Brian Haig - The Kingmaker

“Don’t you just love this car?”

“I told you earlier, it’s not my type.”

I looked back at Hal. “Sorry, pal. The little woman doesn’t care for it.” I tossed a twenty in his flabbergasted lap as we got out. “For gas. Incidentally, the car’s got one broken shock, and it needs a valve job.”

We left him fuming and cursing as we began walking across Key Bridge toward the Georgetown section of D.C.

Katrina said, “I’m sure you have a really good reason why we did this the hard way?”

“We arrived in a cab, so the watchers were expecting us to leave in one. If they’re CIA or FBI they’d know five minutes after we called the cab company, and they would’ve been waiting for us at the other end.”

She grinned. “Aren’t you the clever one?”

“The trick in modern society is avoid anything electronic. The police are spoiled. Between charge cards, ATMs, e-mail, telephones, car rentals with computers, hotels with computers, airlines with computers, the feds have these software programs that sweep through all that clutter, and they find you. If you’re electronically invisible, they’re bewildered.”

“And I suppose you know what to do next?”

“No, actually, I don’t. From here on in, we’re on the fly.”

She scratched her head and said nothing for a minute. Then, “Do you trust Alexi?”

I had to think about that. I guess I did, within limits. Yes, he had an extra bat in the belfry, but as I mentioned, that didn’t mean he wasn’t a decent guy. There was no question how she felt about him. After all, she’d done the big swami dance with him.

“What exactly do you have in mind?” I asked, sort of a delicate way of not answering her question.

“Let’s call him.”

“Why?”

“So he can hide us.”

Oddly enough, the idea of calling a Russian intelligence officer to hide us from the American government had a certain ironic charm. Added to our lack of other workable options, I thought why not.

“Okay,” I said, “but let me do the talking.”

We walked into a grungy-looking record store filled with teenage kids combing through the stacks, hunting for the latest hip-hop hit. I approached the girl at the counter.

“Hey,” I said, “we’ve got an emergency and I don’t have a cell phone. How about if I pay you to use your phone to make a call?”

She snarled, rolled her eyes, and started to say, “Store policy is-”

I whipped out of my pocket the thick wad of money that I took off the thug that morning. “Two hundred bucks.”

Her lips froze. She handed me the phone. I handed it to Katrina. “You got his number?”

Her hand went into her purse, digging for it. I said, “Just talk to his secretary. Tell her we lost a briefcase and we’re wondering if Alexi had any idea where it is. Give her the number for this store and ask for him to call us.”

Katrina dialed the number and in Russian gave Alexi’s secretary our message. When she was finished, I handed the girl the two hundred bucks, then told her we’d be getting a return call any minute. She smiled and licked her lips, and I saw two of those little silver beads sticking through her tongue. We stood by the counter for twenty minutes watching a procession of young kids dressed almost identically in baggy jeans and oversize sweat shirts, nearly all of whom had dyed hair, tattoos, and earrings or small silver beads punched all over their faces. Katrina fit right in. I looked like a guy who mistook this place for a tofu bar.

It sucked being young in this era. In my day we only had to look like fancified dorks in disco drag. At least we didn’t have to get stabbed and tattooed. I mean, those old disco clothes, you send them to Goodwill and glide gracefully into becoming a fat, balding, middle-aged guy. Just throw out all your old pictures and your kids will never know what a jumbo jerk you used to be. All those holes and tattoos-they’ll know.

The phone finally rang, the clerk picked it up, said, “Just a minute,” then handed it to me.

Alexi’s voice said, “Sean?”

“Yeah, Alexi,” I said, then unloaded the whole story, including the fact that my government was somehow mysteriously implicated.

He listened patiently, then said, “This is something very big happening here, Sean. I would offer to put you in safe house, but this could be compromising. It would be better to be using Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown. My people will book you a room and charge it to our expense. It will be under Mr. and Mrs. Harrington. I will be calling you later.”

I hung up, and then Katrina and I walked down the main drag to the Four Seasons. If you have to go on the lam, this is the kind of place to do it. As soon as we were ensconced in the room, I had room service send up two filet mignons and a bottle of wine. It was on the Russians. Why not?

Alexi called twenty minutes after we finished eating.

He said, “Is everything all right?”

“Katrina and I just polished off a sixty-dollar bottle of wine. Hey, you know what, Alexi? Put some booze in that girl and look out. She’s been climbing all over me, licking my ears, making all kinds of lewd suggestions. You’d hardly recognize her.”

Katrina flung her big purse at me.

“Heh-heh,” I said, but neither of them laughed. I thought it was hilarious.

“Anyway,” I said, “we think we’ve got this thing figured out. What we believe is there’s a real mole in our government that Morrison was framed to protect. You guys do those kinds of things, don’t you?”

He didn’t answer for a moment. Then he said, “To protect one that is most important, this could be possible. Is very difficult operation to construct, Sean. Is most difficult to match moles with acceptable surrogates. You understand? We have saying about this. ‘The shadow must match the body.’ ”

Now, here’s the thing. I was in an absolutely desperate position. Somebody was trying to snuff me, for some reason my own government seemed to be accomodating that effort, and Katrina and I were alone, without resources or allies, a raft floating in the middle of a murderous ocean. My only hope was Alexi. So let’s see-maintain my pristine personal integrity, or live a few years longer? Exactly.

I said, “Well, here’s what I think, Alexi. I think Mary’s working for this cabal of yours. I think she’s been on their payroll this whole time, convincing the CIA your accusations were wild ravings and protecting the cabal’s existence. I think she’s been filching her husband’s papers. I think whoever provided those papers to the CIA gave only the documents she pilfered from Bill, while the stuff that would’ve pointed at her is still locked away in Moscow.”

“What?” he asked, clearly surprised. “You accept the cabal’s existence?”

“Yeah.”

“And you think Mary is with these people?”

“Nothing else makes sense. I mean, it was Mary who told me it was baloney, right? She was trying to mislead me. And if she’s not working for the SVR, it means she’s working for somebody else in Moscow, right?”

“This would make sense, Sean. This cabal has extraordinary resources and reach. It could be that Mary is somehow connected. I have never considered this. The shadow certainly fits the body, yes?”

The poor guy was so smitten by his phantoms, he was leaping at any thread that substantiated, fed, and justified his paranoia. I felt sorry for him. But not so sorry that I wasn’t willing to exploit it, as the CIA had done for the past decade.

“There’s a way to find out,” I said. “I’m going to have one of my assistants question Bill. He should be able to confirm whether it fits or not.”

The idea intrigued him, and he said he’d call me in six hours to see what turned up. I immediately placed a call to Imelda. I explained our predicament and why I couldn’t set foot on a flight to Kansas City without alerting the authorities. She could, though; so I told her to.