Sleeper Spy (2 page)

What else would possess a young man to leave his pregnant wife behind forever, to train for years in the KGB’s American Village to pass for an American, and then to insinuate himself into an alien society, never revealing himself until called upon to betray the trust he had built up for a generation? Control had run spies that were in the business for the money—by far the most reliable motivation—or for the thrill, or were driven by some burning theology, or because they had been entrapped and turned. But all those spies had the comfort of continuity of contact; steadying their psyches was the reassurance of a regular series of transactions, made personal by the lifelong security of their own control agents.

Not the sleeper. For nearly twenty years, he had been all alone and unreached-for. He had never been called upon for any espionage and was not permitted to contact his motherland for advice or encouragement. His permanent home was in the enemy’s house. A sleeper was an intelligence agency’s longest-term investment, never to be risked for transitory gains. This particular sleeper was like a time bomb attached to a generational calendar rather than a clock.

Control reminded himself that the explosive detonator in his hand was to be attached to the small quartz-driven clock in the kit. He
consulted the instruction sheet again, clicked the timer into the detonator, and checked the hour against his own watch: 7:00
P.M
. He set the clock for 11:00
P.M
. and pressed the assembled device into the lengthened plastic. It drooped in the middle when he held it in both hands, but he found the answer to that in the instruction sheet: mold the plastic to the object to be exploded.

He went through the bathroom to the bedroom that did not have his suitcase on the bed. The last time they met on this island, Berensky had expressed a desire for the room with the view of the nearby hotel casino rather than of the ocean, and was asleep by ten. He would have his favorite room again.

Control slid on his back under the bed and pressed the length of the Composition D around the rod stabilizing the innerspring mattress. He jiggled the detonator and clock to make sure they were wedged in securely. As a fail-safe, as the instruction sheet suggested, he rigged the switch so that he would have to come into the room and reach under the bed to activate the timer. He would do that during a break in their meeting, only if the sleeper failed to grasp the private financial opportunity that lay before the two of them. If Berensky would not be his partner, the sleeper would lie down on his well-wired mattress for his final sleep. And then Control would take a long walk on the beach, in a safe position to observe the fireworks.

The sleeper paid off the taxi at the entrance to the hotel, waited for it to drive away, and did not enter the lobby to check in. He hefted his garment bag and chose to walk the five hundred yards down a dark gravel road to the farthest guest cabin.

Berensky did and did not enjoy his meetings with Control. The wiry little man was the point of contact with his authentic existence; that was good, after the long two decades of operating totally detached from his roots. Control was the place to put questions to the KGB mole in Washington—what would the Commerce Department announce was the GNP deflator on Friday?—and through him, as cutout, to an agent he did not know in New York—what commodity price was the Federal Reserve most closely watching this month? Control was the conduit for answers that would determine his investments of the fortune, in coming weeks. And he was the veteran agent who had slipped outside
KGB channels to bring Berensky a personal farewell from the sleeper’s natural father, Shelepin, before that giant of espionage had died in obscurity and disgrace.

The part Berensky did not enjoy was systematically deceiving the new leadership of the KGB. Not that Berensky was afflicted with scruples; with his bloodline, he was aware that deception was bred in the bone. But if Control were to learn the actual size of the fortune he had amassed in the past five years, that intelligence would surely cause the Kremlin—in desperate need of hard currency—to trigger a premature conclusion to his enterprise.

Berensky felt the time was not yet ripe to cash in; the political forces within Russia had not come to a decisive turn. A challenge to the Moscow regime was imminent; an underground organization, which might better serve Berensky’s political purpose, was spreading and strengthening. Because the sleeper could not yet be sure which faction he would support—government or underground—he kept a separate set of books with low, yet credible, figures. That is what he had in a section of his garment bag, to show Control.

“Good evening, Mr. Seymour.” Control changed his code name on the tenth day of every month, going down the list of New York State governors. He was up to Horatio Seymour. The system struck Berensky as silly, but it was not for him to criticize the tradecraft of longtime operatives. He did not know Control’s real name, and when they were together, preferred to call him Control rather than that month’s gubernatorial code name.

“I have news for you, Aleks.”

“The Fed’s interest rate decision?” He walked into his bedroom and threw the garment bag on the bed. He flicked on the light in the adjoining bathroom, peed, splashed water on his face, and brought the towel back into the living room, rubbing his face dry. “I could make a killing with that.”

“Bigger news. This.” The veteran agent, a polo shirt over his bony frame, leaned across the coffee table and handed Berensky the printout of a fax message.

Berensky read the news of the plane crash and shrugged. “They come and they go. Too bad. Bomb aboard?”

“No, I think this was a genuine accident. It will affect you and me, but I will come to that in a moment. Your report, please.”

Berensky handed over the one-page summary of the trading done by a portion of his network of brokers. It showed a fortune that had grown to $13 billion.

“Bottom line, we made a profit of six hundred million dollars in the past quarter. It’s in the Antilles bank, and we’re using it to buy oil tankers.”

“Not good enough. You’re slowing down.”

Berensky let himself seem to bridle, but did not argue; his actual profit in the quarter had been $2 billion on a real fortune of $30 billion. “I’m only as good as the information you get me. You have the data I asked for last time?”

Control nodded but did not hand anything over. “Let me see the disposition of the present assets.”

Berensky showed him the placement of the $13 billion he was prepared to show the KGB: banks, account numbers, holding companies, corporate fronts, all accessible only to the sleeper and the lone person he reported to.

Control rose and put that in his briefcase, then went to the kitchenette for coffee. “You want a shot of rum in your coffee? It’s the local custom.”

