Out in the car Toad asked, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking about that Yegor Somebody killing?”
“Not the Russians’ style, you told Yocke. You can’t hand Yocke a bone like that with meat on it, Toad — he’s too smart.”
“Yeah. I’m sorry.”
“The whole thing looks like a classic in-your-face Mossad hit. Like Paris, Rome, Frankfurt, and a dozen others you could name. The KGB makes you disappear, the Mossad makes you a wire-service example.”
“Maybe the Russians are changing tactics.”
“Maybe.”
“Then again…”
For a while Grafton rode silently, looking out the window. Then he said, “Say the Mossad decided to wipe a struggling young Hitler protégé and dropped a hint to someone in the Yeltsin government. Maybe some of Yeltsin’s lieutenants thought the idea up. Whatever. Someone thought that Kolokoltsev’s departure to Communist heaven wouldn’t be an unmitigated disaster and called the cops off. That much is obvious, yet there’s no way in the world to prove a damn thing on anybody. None of these clowns are ever going to breathe a word. Yocke is wasting his time asking embarrassing questions through an interpreter who is trying to keep from wetting his pants. All he’ll do is irritate people who don’t like to be irritated.”
Tarkington grunted. He was thinking about General Brown, smacked like a fly. “Are you just speculating about the Mossad, Admiral, or was that a power think?”
Jake Grafton growled irritably. “I don’t know a damn thing.”
“I don’t like any of this.”
“Write a letter home to mama,” Jake told him.
At least Judith Farrell is somewhere in Maryland, Toad told himself. She’s mowing grass and watching baseball games on television and going to the theater on Friday nights. But even as he trotted that idea out for inspection he threw it back — he didn’t believe it. He had seen her in action once, eliminating a terrorist in a Naples hotel. That memory came flooding back and he felt slightly ill.
“The Russians have their own rules,” Jake Grafton said. “The language is different, the heritage is different, the mores are different, they don’t think like we do. It’s hard to believe this is the same planet we live on.”
Jake Grafton had listened for over twenty years to stories about all-male Russian dinners and vodka celebrations. They were always thirdhand or fourthhand, and the parties described sounded rather like something one might find in a college fraternity house on a Saturday night after the big football game.
And that, he thought ruefully, would be a good way to describe the festive atmosphere of which he was a reluctant part.
The problem was quite simple — he hadn’t had this much to drink in years. He was sweating profusely and feeling slightly dizzy.
Across the table from him Nicolai Yakolev was telling another Russian joke, one about a high party official and a simple country girl. He had to tell it loud to be heard over the noise of the piano.
Jake had told a few of these jokes himself earlier in the evening, before the level of the fluid in the vodka bottle had gone down very far. He had never been very good with jokes — couldn’t remember them long enough to find someone to tell them to — but he did recall several of those crude riddles that had been popular years ago, the so-called Polish jokes. So he transformed the bumblers into Communists and delighted the general and his guests with questions such as, How many Communists does it take to screw in a light bulb? Twelve — one to stand on the chair and hold the bulb, eleven to turn the chair.
Before dinner he had had a chance to meet the allied officers one on one.
Lieutenant Colonel West of the Queen’s Own Highlanders was a deeply tanned trim man, about five feet six inches, with dark hair longer than U.S. military regulations allowed. He seemed quite relaxed with the Russians and Jake heard him murmur a few phrases in the language.
“Delighted to see you, Admiral,” West said when they shook hands. “Met you one time in Singapore years ago. No reason you should remember. Think you were a commander then.”
Jake seemed to think he did recall the man. “A party with the Aussies?”
“Righto. About ten years ago. Jolly good show, that.”
Now he remembered. Jocko West, a specialist on guerrilla warfare, terrorism and jungle survival. “You seem to have picked up a little of the local lingo, Colonel.”
West leaned closer and lowered his voice. “Afghanistan, sir. A bit irregular, I dare say. Sort of a busman’s holiday. These lads were the oppo.” He sighed. “Well, the world turns, eh?”
The Frenchman was Colonel Reynaud, impeccably uniformed. He spent dinner chatting with two Russian officers in French. Prior to dinner, when he and Jake were introduced, he used English, which he spoke with a delicious accent. “A pleas-aire, Admiral Grafton.”
“How did you manage to wrangle a trip to Moscow in the summertime, Colonel?”
“I am a student of Napoleon, sir, you comprehend? Think, had Napoleon arrived in the summer, perhaps history would have been so different, without these Communists. I came to see where it went wrong for him, for France. So I will do a little of work, a little of the seeing of the sights.”
“The people at my embassy told me you are an expert on nuclear weapons.”
Reynaud smiled. “Alas, that is true. I study the big boom. In a way it is unmilitary, n’est-ce pas? The nuclear weapons will make la guerre so short, it will not be la guerre. They leave us without honor. It is not pretty.”
Jake managed to shake hands with Colonel Rheinhart, the German, and Colonel Galvano, the Italian, but he didn’t get to visit with them until after dinner. They both impressed him as extremely competent officers of great ability. Rheinhart was the smaller of the two, a man whom the American embassy said had a doctorate in physics from the University of Heidelberg.
“Herr Colonel, or should I address you as Herr Doctor?”
The German laughed easily. One got the impression that Rheinhart would be a valuable officer in anyone’s army.
Galvano was not as easy to read, perhaps because Jake had difficulty understanding his English. Still, he looked fit and highly intelligent, as all four of the colonels did. Their nations had sent the best they had, Jake concluded, and that best was very good indeed.
As he surveyed these officers at dinner he had wondered about his own selection. He was certainly not a weapons expert or diplomat. Could he get the job done? Looking at the foreign officers, he had his doubts. Then his eyes came to rest on Herb Tenney and the doubts evaporated. He had met a few slick bastards in his career and he thought he knew how to handle them, or at least get them sidetracked where they wouldn’t do anyone any harm. He reached for his glass and had it almost to his lips when he remembered General Albert Sidney Brown. His hand shook slightly. He lowered the glass to the table without spilling any of the liquid.
Two hours after dinner General Yakolev still seemed fairly sober considering how much he had had to drink — at least two for every one of Jake’s. He was sweating and having some trouble forming his English words, yet he looked pretty steady nonetheless.
A miracle.
Right now Jake Grafton felt like he was going to be sick. He excused himself and made for the rest room, where he found Toad Tarkington.
“What in hell do they put in that Russian moonshine anyway?” Toad demanded. “It tastes like Tabasco sauce.”
Jake upchucked into a commode, then used his handkerchief to swab his face with cold water. His hands were shaking. Fear or vodka?
“You okay?” he asked Toad.
“About three sheets to the wind, CAG. I’m ready to blow this pop stand anytime you say.”