Palace of Treason

by Jason Matthews

  “How do you do?” said Zarubina, taking her hand. Her voice was smooth and low-pitched, right out of a warm kitchen with a stew bubbling in the pot. Her palm was soft and warm. “I have heard about you, Captain. I congratulate you on a brilliant start to your career.” Resisting the old Russian urge to cross herself, Dominika smiled her thanks, feeling the familiar tightening in her throat. More of the same, only this is a she-wolf with a different pelt. What is your project, Seamstress? Dominika thought. What are you sewing? Come, Grandmother, and tell me your secrets. Then a pause, a click in Dominika’s mind. Can you guess my story? Do you know who I am, what my icy heart holds? Even to think such things at this close range was folly.

  Zyuganov stepped up and mumbled something about starting, and Zarubina turned to follow him after the X-ray plate behind her eyes recorded a last image of Dominika. She sat at the head of the table.

  In that soft voice, with those mesmerizing eyes, Zarubina briefed the people around the table about the operational environment in Washington: The streets were loose with only intermittent coverage; the FBI were preoccupied. The American administration was floundering in resetting bilateral relations with Moscow; policy makers at all levels were eager for their own Russian Embassy contacts. Zarubina’s case officers as a result had full developmental slates. More significant, the freeze in federal salaries—including those of CIA, FBI, and defense employees—was a resented hardship and was creating openings for SVR recruitment approaches to disgruntled American officers across the board. Finally, the rezidentura was engaged in aktivnye meropriyatiya, active measures, public propaganda to ensure that the White House would not again contemplate the establishment of a defensive missile shield in Eastern Europe, or support grassroots democracy protests from the Baltic to Ukraine. Of course, Zarubina left out operational details that were too specific—there was no need for them to know. She needed their assistance in production, analysis, and technical support. She turned to Colonel Zyuganov. “And Line KR’s best counterintelligence reviews.”

  Zyuganov nodded. “I will attend to the requirement personally.” Dominika saw that he already was imagining himself first deputy chief of SVR under this soft-talking woman.

  Zarubina rested her plump spotted hands on the conference table in front of her. Her fingers twitched occasionally, the only outward sign of internal ecstasies. The yellow-gold bloom around her head was a diadem. She spoke softly, requiring total absorption from those around the table—they could feel their pulses settle in time with hers. Comrades, things were going well. Moscow was strong; Kremlin policies and global goals were syncopated; uninterrupted foreign successes were being realized. The Russian intelligence service was still the very best, the envy of nations and—a nod to Zyuganov—the scourge of opposition services. There was no mention of the glory days of the Soviet Union—there needn’t be, thought Dominika. These words equally would please Tsar Vlad when digitally replayed for him.

  Faces around the table, some otherwise very wise, were transfixed by the honeyed words. Sitting opposite Dominika, Yevgeny was staring at the mild grandmother who would be the next director. He felt Dominika looking at him and turned his head. Yevgeny slowly focused on Dominika’s face, and she read his eyes instantly. The dingy yellow cloud of his lust had been shaken by Zarubina; it was now washed out, overlaid by doubt, guilt about what he had done with Dominika, panic about what he had told her. Dominika felt a momentary flash of alarm, fear that a repentant Yevgeny could come forward and admit all. It would not be overwhelming evidence of her espionage for the Americans, but it would be a short jump to the same conclusion for minds such as Zyuganov’s and Zarubina’s. Dominika was interested to note that she was not frightened at the prospect of trouble but darkly determined—Korchnoi must have tasted this high-wire thrill till the end of his days. She would have to try to settle Yevgeny down. Otherwise . . . what? Not even at Sparrow School did they instruct the girls how to fuck someone to death. Zarubina was looking at the faces around the table, a pleasant smile on her face. Zyuganov stood up.

  “That will be all for now,” he said. “Line OT, please stay behind.”

  Those officers excused began filing out, including Dominika. Yevgeny stayed in his seat at Zyuganov’s left, taking notes. Zarubina chatted amiably with an officer on the other side of the table, but Dominika saw her eyes flitting around the room at the departing personnel, checking for resentment at being excluded, cataloging faces, assessing expressions, sniffing for trouble. Zarubina’s golden halo was steady and strong; this was a creature with no doubts, no hesitation. Her only appetite was for the hunt, and the kill, and the feeding.

  Whatever she was planning for her Washington rezidentura—the presence of the technical officers from Line T strongly suggested that the Seamstress intended to enhance agent handling for her new source, TRITON—details of her plan would be screamingly critical for CIA to know. Dominika resignedly told herself that she would have to endure one more night with Yevgeny before her trip.

  Marta and Udranka were sitting in her office when she got back. Marta was smoking, as usual. Stop feeling sorry for yourself, Sparrow, said Marta. Fifteen minutes with that orangutan between your legs and you’ll have the best present imaginable to bring your beautiful lover.

