The Kingmaker sd-3

by Brian Haig

  Viktor leaned back in his chair, obviously surprised. “Tapes? What is on these tapes?”

  “The whole thing,” Johnson grimly admitted, appearing greatly pained.

  Yurichenko looked over at me. His eyes roved from my shoes to the bald tip of my skull. I was a most unlikely-looking suspect to have found a way to outsmart him. He seemed to be thinking furiously about how to handle this.

  He asked Johnson, “And you really think these tapes would be a problem?”

  Which actually was a clever way of saying, “Hey, I’m not really buying this. And you better not be bluffing or Drummond over there will think he just spent five months vacationing on the Riviera compared to what I’ll do to him.”

  “Oh for Godsakes, Viktor. They detail attempted murders by you inside our country, as well as the murder of an American officer in Moscow. On one of them, Martin admits to everything. He names you as his controller. He admits it was your idea to frame Morrison. Do you know what would happen if all that got out? If the American people learned that for eight years you were actually running our foreign policy toward your country, they’d go wild. The President asked me to tell you he’d be left with no choice. He’d have to cut off everything. He’s not exaggerating, Viktor. You have no idea what those conservative pricks on the Hill are like. We’re talking endless investigations here. This was your doing, not ours. It was your operation. You owe us something for keeping it quiet. That’s the quid pro quo.”

  Viktor looked like somebody just threw a glass of ice water down the back of his shirt. It took him a moment to recover. “But there is still a problem, Harold. Even if we released Drummond, we have no guarantees it won’t come out. Look at him. Imagine the anger in his head. The moment he stepped off the plane, he would tell everything.”

  Almost on command, Johnson and Clapper pivoted their necks and faced me. Clapper said, “That’s why we insisted on having Drummond here for this meeting. He’ll have to swear to give back those tapes and that he’ll never utter a word about any of this.” His eyebrows came down about two notches. “I’m sure you’ll be willing to do that. Right, Sean?”

  Now, here’s the truth about what was running through my head at that very instant. The whole five months I spent in Siberia, I’d known this moment was coming. It was the only thing that kept me sane, that let me withstand the constant beatings, and the incredible loneliness, and the bitter cold. Those tapes were my only source of hope.

  They were a ticking time bomb. They’d do incalculable damage to American-Russian relations. The American people don’t like being played for suckers. They get real grumpy about that. And frankly, given what I now knew about Yurichenko’s plot, that might even be the best thing that could happen. But was it worth the rest of my life?

  I leaned my back against the wall. I was suddenly pensive.

  Knowing me as he did, Clapper said, “Don’t even think about it, Sean. There’s no real choice for you. If you say no, those tapes will still never see the light of day. Trust me on this.”

  There was something in his tone, a slight intonation, as if he knew something I didn’t know. Okay, I had to consider that. But the other thing I considered was that with or without those tapes, I could still accomplish a great deal of good by telling the CIA and, if they didn’t listen, the American press, all about Viktor and his cabal. And frankly, that was much bigger news than another spy scandal anyway. That was the news that would blow the top off everything.

  “Okay,” I mumbled, and Johnson and Clapper relaxed back into their seats.

  As if by some hidden cue, the door behind me opened and the guard yanked me back out of the room, so the grown-ups could be left in privacy to discuss whatever the hell it was they needed to close the deal.

  I was led back to the sedan and then driven to a local jail, where I was given my own cell. I lay down, closed my eyes, and tried to sleep. I couldn’t, though. Between my hacking coughs and my troubled thoughts I was still wide awake at three in the morning, when two guards and two Americans in dark gray suits came to get me. I stared out the windows at Moscow’s streets the whole drive to the airport. The usual assortment of beggars and crippled vets were roaming around, all those poor bastards who never realized they were the pawns on the chessboard whose fates were being decided by men like Viktor Yurichenko. I actually had tears in my eyes as they loaded me on an American C-130 and it took off.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  I spent a miserable week in the military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, while the docs probed and checked every square inch of my body for infections and diseases I might’ve picked up at Camp 18. I had a blood infection, but they cleared that up in a few days. They emptied pharmacies full of drugs into my system for the pneumonia. The whole week they also kept intravenous tubes hooked into my arms so they could restore my vitamin balance, or my blood cell count, or maybe my sperm count. Nobody told me, so how the hell was I supposed to know?

