The Kingmaker

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

It took four knocks on Katrina’s door before she answered, and you can’t believe how relieved I was to see her standing in her bathrobe, her hair wet and bedraggled, a disbelieving and vividly unwelcoming look on her face.

As soon as the cops had released me, I was struck by the thought that if I was a target, well maybe she was, too. Ergo, I was standing on her doorstep, trying to look like we were still the best of chums.

“What do you want?” she asked, in a most unflattering way.

I gave her my most winsome grin. “Can I come in? Please?”

She sighed and stepped aside. As apartments go, there was nothing to brag about here, a Lilliputian efficiency filled with third-hand furniture and a few plants to give it some life. It was neat as a pin, though, the bed made, the plates put away, everything spick-and-span. And who would’ve guessed she was a neat freak?

I said, “We’ve got problems. There was another attempt on my life this morning.”

Her face raced from disappointed to see me to instantly concerned. “What happened?”

“Two thugs bushwhacked me in the parking lot when I left my apartment. One had five grand in his pocket. They were hired guns.”

“And…?”

“And I, uh, I killed them.”

She took a second to absorb this. “And why did you come here?”

“Because you could be next.”

“I’m fine. Nobody’s bothered me.”

“That doesn’t mean nobody intends to bother you.”

Her expression went flat. She looked at her watch. “I’ve got an appointment in thirty minutes. I really have to hurry.”

Were we having a problem here or what? I could see she was still very peeved and was trying to give me the heave-ho, only her timing was awful.

I flapped my arms up and down in frustration. “Are you listening to me, Katrina? Somebody tried to kill me. They might try to kill you, too.”

“Why would they? I’m off the case… I’m no threat.”

I shook my head. “Maybe they don’t know that. Or maybe they’re worried you know what I know.”

She was shaking her head. “This is a very important appointment. It’s for a job. Odd as this may sound, you need money to eat in this country. I… I have to get dressed.”

“You might not live to eat. Please listen to-”

Like lightning, she whipped something out of her pocket, and before you could say “ouch” a switchblade was pointed at my stomach.

She said, “I can take care of myself.”

Wow. She held open her door and gave me the distinct impression I was supposed to use it. It’s amazing how grumpy some people can get. But then women are different than men. They have memories connected to emotions-a poisonous mix.

I stepped out and the door closed behind me. I took the elevator downstairs and left, but didn’t go far. I moved to a position across the street where I could hide behind an illegally parked truck and watch the front entrance of her apartment building.

I took a moment to study the environment. Katrina didn’t live in the best of neighborhoods. Winos were stumbling around, and a few homeless people were camped out on street benches, or huddled inside doorways, hoping to scrounge a little heat. There were some teenagers hanging out by a local bodega, swilling beer even though it was only nine in the morning. They were trashtalking, and just generally trying to impress one another the way young aspiring hoodlums do. If you were looking for likely suspects, you saw plenty of them.

About twenty minutes later, I watched Katrina rush out of her apartment building with her purse tucked under her arm, the way street-smart women carry their valuables in neighborhoods like this, tightly, so nobody can tug it away and run off with it.

I gave her a head start, then dashed across the street and followed. I guessed her apartment building didn’t have underground parking, or even a parking lot, so, like most Washingtonians, she had to scrounge around adjoining neighborhoods for a space. It’s that kind of city, and at the end of her street she hooked a left. My eyes searched to see if anybody was following her, or taking an undue interest. I didn’t see anybody, so I ran forward to keep her in sight.

As I rounded the corner, a street bum on a park bench got up and followed her. He was about twenty steps behind her and he truly did look like a bum, dirty and grungy, with clothes that were tattered and weathered. What was odd was that he didn’t move like a guy who was down on his luck, surviving on handouts, pickled on dope or booze or whatever he could afford. He moved like a sprightly killer stalking his prey, right down to the butcher knife he yanked out of his pocket and lugged in his right hand.

I screamed, “Run, Katrina!” and tried to calculate the distance, wondering if I could get there before he raised it over his head and slammed it into her skull.

