign language, but now all but one had retreated into their self-imposed isolation.

“Umm,” said Jack Yocke, looking hard at the young man who was looking at them. He had longish hair and an air of quiet desperation. His gaze wavered, then fell away.

“Petrol is cheap there, my wife’s cousin says. Every day he drives many many miles. All the streets are paved.”

A door opened and a man passed through the waiting room. Jack Yocke caught a whiff of the prison smell. He had smelled it before in the jails of Washington, a devil’s brew of urine, body odor and fear. Yocke delicately inhaled a thimbleful as Gregor regaled his listener with the adventures of his wife’s cousin in his Chevy on the paved boulevards of Brooklyn.

Two minutes after Yocke reached saturation, a man came through one of the doorways and spoke to Gregor, then led the way along endless dingy corridors. The warden’s corner office was big and had a carpet. A dial phone straight out of the 1930s sat on the wooden desk.

The warden came around the desk to shake hands, then trotted back around the desk and arranged himself in his chair. He was a sloppy fat man with a heavy five-o’clock shadow that made his skin look dingy gray.

Gregor and the warden nattered a while in Russian, then Gregor turned to Yocke. “He welcomes the correspondent for the American newspaper Post to Butyrskaya.”

“Thank him for taking the time to see me.” Of course Yocke had an appointment, arranged by an official with the Yeltsin government, but he was willing to pretend this was a social call.

More Russian.

“Ask your questions.”

“I am here today at the request of the editor of my newspaper, the most influential newspaper in the United States. Everyone in Washington reads my newspaper every day, from Hillary Clinton right on down. Everyone, including all the people in the Senate and House of Representatives. Tell him that.”

After an Uzi-burst of Russian, Yocke continued. “I am here to interview Yakov Dynkin, a Jew who was convicted of arranging the sale of a private automobile for profit. I understand he was sentenced to five years in the gulag at hard labor.”

The warden’s face lost its friendliness as Gregor translated. Yocke didn’t understand the words, but he understood the tone. The interpreter said, “Yakov Dynkin is not here. No Jews are here.”

“Has he been shipped to the gulag?”

“No,” was the answer that came back. Just no.

Yocke thought about it. Dynkin wasn’t here and he hadn’t been shipped to the gulag. “Have they turned him loose with a pardon or probation?”

The warden merely frowned.

Yocke extracted a press clipping from his jacket pocket. He handed it to Gregor and pointed at the appropriate paragraph. “Two weeks ago Tass said Dynkin was here. There it is in black and white.” Gregor stared at the clipping. “Go on! Show him that and tell him I wish to see Dynkin and write about what wonderful treatment he is receiving here at Butyrskaya even though he was convicted of violating a law that was repealed a week before he was arrested.”

Slowly, as if this were costing him a major portion of his pension, Gregor passed the piece of paper across the desk. The warden refused to touch it, so it came to rest in the empty spot on the desk in front of him. He bent over and looked at the English words without showing the slightest glimmer of comprehension.

After a few seconds the warden picked up the offending paper and handed it back to Yocke, who accepted it. Another spray of words.

“He says you are wrong. Dynkin is not here. No Jews are here.”

“Where are they?”

“He doesn’t know. Is there anything else he can help you with?”

“Couldn’t he consult his records or something and tell me if Dynkin has ever been here? Or when he left. Or where he is.”

Gregor considered.

“These people do have records, I assume, something scribbled somewhere to tell them who is rotting in what hole…”

Gregor spoke to Yocke as if he were a small boy incapable of understanding the obvious. “He is not here.”

“Who are you working for? Him or me? Ask him the question.”

“But he has told you the answer. What more could he possibly say? The warden is a powerful senior official. If he says the man is not here, then he is not. That is all there is to that.”

Jack Yocke smiled at the warden. He then turned the grin on Gregor. “This fat geek is lying through his teeth. These greasy Commie bastards railroaded Dynkin for making an honest ruble just because he’s a Jew. They’ve got him locked up somewhere in the large intestines of this shit factory. This pompous son of a bitch knows the whole prosecution was a farce to fuck Jews and embarrass Yeltsin and his people, make them look like lying hypocrites when they go begging in America and Europe for foreign aid. Dynkin sold a car for a profit and these old Commies are grinding him into hamburger.”

