The Kingmaker

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

I flew back to Kansas City the next morning. Katrina took a separate flight, I think because she was still peeved and wanted to avoid me. The frosty look she gave me at the prison entrance tended to support that theory.

Anyway, I had bigger fish to fry than her hurt feelings, like for starters, a client who insisted he was innocent when every indication and piece of evidence screamed guilty, guilty, guilty.

Morrison was already manacled to the table as we walked in. Before we could even sit, he demanded, “Well? What have you accomplished?” His tone was petulant and bossy, a general officer talking down to two inferiors, and it pissed me off.

“We went to Moscow,” Katrina swiftly intervened, smart enough to ignore his lousy manners.

“Yeah, so…?”

“We accomplished a great deal,” I said, ticking off points with my fingers. “We discovered the prosecution will have no difficulty getting a conviction for adultery. Incidentally, your office phone was bugged and it’s all on tape.”

For a mere instant he appeared surprised, perhaps even shocked. Then the look melted. Given everything else he was accused of, the womanizing probably struck him as an incidental distraction. It would be embarrassing in court, but little more than a sideshow.

“Oh, and by the way,” I added, “Mary knew about it, too.”

This wasn’t news to him, I was just confirming it, but Katrina looked surprised. “We also met with Alexi Arbatov,” I continued, “and he thinks you’re innocent, that you were probably framed, but he doesn’t know by who, or why. Oh, and last but not least, somebody tried to kill us.”

“Moscow’s a dangerous place,” he dryly observed.

Even Miss Hold-your-temper lost it on that one. She said, “Somebody tried to assassinate us. We were ambushed. Mel Torianski got his head blown off.”

That dryness instantly evaporated. “By who?”

“The police claimed it was Chechen terrorists. But the ambassador said they blame everything on Chechens.”

He contemplated that a moment. “He’s right. It was someone else.”

I asked, “Like who?”

But he wasn’t listening to me. At first he seemed buried in thought, then suddenly his expression turned elated. “Don’t you see? This proves I’ve been telling the truth. Whoever tried to murder you is worried. They know you’re looking.”

“Nobody knew I was looking. We met with Alexi in secret.”

“You thought you were meeting him in secret. Obviously you were wrong.”

We’d already come to that conclusion ourselves, so I conceded the point.

Then he asked, “Where was Mary? Did you check on her whereabouts?”

“At work and her father’s home. Why?”

He began waving his arms around in excitement. “That proves nothing. It would’ve been so easy for her to arrange. Did she know you were there?”

“So what if she knew,” I said, realizing with an ugly jolt what he was implying.

He kept going anyway. “And if she guessed you were meeting with Alexi, she probably… oh shit… I was the one who turned him. I was the one he trusted. But with me out of the picture, she’d own him completely. She couldn’t let you expose him. She needs him for her future. Don’t you see it?”

“What the hell are you talking about? If you’re convicted of treason, the CIA won’t let her get within a continent of Arbatov. And the closest she’ll ever be allowed to get near that big building in Langley will be her father’s house. Her career’s over.”

He gave me a sly look. “She tell you that?”

“Nearly verbatim.”

“Drummond, you’re such a sucker. With me out of the picture they’ll be completely reliant on her to retain Alexi. Don’t you understand how important he is? And if she gets credit for turning me in, she’ll get a gold medal from those bastards she works for. They’ll love her for it. She chose her country over her lousy traitorous husband… what greater love for her country and all that crap. You beginning to see it?”

“What I’m seeing is a complete asshole.”

He leaned back into his seat and grinned. “I did a lot of thinking in that hospital bed. I thought, now, who would know me well enough to set me up like this? It had to be an espionage specialist. Nobody off the street has the knowledge or skills to pull this off. It would have to be somebody with a motive.” He looked at me expectantly. “She had a motive, all right. You discovered it yourself.”

“You’re losing it.”

“You stupid asshole. You have no idea how she plays. She’s not the sweet little thing you think, Drummond. How the hell do you think she got so far in the Agency so fast? She cut people’s nuts off before they even heard her coming.”

But before I could say another word, Katrina smoothly said, “Okay, we’ll look into it. I promise. In the meantime, we’re also considering other possibilities.”

