The Kingmaker sd-3

by Brian Haig

  Katrina sat on the striped couch, and I was starting to sit next to her when she quickly scooted her fanny over, exiling me to one of those flowered side chairs. She was shrewdly arranging the social setting for the best psychological effect, so she and Janet could have a confidential, chiquita-to-chiquita chat, which I believe to be much wimpier than a mano-a-mano, bareknuckled discussion.

  Janet wore jeans and a sweatshirt with the words UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA curled around a picture of a snarling English bulldog. She had long honey blond hair, a classically pretty face, and a sleek, slender body. She struck me as the type you’d want to have an affair with. I’d want to have an affair with her. But we were here to find out if Bill did have an affair with her.

  She began playing with the hem of her sweatshirt, betraying her anxiety, and Katrina gave her a warm smile and asked, “That shirt yours or in honor of a boyfriend?”

  “Mine.”

  “No kidding. What year did you graduate?”

  “Nineteen ninety-two. I majored in political science.”

  Katrina smiled sweetly. “Is that why you took the job at State?”

  Janet stopped playing with the edge of her sweatshirt. “I wanted to be a Foreign Service officer, but I was having difficulty with the tests.”

  “Hey, got that,” said Katrina, instantly sympathetic. “I worked at State, downstairs in Translations, trying to scramble up cash for law school. I had lots of friends trying to do what you did, though. It’s a bitch of a test, isn’t it? I knew one friend, took it six times and never passed. And I mean, that woman was smart as hell.”

  Janet shook her head. “You want irony? I took it twice and failed. The third time was just before this thing with Bill. I was notified afterward that I passed, except I lost my security clearance and was disqualified.”

  Katrina, her new buddy, shifted to a distressed frown. “Wow, that sucks. What are you doing now?”

  “I’m a paralegal in a small firm downtown. Not exactly what I hoped to do with my life.”

  “You must be royally pissed at Morrison, huh?”

  “I’d hate to be in the same room with her. I’d probably strangle her.”

  Katrina shot me a quick sideways glance. “Her? Uh, I thought her husband was behind it.”

  Janet broke into a throaty chuckle. “Him? He’s just spineless. She hired the lawyer and detectives who sabotaged my life. I mean, okay, I was having an affair with her husband. I’m not proud of it. He was miserable in that marriage, though. She made his life hell.”

  Katrina nodded sympathetically, like, Well of course he was miserable. Married to Mary, with her money, looks, and class, who wouldn’t be? Poor, poor Bill.

  “How’d she find out about you?”

  “He sent some gifts over to my apartment… some lingerie, some jewelry. And do you believe this?… the idiot charged it. She saw the receipts and hired a detective to track me down. Then Bill came into work one morning and asked me into his office. He looked like hell, like he hadn’t slept all night. He said he had to fire me. She ordered it.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “I said, no way. Transfer me, but don’t fire me. I knew I’d done well on the exam the last time. It would ruin me.”

  “And he said… what?”

  A harsh chuckle erupted from the back of Janet’s throat. “He offered me money. I told him to stuff that money up his wife’s ass. He’d told me dozens of times he loved me. Why was he letting that shrew ruin his life? Our lives? You know what he said?”

  “What?”

  “For the children. That old line. It was bullshit. He was a miserable father. He ignored those kids. They were so much like her, he hated being around them.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I protested the firing. There was a hearing, and those high-priced lawyers and detectives had testimonies from the first guy I ever slept with to every affair I ever had. Look, I’m no nun, but I don’t go around throwing myself at married men, either. They made me sound like pathetic trailer-park trash.”

  Katrina was again nodding in her sympathetic way, like, Aren’t men just the biggest cads? What in the hell was God thinking when he gave them such a big role in reproduction? She said, “Hey, I have to tell you. Bill doesn’t come off sounding very good.”

  “Well, yeah, he was spineless… but I don’t blame him. That wife of his is like Lucrezia Borgia. You have no idea.”

  Uncomfortable hearing Mary described in such thorny terms, I swiftly said, “So you didn’t think Bill was an honorable person?”

  She shot me a noxious look. “I didn’t say that.”

  “No?”

  “This whole thing in the news is hogwash. Somebody’s made a terrible mistake.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, really.”

  I scratched my jaw inquisitively. “What were his duties in that office? He says he was Martin’s right hand. Was that true?”

  “Was it true? The guy was at the office every morning at six and didn’t usually go home till ten or eleven at night. Martin showered work on him.”

  Katrina and I exchanged another glance. This had suddenly become much more interesting. “Give me some examples of the kinds of things he did for Martin.”

  “You name it, he did it. He wrote nearly all of Martin’s memorandums and policy recommendations and messages. I typed them, so I know. He represented Martin at meetings with State, or with the White House, or with the CIA. A lot of Martin’s work depended on intelligence, and Bill collected it, summarized it, and kept it flowing.”

  “No kidding? Martin said Morrison was a low-level flunky with a puffed-up title.”

  She violently shook her head. “What a lie! He depended on Bill for everything. Not that I’m surprised Martin denies it.”

  “No?”

