Murder in the House

by Margaret Truman

  Unlike many of his young friends, Mikhailov pursued higher education, majoring in finance at Moscow’s coveted Academy of Economics. As his educational credentials grew, so did his positions of responsibility within the party.

  When Gorbachev came to power in 1985 and speeded up the process that would result in the Soviet Union’s collapse, Mikhailov and fellow hard-line Communists labored to thwart attempts at perestroika and glasnost. They failed, at least on paper and at the polls. But the Communist Party held out hope that one day the nation would be returned to its former glory through a reinstated Socialist system. Platon Mikhailov believed it would.

  He told his aide to wait outside. “Your people, too,” he said to Brazier, who waved his aides from the room. When they were gone, Mikhailov said, “Vodichka, Brazier?” He pulled the bottle from the ice bucket.

  “No,” Brazier replied.

  “Something to eat?” He gestured to the platter of zakuski. “Maybe you would prefer ikra.”

  “I don’t want caviar, Platon. I’m here to talk.”

  Mikhailov broke into a smile, exposing teeth that looked like corn on the cob. “Of course. You are well?”

  Brazier ignored the pleasantry. “What is the status of the sale?” he asked, his voice low and monotone, his eyes trained on the big Russian.

  Mikhailov shrugged and poured himself a drink. Brazier sat impassively and watched as Mikhailov downed half the vodka in the glass, smacked his lips, and laughed. “You don’t know what you’re missing,” he said, finishing the drink and pouring another.

  “I’m losing patience, Platon,” Brazier said.

  “Are you? What is the saying? Patience is a virtue. For a Russian who must deal in this new era, it is more than a virtue. It is a necessity, Brazier.”

  “For some. But I was led to believe you had the ability to cut through it.”

  The Russian filled his glass; a hand went up in a gesture of ambivalence. “It is not easy these days, you know, my friend. It was better before, huh? But then there was not so much to gain.”

  Brazier knew only too well what the deputy minister meant.

  “I might need more from you to finalize the sale,” Mikhailov said through the smoke of another cigarette. Again, a gesture of resignation with his hand. “It’s not as easy as it once was, Warren. More competition for businesses being privatized by the State.”

  “You mean bigger payoffs being paid,” Brazier said softly, narrowing his eyes against the smoke wafting in his direction.

  Mikhailov laughed, and coughed. “Not only a matter of money,” he said. “Favors to be dispensed. Loyalties to be remembered and rewarded. Remember, Yeltsin was an apparatchik, too, until he decided to love democracy and the free market.” He chuckled at his comment.

  Brazier had had enough. He stood and went to a floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the train station.

  “I’m sure we can work it out,” Mikhailov said from where he remained seated. “How is your friend, Congressman Latham?”

  “He’s fine,” Brazier said to the window.

  “Will he be able to deliver the bill, now that he will be distracted because of his nomination as secretary of state?”

  Brazier slowly turned and faced Mikhailov. He was suddenly consumed with disgust for what he saw—the hulking deputy minister of finance, cigarette in one hand, glass of vodka in the other, lips parted in a crooked smile.

  “It will be a shame to lose him,” Mikhailov said. “Committee chairmen are so powerful in your Congress. Secretary of state? A figurehead. Am I right?”

  Brazier’s response was to go to the door. He turned and asked, “When will I know whether you’ve paved the way for the sale of Kazan Energy to Brazier Industries?”

  Mikhailov had picked up a sausage from the zakuski platter and had taken a bite. He finished it, licked his fingers, picked up his vodka, and extended it as a toast. “To when all is resolved, Warren. To when your Congress has passed the Russian Trade and Investment Bill, and to when Kazan Energy becomes part of your family of businesses. When do you leave Moscow?”

  “In the morning.”

  “Call me at my office. Perhaps I will have something additional to report.”

  Brazier left the suite and swiftly led his administrative and security entourage to the lobby and into the waiting limousines. Unlike the trip to the hotel, he occupied one limo by himself. Two of the security men were instructed to follow in another, leaving Brazier’s aides, and the other two guards, to make use of the one remaining vehicle.

  Brazier was delivered to the National Hotel, where he changed into bathing trunks, robe, and slippers and went to the top-floor health club. It was more crowded than he preferred—ideally, he would have the pool to himself. He ignored the four other men, dove in, and swam energetic laps until his shoulders ached.

  He dried himself, put on his robe and slippers, and looked out over the Kremlin, once the symbol of Soviet power, now nothing more than a center of bureaucratic confusion. He was seething when he had left Mikhailov; the swim hadn’t fully exorcised the anger from his tightly wound body.

  He muttered an obscenity in Russian. What a mess reformers like Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and their cronies had made of what had once been an equally corrupt but assuredly more orderly system to navigate, especially if you knew what you were doing.

  Warren Brazier had been navigating the old Communist system since 1965. He knew it well, how the bureaucrats thought and reacted, their individual weaknesses, the greed that prevailed, and especially the chains of command you had to go through to get what you wanted.

  He’d suffered countless frustrations in attempting to gain an industrial foothold in the Soviet Union. His ventures there had never been as lucrative as others in different areas of the globe. But he hung on, developing his friends in high places, building his own personal list of those who’d prospered through his generosity, and who owed him.

