The Kingmaker sd-3

by Brian Haig

  He nodded, then said something to the detectives. I was then led out of the room, placed in the back of another police car, and then driven straight to a Russian hospital. I was led into a cramped, messy operating room and plunked down on a steel gurney.

  The hospital was filthy and run-down and lacked that antiseptic smell that lets you know that germs aren’t welcome there. Soon a harried-looking doctor and two remarkably hefty nurses came roiling in. The nurses laid me out on the gurney and then the doctor began cleaning my leg, spilling a clear liquid on the wound, then roughly wiping it off with a white rag. He pulled out something that looked like calipers and began digging around inside my leg, apparently searching for the piece of shrapnel embedded inside.

  Did I mention that he failed to administer any kind of painkiller whatsoever? I sure as hell mentioned it to him and the two sorry-ass nurses fighting to hold my leg steady. I begged them to stop and called them the filthiest names you could imagine. The only remotely good part about this was that I could finally hear my own voice. It made no difference, however. The doctor was ferociously pitiless. It took him nearly three minutes of digging brutishly around, another few minutes to stitch it up, and when he was done, tears were streaming down my face and I was sweating like a drafthorse.

  They walked out and left me, moaning and shaking and staring at all the blood on the table. Then the door opened and Katrina came in with the two very important-looking guys I’d seen earlier. There were bandages on her knees and elbows, and somebody had given her a shawl to throw over her torn blouse.

  She and the two important-looking men were jabbering in Russian, and although it sounded like people talking underwater, I distinctly heard the sounds of their voices.

  I said, “Katrina, what are these two assholes doing here?”

  She looked over at me. “Bad move, Sean. They speak English.”

  The two men were also staring at me, without what you’d call friendly expressions. I grinned. “Hi guys.”

  The suit on the left said, “I am Igor Strodonov, Moscow chief of detectives, and you will meet my assistant, Chief Inspector Felix Azendinski.”

  This explained why the two detectives back at the station had suddenly stiffened. The Moscow chief of detectives is like the second biggest wig in the whole city police hierarchy. I said, “Nice to meet you.”

  From his expression that was a one-way sentiment. “Miss Mazorski has informed us of what has happened at the site of the very serious accident.”

  “You mean ambush.”

  “Yes, this was so,” he said, trying to sound like a master of the English language, which he clearly wasn’t. “This is most unfortunate thing. Is great embarrassment for Russian people. The driver captain is dead with bullets in head and American lawyers are injured.”

  It was impossible to tell whether he was sincere or not. Most cops don’t mind at all when defense lawyers get gunned down in the streets. They think it’s a charming irony. I asked, “Do you have any idea who the shooters were?”

  “All are unfortunately dead.”

  I personally didn’t think it was the least bit unfortunate. “So you don’t know?” I persevered.

  “We have theory. We are checking out now. They are Chechens, which is not good thing. You understand?”

  “No, I don’t understand.”

  “Chechens very bad… what? Outlaws, yes? They kill Americans to make protest. Was terrorist thing.”

  I nodded as if this made sense-actually it made no sense. Not to me. But then I’m no expert on the Russian political scene. I glanced at Katrina, who stood perfectly still, an enigmatic expression on her face.

  The chief of detectives said, “You very lucky to live. These Chechens, they kill good.”

  Leaving us with that thought, he and his assistant departed. Katrina came over and helped me get off the bloody gurney. Having no idea what to do next, she walked and I limped out of the ward, me swearing that if I got so much as a bellyache before I left Moscow, I’d make them fly me out on a medevac plane.

  A black sedan with American diplomatic plates was outside, and the driver climbed out as we exited. We climbed in, and I noticed that this guy had his M16 within easy reach on the seat beside him. You can bet he wasn’t real damned happy to have us as cargo.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The driver, whose name was Harry, had instructions to take us straight to the embassy, which was terrifically inconvenient since Katrina and I needed to get our stories-aka alibi-straight. I insisted he drive to our hotel to let us get cleaned up, and when that didn’t work, I gave him the excruciating details about my recent surgery, and he either got sympathetic or bored with listening to me bitch, because he agreed to make one quick stop at the hotel for me to get some aspirin.

