The Kingmaker (40 page)

I yanked the ski mask off my head, and Katrina pulled off her mustache and glasses and wig. Martin’s eyes searched both our faces. Then came the moment when clarity set in. There was this instant when he realized who we were and that he’d just told us enough to get him the electric chair.

In shock, he said, “You’re that lawyer. Drummond?”

I pulled the tape recorder out of my pocket. I clicked the off button. I smiled. Not a happy smile, but I smiled.

Katrina, good New York girl that she was, said, “You’re a scumbag, Martin. And now you’re screwed.”

And I added, “I don’t give a crap how good your lawyer is, you’re going down.”

A silly threat, I know, but what do you expect from a lawyer? Then the two of us left him there, on the muddy ground, a shocked expression still pasted on his face. His scream shot through the forest as we walked away.

Katrina drove while I replayed the tape over and over, considering the full ramifications of everything he’d confessed. We were just getting on 95 South when Katrina said, “We have to get Alexi out.”

I nodded and didn’t say anything. I don’t think she expected me to say anything. Getting Alexi out was impossible. We both knew that.

A
t 7:00
P.M.
, I called Mary from our hotel room in the Four Seasons.

“The Steele residence,” Homer answered, pronounced like, What the hell do you want?

“Hey, Homer, Drummond here. How’s the Porsche looking?”

“You son of a bitch. I knew it was you. You touch my car again, I’ll have you arrested.”

“Speaking of things of yours I’ve touched,” I interrupted, “is Mary there?”

I heard a bang that I assumed was the phone hitting the floor, and almost two minutes later Mary said, “Sean, where you are? Are you okay?”

Her tone was real warm and deferential, like she was genuinely concerned for my health. Of course if you read between the lines, it sounded more like, I’m having you followed and you somehow slipped away, so please fall for my act and tell me where the hell you are.

I said, “In thirty minutes I want you and Harold Johnson to
be huddled in his office. I have a tape you both need to listen to, and if you’re not there in thirty minutes, you’ll read the contents of that tape on the front page of the
New York Times
. It won’t be a good day for you, Mary. Thirty minutes.”

Then I hung up. There’s nothing like bossing around the deputy director for intelligence of the whole CIA. It’s a good feeling knowing you’ve got a tape recording in your pocket that will blow the sides off his building. Thirty minutes later, I went down to the lobby and spied around till I saw a tired-looking businessman with a cell phone hooked to his belt.

I approached him with that overused spiel: “Have I got a deal for you.”

He gave me a wary, distrustful expression.

I pulled the wad of money out of my pocket. “Here’s the way this works,” I said, peeling off bills. “You get five hundred dollars to let me make one call on your cell phone. It’s local. It won’t cost much. I’ll be right across the lobby, so you can keep your eyes on me.”

I can be mighty generous with the money somebody was paid to murder me. He stared at the wad in my hand. “What’s the catch?”

“No catch. I’m in a very generous mood. I learned I just won the lottery and I need to call my broker to tell him to take a big breath and get ready for a windfall.”

Which, as metaphors go, was actually pretty good. He looked at me like he couldn’t believe it. “You’re bullshittin’ me, right?”

I waved the five hundred dollars. “Two more seconds and I move on to the next lucky guy.”

Before you could say “take it,” I had his cell phone and he had my money. I wandered over to the corner of the lobby. I went through this little charade because I figured the CIA had some sort of tracing service and I couldn’t afford to let Johnson and Mary know where I was. I didn’t want some goon squad showing up and spoiling my day.

I dialed the number for the CIA and told the switchboard lady to put me through to Harold Johnson’s office.

“Hello, Major, Mary’s here. What’s this about?” he asked, his tone sounding edgy, like he just knew this wasn’t going to be a happy moment, because he’d already had one sour experience with me and the bad taste lingered. As I mentioned before, it’s always nice to know you’re remembered.

“Put me on the speakerphone. You both need to hear this.”

As soon as he assured me I was on, I played the whole tape. You could hear the occasional slaps and howls, but the voices came through very clearly.

Johnson’s voice sounded alarmed and disapproving at the same time. “Whose voice was that?” he barked.

“Milton Martin’s,” I replied, then said nothing, knowing both their faces were going pale with anguish.

