The Kingmaker

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I had set my alarm for 4:00 A.M. and as soon as it went off I leaped out of bed and dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and a warm jacket. I rushed down to the lobby and outside to the Kierskaya station, the subway stop three blocks down. Unlike in American stations, there were no escalators, just long, dark, spooky stairs that carry you deep underground. The entrance to hell probably looks something like this.

In fact, Moscow’s subways were once considered among the world’s greatest architectural achievements. There has to be something Freudian about how Stalin decided that of all things to compete in, it would be subways. While nearly everything the Communists constructed above ground is drably ugly, Moscow’s subway stations are massive caverns filled with fabulous wall carvings and statues strewn here and about so you could swear you were in some surreal art gallery instead of an underground train station. Of course, you have to be deeply into Communist relics to really revel in it.

I strolled past two or three statues till I found one of a striking Amazon with a scarf on her head wielding a scythe, carved, I suppose, to display what a properly virtuous Soviet woman should look like. I could see immediately why the Soviet birthrate had dropped so precipitously.

I peeked around to be sure nobody was looking, then pulled out a piece of chalk and made three two-inch stripes on the marble base, right beside her left foot. I swiftly wandered back down the tunnel and upstairs. I had forty minutes to kill, and therefore wandered the streets and observed the local fauna.

What Moscow’s local fauna consists of is herds of wretchedly poor and homeless people. It was cold as hell, and still they were everywhere, huddled in doorways, standing around subway entrances, stomping their feet to keep their blood flowing, and trying to peddle everything you can imagine, from scrawny-looking sausages to used combat boots to dented-up skillets and frying pans. A fair number were old women, mostly though, they were veterans, and most of those were missing arms or legs.

I couldn’t imagine what it must feel like to give a limb in Afghanistan or Chechnya and come home to this kind of bitter welcome. The state can no longer afford to pay your disability, or what payments it makes can barely buy a pair of socks, and you’re reduced to spending the rest of your life on freezing street corners, hoping passersby will take pity on the legless guy in the raggedy old army dress coat with his hand held out. Crashed empires leave ugly wreckage.

I meandered up to an outdoor magazine and cigarette stall two blocks down from the subway stop, where I stared at the selection of reading materials, which wasn’t all that stimulating because they were all in Cyrillic letters. Finally the guy I was waiting for walked over and began perusing the rack. I recognized him from his photo.

I sidled up next to him and mumbled, “Bill says hi.”

He ignored me.

“Okay, how’s this? Three coins in the fountain? No, no, that’s all wrong… abracadabra? No, crap, that’s not it, either… April showers bring May flowers?”

He was grinning as though I was really very funny. Well, I am very funny. Sometimes. But without saying anything he wandered away, and unsure of what else to do, I followed. He walked down the street and into a small bakery, got into line, and ordered something, while I stood inside the doorway and awkwardly wondered what to do next. Well, the smart thing would be to flee back to my hotel and forget my crazy scheme, but I had already crossed the Rubicon, so to speak, and had to see this through.

He accepted two cups of coffee and two rolls, and then walked over to a table and I took the hint.

Alexi Arbatov smiled when I got to the table and asked, “How is my very good friend Bill?”

“Not a happy guy. Miserable actually.”

“Yes, I hear this. I am most sorry. Bill is my good friend.”

He spoke passable English, but like most Russians, mangled the verb tenses and was clueless about articles. And his “v” came out like a “w,” and so on.

I accepted a coffee and said, “Yeah, well, he’s accused of spying, and you know how governments are. A lousy sense of humor when it comes to those things.”

He sipped from his coffee and studied me. I studied him right back and noted that, up close, his face looked strikingly different from his photos. It wasn’t just a pleasant face, it was the kind Italian artists carved on angels. The features I recognized, but there was a freshness to his skin and a crystalline clarity to his eyes that made you think there couldn’t possibly be anything guileful or conniving behind that facade. It was the kind of face every con man got down on his knees and prayed to God for.

He said, “You are Drummond, yes? You are lawyer for Bill, yes?”

“Why would you think that?” I asked, trying to hide my surprise.

“Please, this is my business. You are Army JAG officer, yes?”

I recognized this as the smarmy parlor trick it was: The great spymaster showing off the mastery of his trade, letting you know he’s got your condom size and brand. Notwithstanding that, I was dismayed and off-balance. I had intended to identify myself as a government investigator named Harry Smith and stupidly thought I could get away with it.

Since there was obviously no point in denying it, I nodded and said, “Bill sent me to ask a few questions.”

“What I can do to help, I will. Bill is my friend.”

