Sleeper Spy (68 page)

“Mr. Berensky evidently had the highest respect for you, but not for your husband. The bequest will be made available to you, specifically not subject to any joint ownership agreement you may have with your
husband, in the form of securities that will be acquired in a holding company in the Antilles that controls the parent company of Unimedia.”

“The stock of which has fallen through its low because of that terrible, though quite accurate, television program by the brash Mr. Fein.”

The accountant nodded; that low price made the purchase of control all the easier. “Mr. Berensky wanted you and another person to control that media empire. He wanted the decision to be yours—whether or not to keep Mr. von Schwebel in management or terminate his services.”

“Who is the other person?”

This woman did get right to the heart of the matter; Michael could see why Berensky had such a high regard for her acumen. “I’m not yet at liberty to say, but it’s a person with experience in the media, who has been bequeathed similar resources. The testator believed your experience would complement each other’s. Between the two of you, control of the Unimedia holdings will be removed from the Feliks organization.”

“Who did Aleks have in mind as my partner?” she pressed.

“I will inform you of that as soon as I have a meeting with that person.”

She nodded reluctantly. “I take it by your frequent use of the word ‘person’ that it is a woman. So be it. And one billion between the two of us would be enough to control a five-billion-dollar empire. Do your duty, Mr. Shu.”

The accountant had a personal note to add. “I was with Aleks Berensky when he was drawing up the will in Memphis. He wanted you to know that he appreciated your fine work over the years, and that—these are his words—he was ‘drawn to Sirkka Numminen more than to any other woman I ever met.’ I suppose that’s why he wanted you to have your independence. And for what it’s worth, he also sympathized with you as a dog owner for having to follow a veterinarian’s advice to put down your mountain dog.”

She sat still for a long moment. “I was useful to him. There came a moment when I was vital to his plan.”

At first, Michael Shu presumed she meant the grand currency coup, but that was too obvious; he reminded himself to think like Irving at moments like these. Perhaps Sirkka was alluding to the killing of the
Swiss banker in Bern; from Berensky’s remark about putting down a Bernese mountain dog, the accountant suspected the woman from Helsinki had arranged for his accidental death or done the deed herself. That would have been really useful.

“Aleks knew the risk he was running, going to see them in Riga,” she said. “He wanted to be sure the fortune was used to rebuild a Russia capable of defeating the West. That called for discipline and patriotic intensity, not the Russian mafiya’s corruption and greed.”

“He was disciplined, all right.”

“Curious, isn’t it, Mr. Shu—Shelepin’s purpose in creating a sleeper was defeated by an enemy he created, without intention, at the same moment. In the end, the husband and wife canceled each other out.” She put her hand on the door handle, and said with affectionate detachment, “I hope Aleks was given a moment to appreciate the irony of that before he died. The mafiya and its allies are taking over in Moscow without his fortune. His life—all those years of self-denial—turned out to be a waste.”

The future media baroness opened the car door. “You said ‘drawn to’ me was the phrase he used?”

“Those were his words.”

“And I to him. I have been useful to Stasi, useful to the KGB, useful to FI, useful to my husband. Of all those I have served, Berensky alone gave me the sense that I was not merely ‘useful.’ ” She walked, head thrown proudly back, into what was—for the time being—her husband’s mansion.

“I appreciate your bringing us together in your office, Mr. McFarland,” said the accountant, drawing his chair up to the desk. “May I call you Ace?”

“Tell him to call you Mr. McFarland, the disloyal creep.” Irving Fein was lounging on the couch.

“I used to disapprove of that racy nickname,” said the agent, “but age is mellowing me. Irving here finds your transfer of allegiance to
Berensky in midstream reprehensible, which is why he prefers to deal with you through me.”

“I can’t blame him.” Shu produced two envelopes. “You, Mr. McFarland, are entitled to a copy of the will because you are mentioned in it”—he handed a manila envelope across the desk—“in reference to the document on these disks.” He handed over the smaller envelope containing Berensky’s twenty-year diary and memoirs.

“I am to represent his estate in the sale of this book?”

“Actually not. The diary is his bequest to you, as is stated on page forty-seven of the Berensky will, in recollection of a dinner party in your home at which he met his daughter. The royalty is all yours.”

