Sleeper Spy

by William Safire

  “You might want to powder your nose,” he said. She was sweating; she looked good to him sweaty, as if she’d been making love. “Otherwise, you’re better than those guys.” He pointed to the monitors across the room of the competing networks, which had just begun covering the story. “They look like they’re phumphing.”

  “Oh my God, I’m on without makeup. At the next break, send me Evelyn with whatever she can do in a hurry. Irving, what do you want me to ask you?”

  “Ask me what if the guy blows himself up.”

  “I’m going to ask him what if the hijacker blows himself up,” she said to the producer in the booth or wherever. “Right. I won’t.” She said, “He says that’s too alarming, scare everybody. What else?”

  “What might the President do right now.”

  Red light. “We’re back at the anchor desk in New York with Irving Fein, the antiterrorism expert. Irv, at this moment, we don’t have much information to work with. We’re waiting for a direct report from the press secretary aboard the hijacked Air Force One. And we should reassure everyone that the President, we are told, is unharmed. Unharmed. Let me ask you directly: What options does the President have at this moment?”

  “Before doing anything, he should get hold of the Vice President and tell him to go to the Sit Room in the White House and stand by.” That sounded fairly stupid to him as he was saying it; what else would the VP do? “Then he could order the Secret Service to mount an assault—to shoot the terrorist in the cockpit—but that seems a little extreme. More likely, he’s telling them to humor him along, and turn the plane around like he wants, maybe only halfway, and play for time and slow down and conserve fuel”—he made a note on his pad to find out how long the plane could stay in the air on fuel it had for a crosscountry trip—“and get some talker-down shrink on the phone. If the hijacker speaks English. The first thing I’d find out is what languages this guy speaks, and what’s his gripe, what does he want.”

  “In our Los Angeles studio,” she said, picking up on his reference to a shrink, “I’m told we have a psychiatrist standing by with experience in dealing with hostage-takers. No—hold it—here’s the plane.”

  “This is the President’s press secretary aboard Air Force One with the President and his party.” The director was ready with a still picture of the press secretary on the screen for a voice-over.

  “We have a woman in the cockpit who is armed and says she has explosives on her person. The Secret Service has decided it would be prudent to believe her. She has handed us a note asking that the flight plan be altered to direct us toward the Atlantic, and we have acceded to her request. She apparently speaks no English, which makes communication difficult, but has handed us a statement in English, with a pamphlet attached, demanding the United States intercede immediately in the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh on the side of the Armenians, who the statement says are dying by the hundreds every day. We are in a tight spot here, but there is no cause for alarm. The President has spoken to the Vice President, who will monitor events from the White House. The President has appointed his National Security Adviser to be his second-in-command here on the plane, in constant communication with the pilot. The President and the First Lady are calm and unharmed. We will continue to be in touch with the White House in Washington, and will patch through to all of you as circumstances warrant. A press pool is aboard and will be permitted to broadcast as soon as our emergency communications can be interrupted. The President has asked me to forward this message: ‘Don’t worry, everyone, we’ll come through this fine.’ ”

  As he listened, Irving beckoned to a stagehand and asked how to dial long distance. The man told him his phone was now programmed to let him call outside, and the code was double-zero, double-zero, then the area code and the number. He got out his address book and dialed the home number of a guy who had been a good source of his ten years before. The number still worked. “Ralph? You up and watching? Answer this lady’s questions.”

  He put Viveca on to the retired Air Force officer who had been the pilot of Air Force One for nearly a decade. He printed a few questions on his pad for her: “How terrorist could get aboard? Fuel capacity of new AFI and how long can stay up? Pilot prep for this? Least bad place on plane for explosion? Best altitude? Gun in cockpit?”

