Sleeper Spy (69 page)

The accountant winced. “It was a bitch getting a death certificate,” he allowed. He shook his head in despair; Irving was on to it.

Irving had told Ace’s driver to take him to the Marine Air Terminal at La Guardia for the shuttle to Washington. He used Ace’s car phone to change his flight to California to later that day from D.C.’s Dulles. Then he called Dorothy Barclay at CIA.

“I’m coming down on the Delta shuttle that arrives at eleven-thirty,” he told her. “It should take a cab about ten minutes to drop me off at that little park on the river near the Agency. Meet me there, then, alone, and tell your driver and your guard to pick us up again in twenty minutes.”

“There’s a White House lunch I have to be at, Irving,” the DCI replied cheerily. “What about breakfast tomorrow at my apartment?”

“You go to that lunch instead of seeing me, Dotty, it’ll be the last time they let you in there.”

“That sounds like a threat.”

“I never threaten. I can write like a sumbitch, though, when I’ve been snookered. This is an open line. Be at the little park named after the chief of staff of General McClellan at a quarter to noon.” Fort Marcy Park was the customary place near the Langley headquarters for intelligence officials to meet sources away from official grounds and bugged offices. “I’ll be leaning on the cannon.”

She showed up at the assigned time, and her car pulled away, as agreed. “Isn’t this the park where—?”

“Laid out right over there,” Irving answered. “Never found the bullet.”

“I watched your program last night. Everybody at the Agency is talking about it. Kind of gives us a black eye, what with Clauson being our second mole, but it could have been worse. Can hardly wait for your book.”

“That’s where the rest of the story is going to be.”

“What’s troubling you, Irving? What couldn’t wait?”

“The FBI is getting set to dump on you, kiddo. Their story is you didn’t tip them off about suspecting Clauson was a mole until that day I was in your office.” That was the information he had beaten out of Mike Shu; he then made his educated guess. “But you knew about it two months before, when you were briefed by your predecessor.”

She did not deny either part, which half-confirmed his guess. “DCIs have to take a little heat from Congress,” Barclay said. “That’s what they pay us for.”

“But it gets worse,” he said. “Your agency didn’t tip the FBI to catch your mole for at least a year, long before you got appointed. And you continued the cover-up.”

“Why would I do that.” It was not in the form of a question, more of a playing-out of a dialogue she expected.

“Because going after the second Russian mole in the CIA would have loused up a bigger operation you had going, to catch the sleeper.”

“You have evidence of that?”

“You bet. Eyewitness. Me. You used me in the final stages of your hunt for the sleeper. Suckered me to a fare-thee-well. Now I’m going to pay you back.”

“I didn’t sucker you, Irving. Walter Clauson did. I couldn’t stop him, because—as you say, we had bigger fish to fry.”

Fein played his hunch. “I need the dates of the two findings. One from the last President, one from this.”

She betrayed no emotion. “You know I can’t give you either date.”

That gave him plenty. If the Director of Central Intelligence was going to refrain from reporting knowledge or reasonable suspicion of a federal crime, that would be against the law—unless covered by a written “finding,” signed by the President, that such withholding of evidence from the Department of Justice was in the national security interest. When a new President came into office, he would have to sign a new finding to protect the new DCI. With her refusal to give Irving “either” date, Dorothy Barclay had confirmed that there were two findings, and that the CIA had put higher priority on its search for the sleeper than on having the FBI close down the mole. That was the meaning of “bigger fish to fry.”

But Irving was well aware that he was dealing with a shrewdie; Dorothy knew what she was doing with her “either date” in tacitly and deniably confirming his guess. He sensed there was something she wanted him to know, and could not tell him, which would justify her agency’s year-long withholding of evidence from the FBI. The reporter assumed it had to do with an answer to his charge of cover-up, which he had told her he got from a Bureau source. He gave it another little push.

“What pisses the Bureau off,” he said, arm around the McClellan chief of staff’s cannon, “is that counterespionage within the United States has always been their baby. The FBI is going to protest that you spooks didn’t have any right to search for a sleeper agent in Memphis.”

