Sleeper Spy (6 page)

The stage manager languidly held up four fingers. “I like to hear it,” she said, because the guy sometimes held his hand in such a way as to make the finger count unreadable. He dutifully said, “Four minutes to air,” adding, “Actually two to first commercial, three to second commercial, three-fifty to local promo,” to annoy her. This was the guy who had saddled her with the sobriquet “Ice Maiden”; better that than the opposite reputation.

She picked up the reading copy, shuffled the pages together, tapped them on the table to straighten out the tops, and then muddled them up again. That’s what the pages were for; not to be read but to be held, to be looked at in a pretense that no prompter was causing the script
to be crawled on a screen directly in front of the camera, and finally to be gathered up in a pretense of tidiness to convey an illusion of finality at the end of the telecast. Show business. It galled her how the news types made much of their profound knowledge of what they were reading even as they played the game of make-believe, holding the pages of a script never meant to be read.

Her hairdresser came on for the final touch-up with spray and comb. Viveca was glad she had put having her own hairdresser into her contract, along with her own makeup person, even though her television agent said it looked un-newswomanlike. That agent wouldn’t like her going to Matthew McFarland to help her create a book, either, but she wanted the best literary rep around to handle her debut in the bookstores. Her publicist had told her that the slob sitting on his spine in Matt’s reception room was some big-name print journalist, made to cool his heels while her potential best-seller was being discussed; Viveca liked that.

A book was a ticket to seriousness; a well-received book said you mattered. Her mentor back in Nashville used to say the world was divided into people who wrote books and people who said they were going to write a book someday. She wished she had him in the control room right now instead of that smart-ass who wanted her to fluff the word.

“Would somebody please bring me a dictionary?” she requested through perfect teeth.

“We have your synonym for ‘indomitable,’ Viveca,” said the producer in her ear. “It’s being put on the prompter now: ‘steadfast.’ ”

She nodded and consented to a read-through. Three seconds short; no need to add anything, she had an internal clock that knew how to stretch. Would her old mentor be watching this? Probably; no reason why not, most television-watchers did, and after he got over his rejection as she moved on and up, he had built himself a nice little family. You’re not talking to a friend, he used to tell her, pointing at the red light on the camera, you’re talking to a judge, stern but fair-minded; and you’re being judged every minute. What the judges want from you is credibility, and what you want from them is respect, not gee-isn’t-she-cute. She thought of the bag of potato chips he would give to her before every show back in Nashville so long ago: “Crisp,” he said. “Think crisp.”

The self-assured newscaster dressed crisply and spoke crisply. She knew her greatest strength was her command presence; in person, she was short, but on the screen she sat tall. Dominant but not domineering; in firm control of herself and of her topic, whether she knew the subject or not.

She straightened her spine, closed and opened her eyes, tightened her sphincter as if she were fooling a polygraph, leaned forward and lifted her chin. Inhale. The red light came on and she felt her surge of authority thrust aside all nervousness. “Newsbreak, Viveca Farr reporting. We have a new Director of Central Intelligence, the first woman ever to hold the post. In naming Dorothy Barclay, the President praised her steadfast will …”

“We’re coming to a tunnel,” the literary agent announced from his car phone. “If I fade out, I’ll get back to you.”

Ace McFarland’s vintage Rolls was nowhere near a tunnel. He always took the bridge to Manhattan. But he liked to make his calls short and authoritative, leaving the impression of busyness even on a slow day, and he had found this a good way to break off calls with drama but not insult.

“Viveca, I’ve been thinking about your book,” he said. “Your initial reluctance about writing your memoirs was right—you’re too young to do an autobiography. It would seem pretentious and invite criticism, especially from the envious. Your memoirs would undoubtedly sell, considering there’d be a book tour and it’d be easy to get you on the best talk shows in every major market. But in the long run it would be criticized as presumptuous, and I don’t want you exposed to any vilification by the ‘shock jocks.’ ”

When she had suggested a book about her life, Viveca had raised that concern about the appearance of pretension only as a minor caveat. Ace judged he could get a paltry $50,000 advance against royalties for the book; most of that would go to an as-told- to ghost. His own 17 percent commission, taken off the gross and the highest in the field, would hardly be worth his time. No movie or miniseries would be likely from a Viveca Farr memoir, which meant the value of the paperback would be less. The project would be seen for what it was: a blatant promotion of her as a personality, enabling her to appear on other networks and local stations flogging her book. It would probably help her lecture fees, but her literary agent had no part of those. And the
selling thing about a memoir was that you actually had to have memories of memorable events, unless you were a household name, in which case you had to have memories of formative details. No; it was too early in Viveca’s rise to semicelebrity for a memoir. Ace had a better idea.

“You should be doing something more substantive,” he advised. “Something you can get your reportorial teeth into.” She had perfect, gleaming teeth, he realized, perhaps not reportorial; no matter. “Perhaps there’s a major subject that you could do in conjunction with a television special.” That would move a book off the shelves; even books on the English language grew legs when given the impetus of a TV series.