  Dominika was leaving for Athens tomorrow morning. She told herself she should have been drafting and transmitting another SRAC message, or packing her suitcase, certainly ordering her thoughts for the inevitable marathon CIA debriefing, and checking a street map to get to the first meet with Bratok and Nate at a safe house, the address for which had been sent to her via SRAC exchange. Instead Dominika stood in front of the shower-fogged mirror in her bathroom, wiping her breasts clean with a washcloth. Yevgeny had tiresome predilections.

  In classic Sparrow style, Dominika had navigated across Yevgeny’s bow in the office late in the day, catching his eye, returning his lopsided smile, suffusing her face with an embarrassed blush at his inevitable and lurid suggestion for a good-bye hump to hold him over for the two weeks she would be gone. At least she was spared the tedious coquetry of suggesting it herself. She fed him, poured vodka down his gullet—alas, not enough—and had to lie with him, watching him sweat, whispering ugovarivaniye, coaxing encouragements, helping his body follow his mind, and purr convincingly as, finally, he hunched over her chest, shoulders shaking.

  Then the next skin-crawling half hour cuddling the woolly caterpillar, faces inches apart, with his huile de Venus–oil of Venus they had called it at Sparrow School—drying on her chest, whispering to him about their shared secret, about his future, about the golden promise of a career with Zarubina in charge of the Service. Now Dominika played it stern, with his stubbly face in her hands: Your welfare is what I’m thinking about; there’s nothing to feel guilty about. Don’t throw it all away. Coming forward and what, confessing, would be the end, an unforgiveable transgression in their eyes. It would be the end of this, of us.

  The smile was coming more frequently, staying longer on his lips, Yevgeny was reassured. His hand—those fingernails were marginally clean—trailed down her belly. Ni khuya sebe, no fucking way, thought Dominika wearily, and held his wrist. Instead she moved her own hand lower, and looked him in the eyes, which grew wider, then wider still. Is this what you want? Dominika thought dryly, moving her hand. Is this sufficient? No. 96, “Chairman Mao’s Chopsticks”: After hours of practice at Sparrow School, it wasn’t the hand or wrist that gave out, it was the electric ache in the shoulder, until you couldn’t raise your arm, until you couldn’t look at another oiled cucumber. Dominika still could not go near Okroshka, cold cucumber soup.

  Yevgeny’s lower lip quivered as if he were going to weep. Dominika had to slow her insidious hand so he could talk.

  “God . . . knows,” he said, concentrating. “Madame Zarubina was the one who made the request to discuss using an illegal to handle TRITON.”

  Throw the bone in the wrong direction. “Interesting but illogical,” sniffed Dominik
a. “What could Zarubina want with someone like that?” Fast then slow.

  Yevgeny closed his eyes and his breath caught. “Zarubina anticipates that she will be able to identify TRITON in the near future, and that he will agree to be handled personally. She says it’s inevitable, whether in a week or a month. When that time comes she will meet him and settle him down. But then long-term handling must be by an officer not assigned to an official Russian diplomatic installation. Safer that way.” He expelled a breath in a long sigh.

  “An illegal?” said Dominika, almost sitting up, protesting to draw him out. “They cannot contemplate using someone without diplomatic cover with someone as potentially valuable as TRITON.”

  “Why did you stop?” said Yevgeny dreamily, looking down at her hand. If Dominika had an ax handle under her bed, she would have resumed with that. “Zarubina—wants to meet TRITON—herself at first,” stuttered Yevgeny. “Yes, that’s better—keep going. Zarubina said she eventually wants a faceless illegal—an expert in operating inside America—to assume handling. All traces of the case will evaporate.” And Benford will have no chance to catch him, thought Dominika.

  “The illegals cadre was decimated when the deputy in Line S, the illegals directorate, defected,” said Dominika, thinking furiously, multitasking. “The identities of most illegals in S were blown to the Americans. The cupboard is bare.”

  Yevgeny shook his head. He spoke with an effort. “Zarubina said there is another illegals school, not the main one at Teply Stan, another one, not even a school, just a program, very small, just one or two students a year. It was not under Line S management, so it was not compromised. It belongs to the Kremlin.” What a coup it would be to get inside this program, thought Dominika, to identify illegals before they ever deployed to America.

  “What is the Kremlin thinking, directing such operations?” said Dominika, already knowing the answer. Russia’s blue-eyed president-for-life and former KGB flunky wanted to keep his hand in the Game, but not to revel in the clandestine geometry of dispatching spies and saboteurs to impose his designs on the world. Putin’s servants were all fungible and dispensable to him. No, this was another display of His Highness the Tsar’s muzhestvennost’, his Russian virility. Yevgeny winced—in her anger, perhaps Dominika had yanked the wrong way. “Zarubina seems to know a lot about things,” said Dominika, slowing down.

  “How she knows about all this, I don’t know.”

  “Perhaps Zarubina will be this new illegal’s patron,” said Dominika almost to herself, already mentally drafting another report, this one for Benford. Mentor one of Putin’s khor’ki, one of his hot-eyed ferrets, and Zarubina would be rewarded—the directorship of SVR.

  “Zarubina doesn’t mentor anyone,” said Yevgeny vaguely, looking down at Dominika’s hand with heavy-lidded eyes. “Don’t stop.”