He turned around and looked at me, even as she turned around and looked at him, and she saw his blade, even as he spun back around and faced her. He was only ten feet from her. I was at least twenty yards away.

Cool as ice, she reached into her purse, yanked out a small canister, held it up like a pistol, and unleashed a spray in his face. The butcher knife was over his head and ready to slash down into her face when he got the full brunt of it. He reeled back for the merest instant, then swung the blade through the air, only Katrina had smartly stepped aside, so he slashed at thin air.

That’s when I got there. I punched him in the back of his head, more to attract attention than to hurt him. He immediately spun around, coughing and rubbing his eyes with one hand, brandishing the butcher knife with the other.

He had no idea who I was, except that I was an enemy. He began swinging the knife wildly through the air, while he used his other hand to wipe his eyes. It was only a matter of time before the pepper spray wore off and his accuracy improved. A butcher knife is a terrific weapon. In the hands of a trained murderer, it only takes one good whack and it’s over. I had no weapon. Or actually, maybe I did. I reached into my pocket and withdrew a pen. I launched a kick at one of his shins and dove at him, hoping he couldn’t get the blade up in time.

We went tumbling onto the cement, him trying to bury the knife in my head, while I brought my right hand up, then swung it down, my pen gouging directly into his right eye socket. I guess I had an adrenaline pump, because I drove it about four inches into his brain. I felt his body tighten and lurch, and he let out a loud scream that sounded perfectly awful, but thankfully didn’t last long.

I rolled off him and Katrina stared down in horror at the Bic pen sticking out of his eye socket. While I hate to be cold about these things, I yanked it out and stuffed it in my pocket, because my fingerprints were on it, and I didn’t want the police to know I’d been there. I’d already killed two men that morning, and it would stretch credulity if they found me with another corpse, like I just happened to be involved in another homicide, and, gee, what a terrifically funny coincidence, huh?

I got up and grabbed Katrina’s arm, then tugged her down the street. Some of the kids I’d seen drinking at the bodega had come around the corner, attracted by the dead man’s scream, and they got a good look at the two of us scurrying away. There was nothing I could do about that, unless I wanted to race back there and threaten them with a bloody Bic pen. From the looks of them, that would be a very stupid idea. This was one of those neighborhoods where seven-year-olds get Uzis for their birthdays. Anyway, with any luck they’d be the kind of kids who’d never tell the police anything, one of those code-of-the-hood things. Even if they did talk, what could they say? They saw a man and woman running away from the crime scene?

Katrina and I intermittently walked and ran, block after block, until I was sure we’d put enough distance between us and the corpse that even a local sweep wouldn’t catch us. I finally dragged her into a pizza shop and we dodged into a booth near the back.

She reached into her purse and withdrew a Handi Wipe, passed it to me, and said, “Wipe your hair. You got splattered by that man’s blood.”

I did as I was told, saying, “Thanks.”

She nodded. “You always show girls such a good time?”

“Not always.”

“No wonder you’re thirty-nine and single.”

“Yeah, no wonder.”

The good news here was that her sense of humor seemed to be coming back. What does that tell you about her? Line her up to get murdered and suddenly she’s all bubbles. Interesting.

“What did we do?” she asked.

“Damned if I know,” I admitted. “But it’s got to be the same people who tried to kill us in Moscow.”

“Not necessarily.”

She was right, of course. There could be two different groups after us. There could be a dozen. But being right, and being right, are two different things. These were the same bastards; I was sure of it. So was she.

I got up and went to the counter and ordered a pizza, partly because I was hungry and partly because I didn’t want to arouse attention from the shop’s proprietors, who were under the perverse impression that their booths were reserved for paying customers.

When I got back to the table, Katrina was playing with a napkin and staring at the tabletop. She looked perfectly calm. It was impossible to tell she was contemplating the fact she’d just nearly gotten her head cleaved in by a murderer wielding a butcher knife.

I said, “You did good back there. It took nerve to pull out that spray while he came after you.”

“Practice, practice, practice. Grow up in TriBeCa back in the good years and life was always exciting.” Her eyes wandered around the shop, then she said, “What are we going to do?”

“We’re not going back to our apartments. We’re not going back to our cars. We better assume they’re very well connected and getting more desperate.”