“Smart bastard,” Irving called across the room. “That way, Ace, you’ll knock yourself loose to get the biggest advance; that’ll force the publishers into a big first printing, making them advertise like crazy to get their nut back. And Berensky will get his message across to the biggest possible public, making that murderous commie bastard look like a victim and a hero.”

“That’s substantially what my client had in mind,” Shu admitted.

“I have represented villains as well as heroes,” said Ace with solemnity, “in line with my lifelong dedication to the principle of free speech.” He ignored the loud noise imitating the sound of regurgitation coming from the couch. “Mr. Shu—why did you ask me to persuade Irving to come here today? Is he in the will, too?”

“No. I wanted to explain to him my seeming betrayal.”

Fein was instantly on his feet. “Seeming? Seeming? You sold out, you little shit! He put ten million bucks in your name in a secret Swiss account not two months after you went to Memphis—on an assignment I sent you on, and paid you for. You were working for two opposing clients at the same time, and I’ll have you up on an ethics charge and drummed out of the satisfied public accountant’s dodge for the rest of your life. Y’unnerstand? And what piece of the estate do you get as an executor’s fee—the usual five percent? Five billion for your sellout?”

“The will specifies one-tenth of one percent, or ten million, whichever is greater,” Shu acknowledged. Irving would find out sooner or later.

“A lousy ten million. You were a cheap buy. You’re rich, all right, but you’ll be dead meat in the eyes of every bean counter in the world.
No matter how you try to buy respectability, in your obit it’ll say ‘traitor to accounting and journalism.’ Just try to enjoy your blood money, big shot—I’ll dog your steps for the rest of your double-crossing life.”

Shu closed his eyes and took the abuse from the man he respected so much, comforting himself with the thought that at least they were in direct communication again. When Irving subsided, Michael said only, “I didn’t sell out.”

Irving then went into another long fulmination, replete with facts and dates, evidently drawn together for a follow-up story on the sleeper’s subornation of a greedy and ungrateful Vietnamese-Russian-American. When the reporter wound down, the accountant told his story.

“Remember the time, after Clauson’s death, you went to see Dorothy Barclay at the CIA?”

“Listen to that weaseling ‘after Clauson’s death.’ You mean after your client murdered him, don’t you?”

“Right. I don’t know it for a fact, and neither does anybody, but it’s a fair assumption that Berensky killed him.”

“Thank you.”

“Anyhow, remember when you went to Langley? And the Director of Central Intelligence gave you the brush-off?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, you must have shaken her up. She turned the whole Clauson file over to the FBI Director right away quick, so she wouldn’t get hit later with an Ames-type delay. And that’s when the FBI agents came to me.”

Fein said nothing, listening. Ace was the one who said, “Go on.”

“They wanted me to work for the Bureau while I was in Memphis with Dominick. They said it was my patriotic duty.”

“But you were on retainer to me, to a private U.S. citizen, and nobody suspected back then that Dominick playing Berensky was really Berensky playing Dominick.”

“You’re wrong about that, Irv. I think Director Barclay was tracking the sleeper, maybe starting after she walked back the cat on Walter Clauson. Something fishy was in the file about Clauson and Dominick working together on a trip to Kiev a few years back. She gave that to
the FBI, and the FBI leaned on me to arrange a tap on von Schwebel’s tap. And I gave them our encryption code. I figured—it was the FBI, right? They’re on our side.”

“They’re on the side of the law. You were supposed to be on the side of the truth.” Irving, as ethical Savonarola, was unrelenting. “You had a CPA’s obligation to come to the client who was your meal ticket, kiddo. That was me.”

“Did I? I don’t know. They were very insistent that I tell nobody, especially not you, because you were getting cozy with Liana in Riga and Davidov of the KGB. The FBI guys—and your friend Hanrahan at the Fed was right with them—wanted me to seem to get closer to Dominick and further from you.”

“The FBI’s idea was to entice Berensky to try to suborn Michael Shu,” Ace said to Irving, as if he needed further explanation, “which would require him to reveal to Mr. Shu that he was not Dominick. Good plot device. E. Phillips Oppenheim, I think, used it in a novel written right after the First World War.
The Great Impersonation
.”

