The Kingmaker

CHAPTER ELEVEN

My late flight back to Washington arrived at eleven. I rushed straight home, climbed into bed, and stared at the ceiling for two hours.

The reason, in a word, was Eddie. I finally had an inkling of his strategy, and it frightened the hell out of me. He was working diligently to make his six-month advantage decisive. He had the momentum and virtually a one-way street on knowledge. Even in the hands of a perfectly average attorney those would be almost insurmountable advantages. Eddie, however, was the Babe Ruth of Army law.

If I didn’t find a line of defense, and damn quick, I’d be trapped in a fog of ignorance when Eddie called with his deal. Even if Morrison did everything they claimed, I obviously couldn’t admit that to Eddie. I needed something plausible-not necessarily persuasive, just… plausible. So what did I have?

Morrison claimed he was framed, and no matter how overused that line was, or how suspect, it still represented a usable alibi. The problem was, it was a possibility that cut two ways. Framed by someone on our side? Or by someone on Russia’s side? And why? Because Morrison knew something and needed to be taken out? A plain and simple grudge? For sport? No small details, these.

It was even possible that this was a particularly excruciating instance of mistaken identity. The government knew it had a mole; it just pinned the tail on the wrong donkey. How do you prove that?

The last possibility was that Morrison had done some sloppy things that were being blown extravagantly out of proportion. Give or take a little, that’s exactly what happened to Wen Ho Lee. Depending on how incriminating those things were, it could still be a catastrophic problem. Did he just forget to close and lock his safe a few times when he left the office at night? Or did he accidentally leave a bundle of Top Secret documents lying on Boris Yeltsin’s desk?

There could be other possibilities, but these were the three that passed the stink test, which, as a wise old law professor of mine defined it, simply meant they stank less than other theories. When operating on conjecture and instinct, this is what legal theology boils down to.

Katrina was in the office when I arrived the next morning, and pacing in the corner was the inimitable Imelda, blowing bubbles with her lips and inspecting the boxes cluttered all over our office. Imelda is very protective of her domain and, like most career Army sergeants, has a tendency to be maniacally prickly about neatness.

She stopped pacing and flapped her arms, threateningly. “Who made this friggin’ mess?”

“Eddie. He’s got a couple of hundred lawyers and investigators cramming every piece of paper they can get into boxes. We’ve gotten three truckloads already. We expect more.”

She kicked a box. “Asshole.”

Exactly. I then led her and Katrina into the office, where I briefed them on what our client told me the day before. I articulated the possibilities I’d pondered, and both nodded frequently, interrupted occasionally, and shook their heads dismally when I was done.

Imelda said, “And you got no notion what’s in them boxes?”

Katrina said, “I’ve been going through them for two days.”

“Findin’ what?” Imelda asked.

“They were tapping Morrison’s phones and had bugs in his office. Thousands of hours of recording transcripts are in these boxes. The few I surveyed confused the hell out of me. I don’t know shit about embassies or attache duties.”

This wasn’t good news. “Anything else?” I asked.

“Four or five are stuffed with financial background information, going back two decades, mostly IRS and bank records. The Morrisons filed jointly and used a professional tax preparer. They kept copies of their tax records going back ten years.”

“Anything interesting?”

“Possibly, but it doesn’t fit.”

“What doesn’t?”

“He filled out an insurance form in 1989, the year they were married. His net assets were estimated at around five hundred thousand dollars, including equity in Morrison’s townhouse in Alexandria and what the investigators assumed was a very sizable wedding gift from Homer Steele.”

“That’s a lot of net worth for an Army officer,” I said.

Katrina politely ignored this absolutely useless observation. “They made a spectacularly good investment in a brand-new company called America Online, back in 1992. Ten thousand shares. They sat on it, and that block of stocks, after multiple splits, is now worth nearly two million dollars.”

“And what do the investigators assume to be their total net worth today?”

“Four million, give or take a hundred thousand.”

“Wow,” said I, shaking my head-yet another unremarkable observation.

Katrina said, “There was a questionable addition. In 1997, they supposedly inherited nine hundred thousand dollars from some source. It was listed on their joint tax return.”

“And we don’t know where it came from?”

“I don’t. But you might. Maybe Mary lost a grandparent?”

“If there was a miracle after I dated her. Her grandparents were already dead. Her father was older when he married, and they waited a while to have a child.”

“Morrison’s parents?”

I said, “Maybe.”

She said, “Hopefully.”

I pondered this new input and said, “Even aside from their investments, they probably bring in close to two hundred and fifty thousand a year from their combined paychecks. Eddie’s going to have a bitch of a time proving greed was the motive.”

Imelda said, “ ’Less Morrison had bad habits.”

“Not him,” Katrina corrected. She added, “One whole container is filled with charge card summaries. Mary was the big spender. Some of those bills from upscale women’s clothiers were huge. Your kind of girl, Sean. A regular clotheshorse.”

“Define huge,” said I, not all that nicely.

“Sometimes five thousand dollars.”

“Mary’s a professional woman,” I replied in her defense. “Impressions are important in her line of work.”

“Of course they are,” she responded. Then she said, “The point is, nothing jumped out at me, and I doubt anything jumped out at them.”

I added, “And you have to figure, Mary’s father is sitting on a big pot of gold, and she’s an only child. Instead of all the hassle involved in treason, Bill could’ve just bumped off the old bastard and ended up filthy rich overnight.”

“We should all be so lucky,” Katrina agreed.

“So, let’s not waste more time on money,” I ordered, and they both nodded. This might not sound like any great leap forward, but when you’re facing infinite possibilities, anything that ushers you into the realm of the finite is a huge relief. If Eddie tried to claim Morrison sold his loyalty, I felt fairly confident we’d stick that where the sun never shines.

I looked at Imelda. “Get the evidence and inventory under control, then start wading through it.”

Katrina said, “Some of the tapped phone conversations are in Russian. Dog-ear those and give them to me.”

Imelda blew some bubbles, flapped her elbows, and stomped out to get started. Katrina shot me an anxious look. She said, “That’s a lot of boxes to go through. And there’s more coming.”

“It’ll be a cakewalk for Imelda,” I assured her with the kind of bold self-confidence that comes only when it’s someone else doing the work.

I then shooed her out of my office and called a think tank up in New York City. I made an appointment to be there at three o’clock, and then called and booked two seats on the shuttle.