The Kingmaker (15 page)

“We talked. She said she had no idea,” I replied, discreetly withholding that part where she described him as Walter Mitty in green drag.

“I was important,” he insisted with a shocked look, completely unaware how asinine that sounded.

Rather than waste more time on that debatable point, I changed tacks. “Alexi Arbatov. Shift back to him. Where’d you two meet?”

“In Georgia, after the second massacre.”

“Did you approach him, or did he approach you?”

“Neither. The Georgians held a big funeral for their slain countrymen, and we both ended up there.”

“Why?”

“It was a good place to test the temperatures. Coincidentally, Alexi and I both thought we’d melt in with the crowds, to see how serious it was becoming.”

“And what? You ended up next to each other?”

“Well . . . yes, exactly. Then, before I knew it, I was being harassed by a group of KGB goons demanding to see my papers and asking what I thought I was doing there. Alexi pulled them off to the side and explained that the Soviet government didn’t want any serious incidents with the Americans. He told them to back off.”

“Just like that?”

“No, not just like that,” he angrily responded. “They knew who he was.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because he was Yurichenko’s protégé.”

“And who was Yurichenko?”

“Not
was
—who
is
Viktor Yurichenko.”

“Okay . . . who
is
he?”

“The head of the SVR, the agency responsible for external security.”

“And Arbatov was his buddy?”

Morrison was shaking his head, unable to believe he had to explain these things. “At the time, Yurichenko was the equivalent of a three-star in the KGB. The man was legendary. He’d
joined the KGB late in the Second World War, and there were rumors he put Kim Il Sung in power in North Korea.”

“That’s nice to have on your résumé. How’d Yurichenko do that?”

“Kim Il Sung spent the Second World War hiding out in KGB training camps in Siberia. Yurichenko was his controller, and when the war ended, he accompanied Kim back into the country, then orchestrated the Soviet support that allowed Kim to elbow everybody else aside.”

“That’s ancient history. Let’s go back to Arbatov in Georgia.”

“Well, we began talking. It took a while, but I made him feel comfortable, and he began to open up. He said Gorbachev was a fool for sending in the KGB to batter these poor wretches. The old system was dying. Gorbachev couldn’t point his finger toward a new future and keep his feet planted in the past.”

I said, “So you figured he was a pretty good guy?”

“Drummond, Alexi was serious. And he told me his boss, Yurichenko, felt the same way.”

I gave him my you’re-full-of-crap look. “This guy Arbatov sidles up next to you, a couple of KGB thugs threaten you, he steps in to save you, then he starts talking about what a hash this whole Communist thing is. You don’t see where that might look suspicious? Where some folks might even conclude he was worming his way into your confidence?”

“It wasn’t like that. I swear it wasn’t.”

I shook my head. My oval-into-a-round-hole theory seemed to be springing some very nasty leaks. With this guy it was axiomatic that every step forward was two steps back. I could feel the frustration welling up in my chest, and sensed that if I didn’t immediately invent an excuse to leave, I might be facing a murder charge.

Walking to the car, I said to Katrina, “Incidentally, you did a good job back there. That good cop/bad cop stunt was very convincing.”

“Think so?” she asked.

“Oscar material.”

“Then I should thank you for making it easy.”

“What’s that mean?”

“You seem to enjoy pissing him off.”

“I’m trying to get the truth. It’s for his own good.”

“Arbeit macht frei,”
she replied.

“Meaning what?”

“It was on a sign that hung over Auschwitz concentration camp. It means ‘Work will set you free.’ ”

I was sure she was sending me another of those subtle messages, but I’m a very black-and-white, meat-and-potatoes sort, so it went clear over my head.

“Well, anyway,” I said, “you try to track down Miss I-got-screwed-by-my-boss-and-all-I’ve-got-to-show-for-it-is-this-unemployment-check. I’ll see what I can come up with on our other big lead.”

We drove back to our fancy digs and got back to work, which for me meant investigating Alexi Arbatov, which wasn’t going to be hard, since I knew exactly where to start my research.

When I mentioned I used to be in the infantry, I meant I used to be part of something called the outfit, which is one of those units in the United States Army you never heard of. It does super-sensitive, spooky little things like follow Noriega around before you invade him, or infiltrate the Iraqi capital a few days before the Gulf War air campaign to knock out the central computers that control their entire air defense system—things like that.

