Sleeper Spy (19 page)

Now it was different. Internal security personnel at the KGB distrusted the independent Foreign Intelligence empire, and Davidov distrusted his own men in internal security. That made it triply difficult for Davidov, a relative newcomer, to track down the sleeper, an agent who might be defecting or absconding.

“Easy for you to say, Davidov, but this was held more closely than any other case.”

“Your handler of the sleeper—who did he report to?”

“Control had only two agents. One was the mole in Washington—on him, the handler reported to FI, not to us. The other was the sleeper, investing the money. Control reported to us on the sleeper, directly to the Director or his deputy, both now dead. That’s the way it always was. This particular handler had an arrangement first in the sixties with Shelepin, then with Director Andropov. Nobody else knew who his agent was.”

“I cannot believe that,” Davidov snapped. “Now what’s all this about Barbados?”

“The handler was last seen checking into a hotel there, a bungalow on the beach. There was an explosion and fire, nothing identifiable left. We can’t say for certain the few body parts that were found were the control’s, but it’s probable.”

“How do we know he was there?”

“The day before, Moscow Central informed him of the death of the Director and his deputy in the plane crash. The control acknowledged in code. He was there, probably to meet the sleeper or his Washington penetration agent.”

“Forget the mole—the deaths in the crash only have significance to the sleeper. Your man examined the hotel register?”

“Of course, Director. Apparently nobody else checked in that night or the night before. The manifests of aircraft arriving tell us nothing. One man died; no trace of another.”

Davidov was sure he knew what had happened: when Berensky was told by his control of the death of the two officials in the KGB who knew his identity, the sleeper had killed the handler and the banking contact in Bern, thereby establishing total freedom of action. He
changed the subject: “You have forty-eight hours to find out everything about Aleksandr Berensky’s background in Russia. His family, his past, up to the time he left on his assignment.”

“We’ve been trying—”

“I wonder. You know where the sleeper was trained, who were his trainers, where they are now. You should know who prepared his new documents, who taught him his legend. Only if you have the answer for me day after tomorrow will you remain in the employ of Federal Security.”

“We will redouble our efforts.” He spun and strode out.

Davidov went to the window facing away from the ring road, toward the artificial lake, and contemplated the bucolic setting chosen by an architect who, in those days, could build and landscape anything he wanted. Unlike his counterpart at America’s huge new “reconnaissance center” in Virginia, he had not had to conceal exorbitant construction figures in another agency’s budget; when so much else was secret, no cost overruns had to be kept secret. Those days of vodka and mushrooms were gone now, for both agencies; when the masseuse downstairs in the KGB health club turned out to be running a brothel and had to be fired, new budgetary restraints kept her from being replaced.

To Yelena, who had listened in on his meeting with his insubordinate, Davidov said: “Now we know what happened. Control was informed of the crash and realized he was the only one who knew the sleeper’s identity. When the two met, he suggested they split the fortune and defect. And Berensky killed him.”

“Or Berensky suggested that, and the handler said no, and Berensky killed him.”

Possible. Davidov added another: “Or the handler laid out the scheme, the sleeper objected on patriotic grounds, and the handler killed Berensky.”

“You don’t believe that, Nikolai Andreyevich.”

“No. The sleeper is a global financier, and a man driven by powerful purpose. He has no restrictions whatever on carrying out his mission. I think he learned from his control that everyone who knew his identity had died in the crash, and he decided to take advantage of the opportunity for total isolation. He killed the handler and he is now deciding what to do with the money.” Davidov was almost certain that Berensky, as a dedicated Soviet man, his culture more communist than Russian,
would lean toward enriching the Feliks people, using the fortune to destabilize the government in Moscow. He had to stop that at all costs.

“I want everything we have on the Krumins woman.”

“Not the videotape again. It will wear out.”

He ignored that. “Her birth certificate, passport, work papers, the surveillance reports, everything. We photocopied the Berensky file she asked to see, did we not? Beforehand?”

“Yes. And we made an inventory. I have the copy of the document she stole. I have analyzed her dossier carefully, if there is a fact you want to know immediately.”

He tested her. “When was she born and where?”

“December fifteenth, 1968, in Riga, Latvian Republic of the USSR. The birth certificate of Liana Maria Krumins is a transcribed copy; I am trying to find the original.”

“Find it.” There were often revealing discrepancies in transcribed documents. “Parents?”

“Her mother is Antonia Krumins, a ballet instructor of Russian descent now living in Riga. Her father was Ojars Krumins, architect, Latvian, died fourteen years ago.”

“Ages at the time of her birth?”

“Mother was seventeen, father was forty.”

Odd, but it accounted for Liana’s Russian-Latvian bilingual ability. “Where did she learn English?”

“From a man she lived with in the independence movement. At school, she was a brilliant student, declined Komsomol membership.”

“Go on.”

“Troublemaker, marijuana trafficker, dissident. Jailed after an illegal independence rally, but was let go the next morning; her fellow protesters were held one to three months.”

“Why was she released so quickly?”

“Don’t know.” Yelena went on: “Expelled from university in 1988. Became spokeswoman for the independence movement, learned English to deal with Western press, broadcast on an opposition radio station. After the breakup of the Union, Krumins became a radio and then television news presenter, her current employment. Respected by her colleagues, big audience on the air.”

“Lovers?”

“Lived with dissident writer for two years, threw him out, had affair with married political leader, may be still going on. Apparently attracted to older men, but treats all men like dirt. They seem to love it.”

Davidov did not let himself smile. “Stick to what the files tell you. Why do you think she was chosen by the Feliks people to do their digging?”

