He shifted his weight in his chair. Mikhailov said something, to which Yakolev gave a short reply. Then he turned his attention back to Jake. “You Americans, with your television eyes. You look at Yeltsin and expect him to create miracles with his mouth! Those political swine — hot air is all they are good for.”
Yakolev leaned forward and reached for another cigarette. “That is why.”
In the silence that followed, the sounds of a helicopter going overhead penetrated the room, followed by distant explosions.
“Do you have any regrets?” Jake Grafton asked when it became obvious Yakolev felt his explanation was sufficient.
“Regrets?” Yakolev said the word bitterly. “Oh, yes!” His head bobbed. “I wish the God the Communists swore did not exist had given this stupid sack of shit sitting beside me some balls. If he had had some balls we would have shot Yeltsin. We would have thrown the selfish swine out of the Congress of People’s Deputies. We would have gone through the ministries and shot every corrupt bastard that we could lay hands on. We would have hunted down the thugs terrorizing the countryside and slaughtered them like rabbits. Then we would have made the farmers grow food and the trains run and people would have had food to eat. Regrets? To watch your country die while the politicians argue and the cowards wring their hands? Yes, Admiral, I have regrets.”
“Why didn’t you shoot him first?”
“That is what I should have done.” Yakolev leaned back in his chair and rubbed his face. “Ahh, I am old and tired. I have lived too long. I have seen too much. I am ready to die.”
“The world is going to hell, so you played God.”
“You Americans have a phrase that seems a perfect reply to sanctimonious comments like that: fuck you.”
“You won’t get off that easy,” Jake Grafton said. His voice had an edge to it. “Russia is in the mess it’s in because of people like you, because czars and dictators and administrators used pens to authorize murder. ‘It had to be done.’ ‘I had to do it.’ ‘I am responsible and I know the way things have to be, so they have to die!’
“You Commie messiahs think your people are pigs. For them you have the profoundest contempt. They are too ignorant, too stupid, too blind to see what’s good for them, so they must be taken care of by wise men like you. You feed, clothe, and house them, keep them warm in the winter, and slaughter them when necessary. All for their own good. It’s just too goddamn bad they don’t understand how wonderful it is that learned, wise, responsible men like you are willing to get their hands dirty running the hog farm.”
Jake Grafton leaned forward in his chair. “What if you’re wrong?”
“We weren’t wrong.”
“Don’t give me that shit!” Grafton roared. “Lenin was wrong, Stalin was wrong, you’re wrong! I’m sick to death of you self-anointed messiahs willing to murder half the people on earth to save the other half, the half you’re in. You make me want to vomit!”
Yakolev said nothing, merely reached for another cigarette.
“We have another one out there”—Jake pointed toward the hangar bay—“ready to slaughter everyone alive who doesn’t agree with him. Now I tell you this — it’s time for all of us little people to take a page from the book of you prophets of doom and damnation.” He stared at Yakolev.
The Russian sneered. “So you brought two Russian villains to Iraq to parade in front of your cameras. The folks at home can see the dirty devils on CNN, prisoners of the victorious, virtuous Americans.”
“No. I brought you here to help me solve a problem. I need your help.”
“Help?” Yakolev laughed, a dry, vicious bark.
“As one soldier to another.”
The laughter died. Nicolai Yakolev’s face twisted again. “You tell me I have no honor, then you appeal to it.” He spit on the table, in Jake’s direction. “I am not a coward! I am not afraid of death. I do not fear a bullet.”
“I know that,” Jake said gently.
“I have two sons and a daughter. They have children.”
“A trial…”
“When?”
“You’ll know when the time comes.”
Yakolev glanced again at Jack Yocke, then shrugged. “I’ll think about it. For you personally I would do nothing.”
Jake Grafton rose from the chair and started for the door. “Come on, Jack.”
Out in the hangar bay Yocke wanted to know, “What was that all about?”
“About doing the right thing, for a change.”
“Like what?”
“You’ll figure it out.”
The room had a table in it about eight feet long. And chairs. At one end of the table sat Saddam Hussein, who glowered at Jake Grafton and Jack Yocke when they came in. He roared something in Arabic. The translator said to Jake, “He wants to know if you are in charge, sir.”
“I’m one of the officers in charge, yes,” Jake said as he motioned to the two soldiers on guard duty to leave the room.
Hussein ignored Yocke, who leaned against the wall opposite the translator, and directed his remarks at Jake. “The United States makes war upon Iraq,” the translator said. “You meddle in affairs that are none of your business.”
Hussein’s hands were bound with a single plastic tie in front of him, so he waved them, now stopped and shook his doubled-up fists: “How long, how long, until you nonbelievers stop raping our daughters? How long until you stop defiling the sacred places? How long until you leave the children of God to worship as the Prophet taught us?”
Toad came over to Jake and handed him a pistol, a 9mm automatic. “We took this off him.”
Saddam thundered on: “You violate the sovereignty of this nation, of this people. You shoot down Iraqi airplanes over Iraq, you send inspectors to hunt through our offices, you—”
Jake Grafton fired the pistol into the ceiling. The deafening report stopped the flow of words.
The spent casing slapped against the wall and fell to the floor with a tinny, metallic sound.
“I have a question,” Jake said softly to the translator. “Ask him how many Iraqis he has killed with this pistol.”
The translator did so.
Hussein sat in silence, saying nothing.
“How many Iranians?”
Silence.
“How many Kuwaitis?
“How many Kurds?
“How many Shiites?”
Unbroken silence.
“If you don’t know or can’t remember how many men you have personally murdered, perhaps you can tell me how many have died at your orders?”
Saddam Hussein’s eyes were mere slits.
“When you are dead will they hold a great funeral, or will they drag your corpse through the streets and burn it on a dung heap?”
When he heard the translation Saddam Hussein opened his mouth to speak, then apparently decided not to. He looked at the translator, at Jack Yocke, then let his gaze return to Jake Grafton.
The automatic was heavy. Jake Grafton stared at it, examined the safety, the hammer, the maker’s name stamped into the metal. Then slowly he removed his own pistol, a .357 Magnum Smith & Wesson revolver, and hefted it thoughtfully.
He laid the revolver about a foot from his right hand, then gave the automatic a gentle shove with his left. It slid down the table and came to rest about a foot or so in front of the Iraqi dictator, the barrel pointing out to one side.
“Let’s settle this right here,” Jake said. “You have killed many men — one more certainly won’t matter on Allah’s scales. And an unbeliever to boot. Go ahead! You grab for yours and I’ll grab for mine and we’ll kill each other.”