  “His ego’s bigger than his nose. He thinks he’s the new Kissinger. Well, he’s not nearly as bright as he thinks he is. He knew nothing about Washington. Bill kept him from being fired. He made him look good.”

  I looked at Katrina and she was gazing back at me with an expression I couldn’t quite fathom.

  Katrina said to Janet, “I can’t thank you enough. If something evidentiary from those years turns up, we may need you to testify. Would you be willing?”

  “Of course. I hope his wife is there. I’ve waited a long time to tell her what I think of her.”

  On that note, we bid our farewells and departed. In the car I turned to Katrina. “Well?”

  She looked away. “Mary has a hard touch.”

  “Yeah, well, what would you do if you caught your mate cheating with his secretary?”

  “It’s irrelevant. Wouldn’t happen.”

  “How come you’re so confident?”

  “I’m fantastic in bed. My men don’t wander.”

  “Well, then, notionally speaking… say your husband was cheating?”

  “Remember John Bobbitt?”

  “Could any man forget him?”

  “Of course, I wouldn’t toss it in a field where they could find and reattach it. I’d put it in the garbage disposal and grind it into mush.”

  “Wouldn’t a simple divorce suffice? Less wear and tear on your disposal.”

  “Well, afterward, I suppose. He’d be worthless. Why keep a dickless man?”

  And Mary has a hard touch? I finally said, “Put her on the witness list, but she’s a last resort.”

  Katrina stared out the windshield. “Of course. They’d tear her to pieces on the stand.”

  They would indeed, which meant all we had so far was one character witness of questionable reliability and infinite vulnerability.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  A “Source close to the investigation” revealed that night that Bill Morrison had provided the Russians with eight years’ worth of technologies that had been submitted to the Commerce Department for export licenses, and were subsequently denied.

  The “source” explained that it was the most catastroph
ic industrial espionage leak ever. When companies submit requests to Commerce for permission to export their latest inventions, they include detailed blueprints. And when the experts at Commerce’s office of export licenses deem a particular technology too strategically sensitive, or too militarily valuable, they stamp “not exportable” on the request and order the company to never, ever let any foreign power see how that product is made.

  The “source” said that Morrison gave the Russians hundreds, if not thousands, of blueprints of outrageously sensitive technologies ranging from radar systems to vital software codes to more powerful microchips, to you name it. It was “impossible to quantify the damage,” opined that anonymous source.

  I formed a mental picture of Eddie slumped back in his blue wool suit as he smugly spun this latest horror story for his admiring audience of reporters. The bastard was having the time of his life. Would it be too much to ask that he just keep his mouth shut and unload this in court, like any decent lawyer?

  Nor did it escape my notice that Eddie’s leaks were spewing out faster and faster. There was a hidden message in this-he was trying to get it all out before he offered his deal, an indication it wasn’t far off. Not a good development.

  I picked up the phone and called his office.

  A youngish-sounding female secretary answered. “Office of Eddie Golden, chief counsel of Counterespionage Team One and chief prosecutor in the Morrison case.”

  My, my… Dumbo the Elephant had invented not one, but two grand titles for himself.

  Raising the tenor of my voice, I said, “Yes, yes. I don’t wish to bother Mr. Golden, as I’m sure he’s ridiculously busy, but could you please inform him the Sexually Transmitted Disease Clinic at Fort Myer called. And… well… we really need him to drop by right away.”

  The secretary said, “I, well, uh, I’m sorry, you have the wrong man. This is the office of Major Eddie Golden.”

  “Oh no, dear, he’s the one. An utter slut. The man’s in and out of here so often we’re thinking of renaming the clinic after him. Thank you very much,” and I hung up.

  I can be so infantile. And with any luck, he was having a fling with the secretary who answered, and the next time he passed by her desk she’d knee him in the nuts.

  Sleep came more easily that night, knowing I’d at least struck one small blow for freedom. Unfortunately, it had a short half-life, because at three-thirty my phone rang, and a deep male voice identified himself as the commandant of the Fort Leavenworth Disciplinary Barracks. Sounding curt and hurried, he informed me I had better get my ass out there real quick because my client had just tried to commit suicide and was in the hospital in critical condition.

  He hung up before I could respond. Very funny. Eddie Golden can be such a sly, sly devil. Like I’d fall for this and rush down to the airport and catch the early bird to Kansas City.

  When I couldn’t fall back asleep, I finally had the operator put me through to the commandant’s office. Sounding like he was talking to a three-year-old dolt, he repeated every word of it.

  I caught that early flight and rushed into the dispensary at 9:30 A.M. Imelda had somehow arrived ahead of me and was in the waiting room, pacing back and forth like an English sentry.

  I breathlessly asked, “Is he still alive?”

  “So far,” she dryly observed.

  “What happened?”

  “Seems some dumbass had a TV set brought into his cell. He opened up the back, yanked out some sharp objects, and slashed his wrists. Guards found him at the twenty-minute check, laid out in a big puddle of blood.”

  I felt my face flush. “So it was close?”

  “Not was close, is close. Docs been runnin’ in and outta there all mornin’.”