“Like what?”

To which she replied, “Did you ever hear Alexi share any theories about some mysterious Russian cabal?”

He was distracted by other thoughts and offhandedly said, “Uh, yeah, sure. All the time.”

“And what did you think?”

“It’s Russia. If it sounds rotten there’s probably some truth to it. But so what? You gotta understand Russians.”

“And what do we have to understand about Russians?” asked Katrina, who was raised by a Russian and therefore had a few insights.

“They’re the most conniving race on earth. Their whole history is a never-ending series of coups and palace manipulations. It’s their national sport.”

“So you think there is a cabal?” Katrina asked.

“No. But Alexi believed it, and I used his suspicion to lure him in. Probably somewhere in Moscow there’s some group up to something, and Alexi has blown it out of proportion. Hell, there’s probably a hundred different groups, and Alexi has jumbled them all together into some single gargoyle. If there was something as big as he suspects, we would’ve detected it.”

“How?”

“Because our penetrations have increased a thousandfold since the Big Bang. Used to be it took work. It was a closed country with cops and soldiers and KGB guys on every street corner. If you joined a Russian for a drink, you had a thousand prying eyes on you, and afterward the poor bastard would get a late-night knock on the door that led to broken bones and yanked teeth and all that. It doesn’t happen anymore. The whole country’s a big fishing pond. Cast a line and you get a hundred bites.”

“So you think Arbatov’s paranoid?” I prodded.

“What Russian isn’t? Especially one with his background.”

“And what’s so special about his background?” Katrina asked.

“He was raised in a small farming village about nine hundred miles south of Moscow. His father was a pig farmer. You believe that? His mother died when he was two, and his father when he was ten, so Alexi was placed in a state orphanage. A year later he won some national math championship and got hooked up with Yurichenko.”

“I don’t see the connection.”

“Yurichenko was the head of the Soviet Union’s version of an exalted Mensa society, this group of people with extraordinary IQs. Not geniuses… hyper-geniuses. So Alexi was flown up from his orphanage to meet with him. The old man virtually adopted him, then got him into accelerated courses in Moscow and then Moscow University. Hell, Alexi lived with him until he graduated from college.”

“So they’re close?” Katrina asked.

“Closer than father and son. But Alexi can’t escape his roots. Sure, he’s got good manners and seems poised and polished, because Yurichenko gave him that. But he still has peasant’s blood, and that makes him distrustful of everybody in Moscow, the same way farmers in Kansas feel about people in Washington. We fertilized that impression every time Alexi brought it up. It was the central motif of his treatment.”

I nodded, because at least on this point, Mary and her husband seemed to be in agreement. Plus, the time had come to break the bad news.

I leaned back in my chair, knowing what was coming. I said to him, “The prosecution wants to offer a deal. We’ve agreed to meet with Golden tomorrow morning.”

“What kind of deal?”

“We don’t know the details yet. We suspect they’ll offer to waive the death sentence in return for a guilty plea at the pre-trial hearing.”

He chuckled. “That’s fuckin’ crazy. I’m not going to plead guilty.”

I didn’t chuckle with him. “It will probably be a one-time shot. Once the offer’s withdrawn we’ll never get it back.”

“What are you saying?”

“We’ve found nothing that exonerates you. To the contrary, every rock we’ve turned over just looks worse for you. And we believe Golden is still sitting on his most persuasive evidence.”

He was shaking his head. “So what? Because you and this bitch here are incompetent, you expect me to plead guilty? Is that what you’re saying?”

I bit down hard on my cheek. “What I’m saying is, it doesn’t look good at the moment, and if we turn down the deal there’s no going back.”

His whole demeanor suddenly changed. His face turned instantly suspicious. “You’re not working this with Mary, are you? What’s going on here? Have you and that bitch cooked up some kind of deal?”

I knew he was emotionally distraught and was lashing out. I also knew how much enjoyment it would give me to reach across the table and snap his neck. Of course, I’m a professional. We compartmentalize, right?

I mustered up my calmest, coldest voice. “My loyalty belongs to you. If I thought Mary had something to do with this, I’d go after her with everything I’ve got. I’ll be back once I’ve heard their offer. It’ll be your choice. If you don’t trust me, then replace me.”