The sleeper disliked rum, but went along. Control apparently had something on his mind beyond the normal information exchange.

He set down the coffee cups. “Aleks, the significance of the message from Moscow is that you are now a complete mystery to the KGB.”

“You are the KGB,” Berensky countered.

“True, for the time being. But except for me, nobody in the organization knows who you are. Nobody knows what the size of the fortune is, and frankly, I have been conservative in my reports.” He made a gesture with his hands as if removing handcuffs. “You are an independent operative. Do you have any idea what that means?”

“You’re suggesting we abscond with the money.”

Control looked pained. “That would be foolish. They would find me and kill me, after getting your name from me. And it would be—” he searched for the word—“dishonest.”

Berensky remained silent, awaiting the proposal.

“You were entrusted, years ago, with three billion dollars in gold bullion,” the veteran began. “This was the money in the treasury of the KGB, along with certain overseas holdings of high members of the
Party.” He sipped his rum and coffee. “I suggest we return to the Russian Federation a return of one hundred percent on its investment—six billion in dollars, which is about what they think it is today. They will be ecstatic. You will be a hero.”

“And what’s to be done with the rest?”

“You are familiar with the Feliks
organizatsiya?
”

Berensky knew that many of the ousted apparatchiks, along with hard-liners in the KGB forced out after the coup attempt, had formed a loose alliance with the new-rich Russian mafiya and Chechen and Ingush patriot-hooligans. When these groups fell in with the longtime underworld—the
vorovskoy mir
, “society of thieves,” that had operated before and after Bolshevism—the amalgam of criminals, corrupt bureaucrats, and crooked entrepreneurs had chosen the name “Feliks” after Feliks Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Cheka, the predecessor of the KGB. What Berensky did not know was whether the purpose of the new community of crime was simple greed or the ultimate seizure of political power.

“No,” he lied.

“You’re out of touch with what’s happening in Russia, Aleks. Many of the new businessmen, and many of your father’s old friends from the days he stood up to Khrushchev, are working together to restore the glory of the Soviet Union, or so they say. The Feliks people know about the three billion sent to you. They think it belongs to them.”

“To some extent, it does, I suppose.”

“So let’s give it back to them. Three billion to the Feliks organization. Their money was kept safe. Nobody gets interest on gold. We’ll be heroes to them, too.”

“That leaves four billion,” said the banker.

“For you and me. We should cut in our junior partner in Washington to some extent, with a little left over for my contacts in Bern and Helsinki, and a tip to the agent in the New York Fed. You could effectively conceal our assets. Everybody rich, everybody happy.” Control paused. “What do you say?”

Berensky felt nothing but revulsion for this man and his scheme to carve up the fortune he had so creatively amassed, and with it the political power it represented; the handler was downgrading it, as if the fortune were spoils, to be shared by political fixers. If he took up
Control’s invitation to corruption, the sacrifice of twenty years of his life would be rendered meaningless. The varied centers of talent brought to bear on building up the world’s largest unknown fortune would see their joint effort reduced to a grand swindle.

“Lot to think about,” he said mildly. “You’re not in a rush, I hope.” Above all, he did not want to cut off his flow of highest-level economic intelligence, which gave him an advantage over every other major investor in the world.

“Your father had a saying, Aleks. ‘The house is burning and the clock is ticking.’ ”

Berensky nodded; he could hear his father, Shelepin, using that proverb to express urgency in his Lubyanka office before his arrest in what was called the anti-Party plot.

“The new chief of the Fifth Directorate will want an accounting immediately,” Control said.

“Maybe you can put him off.”

“There can be no delay. There is some sort of crisis at the Treasury and they are desperate for hard currency. I’m disappointed in you, Aleks. You think about it while I go to the john.”

“I’ll do a refill on the rum coffee,” Berensky said. As Control headed through the bedroom, Berensky picked up their cups and went to the kitchenette. He was not going to be stampeded. Control needed slowing down. The sleeper kept a strong sedative in a small packet in his wallet; he took it out, tore it open, and spiked his colleague’s coffee and rum. The rogue control would get drowsy soon and ultimately pass out. Berensky would then decide what course to take: to wait until the clear light of morning to suggest a plan to delay the conclusion of their mission, or to take him out on the beach that night and let him accidentally drown in the surf.

After the sound of much flushing, Control came back through the door to his bedroom, his look of irritation gone, and joined Berensky in sipping the coffee.

“I noticed a couple of old record albums in my room,” Berensky said to make conversation. “I suppose they still use phonographs down here.”

“Probably just the covers,” Control said, sipping. “They use them for wall decorations. I have the answers you wanted.” He took a paper
out of his pocket. “Gold production figures in Russia and the estimate of the winter wheat crop. And the news to be announced next week about our oil consortium with the Japanese.”

Berensky looked over the insider information from the KGB about Russian plans. His traders in Chicago could act on that. But nothing from within the U.S. government; was the mole inactive? Perhaps Control was holding back that end of the intelligence until he had a reaction to his scheme to divide the fortune and vitiate its potential to stage or prevent a coup.

“Have you decided, Aleks?”

The sleeper stalled. “Let’s go back over those figures again. And tell me about the new man, Davidov.”

Within five minutes, the sedative took sudden effect—unfortunately, a drastic effect, perhaps brought on by the mixture with the hot rum. Berensky was alarmed to see Control try to rise, and find no feeling in his legs. The little gray man slumped back in his chair, a look of horror on his face, trying to say something but getting nothing out but a pitiful gurgle, gesticulating toward the bedroom door. In a moment, the man was unconscious.