Sleeper Spy

by William Safire

  “Of course, Viveca. You know that.”

  “Oh. The Process.” She bit her knuckle to keep quiet. He must have known from the start that she was his for the taking, but she had not thrown herself at him. He kept talking about “the Process,” as if a love affair were like making peace in the Mideast or arriving at courtroom justice, and aside from some affectionate holdings and fraternal kisses, nothing had happened to complicate her life. Usually this was because of her icebox reputation, or the way she intimidated the men she worked with; but when she liked somebody, she thought she sent out unmistakable signals of availability. Edward Dominick surely received them—he was, if anything, sensitive—but he kept saying he didn’t want to hurry the Process.

  She veered back to the subject. “Is Irving right? Are we spinning our wheels? You know, finding Berensky could make all the difference in my career.” Failure in this project would hurt her at the network. The remote possibility of losing her job always gave her the feeling she was standing at the edge of an abyss.

  “We’re on the right track, don’t worry. Remember the story of the turtle and the rabbit? I’m the turtle, slow and steady, and we’ll win in the end.”

  It’s the tortoise and the hare, she felt like telling him, but restrained herself; Southerners had their own slant on the folklore. “I’m not being much help to you,” she admitted.

  “Maybe you can find out what Irving was hinting at,” he suggested, “when he spoke of a mole at the Federal Reserve. That’s a fascinating thought. And it would help if we had some sources at the Fed’s enforcement branch.”

  “Why not ask him yourself? We’re all in this together.”

  “He may be reluctant to share his source with me, but perhaps he’d be more forthcoming with a fellow journalist.”

  She promised to try to find out. It wasn’t being disloyal to Irving to pass on a lead to Edward; as she said, they were all on the same team. But she allowed herself to admit that there might be an edge of jealousy involved.

  “And I’d like to be exposed to Liana Krumins,” he went on. “It would be great if you could establish some rapport with her. Shu says she knows about Berensky’s early years in Russia from the KGB files, his family life especially. Little things—nicknames, birthdays, schools, whatever. Somebody’s going to ask me about his early past,” he explained, “and I’d better be familiar with it.”

  She took on that assignment, too. If Dominick was going to play the sleeper, especially to Russians who might have known the young Berensky, he would have to be supplied with the kind of detail that actors needed for their roles. Twenty-odd years of aging would explain away the change in features, but an impersonator could be trapped by not knowing some silly detail a family member would know.

  “I’m surprised you can get a bagel in Memphis.”

  Michael Shu tidily placed a napkin in the saucer under his coffee cup to absorb the spillage. “Don’t be ethnocentric, Irving. More bagels are consumed in America today than doughnuts.”

  “How the hell can you be so sure of that?”

  “One of the Big Six firms did a study for a doughnut bakery chain. They tried to keep the results from the bagel people, but it leaked.” He watched Irving smear cream cheese on half his toasted poppy-seed bagel. “You think we rattled Dominick?”

  “You could have whimpered a little more, for crissake. The day of the stoic Oriental is long gone.”

  “I like the way Viveca came to my defense.”

  “Wasn’t you she was protecting, it was the guy who’s been shtupping her.”

  “I don’t think they’re having an affair, Irving. Nothing wrong if they are, but I doubt it.”

  Irving and he had worked out a charade to jar Dominick off his careful, methodical course of investigation without offending and losing him. The solution was for Fein to blast Shu; the banker would get the message. Viveca’s intercession was unexpected; Shu liked to think it was rooted in a respect she had for him, but he suspected it had more to do with defending Dominick, as Irving suggested. “Could it be he’s in business for himself on this?”

  “Sure he is. We all are.” Irving gave his foxy grin. “This guy wants to contact the sleeper in his own way, in his own time, on his own terms, and cut himself in on the biggest fortune in the world. He’ll sell us out in a minute.”

  “If you say so.” Shu did not want to believe it. Dominick operated in a sensible, businesslike way, even if his strategy had not turned up really major movements of money into the likeliest banks and mutual funds. “You do tend to be impatient, Irv.”

