Sleeper Spy (55 page)

“We could not allow von Schwebel’s report at our last meeting to be transmitted to Davidov,” was the woman’s firm reply. “Arkady had to die. Your friends in Davidov’s directorate must be rewarded for betraying the informer who was betraying us.”

The former high official of the KGB remarked that the traitor’s body had been put to good use. The chairwoman agreed: it had both frightened the sleeper’s daughter and brought Davidov on the run. “Both the KGB and Liana Krumins are now more likely to be deceived,” Kudishkin noted, “by the fiction of the Memphis banker being Berensky.”

Von Schwebel reported that his wife, Sirkka, was scheduled to meet Davidov in Helsinki on the coming Sunday: she would, he promised, fuel the KGB’s falsely based suspicion that Edward Dominick was the real sleeper. “The journalist Irving Fein is selling the CIA’s creation to the KGB,” he told the board. “Davidov is an inexperienced investigator, no more than an academician with family connections in the Kremlin. Fein has him half persuaded already that the Memphis banker impersonating the sleeper is genuine.”

The Group of Fifty executive interrupted to get to what he liked to call the bottom line: “But what of Berensky, the real sleeper? He’s now sitting atop assets swollen to one hundred billion dollars. Isn’t that getting impossible to conceal?”

“He will allow his impersonator to make the approach to us, as well as to the KGB,” Madame Nina replied. “Dominick will be his conduit for the return to Russia of the assets so skillfully invested—through us, or through the KGB.”

“That is a very big ‘or,’ ” protested Kudishkin. “The CIA’s Fein may be conspiring with Davidov to deliver the fortune to the ‘legitimate’ regime in Moscow. What are we doing to make certain the sleeper—through Dominick or whoever—delivers the fortune to us?”

All eyes shifted to Madame Nina. “We are well equipped to thwart any diversion to the regime now in power,” she said, “and to seize the assets for the future government of Russia and its near abroad. I can hardly wait to meet this Edward Dominick, and through him finally to confront Aleksandr Berensky.”

“I just got off the phone with our friend in the former Dzerzhinsky Square,” Ace said from his digitized cellular phone. It was advertised as secure communication, but he put nothing past the predatory nature of his fellow literary agents and spoke as cryptically as he could about Davidov to Irving Fein. “He suggests it may be time for you and him to have a tête-à-tête.”

“Hell with him, I got my hands full.”

“Irving, I realize you’re under quite a strain—”

“Where’d she go? What’s with the FBI and that cockamamie Globocop? Why can’t they find her? Viveca Farr’s got a famous face, for crissake.”

The agent sympathized; Viveca’s disappearance only added to the media firestorm about her public disgrace. After the first news cycle of the daily newspapers and morning TV talk shows focused on her drunken performance, a second wave of sensational coverage crashed over her disappearance in the newsmagazines, supermarket checkout scandal sheets, and TV magazine documentaries. “Dragnet for Boozy Newsie” was one checkout headline that effectively captured the spirit of the search for Viveca Farr. “Abused ‘Airhead’ Had Hollow Leg” shouted another, pretending to defend her on the grounds that parental abuse had caused her alcoholism and downfall. The serious and responsible press, deploring all the sensationalism and professing to use the Farr episode merely as an example, examined in exquisite detail the role of the communications industry in the destruction of its own personalities.

“You see
Soft Copy
last night?” Fein demanded. “They played that
goddam half-minute clip for the thousandth time. Kids can recite the whole thing, like we used to the Gettysburg address, with all the drunken slurring. The damn thing’s on T-shirts.”

“An abomination. I’m suing one do-gooder for using Viveca’s likeness in his antidrug advertising.” The agent then directed his attention to business: “Fortunately, none of this craziness seems to have affected your publisher. Not a word from them about cancellation of the book contract or demand for repayment of the advance.”

“Aah, they’re afraid they’d get hit with a ton of sauerkraut.”

“It could well be,” Ace agreed, “that our social contact with Karl von Schwebel of Unimedia gives pause to his American publishing subsidiary. Whoever suggested you put them on the party list did you a big favor.”

“That poor bastard is dead now,” said Fein. “Where the hell is Viveca, Ace? You suppose she’s watching everybody who ever knew her dump on her on national television? Does she get the goddam magazines with her face on the cover when she goes to buy food? Is she gonna stick her head in the oven?”

“We can hope she’s far away from major media. This will all die down in a few weeks.” Ace did not mention the two books contracted on her life by other agents, and the television miniseries based on one of them; a lawsuit to stop that was next week’s headache. “But Irving, life goes on. Remember your great story. Surely Viveca would want you to pursue it, and Liana as well.” He was reluctant to use Davidov’s name on the line. “What shall I tell the fellow you irreverently call Niko?”

“Let him talk to Dominick. Eddie’s over in London anyway, getting prepped for opening night.”

“No, Irving, it’s you he wants to see.” He glanced at the notes of his conversation with the KGB man. “Said you could have a late dinner in Moscow and watch the fireflies. I could get you a reservation at the Metropole.”

“Not budging out of here till I get a line on Viveca. Let him miss me.”

“Should I countersuggest London? You could do it over a weekend.” Ace felt the reporter should go; the buzz on Wall Street was rising about the mysterious currency coup of the previous week, and he sensed it had to do with the sleeper. The exclusivity of the sleeper story
might soon be in jeopardy. In the long pause, Ace could envision Irving tapping his temple.

“Fireflies?” Fein said at last. “It’s practically December. No fireflies in Moscow now, the damn bugs would freeze their asses off. Was that your word or his word?”

“His exact word.”

