Sleeper Spy (64 page)

“Yes.” With these terrible admissions, he was earning her trust as he was turning her stomach. “She found out after a moment of passion that I was truly hard of hearing, and she suddenly knew I was the real sleeper, not an impersonator. But Viveca loved me and I did not want to kill her. I put a chemical with a timed release in her wine at dinner before taking her to her studio.”

“You knew how her life would be ruined by the public humiliation. It was a horrible thing to do.”

“But she’s alive. It effectively took her off the board at a critical time. I hope to make it up to her one day.” He seemed suddenly irritated with himself for his long-windedness in justification. “Well, then. As your grandfather would say, the house is burning and the clock is ticking. Get the truth about me from your mother. And to be useful,” he said, attaching the usual device to her amber pendant, “that truth has to come from her lips within two hours.”

“I have not seen Mama in five years. Does she live at the same address?”

She ran the three blocks to the Tower café, where Irving and Nikolai were waiting for her.

“He killed Clauson and drugged Viveca and will give me all the details on the fortune if I can get my mother to tell the mafiya tonight that he is really Berensky.” She was out of breath.

“Full disclosure is hardly in his interest,” said the KGB man.

“If you help Berensky sell Madame Nina on his bona fides,” Irving explained, “and he makes a deal with them, he’ll double-cross you in a minute. And it’s goodbye to Baltic independence.”

They did not feel her sense of revelation and did not understand the urgency of her father’s need. “You’re both wrong. He is tired of all this, and he won’t betray his own daughter.”

“You cannot be sure of that,” from Nikolai.

“He’s using you, kiddo,” from Irving.

“So what?” She gave Irving Fein a quick lesson in Latvian journalism: “I’ll get a part of the story at least, and he won’t kill me or drug me. I will have the names of the banks and the companies and the buildings he owns, and you can write your story after you hear it on my
program.” She turned on Nikolai. “Your eavesdropping truck—can it pick up this transmitter from Mama’s apartment?”

The KGB’s representative nodded yes. She grabbed her knapsack and ran out.

“You suppose she’ll turn her old lady’s opinion around?” Irving was doubtful; if he had been a wife left high and dry with a hungry brat, he would want to stick it to the errant spouse when he came crawling back asking for a big favor.

Davidov shook his head no, and tapped a finger on his cellular phone. “Antonia Krumins is not at her apartment. Left an hour ago. Didn’t go to the ballet school, either, which will be Liana’s next stop.”

“Where’d she go? Your guys follow her?”

“Of course. The woman is right here, in this restaurant. Either upstairs, in one of the private rooms, or downstairs in the basement, where the Feliks politburo will interrogate Berensky. Where Berensky thinks he will cross-examine them.”

Irving licked his lips in satisfaction; the exercise of running around aimlessly would take Liana down a peg. “I’m still pissed off about Mike Shu,” he said.

The reporter was against eavesdropping in principle, but could see why lawmen and spooks swore by it. Fein and Davidov had been unable to hear what von Schwebel said in Berensky’s hotel room—Davidov said the German was probably carrying a jammer—but the sleeper’s subsequent conversation with his daughter had come through loud and clear. And the words that shook up Irving Fein had to do with his right-hand man: “If anything should happen to me … call Michael Shu.… I confided in him, and now he’s the executor of my will.”

Now that was a hell of a note. The one person Irving Fein trusted in the world was not his mother, his lawyer, his agent, or his partner on this story wandering off in the desert—but his accountant, Mike Shu. They’d been through the media wars together. The young Eurasian knew exactly how much Irving had cheated on his expense accounts a few years ago, and when the IRS audited, Mike had kept his lip zipped at no little personal risk. He was straight that way. This was the man who had been “confided in” and had become the executor of Berensky’s estate in the sleeper’s will? That meant he might have been working
for Dominick all along, and maybe for Clauson before that. Was Mike a wide-eyed innocent who had been corrupted by avarice toward the end, or was he a bit player on the wrong side from the start? Irving felt the sand shifting beneath his castle of loyalties. He owed this Berensky bastard a few hard shots in print.

“Don’t assume your accountant colleague betrayed you,” cautioned Davidov. “Berensky must suspect his room is bugged. He may have sent back disinformation just to rattle you.”

“Yeah, but he knows we know that. At this stage of the game, he can’t think he’s dealing with a couple of hayseeds who don’t know from disinformation.”

“That’s just what he might expect you to be thinking, unless he thought you would anticipate that.”

