Red Sparrow 02 - Palace of Treason

by Jason Matthews

  Hannah knew that this shit, unrelieved, made you a little twitchy. Just look at Janice and Benford at Headquarters. She noted to herself that Nate wasn’t twitchy at all, at least not in the bad sense. She thought of him all the time, but there was no question of sending him a friendly email, even a secure internal message. Too ex-lover, too possibly misunderstood.

  She needed a friend: The catechism was to stay away from the other officers in the station—preservation of cover, avoid contamination, compartmentalize your individual activities. There were some workmates from State, from her consular cover job in the embassy, but no real social prospects. Moscow was a nonfrat post, so unless she wanted to bench press an eighteen-year-old, off-duty American Marine security guard, it would be evenings in the embassy housing compound, sitting on kilim pillows around a coffee table eating cheese and crackers with six earnest State Department third secretaries listening to the new commemorative Joni Mitchell CD and wondering why the hostess, an overly dramatic thirty-seven-year-old global-studies major from Mount Holyoke named Marnie, wore a beaded peasant necklace with an oversized wooden M.

  Stop it. Eighteen months left in this Moscow tour, with a hinny mule of a COS on one side of the office trailer and a tipsy, nicotine-saturated DCOS Schindler hanging upside down from the ceiling on the other. And scores of lynx-eyed FSB surveillants waiting for her to come out and play on the street. Hannah had accomplished what Benford asked her to do: DIVA had SRAC and could talk to CIA securely in Moscow, a towering if jeopardous triumph. At the end of her first year, Hannah would be due an R&R break. Rest and relaxation, at a location of her choice. Certainly home to New Hampshire, but maybe somewhere else, say, Greece, for a bit of sun and sea. And a bit of Nate?

  “Hi, Dad,” said Hannah, sitting in her darkened apartment, bathed in the light of the computer screen. The jumpy images of Hannah’s mother and father in their sunny New Hampshire kitchen smiled back. It was morning back home in Moultonborough.

  “How are you, Hannah?” said her mother. “Keeping warm over there?”

  “I’m fine, Mom,” said Hannah. “I bought a big brown furry hat. It’s dreadful—muskrat I think—but warm.”

  “Are you eating well?” said her mother. She had mailed a box of cookies last month.

  “Don’t worry,” said Hannah. “The commissary has everything: peanut butter, bologna, Velveeta.” She dug her fingernails into the palm of her hand. This ghastly prattle was the best she could do: Before leaving for Moscow she had told her parents on no account to refer to or ask about her job. Never. They knew where she worked. Her parents had stared at her, unhappy and aghast, when Hannah said the Russians were always listening. Tonight the FSB techs would be watching the same images of her parents, hearing the same conversation. But not to use Skype as every other embassy employee did (with abandon) would be unexplainable and interpreted only one way: She’s a spook; deploy more surveillance.

  “Aren’t there restaurants over there?” asked her father. Hannah smiled. He was role-playing the goofy New England hick. Careful, Daddy, she thought.

  “Oh sure,” said Hanna. “A bunch of us go out and try local dishes. It’s a lot of fun. There’s a dish with lamb and eggplant called chanakhi, and it’s pretty good.” Hannah wondered if the transcribers would note that the Georgian stew had been Stalin’s favorite.

  “It sounds heavy,” said her mother. God. Hannah ached to tell her father what she was doing, how she had been selected and trained to beard the Bear in his own lair, about what she had accomplished. She knew he loved her and was proud of her. But her triumphs could not be celebrated. “Get used to it,” Benford had said before she left. “Self-abnegation builds character.” Whatever that meant.

  “I should sign off now,” said Hannah. “It’s pretty late here.” Her hand twitched on the mouse to click the disconnect icon.

  “I hope you’re getting enough sleep,” said her mother. “Do you need anything, a warm nightgown, snuggly slippers?” The eavesdropping, slack-jawed louts with the earphones would be making jokes tomorrow about snuggly slippers.

  “Nope, I have everything I need,” said Hannah. “I’ll talk to you guys next week,” she said. Her mother blew a kiss, got up, and moved off camera. Her father stayed still, looking at her through the screen. Careful, Daddy, Hannah telegraphed.

