The Kingmaker

CHAPTER FORTY

I spent a miserable week in the military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, while the docs probed and checked every square inch of my body for infections and diseases I might’ve picked up at Camp 18. I had a blood infection, but they cleared that up in a few days. They emptied pharmacies full of drugs into my system for the pneumonia. The whole week they also kept intravenous tubes hooked into my arms so they could restore my vitamin balance, or my blood cell count, or maybe my sperm count. Nobody told me, so how the hell was I supposed to know?

In between my medical treatments, two of those glum-faced Agency guys kept coming into my room to debrief me. I went over everything. I told them about Viktor’s admissions, and about Milt Martin, and then about life at Camp 18. They taped every word and listened patiently, but I had no idea what they thought. Like most debriefers, they were as uncommunicative as brick walls. Every time I asked them what had happened in the past five months they just stared blankly and said they weren’t allowed to talk about it.

After the hospital released me, I actually took a civilian flight back to the States. The first thing I did after I was seated was bribe the stewardess into giving me six extra bottles of scotch. I deserved a little reward. Although unfortunately, my body was so battered and depleted that I was in a coma after the third one.

I woke up with an incredible headache and a stewardess shaking my arm. The plane was empty of passengers; it was just me and the cleaning crew. I stumbled down the aisle, feeling spectacularly sorry for myself. Was this any way to treat a returning hero?

I made it through customs in record time, and just as I was leaving the sealed-off area, I spotted a short black woman in civvies flapping her arms and running toward me. If I didn’t know her better, I’d swear she was excited to see me.

She walked right up and threw her arms around me, hugging me tightly, like a mother taking care of a child she knew had suffered some grievous misfortune. We stayed like that nearly a quarter of a minute, and it felt wonderful.

Then she backed away and her face got scrunched up. “You look like shit.”

“Well, hell, Imelda,” I said, “it sucked pretty bad.”

She shook her head and sort of half smiled. “Don’t you try any of that bitchin’ and moanin’ crap on me. I ain’t got no time for wimps.”

“But I-”

“But you nothin’,” she said, still smiling.

“Thanks anyway. I mean it, Imelda. Thank you. I owe you my life.”

She shrugged as if it was no big thing. “I gave ’em the tapes last week. General Clapper said it was part of the deal.”

“It was,” I admitted. “They give you a hard time?”

“Them bastards can’t spell hard time. They tried to turn up the heat pretty good for a while. Them people also sneaked into the office and my apartment, lookin’ for them tapes. Like I’d leave ’em in plain sight that way. Hummph.”

I put a hand on her arm. You have to know Imelda. If she said they tried to give her a pretty hard time, that meant they threatened to rip out her fingernails and kill every last member of her family.

I knew when I sent her the tapes, I’d just taken out the best life insurance a man could have. When I was still missing after a week, I knew Imelda would contact the right people and threaten the hell out of them with exposure. She’d know just how to handle it, too. Thirty years as an Army sergeant is the equivalent of a Ph. D. in making others suffer.

I kind of felt sorry for the Agency. They had never run into the likes of Imelda Pepperfield. She doesn’t respond well to pressure. Which is another understatement, because squeezing Imelda is like punching a porcupine. It ends up hurting you a lot more than it hurts her.

I finally said, “Imelda, I hate to sound ungrateful, but what took so damned long?”

She looked down at the floor in evident embarrassment. “It was part of the deal. Them CIA people said you couldn’t come back till they was ready.”

I filed that one away, as I patted her on the arm. “Don’t worry about it. Really. I was having a great time. I was cursing when they dragged me out of the special resort they sent me to. I’d made all kinds of friends. I miss them already.”

Anyway, she led me out to the parking lot where her black Mazda Miata was parked. I’d never reckoned Imelda as the cutesy Miata type, but then nobody’s ever exactly what you think they are, are they? We stayed on the Dulles Toll Road till we got to the Tysons Corner exit. She took the exit, and I asked where she was going, and she just shrugged. The next thing I knew we were pulling up to the front of Morton’s Steakhouse. A guy in a silly-looking uniform took her car and gave her a ticket.

When we entered, Imelda murmured something to the maitre d’, while I stood frozen in the entrance, literally swooning from the aroma of cooking steaks and lobsters and prime rib. The food here probably wasn’t nearly as good as Camp 18’s, but I thought, What the hell… why not give the place a chance?

Oddly enough, two stiff-looking types in dark suits were standing beside the entrance to the private room we were led to. I snarled at both of them as we walked in. For some odd reason I’d developed a real grudge against intelligence people.

Katrina came running at me. She threw her arms around my shoulders and kissed me right on the lips. Then she backed away, and Alexi was there with his hand held out.

“God, it’s great to see you two,” I blurted, and it really was. We shook hands like a couple of old pals.

