Sleeper Spy (56 page)

Negotiating, Irving said, “I don’t think we can do business.” He was prepared to cave, however, to discover Viveca’s whereabouts.

“But here’s something,” Davidov said quickly. “I brought along a printout on Aleks Berensky’s early life in Russia, including some photos, which you should find useful if you’re really planning an impersonation.”

“You’re offering one and a half answers.” Irving went down the list of three KGB queries. “I can give you the biggie—the lowdown on our Memphis operation. I won’t tell you what’s with your mole at the Fed or why I helped Berensky make the twenty bil, because that’s my equivalent of family jewels. But I can give you my answer to ‘why me?’ about Liana.”

He totaled it up like an old-fashioned grocer with a pencil on the paper bag: “That’s more than you’re giving me—two full answers to your one and a half—but I feel generous.”

“To compensate,” said the Russian, “I will open first.” He took a large manila envelope out of his briefcase. “This is the essence of the Berensky and Shelepin family files. Letters, little intimacies, a poor photograph of Aleks and Antonia Berensky on their wedding day, a better picture of their baby, Masha. Very little of this Liana has, though frankly she led us to most of it.”

Irving opened the envelope and fingered the photographs. “Damn wedding shot is out of focus. Looks like the original, though. He was a foot taller than her.” He held up the baby shot and took a small gamble. “Here’s the answer to your question about why-me. This kid in this picture, Masha Berensky, is now known as Liana Krumins.”

“May I ask, as one professional to another, how you learned that?”

Irving felt his chest constrict in joy at the confirmation; he was sorely tempted to tell Davidov he had figured it out from his questions. “No freebies. And I am not a professional spy. Some say I’m the world’s greatest reporter, which I’m too modest to admit, but every now and then, like right now, I think they could be right. Okay, let’s stop horsing around—what about Viveca?”

Davidov took out his own notebook. “She has taken a job at the health club of the Vortex Inn in Sedona, Arizona, a resort about ninety miles north of Phoenix. She has rented a small house one point three miles farther north on Portal Lane. No telephone, no television.”

“Is she okay?”

“She’s not the same woman, I’m told. The dog apparently moves around a lot.”

“How the hell do you know any of this?”

“As one professional to another?”

Irving made a face and nodded.

“When the tradecraft stays simple, it works. One of my men attached one of those locator transmitters to the inside of the bumper of her car—they’re cheap, you can get them anywhere, people use them to foil car thieves. The device made it possible for us to track her easily to Pittsburgh, where she sold the car and rented another with a cash deposit. That effectively took her off the map.”

“So how did you find her in the goddam Grand Canyon?”

“In a burst of inspiration, my agent attached another one of the tiny transmitters to the metal license tag on the collar of Clauson’s dog. As long as the battery lasts, and as long as the collar stays on the dog, it will signal the dog’s exact location. Then I had somebody go to Arizona to make sure.”

“An eyeball check?”

“I am unfamiliar with ophthalmology, or your CIA locutions. The animal has become highly protective of your partner, I understand. Our observer, a retired agent living in the Southwest, was chased for nearly a mile across the desert and refuses to get near the Farr house again.”

Irving ached to see the two of them. He focused on an inconsistency: “How come your first man was able to get the dog’s collar off to put on the bug?”

“Fresh hamburger. Everybody has his price.”

“What kind of job did Viveca take?”

“Says here ‘massage therapist.’ ”

“Are you telling me, Davidov, that Viveca Farr has become a fuckin’ masseuse?”

“Shiatsu, to be specific.” The KGB man shifted his spine in the seat
and looked at the cold heater. “And now to what I want to know. Tell me what goes on behind that extensive security at the Memphis Merchants Bank.”

“You think that’s where the sleeper is, don’t you?” Irving knew his grin was at its most vulpine. “You think Dominick is really Berensky. But I conned you. And that con is what brought you here spilling your guts.”

With no little delight, Irving laid out the details of the Memphis impersonation: the plan for a substitute Berensky, the war room to track the real sleeper’s trades, the parallel operation operated by Dominick, and finally, with the help of a little purloined U.S. government regulatory data, the ingenious walking back of the currency cat.