“Cut it out, Ace.” Irving glared at the agent for his life-follows-art routine, but was no longer looking cloaks and daggers at Michael Shu. “So when did Berensky pop your hymen, Mike?”

Ace started to object to the sexism in the phrasing of the question, but Michael thought it was an apt enough reference to his loss of professional virginity. “Just before the last all-out currency coup. Clauson made his bid to take over the operation and was killed. Berensky needed Sirkka over there, and some way of getting to Mortimer Speigal at the Fed over here. Clauson was always Speigal’s cutout; Berensky needed somebody here to complete the trading circuit, and that somebody couldn’t be you, Irving, you’re too—I don’t know, incorruptible?”

“ ‘Incorruptible’ is a good description of Irving Fein,” said Ace. “Occasionally deceivable, often disagreeable, but never corruptible.”

“So when Berensky made his pitch to me, and revealed himself as the real sleeper, I reported that to the FBI. Right then and there they made me promise not to tell you. The agents said it would be unauthorized disclosure of confidential government information to a private interest and I’d lose my license.”

Irving licked his lips. “And Dorothy Barclay was in cahoots with
them in this? She was part of the plot to use my information and my researcher against me?”

“She was jerking you around from the start. I wouldn’t trust her,” Shu said, hoping to position himself on Irving’s side in some way. If Irving got Liana to contest his appointment as executor, calling into question his fidelity to Berensky while working for the FBI, it would cost him a bundle in lawyers’ fees to hang on to his executor’s fee. “And about that business about her being a lesbian? An FBI guy told me it’s a cover story. Claims she’s as straight as you and me.”

“There’s an exposé for our times,” Ace offered mildly, writing the headline: “ ‘Top Spook Revealed as Closet Straight.’ ”

“Your FBI bosses told you Dorothy got suspicious of Clauson after my visit to Langley,” Irving said. “When I had the dog in the car.”

“It wasn’t until then that she called them in, they told me,” Mike reported. Why was Irving focusing on that detail? “The Bureau’s agents were miffed that she didn’t suspect Clauson. They thought she should have called the FBI in much sooner.” He added, in case it was relevant, “They didn’t know about the dog.”

“You have a headache, Irving?” Ace asked. The reporter was slumped forward on the couch and was banging his head, slowly, with the palm of his hand.

“He does that when he’s thinking,” Mike explained. “So do you forgive me, Irving? Our friendship and your good opinion are very important to me.”

“You bet I’m important to you, buster,” the reporter said, back among the living, “and friendship’s got nothing to do with it. One word from me, and Liana and Niko not only will knock you out as executor, but won’t hire you to manage their thirty billion bucks. And if you controlled that business, you could complete your takeover of the biggest accounting firm in the world. So don’t play me hearts and flowers about friendship and good opinion.”

“If I thought you were a practical businessman, Irving, I would offer you a cut of my cut. But you’re an idealist. You’d throw me right out that window.”

“Damn right. You can stick your commie payoff right where the sun don’t shine and—”

“Wait-wait, let’s not be hasty,” said Ace. He shot Irving his let-me-handle-this
glare, and Irving, to Mike’s surprise, shut up. “Mr. Shu, although you have been in this office before as an employee of my client, as you know I have never represented you. I represent Mr. Fein, an artist who is not to be bothered by crass commercial considerations like perfectly legitimate finder’s fees.” Mike, catching the hint of a deal, nodded agreement; Ace’s cut of Irving’s cut of Mike’s cut would amount to a tidy sum.

The agent turned to his client, who seemed to have suddenly lost interest in unfairly berating his faithless associate and was looking at his watch. “Irving, you made a big point to me earlier about having a reservation on a plane to San Francisco. I will buzz my driver, who will take you to—which airport?”

“Idlewild.”

“He tends to bear a grudge,” the agent said to the accountant. “I don’t know what he’s got against the Kennedys.” To Irving, he said, “The driver will take you to JFK International. Good trip, Irving; give her my love. No, Michael, sit-sit. We have much to discuss.”

Shu waited for Irving’s Parthian shot; the reporter never stalked out of a confrontation without some final, heart-stopping pop.

“Funny you were able to get a will probated so quick without a body,” Irving threw back over his shoulder.