The Kingmaker (17 page)

And so I waited in selfish agony for a doctor to come out and tell me he was dead. Or alive. Or still hovering in that testy netherworld in between.

At 9:50 a chubby, grim-faced surgeon approached. “Major Drummond?”

“Unfortunately,” I dolefully admitted.

“General Morrison is resting peacefully. It was damned close. He lost so many pints, he had a minor infarction.”

“But he’s going to be okay?”

“He should be. But whatever idiot let him have a TV should be shot. What were they thinking?”

Yeah, what were they thinking? I asked, “Can I see him?”

“If you’d like. Make it quick, though. We have him on tranquilizers, so he’ll be in and out.”

He led me down a few hallways to a door with two MPs standing beside the entrance. Inside, Morrison lay in bed with two or three IVs pumping various fluids into his body, his head turned sideways, his face ashen and flushed, like his new blood hadn’t yet worked its way to the surface.

I sat on the edge of the bed. He mumbled, “Shit,” which fairly well summarized our common view—him because he was still breathing, and me because that meant I was still his attorney.

I said, “That was really, really stupid.”

His eyes narrowed. “Yeah . . . I lived.”

“You’ll make it through this.”

“Yeah? How?”

“You just do.”

He stared at the wall and said, “Drummond, a week ago, I was . . .” He stopped and took a deep breath. “Shit, did you know I was on the two-star list?”

“So what?”

“ ‘So what?’ ” He rolled his eyes in disbelief. After a pause, he asked, “What are my odds?”

“At this stage, we don’t know.”

He turned and looked at me, his eyes haunted. “I saw the reporting on TV. I’ve already been convicted.”

“You saw a bunch of Beltway assholes throwing around opinions. It takes ten officers and a shitload of evidence to convict you.”

He thought about this a moment and then asked, “How could this have happened?”

“Well, either you did what they’re claiming or somebody’s made a really big mistake.”

“You don’t believe me, do you?”

“Let’s just say I met your former secretary yesterday. And you might recall I was at your award ceremony for the Silver Star.”

He turned away again, refusing to look me in the eye.

For good measure, I added, “And on a more personal note, you’re an asshole for cheating on Mary.”

“So I fucked up, Drummond. Nobody’s perfect.”

“Mary is. She didn’t deserve that.”

He let loose a raw chuckle. “You stupid asshole. She’s not perfect. Christ, you have no idea.”

“Wrong. I have a very good idea.”

“You weren’t married to her. You have no idea what a bitch she can be.”

This conversation could only go downhill from here, aside from which he seemed to be on the verge of losing consciousness, and there was pressing information I needed out of him. I said, “When you worked for Martin, what was your relationship with Commerce’s export control office?”

His eyes were closing. “Huh?”

I squeezed his arm. “The export control office. The guys who say whether U.S. companies can export their crap to foreign countries.”

“I never worked with them. They’re part of Commerce.”

“I see.” I pondered this a moment, then took a shot in the dark. “Do they have some sister office in State?”

“The Office of Munitions Control?”

“Right, those guys.” I guessed that’s what I was talking about. I mean, other than guys like Morrison who spend most of their careers in Washington, who in the hell knew where all the tentacles of government flow and interlock? No wonder the Republicans want to cut the size of our federal institutions. At least then, when a new team comes to power every four years, they don’t spend their first two studying wiring diagrams and trying to figure out who all those frigging people are and what they do.

The befuddled look was still on his face. “I didn’t do any work with them. Why?”

“Last night’s release said you handed over hundreds of requests that were turned down by that office.”

He shook his head, although I sensed his mood had shifted from outrage to resignation.

I added, “They said you turned over blueprints, tech assessments, the works.”

He started that mirthless chuckle again. “Christ, who’d ever think of giving them the rejects from that office? It’s ingenious.”

“Ingenious?”

His head flopped over, he faced the wall again, and explained, “Those requests go all over town. Commerce, State, CIA, DOD, NSA, everybody has a whack at them. It’s a big veto ring.” He took a long, labored breath. “Dozens of offices . . . hundreds of people are involved—you’d never know who did it.”

