Sleeper Spy (22 page)

Irving got up and began walking around the office, touching the tail on the horse of the Remington, glancing at papers on the banker’s
desk, checking the view from the window. He did not care if the banker considered him nosy; nosiness was the essence of the reportorial persona.

“Back in the eighties, the guys in the Kremlin began getting nervous,” the reporter recounted. “Gorbachev’s reforms weren’t working, but they were encouraging republics like the Ukraine and the Baltic countries to pull away from the center. These guys in Moscow were no dopes; they liked their power, so they began planning for the worst.”

“The worst being the breakup of the Soviet Union,” added Viveca Farr quietly, “and the loss of the power and the financial assets of the Communist Party.”

“Prudent,” Dominick said to her. Irving assumed he was a go-go banker who had trained himself to inject the word “prudent” into the conversation whenever possible.

“You ever been over there?” Irving tossed at him.

“I was part of a trade delegation to Ukraine a few years ago,” said Dominick. Irving noted that Dominick spoke of Ukraine, without the article “the,” as Ukrainians preferred; that suggested a nation, separate from Moscow’s domination, rather than a region, as the Soviets considered it. The reporter figured this banker must have done a few chores for the Agency in the past; Clauson would not have just picked him out of a hat because he was six foot four and the right age.

“The last people the old KGB wanted the assets to go to were the Russian reformers,” Fein continued. “So the bad guys—they call themselves the Feliks organization—hatched a plan to hide the money all over the world. You follow?”

“It’s not very complicated. A logical reaction, actually.”

“Right. But to run the operation, they needed a banker—a helluva banker—over here. Respected. Clean. Not a big shot, not a little shot. But very smart, and completely trustworthy, loyal to the hard-liners who used to run the KGB.”

Dominick looked interested. He turned to Viveca. “Who did they get?”

She looked at her partner.

“Nobody you know,” Fein answered. “Years ago, a generation ago, they planted a sleeper over here.”

“You mean a ‘mole’? I’m a fan of John le Carré. I enjoyed
Tinker, Tailor—
”

“I do honest-to-God scandals,” Fein snapped. “News stories that shake up governments and get big people canned. Jeez, why doesn’t anybody want to deal with reality anymore?”

“A mole is an agent who penetrates another intelligence agency,” Viveca said primly, “and sends information back home, the way Aldrich Ames did. But a sleeper is different. He’s an agent who integrates himself into the enemy society. He is left to his own devices. Once his cover is established, and his legend—that’s his false identity, greatly detailed—becomes a part of him, he must remain alone, unaided. He is not contacted for years, even decades, until the moment comes for him to be activated.”

“That would require remarkable motivation,” Dominick offered, nodding at her to go on.

“Not only loyalty, but dedication and amazing self-discipline. A free society is seductive,” she said, recrossing her legs. “A new family and a career over here must exert a powerful pull. A sleeper agent faces the constant temptation to cross over, to forget his ties.”

“Yeah,” said Fein, wondering where she got all that.

Dominick apparently wanted to see how much she knew about intelligence tradecraft. “What did you mean by his ‘legend’ becoming part of him?”

“The false identity,” she went on, “is constructed from childhood to resist investigation. The files of schools and motor vehicle bureaus and early employers are fixed to have a record of him, so the younger he is when he is sent over, the better. When a credit agency checks him out, for example, the legend responds consistently. And in his own mind, the sleeper almost becomes the person that the legend has built.”

“That’s what this guy did,” Irving picked up. “He came here a generation or so ago. He got into banking. He put down roots. He blended into our landscape. So when the old KGB sent a handler to activate him, this guy was ready to direct the operation to bury all the communist assets.”

“In gold?” Dominick looked skeptical. “We were all told that the Soviets, toward the end, had a dangerously low gold reserve.”

“A few billion, peanuts,” said Fein. He drew out a long computer
printout prepared by Mike Shu and showed it to the banker. The preliminary report was mostly questions about the possibility of oil scams, grain credit fraud, overruns of paper money printings, the illicit sale of plutonium. Nothing solid; they were at the start of their investigation, and what few solid leads they had from Treasury and Fed sources were not to be shopped around until their banker-ringer had committed himself.

“And you want technical advice from me? I’m flattered, but why me? You live in New York, you’ve got—”

Viveca tapped a cigarette out of her pack and leaned forward. “Because we think you would be the perfect—”

“Just a second,” Fein interrupted. “What do you think of that list? On the right track?”

“Kind of obvious,” the banker replied. “I’m assuming what you say is true about sleepers and legends and all that. And for the sake of argument, I’ll buy the whole notion of a scheme to run up a fortune using the inside information available to the KGB. But this printout approaches it from a bookkeeper’s mentality.”

“How would you approach it, Edward?” This from Viveca. She looked around for an ashtray. Dominick took one out of a drawer, evidently kept there for important clients, and put it in front of her. Irving figured that little byplay of hers gave him a whiff of her delicate perfume, as she had done with him in her house; Irving was glad to have her on his side, though he wished he knew who had briefed her on the tradecraft.

“The key to amassing a great fortune,” Dominick said, “is not to steal money. A better way is to set up situations of guaranteed profit. If you were the government of the Soviet Union, and you wanted to channel really large sums into a secret fund, you wouldn’t want to put deposits in other people’s banks, especially regulated banks. Instead, you’d want to take over banks of your own, ones that could then buy their own shipping lines, which in turn would profit from hauling your oil and grain. You would construct an integrated, worldwide profit-making machine. But that’s only one way, or part of one.” He thought some more, willing to appear intrigued by the possibilities.

