The Kingmaker (38 page)

“Some, maybe, but others, no way. No.”

I had this sudden sense of depression because Mary was my only suspect. I didn’t want her to be my suspect, but I needed her to be the one, if that makes sense. And this was no longer just a legal case; it had become a fight for Katrina’s life, and mine, and that was no small consideration, either. I couldn’t move on Mary with a flimsy case. I needed granite proof.

In frustration, I said, “Damn it, you’ve seen the evidence. You tell me how that stuff ended up in Moscow.”

“I have no idea. That’s what I hired you to find out, you asshole. Those papers are the most closely guarded secrets in our government. Do you have any idea, Drummond, how few people lay their eyes on the President’s talking points before he meets with the Russians?”

“How few?”

“A handful. And those papers came from State and the White House over an eight-year period. Except for the National Security Advisor and the Secretary of State, there might be three other people who could possibly have gotten their hands on all
of them. Except we changed National Security Advisors once, and had two different Secretaries of State during that period.”

I thought about that a moment. I asked, “And who would those other people be?”

“Actually, I can’t think of anybody. Nearly everybody changed jobs or left the administration and was replaced. Eight years is a couple of lifetimes in Washington.”

“And you fed those papers up your chain?”

“At State, I gave them to my boss and Milt forwarded them. At the NSC, I passed them through the NSC Advisor and he usually carried them directly to the President.”

“Were you staffing them with anybody?”

“Sometimes. But there’s some documents here”—he paused for a moment, “like this one, dated June 14, 1999, that I carried to the President himself. A former American naval officer had been arrested for spying in Moscow, it hit the news, and I gave the President a talking paper to use to call Yeltsin. Even the National Security Advisor didn’t see that one. He was on a trip to Germany and it was three in the morning, his time. It wasn’t that big of a deal that I wanted to wake him and make him approve the paper before I gave it to the President. I carried it in myself.”

I was scratching my head. “So nobody saw that paper but you and the President.”

He thought for a moment. “Well, Milt saw it.”

“Martin?”

“Yeah, I always sent everything to Milt.”

“Even when you were working at the NSC?”

He suddenly sounded defensive, like, why was I questioning his bureaucratic virility? “Look, Drummond, Milt was the king when it came to Russia and the former republics. Nobody did anything that concerned those regions without running it through him first. Milt played for keeps. If he found out you were undercutting his prerogatives, or giving the President recommendations behind his back, he took you down. More than a few
Assistant Secretaries from Defense and State got sent packing for screwing with Milt.”

“So you sent him all your papers so you wouldn’t piss him off? That it?”

“I sent him my papers because he knows the region inside out. He was the architect of our policies there. Besides, Milt and I had a special relationship. He looked out for my backside and I looked out for his.”

I was staring at the white wall in the hotel room with a truly awful scowl. “And how did Martin get your papers when you were in the NSC?”

“I ran them off the computer, put them in a pouch, and had a courier hand-carry them over. They were too sensitive to be sent electronically.”

“So he got all these papers with your fingerprints on them?”

The import of what we were discussing suddenly began to hit him.

I said, “Did Martin have access to the technology export requests?”

His voice sounded suddenly parched. “He, uh, yeah. He was on the oversight council. He wouldn’t ordinarily have looked at the individual requests, but he’d have access if he wanted. I didn’t participate in any of that. A few times a month he’d go to the council meetings alone.”

There was another momentary lull; then the full consequences hit him like a Mack truck. “That bastard! That traitorous prick! He used me. He set me up. I . . . shit, I trusted him.”

“Yeah, well,” I said, “he trusted you, too. He trusted you to take the fall for him.”

And suddenly it all became crystal clear. It was brilliant. Morrison had been his fall guy, his buffer, his screen. He’d used Morrison for eight long years, even elevated him higher in Washington’s bureaucracy to cover the trail of his own treachery. Of course Morrison never suspected him. Morrison wasn’t the type
to look a gift horse in the mouth. Morrison was too vain to believe anybody could use him as a stooge.

