Free Sleeper Spy by William Safire Page A

wondered what “wet work” was, and if any of what Fein said was true. She used her best question on him: a direct look and a whispered “Really?”
    He didn’t go for it. “First let’s figure out how to work together. I never had a collaborator, I’m a born loner. Two divorces.”
    “I’ve never been married,” she said. “Either.”
    He stopped to weigh her last word. “That’s good, the ‘either.’ I’m a good reporter—nobody’s better, to tell the truth—but a lousy writer. You a good writer? A decent writer? Any kind of writer?”
    She pointed to his two books, flatteringly stacked on the lamp table. “Those are well written.”
    “Well rewritten, you mean. The copy editor couldn’t handle it. They had to hire someone who worked cheap to rewrite long stretches, punch up all the chapter leads. You can’t write, huh? Either?”
    She was not prepared to admit that. “I write most of my own scripts. You probably saw the smart-ass stories that accused me of being a ‘rip-and-read’ announcer. That’s not true. Lot of mean and jealous people in my business.”
    “Forty-five seconds is how many words?”
    She reached for her pack of cigarettes and lit one in silence. He had caught her in a lie and was enjoying it.
    “Look, kid, the Ace says you’re my meal ticket, so I’m for you. If youcan’t write, we’ll find something else for you to do. You can wheedle information out of guys?”
    “I have been doing on-air interviews for nearly seven years,” she snapped. “Heads of state. Candidates. Raped women. Great reporters.”
    “I hurt your feelings.” After a moment, it occurred to her that Irving Fein, the great questioner, wasn’t going to say anything until she did. She took an ostentatious, unsatisfying drag on her cigarette and inhaled deeply. The expression on his face was sympathetic, which she found infuriating. By being sorry for her for having to be so defensive, he was dominating their first meeting. And still he didn’t say anything.
    “If you don’t want to tell me about the fantastic story you’re supposed to have,” she said finally, “we’re not going to get very far.”
    “You don’t have to fill up silence,” he said. “You could have outwaited me, and I would have had to blurt something out. You lost that one.”
    “Journalism 101?”
    “Hell no, this is postgraduate stuff. Learn, it wouldn’t kill you. I’m secure. We’re not competing.”
    “If you’re so secure, why can’t you get a book published by yourself? Why do you need a girl like me as a crutch?”
    “I like that, shows a little spirit. But why do you call yourself a girl? You’re thirty-three, I looked it up.”
    “Your source is wrong, I’m thirty-two. That makes our average age over forty.” He was probably sensitive about his age, pushing fifty; age was one of the things she was just beginning to get sensitive about. She could zing him on his developing paunch, his furtive slump, his general air of determined messinese; the only thing possibly attractive to her about him was his intensity, a quality she never looked for in men but might be useful in a collaborator. That and his reputation within his trade. The trick to handling him was not to show secret vulnerability—that worked best with network executives—but to keep him off balance by not deigning to treat him as an equal. So he’d written a couple of books and won a bunch of prizes; big deal. She had an audience a thousand times the size of his and made ten times his income.
    “Come on now, Irving, cut the fencing.” She did not rise, but crossed her legs and put her bare feet on the coffee table. She hadreason to be proud of her legs, not long, but perfectly proportioned. “Do you have a story or a lot of talk?”
    “How could you tell the difference?”
    “Don’t patronize me. You’re not the one to judge a reporter in my business.”
    “Oh. Your business is different. You deal in pictures, in sound bites. We