“I am to tell you that a meeting has been arranged of the Feliks organization’s politburo in Riga next week,” she recited. “Outsiders are never invited, but you are not an outsider, you are considered their agent and financial adviser. At that meeting, you will have the opportunity to ask a few respectful questions about their plans. Be prepared to answer questions about their assets in your care and to cooperate in their transfer.”
“Fair enough, and well remembered, Mrs. Krumins. Will I see you again, in Riga?”
“No. I am not in politics. And for me, Aleks Berensky died a long generation ago. Goodbye.”
“If there is one thing I wish, it is that I had been given the chance to say goodbye.”
That was surely a lie, but she knew it was one her former husband would tell to stir old emotions and solicit undeserved sympathy. She left him sitting there amid the empty teacups and the sounds of the straining string quartet.
RIGA
The heavyset woman with iron-gray hair asked the status of the Chechen being held hostage in Lubyanka.
“They are trying psychological torture,” Kudishkin reported. “Playing a recording of a man screaming in the next cell all night. We have gotten word to Leonid, however, that it is just a tape, and to pretend to be terrified. So he won’t break; it is a standoff.”
“Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to kill Arkady and send Davidov’s girlfriend the body,” said Ivanenko, the new capitalist.
“It was my idea,” said Madame Nina.
“I’m not second-guessing,” he said hastily, “but it seems to have stirred up the KGB.”
Kudishkin rapped on the table. “We are here to find out about the location of our money.” He looked to the woman in the center. “What is your assessment, Madame Nina—is Edward Dominick the sleeper?”
“No. Von Schwebel’s information was correct,” she reported. “Dominick is a CIA fake. An impressive fake, like a well-made counterfeit bill.”
“The German puts great faith in his eavesdropping,” Kudishkin countered, “but that can be used as a conduit for disinformation if those being overheard are aware of the surveillance.”
The woman in the center fixed her gaze on the former head of a KGB directorate through large glasses whose thick lenses made her eyes seem to protrude. “Your intelligence expertise is always appreciated, Oleg Ivanovich. But I do not rely on a single source for my initial judgment. I found Liana Krumins’s mother, the woman who was married to Berensky before Shelepin sent him to America. I sent her to London to verify or expose him.”
The representative of the Group of Fifty rapped the table in approval. “What was her judgment?”
“She says that, physically, Dominick could pass. Right height, hard of hearing. The face was supposedly in an accident, which makes the more obvious identification difficult. And he is well briefed about Berensky’s life.”
“What was the giveaway?”
“The real Berensky is his father’s son: ruthless, brutal, a little crazy—a perfect agent. But in this man, the Krumins woman saw a softness and weariness that has nothing to do with age. I trust her judgment that Edward Dominick is not Aleks Berensky. Women can tell these things.” Madame Nina folded her hands. “The impostor is working for the CIA and probably Davidov as well, to find out about our operation. And so I invited him here for our meeting Friday.”
SEDONA, ARIZONA
Arlene Paltz was now her name, taken from a missing person. She had a driver’s license issued in Pennsylvania with a vaguely similar face on it, a Social Security number, and a credit reference, all courtesy of a sympathetic used-car dealer. He traded the basis of an identity for $1,000 in cash.
She found Arizona in December to be not at all bad. Although Arlene had planned to keep driving out of the country, through Mexico to the state of Yucatan, she and the car were too worn out after a week to continue. A friendly lady in a pet-supply store in Phoenix, where she picked up a half-dozen extra-large rawhide bones, suggested Sedona to the north. It was a kind of resort for New Age types who believed that Indian spirits and Buddhist philosophies of energy vortexes combined with the clean, dry air to help stressed-out souls find inner tranquillity. She drove up there and found a remote house rental, cheap and dirty, but near a stream necessary for her companion and protector, Spook, who sat half immersed in the cool water much of the time.
