The Kingmaker (28 page)

“Did you confront him?”

“No.”

“That’s a little odd, isn’t it?”

“Perhaps. I thought my reasons were good. In every other way, our marriage was strong. The kids were happy and I didn’t want to destroy that, either. What I did was stop having sex with him.”

“He didn’t wonder why?”

“He knew why. He didn’t want the ugly confrontation either.”

“Okay, I got all that. How come you didn’t warn me?”

“We’re still on the truth?”

“Still there.”

“I was too embarrassed. I . . . well, I couldn’t tell
you
.”

“Because we used to be an item.”

“Exactly. For some odd reason, I wanted you to believe we had a perfect marriage.”

“Silly reason.”

“I guess.”

I took another deep breath. “By the way, I met Alexi Arbatov. Nice guy.”

Her face turned blank. “You . . . you
what
?”

I thought if I slipped that in damned quick, we’d get past the hard part. This falls under the old mashed-potatoes-and-peas
theory, where you hide the peas under the potatoes so your mother thinks you ate them. It never worked then, either.

“Mary, he’s a witness. Maybe the key witness.”

“Sean, what were you thinking? Oh Christ.”

“It’s okay. I did that little three-stripes-on-the-statue deal and we met secretly.”

“Bill told you about that? Don’t you know what you’re doing? Alexi’s the most important asset we’ve ever recruited. Do you have any notion what they’ll do to him if he’s caught? This isn’t about you and your client.”

“Yeah, it is. Inconvenient, I know, but I have an obligation to follow every avenue, and Alexi’s an avenue.”

“Wrong. Bill’s using you. He’s turned you into a puppet. He’s manipulating you into exposing Alexi.”

“You sound like you think Bill’s guilty.”

“No, I don’t . . . or maybe . . . oh hell, I don’t know what I think anymore.” She rubbed her forehead, like she had a king-size migraine. She said, “Bill’s angry, right?”

“Oh, I suppose you could say that.”

“I know what he’s like when he gets this way. He gets vengeful. He’s probably mad enough to try to burn Alexi to get back at the CIA. You can’t be part of that.”

The only problem with her logic was that it had been my idea to meet with Alexi, not his. You could argue that Morrison left a trail of breadcrumbs that led me in that direction; I just didn’t believe that he was that devious. Or that I was that gullible. I said, “Why didn’t he expose him before? Say Bill was a traitor, why didn’t he give him away long ago?”

“I’m afraid it doesn’t prove anything. Exposing Alexi would’ve been suicidal. If Alexi were arrested by the Russians, there would’ve been an internal investigation. It’s routine, and only ten living people know about Alexi. The rest of us take lie-detector exams. Bill would’ve hung a neon sign over his own head.”

“Yeah, well, Alexi thinks Bill’s innocent. In fact, he agrees with Bill that this whole thing’s a frame job.”

Her face turned very still and very tense. “He told you that?”

“He’s convinced of it.”

“And did he say who framed Bill?”

“He thinks it’s some cabal in Moscow he’s been trying to crack for about ten years.”

She stared off at the trees. “Oh shit, Sean . . . not Alexi’s cabal.”

“He told me you knew about it.”

“Of course I know about it. He’s been mumbling about it for twelve years. It’s his fixation. For Godsakes, we even encouraged his belief. It was all part of the plan.”

“What plan?”

She suddenly stopped talking. She folded her arms across her chest and stared down at the ground. She had obviously already crossed that line where Alexi’s name was going to be a topic of discussion at her next lie detector session. Up to this point, though, she could blame it all on her husband’s pesky lawyer and his incessant nosiness. The next explanation was the big one, the disclosure that put her on quicksand.

When she looked up, she put her hand back on my arm. “Sean, how do you think we recruited him in the first place? The first time he met Bill he began complaining about some mysterious force that was tearing apart his country. He was obviously groping to see what we knew. So we sent back Bill to tell him we suspected the same thing. It was a ruse. We used his vulnerability to establish an alliance. Like many people of extraordinarily high intelligence, Alexi is paranoid.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because the Agency’s top psychiatrist has been helping us manage him this whole decade. Do you know the code name of this operation? ‘The Patient.’ Alexi’s paranoia is the hook that allowed us to make him an asset. We fed it. We constructed operations to exacerbate it. Why do you think he betrayed his country? Alexi is extremely patriotic. In his mind, he’s not
betraying his country, he’s trying to defeat some dark hidden force that hijacked his nation. Sound familiar?”

