Brian Haig - The Kingmaker

I explained what I wanted her to do and asked her to smuggle a cell phone into her interrogation, and then gave her the number to our hotel room. Then Katrina and I sat and did our best to kill the hours as we waited. We watched an Oliver Stone movie, and we both laughed hilariously, because he was the only guy in the world more paranoiac than us. Katrina asked me about my childhood and I asked her about hers, we talked about politics and sports and college days, and when we ended up discussing our favorite ice-cream flavors we both knew we were in serious trouble.

The phone rang at 11:40 P.M. and I dove across the bed to answer it.

After some opening banter, Imelda said, “Went over the dates with him. Mostly they match, sometimes they don’t.”

What she was referring to specifically were the dates on the documents from the Moscow vault Eddie had provided us. She was showing them to Morrison and asking him where Mary was at those times, how she might’ve gotten her paws on them.

I said, “Okay.”

She said, “Wanta talk to him?”

He came on with his typical blast of selfish, overbearing horsecrap. “Where the hell are you, Drummond? How come you haven’t visited? I don’t like dealing with sergeants. God damn it, I’m a general officer and I’m owed some respect. You’re-”

“Shut the hell up and answer my questions. How do you think Mary framed you?”

“Don’t tell me to shut-”

“Shut your mouth!” I yelled. “I’ve killed three men this morning, and at the moment I’m having visions of flying out there and killing you. This was all because of you. Frankly, you’re not worth it, so if you don’t shut up and answer my questions, I’ll be on the next flight.” Katrina was giving me the evil eye, so I took two deep breaths and tried to calmly ask, “Now, how do you think Mary framed you?”

“I don’t know,” he petulantly replied.

“Yeah, but you’ve now looked at the prosecutor’s key evidence. How could Mary had gotten all those papers out of your office?”

He fell quiet a moment. “She could’ve gotten some of them easily.”

“Not some, damn it… all of them. The President’s and Secretary of State’s talking papers? The blueprints for the technologies denied for export approval? The North Korean talking points? How could she have gotten her hands on those papers?”

“Shit, Drummond, I already told you I never saw the tech stuff, or the North Korean stuff. As for the rest of it, no, she couldn’t have gotten all of it from me. It wasn’t like I was bringing those papers home. She hardly ever visited my office at State or the White House. But I wasn’t the only one handling those papers. Maybe Mary pilfered them from someone else, too. Did you ever think of that?”

Of course I had thought of that. Just as I had thought of the fact that all the White House and State documents had Morrison’s fingerprints on them.

I said, “Let’s be clear on this. Just the talking points and policy papers. The ones with your fingerprints on them… could she have gotten all those through you?”

“Some, maybe, but others, no way. No.”

I had this sudden sense of depression because Mary was my only suspect. I didn’t want her to be my suspect, but I needed her to be the one, if that makes sense. And this was no longer just a legal case; it had become a fight for Katrina’s life, and mine, and that was no small consideration, either. I couldn’t move on Mary with a flimsy case. I needed granite proof.

In frustration, I said, “Damn it, you’ve seen the evidence. You tell me how that stuff ended up in Moscow.”

“I have no idea. That’s what I hired you to find out, you asshole. Those papers are the most closely guarded secrets in our government. Do you have any idea, Drummond, how few people lay their eyes on the President’s talking points before he meets with the Russians?”

“How few?”

“A handful. And those papers came from State and the White House over an eight-year period. Except for the National Security Advisor and the Secretary of State, there might be three other people who could possibly have gotten their hands on all of them. Except we changed National Security Advisors once, and had two different Secretaries of State during that period.”

I thought about that a moment. I asked, “And who would those other people be?”

“Actually, I can’t think of anybody. Nearly everybody changed jobs or left the administration and was replaced. Eight years is a couple of lifetimes in Washington.”

“And you fed those papers up your chain?”

“At State, I gave them to my boss and Milt forwarded them. At the NSC, I passed them through the NSC Advisor and he usually carried them directly to the President.”

“Were you staffing them with anybody?”

“Sometimes. But there’s some documents here”-he paused for a moment, “like this one, dated June 14, 1999, that I carried to the President himself. A former American naval officer had been arrested for spying in Moscow, it hit the news, and I gave the President a talking paper to use to call Yeltsin. Even the National Security Advisor didn’t see that one. He was on a trip to Germany and it was three in the morning, his time. It wasn’t that big of a deal that I wanted to wake him and make him approve the paper before I gave it to the President. I carried it in myself.”

I was scratching my head. “So nobody saw that paper but you and the President.”

He thought for a moment. “Well, Milt saw it.”

“Martin?”

“Yeah, I always sent everything to Milt.”

“Even when you were working at the NSC?”

He suddenly sounded defensive, like, why was I questioning his bureaucratic virility? “Look, Drummond, Milt was the king when it came to Russia and the former republics. Nobody did anything that concerned those regions without running it through him first. Milt played for keeps. If he found out you were undercutting his prerogatives, or giving the President recommendations behind his back, he took you down. More than a few Assistant Secretaries from Defense and State got sent packing for screwing with Milt.”

“So you sent him all your papers so you wouldn’t piss him off? That it?”

“I sent him my papers because he knows the region inside out. He was the architect of our policies there. Besides, Milt and I had a special relationship. He looked out for my backside and I looked out for his.”

I was staring at the white wall in the hotel room with a truly awful scowl. “And how did Martin get your papers when you were in the NSC?”

“I ran them off the computer, put them in a pouch, and had a courier hand-carry them over. They were too sensitive to be sent electronically.”

“So he got all these papers with your fingerprints on them?”

The import of what we were discussing suddenly began to hit him.

I said, “Did Martin have access to the technology export requests?”

His voice sounded suddenly parched. “He, uh, yeah. He was on the oversight council. He wouldn’t ordinarily have looked at the individual requests, but he’d have access if he wanted. I didn’t participate in any of that. A few times a month he’d go to the council meetings alone.”

There was another momentary lull; then the full consequences hit him like a Mack truck. “That bastard! That traitorous prick! He used me. He set me up. I… shit, I trusted him.”

“Yeah, well,” I said, “he trusted you, too. He trusted you to take the fall for him.”

And suddenly it all became crystal clear. It was brilliant. Morrison had been his fall guy, his buffer, his screen. He’d used Morrison for eight long years, even elevated him higher in Washington’s bureaucracy to cover the trail of his own treachery. Of course Morrison never suspected him. Morrison wasn’t the type to look a gift horse in the mouth. Morrison was too vain to believe anybody could use him as a stooge.