“There’s another risk,” said Nate. “If Benford catches TRITON, the Center is going to be looking at why their case crashed. You have to distance yourself.” He was thinking of Yevgeny—he was a traceable link, and if he was interrogated, he could put Dominika in real danger. Nate ignored the image in his head of a faceless Yevgeny in Dominika’s arms.
Gable poured her another finger of ouzo and filled the tumbler with water. “You got two, maybe three, personnel meetings with our officer coming up,” he said. “I want you to use maximum caution—you see something you don’t like, get the hell out of there.”
Dominika patted his hand.
“Do you want to review the Sparrow Hills meeting site?” said Nate.
Dominika shook her head. “You have told me this officer who will meet me is very good,” said Dominika. “I believe you all, but I will make up my own mind when I see her on the street.” She was still deciding whether to build up a serious case of grudge against this twenty-seven-year-old woman.
“Make it a quick look,” said Gable. “The meet should be four minutes, max. Our gal will have the equipment package for your contingency exfil kit.” Gable ran his fingers through his brush cut. “You two will have plenty of time to get acquainted later,” he said.
“She’ll have everything you need,” said Nate. “She’ll be all trained up.”
“Why do you call her she, instead of Hannah?” said Dominika, impatient.
Forsyth and Gable looked casually at Nate. They were exceptional readers of human emotions and, with the instincts of twitchy dogs in earthquake country, understood the situation. Jealousy, mistrust, and competition had no place in a denied-area operation, regardless of gender, ego, or personality. Forsyth made a mental note to suggest to Benford that another Moscow case officer be assigned to meet Dominika in Moscow, even though he expected Benford would refuse. He knew Hannah Archer was Benford’s young star, handpicked and performing magnificently.
Gable, more earthy and cynical, suspected the worst. He looked at Forsyth and telegraphed that he would be giving Nash a high colonic the next morning in the Station, a service euphemism for scaring him shitless. Nate, sitting at the end of the couch and no slouch himself in reading signals, knew he was seriously in the red. And he was furious—with her and with himself. Dominika stood apart and watched the aurora borealis display of their respective haloes collide and separate, thinking that Tchaikovsky would be suitable accompanying music, all cannons and cymbals.
Her CIA men were too good to air internal problems in front of her, but Dominika knew she had just put Nate into the banya, the steam bath, and that, judging from the look on Gable’s face and his swirling purple halo, he would be waiting for Nate tomorrow with the eucalyptus switch. She didn’t know why she did it, but Dominika felt unsettled, a little twitchy. First it’s your temper, now you’ve become a green-eyed klikusha, a hysterical jealous demoniac, she thought. Idiotka, concentrate on your work. Focus on the Gray Cardinals in the Kremlin; reserve your spite for them. She looked furtively at Nate as the men gathered their papers and filed to the door.
Dominika kissed Forsyth on opposite cheeks three times as he left. She hugged Gable, smiling into his eyes. “Will you give me a ride to my hotel?” she said, not looking at Nate. A contrary streak was building up in her, and she reserved the right to be petty about this Hannah. So she would leave, not stay behind with Nate. She did this for Nate, letting Gable see they wouldn’t be together tonight. She ached for him, ached to feel him inside her, but she gave up loving him tonight because she loved him so much. She looked back at Nate as she left.
“Do not worry,” she whispered. “I am all right.”
Udranka was in the corner of the room watching the entire drama. Do what you want, she said, but don’t expect me to agree.
Nate never got his high colonic the next morning. At the opening of business, the ops phone behind Margie’s desk rang, and when she picked it up she heard a low quavering whistle, repeated twice. Margie stuck her head around the corner of her boss’s office door, then into the office next door. Forsyth and Gable together walked through the interior network of rooms to Nate’s little office, nearly at the end of the row, where he was drafting a cable to Headquarters on the safe-house meeting last night. Gable looked down at Nate and briefly mimed whistling. Outside the secure room, they would not speak DIVA’s cryptonym aloud, nor would they refer to her bird-call telephone signal, triggering an emergency meeting—Nate checked his watch—in one hour.