  In between my medical treatments, two of those glum-faced Agency guys kept coming into my room to debrief me. I went over everything. I told them about Viktor’s admissions, and about Milt Martin, and then about life at Camp 18. They taped every word and listened patiently, but I had no idea what they thought. Like most debriefers, they were as uncommunicative as brick walls. Every time I asked them what had happened in the past five months they just stared blankly and said they weren’t allowed to talk about it.

  After the hospital released me, I actually took a civilian flight back to the States. The first thing I did after I was seated was bribe the stewardess into giving me six extra bottles of scotch. I deserved a little reward. Although unfortunately, my body was so battered and depleted that I was in a coma after the third one.

  I woke up with an incredible headache and a stewardess shaking my arm. The plane was empty of passengers; it was just me and the cleaning crew. I stumbled down the aisle, feeling spectacularly sorry for myself. Was this any way to treat a returning hero?

  I made it through customs in record time, and just as I was leaving the sealed-off area, I spotted a short black woman in civvies flapping her arms and running toward me. If I didn’t know her better, I’d swear she was excited to see me.

  She walked right up and threw her arms around me, hugging me tightly, like a mother taking care of a child she knew had suffered some grievous misfortune. We stayed like that nearly a quarter of a minute, and it felt wonderful.

  Then she backed away and her face got scrunched up. “You look like shit.”

  “Well, hell, Imelda,” I said, “it sucked pretty bad.”

  She shook her head and sort of half smiled. “Don’t you try any of that bitchin’ and moanin’ crap on me. I ain’t got no time for wimps.”

  “But I-”

  “But you nothin’,” she said, still smiling.

  “Thanks anyway. I mean it, Imelda. Thank you. I owe you my life.”

  She shrugged as if it was no big thing. “I gave ’em the tapes last week. General Clapper said it was part of the deal.”

  “It was,” I admitted. “They give you a hard time?”

  “Them bastards can’t spell hard time. They tried to turn up the heat pretty good for a while. Them people also sneaked into the office and my apartment, lookin’ for them tapes. Like I’d leave ’em in plain sight that way. Hummph.”

  I put a hand on her arm. You have to know Imelda. If she said they tried to give her a pretty hard time, that meant they threatened to rip out her fingernails and kill every last member of her family.

  I knew when I sent her the tapes, I’d just taken out the best life insurance a man could have. When I was still missing after a week, I knew Imelda would contact the right people and threaten the hell out of them with exposure. She’d know just how to handle it, too. Thirty years as an Army sergeant is the equivalent of a Ph. D. in making others suffer.

  I kind of felt sorry for the Agency. They had never run into the likes of Imelda Pepperfield. She doesn’t respond well to pressure. Which is a
nother understatement, because squeezing Imelda is like punching a porcupine. It ends up hurting you a lot more than it hurts her.

  I finally said, “Imelda, I hate to sound ungrateful, but what took so damned long?”

  She looked down at the floor in evident embarrassment. “It was part of the deal. Them CIA people said you couldn’t come back till they was ready.”

  I filed that one away, as I patted her on the arm. “Don’t worry about it. Really. I was having a great time. I was cursing when they dragged me out of the special resort they sent me to. I’d made all kinds of friends. I miss them already.”

  Anyway, she led me out to the parking lot where her black Mazda Miata was parked. I’d never reckoned Imelda as the cutesy Miata type, but then nobody’s ever exactly what you think they are, are they? We stayed on the Dulles Toll Road till we got to the Tysons Corner exit. She took the exit, and I asked where she was going, and she just shrugged. The next thing I knew we were pulling up to the front of Morton’s Steakhouse. A guy in a silly-looking uniform took her car and gave her a ticket.