“The police? The FBI?”

“Eventually. But not until we figure out what to tell them.”

She nodded at that, because we were both lawyers, and the first thing every attorney thinks of is how much not to disclose to the police. Not that either of us would consider lying, but there’s always the tricky question of how high you want to stick your ass in the air. We’d introduced ourselves to the CIA’s most closely held secret asset, hid the truth when somebody tried to kill us in Moscow, fled from a crime scene, and possibly committed a few other misdemeanors-littering even-the sum of which could get us in very ugly trouble with the law. I had not the slightest doubt what General Clapper was going to do to me when this story came out. If I didn’t have so many other things on my mind, I would’ve been contemplating what I wanted to do after I left the Army.

However, we were obviously long past the point where our legal careers were our overriding concerns. I said, “Do we agree we’ve stumbled onto something important enough to cause our deaths?”

She automatically said, “Agreed,” which, considering the circumstances, wasn’t any stretch.

“Do we agree Morrison’s probably innocent, that somebody’s trying to keep us from proving that?”

She hesitated, and in a very lawyerly tone said, “Explain that.”

“The evidence suggests Morrison’s been framed. By whom is debatable, but whoever did it wants to keep it that way. You and I have somewhere, somehow, touched something that puts us at risk.”

“Okay,” she admitted, very practically.

“What is it we touched?”

“You’re the one with the theories. Tell me.”

“Try this,” I said, and she bent forward, her eyes searching my face. “What’s this whole thing about? What was Mary working on all those years? What did Morrison’s arrest solve?”

“The mole hunt.”

“Right. The CIA and FBI knew somebody was giving the Russians things… important things… sensitive things. They caught lots of small fish, and even some big fish-Ames and Hanssen-but that didn’t tie all the knots. The molehunters were still stubbornly plugging away, still following clues, still tracking their prey. Eventually, they’d catch him-or her. It was just a matter of time and circumstance. So the Russians fed them Morrison. They framed him with enough things and in such a way that almost any open questions would be answered.”

“So the mole is still operating?”

“And somehow, we’ve touched something that puts him or her at risk.”

The girl behind the counter called out my number, so I went up and got our pizza. We sat and munched for a while. What I’d said made sense. It wasn’t necessarily correct, but it made sense. There were other explanations, but if I was right about Morrison being innocent then you had to seriously consider this possibility.

And if you agreed with that, you’d agreed with this, too: Whoever did the job on Morrison had gone to a lot of time and trouble. They had had somebody tip off the CIA in the first place. They had planted documents covered with his fingerprints in that vault in Moscow, then released them to the CIA.

All of which added up to this: Whoever did this was an intelligence professional with extraordinary resources, somebody in the CIA or the SVR who knows espionage intimately. Possibly, maybe even definitely, somebody with tentacles in both intelligence services.

Katrina finally said, “The FBI won’t believe a word of it. They’ll think we’re a couple of sleazy attorneys trying to get our client off.”

“Yes, they probably will,” I agreed, digging into a particularly greasy slice of pepperoni with sausage, struggling to ignore its resemblance to the gruesome stuff that had splattered out of the killer’s eye an hour before.

She asked, “Any ideas how to handle that?”

Instead of answering that, I said, “How much do you know about lie detectors?”

“What I learned in law school. They’re considered fairly valid. Some study was done that gave them something like a ninety-eight percent accuracy rate.”

“Do you remember what accounts for the other two percent or so?”

“Remind me.”

“Lie detectors work by sensing changes in your body temperature and normal body rhythms. There are chemicals that fool the machine. Supposedly, you can even train yourself to defeat them, like Buddhist meditation techniques, where you disenfranchise your mind from your body.”

“Your point being?”

I swallowed hard once or twice. “Let’s talk about Mary.” My face turned dark as I added, “I went over and had a chat with her last night. It wasn’t pretty.”

“How ugly was it?”

“She admitted she helped take down her husband. They approached her months ago. I don’t know how big her involvement was, but it had to be substantial because they were reporting back to her on what they were finding.” I squirmed around uncomfortably, then added, “She, uh, well, she also admitted she’s one of Eddie’s witnesses.”

