So, What Now? : Agents peddling everything from book contracts to lecture tours are circling and saying, ‘Gorby, we want you.’

Excerpt from Mikhail Gorbachev’s Filofax:

12/31: Outta here. To California, New Year’s party at Rancho Mirage with Annenbergs, Reagans, et al.

1/2: Back to Moscow. Noon, shooting TV spot outside Kremlin. When voice says, “Former Pres. Gorbachev, you’ve just presided over the breakup of an unhappy empire . What are you gonna do now?” I say, “I go to Deez-Nee-Verld.”

1/5: Breakfast w/book agent; lunch w/speakers’ agent; cocktails w/tv agent; dinner w/marketing rep; aperitifs OPEN.

1/6: To Tokyo . Speak to Sony execs.

1/ 7 : To New York . Noon at Estee Lauder for chemical peel of birthmark; lunch at Harvard Club. Armani fitting.

1/8: Back to the dacha. OPEN.

It is anybody’s guess what the man who unglued the Soviet empire will do after his country is officially dismembered.

Plenty of people think they know what’s next for Mikhail Gorbachev and even more have suggestions. Just last week, for instance, a Russian astrologer predicted that Gorbachev would become head of the United Nations by 1995, while some Manhattan deal makers speculated that he would write books in the Crimea and do lunches in New York. Still others, mostly his enemies, half expect that Gorbachev might end up in prison.

“Who’s to know what’s up for the man,” says Jack Matlock, former U. S. ambassador to the Soviet Union. “I don’t think he’s the sort of guy to just give up on his ideas and walk away. He could play the part of elder statesman or even come back at some point. But that’s highly speculative. Anything is, right now.”

Some have written that Gorbachev would like to continue his political activity and have a role in the government reformulating in the aftermath of the Soviet breakup. But others have written that Boris Yeltsin, his political nemesis, won’t have him and is offering nothing more than a pension.

Unlike a Ronald Reagan or a Margaret Thatcher, both of whom left government with fat passels of perquisites, Gorbachev is likely to get a few rubles, an apartment in Moscow and a dacha in the suburbs. Beyond that, it’s difficult to predict what other material benefits might follow.

Part of the problem is precedent: There is none. Not only is Gorbachev being “retired” as president, the whole Soviet system is getting the proverbial dinner and gold watch. In the past, Soviet leaders either were condemned to oblivion or died--either naturally or from lead poisoning.

But Gorbachev has a strong enough public following--although mostly outside his country--that it is hard to imagine President Gorbachev settling for being an anonymous Comrade Gorbachev, much less Citizen Gorbachev.

He is certainly not short of opportunities to cash in. The man who lost out because he refused to completely give up the communism gig could become a raging capitalist, even a multimillionaire, if he chooses.

“About a year on the lecture circuit talking about perestroika, and we could make him a believer in our system,” says Don Walker of the Harry Walker Agency in New York. The agency handles speaking engagements for such heavy hitters as Henry Kissinger, former President Gerald Ford and Benazir Bhutto, former president of Pakistan.

“I think Gorbachev has one of the most breathtaking stories of the century to tell and, since he’s the person who set it in motion, he’ll be a big sell.”

And another agent compares the wooing of Gorbachev by publishers, authors’ agents, lawyers and speakers’ bureaus to a giant fishing tournament.

“I sort of have this image of a big boat weighed down, just about sinking, with hundreds, thousands of agents dropping lines with bait to catch this big, fat fish,” says the New York agent who asked not to be identified because he’s hoping his bait gets swallowed.

One New York view has Gorbachev going the strictly serious route for at least six months, writing yet another dry tome and lecturing at some Ivy League college in a cold city somewhere on the East Coast. (Harvard has already dropped hints he’ll end up there.)

A more tongue-in-cheek Hollywood view? Gorbachev gets a “development deal” to produce, of course, something on his own--be it a new political party in Moscow or a documentary series for Russian television.

All sorts of people have been in Moscow recently trying to take a meeting with Gorbachev. The problem is that few know how to get to him.

When word got out that Matlock might see him, some people pressed the former ambassador to put in a good word for their ventures.

“Several people tried to get me to pass along that they could make a good deal for him like up to $100,000 a speech,” says Matlock, who declined to act as a messenger when he met with Gorbachev last Tuesday in his Kremlin office.

Matlock notes that the Soviet President-for-the-Time-Being mentioned that his book, “Perestroika,” was still selling well: “He felt that shows people are still interested in his ideas and he expects to influence.

“At times two or three years ago he seemed so self-assured it bordered on cockiness. He was not in a morose mood at all and there were no signs of bitterness but I’ll tell you, he was a lot more subdued.”

Eddie Bell, chief executive and publisher of HarperCollins in the United Kingdom, which published “Perestroika,” says he is waiting to get “the call to come to Moscow.

“In the past they would call and say, ‘Come. We’ve got something.’ President Gorbachev has talked about writing full time. If he does then, of course, I’d be involved. But there is not, at the moment, a book in the works.”

HarperCollins also published Gorbachev’s “The August Coup,” and a memoir by his wife, Raisa. If Gorbachev is ready to reveal new details of the Soviet Union’s unraveling, Bell expects he’ll write another book:

“Americans think out loud; English people are inclined to think into themselves; and the Russians think on paper. From that viewpoint it would not be unreasonable to say he’ll want to get his thoughts down on paper.”

But it’s not sewn up for HarperCollins, by any means.

When Margaret Thatcher retired in June, the great publishing houses in London and New York lined up with juicy offers. Thatcher, like Reagan, also received big-buck offers for speaking engagements.

According to sources in New York, Gorbachev is getting the same treatment and could expect from $50,000 to $100,000 per speech--even more in Japan.

Ultimately, however, the Gorbachevs’ future may depend on what they find acceptable.

In the past Gorbachev has given book royalties to charity and he has suggested recently that he might want to raise money in the West to help his country.

But what the man dubbed Man of the Decade in the 1980s probably won’t find acceptable in the 1990s is the silence of a world no longer clinging to his every thought, his every word.

“Right now he’s probably wrestling with his own conscience whether it’s honorable and decent to be an itinerant lecturer and personality in the West,” says Helmut Sonnenfeldt, a Soviet expert at the Brookings Institution.

“But at least when Margaret Thatcher stands up in the House of Commons . . . , people pay attention. I’m sure it isn’t quite as satisfying but she at least has a platform. I don’t see Gorbachev going into the Russian Parliament. I don’t see his own people paying attention. Not for awhile.”