The Kingmaker (12 page)

I kept nodding my head and tried to take this in. The title of Assistant Secretary of Anything is ordinarily a fairly banal position in Washington. Secretaries of Something are walking gods. Deputy and Undersecretaries of Whatever are mystical creatures
with lethal wands. But there are so many
Assistant
Secretaries that they’re like bunnies in the forest, living in the shadow of the redwoods, groping silently around the roots and hoping not to get stepped on.

Milt Martin was an exception to the rule. Actually,
the
exception. He’d been one of the President’s best chums since they’d roomed together in college, and even the Secretaries of Something trembled when he walked into a room. In Washington, image trumps all, and whether he did or didn’t, everybody believed Martin had the power to pick up the phone and call his old roomie and say, “Yo, boss, you know that jerk you hired to head the Treasury Department? Well, he pisses me off. Fire him.”

Nor did I have to wonder how those critical memorandums worked their way into Martin’s office. Morrison had few equals as a bureaucratic panderer—I’d seen him in action and knew this firsthand. He’d likely found a slick way to have somebody bring them to Martin’s attention.

I said, “And how long were you Martin’s assistant?”

“Four years.”

“Did you travel with him?”

“Not in the beginning. After a year, though, he said I was too indispensable. I handled everything: his correspondence, his speeches, his position papers.”

“Were you still reporting your contacts with Russians?”

“Shit, how could I? On a trip I’d meet hundreds of Russians. I’d be in conference rooms where they were coming in and out. Afterward there’d be a big reception or a dinner with dozens of guests.”

“That’s not good. The prosecution can say you had constant contacts that afforded you ample chances to betray secrets.”

“I was rarely alone. I was almost always with Milt.”

“And he was preoccupied. And he trusted you. He wasn’t watching to see if you were passing microfilms or documents.”

“And what do you expect me to do about that, Drummond?”

“Nothing.” I rubbed my temples as I contemplated the ease
with which Eddie could show Morrison’s opportunities for treason. “It’s a vulnerability we have to be aware of. What happened next?”

“After the President was reelected, I told Milt I needed to move on. I explained how the Army worked, that I needed new, increasingly more important positions in order to get promoted.”

“And how did he take that?”

“You know, he said he’d been thinking the same thing. He suggested a position on the National Security Council staff.”

“And you said?”

“Are you kidding? It was perfect. He and I shared a very close personal relationship, were in sync on the issues, and we both knew we’d be watching each other’s backsides.”

“And what did your new duties entail?”

“I headed up the former Soviet Affairs part of the staff. I was the guy who prepared all the interagency policy papers, who briefed the President before trips, who coordinated our positions toward all the former Soviet states.”

I felt a headache start to pulse. Ordinarily an impressive résumé is just that: impressive. In his case, it was an anchor tied to his feet. In trying to ascertain what he’d been privy to, I’d learned that for ten years he’d seen everything. I mean, think of what damage Ames and Hanssen had done—both low-level spooks—and all the excitement they’d caused.

I asked, “And what was Mary doing during all those years?”

“Several jobs. She was in Analysis, doing the same kind of work I’d been doing. But when the Ames affair broke, a number of Soviet specialists were caught in the backlash. People who had nothing to do with Ames were beartrapped by other improprieties—cheating on taxes, drinking too much, all kinds of things. Everybody got scrutinized, and the result was a bloodbath. Those who survived became even more valuable because the ranks of trained Sovietologists had been thinned so much.”

“And Mary was one of those survivors?”

“Oh, better than that. Mary helped handle the investigation.”

“Tell me about that.”

“She was the one who discovered that some of the betrayals attributed to Ames couldn’t have been done by him.”

“How’d she uncover that?”

“By correlating the events and assumed disclosures against where Ames was at the time, what he had access to. She realized he couldn’t possibly have done all the damage being blamed on him.”

“And that meant . . . what? Another mole?”

