No surprise either that a sizable press contingent sought out Warren Brazier, or anyone from his organization willing to speak to the media. The best that could be determined was that the industrialist was in Washington, probably in his office on the top two floors of an eight-story office building on New Jersey Avenue, within shouting distance of the Capitol and Union Station.
As with other administrative centers of Brazier Industries—Moscow, San Francisco, New York, Singapore, and New Delhi—a large corner office was kept empty for the company’s dynamic leader, flowers changed each day, his favorite beverages and snacks on hand, personal staff poised to serve. Each office had a large, private marble bath with sauna and Jacuzzi, a small bedroom area, and a closet containing a full wardrobe.
Brazier had been there since five that morning. He received word at six from an aide, who’d been monitoring local television, that Latham’s body had been found.
“Are you sure?” Brazier had responded.
“Yes, sir.”
“I see. Thank you. Please inform the staff, and make it clear there is to be no comment, from anyone, to the press.”
“Yes, sir.”
Brazier tuned the TV in his office to CNN. His timing was good; the anchor had just begun an update on the story. He intoned over a still photo of Latham, “As reported earlier, Congressman Paul Latham of California, eight terms in the House of Representatives, highly respected chairman of the powerful House International Relations Committee, and nominated by President Scott to become secretary of state, is dead.… His body was discovered earlier this morning by a member of the Capitol police, who came across Representative Latham in a small park near the Capitol. According to our information, he was found with a revolver gripped in his right hand. Death resulted from a gunshot to the temple. An autopsy is being conducted by the district medical examiner.
“A source close to CNN tells us that Congressman Latham had recently been depressed over allegations of impropriety stemming from his friendship with the industrialist Warren Brazier. Our source further informs us that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chaired by California Senator Frank Connors, the committee that would have conducted Latham’s confirmation hearing, had developed evidence of alleged wrongdoing by the deceased Congressman. We’ll continue to bring you this breaking story as more information becomes available.”
Now, at four in the afternoon, Brazier remained secluded in his office. He’d spent much of the day conferring with top aides, including his chief lobbyist, Tom Krouch. Krouch was a veteran Washington hand on the Hill, a switch-hitter, having worked for a number of senators and representatives, Republican and Democrat, both on their office staffs and on committees. His extensive network of congressional contacts trusted him, a lobbyist’s most precious commodity. He ran Brazier Industries’ lobbying effort by the book, which meant he knew how to walk that fine line between legal and illegal lobbying, crossing it only when he was confident he’d get away with it.
The other member of Brazier’s senior staff with whom he spent considerable time that day was Aleksandr Patiashvili. Patiashvili, headquartered in Moscow, had flown into Washington two days earlier. He headed up the company’s Russian executive corps, including the dozen or so in the Washington office whose responsibility was, among other things, to advise Krouch’s lobbying group on matters of direct interest to the company’s Russian projects, and to maintain liaison with various embassies in Washington representing nations of the CIS, the Commonwealth of Independent States, which had replaced the Soviet Union. As a group, they were young and well educated, with the exception of Patiashvili, who’d been with Brazier for more than twenty years.
Before joining the company, he’d been an old-line Communist, a general in the Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti, the KGB. Many eyebrows were raised when he left that post to become a Brazier Industries’ employee. You didn’t just walk away from the feared and powerful Soviet intelligence agency to join an American company without the move having been blessed from high up. Speculation was that Brazier had paid handsomely, not to Patiashvili, but to leaders within the Soviet government to bring onboard someone with Patiashvili’s heavy credentials.
While these meetings took place, Russian executives on the floor below assigned to Brazier’s Washington office caught up on things back home with the three young men who’d accompanied Patiashvili from Moscow. They sipped tea and nibbled on an overflowing platter of blinchiki s’varenem, the jam pancakes favored by the boss, that were flown in regularly from Russia. They commented on the news that the boss’s friend, the American congressman from California, Paul Latham, had committed suicide that morning. But none of them knew just how close—more important, how interdependent—Brazier and Latham had been. It was a Warren Brazier management technique never to let anyone else in his organization know the big picture. That, he reserved for himself.
Soon, talk among the young Russian men turned from suicide to more pleasant things. There was laughter and good-natured kidding, the latest jokes told, most of them sexual, but one of the young men in the room did not seem to be enjoying the banter. Anatoly Alekseyev, thirty-four, an employee of Brazier Industries for two years, left the room twice to make a phone call. When asked whom he was calling, he replied, “A friend. Just a friend.”
Alekseyev’s area of responsibility was in the energy division of the company. Brazier’s joint oil-drilling venture with the French and Russians on Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk had been receiving most of his attention the past six months. What had started as a relatively forthright project had deteriorated into a bureaucratic morass, complicated by a falling-out between Brazier and his French partners. Adding to Alekseyev’s daily burdens was the recent attempt by the company to buy Kazan Energy from the Russian government. He’d been working twelve- and fourteen-hour days, seven days a week, which cut annoyingly into his social life as a Washington bachelor. He enjoyed America’s capital city, especially Georgetown and its many pubs and nightclubs, where singles gathered to perform the mating dance.
