Brian Haig - The Kingmaker

“I don’t know,” Martin said, “but I’m not making it up. I swear. I think Viktor’s running him as a double agent or something. I’ve thought that for a long time. Look, I was the one who warned him about Arbatov.”

She let loose a cynical chuckle. “And how were you knowing about Arbatov?”

“Because Morrison told me. In his opening interview with me ten years ago. He wanted the job so bad, he was trying to impress me, so he bragged about how he was the guy who recruited Arbatov, how he was still his controller. I swear it’s true. Later he even told me about other traitors his wife was controlling. I gave all their names to Viktor. I exposed those traitors to the SVR, not Morrison.”

I looked up at Katrina and she looked down at me. Frankly, we’d learned everything we needed to learn. In fact, we’d learned more than we ever wanted to know.

I yanked the ski mask off my head, and Katrina pulled off her mustache and glasses and wig. Martin’s eyes searched both our faces. Then came the moment when clarity set in. There was this instant when he realized who we were and that he’d just told us enough to get him the electric chair.

In shock, he said, “You’re that lawyer. Drummond?”

I pulled the tape recorder out of my pocket. I clicked the off button. I smiled. Not a happy smile, but I smiled.

Katrina, good New York girl that she was, said, “You’re a scumbag, Martin. And now you’re screwed.”

And I added, “I don’t give a crap how good your lawyer is, you’re going down.”

A silly threat, I know, but what do you expect from a lawyer? Then the two of us left him there, on the muddy ground, a shocked expression still pasted on his face. His scream shot through the forest as we walked away.

Katrina drove while I replayed the tape over and over, considering the full ramifications of everything he’d confessed. We were just getting on 95 South when Katrina said, “We have to get Alexi out.”

I nodded and didn’t say anything. I don’t think she expected me to say anything. Getting Alexi out was impossible. We both knew that.

At 7:00 P.M., I called Mary from our hotel room in the Four Seasons.

“The Steele residence,” Homer answered, pronounced like, What the hell do you want?

“Hey, Homer, Drummond here. How’s the Porsche looking?”

“You son of a bitch. I knew it was you. You touch my car again, I’ll have you arrested.”

“Speaking of things of yours I’ve touched,” I interrupted, “is Mary there?”

I heard a bang that I assumed was the phone hitting the floor, and almost two minutes later Mary said, “Sean, where you are? Are you okay?”

Her tone was real warm and deferential, like she was genuinely concerned for my health. Of course if you read between the lines, it sounded more like, I’m having you followed and you somehow slipped away, so please fall for my act and tell me where the hell you are.

I said, “In thirty minutes I want you and Harold Johnson to be huddled in his office. I have a tape you both need to listen to, and if you’re not there in thirty minutes, you’ll read the contents of that tape on the front page of the New York Times. It won’t be a good day for you, Mary. Thirty minutes.”

Then I hung up. There’s nothing like bossing around the deputy director for intelligence of the whole CIA. It’s a good feeling knowing you’ve got a tape recording in your pocket that will blow the sides off his building. Thirty minutes later, I went down to the lobby and spied around till I saw a tired-looking businessman with a cell phone hooked to his belt.

I approached him with that overused spiel: “Have I got a deal for you.”

He gave me a wary, distrustful expression.

I pulled the wad of money out of my pocket. “Here’s the way this works,” I said, peeling off bills. “You get five hundred dollars to let me make one call on your cell phone. It’s local. It won’t cost much. I’ll be right across the lobby, so you can keep your eyes on me.”

I can be mighty generous with the money somebody was paid to murder me. He stared at the wad in my hand. “What’s the catch?”

“No catch. I’m in a very generous mood. I learned I just won the lottery and I need to call my broker to tell him to take a big breath and get ready for a windfall.”

Which, as metaphors go, was actually pretty good. He looked at me like he couldn’t believe it. “You’re bullshittin’ me, right?”

I waved the five hundred dollars. “Two more seconds and I move on to the next lucky guy.”

Before you could say “take it,” I had his cell phone and he had my money. I wandered over to the corner of the lobby. I went through this little charade because I figured the CIA had some sort of tracing service and I couldn’t afford to let Johnson and Mary know where I was. I didn’t want some goon squad showing up and spoiling my day.

I dialed the number for the CIA and told the switchboard lady to put me through to Harold Johnson’s office.

“Hello, Major, Mary’s here. What’s this about?” he asked, his tone sounding edgy, like he just knew this wasn’t going to be a happy moment, because he’d already had one sour experience with me and the bad taste lingered. As I mentioned before, it’s always nice to know you’re remembered.

“Put me on the speakerphone. You both need to hear this.”

As soon as he assured me I was on, I played the whole tape. You could hear the occasional slaps and howls, but the voices came through very clearly.

Johnson’s voice sounded alarmed and disapproving at the same time. “Whose voice was that?” he barked.

“Milton Martin’s,” I replied, then said nothing, knowing both their faces were going pale with anguish.

Johnson put me on hold so I couldn’t hear their conversation. I didn’t need to. I knew damn well what he and Mary were jabbering about, and while I would’ve enjoyed overhearing the panic attack that I’d just paid five hundred dollars for the listening rights to, I patiently waited for two minutes while they tried to figure out how to handle me and an audiotape that would shoot to the top of the charts on anybody’s list.

The speakerphone finally came back on. Johnson said, “Drummond, that confession sounded coerced.”

“Well, Mr. Johnson, it was coerced. So what? I did your dirty work for you; I found the mole you couldn’t find.”

“Where’s Martin? Did you kill him?”

“No. I left him in the woods across the river from West Point. I thought you’d appreciate the irony, West Point being the fort Benedict Arnold tried to betray. He was a little distraught and wasn’t very good company anymore.”

Mary said, “Oh my God, you didn’t.”

“Oh my God, I did,” I said. “And one way or another, it’s your fault.”

“How do you get that?” Johnson asked.

“Because you people set me up.”

“We weren’t setting you up,” Johnson insisted.

“Bullshit. You were following and watching me. When somebody tried to murder me and my co-counsel yesterday, your people came along and cleaned up afterward. Did Martin put you up to that?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Drummond.”

“I don’t, huh? What happened to the bodies of those guys who tried to kill me and my co-counsel? Where’d they disappear to? What about the runaround I got from the FBI when I tried to get help?”

I heard a murmuring sound as Mary and Johnson clued each other about how to handle me. Then Mary, the woman I used to do the hokey with, said, “Sean, you’ve got it confused.”

“Confused, huh?” I yelled into the phone. “I saw your guys in Tysons mall when I gave you the slip. Don’t lie to me, Mary. If I lose trust in you, I’ll call the Post and Times and play this tape for them.”