The Red Horseman (23 page)

Grafton eyed Yocke, who had raised his
eyes and was watching the marine on the crates.

“I don’t know,” Grafton said, then listened
some more.

Grafton was in civilian clothes-Yocke
noticed that the trousers were none too clean. Neither was
the shirt. Then he realized the clothes were
Russian, not American. So were the shoes.

“I wonder if you could order some photos for me.
I want satellite photos of the Russian
base at Petrovsk.” He listened a
moment, then spelled the name of the base.

“That’s right. It’s in the footprint of the
Serdobsk fallout.

Should be too hot for humans. I want a shot
at least a month old, one maybe last week and
one now. And some of that Serdobsk nuke plant.”

The admiral listened a moment, then went on.
“Well, I would like about six antiradiation suits
… No, better make that ten suits, with
oxygen-breathing apparatus. Fly them in on a
C-141. We’ll get out to the airport somehow
…

Ten … Yessir . . . Self-contained
breathing apparatus, the whole shooting match.
Geiger counters, film badges, everything . . .

Yessir, I’d like to get down to Serdobsk if
I can.

“Well, I don’t think Yakolev is going
to lift a finger. He’s busy trying to take over the
government … Not a soul, sir. No, I don’t
think he’ll do anything to obstruct us, but the worse
this gets the worse Yeltsin and the democrats look
… I know, that occurred to me too. That’s one
reason I want to get to Serdobsk.”

Grafton fell silent for a moment and
eyed Yocke. It wasn’t a pleasant look.
“We’ll steal one,” he told General Land.
“Send me a couple pilots that can fly anything, and
I mean anything. And just to be on the safe side,
could you send a marine recon team with all their gear and
hot suits?”

They talked about that for a moment, then Jake said,
“And one more thing, sir. I’ve had a man named
Richard Harper trying to find the money trail
to whoever it is here in Russia that is selling
weapons. He called last night and said he has
it. I asked him to write a report.

He’s supposed to mail it to my wife, but I
wonder if you could send someone from your office over
to his house in Chevy Chase to pick it up?

Make a copy for yourself and send me a copy.”

Jake gave him Harper’s address.

“Thank you, sir,” he said finally and hung up the
receiver. He punched buttons and the lights on the
gadget went out.

“Needless to say, you don’t want me to print a
word of that,” Yocke said conversationally.

“Needless to say.”

“What are you going to steal?”

“A helicopter.”

“Can I go too?”

“I’ll think about it.”

Yocke nodded. Grafton packed the com gear
into a soft carrying bag. He was zipping it closed
when Yocke asked, “Think Yeltsin will resign?”

“Maybe.”

“Well, by God, after-“

“He may not have a choice,” Grafton said.
“In case you haven’t noticed, Russia is a
Third World shithole. The rule in Third World
shitholes is that the head of government serves at the
pleasure of the guys with the guns.”

Jack Yocke wasn’t paying much attention. His
mind was in high gear ruminating on Nikolai
Demodov and the KGB general, Shmarov, who it
turned out wanted to be one of the magnificent seven.
And Demodov denied he had been involved in the
Soviet Square rubout … Shit! Those
assholes must have been biding their time, waiting for just
the proper moment to dump Yeltsin. They just didn’t
want that xenophobic neo-nazi Kolokoltsev
around to embarrass them when the puck went down. But
how could he tie those Commies to Kolokoltsev’s
killing?

Grafton stood and arranged the strap
of the com gear bag over his shoulder. He looked up
at the Marine. “Did you hear anything, Corporal
Williams?”

“Not a word, sir.”

Grafton took a couple steps, then paused and
looked back at Yocke.

“Well, you coming or are you going to sit there in the
dirt contemplating your navel?”

The reporter got up and dusted his trousers. “You
oughta see my navel.

Got a ruby in it. Arab belly dancer gave
it to me when I was sixteen.

She was my first piece of ass.”

Yocke’s attempt at humor fell flat with
Jake Grafton. He too had seen the girl
shot and her corpse burned. And he was trying
to understand what must have moved her to pick up a bottle
filled with gasoline with a burning rag stuck in the
mouth and run across that street at the American
embassy.