“Actually there is something you can do. He wants to know why you set him up,” I said, launching straight for the jugular.

“Certainly Bill did not send you to ask this question?”

“Well, certainly he did,” I lied.

As his lawyer, I was allowed to lie on his behalf. The real reason I came to Moscow was to meet Arbatov. Pretty clever, huh? If Morrison was guilty, he didn’t seem inclined to confess it, and even if he wasn’t, the one guy who’d know for sure was seated across from me. I intended to smoke the truth out of him, to put Alexi Arbatov on trial.

And along that line, I said, “Don’t bullshit me, Arbatov. He’s facing the death sentence. The prosecutor can barely move his lips fast enough to leak all the charges they’re bringing against him. Want to hear how I’ve got it figured?”

This was a moment when he should have been jumpy or evasive, but he calmly replied, “Yes, please to tell me how you have this figured.”

“Sometime back in ’88 or ’89, you and your boss, Yurichenko, found out about this young American couple who were burning up the American intelligence community. One was an Army officer who, with a little outside help, could rise through the system and end up a very high-ranking officer. Given credit for recruiting you, he’d have more clout than anybody ever dreamed. He’d become the Teflon man. They’d have to keep nudging him forward because after all, he’s the only conduit to you.”

He sipped from his coffee and munched on his roll, not saying a word, not gesturing, not responding in any way.

I continued, “This young officer’s the perfect catch-smart and handsome and competent, but also vain and unusually ambitious, and that makes him vulnerable. So he visits Georgia, and suddenly he’s got these KGB goons strong-arming him and coincidentally, you show up. You save him, and he thinks he recruits you, or halfway recruits you, and then you begin helping him rise through the ranks.”

He took another sip of coffee to wash down some roll, and then said, “This is what you call Manchurian Candidate operation, yes?”

“Whatever. Next, you bring Mary into it and turn them into the indispensable couple. Having you as their trophy makes them indebted to you. Morrison trusts you. He tells you things. He thinks he owns you, but you own him.”

“Very good, but in what way does Mary fit into this?”

“An unwitting dupe. She meets with you when he’s not available. She keeps him informed. She comes back from meeting with you, climbs into bed with her husband, and they chatter about you before they roll off to sleep. Sometimes you probably use her to pass coded instructions or signals. Right?”

He shrugged, and then asked, “And how does Bill come to get caught?”

“I haven’t figured out that part yet. Maybe somebody in Moscow told on him… maybe you fed his name to the CIA.”

“And for what reason I would do this? He was valuable to Russia, yes?”

“You tell me,” I said, searching his face for involuntary clues, which, so far, were nonexistent. “Maybe he got greedy and asked for things you weren’t willing to give him. Maybe you got tired of him, or maybe he realized you were exploiting him and got pissed.”

He nodded as though these were all reasonable options. “And how does Bill pass all these wonderful things they are saying he gives to me?”

“I haven’t figured out that piece, either.”

“No?”

“Not yet. The problem is the government’s blasting him with a shotgun, and probably a few of those pellets are bull’s-eyes, but the rest are stray shots, things they suspect him of giving, or things somebody else gave that they’re blaming on Morrison… I don’t know. But you snookered him into giving a few things, and now he’s facing the hangman’s noose.”

He put down his coffee cup and brushed some crumbs off the tabletop. “Major, I am disappointed in very big way. Have you experience in espionage?”

“I seem to have missed that class at law school.”

He laced his hands into a steeple and poised his forefingers against his lower lip. “We do not expose our agents this way. To turn him in would be to lose everything, yes? Your CIA will ask what could Bill possibly betray and erase all damage. This is not our way. If Bill was target for disposal, an unfortunate accident would be arranged.”

It had become my turn to sip from my coffee and try to act aloof. “So why didn’t you just do that?”

“Problem two,” he continued, as though I hadn’t said anything, as though this were his inquisition. “I have big reasons to protect Bill. How I would betray him? He would betray me back, yes? You understand-I would be dead.”

Well, yes, I thought, which could very well account for why Morrison told Katrina and me about him. Maybe that’s exactly what Morrison was trying to accomplish. But then I had another thought.

I said, “He was your dupe and Yurichenko knows that. If your name gets dragged into this, you’re no longer a hidden hero, you’re a public hero. Maybe you thought it was time for everybody to learn how very clever you are, how you turned an American general officer.”

“Major, Mary was Moscow station chief, and Bill was to become two-star general. Both were becoming more important. I would choose this moment to make their house burn down… how would my bosses perceive this, hmm?”

