by Brian Haig
“You said ‘her boss,’ ” I asked, suddenly apprehensive. “Who’s in charge of the prosecution?”
“Major Golden.”
It occurred to me that he had been waiting for this moment. The JAG Corps annually presents an unofficial award, a silly twist on the Navy’s Top Gun, called the Hangman Award. It has rested on Eddie Golden’s office bookshelf two years running, and in an obnoxiously prominent place, telling you volumes about Mr. Golden. I played a role in that award, having faced him three times, the first two of which I was carried out of court on a stretcher. I nearly got the better of him the third time, before it was declared a mistrial, which, technically, was a draw. The idea of Eddie scoring a hat trick on me was sickening.
I mumbled, “I’ll send you a name when I think of one.”
He nodded as I made my retreat, thinking to myself that I’d ended up with a case I didn’t want, representing a client I couldn’t stand, opposing an attorney I dreaded. In short, I had kicked myself in the nuts.
I drove off in a fetid mood and raced down the George Washington Parkway to the McLean exit, described in Realtors’ brochures as a “leafy, upscale suburb” located right across the river from our nation’s glorious capital. Between “leafy” and “upscale” the message is this: McLean is where two or three million bucks in the bank can land you.
I raced past the entrance to the CIA headquarters, took a right on Georgetown Pike, shot past Langley High School and two more of those leafy side streets, then turned into one of what those Realtors’ brochures enticingly call an “elegant, highly prestigious address with old world charm.” Translation-bump up the bank balance another ten mil.
The street was lined with graceful old mansions that are distinctly different from the new McMansions sprouting up elsewhere, intimating that the residents of this block pay their property taxes with old money. Old money’s supposed to be better than new money, but when you have no money, like me, the distinction’s a bit blurry.
I pulled into the big circular driveway and parked my 1996 Chevrolet right next to a spanking-new $180,000 Porsche 911 GT2-a glorious thing in shimmering black, a boy-toy of the highest order. I admired it for a long, simmering instant before my car door flew out of my hand and oops-a big scratch and ugly dent magically appeared.
I walked to the front door and rang the bell. The man who answered had a curious smile that flipped into a vulgar frown as his eyes fell on my face. “Drummond?”
“In the flesh, Homer, and it’s a real pleasure to see you, too,” I replied, with a big phony smile.
He did not smile back. The man was Homer Steele, Mary’s father, a guy born with a lemon stuck so far up his ass that the stem poked out his ear. I thought I heard him laugh once at a cocktail party, but when I went to investigate, he was choking on a piece of lobster. I rooted for the lobster, incidentally.
“What do you want?” he demanded in a less than polite way.
“Mary. She’s expecting me.”
The door slammed and I waited patiently for three full minutes, overhearing a jarring argument inside. Was this fun, or what?
Finally the door opened, and there stood Mary Steele Morrison in her full staggering glory.
So let me explain about Mary.
Remember Grace Kelly… that alabaster skin, those scorching blue eyes, that silky white-blond hair? Remember how she walked into a room and men actually gasped? That’s Mary without the slightest exaggeration. One of those Hollywood doubles agencies saw her picture in some society rag and even offered her work as a stand-in.
Two months into my sophomore year at Georgetown, she approached me in the middle of the campus quad and brazenly begged me for a date. A crowd began gathering. People were watching. I did what any gentleman would do, and then the girl started calling me all the time, making a damned nuisance out of herself, and out of pity I dated her for the next three years.
That’s how I remember it.
Oddly enough, she recalls it somewhat differently.
Her father wasn’t too keen on her career choice, which we’ll get into later. She’d stop home on weekends, and there was always some new jerk in a Ralph Lauren sweater, perched casually by the fireplace, sipping sherry, eyeing her like a used sofa her father wanted to pawn off.