Johnson put me on hold so I couldn’t hear their conversation. I didn’t need to. I knew damn well what he and Mary were jabbering about, and while I would’ve enjoyed overhearing the panic attack that I’d just paid five hundred dollars for the listening rights to, I patiently waited for two minutes while they tried to figure out how to handle me and an audiotape that would shoot to the top of the charts on anybody’s list.

The speakerphone finally came back on. Johnson said, “Drummond, that confession sounded coerced.”

“Well, Mr. Johnson, it was coerced. So what? I did your dirty work for you; I found the mole you couldn’t find.”

“Where’s Martin? Did you kill him?”

“No. I left him in the woods across the river from West Point. I thought you’d appreciate the irony, West Point being the fort Benedict Arnold tried to betray. He was a little distraught and wasn’t very good company anymore.”

Mary said, “Oh my God, you didn’t.”

“Oh my God, I did,” I said. “And one way or another, it’s your fault.”

“How do you get that?” Johnson asked.

“Because you people set me up.”

“We weren’t setting you up,” Johnson insisted.

“Bullshit. You were following and watching me. When somebody tried to murder me and my co-counsel yesterday, your people came along and cleaned up afterward. Did Martin put you up to that?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Drummond.”

“I don’t, huh? What happened to the bodies of those guys who tried to kill me and my co-counsel? Where’d they disappear to? What about the runaround I got from the FBI when I tried to get help?”

I heard a murmuring sound as Mary and Johnson clued each other about how to handle me. Then Mary, the woman I used to do the hokey with, said, “Sean, you’ve got it confused.”

“Confused, huh?” I yelled into the phone. “I saw your guys in Tysons mall when I gave you the slip. Don’t lie to me, Mary. If I lose trust in you, I’ll call the
Post
and
Times
and play this tape for them.”

Which was an overstatement, because I’d already lost trust in Mary, and in Johnson’s case, I’d never trusted the bastard in the first place.

Johnson said, “Don’t do that, Drummond. For Godsakes, don’t even make that threat. You’ll set back our relations with Russia by a dozen years. You’re a soldier. A scandal like this will seriously harm this country.”

My voice grew louder. “I’m that classic rat driven into the corner. You put me here. I don’t think about consequences any longer, I just lash out. Guys like me are really, really scary.”

I heard more murmuring, and if I had to guess what was being said, it was Mary telling Johnson it was true. I was really, really scary.

“Okay, okay,” Johnson came back on, trying to sound placating, the professional hostage negotiator who knew how to calm the nerves of an overwrought subject. “We’ll get through this, Sean. Calm down and we’ll get through this.”

By this time, my anger was reverberating over their speakerphone. “I’ve survived two attempts on my life. A fellow officer was brutally murdered. You got the number for the Senate Intelligence Oversight Committee? Those right-wing politicos on the committee love this kind of shit. They think we’re suckers for getting closer to Russia, anyway. Ah, hell, don’t trouble yourself. I’ll get the number from the operator. Listen, I’ve got a lot of calls to make, so I’ve got to run.”

Mary, sounding desperate said, “Sean, don’t. Please. Just talk this out.”

I yelled, “Talk it out with the newspapers! I don’t want to hear your lies and—”

“You’re right,” she interrupted.

“About what?”

“We were having you followed and watched.”

“Why?”

“Ever since Moscow. Ever since that first attempt. Mort Jackler’s our man. He’s not stupid, Sean. When you tried blaming that attempt on Mel Torianski, he knew you were lying. We saw you meeting with Alexi. You’ve been watched ever since. We had to know why someone was trying to kill Bill’s defense team. And we had to protect Alexi.”

“If you were watching, how come Katrina and I almost got killed?”

“We were caught flat-footed. I swear it’s true. We couldn’t protect you. It all went down too fast. And when you told me Katrina wasn’t on the team, I pulled off her security.”

“But you could hide the attempts afterward? And you could have the FBI cold-shoulder us? You could do that because you wanted us to stay out in the cold as bait. You used us. Jesus, Mary, you are one cold-blooded bitch.”

“You brought it on yourself, Sean. You got overinvolved. I warned you. You were talking with Alexi. I warned you not to do that.”

