Sleeper Spy Page 6

  That meant that both the Russian and American espionage services were looking for him and trying to trace the fortune. In addition, the Feliks people—who knew of his existence, and whose money had formed his original stake—were surely using all their underworld contacts to find him. Sooner rather than later, the sleeper was certain, one of these organizations would break through the complex series of cutouts and fronts he had established to hide and leverage the assets; at that point, his historic decision of what to do with the money might be wrested from his hands. That was why he felt an urgency to make big money in the coming quarter.

  The final intelligence from Control about Russia’s oil consortium with Japan had been useful; it meant an increase in the supply of oil, and augured a small dip that day in the world price. Through a series of investments in financial derivatives based on oil futures, he had made a couple of hundred million dollars. The gold production figures were more valuable; his London gold broker relied on the likelihood of a shortfall in Russian production to take a strong position.

  But this was relatively small potatoes. Inside information about Russian dealings would not permit dramatic gains, even when leveraged as heavily as Berensky now could manage. For major moves, he needed to get key figures from the KGB sources inside the U.S. government. Then he could play currencies, the most concealable major form of speculation.

  Control’s death made that more difficult: the mole in Washington did not want to be contacted, and he would have to wait; the agent at the Federal Reserve in New York was unknown to him, and passed along information only through the Washington man.

  In retrospect, the sleeper knew he had erred in not taking Control’s unconscious body out and drowning him. Of course, his lack of firmness had turned out to be fortunate: if he had killed the greedy handler, Berensky would have gone back to sleep in the bungalow and been blown up. But he could not count on that luck in the future. He vowed to act with more vigor next time a confederate showed signs of crossing him.

  Where was he most vulnerable? In Bern and in Helsinki. The banker in Bern was the longtime contact of, and probably partner of, the faithless Control. The banker had on deposit only the first $3 billion in gold—the original Communist Party stake—but it was likely that he shared Control’s plans to seize the entire fortune. Berensky would be safer if the banker died.

  The economist in Helsinki had an idea of the sleeper’s identity and could be a source of blackmail. She was connected to too many agencies: certainly Stasi in Germany, probably the KGB or Russian Foreign Intelligence, possibly his Washington contact. The sleeper was more inclined to trust her, however; there was a simple way to put her loyalty to the test.

  He dialed her direct extension at the Econometric Institute in Helsinki and recognized the voice that answered the phone.

  “This is Dr. Gold,” he announced briskly. “The veterinarian in North Carolina. Your vet in Davos sent the slides of your Bernese mountain dog’s lung to my laboratory.”

  “Of course,” she said. “How good of you to call so promptly. What’s to become of my Berner Sennenhund?” She used the Swiss name of the breed; Berensky admired her quick take of an unrehearsed code.

  “The prognosis is not good. Your Berner has a form of cancer that is a genetic fault of the breed. I have to advise you to put him down.”

  A pause. “That saddens me. The Berner has been a faithful companion.”

  “You owe it to him, then, to put the animal to sleep before the onset of great pain.”

  “I understand, Doctor. How long do I have?”

  “Three or four days. No longer than a week. I feel for you, ma’am—I lost one of my own not a couple of weeks ago. It’s sad, but necessary.”

  “You’re right, of course. I will do what a responsible pet owner must do.”

  POUND RIDGE, NEW YORK

  Viveca Farr confronted herself with a direct question: What does a legendary reporter drink? Irving Fein was coming to see her, at Matt’s instigation. She decided he’d probably drink Scotch.

  She checked the bar in the den; plenty of Scotch. No bourbon; she had finished the bourbon herself the other night. White wine? She was ready to bet Irving Fein would never ask for white wine. Maybe red wine. She hesitated, then pulled down a bottle of the cheaper stuff, sank the screw in the cork, and deftly opened it. “Breathe,” she told it, and poured herself a glass.

