Brian Haig - The Kingmaker

He barked something at another goon, who immediately sprinted out of the room. We stood for the next two minutes without anybody saying a word. To say that the air was thick with tension would be an understatement. I kept glancing down at the poor guy whose cranial fluid was making a big puddle on the floor.

Finally Viktor stared at me. “You sacrificed yourself for Alexi and the girl, yes?”

I didn’t need to answer.

He chuckled and rocked back and forth on his heels. “How very, very stupid, Drummond. If Alexi escaped, I will never forgive you.” He peered more closely into my face. “You understand that, don’t you? I won’t kill you, but you’ll wish I would. You’ll pray every night to die. You’ll become my solace.”

Suddenly the door burst open and the goon rushed in. He said something in rapid-fire Russian and Viktor just glared at him. I was in big trouble.

I almost shuddered from the expression on his face-a mixture of bitterness, hurt, and fury that coursed straight up from his soul. I didn’t have to guess what the news was. I already knew. The Secretary of State had canceled his appointment with the foreign minister and took off at 6:20. Alexi and Katrina had accompanied him, of course.

This was great for them. This was exceedingly bad for me.

I said, “It’s done. Let it go.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment, I think because he was choking on his own bile. I doubt if he’d ever lost at anything, chess or espionage. Losing gracefully is an acquired skill. Defeats pile up on top of defeats and eventually you lose the outrage for the next one that comes along. Viktor obviously hadn’t built up that immunity yet. I vaguely realized that if I didn’t make him think of something else, he might break his word and have Felix come over and punch my nose through the back of my head.

I asked, “If he was a traitor, why do you care? He’s got nothing more to tell us, right?”

The goon who held me tightened his grip, and Felix took a step in my direction.

Instead, Viktor’s neck snapped up. “You don’t understand, do you? Of course you don’t. Alexi was like my blood. I treasured him. I raised him. I took him in when he was a sniveling little pig farmer’s son. I, uh-” He suddenly stopped talking. He became emotionally tongue-tied, and I realized he really did look upon Alexi as his own child. Perhaps a wayward child, but don’t most parents love their kids, warts and all?

Still, it didn’t add up. A piece was missing, and I didn’t know what it was.

I said, “You knew he was a traitor. For twelve years you knew. Why didn’t you stop him?”

He stared at me with pure hatred. “Because it was useful, you idiot.”

I was thoroughly baffled. “Useful? I… I don’t get it.”

“Of course you don’t. What was Alexi reporting to your people?”

“About some cabal he thought was undermining Russia and causing wars and revolutions.”

“A cabal?” Viktor asked.

“He said it helped undermine the Communists and get Yeltsin into the presidency. It helped him get reelected. It sparked the wars in Chechnya and Georgia and Azerbaijan.”

He was chuckling long before I was done. “And you believed this garbage?”

“Uh, well…” I stammered.

“Of course you didn’t,” he snapped. “Surely your people had that figured out. Poor Alexi… so brilliant and attractive and, well, troubled in his head. Yes?”

I nodded.

Then he really chuckled. “For twelve years Alexi told your people these wild stories and the more he elaborated, the more crazy he sounded.”

“But you believed him, too, didn’t you? You helped Alexi search for this cabal. You infiltrated Yeltsin’s organization, you dispatched Alexi to find them. You gave him resources and you were involved.”

A look of amazement crossed his face. “Alexi told you this?”

“Yes.”

The surprise gave way to curiosity. “Did he say he ever found these people?”

“No. But you know that… he was reporting back to you. You were involved in every step of the search.”

“Oh really?”

“Alexi told me-you directed him to find these people. He reported everything to you.”

“Ah, yes, that’s true,” he said, slapping his side, like what a stitch that was. “Alexi thought he came so close, so many times. Then, mysteriously, the evidence would disappear.”

I was shaking my head, now completely confused. “What are you talking about?”

“He was always the good son, and he wanted his adopted father to see what he’d done. He so wanted me to be proud of him that he rushed in to tell me every time he got close. Unfortunately, he was about to destroy the most important work of my life. I had to prevent that, of course. So I sabotaged his operation.”

“You mean, you-”

“Of course, you idiot. This cabal, as you call it, these are my people.”

“But-”

“But nothing,” he sneered, obviously knowing what I was about to say. “Let me ask you something.”

I nodded.

“Do you know I put Kim Il Sung in power? I went into North Korea with him when the Great War ended. I disposed of his enemies and gave him the weapons to build a liberation army. I even persuaded Mao to send the Chinese army in to save him when your army chased him out of the South. Do you know I was the man who recruited Fidel Castro? I met him in Mexico when he was just an angry young punk with a big ego. I gave him the guns and told him how to run Batista off that island. Ho Chi Minh was another of my creations. I had his rivals assassinated and helped him rise to the top of the nationalist movement. I helped him run the French out, and orchestrated every inch of our support for his war against your army.”

He paused to let me absorb all that. I had picked up bits of it in the intelligence files, but it wasn’t the same as listening to him brag about everything he’d done. It isn’t often you hear from a man who’s changed the course of world history. It was chilling.

“And there were other leaders, other nations. The Congo, Ethiopia, Eastern Europe. I was the man who knew how to orchestrate revolutions and wars, to make sure the right man rose to the top. I was the kingmaker. That was Stalin’s nickname for me. Khrushchev’s also. Brezhnev thought I walked on water. Andropov, too.”

“You must’ve been busy as hell,” I said, wondering where this was going.

He gave me a sardonic look. “I woke up one day and realized something quite shocking, Drummond. I was working for idiots. I was the man building their empire, while they were destroying my homeland. They were stupid, venal men, all of them. Stalin nearly buried Russia. He made that idiotic bargain with Hitler and nearly got us all killed. Then Khrushchev, who was so clumsy in his dealings with your Kennedy, he nearly got us blown into a nuclear dustpile. And Brezhnev was nothing but a common thief. He wasn’t even a smart thief. We were lurching from bad to worse. Do you know what it feels like to serve a system that produces such garbage for leaders?”

“No,” I admitted, and I meant it, too.

He seemed to consider my answer, as though it were the naive babbling of a child. He sighed. “I was helping them destroy Russia. You Americans, you had the right idea. You ran your empire like an elite country club. You took only the rich and talented… Japan, Western Europe, Taiwan, Canada. We… well, we were taking in useless leeches. Eastern Europe, Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba, Yemen, Ethiopia-what do all those places have in common? They are all impoverished messes. They were needy orphans that drained our wealth and energy. We got nothing from them. Nothing. And our own people were becoming poorer and poorer. This is not how these things are supposed to work, is it?”