Gregor’s face was frozen, immobile. Even his eyes were blank.

“Ask him if it’s true that about a hundred and twenty thousand people are still imprisoned in labor camps for doing business that is legal in Russia today. Ask him.”

Gregor put his tongue in motion. After a few syllables from the warden, the translator told Yocke, “He doesn’t know.”

“Ask him how Russia can establish a free-market economy if it keeps all these people in prison for earning a profit.”

Gregor looked at his shoes.

“Ask him!”

The translator’s head moved from side to side, about a millimeter.

Yocke flashed another broad grin at the warden. “Come on, Gregor. There’s a story here. These Commies ain’t got religion. They’re still the same filthy, diseased assholes they always were. They screwed Dynkin to get at Yeltsin. You can see that, can’t you? They can’t get away with it if we tell it to the world.”

Gregor’s face looked as bad as Lenin’s, who had been dead for over sixty years.

“Don’t chicken out on me again,” Yocke pleaded. “Think up something that will open up this pig’s…”

But Gregor was leaving. He stood and nodded obsequiously to the warden while he jabbered away like a parrot with a hard on. The warden expended the effort to get to his feet. He tugged his jacket down over his gut and adjusted his tie. He grinned at Yocke and thrust out his hand.

At a loss for what to do next, Yocke closed his mouth, gave the warden’s soft hand a token pump, then followed the retreating Gregor.

Going down the corridor Yocke demanded, “What did you tell that fat screw?”

“Screw? What is a screw?”

“A prison guard. A power pervert.”

Gregor gave Yocke a look that was about an equal mixture of contempt and amazement and kept walking.

Outside in the street, Gregor exploded. “You can’t talk to a powerful person like you did in there. This is Butyrskaya! Are you insane? Do you know nothing?” He sprayed saliva.

“My newspaper sent me to get a story,” Yocke snarled. “That asshole was lying! He didn’t even look at the records. What a crock! You people have held your nose so long that you can’t smell shit when you’re in it up to your ears. You’ve been fucked by these people for seventy-five years because you bent over and grabbed your ankles and held the position. You gutless wonders will—”

Gregor spit at Yocke’s feet. “You are a little boy throwing pebbles at a great bear. The chain holding the bear is very rusty, very weak. If you arouse him you will end up in his belly and no one at your rich newspaper in Washington USA will ever know what became of you.” He snapped his fingers. “Like that. You will be gone. You and your dirty words and stupid questions and your notebook where you write your words making fun of us. Gone forever, Mister Jack Yocke. Think about that if you have any brains to think with.”

They went to Gregor’s tiny Soviet sedan and shoehorned themselves in. Sitting there with his knees jammed against the dashboard, Yocke said, “Why don’t you drop the krulak act and stop feeding me bullshit?”

“Why don’t you stop acting like stupid Yankee billionaire looking down his nose?”

“I will if you will.”

Gregor inserted his key in the ignition, then glanced sideways at Yocke. “Standing in Soviet Square while gunmen shoot bullets was the most grotesque”—he had to search for words—“the most dumbest stupid thing I have ever in my life seen. Everyone ran because those who shoot don’t want anyone to see their faces. We stupid Russians think of that real quick.” He bobbed his head once and snapped his fingers. “Even if stray bullets don’t kill you the gunmen will if you stand there like you are watching old men play chess. And you hung there on the side of the speaker’s platform, an ape in the zoo. You weren’t shot — a miracle, like an immaculate conception. Truly there is a God and he looks after grotesque stupidly Americans.”

Jack Yocke’s embarrassment showed on his face. “Well, that was sorta…”

Gregor pointed at the prison. “In there, you shot your mouth.”

“Shot my mouth off.”

“Yes. Off. Shot mouth off. Can warden speak English?” Gregor shrugged grandly. “Was the office bugged by people who tape and listen?” He shrugged again. “Can the people who tape and listen speak English?” Another shrug. “Will the warden tell something he has been told not to tell to you, an American reporter to write in your glorious important foreign newspaper God knows what?” He lifted his hands and raised his eyebrows.

“Rub it in.”

“Okay.” He used his knuckles to rub Yocke’s head. “There. It’s rubbed in. You Americans!”