“Part of the way?” Viveca asked, from within her cloud of smoke.

“The key you have is information. Inside information. The equation
is this: advance information, plus serious money—major capital to act on the data—equals big profit. A superpower like the old Soviet Union could manipulate markets on a grand scale. You could sell short on the commodity futures market and then produce a glut of that commodity, and your man on the outside would be able to make billions in a year. Or you could buy long and then create a shortage, and make more billions.”

“You’re going too fast for me,” Viveca said. Irving was glad she’d said it.

“Miz Farr, Mr. Fein—Viveca and Irving, if I may—I really don’t know if this sleeper business of yours is true or not. Maybe you’re just down here pulling my leg, and this is
Candid Camera
or something. But if you knew in advance what a superpower was going to do in politics or economics, it would be like owning tomorrow’s newspaper today. You’d know what to buy and sell. You’d know who won the races, where the local wars would start, what shortages would develop. You could make fortune on top of fortune.”

A buzzer sounded; Irving figured Dominick had told his secretary to interrupt him with a nonexistent important call at about this point. As he spoke to his secretary on the intercom, the reporter murmured to Viveca: “He’s hooked. Reel him in.”

Viveca sensed it wouldn’t be that easy. Dominick was apparently intrigued with the Soviet plot, but if he was anything like her banker father, he would want to protect himself against losses in any involvement. This Memphis banker reminded her of her father, Victor Farrano, when he was at the top of his profession, at the time she was away at Mount Holyoke. He was carefully easygoing, immaculately disheveled; interested in his daughter in a measuring way, requiring her to display self-confidence lest she disappoint him. Her father, who worked successfully at being outgoing, had been centered on his own being, sure of his moral moorings until he went overboard at fifty on a financial scheme and a scheming woman and lost his fortune and his home and his family. Viveca wet her lips and swallowed; whenever she thought of that benighted man, she wished she had a drink. From the heights of social prominence, so important at a top-line school, she found herself waiting on tables, her humiliation delighting the young
women she had previously snubbed. Since that day she had felt as if she were standing on a trapdoor always on the verge of being sprung. At least she had been able to make the money on the air to get the Pound Ridge house back.

She was impressed with Irving’s choice of a banker. Dominick exuded authority from the way he made no obvious effort to make his presence felt. A charming chuckle, but no fake heartiness; the handshake was firm, but was not followed by a too-familiar touching of the shoulder or holding of the forearm.

“Let me have lunch with him alone,” she told Irving while Dominick was on the phone. “Meet me at the departure gate at three.” When he hesitated, she added, “He doesn’t like you.”

“Nobody likes me; so what,” Irving said, playing the self-mocking realist by adding, “At least he has good judgment. But you’re right, he has eyes for you. Pull out all the stops.”

“I’ll only pull out the ones I need.”

“Remember to get him to check with Clauson at Langley,” Irving reminded her, “and prime him to expect ‘neither confirm nor deny.’ Hint that we have a source at the Fed, because I do, and that’s catnip to these bankers. And don’t push to close the deal.”

Viveca rose as Dominick put down the phone. “Irving has to go and milk a source, as he puts it. Is there a place near here where a single woman can sit at a counter and have a lonely lunch?”

As she had expected, Dominick took her to the restaurant atop the bank building. He did not try to pour on the charm; he did not pump her for more about the reason for her interest in the world of espionage, which she hoped he would, because she preferred responding to selling. He did not come on to her, nor did he show her pictures of his late wife and away-at-school kids; the banker played it down the middle, smoothly sharing backgrounds, delighted to learn that she was the daughter of a banker, showing sincere interest in the way she presented the news. Perhaps this project would balance out; Irving the frenetic boor, Dominick the stable gentleman. Both men were daring—Dominick had to be a bit of a gambler to get ahead in the Southern banking world of the eighties—but there was a nice element of prudence to him.

Persuading him to join the enterprise became important to her, not merely to prove to Irving and Ace how valuable her participation could be, but for her own self-confidence and peace of mind. It would be good, for a change, to enjoy her work.

“And now, Miz Farr, you’re about to tell me why you chose me, out of the whole world of bankers, to be your technical adviser.”

“It’s more than that, Edward. You know I could take Irving to any one of a dozen top bankers for good strategic advice. And Irving could take me to the best SEC enforcement people, Federal Reserve monitors, banking sources on the Hill. He has an especially good contact at the Fed.” She took a step further: “Look—Irving is not our kind, but he is very good at what he does.”

“I believe you. And you two make a good team. I’m glad I’m having lunch with the good cop.”

“What we want is not only your technical advice, but your strategic sense. That equation of yours—about advance information plus major capital equaling big profit—was an eye-opener to me. I had no idea that the Information Age extended that far.” She knew her memorization of his fairly obvious “equation” would cause him to preen, but sensed she was laying it on a little thick; she came to the point she and Irving had rehearsed. “We want your involvement, Edward. If we are going to find the sleeper agent—and I’ll tell you what we know about him if you’re with us—then we need somebody who can think the way he does, act the way he might act. We want you to become him, track his decision-making, get into his stream of affairs.”