“Why would you think that?” I asked, trying to hide my surprise.
“Please, this is my business. You are Army JAG officer, yes?”
I recognized this as the smarmy parlor trick it was: The great spymaster showing off the mastery of his trade, letting you know he’s got your condom size and brand. Notwithstanding that, I was dismayed and off-balance. I had intended to identify myself as a government investigator named Harry Smith and stupidly thought I could get away with it.
Since there was obviously no point in denying it, I nodded and said, “Bill sent me to ask a few questions.”
“What I can do to help, I will. Bill is my friend.”
“Actually there is something you can do. He wants to know why you set him up,” I said, launching straight for the jugular.
“Certainly Bill did not send you to ask this question?”
“Well, certainly he did,” I lied.
As his lawyer, I was allowed to lie on his behalf. The real reason I came to Moscow was to meet Arbatov. Pretty clever, huh? If Morrison was guilty, he didn’t seem inclined to confess it, and even if he wasn’t, the one guy who’d know for sure was seated across from me. I intended to smoke the truth out of him, to put Alexi Arbatov on trial.
And along that line, I said, “Don’t bullshit me, Arbatov. He’s facing the death sentence. The prosecutor can barely move his lips fast enough to leak all the charges they’re bringing against him. Want to hear how I’ve got it figured?”
This was a moment when he should have been jumpy or evasive, but he calmly replied, “Yes, please to tell me how you have this figured.”
“Sometime back in ’88 or ’89, you and your boss, Yurichenko, found out about this young American couple who were burning up the American intelligence community. One was an Army officer who, with a little outside help, could rise through the system and end up a very high-ranking officer. Given credit for recruiting you, he’d have more clout than anybody ever dreamed. He’d become the Teflon man. They’d have to keep nudging him forward because after all, he’s the only conduit to you.”
He sipped from his coffee and munched on his roll, not saying a word, not gesturing, not responding in any way.
I continued, “This young officer’s the perfect catch-smart and handsome and competent, but also vain and unusually ambitious, and that makes him vulnerable. So he visits Georgia, and suddenly he’s got these KGB goons strong-arming him and coincidentally, you show up. You save him, and he thinks he recruits you, or halfway recruits you, and then you begin helping him rise through the ranks.”
He took another sip of coffee to wash down some roll, and then said, “This is what you call Manchurian Candidate operation, yes?”
“Whatever. Next, you bring Mary into it and turn them into the indispensable couple. Having you as their trophy makes them indebted to you. Morrison trusts you. He tells you things. He thinks he owns you, but you own him.”
“Very good, but in what way does Mary fit into this?”
“An unwitting dupe. She meets with you when he’s not available. She keeps him informed. She comes back from meeting with you, climbs into bed with her husband, and they chatter about you before they roll off to sleep. Sometimes you probably use her to pass coded instructions or signals. Right?”
He shrugged, and then asked, “And how does Bill come to get caught?”
“I haven’t figured out that part yet. Maybe somebody in Moscow told on him… maybe you fed his name to the CIA.”
“And for what reason I would do this? He was valuable to Russia, yes?”
“You tell me,” I said, searching his face for involuntary clues, which, so far, were nonexistent. “Maybe he got greedy and asked for things you weren’t willing to give him. Maybe you got tired of him, or maybe he realized you were exploiting him and got pissed.”
He nodded as though these were all reasonable options. “And how does Bill pass all these wonderful things they are saying he gives to me?”
“I haven’t figured out that piece, either.”
“No?”
“Not yet. The problem is the government’s blasting him with a shotgun, and probably a few of those pellets are bull’s-eyes, but the rest are stray shots, things they suspect him of giving, or things somebody else gave that they’re blaming on Morrison… I don’t know. But you snookered him into giving a few things, and now he’s facing the hangman’s noose.”
He put down his coffee cup and brushed some crumbs off the tabletop. “Major, I am disappointed in very big way. Have you experience in espionage?”
“I seem to have missed that class at law school.”
He laced his hands into a steeple and poised his forefingers against his lower lip. “We do not expose our agents this way. To turn him in would be to lose everything, yes? Your CIA will ask what could Bill possibly betray and erase all damage. This is not our way. If Bill was target for disposal, an unfortunate accident would be arranged.”
It had become my turn to sip from my coffee and try to act aloof. “So why didn’t you just do that?”
“Problem two,” he continued, as though I hadn’t said anything, as though this were his inquisition. “I have big reasons to protect Bill. How I would betray him? He would betray me back, yes? You understand-I would be dead.”
Well, yes, I thought, which could very well account for why Morrison told Katrina and me about him. Maybe that’s exactly what Morrison was trying to accomplish. But then I had another thought.
I said, “He was your dupe and Yurichenko knows that. If your name gets dragged into this, you’re no longer a hidden hero, you’re a public hero. Maybe you thought it was time for everybody to learn how very clever you are, how you turned an American general officer.”
“Major, Mary was Moscow station chief, and Bill was to become two-star general. Both were becoming more important. I would choose this moment to make their house burn down… how would my bosses perceive this, hmm?”
I couldn’t think of any good counters to that-which didn’t mean there wasn’t one, or even hundreds of possible reasons. Everything about this case gave me a headache. These people were all spies and counter-spies and whatever, and this was their devious little game of duplicities and counter-duplicities. I, on the other hand, was a novice, with only the vaguest notion of what Morrison was accused of, and even those ideas were wildly suspect and probably exaggerated.
I took a wild stab anyway. “Maybe Morrison was dealing with somebody else in your organization, too? Or maybe somebody in your SVR learned about him, was jealous of you and your relationship with your boss, and burned him to make you look bad.”
“Then I would be already dead. And why would anybody who learns of Bill burn him? They would”-he paused to search for the right word-“poach?” I nodded that I approved, and he continued, “This is not uncommon in our trade. Is known to happen. But to burn an invaluable resource for reason of jealousy? No, I think not.”
I stared into my coffee and contemplated the realization that I might be over my head here. True to his CIA profile, Alexi Arbatov was frighteningly smart and persuasive.
Foolishly revealing my frustration, I said, “Okay, what do you think happened? Why did a bunch of tough guys show up at the embassy and bag Morrison? The U.S. government doesn’t move on traitors without a truckload of evidence.”
“I am asking myself this same question. Bill has my fate in his hands. If I am to become compromised, it is a most ugly fate.”
“So you keep saying.”
He half-chuckled. “Any day now, this could be proved. I see your three chalk stripes on the statue this morning and I am thinking my game is already up.”
“Explain that.”
“Only Bill and I share this signal. I was expecting entrapment.”
I pondered this dilemma until he said, “But you are intriguing to me. You are only American person who tries to prove he is innocent. Everybody else says he is guilty.”
“So you’re saying what… you and I are allies?”