Betrayal? The Russian people had been betrayed
by the Communists, all right, who had promised much and
delivered little.

But the American embassy?

Perhaps she felt a profound anger at a
system that for fifty years had paid any price
to acquire technology, yet in the end the
technology betrayed them all. The Americans were
the gurus of high-tech, the master alchemists.

Musing thus, Jake was still unsure. A great
disgust at technology and technicians was
motivating much of the political unrest worldwide,
he thought, but still … Serdobsk was a Russian
reactor. Perhaps mixed with those emotions was the
age-old Russian suspicion of all things
foreign. The Russians weren’t as bad as the
Chinese in that regard, but they did fear the outside
world, some sort of a national inferiority complex that they
soaked up with their mother’s milk.

He would liked to have asked that young woman, but that
chance was gone forever. She was a heap of charcoal and
bone now, out there on a spot of melted, charred
asphalt.

Jake Grafton wondered if the dead woman
had had any relatives at Serdobsk or out there
in that radioactive footprint.

He was opening the door to the apartment building when
Jack Yocke asked, “Did General Land say
what America’s response to the meltdown was going
to be?”

Now Jake saw it. He let go of the door
handle and turned to face Yocke.

He could almost hear her voice. You are
America. You are not stupid and venal and corrupt,
yet you did nothing to help us. You let the stupid,
venal, corrupt men tell their lies and build their
poisonous monuments to our ignorance and so destroy
us, the helpless.

You, America.

Jack Yocke repeated his question.

“No,” Jake Grafton muttered, shaking his
head. “He didn’t.” And he turned back for the
door handle.

Upstairs in the apartment, which of necessity was also
Jake’s office, Yocke had more questions. “Just how
much nuclear material was in that reactor,
anyway?”

“About four and a half tons.”

con”Tons?”

“Yeah. Maybe three or so tons of uranium
and a ton and a half of plutonium.”

“Gee, that sounds like a lot. I guess I always
thought those things used just a couple of hatfuls.”

“This was a fast breeder. A typical
water-cooled reactor would have maybe
three times that amount.”

“So this time they got off lucky?”

Jake Grafton snorted. “Not hardly. The
goddamn stuff blew up, went nuclear.
Probably half the core went into the atmosphere.
We don’t know enough yet to even make an
intelligent estimate. And a breeder like that-it
figures they had three or four tons of
plutonium in the pipeline, just lying around. Some of
that probably got swept up into the atmosphere and
scattered all over too. No, these Russians just
had no luck at all.”

After a bit Yocke asked, “So how bad is
it?”

“Bad?” Grafton looked perplexed.

“Compared to Chernobyl.”

Grafton shrugged. “A hundred times worse?
Two hundred times? ‘Bad” is a ridiculous
understatement. The stuff that went into the air is really
filthy . . .” He groped for words, then gave
up. “Really filthy,” he repeated. “Ser dobsk
is way the hell and gone away from everything, so no
cities were poisoned immediately, but by the time all that
fallout hits the rivers and streams and lakes . .
.” He shrugged. “I wouldn’t be
surprised if this incident ultimately kills a
million people.”

Jack Yocke just stared.

“Another million,” Jake Grafton roared
savagely. “God in heaven, when will it ever stop?”

Yocke got out his laptop and pecked aimlessly
until Jake suggested he do that in the bedroom, so
he went in and closed the door. The muffled crack
of a rifle penetrated the room and Jake
half-rose off the couch before he thought better of it.

He needed time to think. One of the most trying things
about a military career, he thought, was that so many
decisions had to be made immediately with the best information
available, which used to be precious little and fragmentary
at best. Then came computers and the highly touted
information age; the trickle of information became a
raging torrent of facts and numbers endlessly pouring
from laser printers that no one had time to look at.
Who could drink from a fire hose?

Jake Grafton knew that if he merely
picked up a telephone and asked, he could have more
information in an hour than he could read in a year.

Better to go with what he had. He leaned his head
back onto the couch, closed his eyes and tried
to assess his meager collection of facts and
impressions.