“What about Yeltsin’s election? The way he tells it, there’s no plausible way Yeltsin went from zip to victory inside three months.”

“Oh, please. What the hell does Alexi Arbatov know about politics? For Godsakes, he’s a KGB hack. His knowledge of politics was shaped at Moscow University under the Communists. Do you know what he was taught? That democracy is a capitalist farce where rich men buy candidates and foist them upon the poor working class. To get inside his head we even got copies of the course books he was taught with. You have no idea how much work and effort went into recruiting and managing him. If you expose him, the whole world is going to crash down on your head. I’m worried for you. That’s why I’m explaining this.”

“You still didn’t explain how Yeltsin won.”

She very patiently said, “Yeltsin won because the other candidates were too unattractive and politically clumsy. He won because the big money backed him, and he was an incumbent who used the power and prestige of his office. It happens in this country all the time. Look at some of the hacks that hold high office and get reelected again and again. But when Alexi told us about his dark suspicions we said, ‘Yes, yes, you’re right, Alexi, there does appear to be something mysteriously sinister.’ The same thing with Chechnya and Georgia and Azerbaijan. I assume he told you about those, too. We were validating his fears, Sean. We were maintaining him as an asset.”

To my credit, I had entertained the notion that Alexi’s tale was suspect—that he was lying to me, or leading me down a blind path or was just plain wrong. But I’d never even suspected he was delusional. My client struck me as delusional, but Alexi?

But then I didn’t have a highly paid psychiatrist guiding me through the twisted labyrinths of Alexi’s head. It now seemed so obvious. The CIA torqued his paranoia in a calibrated campaign to turn him into a traitor. He was a highly moral man who
worked in an immoral profession for an immoral government and constructed bogeymen to salve his troubled conscience. They’d focused on his vulnerability, exactly as folks in their profession are taught.

I stared off at a wisp of smoke trailing out of a chimney. “Wow.”

She was holding both my arms and staring into my eyes, measuring something, maybe whether there was a brain somewhere inside that head. Then she smiled. “I know your intentions were good. You’re out of your depth though. Just. . . please, be more careful. I talked you into taking this case, and I’d never forgive myself if you got hurt.”

We began walking arm-in-arm back to the oversize barn she called home. I said, “And about your husband’s cheating . . . I’m sorry it turned out that way. It must’ve been miserable for you. Believe me, I took no joy in discovering it.”

“I warned you it wasn’t a perfect marriage. I wasn’t exaggerating, was I?”

“Why didn’t you just divorce the son of a bitch?”

“The same reason I married him instead of you.”

“And what was that?” I asked.

“I misjudged.”

We were at the front door. She turned and looked into my eyes. This was one of those earthshaking moments when a real dramatic thing has been said, and some kind of equally dramatic follow-up is needed. She was leaning slightly toward me—all I had to do was pull her into my arms.

I’m not a complete stickler on professional ethics, but I have my limits. She was married, and that’s one thing. She was my client’s wife, and that’s another thing. She was a vision from my past who tugged at my heart and filled my dreams, and that’s yet another thing.

I pondered all these clashing thoughts until the moment turned awkward, she backed away, went inside, and closed the door.

I was not having a good day with women.

I
flew back to Kansas City the next morning. Katrina took a separate flight, I think because she was still peeved and wanted to avoid me. The frosty look she gave me at the prison entrance tended to support that theory.

Anyway, I had bigger fish to fry than her hurt feelings, like for starters, a client who insisted he was innocent when every indication and piece of evidence screamed guilty, guilty, guilty.

Morrison was already manacled to the table as we walked in. Before we could even sit, he demanded, “Well? What have you accomplished?” His tone was petulant and bossy, a general officer talking down to two inferiors, and it pissed me off.

“We went to Moscow,” Katrina swiftly intervened, smart enough to ignore his lousy manners.

