“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!