From that scant evidence, Mary deduced that her father was trying to mate her with somebody’s large fortune, and that put her in a cranky, rebellious mood. The day I worked up the nerve to ask her to go see a movie, she saw the perfect candidate for the perfect plot. In a nutshell, she’d lure me home to meet Daddy Warbucks, and since I wasn’t exactly what Papa had in mind, a deal would be struck-the spoiled rich kids and I would mutually disappear.
Her side of the story has going for it that it bears an almost uncanny resemblance to the facts. Homer barely glanced at me before he yanked her comely tush into his study, and the sounds of their yapping and thrashing echoed all over the house. And if you think that’s not a crappy feeling, try having it happen to you.
Anyway, now as I stood in her doorway, her arms flew around my neck and she planted a kiss on my cheek. I hugged her, too, and then we stepped back and examined each other, as ex-lovers are wont to do. She smiled and said, “Sean Drummond, I’m so damn glad to see you. How are you?”
“Uh, fine, yeah, hi, gee, crappy way to meet, how are you, you look great.”
Am I cool or what?
That smile-I’d forgotten how unnerving it was. Most beautiful women, the best they can do is this flinching motion of a few stingy muscles that comes across more like a favor than a feeling. Mary’s smile swallows you whole.
Besides, she did look great. Her face was slightly leaner, and there were a few tiny wrinkles, but the effect was to enhance her beauty-as the poetically inclined might say, sprinkling dew on a rose petal.
She wrapped both her arms tightly around my arm and tugged. “Come on.” She giggled. “I swear it’s safe. My father promised to leave us alone.”
“Gee, I don’t know.” I peeked inside. “I don’t trust the old fart.”
Mary giggled some more. “He has a dartboard upstairs with your face on it. He’s probably up there right now.”
This was a joke, right? She led me to the rear of the big house, to a cavernous sunroom built off a living room the size of a football stadium. The house was filled with ancient-looking oriental carpets, and cracked, antique-looking paintings, and leather furniture with brass studs, and all the other ostentatious furnishings meant to remind visitors of the life they can’t afford.
She sat on a flower-patterned couch and I took a place across from her. The moment instantly got landlocked in the past. Twelve years is a long time, and a million questions were swirling in my mind. Unfortunately, the one that kept kicking to the surface was, Hey, why’d you marry that lousy prick when you could’ve had me?
Given the circumstances and all, perhaps it would be best to avoid that one. I finally announced, “I saw him this morning.”
“How is he?”
“Not well. On suicide watch.”
She shook her head. “Poor Bill. They called him into the office on some pretense, then he was in handcuffs being dragged out of the embassy. They deliberately humiliated him. Those bastards even invited CNN to be there.”
I tried to appear sympathetic, but to be honest, I had enjoyed watching the arrest. Of course, this was before he became my client, and now I was deeply ashamed of myself. Right. Anyway, I said, “Well, he signed the request and my boss just approved it.”
She tried to muster a warm smile as she said, “Thank you. I mean it. I know it’s awkward. I just…” And suddenly that smile crumbled, and she was biting her lip.
I put a hand on her leg. “Forget it.”
She laid her hand on top of mine. “We shouldn’t have asked,” she finally said. “What a stupid predicament.”
I chuckled. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Sean, I have no right to put you in this position. I’m desperate… I h
ave two young children and a husband accused of treason. Bill insisted on you, but I-”
“Look,” I interrupted, “if you’re concerned about my feelings, don’t be. Lawyers have no emotions.”
“Liar.”
“Liar, huh? At Georgetown Law, they caught a girl crying one day… She’d just learned her mother died. They threw her out on her butt. There was a big ceremony in the auditorium and they said she just couldn’t cut it.”
She was shaking her head and laughing. “Oh, come on.”
“We’re the ones in movie theaters who get dreamy-eyed when the Titanic goes down, counting the corpses and plotting the class-action suit.”
She giggled and said, “God, I’ve missed you,” then instantly looked chagrined, like, Oops, what made those words pop out? “Hey,” she said, a little too awkwardly, “do you want to meet the kids?”