  Matt had suggested this first meeting be held in his office, but Viveca didn’t want the agent to act as her chaperon; she wanted to handle the world’s greatest investigative reporter, as he liked to bill himself, all by herself. She could have had him come to her apartment on Central Park West, near the studio, but that was decorated in whites and silks and Man Ray photos; even so, now that she thought of it, that might have been better. Living in a storied stone house in Pound Ridge—Tudorstyle, eighteen rooms, on four landscaped acres—was as pretentious, in its way, as calling yourself the world’s greatest reporter.

  She could hear him saying “What a goddam palace” and thinking of her as some kind of princess complaining about a pea under the mattress. Impressing him that way was a mistake, but this is where she came to escape from the television crowd on weekends when all its Manhattan members traipsed out to the Hamptons as one impenetrable mass. She could explain how rich she was not, what a regular person she was, if that turned out to be important to him; she suspected that it would. From that one glimpse of him in Matt’s waiting room, the journalist struck her as one of those prestigious smart-asses who resented success in others whom they considered lightweights, success they assumed was too easily gained.

  She was fearful he would see through her in a minute. She couldn’t write; she could ask a list of questions with fervor, but she lived in dread of a surprise answer that required a follow-up. Who needed this?

  It wasn’t that she was dumb, or not naturally curious, but there had been little time to become a policy wonk on the way to television news celebrityhood; by the time your brain became convoluted enough to understand the nuances of foreign affairs and economic dreariness, your face was too wrinkled to attract an audience. All the producers who brought her along too fast later criticized her for coming up too fast, for not “paying her dues.” One year she was running copy, the next year she was on the air, station managers pushing her for their ratings, viewers taking her every word so seriously. The reviewers all used the same word to describe her delivery: “crisp.” Would Irving Fein be hungry? She put out the potato chips.

  Waiting for her potential new collaborator, Viveca looked in the bar mirror; the slight worry line between her eyes added to the illusion of authority. Her makeup was understated for this occasion, the blond hair mid-length, carefully casual, no spray glazing her head the way it had to be on camera. Her face’s saving grace, she knew, was its slightly crooked nose; the imperfection added character. Nobody wanted a fashion model doing the news. What was wanted—sought desperately, by producers and advertisers—was mastery without age, good looks without glamour, gravitas without weight. On the air, she had the rare ability to transmute attractiveness to authority, and she knew it.

  That confidence faded when the camera’s red light went off. What if Fein asked her about the Kurdish tribes in Iraq or the black gangs in L.A.? In that case, she would turn the question back on him; men so handled invariably spun out their answers. But what if this one really wanted to know what she thought? He was a reporter; he was, if not great, certainly good; he would not be put off. Her schedule did not include time to develop any of the wide knowledge he would probably demand.

  The hell with him. What she brought to this marriage was the beginning of fame—potential stardom—and the art of presentation. He could do the digging and the thinking and the writing. As Matt had explained, selling her on this notion, the television dimension provided synergy to the story and sales to the book. And what the hell did “synergy” mean? What if she used that word and Fein asked her what it meant? He was sure to judge
her, as they all did; suddenly Viveca was afflicted with the sinking feeling that this might not work. The moment he started hitting on her professionally, she would threaten to throw him out; Matt had confided that, commercially, he needed her more than she needed him.

  A gray station wagon crunched up the driveway, and she went out to meet it, her glass of wine in hand, hospitable in a defiant way. His car, as she had feared, was a disgrace to the neighborhood. The dilapidated state of the vehicle, despite its “no radio” sign for burglars, was a statement that he was poor and honest and proud and would make putting her down part of his life’s work.

  “Where’s the butler to park the car? Thanks, I can use it.” He took the drink from her hand, knocked it back, went, “Yecch—haven’t you got a decent bottle of wine?” and led the way into her house. “Goddam palace,” he said.

  “I knew you’d say that.”

  “Pretty run-down, though.” He touched the leaves of a plant. “Fake. Good fake, though.”

