The Red Horseman by Stephen Coonts Read Free Book Online

postCommunist world. The world
had changed almost overnight, yet change was the
bureaucracy’s worst enemy, the crisis to which it had
the most difficulty responding.
    This morning Jake Grafton thought about change.
The knee-jerk reaction had been to reorganize,
to draw more lines on the organization chart.
    That had been easy, though it hadn’t been enough.
The brave new world had to be faced whether the
policymakers were comfortable or not.
    They were uncomfortable. Very uncomfortable. Men and
women who had spent their adult lives as warriors
of the cold war now had to face the unknown without
experience or that were going to cost people their reputations,
their caperspective. Mistakes were inevitable,
grievous mistakes re ers. This sense of
dangerous uncertainty collided with the extraordinary
dynamics of the evolving geopolitical landscape
to produce a stress-filled crisis atmosphere
in which tension was almost tangible.
    This situation is like war, Jake Grafton
decided. Every change in the international scene
reveals a new opportunity to the bold few and a
new pitfall to the cautious many.
    He was musing along these lines when the Pentagon
came into view. It was a low, sprawling building
much larger than it looked.
    As he parked the car he was wondering if there was
any place at all for nuclear weapons in this
changing world.
    were they obsolete, like horse cavalry and
battleships? He also wondered if he was the only
person in the Pentagon asking that question.
    “Everyone would have been better off if Russia
had had another revolution and shot all the
Communists.”
    General Albert Sidney Brown delivered
himself of this opinion and stopped the strategy
conference dead. Which was perhaps what he intended. The
subject was the growth of virulent
anti-Semitism in the former Soviet states.
    “General,” CIA deputy director Harvey
Schenler said wearily, “I don’t believe
fantasies of that type contribute much to our
deliberations.”
    Brown snorted. “Most of the problems the new
regimes in eastern Europe and the old Soviet
Union are now facing were caused by the Communists’
grotesque mismanagement, incompetent central
planning, believing their own propaganda, lying
to everybody, including themselves, cheating, bribery,
favoritism-the list goes on for a couple dozen
pages. Now that the Commies have become the
political opposition, they’re preaching hatred of the
Jews, trying to blame them for the collapse of the
whole rotten system.
    It’s 1932 in Germany all over again. Now you people
in the CIA seem to think that if the Communists get
back in power, in some magical way this nuclear
weapons control problem will just disappear.
Bullshit!”
    Schenler’s tone sharpened. “I think you owe me and
my staff an apology, General. We have
said no such thing here.”
    “You’ve implied it. You just stated that we have
to keep our lines of communication open to the Commies,
treat them as legitimate contenders for power.”
    “We’re not suggesting the United States should
aid their return to power.”
    Brown cleared his throat explosively. “Then
I apologize.
    I’ve become so used to double-talk and new age
quackspeak from you people, I’m easily confused. Perhaps
today we can dispense with the bureaucratic mumbo jumbo
and get down to brass tacks.”
    Schenler paused for several seconds as he
looked at the page before him.
    He had an apology and a challenge. He
decided to accept the apology and return to the
agenda items.
    Brown’s outburst was the only bright spot in the
meeting, Jake Grafton found to his sorrow.
These weekly strategy sessions, “strategizing” the
civilian intelligence professionals called it,
were usually exercises in tedium. Today was no
exception. No facts were briefed that hadn’t already
circulated through the upper echelons. Most of what
ended up on the table were policy options from
CIA analysts, career researchers who were
theoretically politically neutral. Jake
Grafton didn’t