“You’re, uh, you are still Alexi, aren’t you?” I asked.

“No, I am now Bill Clinton.”

“Bill Clinton?” I asked. “What asshole thought up that cover name?”

“Is only big joke,” he chuckled. “I am developing American sense of humor.”

“Who’s teaching you? The CIA?”

This one passed right by him. Maybe it wasn’t funny anyway. Maybe I needed a bit of work on my sense of humor, too. Five months in Siberia can cause you to lose a few steps.

He very seriously said, “Unfortunately, I am also being told I cannot give you real names. Tonight, Katrina and I will be moved to a new location to assume these new identities. Is all set up, because Viktor has people trying to find us. Mary says nobody can know of our new identities, not even you.”

Katrina was rolling her eyes. “You should see the shit we went through to have this dinner with you. What’s with these people?”

“It’s this whole concept of friendship. Very mysterious to them, trust me.”

Did I sound bitter or what?

Katrina said, “They’ve been treating us like little kids. We’ve been living in safe houses for months, while Alexi was getting debriefed.”

“I’ll bet that was fun.”

“Fun, my ass,” she replied, pushing a strand of hair off her forehead as she looked me over from head to toe. “But we obviously got the better part of the deal. You look like shit. Why didn’t you follow us out of that bakery? We waited until Jackler insisted we couldn’t wait any longer.”

I briefly thought of telling her the truth. I considered saying, “Hey, remember when that lady said to abort, and you blew her off? Oh, and you blew me off when I reminded you? Well, guess what? These last five months of my life, that was the result.”

I didn’t, though. I wasn’t about to. The truth was, I’d just spent five months being ridiculously envious of Alexi. Corny as I know this sounds, Katrina was the kind of girl I should’ve fallen in love with, because she believed in her man, and because she was willing to risk her life for him. I, on the other hand, had been in love with a manipulative schemer who chose a complete jerk over me and still had the gall to bring me back into the picture, so she could use me like a dishrag.

So instead, I said, “There was this really cute girl over at the next table, and she, uh… ah, Christ, you don’t want to hear about it.”

She looked at me like I was crazy as hell.

I gave them both a big smile. “So are you two getting married or something silly like that?”

Alexi grinned proudly. “I asked Katrina two months ago.”

“And she told you no, right? She said she’d fallen head over heels for this very dashing, extraordinarily handsome Army lawyer, and she could never settle for a lesser man.”

Alexi obviously had a long way to go before he’d understand American sarcasm. “Uh, no, Sean, this was not what she was saying.”

Katrina took his arm and shot me a bullet of a look. “He’s joking, Alexi. And for Godsakes, don’t copy his sense of humor.”

“Ah, I see,” said Alexi, trying to manufacture a polite laugh.

“So have you set a date?” I asked.

“We must wait until we are resettled and have new identities.”

“Well, I’m very pleased for both of you. I really am.”

And I really was. Real life doesn’t always produce storybook endings the way movies do. And I felt a certain grim satisfaction in being the Cupid who gave these two a chance-I just never realized that Cupid had to go through so much shit to make these romances work.

We sat down and a waiter immediately appeared. I ordered a steak and a prime rib and a lobster, with three or four side orders, and four desserts, and made an obscene pig out of myself. The CIA was paying for this dinner. I wanted to make it a night they’d remember for a long time.

Between shoveling forkfuls of food down my throat, I told Alexi and Katrina all about Viktor and his cabal, and Alexi said he and the CIA had already figured it out. The second he escaped, they had put two and two together and it all fell into place. I tried to fill in a few details they hadn’t guessed, and he looked surprised, but I suspect he was only being polite. He knew Viktor better than anybody. And with that brain of Alexi’s, he probably guessed things Viktor had done that even I didn’t know about.

He finally said, “So you have heard what happened to Milton Martin?”

“No, my barracks at Camp 18 didn’t have a satellite dish,” I replied, stuffing another slice of steak through my lips. “The next one over did, but it was filled with real selfish bastards who wouldn’t let us come over and watch.”

“A week after Katrina and I arrived, Martin jumped off a thirty-story building in Manhattan.”

“He jumped?”

“There was suicide note left on rooftop saying he was most unhappy with life and professionally disappointed. Was of course phony. Viktor was eliminating loose ends. Martin had completed his purpose, yes? Was of no more use to Russia… and was time to eliminate source of possible embarrassment.”

“Gee, I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, wondering if maybe Yurichenko and the CIA had cooked up some kind of deal to keep Martin from becoming the newest sensation. “I hope the concrete he landed on was damned hard.”

