Sleeper Spy by William Safire Read Free Book Online

divided into people who wrote books and people who said they were going to write a book someday. She wished she had him in the control room right now instead of that smart-ass who wanted her to fluff the word.
    “Would somebody please bring me a dictionary?” she requested through perfect teeth.
    “We have your synonym for ‘indomitable,’ Viveca,” said the producer in her ear. “It’s being put on the prompter now: ‘steadfast.’ ”
    She nodded and consented to a read-through. Three seconds short; no need to add anything, she had an internal clock that knew how to stretch. Would her old mentor be watching this? Probably; no reason why not, most television-watchers did, and after he got over his rejection as she moved on and up, he had built himself a nice little family. You’re not talking to a friend, he used to tell her, pointing at the red light on the camera, you’re talking to a judge, stern but fair-minded; and you’re being judged every minute. What the judges want from you is credibility, and what you want from them is respect, not gee-isn’t-she-cute. She thought of the bag of potato chips he would give to her before every show back in Nashville so long ago: “Crisp,” he said. “Think crisp.”
    The self-assured newscaster dressed crisply and spoke crisply. She knew her greatest strength was her command presence; in person, she was short, but on the screen she sat tall. Dominant but not domineering; in firm control of herself and of her topic, whether she knew the subject or not.
    She straightened her spine, closed and opened her eyes, tightened her sphincter as if she were fooling a polygraph, leaned forward and lifted her chin. Inhale. The red light came on and she felt her surge of authority thrust aside all nervousness. “Newsbreak, Viveca Farr reporting. We have a new Director of Central Intelligence, the first woman ever to hold the post. In naming Dorothy Barclay, the President praised her steadfast will …”

NEW YORK
    “We’re coming to a tunnel,” the literary agent announced from his car phone. “If I fade out, I’ll get back to you.”
    Ace McFarland’s vintage Rolls was nowhere near a tunnel. He always took the bridge to Manhattan. But he liked to make his calls short and authoritative, leaving the impression of busyness even on a slow day, and he had found this a good way to break off calls with drama but not insult.
    “Viveca, I’ve been thinking about your book,” he said. “Your initial reluctance about writing your memoirs was right—you’re too young to do an autobiography. It would seem pretentious and invite criticism, especially from the envious. Your memoirs would undoubtedly sell, considering there’d be a book tour and it’d be easy to get you on the best talk shows in every major market. But in the long run it would be criticized as presumptuous, and I don’t want you exposed to any vilification by the ‘shock jocks.’ ”
    When she had suggested a book about her life, Viveca had raised that concern about the appearance of pretension only as a minor caveat. Ace judged he could get a paltry $50,000 advance against royalties for the book; most of that would go to an as-told- to ghost. His own 17 percent commission, taken off the gross and the highest in the field, would hardly be worth his time. No movie or miniseries would be likely from a Viveca Farr memoir, which meant the value of the paperback would be less. The project would be seen for what it was: a blatant promotion of her as a personality, enabling her to appear on other networks and local stations flogging her book. It would probably help her lecture fees, but her literary agent had no part of those. And theselling thing about a memoir was that you actually had to have memories of memorable events, unless you were a household name, in which case you had to have memories of formative details. No; it was too early in Viveca’s rise to semicelebrity for a memoir. Ace had a better