His lips were trembling, and his eyes were wild and wet, on the verge of tears. The veins were sticking out of his neck, from the pressure of blood boiling with frustration.
“God damn it, I am telling you the truth, asshole! I’m not making this up.”
Katrina suddenly bent across the table, between us. “Would you two mind if I stepped outside?”
I said, “What?”
“The testosterone level in here is killing me.”
I shook my head. “You think you can do better than me?”
She looked at me and replied, “Which part? Pissing off our client? Trading insults? Getting nothing done?”
A big, satisfied smirk was on Morrison’s face.
“All right, smartass,” I said, “proceed.”
She dropped into the chair next to me. She studied our client and he studied her back. She said, “We can do better than this, right?”
He nodded.
“Good. You say Martin lied. Who can verify that?”
He considered this, then said, “My secretary, Janet Winters.” He paused. “I’m not sure she’ll help, though.”
“Why won’t she?”
“She was the one who claimed we had an affair. She was, well, she was bitter when it was over.”
“Why?”
“I was fighting for my career. I had to hire a civilian lawyer who specializes in these things. She lost her security clearance and was fired.”
Being a lawyer, I had a fairly good inkling what he was talking about. As did Katrina, who tried to look unruffled, but it wasn’t hard to guess her position, her being a woman and all. There’s some unwritten sisterhood code that in these kinds of things all the benefit of the doubt anatomically flows to the side with boobs.
Morrison sensed it, too. His new buddy was slipping away. He awkwardly said, “Look, the lawyer said it was the only way. I’m not proud of how it went down. She was my secretary for three years, and I, uh, I probably let it get too close. But she was lying… Christ, I never slept with her.”
“Why did she claim you did?” Katrina asked.
“She fell in love with me. She started asking me out. I stopped by her apartment once or twice when I came back from trips, just to pick up things, and she was all over me.”
“Did Mary know?”
“She was the one who told me to get rid of her. When I tried to fire Janet, that’s when she brought the charges. Do you see why I had to defend myself?”
Rather than dwell further on this point, Katrina swiftly said, “Okay, is there anyone else who can confirm what you were doing?”
“Ask Mary, my wife.”
I shook my head.
“What, Drummond? Why are you shaking your head?”
“We talked. She said she had no idea,” I replied, discreetly withholding that part where she described him as Walter Mitty in green drag.
“I was important,” he insisted with a shocked look, completely unaware how asinine that sounded.
Rather than waste more time on that debatable point, I changed tacks. “Alexi Arbatov. Shift back to him. Where’d you two meet?”
“In Georgia, after the second massacre.”
“Did you approach him, or did he approach you?”
“Neither. The Georgians held a big funeral for their slain countrymen, and we both ended up there.”
“Why?”
“It was a good place to test the temperatures. Coincidentally, Alexi and I both thought we’d melt in with the crowds, to see how serious it was becoming.”
“And what? You ended up next to each other?”
“Well… yes, exactly. Then, before I knew it, I was being harassed by a group of KGB goons demanding to see my papers and asking what I thought I was doing there. Alexi pulled them off to the side and explained that the Soviet government didn’t want any serious incidents with the Americans. He told them to back off.”
“Just like that?”
“No, not just like that,” he angrily responded. “They knew who he was.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because he was Yurichenko’s protege.”
“And who was Yurichenko?”
“Not was -who is Viktor Yurichenko.”
“Okay… who is he?”
“The head of the SVR, the agency responsible for external security.”
“And Arbatov was his buddy?”
Morrison was shaking his head, unable to believe he had to explain these things. “At the time, Yurichenko was the equivalent of a three-star in the KGB. The man was legendary. He’d joined the KGB late in the Second World War, and there were rumors he put Kim Il Sung in power in North Korea.”
“That’s nice to have on your resume. How’d Yurichenko do that?”
“Kim Il Sung spent the Second World War hiding out in KGB training camps in Siberia. Yurichenko was his controller, and when the war ended, he accompanied Kim back into the country, then orchestrated the Soviet support that allowed Kim to elbow everybody else aside.”
“That’s ancient history. Let’s go back to Arbatov in Georgia.”
“Well, we began talking. It took a while, but I made him feel comfortable, and he began to open up. He said Gorbachev was a fool for sending in the KGB to batter these poor wretches. The old system was dying. Gorbachev couldn’t point his finger toward a new future and keep his feet planted in the past.”
I said, “So you figured he was a pretty good guy?”
“Drummond, Alexi was serious. And he told me his boss, Yurichenko, felt the same way.”
I gave him my you’re-full-of-crap look. “This guy Arbatov sidles up next to you, a couple of KGB thugs threaten you, he steps in to save you, then he starts talking about what a hash this whole Communist thing is. You don’t see where that might look suspicious? Where some folks might even conclude he was worming his way into your confidence?”
“It wasn’t like that. I swear it wasn’t.”
I shook my head. My oval-into-a-round-hole theory seemed to be springing some very nasty leaks. With this guy it was axiomatic that every step forward was two steps back. I could feel the frustration welling up in my chest, and sensed that if I didn’t immediately invent an excuse to leave, I might be facing a murder charge.
Walking to the car, I said to Katrina, “Incidentally, you did a good job back there. That good cop/bad cop stunt was very convincing.”
“Think so?” she asked.
“Oscar material.”
“Then I should thank you for making it easy.”
“What’s that mean?”
“You seem to enjoy pissing him off.”
“I’m trying to get the truth. It’s for his own good.”
“Arbeit macht frei,” she replied.
“Meaning what?”
“It was on a sign that hung over Auschwitz concentration camp. It means ‘Work will set you free.’ ”
I was sure she was sending me another of those subtle messages, but I’m a very black-and-white, meat- and-potatoes sort, so it went clear over my head.
“Well, anyway,” I said, “you try to track down Miss I-got-screwed- by-my-boss-and-all-I’ve-got-to-show-for- it-is-this-unemployment-check. I’ll see what I can come up with on our other big lead.”