“So what happened to Yakov Dynkin?” Yocke asked as he tried to smooth his hair back into place with his fingers.

“We could spend the afternoon thinking possibilities. He is dead. Moved to another prison. Maybe sick. Maybe released. Maybe in Siberia. Maybe used to clean up mess at Chernobyl. Whatever, for us he is no more.”

“Then why did the warden say no Jews were here? Most liars don’t expand the tale beyond what is necessary.”

“Oh?”

“Why tell a whopper if a little lie will do? If Dynkin’s dead—”

“I don’t know.” Another shrug.

“Let’s try to find Dynkin’s wife. I have her address written down here someplace.”

Gregor turned the key and the engine caught after only three seconds of grinding.

The apartment building was one of dozens in a sprawling area outside the second Moscow loop. They all looked alike, five stories high, splotchy plaster, flat roofs, not a tree in sight. They found the one they wanted because it had a number painted on one corner.

Yocke looked it over and began to compose his story in his head. The adjectives, nouns and verbs came effortlessly as he looked at the appalling, dreary buildings and tried to imagine what it would be like to call one of these concrete cell blocks home.

But he kept his thoughts to himself. Gregor probably lived in an apartment house like this. Or wished he did.

When Gregor parked and killed the engine, Yocke laid a hand on his arm. “Let’s see if we can reach an understanding between us. I’m a foreigner, a stranger. I’m here because the American people are interested in Russia and my newspaper wants to print the stories. All I want to do is understand. If I can understand what is going on, I can write it. But I need to get the truth. I need to get it anyway I can.”

Gregor stared straight ahead. “In Russia there is no such thing as truth. There is only what you write, and it is good for someone and bad for someone else.”

That comment seemed to give Yocke no opening, so he attacked in another direction. “Are you for democracy?”

Gregor considered. “Maybe.”

Yocke frowned. Aloud he said, “For democracy to work, people have to know what is really happening. My job is to find out.”

Come on, Jack! You sound like a candidate for county sheriff. Even you don’t believe that treacle. You are employed by the owners of the newspaper to make them money, to write stories that sell newspapers. To keep the long green flowing they aren’t too picky about who they screw, an attitude they share with hundred-dollar, have-a-nice-day hookers. Now that is truth as red, white and blue as a Harley tattoo.

“This isn’t America,” Gregor explained patiently, damn him!

The reporter grasped his door handle and pulled. “It’s a hell of a lot closer than you think,” he muttered through clenched teeth.

Jake Grafton and Toad Tarkington sat in General Yakolev’s car in the alley behind KGB Headquarters while they waited for the driver to return the keys. Toad was in the front beside the driver’s seat. He stared at the cut-stone walls morosely. Herb Tenney was in the belly of the beast and that was a good place for him, he told himself. Unfortunately Herb would be out dancing in the sunbeams in about an hour.

Jake Grafton had properly rejected his spur-of-the-moment proposal to send Herb on to his next incarnation. The complexities of the proof problem troubled Toad not a whit: he knew Herb was guilty — but there undoubtedly were other people involved in Herb Tenney’s slimy little mess; there had to be. Maybe as few as three or four others, maybe the whole damned CIA, all sixteen thousand of them slopping through kimchi right up to their plastic photo ID badges. As usual Grafton was right. Why trade the devil you knew for heaven knows how many you didn’t?

And just what was Herb’s mess? If the CIA were merely squashing billionaires like stinkbugs, that could be forgiven as some kind of kinky weekend sport, sort of like tennis with live grenades. If they switched to American billionaires they could probably get a TV contract and sell tickets. No, if that were the game they wouldn’t be so twitchy.

So what was going on?

Keren was a newspaper mogul, wasn’t he? Perhaps his papers had uncovered something the CIA didn’t want uncovered. Now that made sense. Arms for Iran? Cocaine for guns? Maybe something to do with the last American election.

But all of this was pure speculation. He was trying to guess what the puzzle looked like after getting a fuzzy glimpse of one small piece.

Toad glanced over his shoulder at the admiral in the backseat. He too was looking at the grim secret police headquarters and the grotesquely ugly buildings across the street, but his face showed no emotion.

You’re never gonna be an admiral, Toad-man. Never! You don’t have the cool for it.

