Sleeper Spy (12 page)

All this heralded the post-communist era of institutionalized corruption, but Madame Nina’s presence gave an old-Soviet Lubyanka quality to every meeting of the organization. Arkady tried again, this time with no hint of disrespect. “She was the one who pushed on to asking for the Berensky file. I don’t think either of us was followed afterward. These days they don’t have so many people to follow everybody around.”

“You are certain of that.”

She evidently didn’t believe him; he knew better than to profess his loyalty, because that would further erode his credibility. “There was ice and snow that night all over the sidewalks outside Lubyanka,” he offered. “In the old days of the KGB, there was not a snowflake that fell that was not swept away immediately, from the front door all the way past the bookshop down to the all-night café for the drivers. But the sign on the door now says ‘Federal Security Ministry’ and it seems the new KGB doesn’t have the budget anymore to sweep the street or follow every suspect. I doubled back to see if any tracks in the snow had followed hers. She was not followed.”

“And after she came out of Lubyanka, when you made contact again with our journalist asset,” the woman with the pale, hard face asked, “what did she report?”

That was the difficult part for Arkady. “She had been told there was some trouble getting the Berensky family dossier, Madame Nina. They told her it might have been misfiled in the transfer of papers. She did not see it.”

“Does that sound plausible to you?”

He had to be careful here. “No. I suppose the archivist wanted to send the file she requested to Nikolai Davidov first. She said they told her to come back in a week.”

Madame Nina waited. When he added nothing, she asked, “To be told that took her an hour and a half inside?”

“That worried me, too, Madame. This Krumins girl is not one of us, of course. I do not know why she was chosen to help us in the search for Berensky.” At Madame Nina’s glare, he added hastily, “Nor do I have any need to know. But her purpose is not our purpose. She is in this only to feed the curiosity of her television viewers.”

“Our purposes run parallel,” the woman in authority said, “at least for now. Is she aware of the risk to herself in this search?”

To Arkady, who had come to admire Liana Krumins, that was the maddening part. “She has no way of knowing she is running any risk at all. We led her to a story about a missing agent for her television program, and now she assumes she is off on her own. That is how journalists think.”

He would not say so, but he had begun to worry about the short-haired young woman’s safety. Liana was independent-minded. She had
sided with the Latvians against the Russians before independence, which had taken great courage and had cost her time in jail; then she had sided with the Russians on human-rights grounds when the Latvians tried to push Stalin’s colonialists out. Liana’s politics were passionately against whatever was the popular grain; soon after Independence Day, her intensity in front of a camera and her willingness to touch on controversy had made her the most avidly watched television reporter in Riga. She seemed to relish taking risks on the air, much as she had put her own freedom at risk when the Baltics were under Soviet rule. Arkady suspected there was more danger to her in pursuing this story than he or she knew.

The Feliks people’s idea—which Arkady considered a sound one, given her journalist’s credentials—was to set her on the sleeper’s trail and then follow her. But the
avtoritet
had no guarantee she would let them follow. Nor could the Feliks people be sure that the new men at the KGB would not follow her, too.

Arkady had picked up a rumor that of all those searching for the sleeper, Liana Krumins of Riga television would be the one that the unknown spy would choose to contact. He did not know why and was too cautious to ask; he was not yet among the most trusted. It was unfortunate that the inquisitive young woman did not know the risk she was running, perhaps acting as both hound and bait, but she struck him as someone who if she knew would probably run the risk anyway.

Madame Nina seemed to read his thoughts: “Does she suspect why she was chosen to be given this information?”

“I guess she thinks we think she is a good investigator.” That was safe to say. He would ask nothing further about the organization’s interest in her but would keep his ears open. It would be interesting and perhaps profitable to learn why she, of all the journalists in the former Soviet republics, had been selected by the Feliks people to lead the search back to Berensky in his American identity.

Over a beer in the little all-night café down the street from Lubyanka, Arkady had told Liana to stay in close touch with her initial contact—himself—and urged her not to trust others among the Feliks people or to go off on her own. He hoped she had taken his advice to heart. The veteran in the demilitarized jacket said nothing to the committee of this unauthorized warning. He found Madame Nina to
be more menacing, in her command presence and her ingrained doubt about those she interrogated, than most of the security apparatchiks had been in the old days.

After informing Arkady that someone else would follow Liana back to Lubyanka next week, the impassive woman at the center of the table formally dismissed him. Arkady suspected that Madame Nina, first among equals in the tightening alliance of old apparatchiks and new capitalists, of resentful nationalists and outright gangsters, did not trust anyone to associate with Liana Krumins for too long.

Ace McFarland’s slim cellular phone was in his jacket breast pocket. A wire ran to small receivers over his ears and a tiny microphone held in place in front of his mouth. He knew the setup made him look like an extraterrestrial being, but it granted him total mobility. He liked to pace as he worked his instrument of deal-making, and his call from his television news star client had him walking and talking across his office, down the hallway, across to the executive john, back to his office.

“Viveca, I’m chagrined at his exhibition of boorishness.” He let her go on reciting the details of her tempestuous encounter with Irving Fein, clucking and groaning at the proper intervals. “You are right, there is simply no excuse for that. I feel awful that I was the one responsible for subjecting you to that. No, no, I should have known the chemistry would never take. My fault, entirely. How could Irving have been so—so unprofessional? As of this moment, he’s not my client anymore. Which means he may never get another book published as long as he lives.”

“Well, wait a minute, I’m not out to ruin the guy.” The agent’s escalation of her sounding-off caused the newswoman to back away a bit, as he had hoped it would. “I just won’t work with him, ever, under any circumstances. But if it got out that it was my fault you dropped him as a client, all his friends—who think he’s such a hotshot reporter—they’d come at me. They’re a mafia.”