Gable and Nate arrived at the safe house separately fifteen minutes apart. There was an empty tumbler from last night on the low table in the living room with a faint trace of lipstick. Gable and Nate saw it at the same time—they were racked with concern for her. They did a quick check of the apartment, then Gable went back down to the street to set up and watch her walk in.
Nate heard the elevator clunk to a stop on the landing, the squeak of its door, then Gable’s key in the lock. Dominika stormed into the safe-house living room with pogrom and pillage on her face. She was wearing a light beige sweater, pleated navy skirt, and black leather flats. Her hair was messily up and she wore no makeup, which Nate always thought suited her classic features. Not this Visigoth morning though. Nate willed himself not to stare at DIVA’s nipples showing under her sweater—less sexy than threat display. Gable walked in behind her, and both CIA officers waited, cataloging ashtrays and table lamps that could turn into projectiles. Dominika stood in the middle of the room. Her voice was flat but her eyes were animal eyes, shifting from Nate to Gable and back.
“The recall cable from Moscow arrived last night,” she said. “There would have been no trouble. Solovyov had a day or two to prepare for travel. But this morning the old fool comes into the office and tells me proudly that his service has offered him the directorship of a highly classified project. He is convinced that he has been vindicated and is returning to a position of influence and prestige.”
“We told him a hundred times he’s under suspicion,” said Gable. “He said he was ready to bolt the minute we rang the bell.”
“Well, Bratok, he seems to have forgotten your words,” said Dominika. She started pacing three steps one way, three steps the other, her arms crossed in front of her. “He is a lotus-eater; he believes they want him back!”
“Did he say when he was leaving?” said Nate. “Did he mention a flight?”
Dominika looked at him sideways as she paced, clutching herself. “I sat there, listening to him—I couldn’t blink—knowing he was headed straight into the cells. What could I say? ‘General, you might remember the words of your CIA officer that you are under suspicion, that this recall is a ruse, and that your escape to America is arranged?’ I had to sit there and nod.”
“Domi, when did he say he was leaving?” repeated Nate.
“He told me the one o’clock Aeroflot was full, so he was looking at something earlier,” said Dominika. Nate looked at his watch. She stopped pacing and squared off in front of Nate and Gable.
“He’s gone,” she said. “The GRU security officer will drive him to the airport and stay with him until he boards. So forget it. He’s in the Butyrka cellars and he doesn’t even know it.” She walked to the couch, sat down, crossed her legs, and started bouncing her foot. Then she got up again and paced to the window, parting the curtains to look out briefly. Gable looked at Nate and gestured with his head, then went into the kitchen and started opening cupboards and clinking glasses. Nate stood in the middle of the room.
“Dominika, come over and sit down,” Nate said, gesturing to the couch. She looked at him over her shoulder.
“Of course,” she said. “Let’s review the next name on the list you want me to eliminate.”
“Domi,” said Nate softly, “will you sit down or would you like me to kick your butt to the couch?”
Dominika’s head snapped around and she saw dragon tails of purple behind Nate’s head. She flashed to a battered Nate dragging her through
the Danube swamp and across the bridge in Vienna. He’d had the same expression that time as he did now. Dominika swallowed the bile in her throat, came around the back of the couch, slumped in the single armchair, and glared at him.
“If you think you can kick—”
“Don’t try me,” said Nate. “Will you shut up and listen to me?” Gable came out of the kitchen with three glasses of ouzo and a store-bought food container he had found in the refrigerator. He set the tray on the table in front of the couch.
“You might want to listen to him, sweet pea,” said Gable, looking at Dominika. “This is bad, really bad. LYRIC is his agent. Just like you’re his agent.”
Gable had hit her over the head with it, and Dominika was furious.
“You told me Solovyov would be taken to the United States,” said Dominika. “You all told me that you had the escape plan settled with the general. Now he’s on a plane to Moscow and they will be waiting for him at the airport.”
“Do you think we want it this way?” said Nate.
