Brian Haig - The Kingmaker

I could hear the sounds of more cursing on the other end, and I called Morrison’s name a few times and could hear him venting. I could just imagine the fit he was throwing. Then Imelda came back on the line. I thanked her profusely and hung up.

Katrina had overheard only my part of the conversation, so I gave her the abbreviated version of Morrison’s responses. We sat and stared at each other in stunned silence. Then we began hypothesizing and knocking pieces into place. No wonder the FBI was helping out Martin. God only knows what story he’d told them, but it must’ve been a whopper; like maybe he was being harrassed by his former employee’s defense counsels, and we were threatening him, and as a former high level official, he needed protection.

She finally said, “This actually is mind-blowing. The President’s asshole buddy.”

“At least I never voted for him.”

“Right,” she acknowledged. Notice how she didn’t say she hadn’t voted for him?

“Next issue…,” I said. “Alexi.”

“What about him?”

“You and he are a… what? Fill in the blank any way you choose.”

She studied me a moment and quite possibly considered saying, “Screw you and none of your damned business.” Truthfully, it wasn’t, but also it was. She finally said, “We’re tight.”

“Tight? I’m generationally handicapped. Take it back ten years or so.”

“You mean, like, are we in love?”

“Yes. Exactly.”

“We’re a work in progress. Give us a bit more time and we’ll probably rendezvous there.”

“Okay, me. What’s my status?”

“You mean, am I still pissed at you?”

“Exactly again.”

“Consider yourself on probation.”

“Do I owe you an apology?”

She smiled. “More than one. I’ll compose a list and get it to you.”

“That would be kind.”

“You did save my life. Always a good place to start.”

“But I’m still in the minus column?”

“Oh yeah.”

I thought about that.

I finally said, “You realize what that guy probably got away with? He literally shaped our policies for eight years. Christ, the Russians were actually running our policies toward them. It’s staggering.”

“Indeed. Now think about this… no evidence,” she said, the trained lawyer going right to the heart of the matter.

“Or time,” I said, because after all, trained killers were out there hunting us down, and that wasn’t a trifling detail.

“Well, you’re the government man. What do we do?” she asked.

We then wasted thirty minutes or so discussing alternatives and knocking holes in each other’s suggestions. Calling the FBI or CIA was out of the question: They wouldn’t believe us; the watchers would end up on our tails again; the killers would be mobilized, and the next time they’d leave no room for failure. As for the Army, what could it do? It’s the most conformist institution in the world and it would no doubt refer the whole matter to the FBI and CIA, and we’d be right back where we started-setting the conditions for our own funerals.

I thought about calling the press and giving them the story, but any reporter in his right mind would say, “Yeah, no kidding? And you’re Morrison’s defense counsels, right? Boy, you guys are really creative.”

The phone rang and it was Alexi.

After assuring him we were fine, I said, “Milt Martin? You know him?”

“I have met Milt at some conferences. He was most powerful man in your last administration, yes?”

“Yeah, well, what would you say if I told you he’s our man?”

Alexi chuckled. “And you are making accusations about me fabricating nightmares. Sean, this is not possible. Martin was your President’s best friend. All policies toward my country were being made by him. And I would most certainly have known.”

That’s when I remembered something. When Morrison had first told me about Alexi, he’d said that Arbatov was always selective in what he provided. If he thought it had to do with his mystical cabal, the information flowed like a river; otherwise, he was a loyal Russian intelligence officer. He’d never given the Morrisons the names of our traitors; he’d picked his disclosures with great care.

So maybe Alexi knew all about Milt Martin. Maybe he knew Martin was the jewel in the SVR’s crown and simply wasn’t going to admit it, even to me and Katrina. And if that was true, his alarm bells would be going off right now, because here he was protecting us, and if we were about to launch off to prove Martin was Moscow’s most valuable spy, well, that would surely compromise Alexi’s standing and future job prospects-and health.

I looked over at Katrina; there was no way in hell I could share that suspicion with her. Like I said earlier, the thing about this world of espionage is you can’t trust anybody. Everybody’s got conflicting loyalties. Even those folks you trust, you can only halfway trust-conditionally.

I said, “Uh, yeah. Listen, why don’t Katrina and I do a little more checking, and I’ll call tomorrow if we find anything.”

That was fine with him, and we hung up. I turned to Katrina and said we needed to go to the hotel’s business center. She gave me a curious look but followed me downstairs. We bought two cups of coffee in the snack bar, then filed inside the business center, found an idle computer, and made ourselves comfortable.

The thing about the Internet is that you can find out a few things about almost anybody, but famous international figures like Milton Martin are open books. I typed his name into Google. com and got 12,753 hits. The only tough thing was deciding which listings were worth reading, because otherwise Katrina and I would be at that computer for two weeks reading entries, most of which were repetitive, and many of which were just silly.

After two hours, here’s what we had: Milton Martin was born on March 7, 1949, in Amherst, Massachusetts, the only child of Mark and Beth. His father had been managing partner of a private equity firm and was worth millions. Milt had been sent to Groton School at the age of thirteen. He’d done Yale undergrad, where he majored in Russian studies and, as already noted, roomed with a future President. He looked like a long-haired egghead in a picture from that period, his nose the only thing that poked out from a mop that actually covered his eyes. He was a good student, except for getting arrested twice for involvement in antiwar protests that turned violent. He ended up doing graduate studies in England, and then went back to Yale for a Master’s, also in Russian studies.

The articles weren’t clear on exactly what he did in the years right after he finished his grad work, but it seemed he was trying to make it as a writer. Apparently it took him seven or eight years to find his voice, because that’s when he published his first best-seller, a book on the origins of the cold war that exposed all kinds of underhanded dealings by the CIA and American military in various places around the world. What was striking about that book, most critics agreed, were the shocking revelations of dirty operations that were supposed to have been among the government’s most closely held secrets. It was widely agreed that he had extraordinary sources. No kidding.

That book led to a series of hearings on the Hill and caused an American President to authorize a bunch of wiretaps to try to find Martin’s sources. When questioned by the FBI, Martin stood behind his First Amendment rights.

His second book was an expose of America’s secret war in Vietnam and Cambodia, again noted by critics for its inside look at operations that were never supposed to see the light of day. This time the inevitable congressional hearings led to a large number of firings in the CIA, mostly of operatives whose names were included in the book, making them useless as clandestine operators in any regard.