The Kingmaker (37 page)

I went into the covered parking garage, and a minute later Katrina sneaked up behind me. How did I know this? She had the nerve to pinch my fanny and say, “Hey, doll, looking for a good time?”

I flinched and grumbled, “Yeah, ain’t I the friggin’ hottie?”

She chuckled.

“Wheels next,” I said, and we walked across the street and down to Route 7, where the local suburbanites make all the car dealers congregate along one long road, each within sight of one another, trying to filch one another’s customers. Liar’s Alley, the locals call it. I dodged into the restroom at the Chevy dealership and changed into jeans and a button-down dress shirt,
with Top-Siders, and then emerged looking like your typical suburban yuppie.

Katrina and I walked over and ogled a 1996 BMW four-seater convertible parked in the lot. Out of thin air a guy dressed like a
Miami Vice
cop appeared.

“Hey folks, like it?” he asked, with the prototypical smile and unctuous manner of his breed.

“Depends how it drives,” I said, stroking the paint job. “Even brought the wife along, ’cause we’re serious. I’m not looking, I’m buying, and if you convince me, you’ll get a fat check as I’m driving off in this thing.”

He beamed. He caressed me with his eyes. He then eyed Katrina, because I was already bagged, and all he had to do was to charm the little woman into wanting it too.

“Hal Burton,” he said. “Just a sec and I’ll run in and get the keys. It’s an incredible car. You sure you can handle it?”

“Born to it,” I said, one overtestosteroned jerk to another.

He winked and then ran in to get the keys.

Katrina said, “Is there a point to this?”

“You like it?”

She stared at the car. “Not my style.”

Hal came trotting out with the key. He winked again as he tossed the key across the hood, like we were a couple of real swell pals, weren’t we now?

He got in the back while Katrina and I climbed in the front. It started up with a throaty roar. We pulled out into traffic and headed straight for the Beltway, Hal babbling about what a titsy car it was, how frequently and expertly serviced, how beloved and pampered by its previous owner, how much the car was . . . well, us.

I hit the GW Parkway exit and began heading toward D.C. Hal in the back said, “Smooth, ain’t it? Like the way it drives?”

“Oh yeah,” I said, nodding enthusiastically.

He said, “Hey, sorry to mention this, pal, but the dealership’s
gotta rule about staying within a five-mile limit. Not that I don’t trust you, ’cause you look like swell folks, but rules are rules.”

I said, “Gee, Hal, I’ll try to get off at the next exit.”

Hal grinned. That grin died when I zipped right past the next exit.

“Hey, uh,” he said, bending forward and tapping my shoulder. “You missed that exit.”

“Sorry. The way this thing drives, you get caught up in it. How much did you say it cost?”

He leaned back. He grinned. He imagined where he’d spend his commission. “List at eighteen five, but you’re obviously a man of the world, so you know that’s negotiable.”

While he droned on about everything he was willing to do to fit us into this car, I took the Key Bridge exit. He grinned and was still prattling about what a swell car it was, and what a swell couple we were, when we came to the stop sign at the end of the exit. I put the car in park and looked over at Katrina.

“Don’t you just
love
this car?”

“I told you earlier, it’s not my type.”

I looked back at Hal. “Sorry, pal. The little woman doesn’t care for it.” I tossed a twenty in his flabbergasted lap as we got out. “For gas. Incidentally, the car’s got one broken shock, and it needs a valve job.”

We left him fuming and cursing as we began walking across Key Bridge toward the Georgetown section of D.C.

Katrina said, “I’m sure you have a really good reason why we did this the hard way?”

“We arrived in a cab, so the watchers were expecting us to leave in one. If they’re CIA or FBI they’d know five minutes after we called the cab company, and they would’ve been waiting for us at the other end.”

She grinned. “Aren’t you the clever one?”

“The trick in modern society is avoid anything electronic. The police are spoiled. Between charge cards, ATMs, e-mail, telephones, car rentals with computers, hotels with computers,
airlines with computers, the feds have these software programs that sweep through all that clutter, and they find you. If you’re electronically invisible, they’re bewildered.”

“And I suppose you know what to do next?”

“No, actually, I don’t. From here on in, we’re on the fly.”

