The Kingmaker

by Brian Haig

“Never.”

  “Where were you assigned in 1988?”

  He stared up at the ceiling. “That was the year before I got married . . . Washington.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Working at the CIA.”

  “Isn’t that an unusual place for an Army officer to work?”

  “Yes and no. Each year the Army selects a few officers to work in other intelligence agencies.” He couldn’t stop himself from adding, “It’s a plum job for elite officers.”

  Did I really have to put up with this? “And where were you working in the CIA?” I politely inquired.

  “Soviet Affairs.”

  Having already reviewed his record I knew he was a Soviet Foreign Affairs officer, had been sent by the Army to the language school in California, then for a graduate degree in Russian studies at Harvard, and then spent six months at the Russian Center in Garmisch, Germany. Presumably, Morrison did well at his training, as the Army tries to hide its dunces and uglies rather than assign them to other agencies.

  I asked, “Did you have access to knowledge that would’ve been helpful to the Soviets?”

  “I saw everything.”

  Katrina said, “Describe everything.”

  “Military assessments, what you’d call spy reports, the most sensitive satellite shots and electronic intercepts. If I asked for it, I got it.”

  I asked, “Was this material controlled?”

  “There were safeguards. You’d get a paper with a control number stamped on it, so you had to keep the original. The office copiers had control methods, too. But sneak in a camera and take a picture, and nobody would ever know.”

  “Like Ames did?”

  “Exactly.”

  Katrina asked, “Did you have any dealings with the Soviets?”

  “Not then, no. I got occasional invitations to cocktail parties at the Soviet embassy, but I always reported those contacts to the Agency.”

  I leaned forward. “Did you ever go?”

  “Are you kidding? I knew why they were inviting me.”

  “Why?”

  “To see if I was vulnerable.”

  When I didn’t reply to that, he continued, “They first try to establish social contact with a target. They charm you. They probe to see if you’re disaffected, or need money, or are vulnerable to flattery or sexual overtures. They make their try, and if it works, the game’s on. If it doesn’t, they invite someone else to the party.”

  Katrina asked, “Did you know any Soviets?”

  “A few. Mary’s job put her in much more contact than mine. That rubbed off, though.”

  I asked, “Why? What was Mary doing?”

  He stopped and leaned back in his chair. “Wait a goddamn minute, Drummond. I’m not dragging her into this.”

  I drew a deep breath and very nicely said, “Neither am I, General. But yours wasn’t just any marriage. There are all kinds of possible intersections we’ll need to sort out.”

  He considered this. “You’re not going to involve her in this?”

  “She’s already involved. She’s interviewing lawyers. Would you prefer I learn these things from Eddie Golden in the courtroom?”

  A truculent scowl shifted into place. “Okay, okay. But you better be damned careful with what I tell you about her activities. You got that?”

  Surely, this was the appropriate moment to remind him that I used to sleep with her, too. Okay, right . . . perhaps not.

  He said, “Mary was a case officer. She was controlling some assets.”

  Katrina said, “Like spies . . . agents . . . targets?”

  “All the above. Mary was in a cell that worked the Soviet embassy and the large contingent at the UN.”

  “And how did that bringyou in contact with Soviet citizens?”

  “It didn’t. I knew who she was meeting with, though. I’m only warning you about this in case any of those people were exposed.”

  “How about 1989? What were you doing then?” Katrina asked.

  “That was the year the disintegration began. Suddenly all the intelligence agencies were critically short of people.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Eastern Europe and the Soviet republics were coming apart at the seams.”

  “Tell us about that,” I said.

  “We called it the Big Bang. It happened so fast that Gorbachev’s own apparatchiks couldn’t understand it.

  “Neither could we. Over fifty years we’d built this massive intelligence kingdom to watch the Soviet Union. Presidents and their advisers became spoiled. The thing we were watching moved half an inch and legions of analysts immediately wrote thousands of papers to explain why. We were experts at watching water freeze.”

  Katrina scratched her head. “What did that have to do with you and your responsibilities?”

  “The White House was screaming for information, and we couldn’t keep up. I was rushed through the Georgian desk, then the Azerbaijani desk, and then the Chechen desk.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Producing assessments. I was flying to those places, interviewing officials, meeting with country teams, trying to get a handle on it.”

  I suggested, “And meeting Soviet citizens?”