  “I get heat, I pass it along. And if you come across a real lead to Berensky, tell me first—we can’t trust Dominick completely, and he’s got Little Miss Icebox in his pocket, no matter what you say. So don’t confide in her, either.”

  “Helluva team.”

  “It’ll work. We’re only striking out on the tracking-down of Berensky through the money end. We’re not doing so bad, I bet, on—” He took a large bite of the bagel, and his conclusion was difficult to hear through the chewing.

  “On making him come to us?” the accountant guessed.

  “That’s what I said. I got a guy in the enforcement branch of the Fed, and he’s grateful to me. I gave him a tip last week about a Chinese mole in his agency.”

  “How’d you find out about a Chinese mole, Irving?” The reporter’s sources were the best.

  “Lookit—I don’t have the foggiest notion if there is or ever was a mole in the Fed, Chinese or Martian. But it’s logical, isn’t it? If you’re gonna penetrate the CIA, or the Defense Department, why not the Fed? So I dress it up as a tip and give it to my guy in the enforcement branch. It’s catnip to him. He can then go to his boss, say he heard about it from the great reporter Fein, and get all sorts of money and staff to go after him. Big bureaucratic power play; nobody at the Fed can stop it, because nobody wants to be the one on record for blocking an investigation that, who knows, may turn up something. Bulgarian mole, whatever. And in a year, maybe the horse will fly.”

  Shu assumed that last was the punchline of a joke but did not want to take Irving off the point. He marveled at his associate’s approach; Irving was able to create an indebtedness in a source out of nothing but an idea. “So then what does your guy at the Fed do for you? Give you the story if the nontip leads to something?”

  “That’s not to hold your breath waiting for. You just don’t have the feel for this, Mike.” He held up a finger smeared with cream cheese. “One—I can get an answer from him right away on all whopping transfers he looked into since late ’89.”

  “That saves us a lot of time.”

  “Two.” Up went a thumb of the other hand. “He runs the traps for me.”

  Michael knew that was one of Irving’s metaphors that he was expected to understand. To “run the traps” was a hunting-trapping expression, he supposed; in early morning, the trapper ran around to all the traps he had set out the night before, to see if any animal had been caught. So the Fed source was checking for Irving on all other current investigations of major money transfers. Shu nodded for Irving to go on.

  “Three.” Fein licked the cream cheese off another finger and added it to the display. “In his investigation of the mole, he looks into the recent surreptitious banking activities of one Edward Dominick of Memphis, Tennessee.”

  Shu’s heart sank. “And me.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll cover your ass. Part of my theory of the story is this: the sleeper, once activated, had to have developed some of the Soviet assets here. Obvious places to get advanced information to make money: Treasury, maybe the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the FTC, but especially the Fed.”

  Which meant currency trading. Which Dominick thought that the sleeper would have thought was too risky. “So why do you want the Fed looking into our fake sleeper operation?”

  Irving made a beckoning gesture. “You tell me, Mike.”

  The landscape was suddenly illuminated. “Because whatever
contact Berensky has at the Fed will sure as hell tell him all about the trading we’re doing to parallel his. And about the banks we’re dealing with. And then the sleeper will think we’re hot on his trail and will come to us to buy us off.”

  “Neat, huh?”

  “Jesus, Irving, I hope you know what the hell you’re doing.”

  WASHINGTON

  “This is your archfriend.”

  Irving recognized the voice of Walter Clauson of the CIA; a split second later, he caught the allusion to the arches of McDonald’s, impenetrably innocent scene of their last rendezvous.

  “The bagels are better in Memphis,” the reporter replied.

  “My God, that sounds like a recognition code in the Mossad.”

  “My agent says that’s my problem,” Irving confessed. “Nobody can understand what I write. You got something for me?”

  “I just thought you might enjoy a day’s fishing.”

  The only fishing Irving had done was as a kid over the fence at Riverside Park, and the gang had made a big deal out of fishing condoms out of the polluted waters of the Hudson River. But Clauson was his best source at the Agency, and the reporter told his caller he was ready to fish, metaphorically and otherwise.

