Brian Haig - The Kingmaker

He’d kept a generally low profile since taking over the SVR. He’d visited the United States three times to attend seminars and meet with each new CIA chief who came to office during his reign. The assessors suspected that he merely dropped by to get firsthand impressions of his competition; this, about the same guy who sat in on all the big international chess championships to observe the players. I wondered if he was as good at predicting the moves of our past three CIA chiefs. Or maybe the past ten?

He was described as a meticulously neat man who dressed like an old world diplomat in tailored three-piece wool suits. Two Agency psychiatrists had sat across from him at one marathon meeting and tried to assess him. They had walked off with wildly divergent impressions. Both agreed he was highly intelligent, but one considered him a cold fish, while the other thought he was charming. One found him uncompassionate; the other insisted his conscience was highly evolved. One said he had an enlarged ego; the other said he was humble to the point of subdued. And so on. Either the two shrinks had split personalities themselves or Yurichenko was an incredibly deceptive chameleon who could convince two simultaneous and highly skilled observers he was showing two different colors.

I stared at the photo Charlie had kindly tucked into the packet. The shot must have been taken covertly, because Yurichenko had that relaxed, unposed look. He was seated alone in a chair in what looked like a hotel lobby. He had snow white hair and thick white eyebrows, wore old-fashioned gold-rimmed spectacles, and had ordinary, moderately attractive features. Hundreds of tiny creases were cluttered around his mouth and eyes, giving the impression of a sense of humor. He looked like a skinny Santa Claus, sans that big beard and those long locks. He had never married and had no known children.

I opened the packet on Alexi Arbatov. This time I began with his photo-I wanted a physical impression of the guy who perhaps bagged my client like a three-legged deer.

He had dark hair, dark eyes, and features that somehow managed to seem both sharp and soft: sharp, like he had a lot of brainjuice and didn’t miss much; soft, like friendly, but not pretentiously so. It was what you would call a beguiling face-damned handsome, only the reassuring, drag-this-boy-home-to-meet-Mama kind of handsome. There was a mole on his left cheek. I was reminded of John Boy Walton, everybody’s favorite boy next door.

He was thirty-six years old and had attended Moscow University, the Soviet Union’s Harvard, graduating when he was only fifteen years old, a record that had never been surpassed. He had received a master’s in something called American studies, followed by a doctorate in political science. It was believed that Yurichenko considered him like the son he always wished he’d had. They were inseparable.

A very interesting point there. Yurichenko and Arbatov had been sidekicks forever. In other words, Alexi Arbatov was Yurichenko’s henchman, the guy who handled key assignments.

Take recruiting and controlling the most valuable spy in Russian history: That would be a key assignment, wouldn’t it?

Right. I read on, and Arbatov, like his boss, had been observed and analyzed by several CIA psychiatric profilers. He fell well outside their standard template for clandestine operators. He appeared to be fastidious, altruistic, nearly monastic in his habits. He was a vegetarian, which is about as rare in Russia as tulips in wintertime. Even more unusual, he was a teetotaler who rarely consumed more than a glass of wine. It’s a wonder the Russians gave him a passport.

“Magnetically charming,” claimed one observer. Despite his obvious intelligence, not bombastic, nor arrogant, nor overbearing-none of the standard traits found in your typical clandestine operator. “Surprisingly shy and tactful” was how the observer summarized him.

All of which added up to a manner that would endear him to an overambitious, egotistic officer who thought he was smarter than anybody. It wouldn’t have been a fair match: the poseur against the boy wonder. Poor Morrison would never have felt the hand that slipped into his pocket. If the CIA was even half right about Arbatov, putting Billy Morrison in his proximity was like sending a Little League team up against the Green Bay Packers. They don’t even play the same sport, for Chrissakes.

In short, were I on the task force investigating Morrison, I’d be completely fixated on his relationship with Arbatov.

Katrina had no trouble tracking down Miss Janet Winters. The State Department’s personnel office gave her the forwarding address, which was in Rosslyn, Virginia, a ten-minute drive from my office.

Katrina wisely made the call to Janet, since the instant the poor woman heard a male voice identify himself as an attorney for Morrison, she’d probably invite us over so she could mow us down with a twelve-gauge shotgun. Incidentally, near the head of my list of ways I don’t want to die is being slain by the jilted paramour of a complete jerk-off.

Katrina sweet-talked her and wangled an invitation. It turned out Janet lived in a red-brick townhouse she shared with a few other professional women, a common enough arrangement in our capital’s anthropology, where young people nest together until they either find suitable mates or enough cash to hibernate alone.

We knocked, the door opened, and an extremely attractive woman in her early thirties stared at us. She took in my uniform, and that didn’t make her the least bit happy. Then her eyes fell on Katrina’s costume, which consisted of floppy camouflage pants and an OD halter top, obviously chosen for my benefit. I ordinarily like cheeky women. You can push it too far, though.

We ended up in a sparsely furnished living room that, like all collective nests, was a hodgepodge of jointly owned furniture assembled in one room. Where the male variety of these nests normally comprises a big-screen TV surrounded by three or four ratty old lounge chairs and a beer-stained rug, the female variant somehow manages to nearly always look tidy and tastefully decorated, despite the clashing striped and flowered and paisley couches and chairs. Women are so impractical that way.

Katrina sat on the striped couch, and I was starting to sit next to her when she quickly scooted her fanny over, exiling me to one of those flowered side chairs. She was shrewdly arranging the social setting for the best psychological effect, so she and Janet could have a confidential, chiquita-to-chiquita chat, which I believe to be much wimpier than a mano-a-mano, bareknuckled discussion.

Janet wore jeans and a sweatshirt with the words UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA curled around a picture of a snarling English bulldog. She had long honey blond hair, a classically pretty face, and a sleek, slender body. She struck me as the type you’d want to have an affair with. I’d want to have an affair with her. But we were here to find out if Bill did have an affair with her.

She began playing with the hem of her sweatshirt, betraying her anxiety, and Katrina gave her a warm smile and asked, “That shirt yours or in honor of a boyfriend?”

“Mine.”

“No kidding. What year did you graduate?”

“Nineteen ninety-two. I majored in political science.”

Katrina smiled sweetly. “Is that why you took the job at State?”

Janet stopped playing with the edge of her sweatshirt. “I wanted to be a Foreign Service officer, but I was having difficulty with the tests.”

“Hey, got that,” said Katrina, instantly sympathetic. “I worked at State, downstairs in Translations, trying to scramble up cash for law school. I had lots of friends trying to do what you did, though. It’s a bitch of a test, isn’t it? I knew one friend, took it six times and never passed. And I mean, that woman was smart as hell.”