The Kingmaker (8 page)

“You’re sure?”

“Mary and I were given firm guidance about what we were allowed to disclose. I never went outside those boundaries.”

Sensing we’d reached an impasse, I said, “Okay, were there others like Arbatov?”

“For me, no. Mary had others, a lot of them, but my principal duties didn’t involve controlling assets.”

“Who brought Mary into it?” Katrina asked.

“He did. After 1991, I had a number of jobs that didn’t allow me to properly control Alexi. He suggested Mary.”

I considered this and concluded that from Arbatov’s perspective it made sense. It kept it all in the family and limited his risk of exposure. I said, “Think hard. Were there any other Russians you stayed in contact with from 1989 to the present?”

“None,” he immediately replied, leaving me wishing he’d at least spent a few seconds scouring his memory.

The molehunters were focused on a trail of espionage that led all the way back to 1988 or 1989. How they came up with those years I didn’t know. I did know this, though: The anonymous leaker said there was only one controller, and by extrapolation that controller had to be acquainted with Morrison from the very beginning.

So maybe they thought that guy was Arbatov—or maybe someone Morrison wasn’t telling me about. I looked over at Katrina and her eyes were locked on Morrison’s face. The intensity of her stare surprised me. Set aside her appearance, her ball
busting, and her sarcasm, and what you got was a deceptively sharp and determined woman.

I said, “Okay, General, that’s enough for now. Start mentally organizing the years 1990 through the present. We’ll come again and begin with those years. Okay?”

Morrison nodded but looked troubled.

I said, “What? You got something you want to add?”

“I, uh . . .” He hunched over, as if in pain. “Listen, Drummond. About Arbatov . . .”

“What about him?”

“I’m not saying Alexi’s connected to this or anything . . .”

“But?”

“Well, it, uh, it might be a good idea to look at him closer.”

“And how would I do that?”

“Talk to Mary. See what she thinks.”

I said that we would, and we then departed, leaving our client chained to the table.

K
atrina and I cloistered ourselves in the living room of our grand office quarters. I had brewed a fresh pot of coffee, tossed a few logs in the fireplace, and lit a big fire before we settled down in righteous style to ponder our next steps.

I wanted to start with her impression of our client. Lacking a past history with him, she might’ve detected things I was blind to. Doubtful, but worth checking.

She was still getting comfortable as I said, “Well, isn’t he every bit the asshole I warned you he was?”

Always helpful to predispose a witness, right?

She replied, “He, at least, has a good excuse”—intimating, I think, something about me. She added, “It’s this arrested and being charged deal, I suppose. Funny what sets some people off, isn’t it?”

“Not hah-hah funny, no. He’s even more insufferable than I remember him. How could that be possible?”

“You tell me. You know him.”

I struck a thoughtful pose and stroked my chin. “How does
anyone get that way? . . . Spoiled rotten from birth . . . everything always fell in his lap. He—”

“Good Lord.” She shook her head and said, “Just give me the facts and I’ll make my own conclusions, okay?”

“Okay . . . the facts. He’s forty-nine years old, was born in Westchester, New York, the son of some big Pepsi bigwig. Had a typical rich kid’s upbringing, went to Andover, became probably the only Yale graduate in modern history to enter the Army, and, as the saying has it, went on to do great things—depending on your perspective, obviously.”

She leaned back onto the cushion and asked, “And how did he meet his wife?”

“I don’t know how he met his wife. I wasn’t there,” I answered, sounding, I suppose, a little annoyed.

“You have a problem with that topic?”

“Me? No . . . What gives you that impression?”

She picked at a nonexistent piece of lint on the couch. “You’re sure you don’t have a problem with this topic?”

Actually, my problem is with nosy, prying women. I let that thought lie, though, and replied, “They met at work, dated a few months, and got married. Okay?”

She pushed a stray strand of hair off her eyebrow. It obviously wasn’t okay, but she seemed to conclude it was the best she was going to wring out of me. She was right, incidentally. She asked, “Do you believe he’s guilty?”

I folded my hands behind my head and stared at the fire. I hadn’t forced myself to consider it. For one thing, I’d been on a whirlwind since Mary first called, and for another, it’s not a question most defense attorneys want to answer about a client. The preservation of ambiguity has almost irresistible appeal in our line of work.