I spun around and left. Katrina remained behind for a few minutes, I think to try to smooth things over. When she finally joined me out in the parking lot she looked a bit shaken. She said, “He was upset. He’s convinced his wife’s framing him. And he’s frustrated that we haven’t made any headway.”

“And he’s an asshole. It would serve him right if she did frame him, but the whole idea’s ridiculous.”

“I suppose,” she said, an answer notable only for the assertion that she neither agreed nor disagreed.

Then came an awkward moment. Gentleman that I am, I decided to be graceful about this. “Listen, I’m sorry about Alexi. Remember, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean you’re not a nice guy.”

“Paranoid, my ass,” Katrina replied, predictably, of course.

“Look, it isn’t just Morrison saying so. I talked to Mary last night. She said the Agency headshrinks pinned him for a bona fide nut right from the start. She said that was the vulnerability they exploited since that first meeting, that the Agency even put together a few ruses to feed his fears.”

It was that “nut” word, I think. Perhaps I should’ve used something more clinical.

Her whole expression changed. “Don’t you ever use that word about Alexi. They’re full of shit.”

“Look, I… well, everybody’s afraid of something. Alexi’s fears are just, well, I guess, a little bigger than everybody else’s.”

She stuck her middle finger in my face. I stared at it for about twenty seconds, till she put it down. We walked back to the office, neither of us saying a word, neither of us liking the other very much.

One of Imelda’s girls handed me a note when I came in. Lieutenant Colonel Charlie Becker’s name and phone number were written on it-the same Charlie who’d gotten me the files on Arbatov and Yurichenko.

I grabbed the phone and dialed the number. Charlie answered on the third ring, and I said, “Charlie, it’s your favorite JAG officer.”

“I don’t have any favorite JAG officers. I believe they should all be put on a big ship, floated out to the Arctic Ocean, and somebody should torpedo the boat.”

“Do they at least get life vests?”

“Good idea. They’ll all slowly freeze to death. We’ll get it all filmed on satellite, and on dull days I’ll sit around and eat popcorn and watch all the lawyers die.”

“Wouldn’t work, Charlie. Lawyers have ice in their veins.”

“Bullshit. You’re all full of hot air. Listen, you asked me about Viktor Yurichenko.”

“Yeah, thanks for the packet.”

“No problem. The thing is, Yurichenko’s coming to America. He’s supposed to meet with the new CIA director. He always likes to do that.”

“When?”

“Arrives tonight. He’s supposed to stay through tomorrow and fly back to Moscow tomorrow night.”

“He staying in Washington?”

“This is the part I’m not supposed to tell you about, on penalty of death. He’s booked at the Hay-Adams Hotel, and for security reasons, he’s traveling and staying under the name A. Ames.”

“No shit?”

“Viktor’s got a real keen sense of humor that way. Last time he came, he used the pseudonym Rosenberg, if you can believe it.”

“Buddy, I do owe you.”

“You’re right. You do.”

I hung up, informed Katrina, and then I called Imelda, who was still back in the Virginia office, and informed her also, before I asked if it was possible to rearrange our tickets in the event we decided to come back to D.C.

Imelda immediately snapped, “Get your asses to the airport right now. I’ll handle them tickets.”

“Well, I haven’t made up my mind yet,” I said.

“He’s a witness, right?”

“Well, he obviously knew all about it. He’s in charge of all external intelligence operations. Morrison’s material would’ve gone to his agency.”

“So drop a subpoena on his ass.”

I looked over at Katrina. “Imelda says to slap him with a subpoena.”

She shrugged. “I don’t think that’s possible.”

I said to both of them, “He’s surely traveling with a diplomatic passport and thus is invulnerable to our laws. Not to mention, no judge is going to allow us to slap a subpoena on the head of Russia’s intelligence agency.”

To which Imelda said, “You think I didn’t think of that? Serve papers on Ames. This guy Yurichenko checks in under an alias, you got the right to nail him. Besides, you ain’t arrestin’ him, but requestin’ his presence as a witness. Draw up the papers and find the right judge.”

I said, “Have the papers prepared before we get back.”

It was a wild outside shot, but the game was winding down and I’d shoot from the bleachers at this point.