  She would have to disabuse him promptly of the idea that she was wealthy. “The house is a white elephant,” she said. “Half the rooms are closed off permanently. My family used to own it, and I was a girl here, before my father lost it all and went to jail and died. I bought it back after the market dropped at a foreclosure auction.” She caught herself beginning to talk too fast; jabbering was always a giveaway. She didn’t say the rest—that the house was too much for one maid to clean and she didn’t make enough money to keep up the grounds properly, other than to have the front lawn mowed.

  He fitted the description she’d heard of a newspaperman, as looking like an unmade bed. She kicked herself for not having worn jeans; here she was, in a skirt and blouse and Donna Karan cotton cardigan, while he was wearing wrinkled chinos and a loud red shirt, all understated Ralph Lauren without reaching for it.

  She got out the Château Talbot, showed him the label.

  He gave a pretty-impressed look. “Good stuff, Cordier’s second-best. Eighty-four is over the hill, but let’s give it a shot.”

  She shrugged and handed him the bottle, eased out of her shoes, and sat on her feet on the couch. She stripped the cellophane off a new pack of cigarettes and lit one.

  “Mind if I smoke?” he said.

  That threw her. “You mean—smoking bothers you?” Real writers still smoked, didn’t they? She smoked because it gave her something to do with her hands. And it was associated with hard newsmen, and bothered most people on the set.

  “I love to smoke,” he said with some nostalgia. “I gave it up. It kills me to see somebody enjoying a good, long drag. Go ahead if you really need to.”

  She thought it over, stubbed it out. “Tell me about this sleeper spy.”

  “Big fella, loner, high-stakes player, megabucks stashed away. Dedicated commie from year one, maybe did a little wet work along the way. Your kind of guy.”

  Viveca wondered what “wet work” was, and if any of what Fein said was true. She used her best question on him: a direct look and a whispered “Really?”

  He didn’t go for it. “First let’s figure out how to work together. I never had a collaborator, I’m a born loner. Two divorces.”

  “I’ve never been married,” she said. “Either.”

  He stopped to weigh her last word. “That’s good, the ‘either.’ I’m a good reporter—nobody’s better, to tell the truth—but a lousy writer. You a good writer? A decent writer? Any kind of writer?”

  She pointed to his two books, flatteringly stacked on the lamp table. “Those are well written.”

  “Well rewritten, you mean. The copy editor couldn’t handle it. They had to hire someone who worked cheap to rewrite long stretches, punch up all the chapter leads. You can’t write, huh? Either?”

  She was not prepared to admit that. “I write most of my own scripts. You probably saw the smart-ass stories that accused me of being a ‘rip-and-read’ announcer. That’s not true. Lot of mean and jealous people in my business.”

  “Forty-five seconds is how many words?”

  She reached for her pack of cigarettes and lit one in silence. He had caught her in a lie and was enjoying it.

  “Look, kid, the Ace says you’re my meal ticket, so I’m for you. If you can’t write, we’ll find something else for you to do. You can wheedle information out of guys?”

  “I have been doing on-air interviews for nearly seven years,” she snapped. “Heads of state. Candidates. Raped women. Great reporters.”

  “I hurt your feelings.” After a moment, it occurred to her that Irving Fein, the great questioner, wasn’t going to say anything until she did. She took an ostentatious, unsatisfying drag on her cigarette and inhaled deeply. The expression on his face was sympathetic, which she found infuriating. By being sorry for her for having to be so defensive, he was dominating their first meeting. And still he didn’t say anything.

  “If you don’t want to tell me about the fantastic story you’re supposed to have,” she said finally, “we’re not going to get very far.”

  “You don’t have to fill up silence,” he said. “You could have outwaited me, and I would have had to blurt something out. You lost that one.”

  “Journalism 101?”

  “Hell no, this is postgraduate stuff. Learn, it wouldn’t kill you. I’m secure. We’re not competing.”

  “If you’re so secure, why can’t you get a book published by yourself? Why do you need a girl like me as a crutch?”