His mind turned from that happy subject to his serious contemplation of the murder of a fellow human being. He had been serious, he reminded himself guiltily. What if Grafton had said yes? Then it would have been his responsibility. No, Toad told himself, then it would have been the responsibility of both of you.

Are you that frightened of Herb, Toad asked himself.

Yes!

In spite of the mild temperature, Toad Tarkington shivered.

Toad almost went to sleep in the afternoon briefing, a technical seminar on how properly to dispose of nuclear warheads. The speakers were physicists and chemists and weapons designers, all of whom were in love with their subjects as far as Toad could tell.

When Herb Tenney slipped in and dropped into an empty seat, Toad came wide awake. Herb looked none the worse for his ordeal and sat listening as if he could actually understand this technical mumbo jumbo.

Toad tried to ignore Herb, which was difficult. He well knew that some people could sense when they were being watched, and he didn’t want Herb to get the idea that he and Grafton were responsible for his recent unpleasantness, at least not for a while.

Still, when the break in the presentation came and he saw Jake Grafton angling through the crowd for Herb, Toad managed to be within earshot.

“Herb, I thought you were going to be here this morning,” the admiral said.

“I’m sorry, sir. Something came up unexpectedly.”

“This is important,” Grafton replied.

“I’m aware of that.” Toad thought this reply had just a trace of disrespect in it, which would be typical of the Herb Tenney he had come to know and love.

“We’re supposed to be working together on this, Mr. Tenney,” Jake said, his voice so low Toad had to step closer to catch the words. “I don’t know what else you have going on here in Moscow and I don’t really care, but if you can’t give this assignment the attention required then I’m going to have to report you to Washington. I expect you to be at official functions clean and sober and on time.”

“It won’t happen again,” Tenney replied matter-of-factly, without a trace of rancor.

“Fine,” Jake said, and walked away.

That evening back at the embassy Toad Tarkington dug into his luggage. A couple years ago at a Virginia pawnshop he had purchased a Walther PPK, a slick little automatic in .380 ACP caliber. It had probably once belonged to a cop who had used it as a hideout gun because it had a spring-steel clip spot-welded onto the left side of the slide. The clip allowed the pistol to be slipped behind the waistband in the small of the back and hooked onto the top of the trousers. It rode there quite nicely, such a small package that it would usually escape notice, yet it could be drawn easily with the right hand.

He had brought along only enough shells to load the magazine once, so he did that now and slipped the magazine into the pistol. He cycled the slide to put a round in the chamber, then lowered the hammer. He tucked the pistol into the small of his back, checking carefully to make sure the clip engaged his waistband, then fluffed his shirt out over the protruding grip.

It wasn’t much of a gun. Still, it felt good to have it.

He had brought more gun along, a 9mm Browning Hi Power, but it was too bulky to tote around unobtrusively. Toad got out the Browning and cycled the slide and sat on the bed thinking about Herb Tenney and his little white pills.

He pointed the gun at the mirror above the dresser and squeezed the trigger. The hammer fell with a metallic thunk.

He lay back on the bed and closed his eyes. Now he remembered the little square of paper he had found in the pocket of the shirt he was wearing when he unfolded it this morning. He fished it from his wallet and held it up where he could read it.

Rita was fond of writing little love notes and putting them where he would find them at a moment when he least expected it. He wondered when she had written this one. Perhaps when she was ironing the shirts, the afternoon he was packing. Or days before.

Rita…

Funny, but when he was dating and playing the field he had never realized how much he could love a woman. Or how much a woman could love him.

Strange how life reveals its mysteries. Just when you think you have the game scoped out, that you know all the rules and all the intricacies, all it has to offer, a new rich vein of truth reveals itself.

Rita is what you have to lose, Toad Tarkington. Death is not the threat. That’s coming sooner or later any way you cut the cards. The richness of life with Rita and the extraordinary gift of what might be—that is what Herb Tenney and his little white pills can deprive you of.

He held the Browning up where he could see it. Without realizing it he had eared back the hammer.

He pulled the trigger and listened again to the thunk as the hammer slammed down.

The embassy residents were at dinner when Herb Tenney dusted his bathroom sink with fingerprint powder. Yes, there were fingerprints there, most of them smeared but a couple fairly nice. He used tape to lift the best ones and placed the tape on a white file card.