“Oh God, kids?” I groaned.
“It won’t be bad, I promise. They’re just like regular people, only smaller. Just… nothing about Bill, okay?”
I nodded as she left the room and went into the hallway. She called upstairs and a moment later came the thundering sound of little feet bouncing down stairs.
“This is Jamie,” she said, pointing proudly at the boy, “and this is Courtney.” She then paused briefly to fabricate a graceful way to explain me, the guy who would’ve been their father were it not for their mother’s awful judgment. To them, she said, “Guys, this is Major Sean Drummond. We went to college together and, well… we were best of friends. He’s just stopped by to say hello.”
They padded over and shook my hand, a pair of blond-haired, blue-eyed replicas of their mother. This was no bad thing, I must tell you, and I felt perversely gratified to see so little of Morrison’s seed evident in their children. Don’t ask me why; I just did.
I said to her, “Christ, your genes are greedy cannibals.”
She giggled. “Bill always said I mated with myself.”
Then the hard part. There’s a good reason bachelors aren’t supposed to have children and it’s called competency. I try to come down to their level, to engage them in conversations about things I assume they’re interested in, like say, Tonka trucks and Barbie dolls, and they look back at me like I’m a moron.
I regarded them with my most charming smile. “So, hey, what do you guys think of the Redskins’ chances this year?”
Mary rolled her eyes, while Jamie, who looked to be eleven or twelve, pondered this a moment, then finally replied, “They need a new coach.”
“You think so?”
“A new quarterback, too.”
“A new quarterback, huh?”
“And their defensive backfield stinks. So does their offensive line.”
“I take it you don’t think much of them?”
“My grandpa likes them, so I hate them.”
The timing would be off, but I stared at him and wondered if he was my lovechild. I said, “I predict you’re going to grow up and become a very great man.”
Courtney, who looked to be six or seven, had been retreating swiftly toward the protection of her mother’s legs, that way shy kids do. But she was a girl-tiny and inexperienced-and thus, should still be susceptible to my charms. I flashed her my smarmiest smile. “And what about you, Courtney? Don’t you like football, too?”
She looked terrifically confused as her mother reached down and stroked her hair. “Ignore him, darling. He gets awkward around women.”
Courtney giggled. “You mean he’s a dork?”
“Honey, we never use that word in front of the people we’re talking about,” said Mary, wagging her finger. “Wait till he’s gone.”
Courtney giggled some more. “Girls don’t like football,” she instructed me. “I like Playstation, though. Especially the games where you get to shoot people.”
“Do they show the blood?”
“On the better ones. Some of them, the people just die.”
“Yeah, I could see where that would get boring,” I admitted with a knowing nod.
“I like it better when they bleed.”
“I think I love you. Would you happen to be free on Friday night?”
She hugged Mary’s leg tighter. “He’s strange, Mom.”
“I know, honey. He can’t help it. Don’t make fun of him, though. He’s very sensitive.”
I stuck out my tongue at Courtney and she broke into giggles.
“All right, you two,” ordered Mary. “Back upstairs and stay away from your grandfather. He’s slipped into one of his grumpy moods.”
Their obligation to meet their mother’s friend completed, they scampered off with relief on their faces. I was impressed. It only took those few moments to realize that Mary was a great mother. The chemistry between her and the kids was palpable and affecting.
We sat on the couches and faced off again. I asked, “And is Grandpa ever not grumpy?”
She shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Ignore the stuffy old ass. He thinks we’re idiots for bringing you into this. I told him Bill insisted on you, that he had always said if he got in desperate trouble, he wanted me to call you.”
“Well… that’s interesting.”
She wisely ignored this. “Sean, he followed your legal career very closely. He really admires you, you know.”
“Well, desperate trouble calls for desperate action, I suppose.”
She nodded that this was so and asked, “How do you think it’ll go?”