“True.”

“That would mean you had no reason to get a finding from the President to refrain from informing the FBI about a suspected mole in your agency.” But of course that did not add up. Presidents don’t sign nervous-making findings, which sooner or later have to be shown to a few overseers in Congress, without a very defensible reason.

“Unless,” she said, and said nothing more.

He was closing in on it, he could tell. He wasn’t there yet. Unless? Unless the reason for not informing the FBI had to do with counterespionage not inside, but outside, the United States. Which meant the finding had to do with a CIA agent who was conducting that counterespionage as part of his spying mission.

Irving felt he had a corner of it: the CIA was using a spy in a most sensitive and dangerous position abroad to find out about the sleeper in America. That spy had to be so high up and so central to the success of this particular mission that the Agency could persuade two Presidents that his identity should be known only to those with an absolute need to know. Not even the molehunt for Clauson was to be allowed to compromise this overseas agent, which was cause for the FBI to be cut out for nearly a year.

Irving suddenly relaxed; he had it. He ran his hand lovingly along the nubbly black iron surface of the Civil War cannon. But first he would have a little fun with the DCI, who had been manipulating him so skillfully from day one of this story.

“Antonia Krumins,” he said. “You helped put her in at the top of the Feliks people, and you hired her to entice her former husband over to Latvia and to rub him out. Nasty business. I thought there were laws against assassinations. But I suppose you had to do what you had to do, Dorothy. And you paid her off with three billion in gold, and now you have her as your agent at the top of the KGB. Brilliant. Tops Philby. You won’t be the first to write a great memoir from jail.”

“I hope to hell you’re only kidding, Irving. You are, aren’t you?”

Fein let her sweat out the possibility he might be serious for a moment, then smiled. “In the Army, when the artillery gets the range wrong and fires on their own troops, you know what artillerymen say to take the edge off the horror of friendly fire? They say, ‘Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.’ ”

“You asked me to come here on no notice for a reason,” the DCI said, unsmiling. “I’m here. What is it you want to know?”

“How come Mike Shu and his lawyers were able to get the Berensky will past the probate judge with no corpse on hand?”

When she did not immediately reply, Irving added, “Ordinarily, no body, no payout for seven years—maybe more in the case of the richest will in the world. How do we know for sure Berensky is dead?”

“He’s dead, all right. There was proof. Enough to convince a panel of judges.”

Not a single probate judge, but a panel. Irving figured that meant the panel of appellate judges in Washington assigned to deal with high-security cases.

“Now you’re going to tell me what that proof was, Dorothy.”

“Part of Berensky’s brain stem was spattered against a wine bottle on the wall. The cells were clearly identifiable as being from that part of the brain, and nobody could live with that part of the brain destroyed.”

That locked it in. “You know the next question,” Irving said.

“Sure I do, but I’m not doing your work for you.”

“How do you know the piece of the brain you scooped up was Berensky’s?”

The Director of Central Intelligence looked almost proud of her interlocutor. “Because the DNA of the brain cells found on the wine bottle matched brain cells the hospital was able to extract from his daughter, Liana Krumins.”

Fein’s mind flashed to the cellar in Biga, with Nikolai Davidov poking around the wine bottles, sneaking away—unobserved, the KGB man thought—with some evidence in a plastic envelope. Evidence that wound up in the hands of a panel of judges in Washington specializing in secret CIA matters. That evidence, provided by Nikolai Davidov, led to a decision awarding the money to Liana and some Russian do-good charitable institute—and denying the fortune to the Feliks people, which had been the goal of the U.S. government all along.

“The CIA had a sleeper all its own in place in a Moscow university,” Irving said. “You activated him for the big operation—to find the Russian sleeper in America with all the dough that could upset the government in Moscow. You were able to get him appointed to head the directorate of the KGB that was assigned to find Berensky.” He remembered the moment, with the President on Air Force One held hostage by a hijacker, when Dorothy was willing to give Irving the home number of a top Russian, but not Nikolai Davidov. “And your own sleeper, Nikolai Andreyevich, or whatever his American name is, damn near brought it off.”

