Sleeper Spy (29 page)

“We’re not the hayseeds Irving Fein thinks, Michael. Memphis is the hub city of Federal Express.” The accountant started to stammer an apology, but Dominick waved it off. “Do you suppose the Feliks organization, with its old KGB contacts, is ahead of everybody in this manhunt?”

“That was not the impression I got from Liana Krumins in Moscow last week. The Feliks crowd thinks he should be their man, and they’re good and pissed he’s disappeared.”

“Tell me about her.”

The accountant did not know where to begin. How could he describe what an independent force in a colorful Latvian blouse was like? As a young woman, Liana was, to Michael Shu, like no other he had ever met: serious but easily amused, sexy but aloof, a manipulative idealist. He kept telling himself to mistrust her because she was in cahoots with the sleazy Feliks outfit, but he felt a quality of authenticity about her, and thought he saw a depth of painful experience in her eyes that belied her years. None of that would he tell the banker.

“She’s old for her age—twenty-six going on forty, you know? She’s tied in tight to the Feliks people, and out to help them squeeze what they can learn out of the new KGB types.” The accountant felt it necessary to add: “But she’s a journalist. I mean, Liana’s after a story, even though the wrong gang set her out after it. She’s a born user, and she’s using them by letting herself be used. Does that make sense?”

“Very perceptive.” Then the banker threw him a fast one. “Is the CIA using Irving Fein, and Viveca Farr, and you?”

“Gee, no.” Shu kicked himself for ever suggesting a close tie with the CIA; it had made Dominick suspicious. “You know, Irving zapped the Agency when everybody else was afraid to. Back when those fellas had real clout. But the reason he doesn’t pop ’em much now is that they’re down and out. Irving can get mean, and loves to bring down big shots, but he doesn’t shoot the wounded. That doesn’t mean we let the spooks manipulate us.”

“I’m glad to hear that, though it would be nice to have the color of law in this enterprise.”

Shu consulted an index card with the points he wanted to cover at this lunch. One to go. “Irving said to be sure you went to an ear doctor. You want to be hard of hearing in your left ear, like the sleeper.”

“So Viveca told me. I have an appointment with an acoustics specialist at New York Hospital tomorrow.” Dominick touched his left lobe. “And anything you can learn, from whatever source—maybe the Krumins girl—about the sleeper’s first twenty years in the Soviet Union would be helpful.”

The banker signaled to the captain and slid out of the booth. The accountant realized Dominick was not even going to bother signing a check; the captain would do that for him, presumably adding a prearranged tip. Shu was impressed.

“Michael, why don’t you make your headquarters for the next few weeks in Memphis, Tennessee?”

Michael Shu nodded, and the banker looked relieved. “I’d feel more comfortable in this with you working closely with me.”

Liana always had company.

Arkady or another of the Feliks people would step out of a doorway soon after she appeared in front of the station and fall into step about twenty paces behind her. She thought that when she grew old and ugly, she would stay involved with espionage in some way, so she would always be shadowed and never be lonely. And ever since her talk with Nikolai Davidov, the day he gave her the tape of her triumph over the guards at Lubyanka, a second presence could be felt, if seldom seen. Sometimes it was a man far behind the Feliks shadow; other times a woman in front of her, walking toward her home; occasionally both. Rarely the same persons; the new KGB apparently still had plenty of people to employ in subtle surveillance.

She found herself thinking about Davidov often, and not always in connection with the story. She could hear him saying, “I hate these interrogations, I always confess in the end,” and it made her smile. Was he married? If so, that would not bother her. Was his a smiling new face on the same old KGB? That mattered. Did she trust him? Of course not; she had abandoned such foolishness long ago, in a cell in what had been the Nazi and Soviet headquarters. Would she use the telephone number Davidov had written on his card if the occasion arose?

She tried to come up with a way to make the occasion arise soon. His mind must be a maze of intrigue; almost equally fascinating was his mouth with that twisting grin. Why, then, the black leather jacket with all the metal zippers, like a rock star or a mafiya dealer? Not right for him; uncharacteristic; he was a serious man, an academician. She was
certain he had kept a copy of the tape of her strip search. She hoped he played it every night before he went to sleep.

A babushka seated on a blanket with a baby at her breast and Russian
beriozka
dolls and surplus military hats blocked her way in the narrow street outside the station. At the outstretched hand offering a doll, Liana shook her head, but she was stopped by the voice—a man’s voice—that said, “I have a message for you from America.”

Liana took the doll in her hand and pretended to examine it. “Who in America?”

“From the one who sleeps. The message is: ‘Do not let any of them use you to reach me. I will be in touch with you.’ Do not buy the doll. Walk on.”

“May I send a message back?”

“No.” The hand came up and snatched back the doll, as if the bargaining for it had led to naught.

Liana started to turn to walk on, then wheeled back on the man in the babushka outfit. Who was this messenger to give her orders?

“Take this message back anyhow.” The reporter Fein had taught her always to leave with a question. But she had no question of substance ready to ask. It came to her: “When and where shall we meet?”

“I’ll pass it on. Walk away now.”

That was better. Never remain passive. She walked away briskly; a few turnings later, she came on a man in an old Red Army hat and a boy selling similar items from Russia. To demonstrate an interest in street vendors to her followers, Liana stopped and examined a doll, dickered over the price, then bought a white marble good-luck mushroom.