  The screen closed in on her face and the two voices in a pretty good interview, certainly timely. The monitors of the other networks showed the anchors phumphing, recapping, adding little new. Off camera now, Irving called a source at the CIA at home, asked one question, was rebuffed, told the guy he would get him one day, and hung up. Riffling the pages of his address book—he had once tried one of those whizbang computer cards, but the book was faster—he called the duty officer at Langley, identified himself, and asked to be put through to Dorothy Barclay, the DCI, at home. In a moment, she came on.

  “I’m in my car on the way back to the office, and this is an open line,” she said.

  “I need Davidov’s home number, right now. It’s on your hotline card, about tenth down on the list, in the wallet in your bag.”

  “It’s eight in the morning in Moscow, Irving. He may already be at work.”

  “Not him. And it’s Saturday there. You know what’s going on, Dotty. We’ve known each other for a long time, and I really need this. I really … need … the number. I won’t tell where I got it.”

  “I don’t have Davidov’s number. He’s too new.”

  “You’re lying to an old friend, Dotty. I’m surprised at you.”

  “I can give you Viktor Gulko’s home number. He’s the Russian President’s right-hand man. He has a red phone on his night table to the top man. I swear he’s better for your purpose than Davidov, who’s down the line at the KGB.”

  She read off the numbers of the presidential aide’s home and private line at the office, and promised the same for anybody else if this aide was not available. Irving thought it odd she did not have Davidov’s number, but was glad to be given what amounted to an upgrade. He knew all along he had been smart to keep her secret years ago, at a time when her closeted lesbianism would have made her a security risk. Dorothy Barclay was a good investment. Few other reporters could call her at home at night for a piece of information, and nobody else dared call her Dotty.

  He got Gulko on the line first crack, at his apartment; must have woken him up. The Russian had not yet heard about the hijacking, but he knew Irving’s name from his writings on counterterrorism, and was familiar with the mess in Nagorno-Karabakh. Irving filled him in on the bare details and told him what he had in mind. Gulko, who Dotty had probably chosen because he was antibureaucratic, reacted swiftly and positively.

  Irving tapped Viveca on the arm, interrupting her interview with the pilot. “I got somebody here, on the line from Moscow. He can help explain what’s going on in the place where the hijacker comes from. His name is Viktor Gulko, he’s the President of the Federation’s right-hand man. Mr. Gulko, you’re on the air to everybody in America. First tell us what’s the state of the war down in Nagorno-whatever.”

  That was a softball to let the man wake up and gather his thoughts. Irving knew what he wanted Gulko for, and knew that what he would ask for was in the Russian Federation’s best interests. The question was a setup for a yes, would advance the story, and might even help the President in his tight spot. As the Russian aide sketched the outlines of the ethnic strife between Armenians and Azeris, it occurred to Irving that he could make a reporter out of the woman seated next to him. He wrote out for Viveca: “Bust in with—would you be willing to call your contacts down in that republic and get them to find someone who will try to talk the hijacker out of her plan? We can patch whoever it is through to the plane.”

  One thing about Viveca—in a fluid situation, she took direction. She waited until Irving was in the middle of a question about the cause of the Armenian uprising to put her hand on his arm, on camera, and say: “Let me break in, Mr. Gulko, with this question: would you be w
illing, right this minute, to call your contacts down in that republic and get them to find someone who will talk the hijacker out of her plan?”

  “Well, yes, of course,” Gulko said after the briefest hesitation, perhaps aware he was broadcasting to millions from his bed. “I will first call my superior, who will call the Russian President. I am sure he will be eager for us to do all we can to help avert this danger to the life of the President of the United States. When I get the Armenian leader who can help, or perhaps a relative of the hijacker, I will use the hotline to the White House?”

  “The switchboard may be jammed,” said Irving, picking up on the Russian’s rising inflection. He wanted to maintain control of the communication. “Call this number, and we’ll patch you through to Whacka and onto the plane.” He took off his lapel mike and gave him the number, hoping it would not go over the air to let every nut call in. Gulko would know what Whacka was; the KGB tapped its transmissions often enough.