“You’re absolutely right, of course, Viveca. I’ll find some other collaborator for him on this story, which will not be difficult at all, because it’s developing into something bigger than I thought. You just
forget the whole project. Forgive me for inflicting such an experience on you. He may well be the greatest reporter in the world, as his peers seem to think, but he’s a lout. Totally insensitive.” She broke in with an “And that’s not all,” but he kept overriding her complaints with his fervent agreement. “Yes, yes, insulting—no, I don’t want to hear it. Sexual favors? You? Last straw.”

He let her build toward a second peak of indignation, held her there a few moments, then let her taper off.

After she wound down, there was a pause, and she said: “What did you mean when you said it was developing into something bigger than you thought? You thought his story was pretty big last week.”

“Oh, Irving said he hit pay dirt with a source in Washington this morning, but he tends to exaggerate.” He had not yet returned the call from the reporter, whose book would be a difficult sell, but that was because he wanted to get a report from Viveca first. “I’ll team him up with someone in your industry who’s insensitive to the point of being numb, and they’ll win all kinds of awards, and more power to them. Not for you. You need someone who can show some decent respect for your talent and your proven record of success. I’ll find him, or her, you’ll see. May take a little time, but—”

“You spoke to him? Did he tell you about our awful meeting in Pound Ridge?”

Ace paused for effect. “He said something about having acted like a jerk, and seemed a little sheepish about it. But he didn’t give me any of the details as you just did. I’ll bet he was plenty ashamed of himself, as he certainly should be. Nerve of the guy, and then to mislead me into thinking he just made a few minor faux pas. If I had known the truth when I talked to him, I would have told him to take his world beat, and all the professional acclaim that goes with it, and stick it in his ear. Viveca, you’ll have to believe me, I’ve been in this business forty-five years and this has never happened to me before.”

“He said he acted like a jerk? Those were the words he used?”

“Something like that. I’m not like you newspeople, I don’t make notes, all I make is superagent history. Viveca!” Clients, he’d learned long ago, liked to hear agents shout out their names. “He’s a proud man, and let’s face it, he’s insecure in a lot of ways, but I could tell he knew he overstepped in trying to browbeat you.”

“He felt bad about it?”

“He’ll feel a lot worse when I tell him I have to find someone else to make his ‘global exclusive,’ as he calls it, salable.” He pushed a button on his desk that made a loud buzz. “Viveca, that’s an overseas call I placed before, and it’s hell getting through to Beijing—can I call you right back? Again, I’m terribly sorry, but the hell with him, we’ll find someone that’s right for you to work with. Be right back to you.”

He took off his earphones, went to the door, and told his secretary to return the call Irving Fein had placed from a phone booth in Washington.

“Irving, sorry I’ve been unreachable all week, it’s my lumbago. How did your rendezvous go on the famous park bench?”

“I didn’t take him to the bench—he thinks they have long-range unidirectional mikes aimed at him. We had breakfast at a fast-food joint, the most secure location in the world.”

“Progress?”

“I’ll tell you when I see you. But Ace—I, uh, wanted you to know your celebrity newsgal and I didn’t hit it off so well the other day.”

“So I heard. She mentioned that she came on a little strong and you weren’t having any of that.”

“That’s a fair way of putting it. She called you?”

“I called her because a couple of publishers heard I was handling her next book. The fact of my representation gave her a little extra prestige, so they expressed an interest.” It was important that clients know of his direct contribution to the value of their work. “I think I can get a little auction going in hardback, maybe lock the paperback in, which should wake ’em up at the book clubs. I’ll hold back electronic rights, of course—they may be an annuity for your grandchildren.” He went on into the arcana of agenting, knowing Irving found this of little interest; as with most impecunious authors, to Irving the advance was all. But an analysis of the minutiae was both an opportunity to demonstrate the value of sophisticated representation and a device to give the reporter time to mull over what he might be missing without his famous collaborator.

“And she admitted our first session wasn’t the greatest because she came on strong?” Ace could hear Irving working up a head of steam.
“Did she also tell you she said I was a has-been who needed her glamour to get a decent advance?”

“No, of course not. She seemed a little apologetic, but—she said that to you?”

“Did she tell you she called me a prick?”

Though that was hardly cause for any reporter to take offense, Ace let himself gasp into the tiny transmitter. “She certainly said nothing of the kind. I had no idea, Irving, first that she would use language like that—she always seemed like such a lady—and second that she would show such disrespect for the greatest reporter in the world today.”

“Don’t butter me up, Ace.”

“As a matter of fact, Irving, those were not my words. Viveca used that very phrase when she called to share her worry with me about your reaction. Said something to the effect that all the other journalists who thought you were, quote, the greatest reporter of all time, unquote, might hold it against her if you were to take umbrage at her attitude. She’s well aware of your power among your peers.”

“Still, I dunno if it’ll work.”

“You know what? I made a mistake,” the agent confessed. “And I’m the first to admit it. If she insulted you that way at the start—even though she later felt remorse about it, even a twinge of fear—that does not augur well for working closely under stress on a major book and television series. Fortunately, nothing’s been signed. Let’s break it off now, today.”

“She really commands a big advance?”

“I know this sounds odd coming from me, Irving, but money is not everything. If you feel the personal chemistry is wrong, I can find someone else, perhaps a younger man in television, someone who could also help you with a lot of the legwork.” He paused, as if thinking it over. “We’d have to settle for a lot less up front, but if the story makes world headlines, we can do well in the long run. I’m not getting any younger, but I can wait for the main commission income.”