Because Davidov had not been forthcoming about Clauson’s death, Irving left out the part about his initial contact with the murdered CIA man. And because Hanrahan at the Fed had arranged with the FBI and the New York cops to hold back the news of Speigal’s suicide, Irving volunteered nothing about his brief and somewhat embarrassing association with Mortimer Speigal, the mole at the Fed.

“Has your plan succeeded?” the Russian asked. “Has the sleeper agent contacted you?”

“Not yet. We figure that will happen right after Dominick has his little chat with Madame Nina and that crowd. That’s when Berensky should contact his impersonator and decide where his loyalty lies—with the old KGB guys who sent him over, or with the new government that split up the old gang. Or he and Dominick could go into business for themselves.”

“Much rests on that decision.” Davidov adopted a formal tone. “I would think that your government is duty-bound to make sure our government receives its stolen assets and the fruits of that theft.”

“You been talking to a lawyer, Niko. I don’t work for the gummint. I work for the story. And Dominick doesn’t work for the gummint. He’s in this for the glory and the money.”

“I do not buy that cover for a minute,” said Davidov. “I believe you are a front group, a proprietary set up by American intelligence. There is no way your so-called journalistic operation could have come this far without the active participation of the CIA, the NSA, the Treasury, and the Federal Reserve. Part of your job is to deny this, of course, but the denial is not plausible.”

“Tell you the truth, we got a little help from little people in most of those outfits, and you left out the Ex-Im Bank. But that’s just reporting, Dave.” He knew the “Dave” would get under his skin. “This is a strictly private show. I don’t give a hoot where the money goes, so long as I can tell the world all about it.”

“This is more dangerous than you think, as Liana could tell you. As your partner Farr could tell you.”

“Dominick’s in danger, I admit. I wouldn’t like to be in his shoes in Riga next week, sweet-talking this Nina cookie about how he’s really Berensky. But Dominick’s no dope—he knows that his safety lies in his usefulness to everybody. To you guys and to the Feliks crowd, he could broker a share of the bundle. To the real sleeper, he could help keep Berensky anonymous for life, and beyond the reach of assassins. Dominick will be superrich and world-famous, and he figures it’s worth a little risk. Talk about duty-bound—you’re duty-bound to protect him.”

Davidov shook his head. “In your scenario, a greedy American banker helps a faithless Russian agent steal our money. Why should we protect him?”

“Edward Dominick is the goose that’s laying your golden eggs. He disappears, your bridge to Berensky disappears. You keep Dominick safe, it’ll pay off for you.” He hoped Davidov would buy that pitch; Irving owed Dominick whatever cover he could provide.

“By the way, how did you come up with Edward Dominick?”

Irving was wary of “by the way” questions; he was a frequent user of that pretense of casual interest to get to the heart of the matter. “Looked around for a six-foot-four international banker, some Russian travel, could fake a hearing problem. Viveca liked the one from Memphis. Good choice, no?”

“Who steered you to Mortimer Speigal at the Fed?”

This guy was sharper than Irving had thought. That made him less certain of his victory in learning of Liana’s why-me; maybe Davidov wanted to plant that on him. He brushed that probe aside: “When is it my turn to ask about your sources and methods?”

“Too-shay, as you say,” said Davidov. “All I need from you now is a list of the assets held by our sleeper around the world, which you have led us to believe is about one hundred billion dollars.”

“Nyet problema, Niko. That list of companies and banks and
mutual funds and whatnot will be Appendix A of our book, which should list for thirty bucks but you can get it at the discount stores for twenty-two ninety-five. And Viveca had in mind running those names at the end of the telecast in what they call a ‘crawl,’ whatever that means. If you’ll spring for a shilling to make that heater do its thing, I’ll send you a free copy of the book plus the videotape. A forty-nine ninety-five value.”

The KGB man rose and put a shilling in the heater; the filaments reddened almost immediately. He put his hands in his jacket pockets, rocked back and forth on his heels, and made a kind of formal declaration: “I think Irving Fein is a contract employee of the operations branch of the Central Intelligence Agency, which used to be called the ‘dirty tricks’ division. I think Viveca Farr and Ace McFarland are active agents run by you under Dorothy Barclay’s direct command. I think Edward Dominick of Memphis is in fact Aleksandr Berensky of Moscow, and is only posing as an impostor, and has been operating for the past five years as a double agent. I think, finally, that your operation is an attempt by the United States government to destabilize the government of the Russian Federation and to bring about anarchy and further political disintegration.” He sat down.