“And what? When somebody tried to kill me, you thought you’d use me to figure out who? Was it that cold?”

“I didn’t like doing it, Sean. I swear I didn’t.”

“No, of course you didn’t, Mary.”

Johnson, knowing this thing was going south, quickly interjected, “It’s true, Sean. She argued against it. I overruled her.”

I shook my head. Sure she did. They thought they were so clever. That’s the problem with people who rise up to the heights of their bureaucracies and get big fancy titles. They actually begin to think they really are smarter than everybody else.

I said, “And what about Bill Morrison, my client, Mary’s husband, the man accused of treason?”

Johnson said, “Um, well, until this conversation we were convinced he was our man. God damn . . . Milt Martin. I’m still having trouble believing it. Of course, Morrison’s still guilty of some serious crimes. According to your tape, he gave Martin the names of our assets. That was a serious security violation that led directly to their deaths.”

“Uh-huh,” I commented. “And what are you going to do about Arbatov?”

“What about him?” Johnson asked.

“ ‘What about him?’ ” I sarcastically mimicked. “He’s been exposed. Victor knows about him. He’s at risk.”

Johnson’s tone sounded deeply sympathetic. “Yes, it’s a shame, isn’t it? That’s always the risk in our profession. Alexi knew this, of course. He knew it from the moment he first made contact with Bill Morrison.”

“I asked you what you’re going to do about it.”

There was another quiet moment and I could almost visualize them exchanging signals of some sort.

Mary finally said, “There’s nothing we can do about it, Sean. Ordinarily in these kinds of operations we have a prearranged signal we give our asset that warns him to flee. We don’t have an arrangement like that with Alexi. Even if we did, it wouldn’t
work. Yurichenko is surely having him watched. And his profile is too high. He’d never get out.”

“So you’re just going to let him fry?”

Again it was Mary who replied, “Sean, I care deeply for Alexi. There’s just nothing we can do. The White House doesn’t want any troubles with the Russians . . . that’s just the way it is. Even if we could put together an operation to try to get him out, the White House would veto it.”

“So that’s it?”

“That’s it,” Johnson said, sounding ruthlessly unsentimental.

I smiled. I pulled my trusty tape recorder away from the earpiece. I flicked it off. Then I said, “Hey, guess what?”

“What?” Johnson asked.

“I just recorded this whole conversation, too. I know I shouldn’t have, and I feel really bad about it, only I thought whoever listens to Martin’s confession might enjoy listening to you admit you were using me, an officer of the court, as bait for killers. Not to mention your willingness to let a valuable asset die. I’ll bet that’ll do wonders for recruiting future assets. They’ll be lining up at the door. Don’t you think that’s a nice touch?”

There was a moment of agonized silence. I was put on hold again. But that’s okay; I’m not the kind of guy who gets his feathers all ruffled by life’s little annoyances.

And while I waited, here’s what I was thinking. The good news here was that Mary hadn’t tried to have me murdered. That was a reassuring thing to know, after all. What lousier feeling is there than knowing the woman you used to love—had I really been that stupid?—hired some goons to turn you into compost?

But that’s as far as the consolation went. Mary had played me like a harp from the beginning. I thought back to that opening session with her, when she sat on that flowered couch looking like the distraught wife and got me to beg her not to feel bad about dragging me into this. I thought about all those times we met where she denied knowing what the hell was going on. I was more than a sucker.

Johnson’s voice finally came back on. “Drummond, we need to make a deal.”

The man had good instincts and knew exactly what this call was about. I replied, “Same conditions as last time. I name the terms, you nod your head and say, ‘Yes sir, and what else can I do for you?’ If I hear a single hesitant pause . . . well, there won’t be a second chance. Got that?”

“Yes sir, and what else can I do for you?” he responded, showing he was a careful listener who hadn’t missed a single comma.

I outlined everything he and Mary were going to do for me, then hung up. I walked across the lobby and handed the phone back to the businessman, who beamed like an idiot.

I went back upstairs. Katrina was seated on the bed, watching MTV, of all things. “Well?” she asked, so anxious she couldn’t even look me in the eye.

“It worked,” I said. “You were right. They’re going for it.”