“Brown was about to cause serious problems.”
“What kind of problems?”
“He sent a written report of the bugs to Schenler. Demanded an investigation. There was no other way to cork him.”
Jake changed direction. “General Shmarov — why’d you kill him?”
“I am not—”
“Sit on him, Toad.”
Tarkington stiff-armed Tenney on the shoulder and he toppled. “No,” he sobbed. “For Christ’s sake, no!”
“Answer the question.”
“Shmarov set up the weapons sale to Iraq. He arranged everything, the transfer of the money, the reactor explosion — everything. He was in the junta but he was hedging his bets, showing the American delegation KGB files, files that they shouldn’t see, just in case Yeltsin came out on top after all.”
“Didn’t he bribe the deputies?”
“Yeah, but you know how it is. Those kind of swine won’t stay bought.”
“What kind of files?”
“You’re so fucking smart, you tell me.”
Jake opened his mouth to say Toad’s name, but he refrained. Another episode with the pills and Tenney might indeed die, even if one-half the binary cocktail were aspirin. Perhaps he already had the missing chemical in his system.
“Okay,” Jake said slowly. “The CIA and the KGB have cooperated on numerous matters in the past. Those were the files Shmarov was going to hand to the senator and the people with him. Those files would inevitably lead the Americans to Harvey Schenler and his cronies, people like you, people who have been running their own foreign policy within the CIA. So Shmarov had to die. And all along I thought you were just trying to poison me. Ha! You were sent here to make sure Shmarov didn’t spill the beans either. How many people in Moscow were on your shit list, Tenney?”
“Kiss my—”
“Richard Harper.”
“Who?”
Jake Grafton bent down and began picking up the tablets from amid the vomit on the floor. Several of them were soft but intact.
“Don’t fuck with me, Tenney. I’m out of time and patience.”
“We caught Harper in some of the computer files and tracked him down,” Herb Tenney said, his voice rising slightly. “He wasn’t a very good hacker, nowhere near as good as he thought he was.”
“He found the money trail, didn’t he?”
“What money trail?”
“The money trail, you simple shit.” Jake Grafton unzipped a large chest pocket on his flying suit and extracted an envelope. He removed the contents. “Here is a letter to me written by Richard Harper. Look at it. It’s in Harper’s handwriting. Look at it!”
Tenney looked.
“Harper sent it to my wife,” Jake continued, his voice like broken glass. “She took it to Hayden Land and he sent it here by diplomatic pouch. You got to Richard Harper too late!”
“I don’t know what you are talking about.”
“I’m talking about Saddam Hussein’s three billion dollars. I’m talking about the Mideast Palm Oil Import Corporation, a CIA front. I’m talking about J. W. Wise Organic Commodities, Inc., another CIA front. I’m talking about seven more corporations controlled by the CIA that shuffled Saddam Hussein’s money back and forth all over the world until it ended up in Moscow — in the hands of General Shmarov and his allies in the military and in the legislature. Money for nuclear weapons. Money to buy friends. Money to overthrow Yeltsin. Blood money! Tell me about that money!”
“I don’t—”
“If you tell me you don’t know just one more time we’re gonna do the pills. This time the tape stays on.”
Tenney shook his head and sweat flew. “I didn’t know he wrote a letter.”
“I guess not. If you had, my wife would be dead now, huh?”
“Listen, Admiral. We—”
“So now Saddam Hussein has nuclear weapons? Is that right?”
“We helped possible friends in high places in crucial nations with money! Okay? We’ve done it before. We’ll do it again. Jesus, where do you think you are? Oz? Never-never land? We—”
“Answer my question!” Jake roared. “Saddam Hussein has nuclear weapons?”
“Israel has them. Russia is in meltdown. We need a stable government in Russia or the world is facing a new dark age. Hussein wants to be a regional power. A couple dozen nuclear weapons — shit! We have tens of thousands. He knows that. So he can be a big frog in a little pond and we can make damn sure he doesn’t get out of line.”
“You think you can control him? What about the Gulf War?”
“Let’s call a spade a spade, Admiral. We can control him or kill him. America needs a stable government in Russia. That’s priority number one. With Russia on its feet and in our corner, the two of us can keep Saddam on a short leash or knot the noose.”
“So you let Shmarov and Yakolev murder a half-million Russians. No, let me rephrase that—you helped them murder a half-million Russians!”
“We didn’t—”
“Harper found that the money went through CIA dummy corporations, didn’t he? That’s why you killed him.”
“You make it sound as if we’re the bad guys. We aren’t. We’re trying to keep the peace in an unstable world. Surely you can see that? We had no choice. Yeltsin is failing: he’s doomed. He can’t possibly succeed, not a chance in a million. Either we have an in with his successors or we get the door slammed in our faces. That’s the only goddamn choice we have.”
“How long have you and Schenler been running your own foreign policy?”
“Huh?”
Jake’s voice was almost a whisper. “How long has the CIA been running its own foreign policy? That’s a simple question.”
Tenney looked bewildered, as if he didn’t understand what was being asked. And then the truth dawned on Jake. Presidential administrations came and went but the professional spies soldiered on regardless. The CIA had been doing what the CIA leaders believed necessary for as long as there had been a CIA, almost fifty years. It still was.
“All you people, you bottle-sucking lollipop amateurs—fucking around in national security matters,” Herb raved, becoming more and more infuriated. “You’re all gonna die! This ain’t a fucking football game. This is real, for keeps. America is at stake here.”
He’s coming apart, Jake Grafton decided. He’s been through too much.
Jake averted his eyes as Tenney ranted on: “Those ten-cent codes you use on the scramblers — they’ve been reading the messages thirty minutes later. They even fax me hard copies. They know what the fuck you traitors are up to. They know!”
Jake and Toad taped Herb Tenney’s mouth and put him in the bedroom. When the door was closed, Toad asked, “So he wasn’t trying to poison us?”
“Sure he was,” Jake muttered. He put the tablets into the bottle and dropped it into his shirt pocket.
“What are those tablets, some kind of suicide pills?” Spiro Dalworth asked.
“Binary poison,” Toad told him. “It’s medicine for people you don’t want to see anymore.”
Jack Yocke sat over in the corner with his chin resting on one hand. He glanced at Jake Grafton, who was staring at the floor, then leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes.
Toad reached under the couch for the cassette recorder and pushed the rewind button. When the rewind was complete, he placed the recorder on the table and pushed the play button. He thumbed up the volume. Several minutes went by as they listened to feet shuffling, someone coughing, then finally Jake Grafton’s voice: “General Shmarov died last night. Tell us about that.”