I couldn’t think of any good counters to that-which didn’t mean there wasn’t one, or even hundreds of possible reasons. Everything about this case gave me a headache. These people were all spies and counter-spies and whatever, and this was their devious little game of duplicities and counter-duplicities. I, on the other hand, was a novice, with only the vaguest notion of what Morrison was accused of, and even those ideas were wildly suspect and probably exaggerated.

I took a wild stab anyway. “Maybe Morrison was dealing with somebody else in your organization, too? Or maybe somebody in your SVR learned about him, was jealous of you and your relationship with your boss, and burned him to make you look bad.”

“Then I would be already dead. And why would anybody who learns of Bill burn him? They would”-he paused to search for the right word-“poach?” I nodded that I approved, and he continued, “This is not uncommon in our trade. Is known to happen. But to burn an invaluable resource for reason of jealousy? No, I think not.”

I stared into my coffee and contemplated the realization that I might be over my head here. True to his CIA profile, Alexi Arbatov was frighteningly smart and persuasive.

Foolishly revealing my frustration, I said, “Okay, what do you think happened? Why did a bunch of tough guys show up at the embassy and bag Morrison? The U.S. government doesn’t move on traitors without a truckload of evidence.”

“I am asking myself this same question. Bill has my fate in his hands. If I am to become compromised, it is a most ugly fate.”

“So you keep saying.”

He half-chuckled. “Any day now, this could be proved. I see your three chalk stripes on the statue this morning and I am thinking my game is already up.”

“Explain that.”

“Only Bill and I share this signal. I was expecting entrapment.”

I pondered this dilemma until he said, “But you are intriguing to me. You are only American person who tries to prove he is innocent. Everybody else says he is guilty.”

“So you’re saying what… you and I are allies?”

“Perhaps. But there is problem. I have most serious reservations concerning you.”

“Like what?”

“You do not talk like he is innocent. But bigger problem is you are not trained in this game we play.”

“I know what I’m doing.”

He shook his head. “Please not to take offense. This morning, you make your three marks, then you go stand at meeting place like dumb duck in shooting gallery. What if I am discovered and instead of me was SVR counterespionage team coming to arrest you? What if I am really controller for Bill… maybe I would just kill you.”

I rubbed my chin and tried to look smarter than I was. He made this a bit difficult as he continued his spycraft for idiots tutorial. “This is not how trained agents do these things. We act like dogs, yes? We mark trees, and then find vantage to watch. Bill and I choose that kiosk for our meetings because of big hotel next door. Bill always comes to meetings dressed as Russian citizen, not like L.L. Bean American. Bill uses false name to check into upper-level room, and watches to know I am alone. He does not come out until I walk into bakery. If I do not go into this bakery, is signal I am being observed, and we are in trap. Bill would then be on next flight to America.”

“Okay, so I’m not a professional spy. What’s your point?”

“You are posing quandary to me.”

“Go on.”

“You know about me. You are well-intended, I think, but dangerous.”

Physical features aside, Alexi Arbatov had a certain earnestness of manner that made you want to agree with him. I found myself nodding, and then thinking he was right because… well, okay, yes, because he was right.

Time for a mental slap there, Drummond. For one thing, he was rejecting my qualifications before I even agreed to work with him, which poses something of a cart and horse problem. For a second thing, I didn’t trust him. Okay, he had an alibi or counter for everything, but he was a boy genius in a profession that breeds the world’s biggest backstabbing liars, and wasn’t this how my client began his relationship with this guy? Buy into his line of crap and look where it gets you.

On the other hand, I had come all this way to get a firsthand look at Alexi Arbatov, and, well, what now?

Before I could answer that question, however, Arbatov took the choice out of my hands. He stood, neatly collected our coffee cups and napkins, and like a good citizen carried them over to a trash receptacle.

He next sauntered to the counter, where a chubby babushka was filling somebody else’s order. He yelled something in Russian, and she looked up, chortled, and said something back. They both laughed. I didn’t understand a word, but got the general gist. He was complimenting her on the coffee and roll, and she was responding like a thirteen-year-old who just got her hair stroked by the Backstreet Boys.

I was oddly impressed. One wouldn’t expect a bloodthirsty, conniving spymaster to be so convivial toward the hired help. On the other hand, these guys are good. They know it’s the little things that lend legitimacy to their biggest shams.

I caught up with him by the doorway and frantically whispered, “So what’s next?”

He ignored me, walked out, and got about ten steps before he looked back. “Nothing is to be next. Good-bye.”

He disappeared into the crowd, obviously having made up his mind. I could scrape all the chalk stripes on that statue I wanted; I would never see him again.