“Whether you want it or not, once again you bastards have made me responsible for putting a good man in his grave,” said Dominika. She crossed her legs as she sat and started bouncing her foot again.
“Yeah, well a lot of good men—and women—get screwed in this game,” said Nate. “Maybe the point is we protect a lot of others in the balance.”
“Did you know this would happen?” said Dominika. They had made love on this couch, and again standing up at the kitchen sink, and he had known all along.
“Listen, Dominika,” said Nate, “this is not a plot. We didn’t use you to put the general away. He was our asset.”
“You wanted me to expose him, to improve my position,” said Dominika. “I never should have agreed.”
Nate shook his head. “You heard Benford,” he said. “The general—LYRIC—was already exposed by that son-of-a-bitch mole in Washington. LYRIC knew it—I told him, and he took it calmly. He was all set to resettle in the United States. He was always headstrong, an old soldier who was grieving for his lost kids, but still a patriot at heart. He made himself believe his people wanted him back. He wanted to go back. Maybe a little part of him knows the truth, but the Russian officer in him wants to believe otherwise.”
“Get it out of your mind that this was some slick move,” said Gable. “It’s TARFU. We’ll be answering questions from Washington for weeks. Forsyth and me, as chief and deputy, but especially droopy over there, as LYRIC’s handler. No one likes to lose an agent.”
“What is this TARFU?” said Dominika. Gable sometimes spoke in tongues.
“It means Totally and Royally Fucked Up,” said Gable, pouring more ouzo.
“You will be censured?” said Dominika, looking at Nate.
“They’ll second-guess him for months,” said Gable. “But we gotta keep doing our jobs. Just like you.” Dominika slumped in her chair, arms crossed. She hadn’t thought of the implications for Nate—now she felt doubly responsible.
“And that means—look at me—that means you have to keep doing your job,” said Nate. “And you have to stay safe. And part of that means staying strong against Zyuganov. And if it means in two days you have to go down into the cellars and slap LYRIC across the face, you fucking do it.”
Dominika had not thought of the very likely possibility that Zyuganov would drag her to sessions in the prison with LYRIC. One CIA mole would be interrogating another, knowing the truth, with the poisonous dwarf looking at both their faces. If her expression did not show her unease, the shiver that would run through her certainly would. The CIA men saw it instantly.
“I will not do that,” she said.
“You remember what I told you both in Vienna?” said Gable. “That someday you’re gonna have to make a decision that’ll make you taste your stomach behind your teeth, but you got no choice, and maybe it even means hurting someone you respect and trust. Well, it happened today and it’ll happen again tomorrow, and the next day.” Gable looked at his watch. “It’s almost one o’clock. You hungry?”
Dominika shook her head. Gable peeled the foil off the aluminum container. Three small eggplants, stuffed with tomatoes and glossy with oil, lay in a row. Gable looked at Nate. “You want one?” Nate shook his head. Gable pushed the container away. He got up and shrugged on his coat.
“Whatta we doing now?” said Gable. “You going back to your embassy?”
Dominika nodded.
“Then we see you tonight as usual?” said Gable.
Dominika nodded. “I leave tomorrow on Aeroflot,” she said.
“Anything you need?” said Gable.
Dominika shook her head.
“Okay, give me ten minutes to clear the street,” said Gable. “See you tonight.”
“Good-bye, Bratok,” said Dominika. They didn’t hear the elevator—he had taken the stairwell. They sat across from each other, not saying anything. Nate’s purple halo was incandescent; it pulsed with energy. Dominika wanted to sit down next to him and put her arms around him, but she would not: LYRIC’s disastrous decision, her lingering resentment, and her imminent return to Russia had settled on her like a heavy blanket. She had heard Bratok, and she now knew what bile tasted like behind her teeth. Dominika checked her watch and stood.
“I’m going now,” she said.
“See you tonight,” said Nate. “Same car site as yesterday?”
“Same time?” said Dominika. She wondered if the evening would end with them in bed.
They both would have been immeasurably sad had they known then that they would not be able to say good-bye to each other.