Back at his desk he compared the prints to those on the fax he had received an hour ago on the CIA’s private com equipment. One of them was a perfect match.

So Jake Grafton had personally searched the place. That dweeb Tarkington was probably with him when he did it. The fax also supplied him with a copy of Tarkington’s fingerprints, but developing more raw prints for comparison hardly seemed worth the effort. Herb Tenney sighed and stowed the bottle of powder and the brush and tape in the fingerprint kit.

That arrest this morning had been a farce. They had stopped his car a block from the embassy and handcuffed him. Then a Russian had driven him and his car to KGB Headquarters. There he was escorted to a cell and stripped and X-rayed.

He had spent three hours sitting stark naked in an isolation cell before they returned his clothes. Throughout the entire experience no one had asked him a single question. Not when they picked him up, during the ride to the prison, nor while they were holding him.

After he was dressed, a man in a blue suit led him through the corridors to an office. Sitting behind the desk pawing through the stuff that had been in his pockets was General Shmarov.

“Find anything interesting?”

Shmarov held up the white button that came off yesterday’s shirt and looked from it to the CIA officer. “Maybe the cleverest transmitter I have yet seen, Tenney.”

Then he grinned and tossed the button on top of the currency and passport lying there. “Sorry for the inconvenience today.”

“Was this supposed to be funny? Should I laugh now?”

Shmarov shrugged. “You know how these things are. I was asked to do a favor by a very high officer in the Defense Ministry. He wanted your passport checked. How could I refuse? He had been asked to do this by an American naval officer.”

“Rear Admiral Grafton? He was here?”

“Yes. Grafton. With an aide. Did he leave any of your seams intact?”

Tenney found a chair and dropped into it. “I think I caught a cold in your dungeon. I never realized how drafty these damned places are.”

“They searched your car and took the keys that were in your pocket. They brought them back a few minutes ago.” General Shmarov displayed the keys and placed them beside the button on top of the rubles and dollars. He lit a cigarette, took a deep drag, and filled the room with smoke. Then he said, “Want to tell me what this is about?”

“I’m as mystified as you are, General,” Herb Tenney told him.

Shmarov displayed his gold teeth in a grin and puffed some more on his cigarette.

“Who rubbed out Kolokoltsev?”

The golden grin disappeared. Shmarov stubbed out the cigarette and stared through the dissipating smoke at his visitor. “Someone who wanted to make a lot of trouble. They succeeded.”

“Hard to believe that something like that could happen here in Moscow, almost under your nose. Soviet Square is what, a half mile from here? A kilometer?”

“What do you know about it, Tenney?”

Herb Tenney got up and approached the desk. He picked up his things and placed them in his pockets. Then he put his knuckles on the desk and stared into Shmarov’s face. “I think it looks as if you people killed your own guys so you could set up Yeltsin. They’ll think that over at the Kremlin. They’ll think it in Washington too. Whoever pulled the cops out of that square really screwed the pooch.”

“We are not that stupid.”

“I’ll tell them that at Langley. But if I were you I’d find someone to hang it on, and damn quick.”

The ringing phone woke Jake Grafton. He had thrown himself on the bed and just dozed off.

“Grafton.”

“Admiral, this is Jack Yocke.”

“Hey.”

“I was wondering if you could come over for a drink.”

“Well, I don’t think—”

“See you within an hour, Admiral, in my room.” And Yocke hung up.

Jake cradled the receiver and swung his feet over onto the floor. He looked at his watch. Eleven at night. He was still fighting the jet lag and hangover and he felt lethargic, unable to concentrate. He put on his shoes and splashed some cold water from the sink onto his face.

Yocke’s room was on the fourth floor of the hotel. He opened the door at Toad’s knock. “Come in.”

When he had the door closed Yocke said, “General Land called a little while ago. You’re to wait here with me.”

“For what? Another phone call?”

Yocke shrugged. “I just take messages and deliver them.”

Jake sank into the one stuffed chair.

“How’s the foreign correspondent these days?” Toad asked Yocke as he dropped onto the bed.

“He’s right in the middle of the biggest story in Russia and he can’t make heads or tails of it,” Yocke replied, staring at Jake Grafton. “Can’t print it either.”

“I guess assassins can be tough to interview if you can’t find them.”