  He’d been calculating his moves in the Soviet Union with one goal: Be the individual they turned to when the inevitable happened, the collapse of the economic system and the Soviet Union itself. His prognosis had been on the money: The system and government had collapsed.

  But instead of Warren Brazier being in the right place at the right time, being the one in the best position to prosper by the collapse—being first in line to snap up formerly State-owned industries at bargain-basement prices—he’d been forced to compete with Russian business interests with longer tentacles into the reformed government, some of them in the government itself.

  Brazier and Deputy Minister of Finance Platon Mikhailov went back a long way, to when Brazier made his first business foray into what was then the Soviet Union. Khrushchev had been deposed by party leaders less than a year earlier, and the Ukrainian, Leonid Brezhnev, was in power. Difficult as it was, Warren Brazier had done business with the Communists for twenty years—through the Brezhnev era, and those of Andropov and Chernenko after Brezhnev died in 1982—succeeding where few other outsiders had, or could. From his perspective, it didn’t matter who was in charge of the totalitarian state. Business, Soviet style, went on as usual.

  But the economy was a disaster. Technology hadn’t progressed much beyond the 1950s, except in space, while the West forged ahead to develop the computer age, and toward such exotic military concepts as the so-called Star Wars defense.

  Through his highly publicized efforts to create profitable industries within the Soviet Union, Warren Brazier became known as America’s unofficial ambassador to it. His views on U.S.-Soviet relations were sought by congressional committees, think tanks, and even presidents of the United States. His picture appeared on the covers of Time and Newsweek. Would he launch a third political party? Brazier never said yes, never said no, encouraging grassroots attempts to draft him as a candidate one day, protesting he was too busy running his company to become mired in politics on another. Observers felt he reveled in the power such ambivalence generated, and they were right. Warren Brazier’s short sta
ture was more than compensated for by an ego of gargantuan proportions.

  While his staff, except for the on-duty security men in the hall outside, drank and danced to American hip-hop music in one of many Western-style discos springing up all over the city, Brazier solemnly ate dinner alone in his suite. He’d developed over the years a taste, at times even a love, for Russian food, especially Georgian fare.

  But this night, his dark mood precluded anything Russian. He ordered steak well done, and a salad, and washed it down with mineral water.

  He awoke the following morning with as much anger as when he’d gone to bed.

  Clearly, certain changes had to be made.

  7

  THE NEXT DAY

  In Washington, D.C., there are as many jurisdictional disputes each day as there are tourists daily during cherry blossom time. The investigation of Congressman Paul Latham as nominee for secretary of state, though assumed to be a shoo-in, would not be an exception.

  The FBI wanted preliminary questioning to take place at its headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue. President Scott’s chief of staff suggested that the White House would provide a more conducive setting. Latham preferred his own office. Mac Smith, as the congressman’s counsel, reluctantly intervened with all the parties, and prevailed on behalf of his client.

  Smith, Latham, a White House attorney, two FBI special agents, and a stenographer sat in a semicircle in Latham’s office in the Rayburn House Office Building. It was eleven in the morning. The mood was relaxed. The participants exchanged quips about things in the so-called news. The two C-SPAN channels, volume off, provided silent pictures over Latham’s shoulder of the House and Senate in action.

  “Well, let’s get to it,” Latham said. “I haven’t missed a vote in ten years and don’t intend to now.”

  “I wouldn’t want you to miss the vote on executive-branch appropriations,” Dan Gibbs, the White House attorney, said. “I’m hoping for a raise.” He didn’t smile.

  “Post office funding, too,” Latham said. “The day of the dollar stamp is not far off.”

  One of the FBI agents asked the stenographer if she was ready. She confirmed that she was with a nod, then remembered and said, “Yes.” He said to Latham, “You know, Congressman Latham, that this is routine.”

  “Of course. I assume you’ve already started digging into my background.”

  “That’s right. Actually, this will probably be a lot faster than most cabinet nominee investigations. Hard to find anything controversial in your life.”

  “That’s because I’ve avoided controversy. Maybe not here in the House, but certainly in my personal life.”

  “Let’s go back a bit,” the agent said. “You taught political science at U of California at Berkeley.”

  “Briefly,” Latham said.

  “Two years?”

  “A few months shy of that.”

  “A very liberal university.”

  “A very open-minded and challenging university,” Latham countered.

  The agent turned to his colleague and asked lightly, “What did they call the university at Berkeley? The People’s Republic of Berkeley?”

  The second agent nodded.

  Mac Smith looked at Latham for a response; his client didn’t seem to be annoyed at the flippant comment.

  “We managed to track down some of your students,” the lead agent said.

  “You’re in trouble now,” Smith said.

  “I assume you were impressed with their educational credentials,” Latham said.

  “Very,” said the agent. “They said you ranked among their most popular teachers.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “One of them said you had some pretty unorthodox theories about international relations.”

  “Oh? Obviously not one of my brighter students.”

  “She said you seemed to be sympathetic to the Soviet Union.”

