Sleeper Spy (27 page)

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.

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 shot 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.”

“Without saying what the story is,” Viveca cautioned. “We don’t want anyone else to get onto this, or to jeopardize the man who’s to
impersonate the sleeper in any way. Only the three of us—Irving, me, Michael here—know.”

“Relax,” Irving told her. “Ace made it all up to jack up the bid.”

“I then proposed not to open the bidding to others,” the agent continued, obliquely confirming Fein’s analysis, “for an advance of half a million dollars. Of course, that was my asking price, to get them thinking munificently.”

When neither of the coauthors wanted to ask the next question, Michael stepped in: “And what will they hold still for?”

“Three-fifty advance in two pieces, as Irving wanted, not three; plus twenty-five thousand for research, that’s your fine associate here; and twenty-five more in reimbursable expenses, mainly travel.” He held a triumphant finger aloft. “And—and—a seventy-thirty paperback split, as Viveca wanted. Ninety-ten on first serial, eighty-twenty on foreign sales. Of course, we retain all movie, television, and electronic rights, including CD-ROM and anything on-line.”

“Grab it,” said Irving.

“Take it,” she agreed.

“I took it.”

“I agree, too,” Michael put in.

Ace seemed to ponder a moment. “I should also put in a clause retaining all dramatic rights, to give us the basis for a claim in case anybody tries to make a miniseries based on the facts you report.” He held up his hand to prevent an outburst from Irving. “I still say, after this is over, there are still fictional possibilities—”

“This is not a novel,” said Irving grimly, repeating it like a mantra. Michael knew of Irving’s only attempt at fiction, done after a bitter experience at a magazine: a short story about a magazine editor who was murdered by a rejected author. The accountant always thought Irving’s title was lively—“Kill Fee”—but publishers said the plotting was so convoluted and the background so burdened with facts that the story never got off the ground.

“I have to work out a new theory of the story,” Irving declared.

Michael Shu knew what Irving was working on, but it must have been a mystery to Viveca.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded.

Michael was surprised at her hostility; it was as if they had come too close in the coverage of the hijacking and she wanted to push him away. They were downstairs in a delicatessen near Ace’s office, Irving helping himself to great forkfuls of the free sauerkraut, cupping his palm to catch the dripping juice.

“Like a prosecutor starts with a theory of a case,” the accountant explained to her. “It’s the hypothesis, what you go on. Irving starts with it, but he doesn’t have to stick with it.”

She seemed not to like the change of subject. “Michael here has an appointment with Edward and me tonight,” she told Irving, “to go over his memo about the bank in the Bahamas. Now you want to go off in some other direction?” The accountant was glad she made that point; Irving did have a tendency to take sharp turns, sometimes wasting a lot of research time.