  Viveca then started interviewing Irving about who Gulko was; the detail about the red phone on his night table to the boss added a nice touch but didn’t last long, so she switched to what a successful intercession could mean to relations between the two former rivals. In time, she got a signal in her ear to do a wrap-up and switch to Washington. She stumbled through that, only slightly disoriented by all that had been going on, but still crisp and authoritative in her cue to the bureau in Washington.

  “Sam’s just coming in the building,” said the floor manager. “He’ll take over.”

  “That’s nice,” was all she said. Irving thought she was relieved but did not want to show she wanted relief. A minute into the Washington feed, however, she sat up sharply and reacted to the message in her ear. Red light. “We interrupt to bring you this transmission from Air Force One.”

  It was the AP reporter from the press pool. “The crisis is over,” he reported. “The hijacker was shot in the head and killed instantly by the copilot, who had a concealed weapon in the cockpit. The decision to risk an explosion was taken by the National Security Adviser on the recommendation of the head of the Secret Service detail.”

  Other reporters on the plane came on with interviews, and finally the President himself came on with a statement of reassurance to the public and thanks to his crew. Irving figured the delay was due to a slow speechwriter, but forgave the ghost when he heard the line “I understand that the Russian government, when asked to help by an American journalist, was forthcoming, and I want to express the gratitude of the people of the United States.” Now the Russians owed Irving a big one. Dotty would look good, too, when she took credit internally for making it possible.

  The network coanchor came on the set, congratulated Viveca, and told her to finish the show, insisting he wasn’t needed. These piranhas knew when to be gracious, Irving figured.

  When it was all over, she told Irving, “You were excellent.” No big hug, no you-saved-my-ass, just a prim acknowledgment of professionalism.

  That was okay with Irving Fein. Television had never been his medium. He was glad to have been able to show her, as well as any real journalist who watched, how to advance a story. The grateful producer sent them home in separate limousines. Irving told the producer, who seemed overwhelmed by Viveca’s ability to jump in and ask the key question of the Russian on the phone, that he would be sending in a bill for his services, maybe a grand. He never did TV just for the glory of it; he had a little stickum note on his computer with a quotation from Samuel Johnson: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.”

  Then he told the limo driver to drive around for an hour or so, down Fifth Avenue, around to Times Square, up to Columbus Circle. Even better than the feeling of luxury was the experience of luxury for which someone else was paying. He called everybody he could think of around the world from the car.

  NEW YORK

  Michael Shu knew he was impressionable, but found the offices of a high-powered literary agent to be truly impressive. On top of that, he was soon to be a full participant in an impressive meeting.

  Two nights before, freshly returned from a trip to Moscow, Riga, Paris, and the Bahamas, he had watched Irving Fein with his new book partner, Viveca Farr, cover the hijacking crisis. Now here he was with those media stars, invited to a meeting in the Madison Avenue offices of Matthew “Ace” McFarland, renowned as a man who made everybody rich. Shu was proud to be part of the team and grateful to Irving for dealing him in. And after lunch, he was going to meet the ringer for the sleeper, an international banker who traveled in the circles only the most senior of the Big Six accountants ever got to see. This was the big time.

  He arrived early, looked at the stack of books by authors represented by McFarland (“Call him Ace, he loves it,” Irving had told him), and picked up a New York Times. The television review of the coverage of the hijacking put Viveca’s network far in the lead, not only for being the first broadcast net on the air with sustained interruption of programming, but for reaching around the world for guests that illuminated the background. “Ms. Farr, though stumbling through her wrap-ups, and quite understandably looking somewhat haggard with no makeup—she went on the air at a moment’s notice—made the most significant reportorial contribution of the evening with a pointed question to a Kremlin aide. The reporter asked the Russian about reaching-out to agents in the war zone to establish a phone link between the hijacker and some of her compatriots who opposed her violent demonstration.”

