The Kingmaker (22 page)

“Bullshit! They always blame these things on Chechens. What were you two up to?”

I bent forward to answer, but Katrina lunged forward faster. “That’s the same damn thing I was going to ask you.”

“What are you talking about?”

“What am I talking about?” Her voice rose with outrage, and I have to admit I was waiting breathlessly to hear her story as well. “We come here to conduct our investigation and
you
assign us a driver who nearly gets us killed.”

Jackler lurched forward in his chair. “This Torianski guy?”

She replied, “That attack was directed at him. That’s obvious, isn’t it?”

All four men were now regarding her with inquisitive
expressions. For their joint benefit, Jackler asked, “Why’s it obvious?”

“Mel told us he was sorry he got us into this only a second before he was shot.”

“He said he was sorry?” the ambassador asked.

“Didn’t I just say that?” Katrina demanded.

All eyes turned to me, and Jackler asked, “That right, Drummond?”

“I remember he said he was sorry. And he mentioned something . . . something . . .” I scratched my head and looked up at the ceiling, trying to recall what he said—that he didn’t really say. But that’s beside the point.

Katrina said, “About the SVR?”

“Right, that part. Something about SVR bastards.”

“He said that?” the ambassador asked.

“Bullets were flying through the window, so I couldn’t hear real distinctly. But yeah, SVR bastards, or buzzards, or something. Anyway, Mr. Ambassador, I’m registering an official protest. My associate and I had our lives put at risk by your people.”

Riser turned to one of the two men I didn’t know from Adam. “Could that be possible?”

The man hunched his shoulders. “We, well, um, we hadn’t even considered it. We’ll have to comb through everything he was working on to see if it’s a possibility.”

Riser’s face flushed. “Why didn’t you already consider it? It’s your damned job to consider it. Why do I have to sit in front of these poor people looking like a horse’s ass?”

“Uh, sir,” said the other unidentified man, “Phil meant we considered it . . . we just ruled it as . . . well, as a lower possibility.”

“A lower possibility?”

The unnamed guy looked cunningly at Phil and said, “Yes sir. Torianski was involved in a few things; we just . . . didn’t think they were worth bringing to your attention yet. We wanted to hear Drummond’s side first. We’re narrowing the possibilities. Now we intend to look more deeply.”

“Right,” said the guy I didn’t know from Adam, whose name turned out to be Phil. “We don’t like giving you half-cocked theories. But now that we’ve ruled out these two,” he said, indicating us, “we know exactly where to look.”

“At the SVR thing, right?” the still-unidentified guy suggested to Phil, whom I took to be his boss, whose ass he was scurrying to save.

“The SVR thing, right,” Phil adamantly replied, looking at the ambassador and nodding his head in our direction. “Which we obviously can’t discuss in their presence.”

Katrina appeared to be fascinated by the unfolding scene. They should start one of those reality TV shows where you get to watch trained bureaucrats play cover-your-ass.

With an aggrieved scowl, Riser said to us, “I’m very sorry. This is so embarrassing. As you can see, my own staff has been keeping me in the dark.”

“It happens, sir,” I said, ever the graceful type.

“For Godsakes, just assign us a driver who doesn’t get us killed,” Katrina insisted.

“Of course.” He hastily ushered Jackler and us out of his office, apologizing profusely as we walked out his door.

Out in the hallway, we could hear his voice go off, as Jackler said, “You two aren’t bullshittin’, are ya?”

“What? About Torianski?”

“Come on, Drummond. That boy didn’t have anything to do with this Morrison thing, did he? He worked for Morrison, right? And you’re here looking for an accomplice, and this guy gets whacked.”

“You know, I haven’t got a clue. I hadn’t even thought of it, but it does look suspicious, doesn’t it? Christ, I hope not. With him dead it would blow our chances for a deal with Eddie.”

He walked away shaking his head, leaving little doubt that he intended to look fully into this matter. It would’ve been hilarious, except a young Army captain who had struck me as a very decent guy was dead.

Not to mention that Katrina and I were on somebody’s hit list.

Not to mention this was Arbatov’s turf.

Not to mention it was his game.