“Matt, do you have a subject in mind?” Viveca sounded disappointed; her heart had undoubtedly been set on a biography of herself that she could control, one that would block any unfriendly biography from the market. Ace knew she was thinking of the blurbs about her talent from has-been colleagues of hers, or from famous clients of his, that would be used in advertising the hardcover, and of the hundreds of thousands of paperback copies that would carry those avidly solicited, smarmy encomia on the cover. He was not certain that blurbs sold any book, but he was sure that the prospect of blurbs sold some celebrities on writing books.

“I have the germ of an idea,” he said. “It would be perfect for someone with your skills. Hello? Can you hear me?” He cut himself off, ostensibly going through the tunnel. Long association with Irving Fein had taught him a few communications tricks. He had stopped going through tunnels at the first suggestion that they might be targets of terrorists. Ace McFarland could see himself being blown gloriously off a bridge, never buried in a tunnel.

He stepped off the elevator into his waiting room, assessed his appearance in the darkened glass opposite, and hailed Irving Fein, seated all over the couch. He would not remonstrate with Irving about stealing the books on the coffee table; that’s what the books were there for, to be stolen and replaced at publishers’ expense. He led his client down the long hall to his corner office, chirruping greetings to his associates and their assistants on the way.

“I want a huge advance for a book,” said Irving, plopping himself
down in the designer chair with the nubby fabric, then getting up, grabbing a couple of oversized throw cushions that were sticking into his back, and throwing them onto another chair. “I’ll invest it all in the research, which is gonna be a bitch.”

Ace looked at him in weary fondness. “Presumably you are speaking of a six-figure advance,” he said. “Years ago, I was able to get that for you.”

“Whatsamatter you can’t anymore? Losing a step?”

“Times have changed, Irving. Publishers’ budgets have tightened, the number of blockbusters has grown smaller. Your own position has changed because of the smaller sales of your last book—which I personally thought was excellent, despite the reviews, and despite that unfortunate episode on your tour.” Fein had appeared in the Green Room moments before airtime for an interview, had refused to sign the standard release form because of its boilerplate waiver of libel protection, and had been pushed aside for a cookbook author.

“I never waive my rights. The publicity dame knows that. Years ago, I was sitting in a Green Room with Edward Bennett Williams—we were guests on some show—and the producer’s sweetie comes in with the paper to sign. Williams, the great lawyer, showed me what to do. Where it says ‘hereby agree to hold harmless,’ he made a little caret after the ‘hereby’ and wrote in ‘do not’ and then signed it. The kid only knows from get the thing signed. But my luck, this time in L.A., the producer reads it and kicks me off. Fuck ’im. Besides, the books weren’t even in the stores yet in that town, so the whole thing would have been a waste of time.”

“We all know,” the agent agreed with only a touch of irony, “how publishers conspire against authors to prevent the sale of their books.”

“And they never advertise until it’s too late,” Fein added. “And the first printing is always too small, so when a buyer walks in they’re out of stock. Jeez, you wonder why my last book died.”

“A significant first serial sale would have helped,” Ace reminded him gently; he did not add that magazines from
Time
to
The New Yorker
to
Reader’s Digest
had turned down Irving Fein’s book about international arms dealers. Though the book was based on solid and original reporting, its subject was behind the topical-interest power curve.

“They stole the ideas and assigned their own reporters,” Fein muttered. “Never again. We publish in secret.”

“But not secret from me.” The agent let him have a glimpse of reality. “Irving, I love you. In my considered opinion, you are the greatest reporter alive today. Bar none. And many others agree, albeit reluctantly.”

“Here comes the ‘but.’ ”

“Nobody has your sources, and nobody has ever milked them for more exclusive information. But your books do not sell. Maybe it’s your lack of exposure on television, or whatever, but a six-figure advance is not in the cards.” Ace let that sink in. “Unless, of course, you can convince me you have a world beat that will scare the hell out of everybody.” As a seeming afterthought, he threw in: “Or unless we can figure a way to team you up with somebody who remedies your weakness in sales.”

“I have the world beat, I think. At least a good lead on it.” Fein was dispirited by the bad news about the advance and seemed not to have heard the suggestion about a collaborator. “But it’s gonna take a hell of a lot of digging, and I can’t afford it.”

The agent knew when to wait.

“The communists back in the Nixon days, the era of détente, beat us on some grain deal. They concealed a big shortage, bought from us cheap, saved a bundle.”

“
The Great Grain Robbery,
” the agent said, recalling the book on the subject. “Not mine. Didn’t sell.”

“The KGB realized the need for big-time economic espionage later on.” Irving leaned forward, intensity in his voice and body. “They planted an agent here—maybe recruited him here, in some college—and let him work his way up in the banking business. Never used him, never put him at risk. They figured they’d want him for something big one day. It’s not done often, takes a lot of restraint. The agent is called a ‘sleeper.’ ”

“That’s why you had me emphasize the word ‘sleep’ twice in my conversation with Davidov. Glad you told me. I thought I was being a hypnotist.”

“You were better off not knowing when you went in there,” Fein said, not apologetically. “And the way our KGB smoothie clammed up tells me he’s sensitive to a hunt for the sleeper.”

“And it turns out,” said Ace, anticipating the plot, “this Rip Van Winkle agent has become the head of the Chase Bank, or Chairman of
the Federal Reserve, or maybe even Vice President of the United States, and you’re going to expose him.” The agent thought quickly: “We’d better get a libel lawyer in at the start.”