IMAM BAYILDI—STUFFED EGGPLANT
Slit small eggplants to make a pocket, then bake until soft. Sauté thinly sliced onions, garlic, and thin wedges of tomatoes, salt, sugar, dill, and parsley. Stuff the pockets of the eggplants with filling and drizzle with olive oil. Add water, sugar, and lemon juice to the bottom of a pan, cover, and cook over low heat, basting occasionally until the eggplants are nearly collapsed and the juice in the pan is thickened. Cool and serve at room temperature.
30
Dominika returned briefly to the embassy to see if she could pick up anything else on LYRIC, but there was nothing new: The old fool had departed on an early-morning flight. He expected to be met at Domodedovo airport by a young protocol officer and driven to GRU Headquarters in a black Mercedes. Instead, the attentive officer would escort him to the hospitality lounge off the main terminal, where five men in suits would seize his wrists and his ankles and there would be an arm around his neck to hold him still, and they would unbutton his shirt and take off his shoes, and welcome him back to the Rodina. He was lost.
Dominika stayed a while longer at the embassy, swallowed a wedge of Russian vegetable pie from the embassy canteen without tasting it, and then walked to her hotel. It was midday and the sun was hot on her head. She was dulled and numb over the LYRIC situation. They had done it to her again or, rather, she had done it to herself. She knew the CIA men were out of their minds with concern: They had just lost an agent, partly through bad luck, partly thanks to an old man’s obstinacy, partly through inattention. But she was back in the familiar tar pit, up to her hips in it. Welcome to the life you chose.
She daydreamed, walking head down on the dusty sidewalk of Ambelokipi toward her hotel, about escaping. How would she frame it, how would she tell Nate she wanted him to take her to America, right now, and put her in a house near a lake surrounded by pine trees, a house with a fireplace, and make slow love in the mornings? You’re a little genius, she thought. A real dreamer. Who are you kidding? This deep-freeze existence of hers would continue until she died, exposed by a traitor, or shot by a sniper, or butchered by a maniac assassin.
Marta walked beside her, smoking and looking at the young men on the sidewalk. Clear your mind, she told her, concentrate, love your man, and don’t be afraid.
Love your man. Dominika cleared her mind as she got her room key from the desk and walked
up the narrow stairs, dark and cool compared with the heat of the street. She wanted to change out of her sweater and dress for the evening reception at the embassy, from which she would then slip away to see Nate and Gable at a late-night meeting. She decided she would tell them both she was sorry tonight. Dominika had bought a sheer black body shirt from the Wolford lingerie store in Kolonaki that she would wear under a short jacket and skirt—not formal, but slutty professional. You could see through the gauzy material and she (or Nate) could open the crotch snaps with one hand.
She didn’t recall having drawn the shades in the little sitting room, and something came grunting at her from the little bedroom on the right, a blur, and a shock, and the feel of steel arms around her waist, and Dominika twisted to her left while stepping wide, but the arms didn’t let go, and she was picked up bodily and slammed against the wall with demonic force and the person was an indistinct shadow but not a man, not with that scent, not with those chest pillows, and Dominika hit the blond head with her elbow while reaching low with her other hand and driving a stiff-ridge hand strike between her legs, and got a chuffing noise for her effort, and the arms came away from her waist, but then snaked around her throat, and the woman put a knee in the small of Dominika’s back and tried to pull her to the floor, but Dominika scrabbled at a little ceramic lamp with a seashell pattern on the shade and reached around, and smashed it against the side of the bitch’s head, and the arms let go and Dominika turned to look at her, she was holding her cheek, dressed in a T-shirt and wraparound skirt, and had big shoulders, big legs, eyes the color of slate, and that blond hair lying tight on her skull, and without warning she exploded from a standing start and drove her shoulder into Dominika’s stomach, driving both of them backward onto a glass coffee table, which shattered, and the woman kept driving with her legs, pushing through broken wood and glass, getting a purchase and hitting at Dominika’s head, and her ribs were on fire; she put a thumb into one of those river-stone eyes, but the beast just grunted and shook her head, and Dominika knew she could not