  “Good talking to you, baby girl,” he said. “You take care over there. Love you.”

  “Bye, Daddy,” said Hannah. He means give ’em hell, she thought. That’s just what I’m doing, Daddy.

  In Headquarters, Benford read Hannah’s cables, icily impressed. She had performed well, he knew, and DIVA’s SRAC system was working beautifully, full-out. Hannah had cased superior sites, her surveillance-detection runs were nearly perfect, and she was a brick on the street. So natural, so cool, in fact, that FSB surveillance apparently assessed her to be a low-ranking functionary in the embassy, a junior officer in personnel, and accordingly had deployed only sporadic “check-up” coverage on her. Most nights she was black—she was sure of it. And thank God that hammerhead COS had not interfered with her. Benford would keep his eye on Throckmorton.

  The DIVA reporting (via SRAC bursts) about the mole TRITON and Russian attempts to discover the identity of LYRIC had torn away the rotten wainscoting to reveal a mass of termites. Big CI trouble. Benford looked dyspeptically at the Moscow cables again. If TRITON was inside the Agency, he would not see these DIVA reports—Benford had hurriedly invoked a dedicated compartment to limit distribution to himself, three officers in CID, and the new chief of ROD, Dante Helton.

  With sandy hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and the wry look of a dissolute academic, Helton was relatively young for a division chief, having started his career in communist Eastern Europe as a junior officer. Helton once told Benford that ops in the former East Bloc in the Wild West days were every bit the challenge of Moscow, with the added dimension that your host-country adversaries—from intel-service chiefs and planners all the way down to surveillance personnel—were the inheritors of brilliant national patrimonies from Poland (Chopin) to Czechoslovakia (Freud) to Hungary (Teller) to Romania (Vlad the Impaler). They were devilishly smart as well as committed. Helton had operated in Warsaw under murderous pressure—his hostile surveillance team, eventually driven into a rage by Helton’s endlessly smooth manipulation of them, had one December night in 1987 flattened the roof of his Polski Fiat 125 level with its doors with coal shovels. The next evening he fucked them all over again.

  Benford sat in his littered office with Helton and Margery Salvatore, a CID maven whose Sicilian ancestors, Benford was convinced, must have included the Fisherwife of Palermo who in 1588 claimed to have flown on goats with local witches. Margery could figure things out, complicated things, and Benford wanted her insights. He likewise had summoned Janice Callahan. She had not yet arrived, to Benford’s annoyance.

  “If it’s all right with you two, I will offer preliminary comments until Janice arrives.” He bellowed through the door to his secretary, the one with the fluttering eyelid. “Tell Callahan to come instantly. If she is en route, tell her to begin running.” He looked at Dante and Margery for any sign of disapproval or unease, and saw none. Benford registered that he was known as a temperamental crank, but was agnostic about it.

  “I am going to Athens in several days to consult with Station and to participate in the debriefing of DIVA,” said Benford, running nervous fingers through his unruly salt-and-pepper hair, inadvertently creating a modified Mohawk ridge on one side of his head. Normal: Dante and Margery did not blink.

  “Only a few agents—all of them retired or dead—in the pantheon of Russian operations have been able to report with the scope and potential that DIVA is displaying. The fortuitous upcoming opportunity for a personal meet will, I expect, provide abundant detail.” The door opened and Janice, ice-tea cool in a leopard-print wrap dress and Jimmy Choo black mules, ambled in. Benford scowled at her. “What took you so long?” said Benford. Janice looked aroun
d for someplace to sit—Dante and Margery had cleared the two frayed chairs of newspapers and boxes. The only other perch—a small swaybacked couch—was brimming with more files.

  “If I run, my dress falls off and these shoes come off my feet, Simon,” Janice said absently, running a hand through her hair and looking around. “I keep forgetting to bring a camp stool when I come to your office.” Benford watched her as she cleared a space for herself. A small avalanche of files hit the floor. She leaned down to pick them up, her cleavage revealed exponentially. Helton studiously looked away.