The most important fact … impression
maybe … was one he wasn’t sure he had right.
Most people automatically assume that people everywhere are
all alike–they think like we do!” Jake knew
better. But he thought he could see the viewpoint of the
professional soldiers like Yakolev who saw their
place in Russian society slipping out from under
them. Without the American enemy to stimulate the
allocation of damn scarce resources and keep the
ranks filled and people motivated, the military was
crumbling.

They had tried to fashion a new mission
to protect ethnic Russian minorities wherever
they might be and had been outmaneuvered by Yeltsin and
his allies. The nukes were being taken away while the
Americans and Europeans kept their conventional
forces, there was no money, not even to feed the troops,
the industrial establishment necessary to support a
modern military was disintegrating, all at a time
when the values the leaders had devoted their lives
to were belittled or rendered politically meaningless. The
Soviet Union was gone. Mother Russia was
collapsing from within, there were no more secrets to guard,
there was no place for men of integrity and
honor. So the generals were going to save Russia in
spite of politicians.

How far would these men go?

How far had they already gone?

Yakolev: “I serve Russia!” A uniform
for a patriot or a bloody rag to hide a
tyrant’s nakedness?

Someone was shaking him. He opened his eyes with a
start. It was Tarkington, holding a finger to his
lips for silence. He seized Jake’s arm and
nodded toward the hall door, which was partially open. His
lips moved, a silent word: “Come.”

When they were in the hallway Toad eased the door
shut behind them until it clicked, then led Jake
down the hall.

He passed Jake his pistol, which was sheathed in its
shoulder holster.

The gun had been under the pillow in Jake’s
bedroom, and Toad had retrieved it before he woke
the boss.

“Yocke has an outside call,” he
whispered. “The senior chief stalled and told her
he’s trying to find him. When we get back to the
switchboard he’ll ring the phone. Yocke’s in
there, isn’t he?”

“Uh-huh.” Jake glanced at his watch. Almost
two in the morning.

Toad broke into a trot.

“Is it her?” Jake wanted to know.

“I didn’t hear her voice. But I got this
feeling.” After all, Toad thought, how many women
could there be in Moscow who want to talk to Jack
Yocke?

When the two officers came through the door,
Senior Chief Dan Holley flipped a switch
on the switchboard.

“Still there, ma’am?” he asked. Then he said,
“He’s staying with some folks. I’ll ring now.”
Then he toggled the switch again and handed the headset
to Jake Grafton.

“The mike won’t work, but you’ll hear everything.”

Jake donned the headset and listened to the ringing.
The telephone in the apartment was in the small living
room and Yocke was probably asleep, so this was
probably going to take a moment.

The phone rang and rang.

Oh, damn. Two nights ago when Yocke
arrived at the embassy, he had told him not
to answer the phone. What if he doesn’t?

Toad and the senior chief were watching. More
ringing.

C’m on, Jack. You’re supposed to be a
curious reporter!

“It’s ringing,” Jake told his audience. And then
the door opened and Spiro Dalworth slipped into the
room. Jake had had Spiro, Toad and the senior
chief alternating shifts on this switchboard since
Captain Collins gave his approval.

The regular operator supervised and gave them
directions, but the navy men listened to the voice of every
caller and waited for someone to ask for Jack
Yocke.

Now it had happened.

Ten rings. Eleven. Dammit, Jack!
Answer the phone!

“Hello.” Yocke was still half asleep.

“Jack?” A woman’s voice. An
American woman. Was it her?

“I think so.” He sounded almost petulant.

“This is Shirley Ross. I’m glad I
reached you. I tried half the hotels in town and was
about to give up when I thought of the embassy.”
comHmm.

What time is it?”

“It’s late I know, but I just had
to talk to you.”

“Glad you called.” Yocke’s voice was
crisp and alert.

He was wide awake now. “How are you weathering the
riot?”

“I heard about your story,” she gushed. “I’m so
thrilled!

It’s so important that people know the truth.” She was
laying it on too thick, Jake Grafton thought,
and he bit his lip. “I never thought you would get it,”
she finished.

“Luck.”

“And … I don’t know just how to say this, but …
I didn’t think you had the courage to write it.”