  As soon as Katrina and I were headed up in the elevator, I urgently said, “Any thoughts?”

  She retorted, “Chechens, my ass.”

  We had come to the same conclusion, although presumably for different reasons, and after a fair amount of hesitation, I said, “I, uh, I’ve got a confession.”

  “A confession?”

  “I believe that’s the right word.” I stared straight ahead and said, “I met with Alexi Arbatov this morning.”

  “You what?”

  “The last time I saw Morrison, I asked him how he contacted him. It’s one of those discreet-marks-in-the-subway things those spies like to dream up and… well, anyway, I met with him.”

  Icicles could hang off the look I was receiving. “I’m sure you had a damned good reason you didn’t include me in that decision.”

  “I, well, I had a reason. I thought it was a good one.”

  “Tell me that reason.”

  “I thought the less that went along the better.”

  “Well, fuck you,” she said, which was an appropriate sentiment.

  Anyway, we’d reached the doors to our rooms, and I said, “Grab whatever you’re going to change into and come over. And be careful, these rooms could be bugged.”

  She emerged seconds later carrying a clean dress, untorn stockings, and a pissed-off expression. I unlocked my door and she and I went in. I flipped on the TV and again there were the sights and sounds of a girl loudly doing the big nasty. If the room was bugged, whoever was listening on the other end had to be impressed, and was probably at that moment turning to his buddy: “Hey, Igor, check this. That American stud comes back from a gunfight and immediately nails his co-counsel. What an animalinski, huh? And just listen to her moan. Christ, no wonder those bastards won the cold war.”

  I went to the shrunk and pulled out a fresh uniform, then hooked a finger for her to follow me into the bathroom, where I turned on the shower and got the water flowing in the sink-they do that in the movies, hopefully with good reason.

  I stripped down to my underwear and said, “The point is, Arbatov says he’s got no idea what happened to Morrison. He claims Morrison wasn’t a traitor, and the arrest puts him at great peril.”

  Katrina was stepping out of her skirt. “That was it?”

  “No. He said I’m an amateur and that worried him.”

  “Did you trust him?” she asked, yanking off her stockings and getting down to her panties and bra. Compartmentalize, I reminded myself-good thoughts to the frontal lobe, naughty thoughts to the rear. By the way, did I mention that she wore a thong?

  Not quite tearing my eyes away, I said, “There’s something trustworthy about him. Of course, Morrison thought so, too, and look where it got him.”

  She pulled the new dress over her shoulders. “You think Arbatov was behind the attack?”

  “Yes. I didn’t think he’d recognize me, but he did. I made a big blunder. I wanted to smoke him out, only I didn’t think it through.”

  She sat down to pull on her stockings. “You put a scare in him? Is that it?”

  “Best guess-he showed up to see who had Morrison’s meeting signs, discovered it was me, that I knew about him, and he immediately rushed back to t
he office and arranged my assassination.”

  “Our assassination.”

  “Right.”

  She stopped rolling up her stockings and looked up at me. “And now, because of the police report, Arbatov knows about me, too.”

  “Well, yes, I think so,” I admitted.

  I mean, this was some poor Washington attorney I’d hired for one-fifty a day, and now I was telling her that as a result of my appalling impulsiveness the number two guy in Russia’s notoriously deadly spy apparatus wanted her buried.

  You watch all those great Hollywood spy movies and think how cool it is that the hero or heroine can outwit all those assassins and kill the bad guys, and save the world, and then end the movie in bed with the beautiful girl or dashing guy. That’s Hollywood for you. Back to the real world, the closing scene would be a bunch of people weeping over a grave, and it wouldn’t be the bad guys’.

  She contemplated the possibilities and then asked, “You think he’ll try again?”