  I fell into a heap on a nearby couch. I stewed. I hate to sound selfish, but if Morrison died, I’d be front-page news by noon, the Dr. Kevorkian of military law.

  My bosses would be both happy and furious with me. They’d be happy I provided my client the tools to save the government the time and expense of weathering the trial and appeals process before it executed him. There’d be no big crowd of folks holding a candlelight vigil outside his death chamber, no fussy editorials about the morality of executions, no question about whether he got a fair trial, because he had carried out the sentence himself.

  And they’d be furious because to pinpoint and repair the damage, the government needed to know everything he gave to the Russians. Corpses don’t speak.

  And so I waited in selfish agony for a doctor to come out and tell me he was dead. Or alive. Or still hovering in that testy netherworld in between.

  At 9:50 a chubby, grim-faced surgeon approached. “Major Drummond?”

  “Unfortunately,” I dolefully admitted.

  “General Morrison is resting peacefully. It was damned close. He lost so many pints, he had a minor infarction.”

  “But he’s going to be okay?”

  “He should be. But whatever idiot let him have a TV should be shot. What were they thinking?”

  Yeah, what were they thinking? I asked, “Can I see him?”

  “If you’d like. Make it quick, though. We have him on tranquilizers, so he’ll be in and out.”

  He led me down a few hallways to a door with two MPs standing beside the entrance. Inside, Morrison lay in bed with two or three IVs pumping various fluids into his body, his head turned sideways, his face ashen and flushed, like his new blood hadn’t yet worked its way to the surface.

  I sat on the edge of the bed. He mumbled, “Shit,” which fairly well summarized our common view-him because he was still breathing, and me because that meant I was still his attorney.

  I said, “That was really, really stupid.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Yeah… I lived.”

  “You’ll make it through this.”

  “Yeah? How?”

  “You just do.”

  He stared at the wall and said, “Drummond, a week ago, I was…” He stopped and took a deep breath. “Shit, did you know I was on the two-star list?”

  “So what?”

  “ ‘So what?’ ” He rolled his eyes in disbelief. After a pause, he asked, “What are my odds?”

  “At this stage, we don’t know.”

  He turned and looked at me, his eyes haunted. “I saw the reporting on TV. I’ve already been convicted.”

  “You saw a bunch of Beltway assholes throwing around opinions. It takes ten officers and a shitload of evidence to convict you.”

  He thought about this a moment and then asked, “How could this have happened?”

  “Well, either you did what they’re claiming or somebody’s made a really big mistake.”

  “You don’t believe me, do you?”

  “Let’s just say I met your former secretary yesterday. And you might recall I was at your award ceremony for the Silver Star.”

  He turned away again, refusing to look me in the eye.

  For good measure, I added, “And on a more personal note, you’re an asshole for cheating on Mary.”

  “So I fucked up, Drummond. Nobody’s perfect.”

  “Mary is. She didn’t deserve that.”

  He let loose a raw chuckle. “You stupid asshole. She’s not perfect. Christ, you have no idea.”

  “Wrong. I have a very good idea.”

  “You weren’t married to her. You have no idea what a bitch she can be.”

  This conversation could only go downhill from here, aside from which he seemed to be on the verge of losing consciousness, and there was pressing information I needed out of him. I said, “When you worked for Martin, what was your relationship with Commerce’s export control office?”

  His eyes were closing. “Huh?”

  I squeezed his arm. “The export control office. The guys who say whether U.S. companies can export their crap to foreign countries.”

  “I never worked with them. They’re part of Commerce.”

  “I see.” I pondered this a moment, then took a shot in the
dark. “Do they have some sister office in State?”

  “The Office of Munitions Control?”

  “Right, those guys.” I guessed that’s what I was talking about. I mean, other than guys like Morrison who spend most of their careers in Washington, who in the hell knew where all the tentacles of government flow and interlock? No wonder the Republicans want to cut the size of our federal institutions. At least then, when a new team comes to power every four years, they don’t spend their first two studying wiring diagrams and trying to figure out who all those frigging people are and what they do.

  The befuddled look was still on his face. “I didn’t do any work with them. Why?”

  “Last night’s release said you handed over hundreds of requests that were turned down by that office.”

  He shook his head, although I sensed his mood had shifted from outrage to resignation.

  I added, “They said you turned over blueprints, tech assessments, the works.”

  He started that mirthless chuckle again. “Christ, who’d ever think of giving them the rejects from that office? It’s ingenious.”

  “Ingenious?”

  His head flopped over, he faced the wall again, and explained, “Those requests go all over town. Commerce, State, CIA, DOD, NSA, everybody has a whack at them. It’s a big veto ring.” He took a long, labored breath. “Dozens of offices… hundreds of people are involved-you’d never know who did it.”

  “So the leak could’ve come from any number of sources?”

  “Of course.”

  I touched his shoulder. “Okay, listen, I promised the doc I wouldn’t stay long. So you promise me something.”

  “What?”

  “No more of this suicide crap. If I’m going to work my ass off on your case, I don’t want any more late-night phone calls about your health.”

  I couldn’t see the expression on his face or the look in his eyes. “Okay.”