Sleeper Spy

by William Safire

  “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.”

  RIGA

  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.

  CHICAGO

  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 mot
her. 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.

  The agent rose and went to the hotel-room window facing Grant Park. He felt he had almost come to know Liana through videotapes of her recent Riga telecasts in Russian. In appearance, culture, and attitude, the vibrant and self-sufficient young woman seemed closer to him than his American daughters. Those two looked and acted like their late blond, all-American mother—materialistic predators roaming the shopping-mall jungle.

  So much for the strangely inefficient KGB search. The pursuit of Berensky by the Feliks organization was another story. Latvia, now outside the KGB orbit, was its base; an extensive cabal of secret police old-timers was a part of its network; many of the new mafiya of entrepreneurs had become the Feliks organization’s source of support. Some of those black marketers were aware of the ways Berensky offered to draw oil profits out of the country.

  The dominant Madame Nina, and those in league with her, presumed—correctly—that Berensky was assembling this vast fortune for their use. He was inclined to think their trust was well placed, provided they could first bring the new Russian “reformers” to the economic brink of disaster. Yet he was aware that the clandestine organization’s leaders were growing impatient with him, even as they knew they could not afford to offend him.

  Berensky wanted to be sure that the vast wealth he was assembling would be used for the original purpose Shelepin had drilled into his mind: to save and serve the strong Russia he was born to. His conception of Russia was as a nation whose people were under the firm control of a central government in Moscow, with a leader who had a sense of Russia’s imperial destiny. Communism had failed, but Russia must never be less than a superpower. The current regime in Moscow was drifting toward convergence with the West; Berensky had to be certain that the organization in Russia whose assets were entrusted to him was truly the heir of Shelepin’s vision.

  He wished he knew more about the leader Madame Nina. Control had failed to provide hard information about the shadowy woman.

  His other pursuers were almost laughable. He viewed the American news reporters, the flamboyant Fein and the neurotic television girl Farr, as more of an inconvenient amusement than a threat. He had devised a way to monitor their amateur investigation patterned on what his father had told him about the Trust, a KGB entrapment operation started in the 1920s. Nothing they were doing was a source of concern to him.

  Except for their employee, the Eurasian accountant, Michael Shu. Berensky turned away from the window and looked into the darkness of the room, irritated at a mere coincidence. Of all the offshore banks where major money could be run, why did this naive accountant have to have close connections with the Yellowbird Bank of the Bahamas? It happened to be the bank Berensky had bought five years ago and taken out of the dangerous business of laundering drug money, to be free for his far more lucrative currency trades and asset transfers. It was highly unfortunate that Shu knew most of the employees from the bank’s former narcotics days.

  Berensky determined to keep a close eye on Shu’s poking around. If he came too close, and could not then be suborned, the accountant would have to be removed.

  The sleeper found this prospect of violence neither troubling nor enjoyable; it would not be the first time he had protected his mission by creating an accident victim. Berensky recalled how, to protect his identity in the early days in America, he had arranged for the apparent suicide of a fellow agent when he discovered him doubling for the CIA. More recently, when the owner of a Swiss bank that handled the original $3 billion stake posed a threat, Berensky had been forced to direct his confederate in Helsinki to go to Bern and arrange another suicide. Now, with a $30 billion empire at stake, and the moment not yet ripe for the financing of a counter-counterrevolution, the sleeper remained ready to do whatever was necessary to protect his enterprise.

  The telephone rang. He ignored it, knowing the call could not be for him.

  He felt a great responsibility pressing on his chest: no less than the rejuvenation of Russia as a superpower and the regaining of an empire. He had been willing to live a lifelong lie, on his own, in enemy territory, to be ready for this moment. He presumed that his father, a Soviet man of extraordinary foresight, had envisioned as an eventuality the economic ruin of the socialist state, and had sent him into the heart of capitalism to assemble the capital needed for the recovery of national power. The sleeper agent was not about to let anything interfere with his historic mission. Especially not when it was so close to completion.

  In an age when information was power, he had the information: at first from the Russian side, where advance knowledge of economic news and political acts that would affect trading had enabled him to multiply his initial stake tenfold on the anonymous and liquid currency markets.

  More recently, he had been applying the same technique in the West. A former East German Stasi cadre had offered itself for sale soon after the Berlin Wall fell, and Control had snapped it up. That was how he had gained a most valuable personnel asset, a Finnish economist, a striking and brilliant woman with ties to a source in the American Federal Reserve. Sirkka Numminen’s access to inside information about moves planned at the Bundesbank and the Federal Reserve had helped Berensky build his fortune. And when called upon for wet work in Bern, she had justified the training of a lifetime.

  He had positioned himself financially for one great final coup, one that would take his hoard to $100 billion. That would be enough to affect the balance of power in an impoverished Russia needful of the Shelepin vision of global dominance.

  Thinking of his father, who had been hard of hearing, the sleeper pulled at the lobe of his left ear, where a small hearing aid nestled deep in the canal. One of his American daughters was complaining of not being able to hear her professors clearly. He hoped the genetic weakness had not affected Liana.

  MOSCOW

  “We have the first useful results of the surveillance of the sleeper’s daughter, Director Davidov,” Yelena said. She was irritated with herself; she was upset at the Director’s unrelenting interest in the Riga television woman.

  “About time.”

  “Our surveillance of her has been very expensive,” she said. “Two people on two twelve-hour shifts. Not to mention the technical backup.”

  “I will retire some border guards. What results?”

  “The transmitter on the clasp of her amber pendant worked this time,” Yelena reported. The tiny, sensitive bug made in Taiwan had a broadcast range of nearly one hundred meters; the previous transmitter, manufactured years before in Soviet Ukraine and planted with great difficulty after a
surreptitious entry of Liana’s apartment, had emitted nothing but useless squeaks that were the cause of an intemperate outburst by Davidov, ordinarily a calm person. “She was accosted by a woman with a baby on a carpet selling beriozka dolls. Here is the transcript.” She handed him the single page.

  He read aloud the entire exchange between Liana Krumins and the messenger disguised as a babushka, from “I have a message for you from America” to the final “Walk away now.”

  Davidov held out his hand. “And now you will give me the report of the interrogation of the messenger,” he said, “who we took into custody immediately.”

  “Unfortunately that did not happen.”

  The directorate chief closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “I gave specific orders to pick up anybody who made contact with this woman to pass on any information. The three men in the truck heard the exchange. The two shadows on the street saw it. The babushka messenger is the only known connection to the sleeper, if she is genuine. What happened to her?”

  “Unfortunately she disappeared around the corner.”

  “Baby and blanket and souvenirs and all?”

  “Those items were left behind. The baby turned out to be a doll. The messenger may have been a man. We can’t tell from the voice.”

  “Fingerprints on the doll?”

  “Nobody thought to check for that, Director. I’ll see to it right away.”

  “There won’t be any,” Davidov said wearily. “The messenger was a professional. The sleeper agent is a professional. The only amateurs in this entire operation work for me. Unless they are extremely professional operatives who are working against me.”

  The intelligence analyst could not blame her boss for his touch of self-pity; a major tracing opportunity had been missed. “These are all new men and women on the case,” she assured him. “So there will be no old loyalties.”