  “As I was saying, DIVA is a fitting successor to MARBLE, as well as a testament to his farsightedness, God rest him,” said Benford. The room was silent. Every one of them had come up the ranks by reading the MARBLE omnibus.

  “We now have to consider several matters,” he said. “At this time I will not discuss DIVA’s contribution to the Iranian nuclear covert action, nor her success in coming to the favorable attention of the Russian president.”

  “Now that you mention it, getting chummy with the president is a contact sport,” said Margery. “We could jeopardize her continued access and well-being if he loses interest in her and sidelines her. Even Vladimir’s wife, Putina, eventually got the heave-ho.”

  “The prospect of DIVA becoming a favored confidante to the president is enormous,” said Benford.

  “ ‘Favored confidant.’ Simon, what’s that mean exactly?” said Dante. “You want DIVA to seduce the president?”

  “Calm yourselves,” said Benford. “We will exploit what we can with due consideration to protecting our clandestine reporting source.” He glowered around the small office. It’s why he liked these officers; they gave him shit. He began again, his clockwork mind driving without pause the pinions and keys and ratchets in his brain.

  “Let’s review. One: We know that the Russians have begun receiving truncated reports from someone code-named TRITON. Two: The Russians do not yet know TRITON’s identity. Three: TRITON has reported to the Center that CIA has recruited a GRU source on military/scientific intelligence, and has provided our internal cryptonym—LYRIC. Four: SVR Rezident Yulia Zarubina continues to meet a transparent Air Force double agent to enable intel exchanges with TRITON. Five: A recently recruited SVR source was suddenly recalled from Caracas. That agent’s status is unknown.” He looked around the room.

  “Does anyone outside CIA know the LYRIC crypt?” asked Margery. They all knew internal cryptonyms were sacrosanct, but they also knew that they were often mentioned in interagency settings.

  “With the wide readership of LYRIC’s reporting, and the frequent community meetings about his intelligence, it is possible, perhaps likely, yes, that the LYRIC cryptonym is known outside this building,” said Benford.

  “And DIVA has reported that this TRITON is using the US Air Force double-agent operation as a conduit to Zarubina?” said Helton.

  “Correct. I hope to learn more about how this is done when we speak to her,” said Benford.

  “Okay,” said Helton. “But that means TRITON could be in the military, here in Langley, in the White House, on the NSC, on the Hill, or an aerospace contractor in California.”

  “Also correct,” said Benford. “The hunt for this mole would by necessity begin on quite a broad scale. Manpower constraints would be a consideration.”

  “We could be working on this for months,” said Margery, imagining the task forces, the damage assessments, the production reviews. A mess.

  “Years,” said Benford.

  Helton looked at Margery. “That’s not the worst of it,” he said. “If the Caracas recall is because of TRITON, that would suggest he’s inside this building. The recruitment is too new; that case wasn’t known outside Headquarters.”

  “Well, unless we hear that our Caracas agent is on a meat hook in Butyrka prison, we won’t know,” said Margery.

  “And we do not have the luxury of time,” said Benford, fidgeting with a pencil on his desk. “If TRITON is among us, and well-placed, and reading material across distinct disciplines—military, political, scientific, geographic—he could hamstring the entire operations directorate.”

  “And kill scores of agents,” said Margery. She had worked in China operations in the early years and knew the list of agents “not returned, no contact, presumed compromised” by heart. She still thought of some of them occasionally. They all did.

  Benford looked over Helton’s shoulder at Janice Callahan, sitting quietly with mahogany legs crossed, arms outstretched along the back of the couch.

  “Anything to add?” said Benford.

  “Obviously,” said Janice, “we have to find this unpleasant traitor as soon as possible.” Benford’s fuming silence was more appalling than his usual red-faced rants.

  “Thank you, Janice,” Benford said with elaborate irony. “How do we do it?” There was that tick-tock silence in the room, the second before the thermobaric vapor cloud ignites.

  Janice lifted one leg and examined her shoe. “It might be easier than we think,” she said. Benford stilled an impulse to rise from behind his desk, pull his hair, and gyrate. He instinctively cut Janice—all of these friends—some slack: Janice too had walked down dripping alleyways in rusty iron cities with the footsteps echoing behind her.