  “Friends’ Creek is the best place this time of year,” Clauson noted. “Up in the Catoctins, not all that far from Camp David. Ever been there? Beautiful country.”

  “Isn’t this the hunting season? Guys in red hats going after Bambi?”

  “On the chilly side for fishing,” Clauson admitted, “but it is a more contemplative activity. Your current endeavor has become like an albatross around my neck, and I want to regale you as if you were a wedding guest.”

  That was probably some arcane literary allusion outside Irving’s ken. “You’re slipping into your Angleton mode, Clauson. Talk plain English. I’m bothering somebody?”

  “More than you know. You and your companions have made me a sadder and a wiser man.”

  “That’s my job, right? If I’m the guest, where’s the wedding?”

  “We will meet at the Mountaingate Family Inn in Thurmont, Maryland. Take the Beltway to 270 North, past Frederick to Route 15. Sixty miles from D.C., hardly more than an hour’s drive. My cabin in Harbaugh Valley, near the best fishing creek, is fifteen minutes from there.”

  “Wait, I’m writing it down.” Irving hated these long schleps for stories, but sources had to be indulged. He went into his looking-for-paper, fumbling-for-a-pencil routine, stalling for time to frame the right question. “Which one of my queries touched a nerve?”

  “Sure wasn’t red mercury.”

  “Get off my back. That bank in the Antilles, wasn’t it? Stepped on the Agency’s toes there, hunh?”

  “Wear boots, and a slicker in case it rains. I once caught some marvelous trout in a light snow.”

  “Lookit, if I’m risking pneumonia, I deserve a hint. Gimme one so I can do some homework.”

  “Already have.” Clauson set the date and hour and hung up. Irving made careful notes of the cryptic conversation; within a couple of minutes of hearing something, he could set it down verbatim. If he delayed writing it down a couple of hours, he had to fake it.

  He sat wriggling for two hours at the Mountaingate, in his heavy boots and old clothes, waiting for Clauson. Every fifteen minutes, Irving would go back to the buffet table, heap on a mountaineer breakfast, come back and eat it, look at his watch, and wonder if he got the day wrong. He tried his answering machine: Ace wanted him, and Mike Shu had a question, and the lawyer for his ex-wife was dunning him again, and a journalism student wanted a statement from him about the ethics of investigative reporting. He punched star-D for delete and obliterated the last two.

  Where was his source? He couldn’t call Clauson’s office. He tried the spook’s home number; no luck; he did not leave a message on the machine.

  Irving had eaten too much and felt sick, but all-you-can-eat buffets were a challenge. He was going up again for more sausages when the troopers came in.

  Four of them, burly as usual, two carloads’ worth, piled into the booth behind him.

  “Couldn’t be an ordinary government employee, like his ID said,” one of them said. “Two minutes after I reported it, the FBI was on the phone, and then CIA security.”

  “Lieutenant said there’s somebody coming from Annapolis,” another voice said. “Gotta be a big shot.”

  “How come no reporters, then? Been ten-twelve hours since the drowning, four since we got called, nearly three since we told the feds.”

  “Maybe we ought to tip the Frederick News-Post.”

  “No foul play. They only like foul play. Accidents are no big deal.”

  The chubby waitress poured their coffee and recommended the strawberry shortcake. The troopers got up as one and made for the dessert buffet. Irving followed as far as the breakfast spread and got two sausages and another waffle, listening.

  White male, sixty-two, found facedown in Friends’ Creek, drowned at about 10:00 P.M. No fishing tackle nearby. Bottle of gin on bank. Apparently staggered out for a walk behind his cabin, fell in the creek, and drowned. No marks of blows or strangulation. Wallet in back pocket containing U.S. government identification as Walter Clauson, credit cards, and $80. Unlikely a homicide; robbery was no motive. Lights left on in cabin, large black Newfoundland dog barking awakened neighbor in cabin four hundred feet away, who found body at first light and called police. No suspicious circumstances, but feds probably would do blood test, maybe autopsy.