beat this woman for sheer strength, and she fought a wave of desperate fear, thinking wildly about screaming for help as the face pressed closer to her, showing her teeth, and Dominika felt broken glass under her hand and she swiped a shard across the woman’s face from above her left eyebrow diagonally downward across the fleshy nose to the lower right cheek, a pirate scar, and the woman rolled off, holding her face and wiping it with the T-shirt, braless breasts visible when she lifted the shirt, large dark-brown nipples, and then the woman exploded forward again like a wounded Cape buffalo, blood streaming down her face, and Dominika was hunched over, holding her ribs together and trying to breathe, when the banshee threw a looping punch that landed above Dominika’s left ear with white light exploding in her head, and real rage came then and Dominika ignored her ribs and threw a snap punch, then another, at the woman’s face with no effect and they both went backward onto the couch, legs intertwined and holding on to hair and clothes, each one trying to get on top, and the couch jumped a little off its legs with the thrashing around, and the beast heaved up on top of her, turned Dominika on her stomach, mashing her face into the couch, and Dominika could feel dripping blood on her cheek and got a blocking hand up between her throat and the cord before it was strained tight, but she could still pass out with enough pressure—thank God it wasn’t piano wire—and with a lurch borne out of desperation Dominika rocked violently twice, sending the couch over on its back with a crack of wood, dumping them both against the wall and Dominika knew if she wasn’t first on her feet in that confined space she was dead, so she put both hands under the woman’s chin and a foot in her stomach and pushed, then rolled away and got to her feet, the cord still loosely around her neck but the beast was wiping her face again, her breasts glistening pink in the dim light of the room, and she was stepping casually over the upturned couch, and Dominika backed away, bracing for another buffalo charge, and on a whim said, Suka ty zlo’ebuchaya, you’re a fucking bitch, to goad her, because Dominika had about one move left, and when Blondie came, arms reaching for her throat, Dominika ducked and took the left arm over her shoulder, did a quarter turn, and pulled down against the hinge of the elbow, separating the distal humerus from the radial head and splintering the olecranon, the point of the elbow, with a sound like a cracked walnut shell, and the woman barked once with the pain but kept coming, with a low moan from her chest, one arm swinging free, one eye blinking away the blood, and Dominika could barely raise her arm to pull the blood-soaked T-shirt to swing the woman in a flat circle and lift a foot to kick her behind the knee joint, and the sodden T-shirt tore down the front as the woman toppled, unable to break her fall with her limp broken arm, hitting the rug with her cheek, her head bouncing once on the floor and Dominika bent over the stirring woman, flipped her over, took three turns with the cord around her neck, and got out of range of that one good arm by scurrying above the woman’s head, putting her feet on her shoulders, and pulling with her arms, she kept pulling the electric cord, the only way she could stay away from those hands and teeth, the only way she could exert enough pressure, both feet braced, leaning back with the ends of the cord wrapped around each fist, and Dominika pulled, turning her head to vomit a little, whimpering with the exertion, and the waves of pain in her ribs were worse, and the woman’s blood-streaked face slowly tilted back to look at Dominika upside down and the flattened breasts shuddered and the saliva and blood ran the wrong way up her face and Dominika kept pulling, and the woman’s good arm scrabbled at the treble-wrapped cord cutting into her neck and her bellow of dying rage came out as a rasping gargling, and the legs started kicking and the woman bucked twice, breasts flopping, and she kept pulling, but the air was full of buzzing sounds, and Dominika kept pulling, and her vision was tunneling now, black-rimmed and fuzzy, and she came back, five minutes or twenty-five minutes later, she couldn’t tell, and the woman was still staring at her, and Dominika took her feet off her shoulders and knee-walked around her, looking sideways at the corpse in case she started moving again, but there was no rise and fall of the chest or diaphragm, and her skirt was wet from waist to hem and her feet were cut from the glass, and one elbow was bent too far one way, and Dominika could barely take a breath, but the virago was dead. She had killed it.
Red Sparrow 02 - Palace of Treason Page 39