Brian Haig - The Kingmaker

My, my… Dumbo the Elephant had invented not one, but two grand titles for himself.

Raising the tenor of my voice, I said, “Yes, yes. I don’t wish to bother Mr. Golden, as I’m sure he’s ridiculously busy, but could you please inform him the Sexually Transmitted Disease Clinic at Fort Myer called. And… well… we really need him to drop by right away.”

The secretary said, “I, well, uh, I’m sorry, you have the wrong man. This is the office of Major Eddie Golden.”

“Oh no, dear, he’s the one. An utter slut. The man’s in and out of here so often we’re thinking of renaming the clinic after him. Thank you very much,” and I hung up.

I can be so infantile. And with any luck, he was having a fling with the secretary who answered, and the next time he passed by her desk she’d knee him in the nuts.

Sleep came more easily that night, knowing I’d at least struck one small blow for freedom. Unfortunately, it had a short half-life, because at three-thirty my phone rang, and a deep male voice identified himself as the commandant of the Fort Leavenworth Disciplinary Barracks. Sounding curt and hurried, he informed me I had better get my ass out there real quick because my client had just tried to commit suicide and was in the hospital in critical condition.

He hung up before I could respond. Very funny. Eddie Golden can be such a sly, sly devil. Like I’d fall for this and rush down to the airport and catch the early bird to Kansas City.

When I couldn’t fall back asleep, I finally had the operator put me through to the commandant’s office. Sounding like he was talking to a three-year-old dolt, he repeated every word of it.

I caught that early flight and rushed into the dispensary at 9:30 A.M. Imelda had somehow arrived ahead of me and was in the waiting room, pacing back and forth like an English sentry.

I breathlessly asked, “Is he still alive?”

“So far,” she dryly observed.

“What happened?”

“Seems some dumbass had a TV set brought into his cell. He opened up the back, yanked out some sharp objects, and slashed his wrists. Guards found him at the twenty-minute check, laid out in a big puddle of blood.”

I felt my face flush. “So it was close?”

“Not was close, is close. Docs been runnin’ in and outta there all mornin’.”

I fell into a heap on a nearby couch. I stewed. I hate to sound selfish, but if Morrison died, I’d be front-page news by noon, the Dr. Kevorkian of military law.

My bosses would be both happy and furious with me. They’d be happy I provided my client the tools to save the government the time and expense of weathering the trial and appeals process before it executed him. There’d be no big crowd of folks holding a candlelight vigil outside his death chamber, no fussy editorials about the morality of executions, no question about whether he got a fair trial, because he had carried out the sentence himself.

And they’d be furious because to pinpoint and repair the damage, the government needed to know everything he gave to the Russians. Corpses don’t speak.

And so I waited in selfish agony for a doctor to come out and tell me he was dead. Or alive. Or still hovering in that testy netherworld in between.

At 9:50 a chubby, grim-faced surgeon approached. “Major Drummond?”

“Unfortunately,” I dolefully admitted.

“General Morrison is resting peacefully. It was damned close. He lost so many pints, he had a minor infarction.”

“But he’s going to be okay?”

“He should be. But whatever idiot let him have a TV should be shot. What were they thinking?”

Yeah, what were they thinking? I asked, “Can I see him?”

“If you’d like. Make it quick, though. We have him on tranquilizers, so he’ll be in and out.”

He led me down a few hallways to a door with two MPs standing beside the entrance. Inside, Morrison lay in bed with two or three IVs pumping various fluids into his body, his head turned sideways, his face ashen and flushed, like his new blood hadn’t yet worked its way to the surface.

I sat on the edge of the bed. He mumbled, “Shit,” which fairly well summarized our common view-him because he was still breathing, and me because that meant I was still his attorney.

I said, “That was really, really stupid.”

His eyes narrowed. “Yeah… I lived.”

“You’ll make it through this.”

“Yeah? How?”

“You just do.”

He stared at the wall and said, “Drummond, a week ago, I was…” He stopped and took a deep breath. “Shit, did you know I was on the two-star list?”

“So what?”

“ ‘So what?’ ” He rolled his eyes in disbelief. After a pause, he asked, “What are my odds?”

“At this stage, we don’t know.”

He turned and looked at me, his eyes haunted. “I saw the reporting on TV. I’ve already been convicted.”

“You saw a bunch of Beltway assholes throwing around opinions. It takes ten officers and a shitload of evidence to convict you.”

He thought about this a moment and then asked, “How could this have happened?”

“Well, either you did what they’re claiming or somebody’s made a really big mistake.”

“You don’t believe me, do you?”

“Let’s just say I met your former secretary yesterday. And you might recall I was at your award ceremony for the Silver Star.”

He turned away again, refusing to look me in the eye.

For good measure, I added, “And on a more personal note, you’re an asshole for cheating on Mary.”

“So I fucked up, Drummond. Nobody’s perfect.”

“Mary is. She didn’t deserve that.”

He let loose a raw chuckle. “You stupid asshole. She’s not perfect. Christ, you have no idea.”

“Wrong. I have a very good idea.”

“You weren’t married to her. You have no idea what a bitch she can be.”

This conversation could only go downhill from here, aside from which he seemed to be on the verge of losing consciousness, and there was pressing information I needed out of him. I said, “When you worked for Martin, what was your relationship with Commerce’s export control office?”

His eyes were closing. “Huh?”

I squeezed his arm. “The export control office. The guys who say whether U.S. companies can export their crap to foreign countries.”

“I never worked with them. They’re part of Commerce.”

“I see.” I pondered this a moment, then took a shot in the dark. “Do they have some sister office in State?”

“The Office of Munitions Control?”

“Right, those guys.” I guessed that’s what I was talking about. I mean, other than guys like Morrison who spend most of their careers in Washington, who in the hell knew where all the tentacles of government flow and interlock? No wonder the Republicans want to cut the size of our federal institutions. At least then, when a new team comes to power every four years, they don’t spend their first two studying wiring diagrams and trying to figure out who all those frigging people are and what they do.

The befuddled look was still on his face. “I didn’t do any work with them. Why?”

“Last night’s release said you handed over hundreds of requests that were turned down by that office.”

He shook his head, although I sensed his mood had shifted from outrage to resignation.

I added, “They said you turned over blueprints, tech assessments, the works.”

He started that mirthless chuckle again. “Christ, who’d ever think of giving them the rejects from that office? It’s ingenious.”

“Ingenious?”

His head flopped over, he faced the wall again, and explained, “Those requests go all over town. Commerce, State, CIA, DOD, NSA, everybody has a whack at them. It’s a big veto ring.” He took a long, labored breath. “Dozens of offices… hundreds of people are involved-you’d never know who did it.”