Free The Red Horseman by Stephen Coonts Page B

those goons alluded to it
Friday night.
    He said what a terrible thing it would be if Amy
died of heart failure.
    I should have known right then. Goddamnit!”
    The more he thought about the situation the angrier he
became.
    “Goddamn those bastards!”
    General Albert Sidney Brown didn’t get
angry, he went ballistic. He listened to Jake
tell him about the bug in the radiator with an air of
disbelief and growing bewilderment, brut when Toad
used the pipe wrench to disassemble the adiator in the
general’s plush corner office and he saw his
wire, he went into an apoplectic rage. He
spluttered, his face turned a deep crimson.
When he recovered slightly he began to curse.
He gave a rich performance at a fullthroated
volume that would have done the crustiest drill
instructor proud.
    Only when Brown began to wind down did Jake
signal to Toad to cut the wire. If the
CIA had someone listening he wanted them to know they
had just pissed on and royally pissed off the very upper
echelons of the American military. If they cared.
    Then the general got on the phone. Sixty
seconds after he hung up, the DIA’S security
officer, an army colonel, was standing in front of
Brown’s desk. The general led him to the radiator
and showed him the wire.
    By this point Brown’s mood had coalesced
into cold fury.
    “I want to know how many of these goddamn listening
devices are in this agency’s offices. I want
all the sensors and wire and telephone equipment
removed. And take out these–he whacked the
radiator with Toad’s pipe wrench-“fucking
antique radiators. I want to know why these
bugs weren’t detected by your staff. I want to know
what it’s gonna take to make sure something like this
doesn’t happen again. And when you have finished with all
of that, You and your entire staff are going to stand in this
office and swear me a blood oath that there are no more
goddamn bugs in any of our Spaces.”
    The colonel left in a hurry. Brown then
eyed Jake Grafton without warmth.
    “You and I are going to have a little chat,
Admiral. And not in this damned building. Get your
hat and let’s go see if we can find someplace
private.”
    They ended up in an exclusive restaurant in
Alexandria, Virginia, after a silent ride in
Brown’s limo. Brown aPparently knew the
owner, who admitted him after he Pounded on the
door. After listening to Brown’s request she
escorted the two officers to the far back corner of the
empty dining room.
    “I know You don’t open until five, but could
we please get coffee?”
    “Of course, General,” the lady said. “Make
Yourself comfortable and we’ll bring it out in a few
minutes.”
    “I appreciate Your hospitality, Mrs.
Horowitz.”
    She smiled and left for the kitchen.
    “Well?”
    Jake told his boss everything, from Judith
Farrell’s meeting with Toad to the discovery of the
bug- The recitation took thirty minutes and was
broken only by the delivery of a Pot Of coffee and
two cups. Brown listened without interruptions. When
Jake finished the general said,
“Admiral, I’ll lay it on the line with you. You
should have reported the contact by a foreign agent to me as
soon as Possible. You fucked up.”
    “Yessir.”
    “you fuck up again, You’ll be a civilian
by noon the next day.
    Brown refilld his coffee cup and stirred it with a
spoon.
    A slow grin twisted his lips. “Tell me again
about sticking the pistol in that CIA weenie’s face.
    When they had finished dissecting Jake’s
adventure, General Brown began to talk of the
CIA and the personalities of the men who ran it.
Finally he became philosophical:
    “All intelligence services are
bureaucracies, of course.
    The output is always mangled to some extent as it
goes through the pipe.
    But when the people in the intelligence business start
editing the raw data to support their policy
recommendations, the output becomes fiction. It’s
worse than worthless-it’s fantasy as fact, so
it’s just plain dangerous. Policyrnakers think
they’re