He nodded. “So the Agency put her in charge of a small, very sensitive compartment to find the other mole. It had to be handled quietly, because people on the Hill were so angry about Ames that they were actually talking about disbanding the CIA. The Agency was scared.”

“The CIA’s general counsel intimated you had knowledge of her activities. Did you?”

“Of course. She was my wife, and I was cleared to know everything she was doing.”

“So you knew about her efforts to find the mole?”

“Actually, I was part of those efforts.”

My headache lurched toward a ten on the Richter scale. I drew a deep breath and said, “Please describe that.”

“It started with filters to see how many employees had access to the knowledge that had been betrayed. That turned up a large group, hundreds of people. So Mary came up with the idea to try a few entrapments: We laid bait for the mole. We designed a few operations and distributed some classified assessments to see if any were leaked to the other side. And I was the guy pushing the bait through the system.”

“And then what happened?”

“Causes and effects were built into each entrapment. We watched for the effects, but we never saw any.”

“And what came next?”

“After several years, they decided to move Mary. She’d had her chance and come up short, so they moved someone else in.”

I shook my head while he waited for the next question. Frankly, I already had enough to think about. He and his wife had lain in bed at night talking about how to catch the mole the government now believed was him. His increasingly important positions gave him access to the most sensitive secrets imaginable, and because he was an Army officer, he hadn’t been subjected to the lie-detector tests CIA people take on a regular basis.

As much as CIA people hate them, the truth is that years of passing those tests bends the benefit of doubt in their direction. To the best I could see, my client had no counterweights to sway the benefit of doubt even remotely in his direction.

I got up and began packing my papers in my briefcase. I said, “One last question.”

“What’s that?”

“At Golden’s press conference this morning, he added a charge that confused me. Adultery. What can you tell me about that?”

In the Uniform Code of Military Justice, adultery’s still considered a crime. It’s rarely prosecuted unless the act occurs between two members of the same unit, in which case it affects the general climate of order and discipline, which is one reason why it’s on the books. Or for when a general officer sleeps with a subordinate, in which case it’s viewed as an abuse of power. Or when somebody’s being court-martialed for other crimes, and you add it to the list of charges as a way to say “screw you.”

He finally said, “I don’t know what he’s talking about.”

“You’re sure? I’d hate to get broadsided by some nasty little disclosure here.”

He paused to think a moment, then said, “I had a secretary once who claimed I’d had an affair with her. It was horseshit. The whole thing was thoroughly investigated. There was no substantiation. She was lying.”

“And you think they’re just rehashing some old garbage to add to your charges?”

“It’s the only thing I can imagine. It happened five or six years ago. I was vindicated.”

I nodded and said, “Fine.” Then I leaned across the desk. For obvious reasons, I’d been saving this confrontation for the end. “Last point. If you ever involve me in anything that compromises Mary again, you’ll be looking for a new attorney.”

His head reared back. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“When you sent me to ask Mary about Arbatov, you knew damn well the position that put her in. If you weren’t my client I’d knock your ass through that wall.”

He didn’t look at all embarrassed or chagrined. But neither did he try to make any excuses or defend himself. He simply nodded as I walked out.

M
y late flight back to Washington arrived at eleven. I rushed straight home, climbed into bed, and stared at the ceiling for two hours.

The reason, in a word, was Eddie. I finally had an inkling of his strategy, and it frightened the hell out of me. He was working diligently to make his six-month advantage decisive. He had the momentum and virtually a one-way street on knowledge. Even in the hands of a perfectly average attorney those would be almost insurmountable advantages. Eddie, however, was the Babe Ruth of Army law.

If I didn’t find a line of defense, and damn quick, I’d be trapped in a fog of ignorance when Eddie called with his deal. Even if Morrison did everything they claimed, I obviously couldn’t admit that to Eddie. I needed something plausible—not necessarily persuasive, just . . . plausible. So what did I have?

Morrison claimed he was framed, and no matter how overused that line was, or how suspect, it still represented a usable alibi. The problem was, it was a possibility that cut two
ways. Framed by someone on our side? Or by someone on Russia’s side? And why? Because Morrison knew something and needed to be taken out? A plain and simple grudge? For sport? No small details, these.

