Brian Haig - The Kingmaker

“How about 1989? What were you doing then?” Katrina asked.

“That was the year the disintegration began. Suddenly all the intelligence agencies were critically short of people.”

“Why?”

“Because Eastern Europe and the Soviet republics were coming apart at the seams.”

“Tell us about that,” I said.

“We called it the Big Bang. It happened so fast that Gorbachev’s own apparatchiks couldn’t understand it.

“Neither could we. Over fifty years we’d built this massive intelligence kingdom to watch the Soviet Union. Presidents and their advisers became spoiled. The thing we were watching moved half an inch and legions of analysts immediately wrote thousands of papers to explain why. We were experts at watching water freeze.”

Katrina scratched her head. “What did that have to do with you and your responsibilities?”

“The White House was screaming for information, and we couldn’t keep up. I was rushed through the Georgian desk, then the Azerbaijani desk, and then the Chechen desk.”

“Doing what?”

“Producing assessments. I was flying to those places, interviewing officials, meeting with country teams, trying to get a handle on it.”

I suggested, “And meeting Soviet citizens?”

“Of course. I went to Moscow five or six times that year and I met with plenty of Soviet officials in the republics.”

“Did you form any special relationships?” I asked, slyly homing in on the one relevant fact I’d learned from the news releases.

“What do you mean?”

“Did you form any long-term bonds with Russians?”

He suddenly looked very nervous. He rubbed his lips with a finger and was obviously struggling with something. Uh-oh. He replied, “Drummond, I, uh, I can’t discuss this with you.”

“You have no choice. Besides, I’m not only your lawyer, I’m an officer with a Top Secret clearance. And Katrina had her Top Secret restored last night.”

He studied our faces. “You don’t get it. I could get court-martialed for whispering this name.”

“No shit?” said Katrina, in every regard an appropriate sentiment.

Still we had to weather thirty seconds of hand-wringing, heavy breathing, and idiotic indecision before he said, “Have you ever heard of Alexi Arbatov?”

“No.”

“Alexi is currently the number two man in the SVR, one of the two agencies that split out of the old KGB… the one with responsibility over external affairs.” He paused in a transparent attempt at melodrama. “I met Alexi that year… I cultivated him.”

“Cultivated?” Katrina asked.

“It means I didn’t succeed in fully turning him. But I got him halfway there.”

“And halfway there is… what?” I asked.

“Alexi sometimes passes me information. It’s always his choice and usually his volition. In our jargon, he’s an uncontrolled asset.”

“He still is?” I asked.

“Yes. I was his controller. Eventually we brought in Mary also. I was assigned as the military attache in Moscow and she was assigned as the station chief to put us right next door to Alexi.”

I was gaping, mouth hung open, the whole nine yards. Morrison was claiming he’d “acquired” the number two guy in Russia’s most important spy agency. That’s like owning the deed to the Empire State Building: You see all kinds of things from a really great vantage point.

Obviously impressed, I said, “Holy shit.”

And he replied, “Now, asshole, do you see why Mary took me over you?”

Actually, I’m just good at mind reading-what he really said was, “You’re understating it. I brought home the biggest intelligence catch the CIA ever heard of, and look what those bastards have done to me.”

We stared at each other for a while, a sort of awkward pause, contemplating the possible ramifications of this news.

I finally asked, “How did it work?”

“Alexi wouldn’t let others be involved. He knew better than Mary and I did how penetrated we were. He made it a stipulation.”

Katrina deduced that my interest in this topic was something more than idle curiosity and decided to join the play, asking, “Weren’t there safeguards or something?”

“Alexi insisted on one-on-ones, but every time we met, the Agency required me and Mary to write extensive reports. It’s a standard procedure.”

“Explain how that works,” Katrina said.

“You compose it immediately afterward to reduce the risk of memory lapses. You try to recall everything that was said, the target’s mental state, the general mood.”

“Who gets copies of these things?”

“Arbatov was so critical, and so sensitive, that distribution was limited to the deputy directors for intelligence and operations. Oh, and a psychiatrist.”

We both looked and were in fact confused, so Morrison added, “Part of our responsibility was to sustain his willingness to feed us, to handle whatever psychoses or neuroses he was experiencing. There are tremendous undercurrents of guilt and fear for a man who’s betraying his country. The shrink would comb through our reports, look for hints of problems, and advise us how to handle him.”

I found this curious and asked, “And was this Arbatov stable?”

“He had his reasons and he thought they were good ones.”

“And what were those reasons?”

Morrison was hunched over, toying with his manacles, and from my perspective, he appeared evasive. Conceivably, he was merely nervous about disclosing such sensitive information. Or conceivably there was something more here.

He finally replied, “I think Alexi selectively gave us things he considered… What’s the best way to put this? If Russia was doing something he felt was morally repugnant, he’d report on that. But, for example, he never gave us the names of American traitors, like Ames or Hanssen. He gave us no counterintelligence information.”

“Did he ask you for information?”

The ugly frown on Morrison’s face implied that he finally realized where this line of query was heading. “Fuck you, Drummond. Of course we discussed things. I always included my responses in my reports, though. I never told him anything that was a betrayal.”

“You’re sure?”

“Mary and I were given firm guidance about what we were allowed to disclose. I never went outside those boundaries.”

Sensing we’d reached an impasse, I said, “Okay, were there others like Arbatov?”

“For me, no. Mary had others, a lot of them, but my principal duties didn’t involve controlling assets.”

“Who brought Mary into it?” Katrina asked.

“He did. After 1991, I had a number of jobs that didn’t allow me to properly control Alexi. He suggested Mary.”

I considered this and concluded that from Arbatov’s perspective it made sense. It kept it all in the family and limited his risk of exposure. I said, “Think hard. Were there any other Russians you stayed in contact with from 1989 to the present?”

“None,” he immediately replied, leaving me wishing he’d at least spent a few seconds scouring his memory.

The molehunters were focused on a trail of espionage that led all the way back to 1988 or 1989. How they came up with those years I didn’t know. I did know this, though: The anonymous leaker said there was only one controller, and by extrapolation that controller had to be acquainted with Morrison from the very beginning.

So maybe they thought that guy was Arbatov-or maybe someone Morrison wasn’t telling me about. I looked over at Katrina and her eyes were locked on Morrison’s face. The intensity of her stare surprised me. Set aside her appearance, her ball busting, and her sarcasm, and what you got was a deceptively sharp and determined woman.

I said, “Okay, General, that’s enough for now. Start mentally organizing the years 1990 through the present. We’ll come again and begin with those years. Okay?”