She walked more slowly, wondering about the message. Who had sent it? Not the Feliks people; they could contact her at any time through Arkady, and besides, their purpose was to reach out for the sleeper, not to wait for him to come to them or the KGB. Nor was it likely the message came from the KGB; if Nikolai wanted her to know something, he would appear at her door and make himself at home. And the American accountant, Shu, representing the journalist Fein, had been open in his meeting with her.

Might the message actually have come from the sleeper agent in America? Liana did not let herself jump to that conclusion; more likely,
it was a gambit of the KGB to trick the Feliks people or vice versa. Both groups liked to think of her as a pawn in their game. Most probably the sender was Davidov. His purpose was to dissuade her from letting his rivals, now centered beyond his official reach in the Baltics, use her journalist’s credentials to lead them to the agent in America.

Of course, if the babushka’s message was from the real sleeper, the verbal delivery by the souvenir seller would be a good way to deliver it—no way of its getting intercepted or recorded. She let herself give the contact a bit more credence; if the message was real, then it would confirm the existence of the sleeper as alive and active; up to now, he was just a distant theory of old spies.

She quickened her step. Perhaps she would be the one to get a news story that would not only shake the ministry here in Riga, like the broadcast she had done tonight about corruption in the Latvian government, but be picked up and marveled at all over the world. Liana was determined to meet Madame Nina, who apparently dominated an organization that struck fear into many hearts in Russia.

Surely Nikolai Davidov would know more about her. She debated whether to call the number on the card that the KGB operative had given her, and decided that would not be a good idea. Better that Nikolai should come after her; men usually did, for one purpose or another. She could not telephone Michael Shu in America to pass the word to Irving Fein about the sleeper’s possible approach, because that transmission would be overheard by everybody.

When uncertain, press on ahead. She wanted to be the one to get this story. She decided to keep the message from the sleeper to herself. She would keep searching the files in Moscow, developing her relationship with Davidov, a high-level source in the KGB, and staying in touch with the Americans Fein and Shu. If tonight’s warning message turned out to be authentic, and if her return message made the sleeper agent in America aware of her eagerness for a meeting, she could be on the verge of a coup that would make her the most famous journalist in the Baltics.

The sleeper, the man known to some of his searchers only by his real Russian name, Aleksandr Berensky, steepled his fingers in the darkened hotel room and considered the state of the chase.

The directors of the new KGB, who had no claim on his loyalty, were following his daughter to try to find him. Berensky found it amusing that Liana Krumins, who had never laid eyes on her real father, probably had not been told that she was the daughter of the target of her search. He believed she knew nothing of his American identity or whereabouts. She was an innocent in all this, so far; she was searching for a sleeper agent in America only for a journalistic reason, unaware that she was bait. Berensky had watched videotapes of her newscasts, provided him by his thoughtful control agent before the explosion in Barbados, and was impressed with her on-air performance. She did have what the Americans called “gumption”; the messenger he had sent to Riga had reported her refusal to take an order and her return message asking for a meeting. He would ignore it for a while.

His survival was his first priority. Did the new head of the Fifth Directorate know that the KGB’s sleeper agent in America had the Soviet name of Aleksandr Berensky? Did those in Lubyanka know that the sleeper was the bastard son of Shelepin, the greatest Soviet spymaster of all?

He presumed the answer to both questions was yes. A half-dozen of his fellow students at the KGB’s American Village knew of his training, and two had worked with the same handler; they surely had informed Davidov about the Russian identity of the agent sent to put down roots in the United States. But that was all they knew; the only ones who
knew his American legend were the two KGB officials who had died in the air crash, plus Control, who had died trying to kill him. His legend had been exquisitely concocted and was highly resistant to background checks. The only other Russian agent with the need to know that legend was his confederate in Washington; now, Moscow did not know they worked together.

Eyes half-closed in the dark, the sleeper wondered whether Davidov’s branch of the KGB knew that Anna Berensky, once Shelepin’s secretary, was his mother. Did Davidov, a new man with no KGB roots, know that Shelepin’s son—never given his father’s last name—had married a Riga woman named Antonia, impregnated her, and then abandoned her to take on his sleeper assignment? Did Davidov know that Liana Krumins was their daughter?

He doubted it; at the very start of this great enterprise, Shelepin had told him he had erased all connections between his family in Russia and the agent who would work alone in America. Berensky believed that blackout meant not only records but any KGB staff with potentially troublesome memories. In this, he considered himself fortunate to be descended from a totally ruthless man.

The stolid wife, Antonia, was now running his late mother’s ballet school in Riga, and the lively Liana was pursuing her journalism. That suggested that the KGB was in the dark, or at least Davidov’s directorate was. He allowed himself to become certain of that conclusion: the sleeper deduced that Davidov and his “new” KGB operatives were unaware of Liana’s true Kremlin lineage.

Seizure, torture, and swap—if he did know, what could be more natural? That is what the sleeper would do in Davidov’s shoes, if the KGB knew that word of the women’s arrests would get to Aleks Berensky in America. As far as he was concerned, they could do whatever they wanted with Antonia; he had always been glad to be rid of his Russian wife, and if their separation was made permanent by death, so much the better. But the daughter was of interest to him, more so as the years passed.