I could hear the sounds of more cursing on the other end, and I called Morrison’s name a few times and could hear him venting. I could just imagine the fit he was throwing. Then Imelda came back on the line. I thanked her profusely and hung up.

Katrina had overheard only my part of the conversation, so I gave her the abbreviated version of Morrison’s responses. We sat and stared at each other in stunned silence. Then we began hypothesizing and knocking pieces into place. No wonder the FBI was helping out Martin. God only knows what story he’d told them, but it must’ve been a whopper; like maybe he was being harrassed by his former employee’s defense counsels, and we were threatening him, and as a former high level official, he needed protection.

She finally said, “This actually
is
mind-blowing. The President’s asshole buddy.”

“At least I never voted for him.”

“Right,” she acknowledged. Notice how she didn’t say she hadn’t voted for him?

“Next issue . . . ,” I said. “Alexi.”

“What about him?”

“You and he are a . . . what? Fill in the blank any way you choose.”

She studied me a moment and quite possibly considered saying, “Screw you and none of your damned business.” Truthfully, it wasn’t, but also it was. She finally said, “We’re tight.”

“Tight? I’m generationally handicapped. Take it back ten years or so.”

“You mean, like, are we in love?”

“Yes. Exactly.”

“We’re a work in progress. Give us a bit more time and we’ll probably rendezvous there.”

“Okay, me. What’s my status?”

“You mean, am I still pissed at you?”

“Exactly again.”

“Consider yourself on probation.”

“Do I owe you an apology?”

She smiled. “More than one. I’ll compose a list and get it to you.”

“That would be kind.”

“You did save my life. Always a good place to start.”

“But I’m still in the minus column?”

“Oh yeah.”

I thought about that.

I finally said, “You realize what that guy probably got away with? He literally shaped our policies for eight years. Christ, the Russians were actually running our policies toward them. It’s staggering.”

“Indeed. Now think about this . . . no evidence,” she said, the trained lawyer going right to the heart of the matter.

“Or time,” I said, because after all, trained killers were out there hunting us down, and that wasn’t a trifling detail.

“Well, you’re the government man. What do we do?” she asked.

We then wasted thirty minutes or so discussing alternatives and knocking holes in each other’s suggestions. Calling the FBI or CIA was out of the question: They wouldn’t believe us; the watchers would end up on our tails again; the killers would be mobilized, and the next time they’d leave no room for failure. As for the Army, what could it do? It’s the most conformist institution in the world and it would no doubt refer the whole matter to the FBI and CIA, and we’d be right back where we started—setting the conditions for our own funerals.

I thought about calling the press and giving them the story, but any reporter in his right mind would say, “Yeah, no kidding? And you’re Morrison’s defense counsels, right? Boy, you guys are really creative.”

The phone rang and it was Alexi.

After assuring him we were fine, I said, “Milt Martin? You know him?”

“I have met Milt at some conferences. He was most powerful man in your last administration, yes?”

“Yeah, well, what would you say if I told you he’s our man?”

Alexi chuckled. “And you are making accusations about me fabricating nightmares. Sean, this is not possible. Martin was your President’s best friend. All policies toward my country were being made by him. And I would most certainly have known.”

That’s when I remembered something. When Morrison had first told me about Alexi, he’d said that Arbatov was always selective in what he provided. If he thought it had to do with his mystical cabal, the information flowed like a river; otherwise, he was a loyal Russian intelligence officer. He’d never given the Morrisons the names of our traitors; he’d picked his disclosures with great care.

So maybe Alexi knew all about Milt Martin. Maybe he knew Martin was the jewel in the SVR’s crown and simply wasn’t going to admit it, even to me and Katrina. And if that was true, his alarm bells would be going off right now, because here he was protecting us, and if we were about to launch off to prove Martin was Moscow’s most valuable spy, well, that would surely compromise Alexi’s standing and future job prospects—and health.

