I smiled. “Mr. Johnson’s right. With his help, and Mary’s inducement, we found the real mole. I couldn’t have done it without them.”
From a reductionist’s standpoint, this was true-if they hadn’t turned us into sitting ducks, with deadly killers hunting us down, I wouldn’t have had the “inducement” to do it without them.
Johnson winked at me, like this was just so much fun, and he was just so damned glad I thought so too. He said, “We’ve initiated a nationwide manhunt for Martin, who was last seen near Garrison, New York. The FBI have notified all airports and seaports, and Martin’s photo has been distributed at all border crossing points. Canada would be his obvious choice, but given that goddamn honker of his, he’ll be easy to recognize.”
This ignited loudly appreciative guffaws around the room, because every soul there was in overdrive, straining desperately hard to work themselves back into Johnson’s good graces. Most had that sheepish expression little kids get when they poop in their drawers and everybody’s looking at them like, Hey, what’s that awful stench.
The realization was sinking in that the arrest and public roasting of Bill Morrison had been a king-size goof. Somebody on the Russian side had played them for a fool, and heads were going to have to roll, because this was the CIA after all, and Agency-bashing is maybe the favorite sport of the national press and Congress.
A fair number of the quicker-witted folks around that table were eyeing one another, obviously trying to strike instant alliances and make someone else be the “Weakest-Link-good-bye” guy.
The moment was ripe for me to say, “You can at least recoup some face. We know who Martin’s controller was, right?”
“Yurichenko,” said Johnson, picking up on his line in this passion play.
“Right. So, what if we were to go get Yurichenko’s fair-haired boy? What if we were to bring Arbatov out for all the world to see?”
A roomful of people pondered that. At least half the folks here were going to spend the rest of their careers crammed into a janitor’s closet in the basement trying to figure out how many angels you can fit on the head of a pin. They were vulnerable to any suggestion that would make them look less stupid than they really were.
“Plus,” I quickly added, “you’ve obviously got a bigger problem.”
“And which one would that be?” asked Mary, reading from her script.
“If you listened closely to that tape, you heard Martin confess that he told Yurichenko that Alexi Arbatov was a traitor. Martin may have told him that as long as ten years ago, when Morrison first disclosed it to him.”
Katrina, who’d been struggling to disguise her disgust, suddenly said, “What Major Drummond is telling you is that you have to rescue Alexi. He has given you information for over a decade, and you therefore owe him a great deal.”
Johnson did not even pause. “Here’s the way I see it. We have a chance to repay Yurichenko. Okay, he turned one of our key people. Well, we turned one of his, too. In a zero-sum game everybody’s equal.”
This obviously was the deal we’d struck the night before-well, except for the fact that Katrina and I were going to be used as pawns by Mary and her boss to restore their own legitimacy. But hey, in the grand scheme, it’s no big thing, right? If the law has taught me one thing, it’s that there’s no such thing as full justice. Consider yourself lucky if the meter simply tilts in your direction.
You could swear we were at a neck-snapping convention, the heads were nodding so furiously. Then there were a few tentative smiles. Then actual guffaws. Then the pros took over. They began talking back and forth as they tried to come up with a plan.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Moscow was pitch-dark and freezing when we landed. White snow covered the land and frost hung from the trees. We came in on a U.S. Air Force converted 747 carrying the Secretary of State, who was arriving for a swiftly arranged meeting with his Russian counterpart.
Katrina and I were dressed as U.S. Air Force enlisted troops and were described on the flight manifest as crewmen, Katrina as a steward, me as a radio-telephone operator. The Secretary of State was scheduled to be there only a few hours, which was tight, but coming and going under his diplomatic cover was the only way to get done what we needed to accomplish. Mary was along also, listed under an alias as a publicity aide to the Secretary, which was a thin cover, but she wasn’t leaving the plane, as the Russians knew her on sight.
It had to be us three. Alexi knew Katrina and me, and Mary had been his contact all those years. We were the only ones who knew how to contact him, who he’d talk to-the only three he’d conceivably entrust with his fate.
The instant the Secretary’s official welcoming ceremony was over and the cavalcades of black, official-looking cars had departed, we got to work. Another stream of cars began trickling in, and men and women camouflaged in workers’ coveralls began streaming up the steps and clustering in the lounge next to the Secretary’s sleeping suite. Within ten minutes, twenty CIA folks were packed in that compartment, and Mary began her briefing.
You’ll never guess who was in charge of the ground team. My old buddy Jackler, the grand inquisitor himself, and he had Mary’s former embassy crew working for him, since they were intimately familiar with Moscow and Russia’s security procedures, which was essential for our purposes.
Jackler had apparently been warned to be nice to me, and he was-to a point. You could see it really hurt him, but he was trying. He was like that pit bull you keep chained in the basement. Politeness had been bred out of his gene pool. When we were done with the operations briefing he barked at everybody to get moving, and bodies began slamming into one another as they raced for the exit.
As soon as the last of the common field hands were gone, Jackler and Mary sidled over to Katrina and me. He growled, “You two need to have your friggin’ heads examined. We don’t do shit this way. You’re flyin’ by the seats of your pants.”
Katrina said, “And is there another alternative?”
“Yeah. Send Arbatov a goddamned sympathy card. That’s how the code works in these things.”
“It isn’t an option,” Katrina said, eyeing him suspiciously.
“Lady, it’s your ass. If this thing goes south, we can’t help you. This is their country. You got any idea what Russian prisons are like?”
“I don’t care.”
Maybe she didn’t, but I did-I cared a lot. I mean, I was all for getting Alexi out of there, but it sure would suck if our plan was foiled and all three of us ended up in Yurichenko’s hands.
I gave Jackler my most badassed stare. “You better make sure it doesn’t go south. See, I left copies of some very embarrassing tapes with some friends back in the States. If I don’t come back, they’ve been told where to send those tapes, and trust me, that would be a disaster for you and all your buddies at Langley.”
Jackler’s eyes darted over at Mary. She simply shrugged, like, Yeah, I know it sucks, but that’s the way it is.
Then Mary looked at me. She put a hand on my arm and dragged me away, into a corner. With her hand still on my arm, she leaned so close that I could feel her hair against my face and her breasts pressed against my arm. “Sean, please, be very, very careful. Our people have the meeting site staked out. If they give you the signal to abort, you and Katrina get out immediately. You understand that, right?”
“I understand that.” Although I somehow suspected that that wasn’t what this was really about.
“Listen… I, well, uh… I know you’re disappointed in me.”
She paused for me to answer. I was supposed to say something like, “Uh, yeah, I’m not too happy about the way all this went down, but crap happens; I’m over it now, and my heart still goes pitter-patter when I’m around you.” I didn’t say anything. I used Eddie’s favorite stunt. I left the full onus of carrying this conversation on her shoulders.