And if you add all that together, it was time to book two tickets on the next flight home.

I
swallowed three more aspirins and lay down to nap before I organized our flight from Moscow. As both Napoleon and Hitler learned, planning a retreat from Moscow is a tricky affair that takes a clear mind and meticulous preparation. I’d woken up early, been shot at, wounded, and operated on, and was left feeling a bit groggy and foggy. I don’t know how long I slept, maybe a few minutes, maybe a few hours, but I awoke to a hand shaking me.

My eyes cracked open, and I found myself staring at the handsome features of Alexi Arbatov. Instinctively, I jerked forward and nailed him in the forehead with a flat-handed punch. He flew backward, and I leaped out of the bed and jumped on him. He put up no fight, just went limp and passive. I flipped him over on his stomach, got one arm wrapped around his jaw and the other against the back of his head. I said, “Move and I’ll break your neck.” Not too original a line, but suitable for the occasion and, more important, authentic.

“Please . . . let go,” he replied, his words choked and strained,
because I had rotated his chin nearly forty-five degrees to the right, poised for the quick jerk that would disconnect his skull from his spine.

“Of course . . . I let you go and you whack me.” I did, however, let his head rotate slightly back toward its natural position before I accidentally strangled him to death.

He mumbled, “You are being fool. Why did I not kill you when you were sleeping?”

It was a reasonable point—unless he was like one of those old western gunfighters who called their victim before they shot. The common perception is they did that out of some heroic sense of fair play. Wrong—it was the sadistic code of the Old West to let the victim have a miserable moment to contemplate his impending death.

Anyway, I released him from the lock, and he rolled over and sat up and began rotating his head. I stayed coiled, ready to strike. He didn’t say anything for a moment, but regarded me through sullen eyes.

He eventually said, “I have gotten report on attack an hour ago. We have big problem.”

“True.” I added, “But not the same problem. Mine is the number two guy in the SVR wants me dead. Yours seems to be how to murder me without causing the fingers to point back at you.”

He scratched an eyebrow. “This is not true.”

“No, and Stalin’s not dead, either. He and Elvis are hiding out together at some luxurious resort in Mexico, partying their asses off.”

He gave me a quizzical look. “Elvis?”

“It’s an old . . . oh, forget it.” I fell back onto the bed and wondered what this guy’s game was.

He insisted, “Major, I did not order this attack, but is big problem for me. I am meeting with you in morning and then you have ambush. Who else knows we have this meeting?”

“My co-counsel. Only I didn’t tell her till after the ambush.”

“There are others, though, yes? This must be true.”

His face
did
look exceedingly apprehensive, and whatever his angle was, I couldn’t see it. It didn’t mean there wasn’t one—only that I couldn’t see it. An important distinction, that.

I said, “If it wasn’t you, who tried to kill us?”

Straightening his clothes, he replied, “Police say they are Chechens. This is why it comes to my desk. Acts of domestic espionage must be reported to Viktor and me immediately.” He paused and then added, “But this is idiotic conclusion. Chechens do not kill Americans.”

Truly, his response surprised me. Were he trying to deflect blame, the easiest thing would be to say, “Chechens? Most definitely.”

Arbatov walked around and ruminated a bit, then finally stopped and faced me. “Did Bill talk about information I am giving to him?”

“No.”

He got a distracted look. “You know
nothing
about plot?”

This was getting surreal, however, I’d seen enough bad spy movies to know exactly how I was expected to respond. So I said, “Plot? What plot?”

“He tells you nothing?” He studied my face to see if I was being truthful.

“No, Arbatov, he never told me about any plot.”

He let loose a large sigh and walked over and stared at the curtain. I said, “Look, maybe you should tell me about this plot thing. If you’re really at risk, and your fate hinges on my client, maybe you should tell me everything.”

I could see his shoulders quake like he was chuckling, and, okay, so I did sound a bit ridiculous.

“Please.”

He remained quiet, so I said, “Okay, so this plot is huge and momentous. And I’m not a professional spy, so you can’t tell me.”

“I am sorry. I trust Bill and Mary. You, I do not know . . . or trust.”

“Well, back to square one then.” I couldn’t resist adding, “And for the record, I don’t trust you either, pal.”