“James, Jesus, and—hey, look who’s here,” Irving said to the lifelong commie so steeped in Ping-Pong deception he couldn’t tell it was costing him his girl. He pointed to Karl and Sirkka von Schwebel, standing at the maître d’s lectern, waiting to be seated for dinner. “Shall we blow their minds by asking them to join us? He can pick up our tab.”

“It might be amusing. At some point, take him aside on some pretext and let me talk to Sirkka alone.”

“Oh, Christ, look who’s at that table in the back waving to us,” said Sirkka.

“It’s an opportunity,” said her husband quickly. “Let’s join them. You have to change your story to Davidov to protect Berensky.”

“I absolutely convinced him two days ago that Dominick is the real sleeper. It’s going to be hell to turn it all around.”

“You won’t have to. Just plant a seed of doubt, enough to give him pause in case he plans to take Berensky out. I’ll do the opposite with Madame Nina after dinner, to protect our client with her.” He pretended to look for the maître d’. “I give you permission to promise your old friend and colleague anything.”

She froze inside.

“Jealousy is not in my nature,” he went on quickly. “Throw yourself at him if you have to. Turn him around on Dominick. Nothing is more important.”

“Thank you, Karl.” The feeling of two-against-the-world in the hall of mirrors had been based on foolish sentiment; she despised herself for ever forgetting she was always destined to act as someone’s agent.

Sirkka feigned surprise at seeing the Russian with the American. She waved, mouthed hello across the room, and said to her husband, “How are you going to separate Davidov from that boor so I can make my promises?”

“I’ll think of something.”

“And then we’ll have to extricate ourselves to get downstairs to the meeting.”

“We’ll leave together and come back to the café later.” They worked their way through the tables. “Ah, Nikolai,” the media baron boomed. “We’ve caught you giving the KGB’s secrets to the world’s greatest reporter.”

“Curious how they both wanted to go across the street for a cigar,” Nikolai Davidov said to Sirkka Numminen von Schwebel. He marveled at her participation in the rump operation set up by Clauson and Berensky, even as she was officially an agent for FI. That did not make her a double, working for the enemy and subject to summary execution, but an agent engaged in what Americans colorfully called “moonlighting.” He presumed Sirkka’s primary loyalty still rested with Berensky, who had apparently enlisted her husband to help him establish bona fides with Madame Nina.

Davidov further speculated that Sirkka’s present assignment was to protect the sleeper from harm. She could accomplish this in either of two ways: first, by getting her admiring acquaintance Nikolai to assign his KGB operatives illegally in Riga to intervene in any mafiya attempt on Berensky’s life, should Madame Nina decide he was a fake. On the other hand, if Berensky appeared to be turning his assets over to the Feliks people, the resourceful Sirkka would be ready with a fallback position: somehow to prevail on Davidov and his KGB agents to refrain from killing a faithless Berensky. Of all the attitudes in the
Kama Sutra
of espionage, Davidov observed, none was as attractive as the fallback position.

“Irving Fein doesn’t smoke,” he said. “Does your husband?”

“Rarely. Cigars make him sick.”

“Romantics, then. They wanted us to be alone together.”

“Karl has urged me to promise you anything—my body, my soul—to plant a seed of doubt in your mind about Dominick being Berensky.”

“You can keep your soul.”

“My husband just showed me he does not think I have one.”

Davidov had intended his remark as banter and was surprised at her flash of bitterness; an agent as experienced as Sirkka was not supposed to be afflicted with romantic notions. On the other hand, he was aware that his own feelings about Liana affected his handling of this case.

“You and your husband are working closely together,” he observed, “to affect the outcome of this meeting tonight. Does Madame Nina think Dominick is an impostor?”

“She has every reason to. If Dominick were really Berensky, he would represent a threat to her control of the organization. The prodigal son returns and takes over. He has the money, and with the Feliks people, money is power and power is all. As I should never forget.”

“What about the testimony of Antonia Krumins?” he asked. “Is she telling the truth in denying Dominick’s validity as the sleeper? Will their politburo believe her?”

“I think she is telling what she thinks is the truth. I think they will believe the wife’s opinion that he is an impostor, despite our testimony that he is the authentic sleeper. And that disbelief is what Madame Nina wants.”

Davidov put himself in the Feliks people’s shoes and made a judgment. “Then they will decide Dominick is an impostor, and hit him before he gets to the airport tomorrow. Or before he gets back to his hotel tonight.”

“Isn’t that what you would do, if you were the threatened leader? If you want Berensky’s money for Russia, Nikolai Andreyevich, you’d better grab him while he’s still alive.”