She scratched her head and said nothing for a minute. Then, “Do you trust Alexi?”

I had to think about that. I guess I did, within limits. Yes, he had an extra bat in the belfry, but as I mentioned, that didn’t mean he wasn’t a decent guy. There was no question how she felt about him. After all, she’d done the big swami dance with him.

“What exactly do you have in mind?” I asked, sort of a delicate way of not answering her question.

“Let’s call him.”

“Why?”

“So he can hide us.”

Oddly enough, the idea of calling a Russian intelligence officer to hide us from the American government had a certain ironic charm. Added to our lack of other workable options, I thought why not.

“Okay,” I said, “but let me do the talking.”

We walked into a grungy-looking record store filled with teenage kids combing through the stacks, hunting for the latest hip-hop hit. I approached the girl at the counter.

“Hey,” I said, “we’ve got an emergency and I don’t have a cell phone. How about if I pay you to use your phone to make a call?”

She snarled, rolled her eyes, and started to say, “Store policy is—”

I whipped out of my pocket the thick wad of money that I took off the thug that morning. “Two hundred bucks.”

Her lips froze. She handed me the phone. I handed it to Katrina. “You got his number?”

Her hand went into her purse, digging for it. I said, “Just talk
to his secretary. Tell her we lost a briefcase and we’re wondering if Alexi had any idea where it is. Give her the number for this store and ask for him to call us.”

Katrina dialed the number and in Russian gave Alexi’s secretary our message. When she was finished, I handed the girl the two hundred bucks, then told her we’d be getting a return call any minute. She smiled and licked her lips, and I saw two of those little silver beads sticking through her tongue. We stood by the counter for twenty minutes watching a procession of young kids dressed almost identically in baggy jeans and oversize sweat shirts, nearly all of whom had dyed hair, tattoos, and earrings or small silver beads punched all over their faces. Katrina fit right in. I looked like a guy who mistook this place for a tofu bar.

It sucked being young in this era. In my day we only had to look like fancified dorks in disco drag. At least we didn’t have to get stabbed and tattooed. I mean, those old disco clothes, you send them to Goodwill and glide gracefully into becoming a fat, balding, middle-aged guy. Just throw out all your old pictures and your kids will never know what a jumbo jerk you used to be. All those holes and tattoos—they’ll know.

The phone finally rang, the clerk picked it up, said, “Just a minute,” then handed it to me.

Alexi’s voice said, “Sean?”

“Yeah, Alexi,” I said, then unloaded the whole story, including the fact that my government was somehow mysteriously implicated.

He listened patiently, then said, “This is something very big happening here, Sean. I would offer to put you in safe house, but this could be compromising. It would be better to be using Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown. My people will book you a room and charge it to our expense. It will be under Mr. and Mrs. Harrington. I will be calling you later.”

I hung up, and then Katrina and I walked down the main drag to the Four Seasons. If you have to go on the lam, this is the
kind of place to do it. As soon as we were ensconced in the room, I had room service send up two filet mignons and a bottle of wine. It was on the Russians. Why not?

Alexi called twenty minutes after we finished eating.

He said, “Is everything all right?”

“Katrina and I just polished off a sixty-dollar bottle of wine. Hey, you know what, Alexi? Put some booze in that girl and look out. She’s been climbing all over me, licking my ears, making all kinds of lewd suggestions. You’d hardly recognize her.”

Katrina flung her big purse at me.

“Heh-heh,” I said, but neither of them laughed. I thought it was hilarious.

“Anyway,” I said, “we think we’ve got this thing figured out. What we believe is there’s a real mole in our government that Morrison was framed to protect. You guys do those kinds of things, don’t you?”

He didn’t answer for a moment. Then he said, “To protect one that is most important, this could be possible. Is very difficult operation to construct, Sean. Is most difficult to match moles with acceptable surrogates. You understand? We have saying about this. ‘The shadow must match the body.’ ”

Now, here’s the thing. I was in an absolutely desperate position. Somebody was trying to snuff me, for some reason my own government seemed to be accomodating that effort, and Katrina and I were alone, without resources or allies, a raft floating in the middle of a murderous ocean. My only hope was Alexi. So let’s see—maintain my pristine personal integrity, or live a few years longer? Exactly.