  “How. Do. We. Do. It?” said Benford.

  “Starve a cold and feed a fever,” said Janice, looking at him through her lashes and flashing her trademark smile.

  CHANAKHI—STALIN’S GEORGIAN STEW

  In a heavy Dutch oven (or tagine) brown cubes of lamb that have been rubbed with salt, pepper, oil, paprika, and red pepper flakes. Add sliced onions and garlic and sauté until soft, then add chopped basil, parsley, and dill, followed by stewed tomatoes, their liquid, and red wine vinegar. Nestle cubed eggplant and cubed potatoes into the stew, and add water to cover. Put the lid on and simmer on low heat until the lamb is tender, the vegetables are soft, and the juices are thickened. Garnish with chopped parsley.

  24

  “Starve a cold and feed a fever?” said Benford quietly. “Please have the goodness to explain to me why you are quoting the Farmer’s Almanac.” Helton turned in his chair, smiling. He had the scent, just a whiff, and waited for Janice to explain.

  “Simon, if TRITON cannot use the Air Force DA op to get his info to Zarubina—if we starve the cold—he’ll get so anxious about his money, or his stroked ego, or whatever motivates him—we feed those fevers—he’ll have to risk meeting Zarubina face-to-face.”

  “And we’ll have a chance at getting a look at him,” said Margery.

  “Zarubina is no pushover,” said Helton. “She’ll be difficult to trip up on the street.”

  “Easier than trying to dig TRITON out of the long grass once he’s been assigned an illegals handler,” said Janice. “We all read DIVA’s SRAC message. The Russians are getting ready to assign a clean illegal to meet him. We’ll never find him then.”

  They all looked at one another. An illegal would mean big trouble. Since the beginning of espionage, a foreign spy with civilian cover, posing as a native-born citizen of the host country with a meticulously prepared legend, speaking fluent, colloquial language, and living an unremarkable life with a humdrum job, had been the perfect faceless solution to handle a sensitive asset in enemy territory. No official status. No diplomatic installation. No intelligence-service connection. No profile for the mole hunters to search for. And everyone in the room knew the Russians prepared and deployed illegals better than anyone.

  “Janice is right. Terminate the Air Force double agent op,” said Helton. “They’ll scream bloody murder, but you can go over OSI’s head and get some general to spike it.”

  “And our boy will have a dilemma,” said Margery. “Without the DA op, TRITON has three choices: Find another anonymous way to commit treason, stop spying, or come out of the closet and deal with Zarubina in person on the street.”

  “And we make that nice old lady in the rezidentura come out and pla
y, we elevate her heart rate a little, and we see,” said Janice.

  “I’ll do this myself,” said Benford, already thinking about the possibilities. “The Air Force is going to be enormously unhappy. And Major Thorstad will no longer have to endure the rigors of espionage. He will have to content himself with watching his videotape movie collection at night.”

  Janice got up from the couch and twitched her dress into place. “It’s Blu-ray and streaming video now, Simon,” she said. “VHS is gone.”

  “Gone? What are you talking about?” said Benford.

  Seb Angevine sat in the black SUV returning to Headquarters after a meeting at AFOSI Headquarters in Quantico, Virginia. He was lost in thought as the vehicle sped north on the George Washington Memorial Parkway, the budding trees that lined the Potomac a blur. An hour ago, he’d had to suppress his panicked reaction when he was informed by a thin-lipped Air Force colonel that SEARCHLIGHT, the double agent operation featuring Major Thorstad, had been terminated on the orders of the deputy chief of staff for Intelligence of the Air Staff.

  The colonel explained that, despite the operation’s solid start and hopeful results in engaging with Russian intelligence, the decision to terminate the DA op was made because SVR requirements levied on Major Thorstad increasingly were zeroing in on classified programs and technology that could under no circumstances be approved as feed material. The potential tactical gains from dilatory contact with the Russians were eclipsed by the significant potential intelligence losses. Major Thorstad was to break contact and rebuff any attempts at recontact by SVR.