Brian Haig - The Kingmaker

Now she was talking. Mouton Cadet, ’67, anybody?

I suggested, “And now I suppose you want to know what I’m looking for?”

“I already know.” She glanced in the direction of the fireplace and said, “Our client’s wife.”

That didn’t even dignify a reply, but I gave her a finger in the air anyway.

We moved on to researching the cases of the Walkers, Ames, and Hanssen. The ever-resourceful Imelda had found a trove of material that covered everything from the trial procedures to some well-written synopses of the strategies used by the prosecutors and the defense. In separate folders were materials on the Wen Ho Lee case, which were vastly more hopeful, from our perspective, since the defense slipped the willie to the prosecutor for the whole world to see. But then, there were distinct differences between the Lee case and ours-like our defendant was white and couldn’t accuse anybody of racial discrimination; he didn’t have a charming daughter to run around and hold free-my-daddy rallies; and in Lee’s case, when forced to put up or shut up, the government suddenly coughed a few times, looked mortified, and admitted it had caught a fairly severe case of evidence deprivation. If O’Neil and Golden were to be believed, the government’s dilemma regarding our case wasn’t an evidence shortfall but a swamp so vast and murky that an army of attorneys could barely slog through it.

By midnight, drool was spilling out my lips. I stretched and mumbled, “I’ve got to get some sleep.”

Katrina’s beaded nose was stuffed in a big folder. The girl had endurance, having been in the office at six that morning and she was still going like a choo-choo eighteen hours later, while my gas gauge bounced off empty.

In my bedroom I slipped out of my clothes and was asleep almost immediately. I’m a light sleeper, however. The problem with old Army quarters is creaky stairs, as well as a complete absence of modern insulation and noise abatement buffers. At three-thirty, I heard her footsteps on the stairs. I alternately cursed and prayed she’d move her skinny ass a little faster and then rush through her ablutions and let me get on with my sleep.

Then I swore I heard cabinets opening and shutting downstairs. I quietly slipped out of bed and tiptoed to the door. I paused to briefly consider my quandary. Definitely there were at least two different sets of noises out there, possibly three. I needed to see why, although sneaking quietly down those stairs was out of the question.

I chose the other way and plunged down so fast that I nearly tripped over my own feet. And at the base of the stairs, that was exactly what happened. Sort of. I flew through the air and crashed face first into a wall. Except I hadn’t tripped. Something had shoved my back and helped me along.

I recovered my senses and spun around just in time to get a hard, booted kick in the center of my chest. I made a loud “ooof” sound and sank to my ass on the floor. The lights were out but I saw a large figure looming over me.

Oddly enough, the next thing I saw was the face of a young female medic waving one of those smelly things under my nose, saying, “He’s coming to.”

I heard Imelda say, “That nose look broken.”

I heard the medic reply, “Yes, I think you’re right.”

I noticed that the back of my head seemed to have a big dent in it, and my face hurt, and my chest ached.

The medic squeezed my nose and looked at me with tender eyes. “There, there, Major… you’re going to be fine. Just a few bruises, a little blood, and maybe a broken nose.”

I replied, “Ouch, damn it. Let go of my nose.”

Which she did. And that made me happy. I wedged my way up the wall and got unsteadily to my feet. A stretcher rested by the door, where two more medics were waiting to load me aboard. They looked terrifically relieved to see me standing. Lazy bastards.

“What the hell happened?” I asked.

Imelda adjusted her glasses on her nose and said, “We came down when you got knocked ’round. Heard the door slam and saw two men runnin’ away, only nobody got a good look at them. They was dressed in black and wore hoods.”

“Was anything taken?”

“Didn’t check yet,” Imelda admitted, suddenly sheepish that she’d been so busy attending to me that she’d failed to see what might have been stolen. It wasn’t like her to commit such a breach of duty.

After fibbing to the medics that I’d eventually come over to the dispensary and let a real doctor check me out, I helped Imelda and her two assistants look around. To the best I could tell, nothing had been touched-no open drawers, no ransacked boxes, no sign of burglary at all. Very strange. We all ended up in the living room. I asked, “Did anybody see anything missing?” and instantly felt like an idiot-how do you see something that’s missing?

Heads were shaking all around when I felt this odd flip-flop in my stomach. “Katrina, the tapes. Where are they?”

I had blurted out the question, and the enormity of the possibility hit us simultaneously.

She rushed upstairs and I hobbled after her. She hurried to her purse and flung it open on the bed. Among assorted other female debris, the tape recorder and two tapes spilled out. A common sigh of relief escaped from both of our throats. And, in fact, I was starting to walk out of the room when Katrina said, “Wait.”

She picked up a tape, stuck it in the recorder, and pushed the play button. Nothing. Not a sound, just empty tape. She withdrew that tape and inserted the second one-ditto. She flipped the tape over, fast-forwarded, and reversed. Not a sound. She handed me the recorder, and I stuffed it in my pocket with a loud curse.

Our client was not going to be very happy with us. I was not very happy with us. But Uncle Sam was going to be unhappiest of all, as somebody had just stolen a tape that contained the name of America’s top foreign asset, a name I had very stupidly allowed to be placed on a tape I even more stupidly failed to secure.

The team that descended on our building reminded me why so many American citizens go live in the woods and mumble about black helicopters and paste I LOVE GUNS stickers all over their rusted old pickups.

The FBI agents came up from Kansas City. The CIA folks flew in from Washington, apparently on a very fast jet, because they and their FBI buddies were streaming through the front door some two hours after I called to report the incident. Not that you could tell them apart-they all wore cheap-looking gray and blue suits, complemented by that glum, dour expression that distinguishes a government employee from the rest of humanity.

They went over that house with a fine-toothed comb, took foot molds and fingerprints of my entire team, and inventoried everything we had and a few things we didn’t. They canvassed the neighborhood for witnesses and asked every colonel’s wife who resided on that row if she had happened to be staring out the window at three o’clock that morning. All this was accomplished with Prussian efficiency and New Yorker manners, which is to say the worst of both the old and new worlds.

When all this was done, the head of the team, a CIA guy named Smith-if you couldn’t guess-pulled me into an upstairs room for a come-to-Jesus meeting, as we say in the ranks.

He had a tough-guy look about him, a slouchiness of the face, a well-defined musculature of the body. He stuck a cigarette between his skinny lips, lit it up with a Zippo, then flipped the lighter shut with a harsh jolt of the wrist, badass style. He puffed a few times and fixed me with a withering glare. “So, Major,” he began, “how long you been in?”

“Thirteen years.”

“You’ve been briefed on security procedures before? You’ve signed those little forms that say you understand your duties and obligations?”