“Were you staffing them with anybody?”
“Sometimes. But there’s some documents here”-he paused for a moment, “like this one, dated June 14, 1999, that I carried to the President himself. A former American naval officer had been arrested for spying in Moscow, it hit the news, and I gave the President a talking paper to use to call Yeltsin. Even the National Security Advisor didn’t see that one. He was on a trip to Germany and it was three in the morning, his time. It wasn’t that big of a deal that I wanted to wake him and make him approve the paper before I gave it to the President. I carried it in myself.”
I was scratching my head. “So nobody saw that paper but you and the President.”
He thought for a moment. “Well, Milt saw it.”
“Martin?”
“Yeah, I always sent everything to Milt.”
“Even when you were working at the NSC?”
He suddenly sounded defensive, like, why was I questioning his bureaucratic virility? “Look, Drummond, Milt was the king when it came to Russia and the former republics. Nobody did anything that concerned those regions without running it through him first. Milt played for keeps. If he found out you were undercutting his prerogatives, or giving the President recommendations behind his back, he took you down. More than a few Assistant Secretaries from Defense and State got sent packing for screwing with Milt.”
“So you sent him all your papers so you wouldn’t piss him off? That it?”
“I sent him my papers because he knows the region inside out. He was the architect of our policies there. Besides, Milt and I had a special relationship. He looked out for my backside and I looked out for his.”
I was staring at the white wall in the hotel room with a truly awful scowl. “And how did Martin get your papers when you were in the NSC?”
“I ran them off the computer, put them in a pouch, and had a courier hand-carry them over. They were too sensitive to be sent electronically.”
“So he got all these papers with your fingerprints on them?”
The import of what we were discussing suddenly began to hit him.
I said, “Did Martin have access to the technology export requests?”
His voice sounded suddenly parched. “He, uh, yeah. He was on the oversight council. He wouldn’t ordinarily have looked at the individual requests, but he’d have access if he wanted. I didn’t participate in any of that. A few times a month he’d go to the council meetings alone.”
There was another momentary lull; then the full consequences hit him like a Mack truck. “That bastard! That traitorous prick! He used me. He set me up. I… shit, I trusted him.”
“Yeah, well,” I said, “he trusted you, too. He trusted you to take the fall for him.”
And suddenly it all became crystal clear. It was brilliant. Morrison had been his fall guy, his buffer, his screen. He’d used Morrison for eight long years, even elevated him higher in Washington’s bureaucracy to cover the trail of his own treachery. Of course Morrison never suspected him. Morrison wasn’t the type to look a gift horse in the mouth. Morrison was too vain to believe anybody could use him as a stooge.
I could hear the sounds of more cursing on the other end, and I called Morrison’s name a few times and could hear him venting. I could just imagine the fit he was throwing. Then Imelda came back on the line. I thanked her profusely and hung up.
Katrina had overheard only my part of the conversation, so I gave her the abbreviated version of Morrison’s responses. We sat and stared at each other in stunned silence. Then we began hypothesizing and knocking pieces into place. No wonder the FBI was helping out Martin. God only knows what story he’d told them, but it must’ve been a whopper; like maybe he was being harrassed by his former employee’s defense counsels, and we were threatening him, and as a former high level official, he needed protection.
She finally said, “This actually is mind-blowing. The President’s asshole buddy.”
“At least I never voted for him.”
“Right,” she acknowledged. Notice how she didn’t say she hadn’t voted for him?
“Next issue…,” I said. “Alexi.”
“What about him?”
“You and he are a… what? Fill in the blank any way you choose.”
She studied me a moment and quite possibly considered saying, “Screw you and none of your damned business.” Truthfully, it wasn’t, but also it was. She finally said, “We’re tight.”
“Tight? I’m generationally handicapped. Take it back ten years or so.”
“You mean, like, are we in love?”
“Yes. Exactly.”
“We’re a work in progress. Give us a bit more time and we’ll probably rendezvous there.”
“Okay, me. What’s my status?”
“You mean, am I still pissed at you?”
“Exactly again.”
“Consider yourself on probation.”
“Do I owe you an apology?”
She smiled. “More than one. I’ll compose a list and get it to you.”
“That would be kind.”
“You did save my life. Always a good place to start.”
“But I’m still in the minus column?”
“Oh yeah.”
I thought about that.
I finally said, “You realize what that guy probably got away with? He literally shaped our policies for eight years. Christ, the Russians were actually running our policies toward them. It’s staggering.”
“Indeed. Now think about this… no evidence,” she said, the trained lawyer going right to the heart of the matter.
“Or time,” I said, because after all, trained killers were out there hunting us down, and that wasn’t a trifling detail.
“Well, you’re the government man. What do we do?” she asked.
We then wasted thirty minutes or so discussing alternatives and knocking holes in each other’s suggestions. Calling the FBI or CIA was out of the question: They wouldn’t believe us; the watchers would end up on our tails again; the killers would be mobilized, and the next time they’d leave no room for failure. As for the Army, what could it do? It’s the most conformist institution in the world and it would no doubt refer the whole matter to the FBI and CIA, and we’d be right back where we started-setting the conditions for our own funerals.
I thought about calling the press and giving them the story, but any reporter in his right mind would say, “Yeah, no kidding? And you’re Morrison’s defense counsels, right? Boy, you guys are really creative.”
The phone rang and it was Alexi.
After assuring him we were fine, I said, “Milt Martin? You know him?”
“I have met Milt at some conferences. He was most powerful man in your last administration, yes?”
“Yeah, well, what would you say if I told you he’s our man?”
Alexi chuckled. “And you are making accusations about me fabricating nightmares. Sean, this is not possible. Martin was your President’s best friend. All policies toward my country were being made by him. And I would most certainly have known.”
That’s when I remembered something. When Morrison had first told me about Alexi, he’d said that Arbatov was always selective in what he provided. If he thought it had to do with his mystical cabal, the information flowed like a river; otherwise, he was a loyal Russian intelligence officer. He’d never given the Morrisons the names of our traitors; he’d picked his disclosures with great care.
So maybe Alexi knew all about Milt Martin. Maybe he knew Martin was the jewel in the SVR’s crown and simply wasn’t going to admit it, even to me and Katrina. And if that was true, his alarm bells would be going off right now, because here he was protecting us, and if we were about to launch off to prove Martin was Moscow’s most valuable spy, well, that would surely compromise Alexi’s standing and future job prospects-and health.
I looked over at Katrina; there was no way in hell I could share that suspicion with her. Like I said earlier, the thing about this world of espionage is you can’t trust anybody. Everybody’s got conflicting loyalties. Even those folks