I said, “Well, here’s what I think, Alexi. I think Mary’s working for this cabal of yours. I think she’s been on their payroll this whole time, convincing the CIA your accusations were wild ravings and protecting the cabal’s existence. I think she’s been filching her husband’s papers. I think whoever provided those papers to the CIA gave only the documents she pilfered from
Bill, while the stuff that would’ve pointed at her is still locked away in Moscow.”

“What?” he asked, clearly surprised. “You accept the cabal’s existence?”

“Yeah.”

“And you think Mary is with these people?”

“Nothing else makes sense. I mean, it was Mary who told me it was baloney, right? She was trying to mislead me. And if she’s not working for the SVR, it means she’s working for somebody else in Moscow, right?”

“This would make sense, Sean. This cabal has extraordinary resources and reach. It could be that Mary is somehow connected. I have never considered this. The shadow certainly fits the body, yes?”

The poor guy was so smitten by his phantoms, he was leaping at any thread that substantiated, fed, and justified his paranoia. I felt sorry for him. But not so sorry that I wasn’t willing to exploit it, as the CIA had done for the past decade.

“There’s a way to find out,” I said. “I’m going to have one of my assistants question Bill. He should be able to confirm whether it fits or not.”

The idea intrigued him, and he said he’d call me in six hours to see what turned up. I immediately placed a call to Imelda. I explained our predicament and why I couldn’t set foot on a flight to Kansas City without alerting the authorities. She could, though; so I told her to.

I explained what I wanted her to do and asked her to smuggle a cell phone into her interrogation, and then gave her the number to our hotel room. Then Katrina and I sat and did our best to kill the hours as we waited. We watched an Oliver Stone movie, and we both laughed hilariously, because he was the only guy in the world more paranoiac than us. Katrina asked me about my childhood and I asked her about hers, we talked about politics and sports and college days, and when we ended up
discussing our favorite ice-cream flavors we both knew we were in serious trouble.

The phone rang at 11:40
P.M.
and I dove across the bed to answer it.

After some opening banter, Imelda said, “Went over the dates with him. Mostly they match, sometimes they don’t.”

What she was referring to specifically were the dates on the documents from the Moscow vault Eddie had provided us. She was showing them to Morrison and asking him where Mary was at those times, how she might’ve gotten her paws on them.

I said, “Okay.”

She said, “Wanta talk to him?”

He came on with his typical blast of selfish, overbearing horsecrap. “Where the hell are you, Drummond? How come you haven’t visited? I don’t like dealing with sergeants. God damn it, I’m a general officer and I’m owed some respect. You’re—”

“Shut the hell up and answer my questions. How do you think Mary framed you?”

“Don’t tell me to shut—”

“Shut your mouth!” I yelled. “I’ve killed three men this morning, and at the moment I’m having visions of flying out there and killing you. This was all because of you. Frankly, you’re not worth it, so if you don’t shut up and answer my questions, I’ll be on the next flight.” Katrina was giving me the evil eye, so I took two deep breaths and tried to calmly ask, “Now, how do you think Mary framed you?”

“I don’t know,” he petulantly replied.

“Yeah, but you’ve now looked at the prosecutor’s key evidence. How could Mary had gotten all those papers out of your office?”

He fell quiet a moment. “She could’ve gotten some of them easily.”

“Not
some,
damn it . . .
all
of them. The President’s and Secretary of State’s talking papers? The blueprints for the
technologies denied for export approval? The North Korean talking points? How could she have gotten her hands on those papers?”

“Shit, Drummond, I already told you I never saw the tech stuff, or the North Korean stuff. As for the rest of it, no, she couldn’t have gotten all of it from me. It wasn’t like I was bringing those papers home. She hardly ever visited my office at State or the White House. But I wasn’t the only one handling those papers. Maybe Mary pilfered them from someone else, too. Did you ever think of that?”

Of course I had thought of that. Just as I had thought of the fact that all the White House and State documents had Morrison’s fingerprints on them.

I said, “Let’s be clear on this. Just the talking points and policy papers. The ones with your fingerprints on them . . . could she have gotten
all
those through you?”