By eleven o’clock my three plates were empty, and I’d finished my dessert. I’d also generously helped Imelda and Katrina finish theirs, and the third champagne bottle was empty. I was drunk, and hugging and kissing both of them, and saying all kinds of goofy shit, and was right on the verge of puking my guts out.

One of the security agents knocked on the door and stuck his head in. He politely said it was time for Alexi and Katrina to go, because they had a late flight to catch. We exchanged more hugs and kisses, knowing we’d never see one another again.

Imelda drove me back to my apartment. When I let myself in, I noticed that somebody had paid my rent and electricity and phone bills, because everything was in working order. It had to be Imelda, of course. She never misses a beat. Of course, there’d be a big IOU on my desk in the morning. With compounded interest, too, since, like I said, she never misses a beat.

I slept in till ten, when I heard a knocking on my door. I was in my pajama bottoms when I opened it.

Mary was standing there with that awesome smile. “Hey skinny, welcome back.”

“I, uh, well, it, uh… thank you.”

She walked in without asking. She looked better than I’d ever seen her, and I noted that being separated from Bill obviously agreed with her. Her cheeks had a healthy glow, and she had on another miniskirt and a blouse tight enough to show what great uptoppers and shapely legs God loaned her. Her eyes shifted around my apartment, which was small enough to fit into the maid’s bathroom in Homer’s house.

“Nice place,” she said.

“Bullshit,” I replied. “It’s an armpit. This a personal or professional visit?”

“A bit of both,” she said, then leaned against a wall and studied me with those luminous blue eyes. “How bad was it over there?”

“Bad enough. Let’s just say I doubt they have much of a recidivism problem. The odds against surviving that first prison tour just ain’t that high.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, and she did look sorry. “When you didn’t come back to the plane, I was frantic. There just wasn’t anything I could do, Sean.”

“It wasn’t your fault. I didn’t blame you.”

“We tried to abort.”

“I know.”

We’d exhausted that subject, and I was fairly sure she’d already read through my debriefing materials, so she knew everything that had happened. She walked over to a bookshelf and began staring at titles-the point was, she wasn’t looking at me.

Her voice sounded nervous. “You’re not going to believe this.”

“You’d be surprised what I’d believe these days.”

“I received a promotion. After the operation ended, I was made an SES 2. I’m Johnson’s new deputy.”

I shook my head, but not in disbelief. “Well that’s really something.”

“Nobody was more surprised than me,” she said, pretending that it was true, which it obviously wasn’t. She’d turned on her own husband to get ahead, and when that had fallen apart, she’d covered her own ass better than anybody. She had great instincts and wonderful reflexes. Why wouldn’t they promote her?

“So how’s your husband?” I asked, since there was still this five-month gap in my knowledge of anything that had happened outside the frozen wasteland called Camp 18.

“He’s fine. After you left, a new lawyer was appointed.”

“Yeah, I know. How’d he do?”

“You left him a birthday gift. We brought Eddie Golden over to the headquarters and made him listen to your tape. We were very blunt. We told him we could no longer support the charges of treason or murder. He wasn’t happy.”

“I’ll bet,” I said, trying to swallow my disappointment at missing that particular meeting. Of all the unfair things about this case, that was the most painful. I’d earned the right to see the blood drain from Eddie’s face as he realized what a horse’s ass he looked like after all those leaks and briefings to the press about Morrison. That’s the thing about laying it all out for the public the way he had. When your face appears on the cover of People magazine, you better deliver.

“After that,” Mary continued, “a deal was worked out. Bill was allowed to retire as a major general in return for his confession on adultery.”

“As a major general? But he was only on the list. He never even wore the stars.”

She sort of dipped her head. “We wanted the deal very badly, and Bill was furious about this whole thing. We all agreed he had a right to be mad. We were willing to offer him a concession or two.”

I was suddenly suspicious. “And why’d you want a deal so badly?”

She stopped looking at my bookshelf. She stared out the window instead, anywhere but at my accusatory eyes. “Because of the way we had to explain this, Sean. The story we eventually released was that we thought we had an impeccable source in Moscow. He made some grand claims and we believed him. We paid him a great deal of money to turn over certain documents we thought were authentic. Only later did we learn that he was a forger and the documents were fake. There was no traitor.”

“You’re shitting me!” I yelled.

She acted like I hadn’t said anything. “It was embarrassing for the Agency to have to admit it had been gulled by a common thief, but we stomached it. It was a damned sight better than the real story.”

“And why is it better?”

She finally turned around and faced me. “Because for fifty years, we and the Russians were pointing tens of thousands of nuclear warheads at each other. Because the current situation might not be perfect, but it’s a massive improvement over the past. We’re talking about cutting our nuclear arsenals in half. They’re working with us on ending terrorism. Together, we’re looking at hundreds of ways to cooperate and make the world safer and more peaceful. A whole new partnership is being born. Don’t you get it?”