  “Of course. I went to Moscow five or six times that year and I met with plenty of Soviet officials in the republics.”

  “Did you form any special relationships?” I asked, slyly homing in on the one relevant fact I’d learned from the news releases.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did you form any long-term bonds with Russians?”

  He suddenly looked very nervous. He rubbed his lips with a finger and was obviously struggling with something. Uh-oh. He replied, “Drummond, I, uh, I can’t discuss this with you.”

  “You have no choice. Besides, I’m not only your lawyer, I’m an officer with a Top Secret clearance. And Katrina had her Top Secret restored last night.”

  He studied our faces. “You don’t get it. I could get court-martialed forwhispering this name.”

  “No shit?” said Katrina, in every regard an appropriate sentiment.

  Still we had to weather thirty seconds of hand-wringing, heavy breathing, and idiotic indecision before he said, “Have you ever heard of Alexi Arbatov?”

  “No.”

  “Alexi is currently the number two man in the SVR, one of the two agencies that split out of the old KGB . . . the one with responsibility over external affairs.” He paused in a transparent attempt at melodrama. “I met Alexi that year . . . I cultivated him.”

  “Cultivated?” Katrina asked.

  “It means I didn’t succeed in fully turning him. But I got him halfway there.”

  “And halfway there is . . . what?” I asked.

  “Alexi sometimes passes me information. It’s always his choice and usually his volition. In our jargon, he’s an uncontrolled asset.”

  “He still is?” I asked.

  “Yes. I was his controller. Eventually we brought in Mary also. I was assigned as the military attaché in Moscow and she was assigned as the station chief to put us right next door to Alexi.”

  I was gaping, mouth hung open, the whole nine yards. Morrison was claiming he’d “acquired” the number two guy in Russia’s most important spy agency. That’s like owning the deed to the Empire State Building: You see all kinds of things from a really great vantage point.

  Obviously impressed, I said, “Holy shit.”

  And he replied, “Now, asshole, do you see why Mary took me over you?”

  Actually, I’m just good at mind reading—what he really said was, “You’re understating it. I brought home the biggest intelligence catch the CIA ever heard of, and look what those bastards have done to me.”

  We stared at each other for a while, a sort of awkward pause, contemplating the possible ramifications of this news.

  I finally asked, “How did it work?”

  “Alexi wouldn’t let others be involved. He knew better than Mary and I did how pen
etrated we were. He made it a stipulation.”

  Katrina deduced that my interest in this topic was something more than idle curiosity and decided to join the play, asking, “Weren’t there safeguards or something?”

  “Alexi insisted on one-on-ones, but every time we met, the Agency required me and Mary to write extensive reports. It’s a standard procedure.”

  “Explain how that works,” Katrina said.

  “You compose it immediately afterward to reduce the risk of memory lapses. You try to recall everything that was said, the target’s mental state, the general mood.”

  “Who gets copies of these things?”

  “Arbatov was so critical, and so sensitive, that distribution was limited to the deputy directors for intelligence and operations. Oh, and a psychiatrist.”

  We both looked and were in fact confused, so Morrison added, “Part of our responsibility was to sustain his willingness to feed us, to handle whatever psychoses or neuroses he was experiencing. There are tremendous undercurrents of guilt and fear for a man who’s betraying his country. The shrink would comb through our reports, look for hints of problems, and advise us how to handle him.”

  I found this curious and asked, “And was this Arbatov stable?”

  “He had his reasons and he thought they were good ones.”

  “And what were those reasons?”

  Morrison was hunched over, toying with his manacles, and from my perspective, he appeared evasive. Conceivably, he was merely nervous about disclosing such sensitive information. Or conceivably there was something more here.

  He finally replied, “I think Alexi selectively gave us things he considered . . . What’s the best way to put this? If Russia was doing something he felt was morally repugnant, he’d report on that. But, for example, he never gave us the names of American traitors, like Ames or Hanssen. He gave us no counterintelligence information.”

  “Did he ask you for information?”

  The ugly frown on Morrison’s face implied that he finally realized where this line of query was heading. “Fuck you, Drummond. Of course we discussed things. I always included my responses in my reports, though. I never told him anything that was a betrayal.”

  “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.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  KATRINA AND Icloistered 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 n
ose. “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, “Canyou 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?”

  “Itis 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.”