I spent five years in that unit before two or three bullets did enough damage to my internal organs that I could no longer run marathons—which was frankly a relief—or stay in the outfit—which frankly wasn’t.

This was why I went to law school, but it also left me some fairly good contacts in the intelligence community. For example,
this was where I first met Morrison. Aside from that, I had fond memories of the outfit.

I called Lieutenant Colonel Charlie Becker, who used to be the intell officer of our little unit, and had moved on to something bigger and better called the National Intelligence Council, or NIC.

I said, “Hey, Charlie, Drummond here.”

And he said, “Hey, Sean. What you doin’?”

“Still a JAG guy. In fact, I’m defending a guy named William Morrison. Know him?”

“I know him. He’s a prick. Want my advice?”

“Sure, Charlie, what’s your advice?”

“Sandbag him. Do your worst job and let the bastard fry. I never liked him anyway, but that fucker dishonored our uniform and doesn’t deserve to breathe.”

I perhaps failed to mention that Charlie Becker’s a very tough guy who doesn’t mince words, an unusual quality among military intelligence officers, who, fairly or not, are considered somewhat effete by the more manly combat branches. They are broadly regarded as wimpy, overintellectualized types who are very adept at saying infuriatingly ambivalent things such as, “On the one hand this, and on the other hand, that.” Charlie was an exception to this rule. He could bench almost four hundred pounds and used to be an All-America heavyweight wrestler at the University of Wisconsin. Charlie could kill me with his spit.

I said, “Well, I took this oath when I became a lawyer and—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Can the horseshit. How can I help you defend the traitorous bastard?”

“I need two profiles. Two Russian spy guys. One’s named Yurichenko, and the other’s named Arbatov.”

“Viktor and Alexi,” he said in his subtle way, letting me know he was leaps and bounds ahead of me. He added, “There’s always lots of requests on both of them, so I could ask and not draw attention. Especially Yurichenko.”

“You know about him?”

“Does a Catholic know about the Pope?”

“No kidding?”

“I keep a blown-up picture of him above my desk. When I grow up I want to be just like him.”

“So you like him?”

“Like him? The man’s a walking plague. He’s the best you ever saw. I hate his guts. I wish he was on our side.”

Coming from Charlie, this was high praise indeed, because he has very rigorous standards. I gave him my Washington office address, and he promised to bring over the files within a few hours. I told him to hand-deliver them to Imelda, and by the time I landed at Ronald Reagan Airport and drove over to my office, she had the two very important files Charlie had brought over.

I tromped into my office and opened Yurichenko’s first. Viktor Yurichenko was estimated to be somewhere in his mid-seventies. Since no foreigner had ever laid eyes on his KGB file, this estimation was based on the fact that he joined the KGB in 1944, when he was anywhere from eighteen to twenty-two years old. He was a spymaster’s spymaster—those were the exact words used in the file, and human intelligence files aren’t like book reviews, so it’s rare to see any kind of tribute. Nobody was too sure exactly how many incredible operations he’d pulled off, although, in addition to that stunt in North Korea, he was believed to be responsible for recruiting Castro, for helping North Vietnam win the war, and for penetrating the CIA and FBI on countless occasions. I saw why my old buddy called him a plague. He sounded like a one-man cold war.

Yurichenko was a chess aficionado, which had brought him to numerous international events, where he was known to sit in the back row and critique the moves of the likes of Bobby Fischer and Gary Kasparov. Several times the CIA had positioned agents in his vicinity; they swore Yurichenko had predicted every move the players would make, within seconds after their opponents moved. Yet to the best anyone could tell, he’d never
participated in any international chess events himself. He seemed content to sit on the sideline and observe others.

When Boris Yeltsin disbanded the KGB back in 1991, it was widely thought that Yurichenko would be near the top of the blacklist, having been the mastermind of so many cold war intelligence coups that he was virtually a poster boy for the old system. Recall that Yeltsin was disbanding the KGB to show the West and his own people that a new day had dawned, that the bloody-handed practitioners of dirty tricks were no longer employable by the new state. To everybody’s surprise, Yeltsin made Yurichenko the head of the SVR, the Russian equivalent of the CIA.