  “I like that, shows a little spirit. But why do you call yourself a girl? You’re thirty-three, I looked it up.”

  “Your source is wrong, I’m thirty-two. That makes our average age over forty.” He was probably sensitive about his age, pushing fifty; age was one of the things she was just beginning to get sensitive about. She could zing him on his developing paunch, his furtive slump, his general air of determined messinese; the only thing possibly attractive to her about him was his intensity, a quality she never looked for in men but might be useful in a collaborator. That and his reputation within his trade. The trick to handling him was not to show secret vulnerability—that worked best with network executives—but to keep him off balance by not deigning to treat him as an equal. So he’d written a couple of books and won a bunch of prizes; big deal. She had an audience a thousand times the size of his and made ten times his income.

  “Come on now, Irving, cut the fencing.” She did not rise, but crossed her legs and put her bare feet on the coffee table. She had reason to be proud of her legs, not long, but perfectly proportioned. “Do you have a story or a lot of talk?”

  “How could you tell the difference?”

  “Don’t patronize me. You’re not the one to judge a reporter in my business.”

  “Oh. Your business is different. You deal in pictures, in sound bites. We printniks are grubbing after hard facts about real scandals, and the fuzzy new electronic world leaves us suckin’ hind teat.”

  She had him off balance and, carefully scratching an ankle with one manicured toe, pressed her advantage. “If you have something worth working on, I’ll know.”

  “I don’t know how much Ace told you, but it’s a big one.”

  “Matt McFarland doesn’t like to be called Ace. You’ll have to learn to be nice to your agent. He can make it all happen for you.”

  He gave her an unbelieving squint. “Look, kid, Ace loves to be known as the Ace. He tells people not to call him Ace who don’t know him from Adam. The Ace is his shtick, his up-from-the-street attitude. It’s the handle that separates him from the literary types who made agent the easy way with three-hour lunches in ritzy bistros.” He put his heavy shoes on the edge of her coffee table. “The nickname Ace is that little touch that tips the scales to editors who assign profiles. Pretending not to like it is his pose. Don’t fall for poses. Deal with reality, and people will begin to respect you.”

  “You know all about poses. Yours is media biggie, strike terror into the hearts of wrongdoers, darling of journalism scho
ols.” He was probably right about Ace; she hadn’t thought of that, and she was beginning to enjoy dueling with this so-secure character. “But there you sit, with your clodhoppers on my good coffee table, in a pose of your own.” He didn’t move them.

  “You’re afraid you’re over the hill,” she pressed, “and you’re in debt.” She was guessing, but was sure she was right. “You need one big hit to get back in stride, and you hate having to share it with somebody younger and more hip and much more attractive than you. And you can cut out the ‘kid’ business. I’m thirty-two years old—not thirty-three—and I’ve been on my own since I was sixteen making a damn sight more money than you ever made.”

  He drained his glass, set it down, and rose. “Give me my hat, I’m leaving.” She had pushed him too far; she did not want to lose him; it could be he wasn’t as tough as she thought he was.

  “I hurt your feelings,” she mimicked. She poured them both another glass, coming close, then drawing back.

  “That was your best line so far,” he said, sitting down again, “and it was the one I wrote. But you delivered it well.”

  “And you don’t have a hat.”

  “I wasn’t leaving yet. The database says you started as a cocktail waitress at sixteen.”

  “You learn a lot fast about men that way.”

  “You learn how to belt down that booze, too. No?”

  “Let’s see, now. You don’t like my smoking or my drinking. Is there anything else I do that doesn’t please you?”

  “I used to be a drunk, too, when I was your age. Very popular in the newspaper business. You either straighten out or you self-pity yourself into oblivion.”

  That was a thrust Viveca did not appreciate at all. She had been drinking more than before, but she was sure it was not a problem, and she held it down at dinner before airtime. There was a world of difference between a drinker and a drunk; he needed a zing back.