Sleeper Spy by William Safire Read Free Book Online Page B

too small, so when a buyer walks in they’re out of stock. Jeez, you wonder why my last book died.”
    “A significant first serial sale would have helped,” Ace reminded him gently; he did not add that magazines from
Time
to
The New Yorker
to
Reader’s Digest
had turned down Irving Fein’s book about international arms dealers. Though the book was based on solid and original reporting, its subject was behind the topical-interest power curve.
    “They stole the ideas and assigned their own reporters,” Fein muttered. “Never again. We publish in secret.”
    “But not secret from me.” The agent let him have a glimpse of reality. “Irving, I love you. In my considered opinion, you are the greatest reporter alive today. Bar none. And many others agree, albeit reluctantly.”
    “Here comes the ‘but.’ ”
    “Nobody has your sources, and nobody has ever milked them for more exclusive information. But your books do not sell. Maybe it’s your lack of exposure on television, or whatever, but a six-figure advance is not in the cards.” Ace let that sink in. “Unless, of course, you can convince me you have a world beat that will scare the hell out of everybody.” As a seeming afterthought, he threw in: “Or unless we can figure a way to team you up with somebody who remedies your weakness in sales.”
    “I have the world beat, I think. At least a good lead on it.” Fein was dispirited by the bad news about the advance and seemed not to have heard the suggestion about a collaborator. “But it’s gonna take a hell of a lot of digging, and I can’t afford it.”
    The agent knew when to wait.
    “The communists back in the Nixon days, the era of détente, beat us on some grain deal. They concealed a big shortage, bought from us cheap, saved a bundle.”
    “
The Great Grain Robbery,
” the agent said, recalling the book on the subject. “Not mine. Didn’t sell.”
    “The KGB realized the need for big-time economic espionage later on.” Irving leaned forward, intensity in his voice and body. “They planted an agent here—maybe recruited him here, in some college—and let him work his way up in the banking business. Never used him, never put him at risk. They figured they’d want him for something big one day. It’s not done often, takes a lot of restraint. The agent is called a ‘sleeper.’ ”
    “That’s why you had me emphasize the word ‘sleep’ twice in my conversation with Davidov. Glad you told me. I thought I was being a hypnotist.”
    “You were better off not knowing when you went in there,” Fein said, not apologetically. “And the way our KGB smoothie clammed up tells me he’s sensitive to a hunt for the sleeper.”
    “And it turns out,” said Ace, anticipating the plot, “this Rip Van Winkle agent has become the head of the Chase Bank, or Chairman ofthe Federal Reserve, or maybe even Vice President of the United States, and you’re going to expose him.” The agent thought quickly: “We’d better get a libel lawyer in at the start.”
    “More to it than that, Ace.” Fein’s face took on its tradecrafty, vulpine look. “Came the late eighties, the Party’s over. Ahead is the collapse of communism, the breakup of the Soviet Union. The Party has all these assets—not just buildings and famous paintings, they’re not hidable, but liquid assets in banks and safe deposits around the world. In gold, diamonds, who knows what else. Billions, which the old boys are not about to turn over to the new bunch.”
    “And the sleeper agent in the U.S. is the man they choose to assemble and conceal the assets,” the agent assumed. The yarn was getting better. “He becomes the trustee, in effect, for all the wealth of the Communist Party.”
    Fein looked at him with new respect. “You got it. How’d you get it so fast?”
    The agent had seized the idea so quickly because the plot was familiar to him. “
The Odessa File
, by Frederick Forsyth. Big best-seller back in the seventies,