The Kingmaker

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Katrina and I drove through the gate to the CIA headquarters at seven the next morning. We’d been up since four, making copies of the two tapes, mailing one set to Imelda and the second to General Clapper, whom I trusted to do the right thing in the event anything happened to Katrina and me.

I called Clapper at home before we left the hotel room. I outlined what we’d discovered, and, as you might imagine, he wasn’t all that happy that the CIA had used one of his officers and a temporary civilian employee as decoys.

Which isn’t to say he was happy with me, either. He most definitely wasn’t.

I then asked Clapper to recuse me and assign a new counsel. I’d become so personally involved in the case, recusal was a foregone conclusion. If I didn’t voluntarily submit myself, some pissed-off judge would dismiss me, and I’d risk disbarment for malpractice. He said he’d take care of it. It was the only moment in the phone call that he sounded the least bit happy. Who could blame him?

I didn’t tell him how I kidnapped Martin and persuaded him to confess. Some things would be too stupid for words, and full disclosure on my part fell cleanly under that heading. As I said earlier, smart lawyers don’t lie; like clever moths around flames, they just don’t get too close to the truth.

Mary and Johnson were actually waiting for us at the front entrance of their big building. Johnson shook hands and tried to act warm and convivial, which showed he wasn’t stupid, because I held his fate in my hands. Mary leaned forward to give me a friendly peck on the cheek, and when I drew back she accepted it gracefully, like there was no harm in trying.

We went up in the elevator to a big conference room filled with men and women in crisp blue and gray suits. The room reeked of self-contentment, smugness, a clubby bonhomie. These were the same folks who’d spent ten years chasing a mole and were cocksure they’d nailed him and dragged him up to the altar of justice. The mood in that room was haughtiness. They had beartrapped the most elusive spy in history, the same squirrel who’d eluded so many of their predecessors.

That mood wasn’t going to last long.

There were seats reserved for Katrina and me, even down to name placards, which showed Johnson was going a bit over the top to treat us like visiting dignitaries.

He stood up and introduced us to everybody, then put on a melodramatically grim smile and said, “Major Drummond, please play your tape.”

I did. And the whole room sat spellbound, right to the end. Johnson let three or four pregnant seconds pass before he said, “That was the voice of Milt Martin, the former Assistant Secretary of State for the former Soviet republics.”

“Jesus Christ,” one guy muttered. “Oh shit,” a blonde girl at the end of the table erupted. One guy actually pounded the table with his fist. It took another moment for the emotional chaos to subside.

A silver-haired guy who looked like an aging movie star roared, “That goddamn tape is for real?”

A coy grin popped onto Johnson’s face. “Major Drummond, I’d like you to meet Richard Semblick, who was in charge of the team that nabbed General Morrison. He spent three years hunting for our mole, and it was on his recommendation that we focused on your client.”

Semblick’s face instantly turned pink, and I knew immediately what was going on here. Johnson and Mary were choreographing this meeting to cover their own butts. Johnson had that attitude like, Okay, all you putzes screwed up and made us bag the wrong guy, but thankfully I took care of matters myself, so all the rest of you inept idiots bow to my greatness.

I peeked at Mary’s face, and her eyes were fixed on me. Her expression was beseeching, like, Drummond, please, fight your self-righteous instincts… play along with us and we’ll play along with you, too.

I gave a fleeting thought to laying it all out, to explaining to everybody what lying phonies Mary and Johnson were, but that’s all it was: a fleeting thought. We had a deal, and although they hadn’t fully articulated their expectations, we were three-quarters of the way there and I couldn’t afford to jump back to go.

I smiled. “Mr. Johnson’s right. With his help, and Mary’s inducement, we found the real mole. I couldn’t have done it without them.”

From a reductionist’s standpoint, this was true-if they hadn’t turned us into sitting ducks, with deadly killers hunting us down, I wouldn’t have had the “inducement” to do it without them.

Johnson winked at me, like this was just so much fun, and he was just so damned glad I thought so too. He said, “We’ve initiated a nationwide manhunt for Martin, who was last seen near Garrison, New York. The FBI have notified all airports and seaports, and Martin’s photo has been distributed at all border crossing points. Canada would be his obvious choice, but given that goddamn honker of his, he’ll be easy to recognize.”

This ignited loudly appreciative guffaws around the room, because every soul there was in overdrive, straining desperately hard to work themselves back into Johnson’s good graces. Most had that sheepish expression little kids get when they poop in their drawers and everybody’s looking at them like, Hey, what’s that awful stench.

The realization was sinking in that the arrest and public roasting of Bill Morrison had been a king-size goof. Somebody on the Russian side had played them for a fool, and heads were going to have to roll, because this was the CIA after all, and Agency-bashing is maybe the favorite sport of the national press and Congress.

A fair number of the quicker-witted folks around that table were eyeing one another, obviously trying to strike instant alliances and make someone else be the “Weakest-Link-good-bye” guy.

The moment was ripe for me to say, “You can at least recoup some face. We know who Martin’s controller was, right?”

“Yurichenko,” said Johnson, picking up on his line in this passion play.

“Right. So, what if we were to go get Yurichenko’s fair-haired boy? What if we were to bring Arbatov out for all the world to see?”

A roomful of people pondered that. At least half the folks here were going to spend the rest of their careers crammed into a janitor’s closet in the basement trying to figure out how many angels you can fit on the head of a pin. They were vulnerable to any suggestion that would make them look less stupid than they really were.

“Plus,” I quickly added, “you’ve obviously got a bigger problem.”

“And which one would that be?” asked Mary, reading from her script.

“If you listened closely to that tape, you heard Martin confess that he told Yurichenko that Alexi Arbatov was a traitor. Martin may have told him that as long as ten years ago, when Morrison first disclosed it to him.”

Katrina, who’d been struggling to disguise her disgust, suddenly said, “What Major Drummond is telling you is that you have to rescue Alexi. He has given you information for over a decade, and you therefore owe him a great deal.”

Johnson did not even pause. “Here’s the way I see it. We have a chance to repay Yurichenko. Okay, he turned one of our key people. Well, we turned one of his, too. In a zero-sum game everybody’s equal.”

This obviously was the deal we’d struck the night before-well, except for the fact that Katrina and I were going to be used as pawns by Mary and her boss to restore their own legitimacy. But hey, in the grand scheme, it’s no big thing, right? If the law has taught me one thing, it’s that there’s no such thing as full justice. Consider yourself lucky if the meter simply tilts in your direction.

You could swear we were at a neck-snapping convention, the heads were nodding so furiously. Then there were a few tentative smiles. Then actual guffaws. Then the pros took over. They began talking back and forth as they tried to come up with a plan.