by Brian Haig
It sucked being young in this era. In my day we only had to look like fancified dorks in disco drag. At least we didn’t have to get stabbed and tattooed. I mean, those old disco clothes, you send them to Goodwill and glide gracefully into becoming a fat, balding, middle-aged guy. Just throw out all your old pictures and your kids will never know what a jumbo jerk you used to be. All those holes and tattoos—they’ll know.
The phone finally rang, the clerk picked it up, said, “Just a minute,” then handed it to me.
Alexi’s voice said, “Sean?”
“Yeah, Alexi,” I said, then unloaded the whole story, including the fact that my government was somehow mysteriously implicated.
He listened patiently, then said, “This is something very big happening here, Sean. I would offer to put you in safe house, but this could be compromising. It would be better to be using Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown. My people will book you a room and charge it to our expense. It will be under Mr. and Mrs. Harrington. I will be calling you later.”
I hung up, and then Katrina and I walked down the main drag to the Four Seasons. If you have to go on the lam, this is the kind of place to do it. As soon as we were ensconced in the room, I had room service send up two filet mignons and a bottle of wine. It was on the Russians. Why not?
Alexi called twenty minutes after we finished eating.
He said, “Is everything all right?”
“Katrina and I just polished off a sixty-dollar bottle of wine. Hey, you know what, Alexi? Put some booze in that girl and look out. She’s been climbing all over me, licking my ears, making all kinds of lewd suggestions. You’d hardly recognize her.”
Katrina flung her big purse at me.
“Heh-heh,” I said, but neither of them laughed. I thought it was hilarious.
“Anyway,” I said, “we think we’ve got this thing figured out. What we believe is there’s a real mole in our government that Morrison was framed to protect. You guys do those kinds of things, don’t you?”
He didn’t answer for a moment. Then he said, “To protect one that is most important, this could be possible. Is very difficult operation to construct, Sean. Is most difficult to match moles with acceptable surrogates. You understand? We have saying about this. ‘The shadow must match the body.’ ”
Now, here’s the thing. I was in an absolutely desperate position. Somebody was trying to snuff me, for some reason my own government seemed to be accomodating that effort, and Katrina and I were alone, without resources or allies, a raft floating in the middle of a murderous ocean. My only hope was Alexi. So let’s see—maintain my pristine personal integrity, or live a few years longer? Exactly.
I said, “Well, here’s what I think, Alexi. I think Mary’s working for this cabal of yours. I think she’s been on their payroll this whole time, convincing the CIA your accusations were wild ravings and protecting the cabal’s existence. I think she’s been filching her husband’s papers. I think whoever provided those papers to the CIA gave only the documents she pilfered from Bill, while the stuff that would’ve pointed at her is still locked away in Moscow.”
“What?” he asked, clearly surprised. “You accept the cabal’s existence?”
“Yeah.”
“And you think Mary is with these people?”
“Nothing else makes sense. I mean, it was Mary who told me it was baloney, right? She was trying to mislead me. And if she’s not working for the SVR, it means she’s working for somebody else in Moscow, right?”
“This would make sense, Sean. This cabal has extraordinary resources and reach. It could be that Mary is somehow connected. I have never considered this. The shadow certainly fits the body, yes?”
The poor guy was so smitten by his phantoms, he was leaping at any thread that substantiated, fed, and justified his paranoia. I felt sorry for him. But not so sorry that I wasn’t willing to exploit it, as the CIA had done for the past decade.
“There’s a way to find out,” I said. “I’m going to have one of my assistants question Bill. He should be able to confirm whether it fits or not.”
The idea intrigued him, and he said he’d call me in six hours to see what turned up. I immediately placed a call to Imelda. I explained our predicament and why I couldn’t set foot on a flight to Kansas City without alerting the authorities. She could, though; so I told her to.
I explained what I wanted her to do and asked her to smuggle a cell phone into her interrogation, and then gave her the number to our hotel room. Then Katrina and I sat and did our best to kill the hours as we waited. We watched an Oliver Stone movie, and we both laughed hilariously, because he was the only guy in the world more paranoiac than us. Katrina asked me about my childhood and I asked her about hers, we talked about politics and sports and college days, and when we ended up discussing our favorite ice-cream flavors we both knew we were in serious trouble.
The phone rang at 11:40P .M. and I dove across the bed to answer it.
After some opening banter, Imelda said, “Went over the dates with him. Mostly they match, sometimes they don’t.”
What she was referring to specifically were the dates on the documents from the Moscow vault Eddie had provided us. She was showing them to Morrison and asking him where Mary was at those times, how she might’ve gotten her paws on them.
I said, “Okay.”
She said, “Wanta talk to him?”
He came on with his typical blast of selfish, overbearing horsecrap. “Where the hell are you, Drummond? How come you haven’t visited? I don’t like dealing with sergeants. God damn it, I’m a general officer and I’m owed some respect. You’re—”
“Shut the hell up and answer my questions. How do you think Mary framed you?”
“Don’t tell me to shut—”
“Shut your mouth!” I yelled. “I’ve killed three men this morning, and at the moment I’m having visions of flying out there and killing you. This was all because of you. Frankly, you’re not worth it, so if you don’t shut up and answer my questions, I’ll be on the next flight.” Katrina was giving me the evil eye, so I took two deep breaths and tried to calmly ask, “Now, how do you think Mary framed you?”
“I don’t know,” he petulantly replied.
“Yeah, but you’ve now looked at the prosecutor’s key evidence. How could Mary had gotten all those papers out of your office?”
He fell quiet a moment. “She could’ve gotten some of them easily.”
“Notsome, damn it . . .all of them. The President’s and Secretary of State’s talking papers? The blueprints for the technologies denied for export approval? The North Korean talking points? How could she have gotten her hands on those papers?”
“Shit, Drummond, I already told you I never saw the tech stuff, or the North Korean stuff. As for the rest of it, no, she couldn’t have gotten all of it from me. It wasn’t like I was bringing those papers home. She hardly ever visited my office at State or the White House. But I wasn’t the only one handling those papers. Maybe Mary pilfered them from someone else, too. Did you ever think of that?”
Of course I had thought of that. Just as I had thought of the fact that all the White House and State documents had Morrison’s fingerprints on them.
I said, “Let’s be clear on this. Just the talking points and policy papers. The ones with your fingerprints on them . . . could she have gottenall those through you?”
“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 actuallyis 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 p
ossible. 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.