“Yeah, so . . . ?”

“We accomplished a great deal,” I said, ticking off points with my fingers. “We discovered the prosecution will have no difficulty getting a conviction for adultery. Incidentally, your office phone was bugged and it’s all on tape.”

For a mere instant he appeared surprised, perhaps even shocked. Then the look melted. Given everything else he was accused of, the womanizing probably struck him as an incidental distraction. It would be embarrassing in court, but little more than a sideshow.

“Oh, and by the way,” I added, “Mary knew about it, too.”

This wasn’t news to him, I was just confirming it, but Katrina looked surprised. “We also met with Alexi Arbatov,” I continued, “and he thinks you’re innocent, that you were probably framed, but he doesn’t know by who, or why. Oh, and last but not least, somebody tried to kill us.”

“Moscow’s a dangerous place,” he dryly observed.

Even Miss Hold-your-temper lost it on that one. She said, “Somebody tried to
assassinate
us. We were ambushed. Mel Torianski got his head blown off.”

That dryness instantly evaporated. “By who?”

“The police claimed it was Chechen terrorists. But the ambassador said they blame everything on Chechens.”

He contemplated that a moment. “He’s right. It was someone else.”

I asked, “Like who?”

But he wasn’t listening to me. At first he seemed buried in thought, then suddenly his expression turned elated. “Don’t you see? This proves I’ve been telling the truth. Whoever tried to murder you is worried. They know you’re looking.”

“Nobody knew I was looking. We met with Alexi in secret.”

“You
thought
you were meeting him in secret. Obviously you were wrong.”

We’d already come to that conclusion ourselves, so I conceded the point.

Then he asked, “Where was Mary? Did you check on her whereabouts?”

“At work and her father’s home. Why?”

He began waving his arms around in excitement. “That proves
nothing. It would’ve been so easy for her to arrange. Did she know you were there?”

“So what if she knew,” I said, realizing with an ugly jolt what he was implying.

He kept going anyway. “And if she guessed you were meeting with Alexi, she probably . . . oh shit . . . I was the one who turned him. I was the one he trusted. But with me out of the picture, she’d own him completely. She couldn’t let you expose him. She needs him for her future. Don’t you see it?”

“What the hell are you talking about? If you’re convicted of treason, the CIA won’t let her get within a continent of Arbatov. And the closest she’ll ever be allowed to get near that big building in Langley will be her father’s house. Her career’s over.”

He gave me a sly look. “She tell you that?”

“Nearly verbatim.”

“Drummond, you’re such a sucker. With me out of the picture they’ll be completely reliant on her to retain Alexi. Don’t you understand how important he is? And if she gets credit for turning me in, she’ll get a gold medal from those bastards she works for. They’ll love her for it. She chose her country over her lousy traitorous husband . . . what greater love for her country and all that crap. You beginning to see it?”

“What I’m seeing is a complete asshole.”

He leaned back into his seat and grinned. “I did a lot of thinking in that hospital bed. I thought, now, who would know me well enough to set me up like this? It had to be an espionage specialist. Nobody off the street has the knowledge or skills to pull this off. It would have to be somebody with a motive.” He looked at me expectantly. “She had a motive, all right. You discovered it yourself.”

“You’re losing it.”

“You stupid asshole. You have no idea how she plays. She’s not the sweet little thing you think, Drummond. How the hell do you think she got so far in the Agency so fast? She cut people’s nuts off before they even heard her coming.”

But before I could say another word, Katrina smoothly said, “Okay, we’ll look into it. I promise. In the meantime, we’re also considering other possibilities.”

“Like what?”

To which she replied, “Did you ever hear Alexi share any theories about some mysterious Russian cabal?”

He was distracted by other thoughts and offhandedly said, “Uh, yeah, sure. All the time.”

“And what did you think?”

“It’s Russia. If it sounds rotten there’s probably some truth to it. But so what? You gotta understand Russians.”

“And what do we have to understand about Russians?” asked Katrina, who was raised by a Russian and therefore had a few insights.

“They’re the most conniving race on earth. Their whole history is a never-ending series of coups and palace manipulations. It’s their national sport.”

“So you think there is a cabal?” Katrina asked.