“I cannot confirm any of that.”

“I don’t need you to. I was there when your boy scraped the brains
off the bottle, remember? But tell me, Dorothy—after it was over, how did you get him out of there?”

She leaned back against the cannon, took a deep breath, and let it out. “We didn’t have to exfiltrate this agent from Moscow. When Davidov failed to get the money back for the Russian government, they fired him for incompetence. He left the country in disgrace, with the KGB’s good riddance, and nobody knowing about his working for us. Irving, how long have you known about—about this theory of yours?”

“Some theory.” He was not about to tell her he had just figured it out. “It was a goddam masterstroke, Dorothy. All your people at Langley, and around the world, are going to be very proud. And over on 9th Street, the Bureau will shit a brick.”

“The Russians will kill him, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“That’s why I came here when you called. Why I told the White House I had something more important to do.” She stepped closer to him. “If you include your theory about Davidov being our sleeper in your book, he’s a dead man. We’ll do our best for him in the Witness Protection Program, but Madame Nina is now running the KGB, and she will put out a contract on him that won’t quit. Nick is not going to want to live his life in hiding, and sooner or later they’ll gun him down.”

“Baloney. They wouldn’t kill one of our spies. It’s not done.”

“He was born there, didn’t come here till he was a teenager. They’ll treat him as a Russian traitor, not as our man, and the Russians execute their traitors. It’s their way, their discipline. They cannot fail to do it.”

“And you’re telling me that I have to save Niko’s ass by keeping him under cover forever. By spiking a great story, one that makes you guys winners for a change.” He didn’t want to end on a statement. “How many people know about him already?”

“Six. My predecessor and me; the last President and this one; Nicholas David; and you.”

“And when the Congressional committees get shown the Presidential findings in timely fashion?”

“Our agent, his post, and his assignment are not readily identifiable from the findings. If asked, the President and I will make it a point of honor and hang tough.”

“And if I go with the story?”

“Our man’s blood will be on your hands. And we’ll never give you any cooperation again. If you get a lead on the white-slavery racket that goes to the highest authorities in the Pacific rim, and could topple two major governments, don’t come to me for two thick folders I have in my desk.”

“I’m way ahead of you on that. Centered in Japan.” In truth, her tip was news to him, but logic suggested the Japanese would be in on it. “But let my power to burn Niko be a lesson to you—never fuck around with the press, Dorothy. Got it?”

“I swear to God, never again.”

“There’s your car. I want to think this over.” He would not give her any guarantees. One day, in a few months or so, he would tell Niko that his secret was safe, if the countersleeper who turned out to be a noncommie nonbastard made an honest woman out of Liana. Niko would, of course; the CIA wanted a handle on all that money being handed out in Russia.

He used his pocket phone to call a cab and spent the waiting time looking around in the grass for a bullet, not expecting to find anything, just browsing. His brain, having just sprinted the hundred in nine seconds flat, kept trotting along past the finish line. If Liana’s DNA proved the brain that was blown out came from her parent, who was to say it was her father and not her mother? In that case, Madame Nina would be dead with some CIA dame impersonating her in Moscow, and Berensky would be alive playing King Lear to his loyal daughter. An Angleton type would lap up that possibility.

“Nah,” Irving Fein said aloud, “you gotta have closure.” Nina shot Berensky; the bulk of the money went to Liana; its disposition would be guided by Niko—Nick—still working for the Agency but no longer as a sleeper. That was the story, half of which he would write.

To the Civil War cannon pointed out over the Potomac, Irving Fein said aloud: “This park is named after William Marcy, who was not only McClellan’s chief of staff in the war, but later became the general’s son-in-law. Nobody knows that little fact but me.” He looked back over his shoulder and barked an order to the imaginary cannoneer: “You may fire when you are ready, Gridley.”

Irving looked at her in sweater, jeans, and running shoes, with a lawbook in her rucksack, and said, Stanley-like, “Joe College, I presume.”

Viveca took his arm and squeezed it with what seemed to him to be genuine affection. “I loved your show. You brought the best out of Liana. I told her you’d be like a master teacher.”