  “Probably,” I admitted, standing in my underpants. “It won’t be so coarse next time… a car accident or a plane crash, something that can be explained as simple bad fortune. Like, ‘Gosh, those poor bastards; they survive a terrorist attack only to climb aboard a plane that loses an engine and plows into the ground. Talk about crappy luck.’ ”

  “Put your pants on.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yes, you are sorry. Put your pants on,” she insisted.

  “I really am sorry,” I persisted.

  She looked me dead in the eye. “If I had a gun, I’d shoot you. Put your goddamned pants on.”

  So I did. “Okay,” she said, straightening her dress and adopting a very businesslike expression. “What are we going to tell them at the embassy?”

  “We can’t tell them about Arbatov.”

  “No, we can’t, can we?” You could tell that her wheels were really starting to crank, because this was no longer just a law case, because now, she was fighting for her life. I threw some cold water on my face and washed down two aspirins. I turned off the shower and the sink, and she followed me out.

  We climbed back into the sedan, and I told Harry to stick with major boulevards-no side streets, no alleyways, nothing but the most traffic-clogged arteries he could find. He nodded like, yeah, exactly what he was thinking, too.

  We arrived in twenty minutes, and the receptionist at the entrance told us to go straight up to the ambassador’s office. His secretary ushered us right in, and there were the ambassador, two guys I didn’t know from Adam, and that bone-chilling inquisitor, Mr. Jackler. The two guys I didn’t know from Adam made no effort to identify themselves, maybe because they never intended to, or maybe because Riser instantly bellowed, “You two sit right there,” pointing at two chairs across from two couches.

  As Katrina and I complied, Riser and the others arranged themselves on the couches and faced us like an Admiral’s Mast. Riser squirmed around a moment, comfortably arranging his ass while he prepared to grill ours.

  “You okay?” he finally asked, looking first at Katrina.

  “I’m fine.” She stiffly added, “Just a little scraped up.”

  He looked at me. “And you saw the doctor?”

  “Yes sir,” I said, “and I can’t thank you enough for getting us out of that police station. I really can’t. It was really very kind.”

  He bent forward. “Drummond, don’t try sucking up to me.”

  “No sir,” I lied. “Furthest thing from my mind.”

  His face was reddening. “I have a dead officer on my hands. I have another American officer and an American citizen involved in a shootout in the capital of Russia. And the worst thing is, I haven’t got a goddamn clue why. You see where that puts me in a very foul mood?”

  I said, “The police told us it was a Chechen thing, a simple terrorist attack, and we were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “Bullshit! They always blame these things on Chechens. What were you two up to?”

  I bent forward to answer, but Katrina lunged forward faster. “That’s the same damn thing I was going to ask you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “What am I talking about?” Her voice rose with outrage, and I have to admit I was waiting breathlessly to hear her story as well. “We come here to conduct our investigation and you assign us a driver who nearly gets us killed.”

  Jackler lurched forward in his chair. “This Torianski guy?”

  She replied, “That attack was directed at him. That’s obvious, isn’t it?”

  All four men were now regarding her with inquisitive expressions. For their joint benefit, Jackler asked, “Why’s it obvious?”

  “Mel told us he was sorry he got us into this only a second before he was shot.”

  “He said he was sorry?” the ambassador asked.

  “Didn’t I just say that?” Katrina demanded.

  All eyes turned to me, and Jackler asked, “That right, Drummond?”

  “I remember he said he was sorry. And he mentioned something… something…” I scratched my head and looked up at the ceiling, trying to recall what he said-that he didn’t really say. But that’s beside the point.

  Katrina said, “About the SVR?”

  “Right, that part. Something about SVR bastards.”

  “He said that?” the ambassador asked.

  “Bullets were flying through the window, so I couldn’t hear real distinctly. But yeah, SVR bastards, or buzzards, or something. Anyway, Mr. Ambassador, I’m registering an official protest. My associate and I had our lives put at risk by your people.”

