Merger Mystery

By BRUCE VAN VOORST

Arriving like an invasion force, foreign media magnates have taken over billions of dollars' worth of U.S. properties ranging from RCA Records to Scientific American magazine. So far, their intentions have appeared to be strictly business. But what if a foreign communications kingpin were secretly working for the KGB as part of a diabolical scheme to influence American public opinion? And what if this media mole were to get his claws on the most ^ powerful U.S. communications company? That is the provocative premise of Agent of Influence (Putnam; 416 pages), an intriguing merger mystery by David Aaron, author of the best-selling 1987 spy thriller State Scarlet.

Aaron's tale reflects a real-life strategic shift in which military competition is giving way to financial struggle. "The new focus of Soviet intelligence operations under Mikhail Gorbachev," warns one of his characters, "is in the field of economics." Aaron has populated his tale with a new breed of intelligentsia whose members whisper in the same breath about both espionage and arbitrage.

The book's protagonist, Jayson Lyman, is an investment banker who grips his peach-colored Financial Times "like a swagger stick." Advised by his boss that French magnate Marcel Bresson is out to buy News/Worldweek, Lyman is ready to leap to the American company's defense. "You mean foreigners, the French of all people, think they can take over the biggest media company in America? They'll get their butts kicked!" But Lyman's boss informs him that their firm has been retained by the other side.

Plagued by misgivings during the ensuing takeover battle, Lyman joins the search for Bresson's real identity. The French magnate owns no real estate and has no fixed address, except for the 325-ft. yacht docked at Monte Carlo. A reporter looking into Bresson's origins turns up dead. And the magnate's dentist tells Lyman that Bresson's "cement" filling could have been done only in the Soviet Union.

Aaron's tale bristles with arcana picked up during the author's career in Washington, where he served as deputy to Zbigniew Brzezinski on President Carter's National Security Council, and on Wall Street, where he is a board member of the Oppenheimer investment firm. At times, Aaron can get carried away with brand names, as when he notes that a character was able to fall asleep on a plane "despite a monster roar from the four Rolls-Royce SNECMA Olympus 593 jet engines." But he manages to keep his plot shifting as fast as the ticks in the price of a takeover stock.