  Latham looked at Smith and laughed. “I’m about to be called a fellow traveler.” To the agent: “Don’t give her name to Senator Connors. Christ, he’ll call her in as a witness against me.”

  The questioning lasted until 11:45, when the sound of a bell from Latham’s office clock announced that a fifteen-minute floor vote had been called.

  “If you want to continue this after the vote, I’ll be happy to—”

  “No need, Congressman,” the agent said. “We’re pretty much finished up here. There is one area we have to explore a little, but it can wait.”

  Latham, who’d gotten up and gone to his desk in search of papers relating to the vote, asked absently, “What area is that?”

  The agent answered with equal casualness, “Your relationship with Warren Brazier.”

  Latham looked up, his brow furrowed. “Nothing to tell you about that,” he said, scooping up the papers and heading for the door. “Mac, will you hang around until I get back?”

  “Sure,” Smith said.

  Latham’s chief of staff, Bob Mondrian, poked his head in the door. “Mr. Frank’s on the phone.”

  “What does he want?”

  “The vote. He says Sanders might come around to our side.”

  The clock’s bell sounded again, indicating ten minutes left to vote. A recorded male voice reported the substance of the bill. Republican offices had their own recorded voice, which usually put a different spin on each piece of legislation up for vote.

  Latham and Mondrian left the office suite. The FBI special agents closed their briefcases and said good-bye. The stenographer packed up her portable equipment and followed them out, leaving Smith and Dan Gibbs alone in Latham’s office.

  “Nice to hear the Bureau thinks this will be a fast investigation,” Smith said. “Do you?”

  Gibbs, a scholarly-looking middle-aged man with soft black hair that flopped in conflicting directions, and whose black-rimmed glasses were oversized, reclined in his chair, slung an arm over its back, and said, “Yeah, it is. Only, that doesn’t necessarily translate into easy sledding with the committee. Senator Connors is no fan of Congressman Latham.”

  “So I hear. And read.”

  Gibbs got up and closed the door, took his seat, leaned toward Smith, and lowered his voice. “This question about the congressman’s relationship with Warren Brazier could be problematic. I know I can raise this with you as his counsel.”

  “Of course. Better raised now than later. How much of a problem?”

  “We’re not certain. As you know, the FBI’s check into his background won’t amount to much. They look for obvious areas of conflict, things that might cause the president to withdraw the nomination.” He laughed. “That’s about as likely as the president resigning from office. But we have our own investigators dredging up everything and anything Connors and the committee’s investigators might come up with—and use.”

  Smith grunted. “I’m sure that by the time this is over, we’ll know everything we don’t want to know about Congressman Latham’s life, including at what age he was toilet trained and his favorite fast food. It’s a brutal process.”

  Gibbs chewed his cheek, asked, “What do you know about the congressman’s relationship with Brazier?”

  Mac didn’t immediately respond. He’d been around Washington long enough to know that casually sharing information with anyone, even those who presumably were in your camp, like Gibbs and the White House he represented, wasn’t prudent.

  So Smith did what all savvy Washingtonians did. He replied without offering anything Gibbs didn’t already know.

  “Warren Brazier and Paul Latham have been friends for years.”

  “I know that Mr. Brazier has been a big financial contributor to Latham’s campaigns,” Gibbs said.

  “I wouldn’t know about that,” Smith said. “But it doesn’t surprise me. I’m sure any financial help Brazier gave Paul was well within legal guidelines.”

  Gibbs smiled, more of a facial tic, and shrugged. “Brazier’s business history in Russia is interesting. Isn’t it?”

/>   “I’ve found it interesting over the years. I mean, I’ve enjoyed reading about his adventures and successes.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “Warren Brazier? I’ve met him once. A week or so ago. We shook hands.”

  “Congressman Latham has put through some legislation over the years that was beneficial to Brazier.”

  “Has he?”

  This time, Gibbs’s smile said something—that he realized Smith was not about to offer much. He said, “I have to get back to the White House. I’ve enjoyed talking to you, Mac. You have quite a reputation in this town. The congressman is lucky to have you as counsel.”

  “Any lawyer would do. He’ll be confirmed with ease.”

  “I’m sure you’re right.” He stood and arched his back against an unseen pain. “Do me a favor?”

  “If I can.”

  “If you come up with anything that might—well, that would give ammunition to Senator Connors and others who might not want to see the congressman confirmed—you’ll let me know?” He didn’t give Smith a chance to respond, adding, “I’m sure you wouldn’t want to see the president embarrassed in any way.”

  Smith stood and shook Gibbs’s hand. “I enjoyed meeting you, Dan.”

  “Same here. We’ll be in touch.” He handed Smith a business card with his White House direct line on it, and left, leaving the door to Latham’s office open.

  Marge Edwards entered the outer office cradling a sheaf of papers in her arms. The appointment secretary spotted Smith, dropped the papers on a desk, and stood in the doorway. “Hi, Mr. Smith. How are you?”

  “Fine, Marge. Yourself?”

  “Okay, I guess. Busy. Things are going nuts here with Paul up for State.”

  “I can imagine. How’s the confirmation process seem to you to be going?”