“She’s perfect for it. Journalist’s credentials. Unafraid. Three languages. Striking appearance, so easy to follow or trace. And a good researcher, too.”

“And why did she agree to work with them?”

“She probably had contact with the American journalist Irving Fein, when he came through here a few years ago. He could be a CIA front.”

That last guess did not satisfy him. And epistemological training caused him to sense a deception in the May-December marriage on her birth certificate. Moreover, there had to be more to her selection by the Feliks people—a former lover in the inner council, perhaps. She had wide experience for a woman not yet in her late twenties. “Where is she now?”

“Here in Moscow. In Lubyanka, with the archivist in his office. This time he’s awake.”

Davidov was surprised to learn she was at hand. From his closed-circuit monitor in Yasenovo, he punched up the Lubyanka screen, skipped through several channels, and found her talking to the archivist.

“Yelena, where is the Krumins girl likely to go next?”

“She has asked for the Shelepin family records,” the analyst said. “They’re on the fourth floor, in the Chekists’ Study Room.”

He was familiar with that room, dominated by a heroic portrait of the founder of the Soviet secret police, “Iron Feliks” Dzerzhinsky.

“Make sure nobody is in there, and be certain no tape is made, audio or video. No surveillance at all, you understand? Tell the archivist to keep her waiting for an hour.” He could be in Moscow in thirty minutes. “Tell my driver I want to go in to Lubyanka right away. Run down the original of her birth certificate—I want to see that—and hand me her file.”

“The extra document is in, Nikolai Andreyevich.”

There were three thick folders. “All this on a woman so young?”

“She was a troublemaker.”

Liana Krumins stopped at the open doorway of the file room; a man was inside, hunched over the contents of three files spread out at the end of a long table. A low lamp lit the papers but kept his face in shadows, but he seemed youngish, with a flowing mustache in the Stalin style. An expensive black leather jacket, with the zippers and metal buttons that the fashionable set had been affecting in Moscow the last few years, hung over the chair behind him. He was wealthy or had family connections or both.

She entered, looked at the slip in her hand, went to the cabinet with the files on the Shelepin family. The numbered folder was there. An inventory sheet—done on a typewriter, which meant recently—included a cross-reference to another folder about the Berensky family, but did not give its file number. She took two Shelepin family folders out of the cabinet; they were heavy, and hit the table with a thud.

“Shhh,” said the man.

“Shhh yourself,” she replied. She had as much right to be here as he did.

“I’m trying to concentrate. This is important work.”

She glared at him, pulled up a chair with a loud scraping noise, and went to work on her quest. She was looking for any reference to Anna Berensky, Shelepin’s private secretary in his early days at the KGB, or their illegitimate son Aleks, who she suspected was the young man that some of the Feliks people sent to America when they dominated the KGB. The cryptic cross-reference in the file to a Berensky family supported her theory.

Five minutes later, the man at the end of the table looked up and said, “I apologize. I was rude to you.”

She nodded her acceptance, slowly turning over another document. A handsome man, and she liked the strong black mustache, but a fool; how could he not know that these rooms were not only bugged but televised?

“I’m looking for the truth about a fascinating woman,” he said, tapping the papers before him.

She rolled her eyes toward the ceiling, the universal signal of warning about surveillance.

“Oh, that.” He rose, went to the mirror on the far wall, removed it from its hook, and put it on the floor. He then hung his jacket over the lens that the one-way mirror had concealed. He came toward her—moving with grace, like an athlete or a dancer—reached under the table, and pulled out a small microphone, snapping its wire with a short jerk. “Mustn’t forget the audio backup. Now we’re alone.”

“You’re going to get us in trouble. The guards will notice the blackout and be here in a minute.” The man was a fool.

“Relax, I work here. I’m new, but I frighten the file clerks. Name is Nikolai.” He extended his hand. She shook it firmly, as always; he had a strong hand, sensitive fingers. Instead of being a fool, he was a charmer, which put her doubly on guard. He was not wearing a pass; she asked where it was. He pulled out his wallet and showed her his ministry identification: Nikolai Andreyevich Davidov, All Floors. She interpreted that to mean he was no minor functionary. The picture showed him smiling; she had never seen a pass of any kind, even a passport, with a person smiling. She waited for his questions.

He went back to his end of the table, tapped the papers. “Fascinating, what you can learn from these. Frightening, too—in the old days, they wasted God knows how much time and money following innocent people, listening, compiling dossiers.”

She pointed to his coat hanging on the lens and the ripped-out wire on the table. “Only in the old days?”

“You’re right. Some of these are recent,” he said, caressing the file. “But most of the reports were in the late eighties, when she was working subversively for independence.”

“Where?”

“Baltics.”

Probably somebody Liana knew, perhaps in Estonia; more women were trusted there by the independence movement leaders than in Latvia. “I worked for Latvian independence,” she said forthrightly. It was no secret. “Maybe I know her.”

He motioned her over.

On top of the file’s contents was a picture of a room in what seemed like a political headquarters, a familiar sight, with a dozen or so people
working on mimeograph machines in the days before photocopiers and faxes. She knew some of the faces, and looked closer. The man she had lived with at the time was in the center. It was their headquarters.

She pushed the picture aside to see the one underneath. There was her own face in the photograph, elated, the night the Americans recognized Latvian independence, holding out a bottle of champagne. A moment later, she remembered, she had poured the champagne over the head of her coworker. To the left of the pictures she saw an official document, a birth certificate in Russian, a copy of which she had at home.

“This is my file,” she breathed.