  When we entered, Imelda murmured something to the maitre d’, while I stood frozen in the entrance, literally swooning from the aroma of cooking steaks and lobsters and prime rib. The food here probably wasn’t nearly as good as Camp 18’s, but I thought, What the hell… why not give the place a chance?

  Oddly enough, two stiff-looking types in dark suits were standing beside the entrance to the private room we were led to. I snarled at both of them as we walked in. For some odd reason I’d developed a real grudge against intelligence people.

  Katrina came running at me. She threw her arms around my shoulders and kissed me right on the lips. Then she backed away, and Alexi was there with his hand held out.

  “God, it’s great to see you two,” I blurted, and it really was. We shook hands like a couple of old pals.

  “You’re, uh, you are still Alexi, aren’t you?” I asked.

  “No, I am now Bill Clinton.”

  “Bill Clinton?” I asked. “What asshole thought up that cover name?”

  “Is only big joke,” he chuckled. “I am developing American sense of humor.”

  “Who’s teaching you? The CIA?”

  This one passed right by him. Maybe it wasn’t funny anyway. Maybe I needed a bit of work on my sense of humor, too. Five months in Siberia can cause you to lose a few steps.

  He very seriously said, “Unfortunately, I am also being told I cannot give you real names. Tonight, Katrina and I will be moved to a new location to assume these new identities. Is all set up, because Viktor has people trying to find us. Mary says nobody can know of our new identities, not even you.”

  Katrina was rolling her eyes. “You should see the shit we went through to have this dinner with you. What’s with these people?”

  “It’s this whole concept of friendship. Very mysterious to them, trust me.”

  Did I sound bitter or what?

  Katrina said, “They’ve been treating us like little kids. We’ve been living in safe houses for months, while Alexi was getting debriefed.”

  “I’ll bet that was fun.”

  “Fun, my ass,” she replied, pushing a strand of hair off her forehead as she looked me over from head to toe. “But we obviously got the better part of the deal. You look like shit. Why didn’t you follow us out of that bakery? We waited until Jackler insisted we couldn’t wait any longer.”

  I briefly thought of telling her the truth. I considered saying, “Hey, remember when that lady said to abort, and you blew her off? Oh, and you blew me off when I reminded you? Well, guess what? These last five months of my life, that was the result.”

  I didn’t, though. I wasn’t about to. The truth was, I’d just spent five months being ridiculously envious of Alexi. Corny as I know this sounds, Katrina was the kind of girl I should’ve fallen in love with, because she believed in her man, and because she was willing to risk her life for him. I, on the other hand, had been in love with a manipulative schemer who chose a complete jerk over me and still had the gall to bring me back into the picture, so she could use me like a dishrag.

  So instead, I said, “There was this really cute girl over at the next table, and she, uh… ah, Christ, you don’t want to hear about it.”

  She looked at me like I was crazy as hell.

  I gave them both a big smile. “So are you two getting married or something silly like that?”

  Alexi grinned proudly. “I asked Katrina two months ago.”

  “And she told you no, right? She said she’d fallen head over heels for this very dashing, extraordinarily handsome Army lawyer, and she could never settle for a lesser man.”

  Alexi obviously had a long way to go before he’d understand American sarcasm. “Uh, no, Sean, this was not what she was saying.”

  Katrina took his arm and shot me a bullet of a look. “He’s joking, Alexi. And for Godsakes, don’t copy his sense of humor.”

  “Ah, I see,” said Alexi, trying to manufacture a polite laugh.

  “So have you set a date?” I asked.

  “We must wait until we are resettled and have new identities.”

  “Well, I’m very pleased for both of you. I really am.”

  And I really was. Real life doesn’t always produce storybook endings the way movies do. And I felt a certain grim satisfaction in being the Cupid who gave these two a chance-I just never realized that Cupid had to go through so much shit to make these romances work.