“And what about Viktor and his plot? That doesn’t bother you?”

“Sean, for somebody so smart, you can miss the most obvious things. Look at it practically. He ended Communism. He ushered in a democracy. Do you think we and the Russians would be having the discussions we’re having today if the old system was still in place? He’s made the world a much better and safer place. We’re not going to complain about how he did it. That’s ancient history. The important thing is the future.”

I stared hard at her for a few moments. She stared right back. And slowly, reluctantly, even painfully, it dawned on me. I didn’t want to admit it, but it was true. If you looked at it practically, she was right. His motive and means might’ve been pathetic, but in the grand scheme of things, that was irrelevant.

Mary turned back and lifted a book off the shelf. She opened it halfway and acted like she was glancing at the pages. “The point is, Sean, we got you back, and we expect you to honor your deal. Everybody’s happy, so don’t upset the apple cart.”

“Well, there’s still a bit of a problem.”

“And what’s that?”

“It’s the little matter of the five months you all left me rotting in a Russian prison camp. Imelda told you to get me out of there a week after I disappeared. Why didn’t you?”

She was still staring inside that book. “Oh, that. Don’t blame the Agency. And don’t blame Sergeant Pepperfield, either. Trust me, we don’t ever want to have to deal with that woman again.” She looked up from the book and finally looked directly at me. “It was you. You gave us no choice.”

“How’s that?” I asked, sounding angry, because I was.

“Sean, this thing had to be cleaned up. The wrangling with Golden and with Bill, and getting the right story out to the public, that took time. We considered the stakes, and your stubborness, and decided it was best to leave you there until everything was taken care of.”

“It was that cold?”

She ignored this. “We had to be sure that even once you were back you couldn’t climb up on some self-righteous horse and do any damage. If you walk out that door right now and hold a press conference, it won’t work. The bodies have all been buried, Alexi and Katrina have disappeared, and we have the last of the tapes. Don’t be angry, Sean, just accept it. Put it behind you.”

This was obviously the point of her visit. She’d been sent over here by her bosses to ascertain whether I’d be cooperative or not. They were still using her to use me. I spent another moment acting like a potted plant, long enough that she knew she had me. Her intuition about me always had been right on the mark. She closed the book and slipped it back on the shelf. She finally turned and faced me.

“I’ve given a lot of thought to us. It would never work, would it?”

“No, I don’t guess it would,” I admitted. “But one question.”

“What?”

“Why’d you marry that bastard in the first place? Why did you dump me?”

I don’t think she expected me to ask that. She looked confused for a brief span. Then no longer confused, just mildly embarrassed. “Sean, marrying you was never in the cards. I’m sorry. We’re too… different.”

She patted me on the cheek and left, closing the door quietly behind her. I stared at the doorknob. The truth is, sometimes what you think is true really is the furthest thing from it. Like Yurichenko. If you stare through the prism from one angle, he’s a monstrously bad man. But if you turn that prism just slightly to the right, he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.

I’d always thought losing Mary was the worst thing that ever happened to me. When a woman is that beautiful, it makes it damned hard to turn that prism. You don’t really want to find the imperfections.

I had only one more thing to do. I made a few calls and then took a shower, got dressed, and drove to my office. Then I drove across the river and into Washington, over to Eddie’s imposing office building. I took the elevator up to the twelfth floor and was gratified to see there were no more guards with Uzis. Eddie’s artifices were being taken away. Too bad-Eddie lived for the trappings.

I walked down the same hallways I’d been down all those months before. There was no noise or activity in the offices. Boxes were stacked everywhere, apparently waiting to be picked up and trucked to a secure storage facility where nobody would be allowed to see them for fifty years. The whole place had that mood of a carnival that was closing down and getting ready to move on to the next town.

The ringmaster was seated in the conference room when I opened the door and looked in.

“Afternoon, Drummond,” he said, staring at me curiously, obviously wondering why I’d asked him to meet me here.

I grinned. “Hey, Eddie. Tough luck the way this whole thing turned out, huh?”

“It wasn’t my fault,” he immediately snapped. “They tossed me the wrong man. It was their fuckup, not mine.”

“That’s one way to look at it. I just wanted to drop by and leave you something to remember me by.” I tossed the baseball bat at his feet. It had been snapped in half.

He was still sputtering curses when I walked out. See, the thing with life is, you win a few and you lose a few, and if you don’t relish the few you win, well, then you go crazy. I’ve always been an optimist at heart, anyway. I mean, there’s plenty of girls other than Mary, right? And my stomach was still filled with all that Morton’s steak and lobster that the U.S. government even paid for. Plus I was back to sleeping in my own bed, without anybody stealing my blanket. Now I ask you: How could it get any better than that?