Katrina was toying with a slice of pizza and generously avoiding my eyes. “Do you think there was more to it?”

“I don’t know. She said the Agency had a source that tipped off his treason. I don’t know if she was telling the truth or not, and I’m having a little problem trusting her right now.”

Left unsaid was a great deal, but Katrina was a smart girl and could fill in the blanks. For instance, why did Mary beg me to take this case in the first place? Perhaps because she knew she had an emotional grip on me. Perhaps because I was the kind of sucker every schemer dreams of, the lovelorn loser who was so easily manipulated that he refused to see the forest for the trees.

Katrina was wisely not saying anything, so I finally broke the ice. “So, let’s consider Mary.”

“All right, let’s. One, nobody was in a better position to frame her husband. Yes, she was telling him everything she was doing, but he was telling her everything he was doing, too. Two, she could pass in and out of his office every day, steal documents, take whatever she wanted, and never have to worry about a security check. Three, Morrison’s deputy attache said she was involved in everything in the office. She had all kinds of weapons to use against him.”

“When I confronted Mary last night, as I mentioned, she admitted the phone tappers and the trackers were reporting everything back to her. She had her finger on every pulse. She knew exactly what buttons to push, exactly how to make it work.”

Katrina broke eye contact with me and began staring at the tabletop, like she was suddenly distracted.

I said, “What?”

“You met with her last night, right?”

“Right.”

“And she knew we were in Moscow, right?”

“Yeah. So?”

Katrina didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to say anything. She’d given me the hints and knew better than to draw the painful conclusions for me. They were, after all, inescapable, unavoidable, and emotionally crushing. Mary had arranged the hits against us. She certainly had the reach and resources. As the former station chief in Moscow she no doubt knew enough hoodlums she could hire to take us out. And as a resident of the D.C. area all her life, she wouldn’t have any trouble locating some street scum to kill us. Money sure as hell wasn’t a problem.

But why? What had I done that would cause her to want me dead? Was she worried I might expose Alexi? Or perhaps she sensed that Katrina and I were closing in on her? Or both?

Katrina was studying a paper napkin. “Well, what do you want to do next?”

“We’re in way over our heads. We have to tell the FBI.”

She nodded, and I added, “I know a guy. He used to be a JAG officer, got out, tried a big firm, never got picked up for partner, so he signed up with the Feds. Jimmy Belafonte… I haven’t seen him in seven years, but last I heard he’s working in the headquarters here. He’s not the sharpest tool in the shed, but he’ll do.”

I went to the pay phone and asked the operator for the number to FBI headquarters, then asked the Bureau’s operator to put me through to Belafonte. A secretary answered, “Money-laundering Division.”

“Sean Drummond for Jimmy Belafonte, please.”

I was immediately switched. “Special Agent Belafonte,” a voice answered.

“Jimmy, Sean Drummond. I don’t know if you remember me?”

“Sure. JAG School, right? And according to the news, you’re doing the Morrison case.”

“Same Drummond. I need to meet you-privately.”

“Catch up on old times, huh? Love to, buddy, only I’m busy the rest of this week. How about next Thursday?”

“How about in forty-five minutes somewhere outside your building? I killed three guys this morning and I need to talk about it.”

“Some reason we can’t meet here?” he asked, sounding suddenly alarmed.

“Yeah, I don’t want to get shot by a sniper walking in the front door of your building. I know that sounds paranoid, but believe me, I’ve got good reasons. I’m calling because I trust you, Jimmy.”

“There’s, uh, uh, there’s a Barnes amp; Noble with a coffee shop on M Street in Georgetown. How about there?” he asked, sounding tentative.

“Forty-five minutes. I’ll be there,” I said before he could back out on me.

Until this moment, I’d been stupid beyond words. I’d been playing in other people’s sandboxes, and I was the only guy too blind to recognize I was out of my depth. Everybody had warned me: my client, Mary, Alexi. My libido was too puffed up to hear them. I’d nearly gotten myself killed, and Katrina also.

Somebody was making a point of showing me my own limitations.