  We sat down and a waiter immediately appeared. I ordered a steak and a prime rib and a lobster, with three or four side orders, and four desserts, and made an obscene pig out of myself. The CIA was paying for this dinner. I wanted to make it a night they’d remember for a long time.

  Between shoveling forkfuls of food down my throat, I told Alexi and Katrina all about Viktor and his cabal, and Alexi said he and the CIA had already figured it out. The second he escaped, they had put two and two together and it all fell into place. I tried to fill in a few details they hadn’t guessed, and he looked surprised, but I suspect he was only being polite. He knew Viktor better than anybody. And with that brain of Alexi’s, he probably guessed things Viktor had done that even I didn’t know about.

  He finally said, “So you have heard what happened to Milton Martin?”

  “No, my barracks at Camp 18 didn’t have a satellite dish,” I replied, stuffing another slice of steak through my lips. “The next one over did, but it was filled with real selfish bastards who wouldn’t let us come over and watch.”

  “A week after Katrina and I arrived, Martin jumped off a thirty-story building in Manhattan.”

  “He jumped?”

  “There was suicide note left on rooftop saying he was most unhappy with life and professionally disappointed. Was of course phony. Viktor was eliminating loose ends. Martin had completed his purpose, yes? Was of no more use to Russia… and was time to eliminate source of possible embarrassment.”

  “Gee, I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, wondering if maybe Yurichenko and the CIA had cooked up some kind of deal to keep Martin from becoming the newest sensation. “I hope the concrete he landed on was damned hard.”

  By eleven o’clock my three plates were empty, and I’d finished my dessert. I’d also generously helped Imelda and Katrina finish theirs, and the third champagne bottle was empty. I was drunk, and hugging and kissing both of them, and saying all kinds of goofy shit, and was right on the verge of puking my guts out.

  One of the security agents knocked on the door and stuck his head in. He politely said it was time for Alexi and Katrina to go, because they had a late flight to catch. We exchanged more hugs and kisses, knowing we’d never see one another again.

  Imelda drove me back to my apartment. When I let myself in, I noticed that somebody had paid my rent and electricity and phone bills, because everything was in working order. It had to be Imelda, of course. She never misses a beat. Of course, there’d be a big IOU on my desk in the morning. With
compounded interest, too, since, like I said, she never misses a beat.

  I slept in till ten, when I heard a knocking on my door. I was in my pajama bottoms when I opened it.

  Mary was standing there with that awesome smile. “Hey skinny, welcome back.”

  “I, uh, well, it, uh… thank you.”

  She walked in without asking. She looked better than I’d ever seen her, and I noted that being separated from Bill obviously agreed with her. Her cheeks had a healthy glow, and she had on another miniskirt and a blouse tight enough to show what great uptoppers and shapely legs God loaned her. Her eyes shifted around my apartment, which was small enough to fit into the maid’s bathroom in Homer’s house.

  “Nice place,” she said.

  “Bullshit,” I replied. “It’s an armpit. This a personal or professional visit?”

  “A bit of both,” she said, then leaned against a wall and studied me with those luminous blue eyes. “How bad was it over there?”

  “Bad enough. Let’s just say I doubt they have much of a recidivism problem. The odds against surviving that first prison tour just ain’t that high.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and she did look sorry. “When you didn’t come back to the plane, I was frantic. There just wasn’t anything I could do, Sean.”

  “It wasn’t your fault. I didn’t blame you.”

  “We tried to abort.”

  “I know.”

  We’d exhausted that subject, and I was fairly sure she’d already read through my debriefing materials, so she knew everything that had happened. She walked over to a bookshelf and began staring at titles-the point was, she wasn’t looking at me.

  Her voice sounded nervous. “You’re not going to believe this.”

  “You’d be surprised what I’d believe these days.”

  “I received a promotion. After the operation ended, I was made an SES 2. I’m Johnson’s new deputy.”