Jake nodded.
“I am not blind. Russia must join the world. This planet is too small to sustain an isolated society of three hundred million people. We have tried dictatorship and it failed; now we must try democracy. But I lay out the truth for your inspection: no matter who rules the Kremlin, I serve Russia.”
Russia the grand abstraction, Jake thought ruefully. Well, every nation is an abstraction if you stop to think about it. He irritably dismissed the thought and asked, “And the army? Whom does the army serve?” When the Russian was slow to answer, Jake sharpened the question: “Will the army obey your orders?”
General Nicolai Yakolev spit out the word, “Yes.”
That, Jake Grafton suspected, was the biggest and baldest lie so far. And mouthed like a pro. And yet… “These weapons distort everything,” he said.
“I know.”
“While they exist, you serve only them,” Jake said.
“Control all the nuclear weapons that exist, you said. I noted your choice of words, Admiral.”
“They must be destroyed,” Jake Grafton said, “before they destroy you. You asked for truth. There it is.”
The Russian leaned toward Jake. “You are a soldier, not a politician. I like that. I think we can do business. Come.”
He led Jake to a table under a huge oil painting that should have been in a museum. There was a large map on the table. The Russian general pointed and explained where the weapons were and what might be done with the plutonium after the warheads were disassembled. Through the tall windows Jake could see the soft summer sun sifting down, gently bathing everything in a surreal light.
An hour later the men were back at the general’s desk drinking strong, black tea in tall glasses with metal holders. At the general’s suggestion Jake had stirred in juice from a slice of lemon and a spoonful of something that looked like blackberry jam.
“Perhaps you could tell me a little about yourself, General,” Jake Grafton said, jerking his thumb at the dossier.
The Russian laughed. “All the time, effort, and expense that goes into compiling dossiers, and you know what yours tells me? That you are a professional officer. Nothing else. And that I knew before I opened it.
“But it is me you want to know about, even after reading my dossier in the Pentagon. Dossiers are the same the world over. I am old, seventy years. I fought in the Great War. I was young enough to enjoy killing Nazis. In Berlin I saw Hitler’s bunker, helped search it. I saw the patio where they burned his body, his and Eva Braun’s. I walked through the rubble. All Europe was rubble then, my friend. I tell you that.”
So Yakolev had once been a shooter, a warrior. Maybe down deep under the wrinkles and gray hair he still was. Most of the top men in the world’s military organizations weren’t: they were bureaucrats and cocktail party politicians.
The general shook his head. “I was very young then. And that is the only fact about me that would be of interest. The rest is obvious. I survived. I survived!”
Ahh, Jake mused, at what cost? How many men have you sold out, General, how many lies have you told, how much of your honor can possibly be left after you clawed and scratched and gouged your way to the top of this squirming snake pile of criminal psychopaths? The scars must be there…unless you have become one of them, a man without conscience, a man to whom the end justifies whatever it takes to get there. If so…
The general rumbled on. “But no stories. Old men tell too many stories, stories of a dead past that are of little interest to the young, who think their own problems unique.”
“And I am too young,” Jake Grafton said.
General Yakolev’s eyes searched his face. “Perhaps. Your youth…” He shook his head. “You Americans turn out your officers to fatten in the pasture so very early, just when they grow old enough to have a bit of wisdom, just when they are old enough to understand all the things that they are not, all the things that they can never be, will never be. Just when they are old enough.”
Jake sipped his tea. It wasn’t like American tea, weak and insipid. He liked it.
“What do you know of Russia?”
Jake drank the last of the tea and set the cup in its saucer. “The usual, which is not much…the bare essentials, twenty years of reading intelligence briefs, a few books.”
“Tolstoy?”
“A little. Chekov I liked. Andreyev’s The Seven Who Were Hanged was too Russian.” Oops! He should not have said that! “Solzhenitsyn…” What could he say about Solzhenitsyn’s descriptions of hell on earth? They had horrified Jake Grafton, painted communism as one of the foulest evils ever perpetrated by man upon man. “I have read him,” he finished lamely.
“Hmmm,” said Yakolev, his face a mask. “Dinner tomorrow night, yes? The military observers from Britain, Germany, France and Italy will also be here. You know them, yes?”
“No, sir. I’ve never met them.”
“I will send my car for you at the embassy. About eight.”
“May I bring my aide, sir?”
“If you like. We will take the time to learn to know each other better. I will be interested to learn where you draw the line between Russian and too Russian.”
Jake was led back through the long cold hallways with their dim lights and dark oil paintings that could barely be seen. Herb Tenney was standing near the door, waiting. Outside the summer sun of the Kremlin grounds made Jake squint. The contrast between inside and outside hit him hard. He held his hat on his head as he climbed into the car.
Culture shock, Jack Yocke decided. He felt depressed, alone, listless. He could count on one hand the number of people he had met who spoke English. The constant fumbling with the paperback Russian-English dictionary frustrated him. The heavy, fatty mystery meat and greasy vegetables were clogging his bowels. Culture shock, he told himself, hoping that sooner or later he would adjust.
How good it would be to be back in the Post newsroom, talking on the phone to someone who spoke American, understanding the nuances of what wasn’t said as readily as he captured the intent of what was. Oh, for a bacon and egg breakfast, with eggs from a lovely American chicken and crisp fried bacon from a handsome American pig! To go across the street to the Madison coffee shop for a hot pastrami on rye! And an American beer, a tall cold American beer in a frosty glass with foam spilling over the top.
He was gloomily contemplating the difference between American beer and the Russian horse piss product when the motorcade came around the corner into view. Three vehicles. Black. Limos.
He was stuck off to one side of the platform where the speakers were going to address the rally. Perhaps a thousand people, mostly men and babushkas, milled around the square and luxuriated in the sun, rolling up sleeves to brown their white arms, drinking juice from glass bottles. The few children were messily eating ice cream bars sold by a sidewalk vendor, who was doing a land office business today. Apparently the vendors, for the city sidewalks seemed crammed with them, were something new, fledgling capitalists trying the new way right here beside a Communist rally. The irony of it made Yocke smile.
The paper’s Russian stringer translator was sucking on a foul cigarette and chatting in Russian with his counterpart from the New York Times. The Times reporter was on the other side of these two and busy scribbling notes, no doubt literate political insights that would form the heart of an incisive think piece. Damn the Times!
Jack Yocke took off his sports coat and hung it over one arm. He wiped the perspiration from his forehead. And damn these Commies! Why can’t they hire a hall like politicians in more civilized climes?