“That isn’t the story I meant. Anyway, my editor took me off that and gave it to the senior man. I’m doing political stuff. Y’know, ‘Today the Russian Ministry of Economics announced a new stabilization policy for the ruble.’ Drivel like that.” He sighed. “Other than that, the food here is barely edible and grotesquely expensive, the vodka tastes like rubbing alcohol, my bed is lumpy, the pillow’s too big, and I had a devil of a time yesterday getting a roll of toilet paper from the maid. Had to give her a U.S. dollar for it. I’ve got to find an apartment by next week and get out of this hotel or the bean counters at the Post are going to get testy. What’s new with you?”

Tarkington just made a noise and stretched out on the bed. In a moment he said, “This pillow is too big.”

“Would I lie to you?”

“I don’t think the bed’s lumpy though.”

Before Yocke could think of a reply, Jake Grafton asked, “How would you like to tag along with me and Toad for a while?”

The question startled Yocke. Toad opened his eyes, sat up and stared wide-eyed at Jake for a few seconds, then flopped back on the bed and groaned.

“Sort of like Washington a couple of years ago, eh?” Yocke said with a grin. “Same rules?”

“Well, not exactly.” Jake frowned. “I guess I don’t know precisely what the rules should be. So I’d want some sort of promise that you won’t print anything on any subject without my okay.”

“I assume that you’re working with the Russians. Do they know I’ll be there? A reporter?”

“I’ve talked to General Yakolev about it. I told him I could trust you.”

Toad groaned again. “Spreading it a little thick, aren’t you, sir? I’d trust Jack the Hack with parking meter money, but…”

“Yakolev? Isn’t he the chief of staff for the new Commonwealth Army?”

“That’s the guy. Nicolai Yakolev.”

“Soaks up vodka like a sponge,” Toad tossed in.

“I agree.” Yocke grinned broadly and offered Jake his hand. After the admiral shook it, he grabbed a steno pad and a pencil and plopped onto the edge of the bed, forcing Tarkington to scoot over. He flipped the pad open to a fresh page and said, “Shoot.”

“No notes. None.”

“I have to take notes. I got a good memory but it ain’t Memorex. Only way to ensure accuracy later on when I write the story.”

Grafton appeared unmoved, so Yocke steamed on. “We’re talking the Washington Post here, not the Alfalfa County Clarion.” Yocke added confidentially, “I’ll use my own private shorthand. No one can read it but me. Honest.”

“Not even if you write in Swahili.”

Tarkington chortled.

Yocke tossed the steno pad on top of the dresser. “No notes.”

“The other part of it is that the CIA may try to kill you.”

Yocke’s mouth fell open. He glanced at Toad, then back at Jake. “The CIA? Our guys? You’re kidding, right?”

“No.”

“I can’t write a story if I’m dead.”

“That thought may occur to them too.”

“Them? The whole CIA or a couple of bad apples or who?”

“I dunno.”

Yocke lost his temper. “Jesus Christ, Admiral! You don’t give a guy much. What say we do this the conventional, tried-and-true traditional way? You tell me whatever you want to tell me and I’ll write and publish it, just like a real working reporter. You’ll be an anonymous, reliable source, an unnamed high government official. I won’t reveal your name to another living soul, even if they throw me in jail. I’ll stay alive and out of your hair. Anytime you want to talk, just give a shout.”

“Be like having your own psychotherapist on the cheap, CAG,” Toad said unctuously, “but you could skip the messy details about your sex life unless you wanted our modern Dr. Freud to make you famous.”

Jake Grafton shook his head. “Won’t work that way,” he told Yocke. “You either come along for the ride on the chance that someday you may get to write a story or you stay at home. It’s up to you.”

“Just what do you get out of this arrangement?” Yocke demanded.

“I get an independent observer who has the power to reach the American public. I’m not sure what that will be worth because I don’t know how things will shake out. But…if Toad and I get killed and you somehow manage to live to tell the tale, it might make very interesting reading in some quarters. I don’t know. Too many ifs. I just don’t know.” He eyed Yocke. “At the very least you’re an unknown quantity added to the equation.” He shrugged.

A knock sounded on the door.

“Well?” Jake asked. “Yea or nay?”

“I’m in.”