“So the leak could’ve come from any number of sources?”

“Of course.”

I touched his shoulder. “Okay, listen, I promised the doc I wouldn’t stay long. So you promise me something.”

“What?”

“No more of this suicide crap. If I’m going to work my ass off on your case, I don’t want any more late-night phone calls about your health.”

I couldn’t see the expression on his face or the look in his eyes. “Okay.”

“I’ll stop by again later. I may need some help on something.”

“Okay,” he said again, and I inspected his suite to be sure there were no sharp objects or other deadly instruments within reach. Unless he used his IV lines to hang himself, he appeared to be safe for the time being.

I returned to the house on Colonel’s row, drafted a press release, and told Imelda where to send it. Not that anybody was likely to feel sympathetic about Morrison’s attempt. Most folks would shake their heads and ask, What the hell’s wrong with this picture? That bastard can figure out ten different ways to betray his country but can’t figure out how to snuff himself?

I next made some calls to Washington, because if I didn’t start making headway on this case, I’d be attending my client’s funeral instead of his trial. I slipped back into his hospital room later that afternoon, got what I needed, and then flew back to D.C. I called Katrina as soon as I returned and told her to pack her bags for Russia.

I
’d never been to Moscow, a city that in a perverse way was once the American soldier’s version of Mecca, the capital of the empire that kept most of us employed for about fifty years. It was where revolutions and wars were bred, where devious plots for global domination were hatched, where bushy-browed men in outdated, frumpy, ill-tailored suits stood on reviewing stands and watched the largest military machine in the world march by, the same military we all thought would someday, inevitably, come marching against us.

My first introduction to Russian efficiency was the two hours after we landed, as we waited on the runway while ground crews scoured around for the mobile steps that would allow us to deplane. Katrina stoically endured this, I assume because she had Russian blood and was genetically inured from this form of brutal inefficiency. A typically spoiled American guy, I petulantly cursed and moaned the whole time. I’m not graceful in situations like this.

We took a taxi from the airport to a hotel in the center of
Moscow that would’ve been considered a fleatrap in New York City, or even Fargo, North Dakota, but I had been told was a five-star by local standards. The lobby was crowded with floozies and whores in cheap, glitzy clothes, and guys wearing black jeans and black leather jackets, all of whom seemed to be chatting on cell phones, and none of whom looked the least bit like choirboys.

After another twenty minutes wasted ironing out the problem that the hotel had somehow lost or misplaced our reservation, Katrina and I took an elevator up to the fourteenth floor and our side-by-side rooms. My room reeked of tobacco smoke and stale sweat, was barely larger than a broom closet, and the TV in the corner looked like something built in the 1950s. I was impressed—imagine all this luxury for only $280 a night, American.

I threw my bag on the bed, punched the remote, and the screen flickered to life, sound at full blast, showing a girl and three guys doing things that give multitasking a whole new complexity. I frantically punched at the remote to try to flip the channel, or turn down the sound, or turn the damned thing off—it was hopeless. The only thing that worked was the on button, and the girl on the screen was making loud noises intended to convey what a great time she was having, although frankly, I wouldn’t want to trade places.

Katrina’s room and mine had one of those connecting doors, and it took forever to find the TV button that turned the damned thing off, Russian sets having different knobs and symbols from ours.

I yelled through the connecting door, “Gee, my TV was preset on that channel.”

I heard her chuckle. “It’s cool. If that’s what turns on you older guys, doesn’t bother me.”

Older guys? I chuckled to show I could take a joke. Bitch.

An hour later, I was showered and changed, and the phone rang. A chipper-sounding United States Army captain named Mel
Torianski informed me he was in the lobby, and I knocked on the connecting door and yelled for Katrina to meet us downstairs when she was ready. After she assured me she would, I left and found the elevator.

Torianski was a studious-looking sort, skinny, narrow-shouldered, and bespectacled, a poster child for the military intelligence corps. We did the handshake thing as he said, “Welcome to Moscow, Major. I’m a deputy attaché.”

“Lucky for you, Mel. You’re at the embassy, huh?”