She went to one of the many local spas and invested in a massage and a mudbath. The manager needed a clerk-massage-therapist, and a Japanese woman taught her the rudiments of Shiatsu. Within a week, Arlene Paltz had an afternoon job to keep her occupied in a world that knew little about television reporting or supermarket tabloids, and nobody gossiped about the delicious downfall of Viveca Farr. She limited her massages to women, who talked mostly about energy vortexes and real estate values. Their conversations neither involved nor threatened her, and she found the kneading of flesh and digging into muscle a help in forgetting who she was and what she had done.
In the mornings, she sat on the red rocks or with her feet in the stream with Spook and grieved. She did not pass an hour without at least one stretch of sobbing that left her chest sore and throat raw. To relieve this, the runaway from celebrity sought comfort in the available pot, learned to drink cheaper wine, and counted her resentments until she achieved the respite of a midmorning streamside nap to make up for the hours lying awake at night. Frightened of an unrelenting future, she filled her time retracing in bitterness the systematic way every person in her previous life had let her down.
She kept asking herself what she had done, or not done, to deserve such a savage, gleeful, and universal rejection. No civil libertarians came forward to prevent a rush to condemnation, not even the regular counter-condemners who find exculpatory root causes in the actions of ax murderers. It seemed that everyone was eager to believe the worst about a woman who had had to claw her way up by herself and had come “too far too fast.” Her network colleagues distanced themselves from “a good presenter, but no news person.” The ferocity of the attacks in the media and the paucity of understanding among her associates were incomprehensible to her; she had not risen all that high to be brought so low.
Mired in the misery of the aftermath of so public an embarrassment, she found release in tearful anger much as the masterless Newfoundland found solace in the wetness of their stream. Above all, Arlene Paltz did not want anyone from her previous existence—family, friends, lovers, so-called fans and colleagues—to find her, to attack and hurt her again with their mocking laughter. She felt certain that would happen the moment she surfaced again as Viveca Farr, the industry’s favorite object of pointed fingers and even more pointed refusals to comment in her defense. When her eyes were not tearful, they were frightened; the effect of what she had inadvertently learned and what she had subsequently done was overwhelming.
A van from the spa drew up to the porch and was met by a barrage of deep-chested barking. The driver eyed the wet dog and did not get out. He called to her that a group of businessmen had arrived and wanted massages that night. Arlene went up to the van window and reminded the driver she didn’t do men and didn’t work at night. When told the manager said her job depended on her showing up, she shrugged and quit. She had her hiding place; she was not yet so low on money as to have to smile when hassled.
Two days later, staring blankly at what remained of a woven Sioux wall hanging in her living room, Arlene Paltz heard another car engine approach and tires slide to a stop in the dirt driveway behind her own vehicle. A short bark from Spook in the stream behind the house, and another as the dog raced around to the front, was followed by silence. That drew her to the window. She parted plastic-backed curtains that blocked the harsh sunlight and looked out through a narrow opening at the visitor.
The Newfoundland was moving forward cautiously, her tail slowly wagging. A man in a disheveled suit and tie, obviously from far outside the area, was struggling to emerge from a compact car. With a mix of irritation and guil
ty pleasure, she recognized the familiar, lurching form of Irving Fein.
He said, “Hiya, pooch,” and then, as the approaching sodden Spook gave an indication of a coming event, the reporter held out his hands in horrified supplication. “Don’t shake! Stay back! Don’t shake!”
Spook shook herself as only a shaggy 130-pound Newfoundland emerging from a muddy stream and comfortable with his surprise company was capable of doing. She gleefully unburdened her thick coat of moisture. The man in the suit, backed against his car, bore the full brunt of the spray. When it was over, the dog crowded up to him, rubbing her ears on his pants, licking up at his chin, delightedly smearing his shirt and tie with huge front paws. The man gave up trying to protect his clothes, took out a handkerchief, and wiped droplets of mud from his eyes.