I looked over at Katrina; there was no way in hell I could share that suspicion with her. Like I said earlier, the thing about this world of espionage is you can’t trust anybody. Everybody’s got conflicting loyalties. Even those folks you trust, you can only halfway trust—conditionally.

I said, “Uh, yeah. Listen, why don’t Katrina and I do a little more checking, and I’ll call tomorrow if we find anything.”

That was fine with him, and we hung up. I turned to Katrina and said we needed to go to the hotel’s business center. She gave me a curious look but followed me downstairs. We bought two
cups of coffee in the snack bar, then filed inside the business center, found an idle computer, and made ourselves comfortable.

The thing about the Internet is that you can find out a few things about almost anybody, but famous international figures like Milton Martin are open books. I typed his name into Google.com and got 12,753 hits. The only tough thing was deciding which listings were worth reading, because otherwise Katrina and I would be at that computer for two weeks reading entries, most of which were repetitive, and many of which were just silly.

After two hours, here’s what we had: Milton Martin was born on March 7, 1949, in Amherst, Massachusetts, the only child of Mark and Beth. His father had been managing partner of a private equity firm and was worth millions. Milt had been sent to Groton School at the age of thirteen. He’d done Yale undergrad, where he majored in Russian studies and, as already noted, roomed with a future President. He looked like a long-haired egghead in a picture from that period, his nose the only thing that poked out from a mop that actually covered his eyes. He was a good student, except for getting arrested twice for involvement in antiwar protests that turned violent. He ended up doing graduate studies in England, and then went back to Yale for a Master’s, also in Russian studies.

The articles weren’t clear on exactly what he did in the years right after he finished his grad work, but it seemed he was trying to make it as a writer. Apparently it took him seven or eight years to find his voice, because that’s when he published his first best-seller, a book on the origins of the cold war that exposed all kinds of underhanded dealings by the CIA and American military in various places around the world. What was striking about that book, most critics agreed, were the shocking revelations of dirty operations that were supposed to have been among the government’s most closely held secrets. It was widely agreed that he had extraordinary sources. No kidding.

That book led to a series of hearings on the Hill and caused an American President to authorize a bunch of wiretaps to try to find Martin’s sources. When questioned by the FBI, Martin stood behind his First Amendment rights.

His second book was an exposé of America’s secret war in Vietnam and Cambodia, again noted by critics for its inside look at operations that were never supposed to see the light of day. This time the inevitable congressional hearings led to a large number of firings in the CIA, mostly of operatives whose names were included in the book, making them useless as clandestine operators in any regard.

Martin’s last best-seller concerned arms control, and in it the author exposed the deep fractures in America’s scientific community, as well as its arms control community, making the hawks sound like Stone Age, bellicose morons who played dirty against the humanitarian altruists who were trying to rein in the madness, and how Russia’s doves were marginalized by the policies of America’s hard-liners, preventing the world from achieving sanity.

He’d never married. His mother died in 1989, and his father in 1995, leaving him a pile of money. He’d taught at five or six universities and was an accepted member of ten or fifteen prestigious institutes and organizations, making him a bona fide member of the Establishment.

All of which begged the big question: Why would Milt Martin betray his country? He was rich. He was wildly successful. He was respected and accepted. I’d met him and he seemed like a decent enough guy, with none of the rough edges or overweening ambition you smell from some folks—like my own client, for instance. So why?

I called the concierge and had them order me a rental car to be charged to the room. Katrina and I picked up our bags and went downstairs to wait. It was five hours to New York City and we needed to be in midtown Manhattan by eight. If we drove fast, we’d just make it.

W
e needn’t have rushed. Martin’s black limo didn’t pull up to the front entrance of the Society for International Affairs building until 10:00
A.M.
. Martin, it seemed, worked banker’s hours.

He stepped out of the limo carrying a five-hundred-dollar leather briefcase, wearing his Burberry raincoat, that prominent nose of his the first thing to emerge. He turned around and stuck his face back into the car, told the driver what time to pick him up, then spun around to head confidently up the short stairs and into the building: Mr. Establishment arriving for another day at the money mill.