Yocke went to answer the door. The man who came in was wearing a suit and overcoat and had a hard case that looked as if it contained a videocamera handcuffed to his wrist. The case displayed a diplomatic tag.

“Admiral Grafton?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Master Sergeant Emmett Thornton. I need to see your ID, sir.”

Jake took out his wallet and extracted his green military ID card. Thornton gave it a careful look, then handed it back. “Thank you, sir.” He extracted a piece of paper from his inside coat pocket and held it out. “Now if you will just sign for this equipment, it’s all yours.”

Jake scribbled his name. “How much is this going to cost me if I lose it, Sergeant?”

“About a hundred grand.”

Toad snapped his fingers. “We’ll put it on our Amoco card.”

Thornton glanced at Yocke.

“He’s okay,” Grafton told him.

Thornton laid the case on the bed and used a key to open it. They gathered around for a look as he began unpacking items. “What we have here is a TACSAT — tactical satellite — com unit with built-in encryption device. The signal goes right up to the bird, which re-broadcasts it to the Pentagon com center. Ni-cad batteries and a universal recharger. All you do is set the encryption code and use it like a two-way radio. General Land wanted me to remind you that the codes were generated by the National Security Agency.”

Jake examined the switches and buttons on the device. “We’ll need a brief and the codes.”

“Yessir. I’ll come to that. This other item is simpler. It’s a tape recorder with an encryption device attached. You merely record a message, anything you want up to thirty minutes. Then you punch up a six-digit code in this window here. Find a telephone, call the party you want, and when they are ready, you hit the play button. The garbled sound goes out at high speed. Takes about sixty seconds to play a thirty-minute message. If the other party has a message for you, you then put your machine on record and hold it up to the phone. Later on you can play the message and the machine will decode it into plain English. This thing works with telephones or TACSAT.”

The TACSAT came with a set of codes on water-soluble paper. Since it was possible the codes could fall into the wrong hands, “unauthorized personnel” was Thornton’s phrase, each authentic message should start with a code word that the admiral was to make up. Now. After a moment’s thought Jake wrote a word on a matchbook and showed it to the sergeant, who then burned the matchbook in the wastepaper basket.

“The code for the telephone encrypter is a little more difficult. If you other gentlemen would like to step out of the room for a minute?”

“No, Sergeant,” Jake told him. “Let’s you and I go for a walk.”

Out on the sidewalk in front of the hotel the evening breeze was picking up. The sergeant explained: “General Land suggested this code. Take the date, multiply it by the year in which you were born, then divide by the hour of the day in which you sent the message.” He produced a sheet of paper. “Try it. Today is the second of July here so write that as seven oh two. And use local time in the military format. It’s now twenty-three fifty, so use twenty-three hundred.”

Jake got a pen from his shirt pocket and did the math. “I get five nine three point six four seven — something.”

“You were born in 1945, right?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, Admiral. You would just punch that six-digit number into the encrypter and place the decimal in the proper place. Always start with a positive integer and carry out any fractions so that you have six digits. Add zeros to the right of the decimal as necessary.”

“Who has this code, besides you and me?”

“Just General Land.”

“We’ll always use Moscow time?”

“Moscow date and time.”

“Okay. Come upstairs and give Toad and me a complete brief on the gear and we’ll be all set. Did you just get in from Washington?”

“I came here straight from the airport, sir. They’re waiting to take me back.”

“Long flight.”

“I’m used to it. I sleep on the plane.”

Jake Grafton stared at the communications devices with a sinking feeling. After a moment he screwed up the courage to ask, “Just how secure is this techno-junk?”

The sergeant faced him squarely. “Admiral, this stuff is like a padlock on a garage. It’ll keep honest people honest. But with a good computer a competent cryptographer could break any message in a couple hours.”

All Jake Grafton could manage was a grunt.

“The good news,” the sergeant continued, “is that the ruskies don’t have many good computers. They do most of their crypto work by hand, so it’ll take them a couple weeks. Then one hopes the report will get routed here and there through the bureaucracy and a couple more weeks will pass before it lands on the desk of someone who may or may not decide to believe it.”

“A couple hours. With a good computer.”

“That’s about the size of it, sir.”

And the CIA has the best computers in the world. Jake Grafton took a deep breath and thanked the sergeant for his trouble. Being an army man, the sergeant saluted.