I finally suggested, “It doesn’t exactly fit with my view of him.”

“Now that’s enlightening.”

“Look . . . he just doesn’t fit.”

“You can be very annoying.”

“Okay, for those who need lengthy explanations, Morrison doesn’t fit the crime.” Ticking down my fingers, I added, “He’s a pathologically ambitious prick. He’s an oily bastard and an inveterate bully. But a traitor? I could be wrong, but they’ve got the right kind of man for the wrong kind of crime.”

“Trying to cram an oval into a round hole?”

“That works for me.”

“Did you attend the wedding?”

“Damn it, what is it with you?”

She looked down her nose. “It was a perfectly innocent question. Am I missing something here?”

Innocent, my ass. I replied, “Why do you want to know?”

“Until a minute ago, it was idle curiosity. Now I’m wondering if there’s a tar pit here.”

“There’s no tar pit here. I was invited, but, uh, I . . . I was too busy to attend.”

“Too busy?”

“Exactly.”

“Not too bothered? Too busy?”

“I was in Panama, helping track down some asshole named Noriega.”

“You’re serious?”

“The wedding invitation was in my P.O. box when I returned from the war. It’d been sent a month before.”

She said, “Boy, that sucks.” And she was right; it did suck. Then she asked, “Would you have gone?”

The woman was like a dog with a bone. Stubbornness can be a virtue. At the right place and time, it can also be a king-size pain in the ass.

Anyway, the right and proper thing to say, obviously, was, Well, yes, absolutely. All’s fair in love and war, and so forth. I wouldn’t have sat in a front-row pew, where I could hear their lips smack when the preacher got to that “man and wife” part: I would’ve been there, though, the classic good sport, rooting for
the bride and wishing her everlasting love and happiness with the idiot she chose.

I was fairly certain that lie wouldn’t sell, however.

“I don’t know,” I said, and tried my best to sound convincing, while sensing from her expression that I was wasting my time.

Having squeezed more out of that response than I wanted her to, she asked, “Can you adequately defend him?”

“I won’t know that until we hear the full charges and see the evidence.”

“Nice try. Deal with your compatibility issues.”

“Oh . . . that. Yes, I can represent him.”

She sipped quietly from her coffee and let that one drop off a cliff. I said, “Can
you
adequately defend him?”

“It’s going to be a challenge. This whole world of the Army and espionage is completely foreign. I’ve been handling street criminals.”

“And what makes you think this is different?”

“It
is
different.”

“Why?”

“The people I’ve been defending have miserable, hopeless lives. I come from the street and can get into their heads. People who work in espionage are different.”

“Not really. Just think greed, larceny, jealousy.” I smiled and added, “And since we’re delving into my personal life, what about yours?”

“What about it?”

“You’re what—twenty-nine and still single?”

“And you’re what—thirty-nine and still single?”

“In the event you’re not aware of it, age is irrelevant with guys.”

For some reason, this struck her as hilarious. She slapped the pillow and nearly choked to death. “You’re a piece of work.”

My smile widened. “I just want to know who I’m working with.” Okay, I know. It sounded lame even to me.

She smirked and said, “Then let me help. Do I have a
boyfriend? No. Have I ever? A few. Am I desperately seeking? Not. Did I miss anything?”

Like I needed this. “No. That’s fine, thank you.”

“Maybe you want a description of what I’m looking for?”

“Fine. What are you looking for?”

“Definitely not some chest-thumping meathead who spends his weekends knocking down six-packs and screaming obnoxious things at the football jocks on his TV. Masculine, but the right kind of masculine—the kind that knows the difference between a flute and a piccolo.”

This sounded more like a dickless canary than a man to me, although I do know the difference between a flute and piccolo: Spelling.

She continued, “Good-looking . . . but the right sort. California beach boys are a turnoff. Back hair is a turnoff. I’m inclined toward the dark-haired, worldly, charming types.”

Now she was talking. Mouton Cadet, ’67, anybody?

I suggested, “And now I suppose you want to know what I’m looking for?”