“I’m missing something.” The blank spot apparently changed his mind: “Okay, tell Niko I’ll meet him in London at the Lawns Hotel, a fleabag in Knightsbridge. None of his taps or bugs. Maybe that’s what he means by fireflies. And tell him he’d better be ready for some heavy trading. My time is valuable.”

“Put another quarter in the heater.”

“Doesn’t work on quarters, or rubles,” Davidov said. “Do you have any British change?”

Irving, sitting in the room in his overcoat, shook his head; heavy English money made holes in his pockets. He presumed that Niko, as a KGB big shot, had become accustomed to fancy living; proletarian lodging would bring him down a peg.

“Can’t the CIA afford better than this?” Davidov looked around in wonderment. “Russia is not a rich country, but we treat our agents to decent hotels on official business. You don’t even have a phone in here.”

“I don’t work for the CIA.”

“And I don’t work for the KGB. I’m just an epistemologist helping out for a few weeks.”

“Lookit—you want to think I’m a spook? Be my guest, but I take that as an insult. Reporting is a noble business and spying is a grubby business. Now put a slug or whatever in the heater and tell me what’s on your mind.”

“Tough guys like it cold. Have you heard from Liana?”

“She told me how you helped out when she was scared shitless,” Fein acknowledged. It bothered him that Davidov had to be the man Liana turned to when in trouble. “I’m sure you took advantage later.”

“No more than you in Syracuse. And at least I am closer to her age group.”

“Too-shay. Okay, brother-in-law, what do you have to trade?”

“The body in her apartment was that of a double agent. Liana doesn’t
know that. Arkady Volkovich had penetrated the Feliks
organizatsiya
for us. They have their headquarters outside our jurisdiction, in Latvia. He was killed before he could give me a report on their last meeting.”

“So let’s make a little Chinese menu of what you want and what I want,” Irving told him, taking out his pad. “Item one in Column A—what you want—is the report of Madame Nina’s session in Riga.”

“No. That would probably just be von Schwebel’s account of the surveillance of your Memphis operation, which may or may not be better than ours. I want more than that. I want to know what your CIA has going on in that bank building in Memphis.”

Irving wondered which von Schwebel he meant, the husband or the wife, but did not want to show ignorance by asking. “Don’t tell me you’re getting into Sirkka’s pants, too,” he tried.

“We’ll talk about her later,” Davidov said. Irving took that as a no, and guessed that Karl von Schwebel was the one working for the Feliks people; the reporter already knew that Sirkka was being used by the sleeper in America through the cutout of Speigal, the dead Fed mole. Busy couple—he with the Russian mafiya, she with Russia’s Foreign Intelligence and the sleeper. He wondered if the von Schwebels compared notes.

“So item one in Column A,” said Irving, “is the lowdown on my little operation in Memphis, which you think is a CIA proprietary because you’re paranoid.”

“Correct. Now to Column B, your intelligence requirements. What do you want to know?”

“Item one is what the hell happened to Viveca, my partner, and where she is now.” Irving’s priorities were very clear; getting to Viveca came first. “But that’s not something you’d know.”

Davidov surprised him. “I have half of it, the part about where she is.”

“You do? How come? You mean she’s been working for you?” Irving’s stomach churned; was nothing sacred?

“No, just luck. Back to my Column A,” said the KGB man. “Liana says you know why she was chosen by the good Russians and the bad Russians to be the bait for the sleeper. I want to know if you do know.”

Good for Liana—she got to him. “That’s a twofer,” Irving said, then had to explain the Americanism meant two-for-one. “That would tell
you if I know, and then what I know, about ‘why her?’ Come to think of it, it’s a threefer—it would also tell you if she’s working for me against you.”

“No, it counts only as one item. You would not have to get specific about relationships.”

Oh-shit, Irving thought, maintaining a poker face. So Liana was “bait,” and had a “relationship” with the sleeper, which probably meant a family relationship—it could not be a wife or sister, Liana was too young. Taken together, “bait” and “relationship” meant only one thing: Liana was Berensky’s daughter.

Instantly, the vista became illuminated: Liana was the goddam sleeper agent’s own left-behind daughter and didn’t know it. But Davidov’s KGB did, and Madame Nina’s rump government did, and the real sleeper did. And now Irving Fein, who had only pretended to know, knew it too. Unless Davidov was playing games, which was always possible.

“Column B, my needs,” Irving said, silently absorbing that inadvertent leak and turning to his own questions. “What I want to know is, what do you guys know about the murder of Walter Clauson of the CIA?”

“And what I want to know,” the KGB man countered, “is what happened to our mole in the Fed, and why you personally permitted him to send the most valuable information two weeks ago to Sirkka, knowing she would pass it to the sleeper to add to the fortune.”

“Twofer.”

“I accept that.”

“Who’s Madame Nina,” asked Irving, “and how would she be able to identify the real sleeper?” He would need to get that information to Dominick in a hurry, before he went to see her.

“Twofer,” said Davidov.

“Accepted,” said Fein. “So let’s deal.” He reviewed the three items under each column. “You prepared to answer all three of mine?”

“No. I can tell you where Viveca Farr is now, or at least where her dog is. Would she abandon the dog?”

“Never. She loves that dog.” Irving fervently hoped so.

“Then I can give you her exact location. On the second item—about our knowledge of Clauson’s investigation of the sleeper, and what you call his murder—that’s KGB family jewels. I can’t trade that. On the
third, about the identity of Madame Nina, we just don’t know.” At Irving’s skeptical expression, he added, “It pains me to admit that, but not even Arkady knew, and he was in fairly close. We’re working on it, believe me, trying to turn one of the Group of Fifty.”