  Riser turned to one of the two men I didn’t know from Adam. “Could that be possible?”

  The man hunched his shoulders. “We, well, um, we hadn’t even considered it. We’ll have to comb through everything he was working on to see if it’s a possibility.”

  Riser’s face flushed. “Why didn’t you already consider it? It’s your damned job to consider it. Why do I have to sit in front of these poor people looking like a horse’s ass?”

  “Uh, sir,” said the other unidentified man, “Phil meant we considered it… we just ruled it as… well, as a lower possibility.”

  “A lower possibility?”

  The unnamed guy looked cunningly at Phil and said, “Yes sir. Torianski was involved in a few things; we just… didn’t think they were worth bringing to your attention yet. We wanted to hear Drummond’s side first. We’re narrowing the possibilities. Now we intend to look more deeply.”

  “Right,” said the guy I didn’t know from Adam, whose name turned out to be Phil. “We don’t like giving you half-cocked theories. But now that we’ve ruled out these two,” he said, indicating us, “we know exactly where to look.”

  “At the SVR thing, right?” the still-unidentified guy suggested to Phil, whom I took to be his boss, whose ass he was scurrying to save.

  “The SVR thing, right,” Phil adamantly replied, looking at the ambassador and nodding his head in our direction. “Which we obviously can’t discuss in their presence.”

  Katrina appeared to be fascinated by the unfolding scene. They should start one of those reality TV shows where you get to watch trained bureaucrats play cover-your-ass.

  With an aggrieved scowl, Riser said to us, “I’m very sorry. This is so embarrassing. As you can see, my own staff has been keeping me in the dark.”

  “It happens, sir,” I said, ever the graceful type.

  “For Godsakes, just assign us a driver who doesn’t get us killed,” Katrina insisted.

  “Of course.” He hastily ushered Jackler and us out of his office, apologizing profusely as we walked out his door.

  Out in the hallway, we could hear his voice go off, as Jackler said, “You two aren’t bullshittin’, are ya?”

  “What? About Torianski?”

  “Come on, Drummond. That boy didn’t have anything to do with this Morrison thing, did he? He worked for Morrison, right? And you’re h
ere looking for an accomplice, and this guy gets whacked.”

  “You know, I haven’t got a clue. I hadn’t even thought of it, but it does look suspicious, doesn’t it? Christ, I hope not. With him dead it would blow our chances for a deal with Eddie.”

  He walked away shaking his head, leaving little doubt that he intended to look fully into this matter. It would’ve been hilarious, except a young Army captain who had struck me as a very decent guy was dead.

  Not to mention that Katrina and I were on somebody’s hit list.

  Not to mention this was Arbatov’s turf.

  Not to mention it was his game.

  And if you add all that together, it was time to book two tickets on the next flight home.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I swallowed three more aspirins and lay down to nap before I organized our flight from Moscow. As both Napoleon and Hitler learned, planning a retreat from Moscow is a tricky affair that takes a clear mind and meticulous preparation. I’d woken up early, been shot at, wounded, and operated on, and was left feeling a bit groggy and foggy. I don’t know how long I slept, maybe a few minutes, maybe a few hours, but I awoke to a hand shaking me.

  My eyes cracked open, and I found myself staring at the handsome features of Alexi Arbatov. Instinctively, I jerked forward and nailed him in the forehead with a flat-handed punch. He flew backward, and I leaped out of the bed and jumped on him. He put up no fight, just went limp and passive. I flipped him over on his stomach, got one arm wrapped around his jaw and the other against the back of his head. I said, “Move and I’ll break your neck.” Not too original a line, but suitable for the occasion and, more important, authentic.

  “Please… let go,” he replied, his words choked and strained, because I had rotated his chin nearly forty-five degrees to the right, poised for the quick jerk that would disconnect his skull from his spine.

  “Of course… I let you go and you whack me.” I did, however, let his head rotate slightly back toward its natural position before I accidentally strangled him to death.