One source reported that Yurichenko had smelled what was coming and had secretly approached Yeltsin long before the breakup. For several years he had provided Yeltsin with insights about what was happening in the world, in addition to early warnings about Gorbachev’s efforts to squelch Yeltsin and his movement. In short, Yurichenko had ingratiated himself with the upcoming leader, although whether from ruthless self-interest or a genuine belief that the old system was so rotten it should collapse, nobody was too clear about.

He’d kept a generally low profile since taking over the SVR. He’d visited the United States three times to attend seminars and meet with each new CIA chief who came to office during his reign. The assessors suspected that he merely dropped by to get firsthand impressions of his competition; this, about the same guy who sat in on all the big international chess championships to observe the players. I wondered if he was as good at predicting the moves of our past three CIA chiefs. Or maybe the past ten?

He was described as a meticulously neat man who dressed like an old world diplomat in tailored three-piece wool suits. Two Agency psychiatrists had sat across from him at one marathon meeting and tried to assess him. They had walked off with wildly divergent impressions. Both agreed he was highly
intelligent, but one considered him a cold fish, while the other thought he was charming. One found him uncompassionate; the other insisted his conscience was highly evolved. One said he had an enlarged ego; the other said he was humble to the point of subdued. And so on. Either the two shrinks had split personalities themselves or Yurichenko was an incredibly deceptive chameleon who could convince two simultaneous and highly skilled observers he was showing two different colors.

I stared at the photo Charlie had kindly tucked into the packet. The shot must have been taken covertly, because Yurichenko had that relaxed, unposed look. He was seated alone in a chair in what looked like a hotel lobby. He had snow white hair and thick white eyebrows, wore old-fashioned gold-rimmed spectacles, and had ordinary, moderately attractive features. Hundreds of tiny creases were cluttered around his mouth and eyes, giving the impression of a sense of humor. He looked like a skinny Santa Claus, sans that big beard and those long locks. He had never married and had no known children.

I opened the packet on Alexi Arbatov. This time I began with his photo—I wanted a physical impression of the guy who perhaps bagged my client like a three-legged deer.

He had dark hair, dark eyes, and features that somehow managed to seem both sharp and soft: sharp, like he had a lot of brainjuice and didn’t miss much; soft, like friendly, but not pretentiously so. It was what you would call a beguiling face—damned handsome, only the reassuring, drag-this-boy-home-to-meet-Mama kind of handsome. There was a mole on his left cheek. I was reminded of John Boy Walton, everybody’s favorite boy next door.

He was thirty-six years old and had attended Moscow University, the Soviet Union’s Harvard, graduating when he was only fifteen years old, a record that had never been surpassed. He had received a master’s in something called American studies, followed by a doctorate in political science. It was believed
that Yurichenko considered him like the son he always wished he’d had. They were inseparable.

A very interesting point there. Yurichenko and Arbatov had been sidekicks forever. In other words, Alexi Arbatov was Yurichenko’s henchman, the guy who handled key assignments.

Take recruiting and controlling the most valuable spy in Russian history: That would be a key assignment, wouldn’t it?

Right
. I read on, and Arbatov, like his boss, had been observed and analyzed by several CIA psychiatric profilers. He fell well outside their standard template for clandestine operators. He appeared to be fastidious, altruistic, nearly monastic in his habits. He was a vegetarian, which is about as rare in Russia as tulips in wintertime. Even more unusual, he was a teetotaler who rarely consumed more than a glass of wine. It’s a wonder the Russians gave him a passport.

“Magnetically charming,” claimed one observer. Despite his obvious intelligence, not bombastic, nor arrogant, nor overbearing—none of the standard traits found in your typical clandestine operator. “Surprisingly shy and tactful” was how the observer summarized him.

All of which added up to a manner that would endear him to an overambitious, egotistic officer who thought he was smarter than anybody. It wouldn’t have been a fair match: the poseur against the boy wonder. Poor Morrison would never have felt the hand that slipped into his pocket. If the CIA was even half right about Arbatov, putting Billy Morrison in his proximity was like sending a Little League team up against the Green Bay Packers. They don’t even play the same sport, for Chrissakes.