It was even possible that this was a particularly excruciating instance of mistaken identity. The government knew it had a mole; it just pinned the tail on the wrong donkey. How do you prove that?

The last possibility was that Morrison had done some sloppy things that were being blown extravagantly out of proportion. Give or take a little, that’s exactly what happened to Wen Ho Lee. Depending on how incriminating those things were, it could still be a catastrophic problem. Did he just forget to close and lock his safe a few times when he left the office at night? Or did he accidentally leave a bundle of Top Secret documents lying on Boris Yeltsin’s desk?

There could be other possibilities, but these were the three that passed the stink test, which, as a wise old law professor of mine defined it, simply meant they stank less than other theories. When operating on conjecture and instinct, this is what legal theology boils down to.

Katrina was in the office when I arrived the next morning, and pacing in the corner was the inimitable Imelda, blowing bubbles with her lips and inspecting the boxes cluttered all over our office. Imelda is very protective of her domain and, like most career Army sergeants, has a tendency to be maniacally prickly about neatness.

She stopped pacing and flapped her arms, threateningly. “Who made this friggin’ mess?”

“Eddie. He’s got a couple of hundred lawyers and investigators cramming every piece of paper they can get into boxes. We’ve gotten three truckloads already. We expect more.”

She kicked a box. “Asshole.”

Exactly
. I then led her and Katrina into the office, where I briefed them on what our client told me the day before. I
articulated the possibilities I’d pondered, and both nodded frequently, interrupted occasionally, and shook their heads dismally when I was done.

Imelda said, “And you got no notion what’s in them boxes?”

Katrina said, “I’ve been going through them for two days.”

“Findin’ what?” Imelda asked.

“They were tapping Morrison’s phones and had bugs in his office. Thousands of hours of recording transcripts are in these boxes. The few I surveyed confused the hell out of me. I don’t know shit about embassies or attaché duties.”

This wasn’t good news. “Anything else?” I asked.

“Four or five are stuffed with financial background information, going back two decades, mostly IRS and bank records. The Morrisons filed jointly and used a professional tax preparer. They kept copies of their tax records going back ten years.”

“Anything interesting?”

“Possibly, but it doesn’t fit.”

“What doesn’t?”

“He filled out an insurance form in 1989, the year they were married. His net assets were estimated at around five hundred thousand dollars, including equity in Morrison’s townhouse in Alexandria and what the investigators assumed was a very sizable wedding gift from Homer Steele.”

“That’s a lot of net worth for an Army officer,” I said.

Katrina politely ignored this absolutely useless observation. “They made a spectacularly good investment in a brand-new company called America Online, back in 1992. Ten thousand shares. They sat on it, and that block of stocks, after multiple splits, is now worth nearly two million dollars.”

“And what do the investigators assume to be their total net worth today?”

“Four million, give or take a hundred thousand.”

“Wow,” said I, shaking my head—yet another unremarkable observation.

Katrina said, “There was a questionable addition. In 1997,
they supposedly inherited nine hundred thousand dollars from some source. It was listed on their joint tax return.”

“And we don’t know where it came from?”

“I don’t. But you might. Maybe Mary lost a grandparent?”

“If there was a miracle after I dated her. Her grandparents were already dead. Her father was older when he married, and they waited a while to have a child.”

“Morrison’s parents?”

I said, “Maybe.”

She said, “Hopefully.”

I pondered this new input and said, “Even aside from their investments, they probably bring in close to two hundred and fifty thousand a year from their combined paychecks. Eddie’s going to have a bitch of a time proving greed was the motive.”

Imelda said, “ ’Less Morrison had bad habits.”

“Not him,” Katrina corrected. She added, “One whole container is filled with charge card summaries. Mary was the big spender. Some of those bills from upscale women’s clothiers were huge. Your kind of girl, Sean. A regular clotheshorse.”