Viveca had her first good laugh since she became Arlene. In bare feet and a terry-cloth robe, she went out on the sunlit porch and squinted at the man in the uniquely decorated outfit.
“I’m a guest at the Vortex,” he called out in one of his prepared openers, “and I want to know why you don’t give massages to men.”
She went inside to put on jeans and a T-shirt. She was not pleased to see anybody from her Viveca life, because it meant her privacy had been pierced, but better Irving than anybody else. She brought out a Coors, which was all anybody around there drank, and handed him the can along with a paper towel.
“Fridge is broke—it’s not cold.” He exuded gratitude anyway, gulping and blowing away foam, which Spook licked up. “All right, tell me how you found me.”
“I’m the world’s greatest reporter, what’d y’expect.” He took a long, quenching guzzle and hung his jacket on a chair. “Thanks. Nobody hides from Irving Fein.” He punctuated his pride with a belch.
“No, seriously, I have to know. Otherwise I’ll have to start running right away. I can’t face anybody.”
“You look great,” he said irrelevantly. “Your eyes are all red and there’s a splotch on your forehead, but otherwise you look great. The big towel you were wearing for a bathrobe makes a statement. And I like your hair better this way, mousy and messy. Hated that frozen lacquer look.”
“Tell me how you found me.” She had to know. “Can I expect a parade of photographers now?”
“Nope, you’re safe for a while. Here’s the guy who ratted on you.” He pulled Spook toward him and took off her collar, inspecting it closely. He reached in his pants pocket for a tool—Irving was the kind who carried a Korean knockoff of a Swiss army knife, not caring about a bulge in his pocket—and pried something off the license tag. “This is the little bugger,” he said, holding a device between thumb and forefinger. “It’s a transmitter that people use to track car thieves. One of Davidov’s boys planted it on your car and on the pooch. You dumped the car, but thank God you didn’t get rid of the dog.”
Her heart sank; it had been such a lot of trouble to establish a new identity, and she was beginning to like Arizona. “So the KGB knows I’m here.”
“The question you should be asking,” said Irving, ever the determined instructor, “is, if Davidov knows, how come he told Irving Fein? And the follow-up—why is Fein burning his source, which he never does without a reason?”
“I’m just too tired,” she told him. So what if it made her sound like a dolt: information-trading, with its conniving and lying and testing and sparring, was no longer a game she was prepared to play. She had come to the conclusion that dead-serious journalism, with all its delicate probes and brassy intrusions and highwire footwork, had never really been her line of work, and a straight presenter afflicted with investigative pretensions could get badly hurt in the interplay of interests. It was true about being worn out; she was bone-weary all the time, often lacking the energy to prepare food or go to the diner. Only the responsibility of feeding the dog reminded her to eat, and that was once a day.
“You look a little bushed,” Irving agreed, “like you’re on a diet. You’re down to fighting trim, but you don’t need to lose any more.”
“I’ve read a little Greek mythology lately,” she said, ignoring his observation about her weight, “because I don’t buy the newspapers and thank God there’s no television in the house. You know the story of Icarus?”
“I covered that story when I was a cub on the Albany Times-Union,” he said. “Hotshot kid from Troy, in the tri-city area, flew too near the sun, wax melted, wings fell off, into the drink he went. The trick is to be Daedalus, the old guy in the story who knew better and jumped for Joyce.”
“Irving knows everything,” she said to Spook, panting and slavering between them. “He is the reincarnation of Daedalus, and he taught me all I know about reporting.”
“Taught her all she knows, but I didn’t teach her all I know,” he replied through the dog. “More to come.”
Arlene Paltz, resolute nonentity, shook her head. “I don’t even want to know all I already know. I took a run at heavy reporting and it almost killed me. Certainly ruined me.” She walked back into the kitchen for a warm Dr Pepper. Irving followed her, Spook lumbering after him. She led the parade back outside and down to the stream, the drab rental property’s most appealing feature.
