But this wasn’t President Clinton’s call. The interpreter hung up his phone and Yeltsin fell into his chair as he listened intently on his own instrument. Occasionally his eyes swung to Grafton. This went on for several minutes with Yeltsin grunting occasionally. Finally he replaced the telephone on its hook and swiveled his chair to face Grafton. He wiggled his finger at the interpreter and spoke.
The intrepreter said, “A news story has appeared in the Washington Post. You are quoted. Did you release a story to the newspaper?”
Jake nodded. “I did.”
Yeltsin listened to the answer and swiveled his chair nervously. He toyed with a pencil, then stared at it, finally replaced it. He said something to the interpreter.
“The president wishes to know why you released the story.”
“As we discussed last night, it is of critical importance that those weapons be recovered or rendered harmless. We cannot go after those weapons without a public explanation of our actions. So the truth must be told. The truth is that a small group of individuals here in Russia sold weapons to get money to overthrow the elected government. They murdered hundreds of thousands of people to cover up their crime. This is the story. The sooner the world knows it, the better — for Russia, for the United States, for the people of the Middle East.”
“You released this story?”
“Yes.” Of course he had discussed it with General Hayden Land, but both men had agreed it would be best if Jake took the responsibility. If the story came from Jake it was deniable in Washington, and that might well be the first reaction of panicky politicians with a genetic aversion to telling the public about disasters. In the ordinary course of things weeks might pass before they screwed up the courage to talk publicly about this one. Yet Hayden Land and Jake Grafton knew they didn’t have weeks to clean up this mess: at best, they had hours.
“What is going on, Admiral?” In Washington, Yeltsin meant.
“Sir, we discussed this matter last night. Nothing has changed. U.S. Air Force planes are flying in from Germany to take me and the other foreign military observers to Arabia. From there we will go to Iraq to recover the weapons. You agreed that Marshal Mikhailov and General Yakolev would accompany our group on behalf of the Russian Republic.”
“I don’t want them talking to reporters.”
“I understand. I promise that they won’t.”
“I should have been consulted before you talked to the press.”
Jake acknowledged this. He apologized, though not very convincingly.
Yeltsin didn’t look too put out — the story Yocke wrote couldn’t have been more favorable to him even if he had written it himself. Complete innocence was a rare commodity, one to be savored. Being the unwounded target of a cutthroat power play that misfired was even nicer.
“I have a suggestion,” Jake added. “In an hour or so you, Mr. President, are going to be besieged by reporters wanting your comments. The reporter who wrote this morning’s story for the Washington Post, Jack Yocke, is downstairs. Why not get him up here, give him an interview, and get your side of this on record before the spin doctors in Washington and Baghdad get into the act? Mr. Yocke is knowledgeable about this matter and sympathetic to your government.”
The mention of Baghdad did the trick. Saddam Hussein would be on camera as soon as he heard about the Post story. Hussein had just two options, as far as Jake could see: deny he had nuclear weapons or admit it and claim that the government of Russia sold them to him. That government, of course, was Boris Yeltsin. Which option Hussein picked would depend, Jake suspected, on the amount of time he still needed to get the nuclear weapons operational. The nearer he was to being ready to push the button the more likely he was to admit that he had them. But this was speculation, and just now Jake was trying to cover all the possibilities.
In minutes Jack Yocke was being ushered into the president’s office. He glanced at Rear Admiral Jake Grafton seated at an oblique angle from Yeltsin’s desk, then turned his attention to the Russian president.
Yocke knew exactly what his editor, Mike Gatler, wanted — a gold-plated confirmation of the first story — and he went after it without making any detours. Point by point he led Yeltsin through the story and scribbled his answers on a small steno pad.
Yes, it was true that Shmarov had used the KGB to collect money from Saddam Hussein. He sold things that belonged to the nation that he had no right to sell. That was a crime. Such a thing would be a crime in any nation on earth.
Yes, Shmarov allowed the removal of planeloads of weapons from the base at Petrovsk the day before the Serdobsk reactor was destroyed. Yes, Shmarov ordered Colonel Gagarin of the KGB to destroy the Serdobsk fast breeder reactor. And yes, Gagarin committed the crime. Yeltsin was not yet prepared to say what Shmarov did with the money he collected for the weapons — the government was investigating. The new fact to lead off this story — Yeltsin had ordered Marshal Mikhailov, commander of the Russian armed forces, and General Yakolev, commander of the Russian army, to accompany Rear Admiral Jake Grafton and a group of officers from Germany, Britain, France and Italy on a trip to Iraq to recover the stolen weapons.
“Stolen?” Yocke asked, looking up at Yeltsin.
“Stolen,” the interpreter repeated after a burst from Yeltsin. “The government of Russia has never sold and will never sell or give away nuclear weapons. We have given our solemn promise on that point to numerous governments throughout the world. We have signed treaties.”
Jack Yocke then asked the next logical question: what would Russia do to get the stolen weapons back if Saddam Hussein wasn’t gentleman enough to return them? The answer: “We are cooperating with the United States and the governments of other nations to secure the return of the stolen weapons.”
That should have been the end of it, but Yocke was Yocke and couldn’t resist asking one more. After a glance at Grafton, whose face showed no emotion whatever, he said, “General Shmarov allegedly died of a heart attack the night before last. Was it a heart attack?”
“I don’t know,” Boris Yeltsin said. “An autopsy is being performed.”
Yocke opened his mouth, glanced again at Grafton, then thanked President Yeltsin for the interview. He was ushered from the room. Jake Grafton remained seated.
Out in the waiting area Yocke grabbed his computer from the chair where he had placed it and opened it on his lap. In seconds he was tapping away while the U.S. marine captain, McElroy, watched over his shoulder.
When Yocke finished and looked up, McElroy and the four enlisted marines with him were no longer in the room. But there was a secretary behind the desk and she had a telephone in front of her. “May I make a collect telephone call?” he asked.
She merely grinned nervously at him.
“Use the phone?” He reached for it and raised his eyebrows.
She nodded. Yocke snagged the instrument and when he heard a voice addressing him in Russian, asked for the international operator.
The C-141 was somewhere over the Black Sea when Jack Yocke tired of looking out the window at the four F-15 escorts, their KC-135 tanker and the electronic warfare E-3 Sentry that formed this aerial armada. Jake Grafton obviously intended to make it to Arabia regardless of who had other ideas.
As they were boarding the airplane in Moscow, Yocke had asked, “You don’t really expect the Russian air force to try to shoot us down, do you?”