“Frankly, it’s going to be an ordeal for him, for you, and the kids. When it comes to espionage cases, the government leaks everything. It’s like the bureaucrats feel some obnoxious compulsion to tell the American people exactly what kind of disgusting bastard they’ve caught.”
She closed her eyes and looked pained. “I’ve seen it before. I’m trying to prepare myself.”
Truthfully, there was no way to prepare for this, however, I moved on and asked, “What are they telling you at work?”
Regarding this particular question, the day after we graduated, Mary disappeared into that big CIA training facility down by Quantico, Virginia, to begin the career Homer had tried to derail with his fruitless pimping. I never understood why Mary was so intent on becoming Jane Bond, however, she was the kind of model candidate the CIA dreamed of attracting-smart, polished, adaptable-and its recruiters had likely promised her a world of bullshit. Over the years I’d heard she was doing quite well, however, her world was as much smoke and mirrors as mine, so I had not a clue what she did.
She leaned back in her chair and released a big gust of air. “They haven’t told me anything. They can’t. I’m the Moscow station chief whose husband is accused of working for the Russians. It’s a terrible predicament for everybody.”
Oh my. Trying to hide my stupefaction, I asked, “The station chief?”
She nodded as I tried to absorb this news. Needless to say, this presented a whole new array of potential problems. I settled for, “So you haven’t been canned or anything?”
“Not yet. I’ve been reassigned to a management job here in Langley without access to anything even remotely sensitive. They’ll keep me packed in mothballs until this thing is resolved, then they’ll quietly pinkslip me.”
She explained this matter-of-factly, as though it was just the way things worked, and why worry about it. Actually, it left a great deal to be worried about. In reply to my stare, she said, “I know… it’s going to be the bombshell when it gets out. I’m not looking forward to it.”
I pondered this a moment, then asked, “Did you have any inkling it was going down?”
“I’m his wife, Sean. I was the last person they’d say anything to.”
That obviously made sense. I asked, “Did the two of you… uh…”
“Share things?”
“Exactly.”
“He had a Top Secret, SCI clearance. He was the military attache, which is an intelligence job, and I was the station chief. Leads, sources, discoveries, you name it-I held n
othing back.”
“Mary, I advise you to get a lawyer.”
“I know. I’ll be interviewing several over the next few days.”
“Have you been interrogated?”
“Formally, no. I’ve had a few sly queries from my boss, the deputy director for intelligence, but nobody has yet sat me down for a rigorous grilling. They’ll get around to it, though.”
Indeed, they would. “Don’t say anything. As his wife you’re protected from testifying against him. Not to mention, you need to keep as much distance from this as you can.”
“I’m not sure I can sell them on that. He’s my husband. I’m in this up to my eyeballs.”
“Legal distance, Mary. There are all kinds of possible avenues of culpability in this. Get that lawyer quickly, and if they try to question you in between, politely refuse to answer anything.”
She nodded, but with an amused expression, I suppose because it’s a bit awkward to get legal advice from a former lover. I recalled the warning about mixing business with pleasure, however, this was old pleasure mixed with new business so perhaps it did not apply.
I asked, “Are you mad at him?”
“Truthfully, I’m furious. I can’t believe this happened. Maybe it’s not his fault, and I keep trying not to blame him… I can’t stop myself. I need someone to be mad at.”
“It’s natural, and you’ll get past it. Say he actually did it, got any idea why?”
“Not one, Sean. Everything was going so well. We had a good life… we both loved our work. Did you know Bill was on the two-star list that’s about to come out?”
I didn’t know. “Was” would be the operative verb, however, as some guy was probably at that very moment seated in a back room putting a match to that list. The Army tends to be very grouchy about these things.
I walked across to where she was seated, bent over, pecked her cheek, and said, “I have to go. You’ll be hearing from me soon, okay?”
I thought her expression looked bleak and abysmally lonely and I didn’t really want to leave. What I really wanted to do, I won’t go into. I asked, “You sure you should be staying here? With him?” I pointed a finger at the ceiling to show I meant you-know-who.