were hauling out more boxes. Eddie has impeccable timing.
Herbert, in his now-wrinkled gray suit, was still seated by the door, looking severely depressed and exhausted. As it was, I could barely get into my office, so many containers were strewn around.
Katrina was holding two large cups of Starbucks and two slices of crumbcake. She frowned as she handed me a cup and a slice of cake. “Look at this. We’re going to need more attorneys.”
“Two is more than enough.” Perverse as this sounds, I have an aversion to lawyers. They can be okay in ones and twos, but in flocks they get to be insufferable.
Her eyes wandered across all the cardboard and she said, “Think again. They told me a different crew is loading another truck right now.”
“Then we’ll bring Imelda back from Kansas.”
“You’d do this to her?”
It could take three weeks to wade through this mess, and as was already stated, more was coming.
“She can handle it,” I replied.
Katrina gave me a disapproving frown and asked, “What’s the plan for the day?”
“Back to Leavenworth. The plane leaves in an hour.”
“Go solo. I’m going to start wading through this.”
“Wrong. You have a calming influence on our client.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Why?” Not for the first time was I noticing that Katrina had both a stubborn and an independent streak-a very noxious combination.
“You’re big boys. Handle it.”
She was right, of course. I should be able to converse civilly with my own client. I still said something that sounded like “up yours” as I went into my office and called Clapper. I bitched and moaned and explained my predicament. He joyfully chuckled, because Eddie was his fair-haired boy, his legal Adonis, his most lethal hired gun. Clapper loved it when Eddie pulled one of his stunts, and he particularly loved hearing about it from whining complainers like me. I swore I’d someday walk into Clapper’s office with Eddie’s ass on a platter.
I warned Clapper that if I got a bunch more shipments I’d need another lawyer. He chuckled some more. It just made his day when his pet peacock terrorized the opposition.
I caught the flight to Kansas City, made it to the prison shortly after noon, Kansas time, and Morrison was already shackled to his table when I walked in.
He looked surprisingly chipper as he said, “Good afternoon, Major.”
“You got your TV and books?” I guessed.
“And a satellite dish. Drummond, you might be a decent lawyer after all.”
Well, we all know the old saying about how easy it is to make a starving man believe he’s in the midst of a feast. I fell into the chair across from him, withdrew the tape recorder that had so recently salvaged my career, lovingly caressed it, flipped it to record, and said, “Go back to 1990. The last time we spoke you were chasing assessments in the Caucasus. What came next?”
He withdrew a few sheets of notepaper, and I was pleased to see my contribution wasn’t limited to providing entertainment for him. “In late 1990, I was shifted to the Policy Planning Bureau at State.”
I said, “I’m not familiar with it.”
“It’s the internal think tank of State. I was working with a few other Sovietologists to help manage the changes.”
“And still handling Arbatov?”
“Some of the time. I’d gotten busy and that was the year he asked me to use Mary as my surrogate.”
“Busy with what?”
“To start with, separatist riots in Georgia were threatening Gorbachev’s grip on power. The conservatives in his government were furious with him, believing his perestroika policies had incited the unrest. Gorbachev tried to mollify the hard-liners and sent the KGB in to handle the protests.”
“I recall something about some massacres, right?”
“Correct.” He looked up from his notes and said, “It was a regrettable move, because it incited more riots and protests. It also undermined Gorbachev’s image as a great reformer. It was the beginning of the end for him. Boris Yeltsin was rabble-rousing in the streets about how it was time for real change.”
“And what position did you take?”
“I wrote a few memorandums predicting Gorbachev was through. I recommended we open channels with Yeltsin.”
“And how was this perceived?”
“Like I shit in the swimming pool. The Bush people had crafted their whole Soviet policy around Gorbachev. They were focused on unifying Germany and were convinced they needed Gorbachev’s support to accomplish that.”
“So… what? How did that impact you?”
“Suddenly a lot less actions were flowing into my in-box, and people stopped inviting me to meetings, the usual bureaucratic signs of a fall from grace. You know the funny thing? It served me in pretty good stead when Bush lost the election.”
“How come?”
“Because the new team read my memorandums and liked what I’d written. They also felt Bush had blown it. By cozying up to Gorbachev, he’d poisoned the well with Yeltsin. Like the Chicken Kiev speech.”
“And what was the Chicken Kiev speech?”
Morrison frowned, put out that he had to explain this. “In the midst of all the upheaval, Bush actually flew to Kiev and gave a public address urging the Soviet peoples to rally around Gorbachev and stay within the Soviet Union.”
“Tell me this is not so. George Bush?”
“Ironic, isn’t it? On the cusp of winning the cold war, our President is in Ukraine beseeching the enslaved to stay in their chains. I was outraged. I sent up several stiffly worded memorandums.”
I said, “And what happened when the new team came in?”
“By a stroke of good fortune, somebody found my memorandums and showed them to the President’s old college roommate, an academician who’d written several books on the Soviet Union and the cold war. He was made an Assistant Secretary of State, and as things later turned out, the White House turned over all the former Soviet states to him.”
My eyebrows shot up. “Are we talking Milton Martin?”
“Yeah, Milt. He brought me in and interviewed me. I made a good impression and he offered me a position.”
“And what position was that?”
“His special assistant.”
“You were Martin’s special assistant?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Right. That’s what you said.” I very curiously asked, “And what did that involve?”
“Well, Milt’s problem was he hadn’t spent any time in government. He was vulnerable. Since I had considerable Washington experience, the idea was that I’d represent him and his views in Washington, which freed him up to travel as much as he needed.”
I kept nodding my head and tried to take this in. The title of Assistant Secretary of Anything is ordinarily a fairly banal position in Washington. Secretaries of Something are walking gods. Deputy and Undersecretaries of Whatever are mystical creatures with lethal wands. But there are so many Assistant Secretaries that they’re like bunnies in the forest, living in the shadow of the redwoods, groping silently around the roots and hoping not to get stepped on.
Milt Martin was an exception to the rule. Actually, the exception. He’d been one of the President’s best chums since they’d roomed together in college, and even the Secretaries of Something trembled when he walked into a room. In Washington, image trumps all, and whether he did or didn’t, everybody believed Martin had the power to pick up the phone and call his old roomie and say, “Yo, boss, you know that jerk you hired to head the Treasury Department? Well, he pisses me off. Fire him.”