He was a handsome young man, tall and angular with thick black hair worn short, and a serious, dedicated, olive-skinned face. He’d gradually replaced the suits he’d brought with him from Moscow with Western-style clothing, which draped neatly on his slender, muscular body. He did nicely at those watering holes frequented by singles, if such success was determined by not going home alone. Upon arriving in Washington, he lived in a one-bedroom apartment in a building constructed on upper Wisconsin Avenue to provide housing for employees of what was then the new Soviet Embassy, built on the city’s highest point, Mount Alto, and providing a troublingly direct line of sight into the White House. But after a year there, Alekseyev moved away from this Russian conclave to a decidedly fancier and certainly more American apartment complex on the banks of the Potomac River, in lively Georgetown. He was much happier there.
Alekseyev and the others waited to be summoned by Brazier. But at five-thirty, to their surprise, the boss’s personal secretary entered the room and said, “You must be living good. He says everyone can go home except for a few people. Enjoy your evening. He wants the staff here at seven in the morning. There is to be no comment to any member of the press. Anyone who violates that will be dismissed immediately.” The young execs waited until she was gone before allowing sarcastic chuckles to surface.
Alekseyev and his Washington-based colleagues went to their offices to pack up for the night. Offices were to be spotless and uncluttered overnight; Brazier was known to wander through at odd hours, leaving caustic notes for those who violated that rule, one of many.
The three newcomers, who’d flown in from Moscow with Aleksandr Patiashvili, were unsure what to do. They lingered in the hall. “We can leave, too?” one asked another.
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
Their question was answered by Brazier’s secretary. She came to where they stood and said, “Wait here.” She poked her head in Anatoly Alekseyev’s office doorway and said, “H
e wants you to make sure they get dinner and arrive back at the hotel without incident.”
“Me?” His voice mirrored his disappointment.
“Yes, Anatoly, you. And make sure they’re back here by seven.”
She returned to the three young men in the hallway and repeated, in surprisingly smooth Russian, the admonition about not speaking to the press.
Alekseyev led his three charges from the building, exiting through a back entrance leading from the building’s basement. Although the majority of reporters were in front, there were a half-dozen waiting at the rear doorway. They shouted questions, but Alekseyev waved them off, saying as they walked, “No comment. No comment.”
His car, a two-year-old Buick Le Sabre, was parked in the outdoor lot. The four piled in, and he pulled from the lot and into the street, almost hitting a young female reporter who’d followed them. One of the three muttered a comment in Russian about her breasts, causing the man seated next to him to laugh loudly. The third man’s response was different. He kept his eyes on the young woman until she was out of view. The veins in his forehead and neck swelled like snakes devouring a meal; his mouth was a tight, straight line.
The one who’d made the suggestive comment poked his serious colleague in the ribs with an elbow. “Hey, Yvgeny, don’t tell me you didn’t notice those big ones.”
Yvgeny Fodorov forced his thin, pale face to relax, even to smile as he said, “Da. She has nice big ones.”
14
Mac Smith showed up at the Marriott Hotel at National Airport precisely at four and went to the bar, where he ordered a white wine. A TV set was tuned to a channel providing continuous stock market quotes at the bottom of the screen, while talking heads conversed with each other above the steady stream of symbols and prices.
When Jessica Belle hadn’t arrived fifteen minutes later, he considered calling her office. But as he was about to head for a phone, she came through the door with a flourish, flashed an “I’m sorry” smile, and shook his hand.
“I got hung up in traffic coming out of Langley,” she explained, sitting on an adjacent stool. “I think they call it the Puzzle Palace because of the parking lots. Insane.”
“Drink?” Smith asked.
“Something soft.” To the bartender: “Club soda, please, and lots of lime.”
“Well,” Smith said after she’d been served, “what brings us together at the airport for this seminar?”
“Hope you didn’t mind driving over here, Mac. I’m catching a flight in an hour. Thanks for indulging my schedule.”
“Obviously more harried than mine. Settling in at the CIA?”
“No time for that. Giles and I have hit the floor running, as that dreadful cliché goes. Head is swimming.”
“You sounded anxious when you called,” Smith said, sipping his wine.
“Anxious to talk to you. That’s for sure.” She glanced up and down the bar; they could talk without being overheard, provided they did it pianissimo.
“I’m waiting,” he said.
“Okay. First, know that I’m here with Giles’s blessing.”
“Why is that important?”
“Because I’m not here to debate whether the District should be given statehood. Irrelevant issues like that. I’m here, Mac—funny, I have trouble calling my former professor by his first name—I’m here because of something we’ve learned at Langley about Congressman Latham and Warren Brazier.”
“I see.” Another sip of wine, longer this time to allow time to think. “Jessica, why would you be telling me such a thing?”
“Two reasons, and I had to convince Giles it was important that you be rung in. First, you were one of Latham’s closest friends. Second, you were his counsel for the hearings.”
“But I no longer enjoy either role. He’s—dead. As opposed to deceased, or passed away.”
“But his reputation still lives. And there’s the president’s reputation.”