  When would the new illegal be sent to America? Have they identified a specific person? How far along in training is he? Man or woman? What city will she live in? What is her occupation? What is her legend? “Feel good?” said Dominika, watching Yevgeny’s flaring, bushy nostrils.

  “Zarubina is a woman possessed,” said Yevgeny, closing his eyes. Dominika thought he was more right than he knew. “She’s insisting on absolute security. She will meet TRITON for as short a time as possible, then assign the illegal to TRITON to be totally clandestine. Line T is researching secure communications. All of this is to be outside Line KR. No one is to know, not even you. Zyuganov’s orders.”

  Dominika smiled at Yevgeny. “I won’t tell a soul in the Center,” she said. She moved her arm more quickly—martellato, a little hammer in her hand.

  “I know,” said Yevgeny distractedly. He was breathing faster now.

  “You’re so sexy like this,” said Dominika, thinking irony came naturally in the bedroom. Yevgeny suddenly started trembling. He fell back and ground the back of his head into the pillow, groaning. It was thirty seconds before he opened his eyes and his breathing slowed.

  “It will be a long two weeks apart,” panted Yevgeny.

  Two weeks will be over before you know it, said Udranka from the corner of the bedroom.

  “Two weeks will be over before you know it,” said Dominika.

  OKROSHKA—COLD CUCUMBER SOUP

  * * *

  Process peeled and seeded cucumbers, green onions, chopped hard boiled eggs, fresh dill, sour cream, and water to make a soup of granular consistency. Optionally add cubes of cooked ham. Season, chill, and serve garnished with dill or mint.

  23

  Hannah Archer had been busy. For four nonconsecutive days in the past week she had made careful surveillance-detection runs of five, six, four, and three hours, not only determining her status—that is, whether she had trailing surveillance that day—but also quantifying with eyes and instinct increasingly honed on the street what sort of surveillance might be on her. It was a good bet that she was still low on the FSB priority list, but since her arrival she had seen a slight incremental increase in coverage on her. Some FSB desk officer had probably picked her file and thrown it into the “check activity” pile in the “foreigners” box.

  To COS Moscow’s annoyance, Hannah regularly cabled detailed descriptions to Headquarters of what she saw on the street. Vern Throckmorton thought he should be doing the reporting on security conditions, but Hannah deferentially paid him no mind and filed weekly cables to Benford, per the latter’s instructions. COS brooded about it but let it go, wary of the savant’s mercury-switch temper. Never mind, both Benford and Hannah knew that surveillance activity was a delicate barometer of counterintelligence danger—whether the Russians’ tails were up, whether they were on the scent, whether they were pulling on a string—and Benford now had to worry about DIVA.

  Even if her operational act for a given day was simply to drive by and load/unload one of the SRAC receivers she herself had buried around Moscow, she had to know what sort of ticks were on her, what sort of gap they were giving her, whether they were tired and bored or riled and skittish. Passing an invisible SRAC site under trailing surveillance was nothing like meeting a source face-to-face, but Jesus, you still had to do it perfectly, still had to keep your shoulders square, look straight ahead, snap-check your mirrors, then fire the precisely timed shot with a hand casually inside the bag, remembering not to jackrabbit away after passing the site, and it was very preferable not to rear-end the Muscovite car ahead of you—little things that tech-savvy surveillance teams watch for, one lane over and three cars back, looking inside your vehicle with binoculars.

  God, she loved the street, basked in the rhythms of it, kept her window down despite the cold to hear the sounds of it. On several nights she experienced what Jay, her internal-operations instructor, had told her sporadically occurs in case officers under surveillance: a state of grace where she became one with the grim, unshaven, unwashed men in the cars with the radios hot under the dashboards. On those nights, her transported spirit rode silent in the musk-ox backseat with them, listened to the clicks and squelch breaks, heard the muted profane comments, understood how they followed her that night.

  One foggy evening she would hear the tire squeals of parallel coverage, glimpsing the telltale sidelights of cars on flanking streets keeping pace with her. Another night she would see—no, feel—them leapfrogging, her mind riffling through the growing catalog: There’s Oscar and Mustache Man, you switched off your left headlight, naughty, the bread truck we saw last week, boys, wipe the smudges when you take off the roof rack, coming up to the intersection and . . . there you are Matinee Idol, you should have waited behind the bus, never mind, I love you guys, come on, I’ll go home early tonight so you all can rest.

  And the worst nights were when they weren’t there, when the boys had abandoned her for another rabbit, and Hannah was fitful and lonesome. Those were the days when she gripped the wheel: Okay fuckers, are you using the Doomsday Maneuver, so perfect that no one can fathom how you do it, no one can see it to beat it, and you’r
e trying to catch DIVA, and kill her, and all that stands against your unshaven, flat fucking Slavic faces sinking your mandibles into the agent, my agent, is my gas pedal, and the narrow rippled mirrors on this chirping little hatchback, and my strontium-fortified cooz, and you guys cannot have her, it’s not going to happen.

  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?