“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.