“I asked you what you’re going to do about it.”
There was another quiet moment and I could almost visualize them exchanging signals of some sort.
Mary finally said, “There’s nothing we can do about it, Sean. Ordinarily in these kinds of operations we have a prearranged signal we give our asset that warns him to flee. We don’t have an arrangement like that with Alexi. Even if we did, it wouldn’t work. Yurichenko is surely having him watched. And his profile is too high. He’d never get out.”
“So you’re just going to let him fry?”
Again it was Mary who replied, “Sean, I care deeply for Alexi. There’s just nothing we can do. The White House doesn’t want any troubles with the Russians… that’s just the way it is. Even if we could put together an operation to try to get him out, the White House would veto it.”
“So that’s it?”
“That’s it,” Johnson said, sounding ruthlessly unsentimental.
I smiled. I pulled my trusty tape recorder away from the earpiece. I flicked it off. Then I said, “Hey, guess what?”
“What?” Johnson asked.
“I just recorded this whole conversation, too. I know I shouldn’t have, and I feel really bad about it, only I thought whoever listens to Martin’s confession might enjoy listening to you admit you were using me, an officer of the court, as bait for killers. Not to mention your willingness to let a valuable asset die. I’ll bet that’ll do wonders for recruiting future assets. They’ll be lining up at the door. Don’t you think that’s a nice touch?”
There was a moment of agonized silence. I was put on hold again. But that’s okay; I’m not the kind of guy who gets his feathers all ruffled by life’s little annoyances.
And while I waited, here’s what I was thinking. The good news here was that Mary hadn’t tried to have me murdered. That was a reassuring thing to know, after all. What lousier feeling is there than knowing the woman you used to love-had I really been that stupid?-hired some goons to turn you into compost?
But that’s as far as the consolation went. Mary had played me like a harp from the beginning. I thought back to that opening session with her, when she sat on that flowered couch looking like the distraught wife and got me to beg her not to feel bad about dragging me into this. I thought about all those times we met where she denied knowing what the hell was going on. I was more than a sucker.
Johnson’s voice finally came back on. “Drummond, we need to make a deal.”
The man had good instincts and knew exactly what this call was about. I replied, “Same conditions as last time. I name the terms, you nod your head and say, ‘Yes sir, and what else can I do for you?’ If I hear a single hesitant pause… well, there won’t be a second chance. Got that?”
“Yes sir, and what else can I do for you?” he responded, showing he was a careful listener who hadn’t missed a single comma.
I outlined everything he and Mary were going to do for me, then hung up. I walked across the lobby and handed the phone back to the businessman, who beamed like an idiot.
I went back upstairs. Katrina was seated on the bed, watching MTV, of all things. “Well?” she asked, so anxious she couldn’t even look me in the eye.
“It worked,” I said. “You were right. They’re going for it.”
She just nodded. The idea for the scheme was Katrina’s. That’s the problem with spending so much time around professional spies: After a while their deceitfulness rubs off and you begin thinking like they do.
Without saying anything, she pushed the button that killed the TV, then lay down and closed her eyes. I lay down on the bed next to her and was beginning to think about our next steps when my own exhaustion finally caught up. It’s damned hard work torturing suspects and blackmailing the CIA. Or extorting. Or whatever.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Katrina and I drove through the gate to the CIA headquarters at seven the next morning. We’d been up since four, making copies of the two tapes, mailing one set to Imelda and the second to General Clapper, whom I trusted to do the right thing in the event anything happened to Katrina and me.
I called Clapper at home before we left the hotel room. I outlined what we’d discovered, and, as you might imagine, he wasn’t all that happy that the CIA had used one of his officers and a temporary civilian employee as decoys.
Which isn’t to say he was happy with me, either. He most definitely wasn’t.
I then asked Clapper to recuse me and assign a new counsel. I’d become so personally involved in the case, recusal was a foregone conclusion. If I didn’t voluntarily submit myself, some pissed-off judge would dismiss me, and I’d risk disbarment for malpractice. He said he’d take care of it. It was the only moment in the phone call that he sounded the least bit happy. Who could blame him?
I didn’t tell him how I kidnapped Martin and persuaded him to confess. Some things would be too stupid for words, and full disclosure on my part fell cleanly under that heading. As I said earlier, smart lawyers don’t lie; like clever moths around flames, they just don’t get too close to the truth.
Mary and Johnson were actually waiting for us at the front entrance of their big building. Johnson shook hands and tried to act warm and convivial, which showed he wasn’t stupid, because I held his fate in my hands. Mary leaned forward to give me a friendly peck on the cheek, and when I drew back she accepted it gracefully, like there was no harm in trying.
We went up in the elevator to a big conference room filled with men and women in crisp blue and gray suits. The room reeked of self-contentment, smugness, a clubby bonhomie. These were the same folks who’d spent ten years chasing a mole and were cocksure they’d nailed him and dragged him up to the altar of justice. The mood in that room was haughtiness. They had beartrapped the most elusive spy in history, the same squirrel who’d eluded so many of their predecessors.
That mood wasn’t going to last long.
There were seats reserved for Katrina and me, even down to name placards, which showed Johnson was going a bit over the top to treat us like visiting dignitaries.
He stood up and introduced us to everybody, then put on a melodramatically grim smile and said, “Major Drummond, please play your tape.”
I did. And the whole room sat spellbound, right to the end. Johnson let three or four pregnant seconds pass before he said, “That was the voice of Milt Martin, the former Assistant Secretary of State for the former Soviet republics.”
“Jesus Christ,” one guy muttered. “Oh shit,” a blonde girl at the end of the table erupted. One guy actually pounded the table with his fist. It took another moment for the emotional chaos to subside.
A silver-haired guy who looked like an aging movie star roared, “That goddamn tape is for real?”
A coy grin popped onto Johnson’s face. “Major Drummond, I’d like you to meet Richard Semblick, who was in charge of the team that nabbed General Morrison. He spent three years hunting for our mole, and it was on his recommendation that we focused on your client.”
Semblick’s face instantly turned pink, and I knew immediately what was going on here. Johnson and Mary were choreographing this meeting to cover their own butts. Johnson had that attitude like, Okay, all you putzes screwed up and made us bag the wrong guy, but thankfully I took care of matters myself, so all the rest of you inept idiots bow to my greatness.
I peeked at Mary’s face, and her eyes were fixed on me. Her expression was beseeching, like, Drummond, please, fight your self-righteous instincts… play along with us and we’ll play along with you, too.
I gave a fleeting thought to laying it all out, to explaining to everybody what lying phonies Mary and Johnson were, but that’s all it was: a fleeting thought. We had a deal, and although they hadn’t fully articulated their expectations, we were three-quarters of the way there and I couldn’t afford to jump back to go.