potatoes-and-peas theory, where you hide the peas under the potatoes so your mother thinks you ate them. It never worked then, either.
“Mary, he’s a witness. Maybe the key witness.”
“Sean, what were you thinking? Oh Christ.”
“It’s okay. I did that little three-stripes-on-the-statue deal and we met secretly.”
“Bill told you about that? Don’t you know what you’re doing? Alexi’s the most important asset we’ve ever recruited. Do you have any notion what they’ll do to him if he’s caught? This isn’t about you and your client.”
“Yeah, it is. Inconvenient, I know, but I have an obligation to follow every avenue, and Alexi’s an avenue.”
“Wrong. Bill’s using you. He’s turned you into a puppet. He’s manipulating you into exposing Alexi.”
“You sound like you think Bill’s guilty.”
“No, I don’t… or maybe… oh hell, I don’t know what I think anymore.” She rubbed her forehead, like she had a king-size migraine. She said, “Bill’s angry, right?”
“Oh, I suppose you could say that.”
“I know what he’s like when he gets this way. He gets vengeful. He’s probably mad enough to try to burn Alexi to get back at the CIA. You can’t be part of that.”
The only problem with her logic was that it had been my idea to meet with Alexi, not his. You could argue that Morrison left a trail of breadcrumbs that led me in that direction; I just didn’t believe that he was that devious. Or that I was that gullible. I said, “Why didn’t he expose him before? Say Bill was a traitor, why didn’t he give him away long ago?”
“I’m afraid it doesn’t prove anything. Exposing Alexi would’ve been suicidal. If Alexi were arrested by the Russians, there would’ve been an internal investigation. It’s routine, and only ten living people know about Alexi. The rest of us take lie-detector exams. Bill would’ve hung a neon sign over his own head.”
“Yeah, well, Alexi thinks Bill’s innocent. In fact, he agrees with Bill that this whole thing’s a frame job.”
Her face turned very still and very tense. “He told you that?”
“He’s convinced of it.”
“And did he say who framed Bill?”
“He thinks it’s some cabal in Moscow he’s been trying to crack for about ten years.”
She stared off at the trees. “Oh shit, Sean… not Alexi’s cabal.”
“He told me you knew about it.”
“Of course I know about it. He’s been mumbling about it for twelve years. It’s his fixation. For Godsakes, we even encouraged his belief. It was all part of the plan.”
“What plan?”
She suddenly stopped talking. She folded her arms across her chest and stared down at the ground. She had obviously already crossed that line where Alexi’s name was going to be a topic of discussion at her next lie detector session. Up to this point, though, she could blame it all on her husband’s pesky lawyer and his incessant nosiness. The next explanation was the big one, the disclosure that put her on quicksand.
When she looked up, she put her hand back on my arm. “Sean, how do you think we recruited him in the first place? The first time he met Bill he began complaining about some mysterious force that was tearing apart his country. He was obviously groping to see what we knew. So we sent back Bill to tell him we suspected the same thing. It was a ruse. We used his vulnerability to establish an alliance. Like many people of extraordinarily high intelligence, Alexi is paranoid.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because the Agency’s top psychiatrist has been helping us manage him this whole decade. Do you know the code name of this operation? ‘The Patient.’ Alexi’s paranoia is the hook that allowed us to make him an asset. We fed it. We constructed operations to exacerbate it. Why do you think he betrayed his country? Alexi is extremely patriotic. In his mind, he’s not betraying his country, he’s trying to defeat some dark hidden force that hijacked his nation. Sound familiar?”
“What about Yeltsin’s election? The way he tells it, there’s no plausible way Yeltsin went from zip to victory inside three months.”
“Oh, please. What the hell does Alexi Arbatov know about politics? For Godsakes, he’s a KGB hack. His knowledge of politics was shaped at Moscow University under the Communists. Do you know what he was taught? That democracy is a capitalist farce where rich men buy candidates and foist them upon the poor working class. To get inside his head we even got copies of the course books he was taught with. You have no idea how much work and effort went into recruiting and managing him. If you expose him, the whole world is going to crash down on your head. I’m worried for you. That’s why I’m explaining this.”
“You still didn’t explain how Yeltsin won.”
She very patiently said, “Yeltsin won because the other candidates were too unattractive and politically clumsy. He won because the big money backed him, and he was an incumbent who used the power and prestige of his office. It happens in this country all the time. Look at some of the hacks that hold high office and get reelected again and again. But when Alexi told us about his dark suspicions we said, ‘Yes, yes, you’re right, Alexi, there does appear to be something mysteriously sinister.’ The same thing with Chechnya and Georgia and Azerbaijan. I assume he told you about those, too. We were validating his fears, Sean. We were maintaining him as an asset.”
To my credit, I had entertained the notion that Alexi’s tale was suspect-that he was lying to me, or leading me down a blind path or was just plain wrong. But I’d never even suspected he was delusional. My client struck me as delusional, but Alexi?
But then I didn’t have a highly paid psychiatrist guiding me through the twisted labyrinths of Alexi’s head. It now seemed so obvious. The CIA torqued his paranoia in a calibrated campaign to turn him into a traitor. He was a highly moral man who worked in an immoral profession for an immoral government and constructed bogeymen to salve his troubled conscience. They’d focused on his vulnerability, exactly as folks in their profession are taught.
I stared off at a wisp of smoke trailing out of a chimney. “Wow.”
She was holding both my arms and staring into my eyes, measuring something, maybe whether there was a brain somewhere inside that head. Then she smiled. “I know your intentions were good. You’re out of your depth though. Just… please, be more careful. I talked you into taking this case, and I’d never forgive myself if you got hurt.”
We began walking arm-in-arm back to the oversize barn she called home. I said, “And about your husband’s cheating… I’m sorry it turned out that way. It must’ve been miserable for you. Believe me, I took no joy in discovering it.”
“I warned you it wasn’t a perfect marriage. I wasn’t exaggerating, was I?”
“Why didn’t you just divorce the son of a bitch?”
“The same reason I married him instead of you.”
“And what was that?” I asked.
“I misjudged.”
We were at the front door. She turned and looked into my eyes. This was one of those earthshaking moments when a real dramatic thing has been said, and some kind of equally dramatic follow-up is needed. She was leaning slightly toward me-all I had to do was pull her into my arms.
I’m not a complete stickler on professional ethics, but I have my limits. She was married, and that’s one thing. She was my client’s wife, and that’s another thing. She was a vision from my past who tugged at my heart and filled my dreams, and that’s yet another thing.
I pondered all these clashing thoughts until the moment turned awkward, she backed away, went inside, and closed the door.
I was not having a good day with women.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