“I already know.” She glanced in the direction of the fireplace and said, “Our client’s wife.”

That didn’t even dignify a reply, but I gave her a finger in the air anyway.

We moved on to researching the cases of the Walkers, Ames, and Hanssen. The ever-resourceful Imelda had found a trove of material that covered everything from the trial procedures to some well-written synopses of the strategies used by the prosecutors and the defense. In separate folders were materials on the Wen Ho Lee case, which were vastly more hopeful, from our perspective, since the defense slipped the willie to the prosecutor for the whole world to see. But then, there were distinct differences between the Lee case and ours—like our defendant was white and couldn’t accuse anybody of racial discrimination; he didn’t have a charming daughter to run around and hold free-my-daddy rallies; and in Lee’s case, when forced to put up or
shut up, the government suddenly coughed a few times, looked mortified, and admitted it had caught a fairly severe case of evidence deprivation. If O’Neil and Golden were to be believed, the government’s dilemma regarding our case wasn’t an evidence shortfall but a swamp so vast and murky that an army of attorneys could barely slog through it.

By midnight, drool was spilling out my lips. I stretched and mumbled, “I’ve got to get some sleep.”

Katrina’s beaded nose was stuffed in a big folder. The girl had endurance, having been in the office at six that morning and she was still going like a choo-choo eighteen hours later, while my gas gauge bounced off empty.

In my bedroom I slipped out of my clothes and was asleep almost immediately. I’m a light sleeper, however. The problem with old Army quarters is creaky stairs, as well as a complete absence of modern insulation and noise abatement buffers. At three-thirty, I heard her footsteps on the stairs. I alternately cursed and prayed she’d move her skinny ass a little faster and then rush through her ablutions and let me get on with my sleep.

Then I swore I heard cabinets opening and shutting downstairs. I quietly slipped out of bed and tiptoed to the door. I paused to briefly consider my quandary. Definitely there were at least two different sets of noises out there, possibly three. I needed to see why, although
sneaking
quietly down those stairs was out of the question.

I chose the other way and plunged down so fast that I nearly tripped over my own feet. And at the base of the stairs, that was exactly what happened. Sort of. I flew through the air and crashed face first into a wall. Except I hadn’t tripped. Something had shoved my back and helped me along.

I recovered my senses and spun around just in time to get a hard, booted kick in the center of my chest. I made a loud “ooof” sound and sank to my ass on the floor. The lights were out but I saw a large figure looming over me.

Oddly enough, the next thing I saw was the face of a young female medic waving one of those smelly things under my nose, saying, “He’s coming to.”

I heard Imelda say, “That nose look broken.”

I heard the medic reply, “Yes, I think you’re right.”

I noticed that the back of my head seemed to have a big dent in it, and my face hurt, and my chest ached.

The medic squeezed my nose and looked at me with tender eyes. “There, there, Major . . . you’re going to be fine. Just a few bruises, a little blood, and maybe a broken nose.”

I replied, “Ouch, damn it. Let go of my nose.”

Which she did. And that made me happy. I wedged my way up the wall and got unsteadily to my feet. A stretcher rested by the door, where two more medics were waiting to load me aboard. They looked terrifically relieved to see me standing. Lazy bastards.

“What the hell happened?” I asked.

Imelda adjusted her glasses on her nose and said, “We came down when you got knocked ’round. Heard the door slam and saw two men runnin’ away, only nobody got a good look at them. They was dressed in black and wore hoods.”

“Was anything taken?”

“Didn’t check yet,” Imelda admitted, suddenly sheepish that she’d been so busy attending to me that she’d failed to see what might have been stolen. It wasn’t like her to commit such a breach of duty.

After fibbing to the medics that I’d eventually come over to the dispensary and let a real doctor check me out, I helped Imelda and her two assistants look around. To the best I could tell, nothing had been touched—no open drawers, no ransacked boxes, no sign of burglary at all. Very strange. We all ended up in the living room. I asked, “Did anybody see anything missing?” and instantly felt like an idiot—how do you see something that’s missing?

Heads were shaking all around when I felt this odd flip-flop in my stomach. “Katrina, the tapes. Where are they?”