“The president? I can’t keep up with these grand leaps you’re making. Let’s stick to Paul’s reputation. Something’s about to besmirch it?”
“Yes. Warren Brazier.”
“I’m with you so far.”
“Mac, Giles and I have spent almost every waking moment since arriving at Langley poring over intelligence reports from Russia. You know we’re charged with helping American industry overseas.”
“Yes.”
“Warren Brazier is a major player in American business development in Russia—the major player.”
“That’s not new, Jessica. Doesn’t take the CIA to know that.”
She smiled. “Of course it doesn’t. But it does take an agency like the CIA to get beyond what the media reports about Brazier’s Russian activities, and what’s really going on there.”
“Okay. What’s really going on?”
She leaned closer to his ear. “Warren Brazier had Paul Latham in his pocket since Latham first ran for Congress. All the strings from Latham have been in Brazier’s hands, and he’s pulled them every inch of the way.”
Smith winced, but not at what she’d said. He was due for a visit to the dentist. A sudden pain from a tooth that had been giving him trouble confirmed it.
“Jessica, let’s accept that Paul Latham was influenced by Warren Brazier, maybe even to what some would consider an unreasonable level. But that’s nothing new in American politics. Influence peddlers like Brazier are always on the lookout for up-and-coming political stars. They toss their weight and offer financial support to them in return for having the politicians’ ear. Lots of legislation gets passed to benefit some special interest. Maybe most of it. An unpleasant reality, perhaps, but reality nonetheless.”
“You’re right, of course. Paul Latham wasn’t the only committee chair influenced by Brazier. He’s pumped money into Connie Dailey’s campaigns for years.” Congressman Cornelius Dailey chaired the powerful Ways and Means Committee, which had joint jurisdiction where tax breaks for businessmen like Warren Brazier were involved. But Dailey, one of Latham’s closest allies in Congress, was known to follow Latham’s lead on most international issues.
“Fast forward for me, Jessica,” said Smith. “The president. What’s this have to do with him?”
“He’s known about it.”
“And?”
“Still puts Latham up as secretary of state.”
“Have you considered—?”
“The Russian trade bill Latham’s been pushing through committee is a total sellout to Brazier.”
“Have you considered that the bill might benefit this country as well as Warren Brazier? A strong market economy in Russia is good for us.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. There’s more.”
“Oh?”
She checked her watch, finished her drink. “Have to run pretty soon. All the new airport security. No more last-minute sprint for a plane.”
“Then you’d better talk fast.”
“Latham was about to be charged with sexual harassment.”
Smith’s eyes widened, and he directed a stream of air through pursed lips. “Who’s making the charge?”
“A female employee. A—” She screwed up her broad, pretty face in thought. “A Marge Edwards.”
“That’s nonsense.”
Why hadn’t Marge been at Latham’s office this morning?
“Maybe,” she said. “But that’s a personal thing. Not important now that he won’t be facing confirmation hearings.”
Tell that to Ruth Latham and the kids.
“The second revelation has a lot more significance, certainly for the country. We believe Warren Brazier has been funneling large sums of money into the Communist movement in Russia.”
“Why would he do that?”
“To see them come back to power. The Yeltsin government hasn’t been especially cooperative with Mr. Brazier. He’s trying to buy a company, Kazan Energy. You’ve heard of it?”
“Yes. An industrial giant.”
“Brazier always had easy acc
ess to the powers that be when the Communists were in control.”
“Wait a minute, Jessica. Are you saying that legislation Latham championed benefiting Brazier also benefited the Communists, not the free-market democratic leaders like Yeltsin?”
“I’m not saying it, Mac. That’s what our intelligence indicates.”
“I’m not convinced.”
“You don’t have to be. Brazier and the Communists are cozy with the Russian mafia.”
“According to your intelligence.”
“According to our intelligence. Brazier routinely uses them as security.”
“Buys security from them?”
“Uses them.”
“Lots of American businessmen buy security when doing business in Russia. In any of the independent states. Crime is rampant there.”
“There’s buying security—and then there’s hiring Russian thugs and mobsters.”
She checked her watch again. “Gotta run.”
Smith smiled, then laughed. “I love this,” he said. “Former student joins the CIA, calls me, meets me at the airport, and drops a series of provocative charges on the bar. Then runs for a plane. Why have you told me these things?”
“Because you might be in a position to find out more for us.”
“ ‘For us’? For the CIA?”
“Not exactly. Look, we’re on the same side, want the same thing. If Paul Latham was used by Brazier—and that’s probably what happened—at least I hope that’s what happened, that he was duped—and this comes out—which it undoubtedly will—”
“If someone wants it to.”
“—Latham’s sterling reputation will be badly tarnished. Think of his family. President Scott’s reputation will take a hit, too, by extension.”
“Assuming that’s true, why do you think I’m in a position to find out more about it?”
She stood and straightened her white skirt, checked her appearance in the bar mirror. “You’ve made lots of contacts within the Russian legal system. Latham’s family could be a source. His staff.” She raised her pretty blond eyebrows and cocked her head. “Just a thought. Giles is all for it. Thanks for indulging me, and sorry to run like this.”
Murder in the House Page 11