Irving deposited his rear end on the stony bank. “These pants have had it,” he muttered. “And all I brought was a ditty bag.”
“That’s all you need; you’re not staying.” She pointed to a looming red rock formation in the distance. “If you’re into meditation, that’s the place.”
“Vortex central?”
“Don’t knock what you don’t know. It may be that energy flows through the mind and the meridians of the body, the way they say. I may study it.”
She wished he would explore that philosophical vista with her, but true to his nature, he followed a news lead. “Tell me what it is you know that you don’t want to know. The thing you say ruined you.”
She could not control an eddy of fear, and shuddered.
“I’m sorry I made you shudder. Sump’n has you scared shitless. That’s not like you to have the shakes when you’re not even hung over.”
She had the sudden desire for escape in a drink or a joint but did not want to make the trek back to the house. She turned on him: “Being scared has always been like me. What do you know about me? What do any of you care? I’ve been running scared all my life.”
“I thought you were pretty sure of yourself, the way you rolled over people.”
“I was not the complete bitch that some people made me out to be.” She let a deep sigh raise and lower what little was left of her bosom. “Aah, who cares. All over now.”
“Not true. This is just a little dip. You’ll get over it and be back on your feet in no time.”
She reached down and patted Spook’s head. “Don’t you worry, sweetie, everything’s gonna be just fine. It’s all in your head.”
“I didn’t mean it that way, Viveca. I just wish I could cheer you the hell up. Okay, you took a shot, but you gotta be an optimist. You can come back.”
“That’s been your experience. It’s not been my experience. You’re a big man, with a reputation like some kind of invincible gunslinger. People help you because they’re afraid of who you are and what you can do. Me? They look at me and want to kick me, and now they know they can.”
His face grew stony, and he shut down communication. She let him stew, but soon felt bad about that; he had come far to find her, and maybe only partly out of book deals and other selfishness. After a long silence, she asked the question she knew he wanted her to ask: “If Davidov knows where I am, how come he told Irving Fein?”
“Insightful question.” He didn’t answer right away, probably sulking about being lumped together with everybody else who wanted to kick her. Or maybe he was just noodling things over, the way he often did, seeming to commune with a handler on a distant planet. She could sense the saucer of his mind scouting Arizona, its little green men circling around looking for a place to land. “Excuse me, I was sucked
into the vortex for a minute. Davidov? I made a deal with him: I’d tell him the truth about Edward Dominick if he’d tell me the whereabouts of Viveca Farr. Frankly, I didn’t think he knew, but he did. Those guys are better than I thought.”
“You traded Dominick for me?”
“I’d trade anything I got for you.”
“I don’t believe that for a minute.”
“You’re right.” He took out his Swiss army knife knockoff, looked at it fondly, put it back. “Not my knife. Anything I got except that.”
That was Irving backtracking from his blurting out of a human feeling; she knew him well. His intensity rubbed off on her enough to stimulate a question about her old life: “Irving, what did you tell Davidov about Edward Dominick?”
“Like I said, the truth. I filled him in on the Memphis war room, the parallel sleeper operation, the impersonation.”
She was too fearful of reinvolvement to try to figure that out for herself. “Why? That was our big secret.”
“Stirred the pot. Besides, Eddie’s big target is Madame Nina and the baddies hanging out in Riga. And you know what? I got some inside family poop out of my new buddy Niko that will blow your mind. It’ll help Dominick make his pitch there.”
“Go ahead, blow my mind.”
“Like Liana is the sleeper’s daughter. That’s why she was picked by the KGB and the Feliks people to be the bait. How does that grab you?”
She let herself look surprised and impressed. She thought about Liana’s fine features and poor skin, and of Edward’s slightly scrambled features and poor skin; they did not look alike. The eyes were the same, a cool gray, but the expression around the eyes, usually the telltale of a family resemblance, was different—his canny, hers defiant. They shared no mannerisms because they had never been together. She probably took after her mother.
Sleeper Spy Page 41
