Brian Haig - The Kingmaker

I stared at the photos as he disclosed this.

He continued, his voice deadly frosty, “Don’t take the deal. For one thing, I’ll enjoy kicking your ass just because I don’t like you. For a second thing, your client deserves the death sentence and I want credit for the kill. Ask one more time for better terms and the deal’s off. Now be a good boy and go talk to your client. You have forty-seven hours and fifty-five minutes.”

With that, Eddie spun around and left, trailing the reek of vanity in his wake. As deal discussions go, I’d never seen it done better. He’d set it up to watch me gape and stutter, because that’s the way Eddie is. And he’d withheld the two photos till the end to add to my humiliation.

Usually in espionage trials, the best the government can do is posit a circumstantial case. Traitors tend to be crafty fellows who work in shadows and isolation, leaving little evidence and few witnesses. Almost always when the government suspects espionage they therefore attempt an entrapment, hoping their target will walk into the setup and offer them enough evidence to persuade a jury they had the intent to betray.

If Eddie was telling the truth about what was in box number 6-and he better be or he’d face disbarment-he had the murder weapon with the fingerprints on it.

I looked over at Katrina, who sipped coffee and observed our exchange. “What do you think?”

She pointed at box number 6. “In a word, we’re screwed.”

“Looks that way, doesn’t it?” I said, still reeling and trying to come to grips with all the nasty ramifications.

She took another sip of coffee and seemed to be thinking hard. “He doesn’t care what we plead, because he believes he has an airtight case. We can’t attack his key evidence because we’re foreclosed from knowing how he got his hands on it. And-”

The phone interrupted, and I went over to answer. It was Alexi, saying, “I am only having a minute, Sean. Viktor is upstairs preparing for his meetings and I have fabricated an excuse to come down to the lobby.”

“Well, guess what? The prosecutor just left. He came by to drop off a bunch of Top Secret documents that were stolen out of a vault in Moscow by some unnamed CIA asset. These documents verify every wild claim the prosecutor’s been making. And guess what else? The documents have Morrison’s fingerprints all over them.”

There was a long pause. He finally said, “This is impossible. Please believe me, if Bill was being controlled by us, I would be knowing.”

“Then either you’re a liar or wrong. Maybe someone else in your SVR was running him, and you weren’t in the right compartment.”

“That cannot explain this,” he said, sounding edgy and anxious. “The prosecutor is being certain these papers came from Moscow?”

“He assures me the director of the CIA and a military judge have verified the source.”

“It had to be this cabal.”

“Well, that’s another thing,” I replied, knowing I was probably making a big mistake by bringing this up, but the compulsion was simply irresistible. “Both Mary and Bill said this cabal thing of yours is hogwash. They said they were feeding your paranoia to keep you on the line.”

There was suddenly another long pause, and I said, “You still there?”

“Th- they are wrong,” he assured me, sounding both hurt and puzzled. “How are they explaining all the things this cabal has accomplished?”

“Well, I asked Mary about Yeltsin’s election. She said it was just politics.”

“And what about Azerbaijan and Armenia? Or Georgia? Or Chechnya?”

“All hogwash.”

“They are wrong,” he said, sounding suddenly bitter. “Arms thefts… wars… assassinations, I have been warning Bill and Mary for a decade. I have told them where to look… what to look for. I do not make this up.”

I suddenly felt sorry for Alexi. I liked him. He seemed to be a genuinely decent guy, but who knows what devils and visions lurk in some folks’ brains? He was frustrated and angry and hurt, but I had my own problems.

“Look, Alexi, all I know is I’ve got a client I’ve got to defend and I-”

“Sean, please,” he interrupted. “You must be keeping open mind about this. Bill is no traitor. I would be dead if he was traitor. My name would have been handed over, and I would be dead. You see this, yes?”

“No, I don’t. Mary said he never turned you in because it would’ve pointed a finger straight at himself. Plus, you were his ticket to bigger and bigger jobs.”

I could hear him sigh. Then I heard another voice in the background and Alexi suddenly hung up. I turned and looked at Katrina’s face, and a happy face it was not.

Her hands were balled into fists as she said, “You bastard. You didn’t need to say that to him.”

“Yeah, I did. In case you’re not paying attention, the prosecutor just dropped off enough evidence to hang our client. We don’t have time to waste with Alexi and his nightmares anymore.”

“You’re wrong. If Alexi’s right, it explains why somebody went to the trouble to frame Morrison. You know that. It’s-”

I held up a hand to cut her off. “I’m busy. I’ve got work to do. Forget about it.”

Her eyes narrowed to pinpoints, and she spun around and walked out.

I was actually glad she was gone, because I needed privacy to consider my options. Having all of Eddie’s evidence gave me the chance to piece together how he’d approach this case. And I badly needed to get my arms around it before I flew out to see Morrison about the deal, to tell him whether he was signing his own death sentence or not. More likely the former, from what I’d heard, but I needed to be clear about the odds.

Here’s how I figured it. Eddie would start by painting a scandalous picture of my client and trying to establish motive. The Dorian Gray attack seemed most likely. He’d point at Morrison seated at the defense table in his brigadier general’s uniform, handsome, impressive, a man blessed by nature, genes, and birthright to succeed. He’d make a big thing about how he was born into a wealthy, successful family, attended the most elite private schools, entered the very best army, been treated to every opportunity America has to offer. He’d been diligent, hardworking, and thoroughly disliked by any and all who served under him. He’d clawed his way up, but to him up was never high enough, because Bill Morrison was vain, arrogant, and endlessly ambitious. No accomplishment or title or measure of success was ever enough.

He had money-a great deal of money-but not enough. He wanted more, and if the price was betrayal, so be it. He was married to a ravishingly beautiful woman who gave him wonderful children, a stable home, social prestige, and stature. It wasn’t enough. Morrison needed more women the way rich people need newer, bigger, more expensive cars. He needed the never-ending sexual conquests to assure himself, no matter how fleetingly, of his own eminence and physical attractiveness. The Army gave him awards and rank-still this wasn’t enough. Bill Morrison needed even more professional approval than the Army with all its medals and pins could provide, and he’d sought it secretly in the arms of Russia’s spymasters.

This, Eddie would claim, was Morrison’s motive. He had betrayed his country for no other reason than his gluttonous ego. Eddie would promise a long line of witnesses who’d testify to that endless hunger, the trite selfishness, the succession of sexual trysts, the relentless and pitiless ambition. Nor would there be a dearth of those witnesses, because their statements filled two whole wall safes, an oral travelogue to a man whose need for approval-professionally, personally, and romantically-was bottomless.