Free Sleeper Spy by William Safire

to transmute attractiveness to authority, and she knew it.
    That confidence faded when the camera’s red light went off. What if Fein asked her about the Kurdish tribes in Iraq or the black gangs in L.A.? In that case, she would turn the question back on him; men so handled invariably spun out their answers. But what if this one really wanted to know what she thought? He was a reporter; he was, if not great, certainly good; he would not be put off. Her schedule did not include time to develop any of the wide knowledge he would probably demand.
    The hell with him. What she brought to this marriage was the beginning of fame—potential stardom—and the art of presentation. He could do the digging and the thinking and the writing. As Matt hadexplained, selling her on this notion, the television dimension provided synergy to the story and sales to the book. And what the hell did “synergy” mean? What if she used that word and Fein asked her what it meant? He was sure to judge her, as they all did; suddenly Viveca was afflicted with the sinking feeling that this might not work. The moment he started hitting on her professionally, she would threaten to throw him out; Matt had confided that, commercially, he needed her more than she needed him.
    A gray station wagon crunched up the driveway, and she went out to meet it, her glass of wine in hand, hospitable in a defiant way. His car, as she had feared, was a disgrace to the neighborhood. The dilapidated state of the vehicle, despite its “no radio” sign for burglars, was a statement that he was poor and honest and proud and would make putting her down part of his life’s work.
    “Where’s the butler to park the car? Thanks, I can use it.” He took the drink from her hand, knocked it back, went, “Yecch—haven’t you got a decent bottle of wine?” and led the way into her house. “Goddam palace,” he said.
    “I knew you’d say that.”
    “Pretty run-down, though.” He touched the leaves of a plant. “Fake. Good fake, though.”
    She would have to disabuse him promptly of the idea that she was wealthy. “The house is a white elephant,” she said. “Half the rooms are closed off permanently. My family used to own it, and I was a girl here, before my father lost it all and went to jail and died. I bought it back after the market dropped at a foreclosure auction.” She caught herself beginning to talk too fast; jabbering was always a giveaway. She didn’t say the rest—that the house was too much for one maid to clean and she didn’t make enough money to keep up the grounds properly, other than to have the front lawn mowed.
    He fitted the description she’d heard of a newspaperman, as looking like an unmade bed. She kicked herself for not having worn jeans; here she was, in a skirt and blouse and Donna Karan cotton cardigan, while he was wearing wrinkled chinos and a loud red shirt, all understated Ralph Lauren without reaching for it.
    She got out the Château Talbot, showed him the label.
    He gave a pretty-impressed look. “Good stuff, Cordier’s second-best. Eighty-four is over the hill, but let’s give it a shot.”
    She shrugged and handed him the bottle, eased out of her shoes, and sat on her feet on the couch. She stripped the cellophane off a new pack of cigarettes and lit one.
    “Mind if I smoke?” he said.
    That threw her. “You mean—smoking bothers you?” Real writers still smoked, didn’t they? She smoked because it gave her something to do with her hands. And it was associated with hard newsmen, and bothered most people on the set.
    “I love to smoke,” he said with some nostalgia. “I gave it up. It kills me to see somebody enjoying a good, long drag. Go ahead if you really need to.”
    She thought it over, stubbed it out. “Tell me about this sleeper spy.”
    “Big fella, loner, high-stakes player, megabucks stashed away. Dedicated commie from year one, maybe did a little wet work along the way. Your kind of guy.”
    Viveca