  Irving Fein paid his bill, noting he had not eaten so much for so little in a long time. He went outside to the gas station and asked the attendant for directions to Friends’ Creek. The name, he was told, had to do with Quakers who settled the area. He drove his rented utility vehicle to Sabillasville, observed the signs for Fort Ritchie, where the President and everybody who counted would go to run the country from underground in case of a nuclear attack, and then followed the Sunshine Trail to the scene.

  The body had already been put in a bag, he was told by one of the three troopers on the porch of Clauson’s cabin, and had been taken to the Frederick morgue. The troopers were awaiting a visit from “other authorities,” presumably from Washington, before leaving the cabin.

  Irving identified himself as a neighbor and on a quick inspiration offered to take care of the dog. The troopers waiting on the porch saw that as a blessing and let him into the house. The reporter befriended the large animal, who seemed appropriately lost with the body of his master gone. Irving got him some Milk-Bones, the biggest they made, from the kitchen cabinet. Then he looked around the house, touching nothing.

  Clauson’s portable computer, connected to the wall and taking an unnecessary charge, was on a rustic desk. Heavy laptop, maybe five years old. Irving presumed the government worked on WordPerfect, which he knew, and turned it on. Talking nonsense to the dog, whom he called Blackie for the benefit of the troopers lounging on the porch, Irving looked through the dead man’s directories. He word-searched using “sleeper” and “Berensky” and “Feliks” and came up with nothing. He looked at the root directory to find out if any files were encrypted; no luck, none were. The batch files yielded nothing unusual. He called up the modem menu and saw a dozen frequently called numbers. He copied those down and with his handkerchief wiped his fingerprints from the keys.

  On the arm of Clauson’s easy chair, under a reading lamp, a book was open. The reporter picked it up. It was The Classic Hundred: All-Time Favorite Poems, and the binding was cracked where the book was open, at a long poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He looked for underlining or any notes anywhere in the book; nothing. He wiped again and put the book back on the arm, open as he had found it. Another book was on the seat of the chair, titled FDR’s Moneybags. He thumbed the tattered volume quickly, noted it was about economic policy in the Roosevelt administration, shook it for a note, came up with nothing, and chucked it back in the seat. The dog whimpered, a small white sound from
a big black animal; the reporter talked reassuringly to it and dangled his hand in a nonthreatening manner to be licked. The dog didn’t lick but sniffed and at least shut up.

  Irving looked back at the computer, nagged by the thought that he had missed some message on it from the dead man. A chair on the porch creaked as a trooper came out of it; no time.

  The masterless dog followed him to the car. Irving looked at him; the troopers expected him to do something about the dog, which had been his excuse for poking around. He went back into the house, gave the massive animal a couple more Milk-Bones, and set out a bowl of water on the porch. To the sound of heavy lapping, Irving put on his best rustic demeanor. “I heard down in Thurmont ol’ Walt was drinkin’.”

  “Looks like it.” A trooper indicated a gin bottle with a label attached, presumably for their report. “Was he a gin drinker?”

  “I dunno,” Irving replied. “Actually, he wasn’t much of a drinker at all. Guess maybe you should give him a blood test, if that’s what you do.”

  “Been twelve hours; hard to tell now.”

  The dog followed him out to the car again. One of the troopers called, “Give him a good home, mister,” and Irving called back, “I think I’ll have to take him to the shelter in Thurmont.” The cops seemed disappointed. The dog climbed into the front seat next to the driver, as he must have done with Clauson, and waited for his ride, panting out the window. Irving started the vehicle and made the rounds of three neighbors’ cabins, asking if anybody wanted Clauson’s dog. Two of the kids warmly greeted him by name, Spook—Clauson had given an appropriate name to a spy’s pet—but no adult would take on the expense of a dog that looked to weigh about 130 pounds.

  No time to look up the Humane Society. With the panting animal as company, the reporter drove south to Virginia. He was unfamiliar with dogs, had never owned one; often they growled at him, even dogs friendly to most other people, presumably because he was tense and moved in lurches. Dogs liked calm people, which Irving Fein was not. This one did not seem to treat him with distrust, though. Then it clicked; Spook was accustomed to a stress-ridden master pretending to be calm.