Brian Haig - The Kingmaker

I said, “So you figured he was a pretty good guy?”

“Drummond, Alexi was serious. And he told me his boss, Yurichenko, felt the same way.”

I gave him my you’re-full-of-crap look. “This guy Arbatov sidles up next to you, a couple of KGB thugs threaten you, he steps in to save you, then he starts talking about what a hash this whole Communist thing is. You don’t see where that might look suspicious? Where some folks might even conclude he was worming his way into your confidence?”

“It wasn’t like that. I swear it wasn’t.”

I shook my head. My oval-into-a-round-hole theory seemed to be springing some very nasty leaks. With this guy it was axiomatic that every step forward was two steps back. I could feel the frustration welling up in my chest, and sensed that if I didn’t immediately invent an excuse to leave, I might be facing a murder charge.

Walking to the car, I said to Katrina, “Incidentally, you did a good job back there. That good cop/bad cop stunt was very convincing.”

“Think so?” she asked.

“Oscar material.”

“Then I should thank you for making it easy.”

“What’s that mean?”

“You seem to enjoy pissing him off.”

“I’m trying to get the truth. It’s for his own good.”

“Arbeit macht frei,” she replied.

“Meaning what?”

“It was on a sign that hung over Auschwitz concentration camp. It means ‘Work will set you free.’ ”

I was sure she was sending me another of those subtle messages, but I’m a very black-and-white, meat-and-potatoes sort, so it went clear over my head.

“Well, anyway,” I said, “you try to track down Miss I-got-screwed- by-my-boss-and-all-I’ve-got-to-show-for-it-is-this-unemployment-check. I’ll see what I can come up with on our other big lead.”

We drove back to our fancy digs and got back to work, which for me meant investigating Alexi Arbatov, which wasn’t going to be hard, since I knew exactly where to start my research.

When I mentioned I used to be in the infantry, I meant I used to be part of something called the outfit, which is one of those units in the United States Army you never heard of. It does super-sensitive, spooky little things like follow Noriega around before you invade him, or infiltrate the Iraqi capital a few days before the Gulf War air campaign to knock out the central computers that control their entire air defense system-things like that.

I spent five years in that unit before two or three bullets did enough damage to my internal organs that I could no longer run marathons-which was frankly a relief-or stay in the outfit-which frankly wasn’t.

This was why I went to law school, but it also left me some fairly good contacts in the intelligence community. For example, this was where I first met Morrison. Aside from that, I had fond memories of the outfit.

I called Lieutenant Colonel Charlie Becker, who used to be the intell officer of our little unit, and had moved on to something bigger and better called the National Intelligence Council, or NIC.

I said, “Hey, Charlie, Drummond here.”

And he said, “Hey, Sean. What you doin’?”

“Still a JAG guy. In fact, I’m defending a guy named William Morrison. Know him?”

“I know him. He’s a prick. Want my advice?”

“Sure, Charlie, what’s your advice?”

“Sandbag him. Do your worst job and let the bastard fry. I never liked him anyway, but that fucker dishonored our uniform and doesn’t deserve to breathe.”

I perhaps failed to mention that Charlie Becker’s a very tough guy who doesn’t mince words, an unusual quality among military intelligence officers, who, fairly or not, are considered somewhat effete by the more manly combat branches. They are broadly regarded as wimpy, overintellectualized types who are very adept at saying infuriatingly ambivalent things such as, “On the one hand this, and on the other hand, that.” Charlie was an exception to this rule. He could bench almost four hundred pounds and used to be an All-America heavyweight wrestler at the University of Wisconsin. Charlie could kill me with his spit.

I said, “Well, I took this oath when I became a lawyer and-”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Can the horseshit. How can I help you defend the traitorous bastard?”

“I need two profiles. Two Russian spy guys. One’s named Yurichenko, and the other’s named Arbatov.”

“Viktor and Alexi,” he said in his subtle way, letting me know he was leaps and bounds ahead of me. He added, “There’s always lots of requests on both of them, so I could ask and not draw attention. Especially Yurichenko.”

“You know about him?”

“Does a Catholic know about the Pope?”

“No kidding?”

“I keep a blown-up picture of him above my desk. When I grow up I want to be just like him.”

“So you like him?”

“Like him? The man’s a walking plague. He’s the best you ever saw. I hate his guts. I wish he was on our side.”

Coming from Charlie, this was high praise indeed, because he has very rigorous standards. I gave him my Washington office address, and he promised to bring over the files within a few hours. I told him to hand-deliver them to Imelda, and by the time I landed at Ronald Reagan Airport and drove over to my office, she had the two very important files Charlie had brought over.

I tromped into my office and opened Yurichenko’s first. Viktor Yurichenko was estimated to be somewhere in his mid-seventies. Since no foreigner had ever laid eyes on his KGB file, this estimation was based on the fact that he joined the KGB in 1944, when he was anywhere from eighteen to twenty-two years old. He was a spymaster’s spymaster-those were the exact words used in the file, and human intelligence files aren’t like book reviews, so it’s rare to see any kind of tribute. Nobody was too sure exactly how many incredible operations he’d pulled off, although, in addition to that stunt in North Korea, he was believed to be responsible for recruiting Castro, for helping North Vietnam win the war, and for penetrating the CIA and FBI on countless occasions. I saw why my old buddy called him a plague. He sounded like a one-man cold war.

Yurichenko was a chess aficionado, which had brought him to numerous international events, where he was known to sit in the back row and critique the moves of the likes of Bobby Fischer and Gary Kasparov. Several times the CIA had positioned agents in his vicinity; they swore Yurichenko had predicted every move the players would make, within seconds after their opponents moved. Yet to the best anyone could tell, he’d never participated in any international chess events himself. He seemed content to sit on the sideline and observe others.

When Boris Yeltsin disbanded the KGB back in 1991, it was widely thought that Yurichenko would be near the top of the blacklist, having been the mastermind of so many cold war intelligence coups that he was virtually a poster boy for the old system. Recall that Yeltsin was disbanding the KGB to show the West and his own people that a new day had dawned, that the bloody-handed practitioners of dirty tricks were no longer employable by the new state. To everybody’s surprise, Yeltsin made Yurichenko the head of the SVR, the Russian equivalent of the CIA.

One source reported that Yurichenko had smelled what was coming and had secretly approached Yeltsin long before the breakup. For several years he had provided Yeltsin with insights about what was happening in the world, in addition to early warnings about Gorbachev’s efforts to squelch Yeltsin and his movement. In short, Yurichenko had ingratiated himself with the upcoming leader, although whether from ruthless self-interest or a genuine belief that the old system was so rotten it should collapse, nobody was too clear about.