Irving Fein rose to reply. “I think you are jumping on the bones of Liana Krumins and Sirkka von Schwebel simultaneously, and that unbearable pleasure indefinitely prolonged has driven you out of your mind.” He drew his overcoat about him and took his seat.

After a moment, Davidov said, “Then I’m half right.”

Nice return; Fein took a beat. “You’re not making it with Sirkka?”

“She says she’s in love with her husband.”

“One of those.” Irving didn’t believe it. “No, you’re not half right, Niko. Your conclusions are consistent. You’re either all right or you’re all wrong.”

“Tell me why I am wrong.”

Fein would not be suckered into a selling position. “It may be more to my advantage to have you think you’re right.” Davidov’s academic training was in the knowledge of knowledge, and he must be sophisticated in double deceptions, so Irving decided to try a transparent reverse sell.

“My immediate purpose,” the reporter said, “is to help Dominick
persuade the Feliks people that he is the real sleeper. That would lock him in as the broker and ensure the success of my book. Now: if you think my impostor is the real Berensky, and if your new KGB is shot through with leakers like the kind who betrayed Arkady, then it follows that Madame Nina’s inclination to believe the impostor will be reinforced by reports from traitors within the KGB. Ergo—it’s in my interest for you to disbelieve me.”

Irving held up his arms. “Okay, Niko, I confess: I’m a spook, Dominick is not just playing Berensky but actually is him, and the U.S. is out to grind Russia’s face in the dust.”

Davidov shifted in his chair to look at Fein’s image in the mirror against the closet door. “But you make that case in such a way to induce me to disbelieve it. You want me to think you are not a spook, that Dominick is not the real sleeper, and the U.S. interest in Russia is benign, or is not germane to your journalistic project.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Fein lunged out of his chair and stared in Davidov’s face. “Because you’re not a schmuck, that’s why! Because I started this whole deal, because I know what’s true and what’s false, and because right is right and wrong is wrong.” He extended his arms heavenward. “James, Jesus, and Angleton, save us from all this shit about gray areas and mirror images and spies in from the cold. Moral relativism went out in the garbage with the Cold War. And stop looking at me in the fuckin’ mirror.”

“What do you suppose she meant about the fireflies?”

Irving could hear Viveca’s voice on the recording:
“Can you call me back real soon? I’m at home in the country and the fireflies are out.… ”

“That’s on my dunno sheet, Dave. Mind if I call you Dave?”

“Mind if I call you Feinzy?”

“Niko?”

“Fine. What’s a ‘dunno shit’?”

“Sheet. Sheet of paper with what you don’t know on it. Like—are the fireflies bugs, and was Viveca saying be careful of the bug on the line? Or maybe it meant nothing except we’ll sit on the porch, and we confuse ourselves by overanalyzing.”

“You turn almost human, Fein, when you talk about her.”

“I’m only telling you this because you won’t believe it—but I got a real feeling for that woman.” That wasn’t the half of it. “You think she boozed herself up, or that somebody did her in?”

“That’s on my dunno sheet, too. Right under why Speigal’s last message went to Sirkka from your fax machine.”

“You only get one freebie. But if you want to make another trade, get Sirkka to get her husband to get Madame Nina to get in touch with Dominick at Claridge’s. They ought to take tea together, with those sandwiches the cannibals like.”

Davidov made that three-cushion deal with a nod. “I’m seeing Sirkka this weekend.”

“Gonna take a run at her?” She was a little on the detached and stately side for Irving’s taste, but the cool Finn was at least in his age cohort. Davidov was too young and inexperienced for her. “For your country’s sake?”

“I intend to be faithful to Liana. I tell you that because you will not believe it, but it may inhibit your transgenerational lust. Liana worships you, by the way, though of course not physically.”

“Yeah-yeah. But you don’t tell her she’s chasing after her own father. You don’t tell her the body on her bed was your agent. That’s your idea of fidelity?”

“Either you or I or Madame Nina will tell Liana, but only when she has something to trade.”