I climbed off the bed and went to the chair where I’d thrown my uniform and started to get dressed, while he stared at the curtain and mulled his options. He finally spun back around and faced me, shaking his head, but desperation is the mother of all disclosures. He’d come to understand that truthfully and inevitably, he had no other options. The three guys resting in a Moscow morgue had joined us at the hip, a sort of literal version of a shotgun wedding.

Sounding tentative, he said, “The reason I first meet with Bill was to discuss with him about strange things happening in Soviet Union.”

I was racing to pull on my pants, since it seemed ridiculous to be standing in my underwear as the deputy head of Russia’s spy agency spilled his guts about some earthshaking plot. Surely, moments like this should be more dignified. I said, “Things like what?”

“You are knowledgeable about how the Soviet Union came to be ended?”

“Let me see . . . I think I recall something in the news about it.”

He ignored my sarcasm. “You do not wonder how this happens so fast . . . how my seventy-year-old nation explodes?”

“No.” I stopped dressing and stared at him. “I figured it was a big, rotten piece of garbage that had no reason to hold together. You build a house on a lousy foundation, sooner or later, it’s going to crash down.”

“Is too simplistic. Please do not get confused with your moral relativism. Your country expands in same way as Russia does. American armies march westward and conquer Spanish, Mexicans, Indians, Filipinos, Hawaiians. You defeat them, and you absorb them. Russia does this same thing. You have civil war and we have civil war. You have Ku Klux Klan, and negro
demonstrations, and Puerto Rican terrorists, and we have separatist splinter groups. Yet, both nations outlive these things, yes?”

“Your point being?” I asked, not completely buying into his analogies, because frankly there was a world of difference. Well, maybe not a world, but enough to be significant.

He continued, “Inside one year, my country explodes into pieces. For seventy years, one government, one philosophy, one currency, then suddenly, one nation becomes fifteen. You see no oddity in this? This was not planned, was nobody thinking ahead about this. Suddenly, many, many millions of people are thrown into decades of deprivation and poverty and instability.”

“Had to happen sooner or later. It was a rotten system.”

“Major, please, I am not bemoaning loss of Communism. I am not some old apparatchik who misses old glories. I am like scientist, looking for reasons. How can this thing happen so fast? Forget your American prejudices and assumptions.”

“Keep going.”

“Was made to happen in this way. Impulses are there, yes, but big assistance was given. A glass statue can be frail, but somebody must knock it off table to make it shatter.”

“And what? You think we were behind it? Hey, pal, you’ve been reading too many of the brochures the CIA writes about itself.”

“Your CIA cannot do this . . . I know this. Was too vast, too knowing. This had to be an internal thing.”

All very interesting; however, it was time to bring the conversation back on track. I asked, “And this has something to do with why you met Morrison?”

“Yes. Viktor Yurichenko, my boss, heard my concerns, and he agrees something is propelling our country toward this cataclysm.”

I instantly found myself taking Arbatov more seriously, because Yurichenko had an incredible reputation, and if they both believed something stank to high heaven, maybe there was a turd in the punch bowl, geopolitically speaking, of course.

He continued in his earnest tone, “Then Viktor tells me to go look for plotters in trouble spots. I am doing this on pretext of assessing situations, but I am looking really for whoever is intervening in these factions, is prodding them, is organizing demonstrations and exacerbating local political anxieties.”

“And did you find them?”

“Was too hidden. But I was becoming even more convinced something was there.”

“Why?”

“Was too orchestrated. Someone knowing of our seams and stresses was tugging out stitches. You are knowledgeable about chaos theory, yes? Even in most frantic events there must be patterns, logical progressions, but to find these progressions, separate forces must be slowed and studied.”

“Okay, so?”

He was becoming animated, and clearly agitated, but whether from passion or frustration I couldn’t tell. He said, “This was our problem. Was happening too fast . . . overpowering Gorbachev and his government, avalanches of protests, and local political decisions, and criminal acts, and even revolutions. Everywhere this is happening, fires in every corner. There has to be some trigger, yes? There was too much synchronicity, too much
unapparent
coordination.”