  He had to go back and read it again, but the upshot was surely favorable; Michael was sorry the reviewer did not acknowledge Irving as the first to suggest the possibility of a cleaning woman breaching security. But Irving got a plug, too: “Mr. Fein, a print media journalist well known for his dogged enterprise, scored with the timely call to his high-ranking Russian source. It pays to have a little black address book. Though clearly not comfortable before the camera, and inclined to slump in his chair and to mumble, Fein’s down-home, unpolished bearing provided a nice counterpoint to Ms. Farr’s crisp television professionalism.”

  Michael straightened in his reception-room chair. The reviewer had Irving’s physical demeanor down pat; he did have a tendency to melt into whatever he was sitting on. The elevator doors opened and Irving bounded out; somewhere in the accountant’s mind there was this poetic image of a great beast “slouching toward Bethlehem.” He held up the paper: “ ‘… scored with the timely call to his high-ranking Russian source.’ You were a hit.”

  “I never look at reviews, waste of time. Am I late?”

  “Viveca’s not here yet. I didn’t want to go in without you. Yeah, we’re six minutes late. You should see what I got in the Bahamas.”

  “A tan? A dose? You really shouldn’t go for those great-lookin’ casino dolls, Mike—they’re shills for the house.”

  Michael shook his head; the reporter was a kidder, almost every line ending in a rising inflection, but Irving knew what they were after: evidence of major money movements and transfers of bearer bonds through Bahamian banks to or from the Soviet Union and its satellites in 1988 and ’89. These would be the clues to how and where the sleeper was operating.

  One of Irving’s friends, a longtime con man forced to live offshore, had led Michael to a government official who was able to allow a look at some computer records for a small fee and the promise of a journalistic favor one day. “Irv, your crooked buddy down there said to look at the barter arrangement of oil for sugar with Castro in Cuba. A lot more oil came from the Sovs than the deal called for, and was sold in Puerto Rico, and somebody made a bundle that was socked into a Bahamian bank.”

  “You got all that in a memo for Dominick?”

  When Michael began to pull it out of his briefcase, Irving told him to save it, because Viveca was coming off the elevator.

  “Lipstick and everything,” was his greeting. “I liked you better the other way—‘somewhat haggard.’ ”

  So Irving had read the review; Michael Shu knew he was a kidder. She s
hot the reporter a mock scowl and led the way down to Ace’s office without waiting to be announced.

  “Viveca! Irving! And you too, young fellow. I have great news! Sit-sit.”

  They sat-sat. On the wall opposite was a huge painting of what seemed to Michael to be nothing. It was all white, in a slim gold frame on a white wall. Irving noticed him studying it. “Like it, kid? White cow eating celery in a snowstorm. Cost Ace a fortune. Symbol of decadence, purity, whatever you see in it.” Shu assumed it was a tax-avoidance scheme he had not yet heard about.

  “I have to say how proud I am to be associated with you two.” Ace beamed. “Did you see the tape afterward? You were magnificent.”

  “I never look at myself on tape,” she said.

  “I never read reviews,” Irving added.

  “The mark of the professional. I exploited this opportunity immediately,” Ace went on. “Thirty million people were coming to know the two of you, and trust the way you worked together, the other night. Viveca, you were already a household name, a familiar face, but you needed an extra boost of credibility that experience brings.” He swiveled to face Irving. “And you, my old friend, were known as the greatest reporter in the world among your peers, but most people thought of you only as a byline in cold print. Now that’s all changed. Today you two are fused together as a reporting team, followed and admired by millions.”

  “Cut the shit, Ace. How much did you get for the advance?”

  “I’ll do my share on this project,” Viveca said, “but fusing is more than I had in mind. Did you make a sale?”

  “I told the publisher that I had been negotiating with, on an exclusive basis because of the story’s secrecy, that the three hundred thousand we had been talking about would no longer do. As a result of the smash hit on television the other night, I told him, I had expressions of eager interest from others, and simple fairness forced me to open it up to competitive bidding.”