“Yes sir. Two years now.”

“I guess you knew the general pretty well?”

“As well as a captain gets to know a general,” he replied with an anguished expression. No need to explain further.

The elevator door opened and out stepped Katrina, although at first I didn’t realize it was her.
Rolling Stone
magazine had turned into the
Wall Street Journal
. Gone were the SoHo slut clothes and cartoonish makeup, replaced by a tailored blue business suit with a short skirt that showed long, tantalizing legs, matched with high heels, the sum of which was a female butterfly that could make all the little male butterflies get petrified wings. The only residue of her more natural self was the bead in her nose, and oddly enough, mixed in with her conservative apparel and toned-down makeup it seemed quite sexy, a sly hint that underneath that buttoned-down business suit lurked something more brazen.

I cocked my head and she smiled. I whispered, “My, but don’t you look nice.”

“A Dooney & Bourke goddess, huh?”

I swallowed my curiosity and introduced her to Captain Mel Torianski, who was checking her out like a hungry man eyes a slab of tenderloin on a hook. He was a horny little wimp, at least. He had a government sedan parked outside that we all three walked out to, and along the way to the embassy I asked, “So Mel, how’s the embassy taking the arrest?”

He stared straight ahead, no doubt pondering whether he
should confide these things to Morrison’s lawyer. He finally said, “We’ve got lots of visitors from Washington. You know what I’m saying here, right, Major?”

I guessed I did. The way these things work, after a spy’s caught, since the government has already gone to the considerable trouble to form a big investigation team—and everybody’s getting bored and antsy—they shift into what’s called the damage assessment phase. Said otherwise, a witch hunt to see who else might be knowingly or unknowingly implicated, the general rule of this phase being that if you shoot everyone, you can be damned sure you get the guilty parties.

I said, “So a bunch of glum-faced guys in black and blue suits are running around the embassy?”

He nodded miserably. “A huge team flew in four days ago. We’re all being interrogated repeatedly, and these aren’t nice guys, if you know what I mean.”

I knew exactly what he meant. I asked, “So what’d you think of Morrison?”

“Truthfully?”

“No, Mel, I want you to lie to me.”

That got a nervous chuckle. “Uh . . . right. He treated us like garbage. It was all about him. You won’t find many folks who worked for him that have nice things to say. I doubt you’ll find any.”

Well, no surprise there. I never expected to.

Katrina asked, “What about Mary, his wife? What did people think about her?”

“Oh, she was real popular. To be truthful, we all sort of wondered how she married such a jerk. A woman like her, you’d think she could’ve done much better.”

Oddly enough, I’d had that very thought countless times. I asked, “So Mel, did you ever see Morrison do anything suspicious?”

“No, but hey, he was my boss, so I wasn’t looking over his
shoulder. But no sir, I never saw anything.” He sounded rueful, like he wished he did, so he could help bury him.

We finished the car ride with Mel pointing out landmarks and offering tidbits about life in Moscow. I was struck by how ugly and depressing the place was. It was dirty; not trashy, because I didn’t see any litter, but dirty, like it rained soil. The sky was an oppressive leaden color, and the buildings were mostly gray, blocklike structures that looked like they shared the same architect—a man named Stalin. Frankly, it’s no wonder he hasn’t been written up in
Architectural Digest
as a guy who brought glory to the profession.

Nor was the U.S. embassy any testament to palatial elegance. It was a modern, big-windowed building that looked like one of those cheaply constructed, minimally decorated high rises you see in low-rent office parks back in the States. Not that it was cheap, being the same embassy that was built with a bit of KGB skullduggery poured into its foundation. The building had been secretly wired and bugged as it was erected, and when that was discovered, to considerable embarrassment, the whole top two floors were ripped off and rebuilt, and the place ended up costing more dollars per square foot than the Trump Tower.

Inside, Mel led us to a bank of elevators and up to the office of the ambassador, who apparently wanted words with us before we spoke with anybody on his staff. We waited about five minutes before three guys came streaming out his door with their pants on fire, and his secretary signaled us to go in.