27
For the second meeting at safe house TULIP, Nate picked Dominika up at dusk at a CPU—car pickup—site in Ambelokipi after his own hour-long SDR. He checked his watch to make sure he hit the four-minute window, then sighted down Fokios—no trailing coverage on the narrow street—as he slowed to make the turn onto Levadias. A parked car at the intersection had its front wheels turned out, a tell of staked-out surveillance, but an old lady was loading boxes into the trunk, and Nate saw no reaction as he passed. As he slowed to turn into the Y-shaped intersection with Levadias, Dominika stepped out from under a green canopy in front of a neighborhood pharmacy and, ballerina smooth and strong, slid into the passenger seat of the still rolling car, swinging the door shut as Nate moved away. She bent forward, reached under her seat, and came up wearing a long blond wig and a huge pair of tinted glasses. The elegant Slavic beauty with pinned-up hair had changed in four seconds to a bottle blonde with questionable fashion sense, perhaps on her way to dinner with a paramour. Nate looked over at her as she pulled the seat belt across herself.
“I never thought of you as a blonde,” he said. “You look pretty sexy.” He had been about to teasingly say “slutty” but thankfully his brain worked faster than his mouth this time. Gable’s words from the night before hung in the hot air of the dusty little car.
Dominika smoothed the wig a little and laughed, glancing at him, checking. Steady purple. “Thank you, Neyt. Perhaps I will dye my hair blond. No one in my embassy would recognize me.”
“They won’t wonder where you are every evening?” said Nate.
“No. I will attend a party at the rezident’s house in a few days, and an evening concert at the embassy next week. It will be enough. Besides, no one is going to ask Captain Egorova of Line KR what she is doing in Athens.”
“Well, I’m glad Captain Egorova of Line KR is spending this evening with us,” said Nate. “Everyone will be at the apartment tonight. Benford spent all day with Forsyth and Gable. He’s hatching something.”
“You were not there?” said Dominika.
She was lightly kidding, but it required an evasive response. Nate had been trying to meet LYRIC, to get him ready to defect, but the general had been a no-show. Mule-headed old soldier. But he couldn’t tell Dominika about him.
“I had to help out in the political section all day. We have to play nice with our embassy colleagues.” Nate dully registered the interchangeability of the concept of “cover story” and “lie.”
“Do you think it will be a late night?” said Dominika.
“Probably. I brought stuff in for dinner.” There were food packages on the backseat. “Why? Do you have to get back early?”
“No,” said Dominika. “I was just curious.”
Nate turned onto six-lane Alexandros Boulevard to begin a stair-step route around the back of Likavitos Hill and through Neapoli to park somewhere quiet and walk in the rest of the way.
“I was wondering,” said Dominika, glancing over at him, “when we could expect to be alone.” They were in the middle of a block of stopped traffic four lanes wide and ten cars deep, waiting for the light to change. Motorbikes wobble-walked between the rows of cars to gather at the front, under the light, like settlers lining up for a land rush. Nate checked his mirrors instinctively, then leaned over and put his face close to hers.
“Alone? What did you have in mind?” Nate said. Dominika brushed a bit of blond wig from her eyes and ran her fingers along the side of his face. Nate leaned closer, their lips nearly touching. Dominika closed her eyes.
“Additional SRAC training,” said Dominika. “That means short-range agent communication, no?”
“How short-range?” said Nate, brushing his lips across hers.
“Certainly not too short,” said Dominika, hooking his head and bringing their mouths together.
The light changed and the night erupted into an Athenian hysteria of forty cars honking, each one at the malaka, the silly jerk-off in the car ahead, to get moving.
Chief of Athens Station Forsyth opened the safe-house door and pulled Dominika inside by the wrist. They exchanged the requisite three Russian kisses on alternating cheeks, then Forsyth put his arm around Dominika’s shoulders and led her into the living room, leaving Nate to juggle an armload of food parcels, shut the front door, and throw the locks. The rest of them were in the living room, standing around the drinks tray. Her team. Her family. Nate came in from the kitchen. And her lover. She could still taste him on her lips, still feel the tingle.
Something was up, something had happened. As Dominika smiled, shook hands, and accepted a drink, that ensorcelled mind of hers took in the scene. Aurae filled the room. The CIA case officers’ shoulders were stiff. They were quiet and smooth, but too quiet; she could hardly tell something was wrong, that’s how good they all were. Forsyth, in a light-gray suit with a navy tie, bathed in his artistic blue haze, ran his fingers through his salt-and-pepper hair; Bratok, dear brother Gable of the passionate purple halo, his shirtsleeves rolled up his thick forearms, was looking at her the way her ballet coach used to; Benford, tie askew, with flyaway hair and a wrinkled dark suit, was miles away, ablaze in the deep-blue atelier of the master watchmaker, tweezing clockwork gears, pins, and wheels in place, just so; and Nate, in a blazer and open shirt, trim and spare of movement, the man she loved, was mixing a drink, also purple, steady and bright—his passions included her. He looked up and his smile was relaxed.
Dominika was dressed in a simple navy cotton dress and black leather flats. Her hair was up and she wore only a light lip gloss. Usually she didn’t wear jewelry, but tonight she had put on a single strand of pearls. She sat at one end of the couch, crossed her legs, dangled a shoe, and started bouncing her foot. The CIA men sipped their drinks.
“I will make a dash for the terrace and escape through the pine trees if you do not tell me what is going on,” said Dominika, looking across at Benford, then at the rest of them, one by one. Gable was sitting closest to her on the L-shaped couch.
“Atta girl,” he said, turning to Forsyth. “I told you. The first five minutes.”
“Dominika, I want to applaud the remarkable work you have done since you returned to Moscow,” said Benford, leaning forward in his armchair. “We have all of us been discussing the confluence of intelligence you have generated. It is a perfect storm of precious counterintelligence leads, a positive intelligence windfall, and a precarious but potentially epic covert-action opportunity. All thanks to you.”
Gable leaned over and squeezed her arm in congratulation. “You keep listening to me, and you’ll be a star,” he said. Dominika looked at him deadpan and shook her head sadly, as if there were no hope for him.
“All this operational movement unavoidably multiplies the risk to you, Domi,” said Forsyth. “We have to balance your continued safety against exploiting these openings. We want to propose something that will boost your standing and improve your security posture.”
“Forsyth,” said Dominika, though it came out closer to “Fyoresite.” Using his last name was the closest Dominika could get to the affectionate Russian use of the patronymic. “You all know that I will weigh risks and play the system, the system I know best. But I will not stop.”
“With a resentful and barbarous superior like Alexei Zyuganov, you have a formidable enemy,” said Benford. “We want to fortify you against him. You’re too valuable to us.”
“And there’s an opportunity just now, but it’s a little tricky,” said Forsyth.
“She can do it,” said Gable. Nate shifted in his seat, not knowing what was coming. Dominika tried to sit still, but her foot still bounced.
“What?” she said. “Tell me.”
“Do you know Lieutenant General Mikhail Nikolaevich Solovyov, of the GRU?” asked Benford. Dominika felt all their eyes on her. Nate, in a flash, knew what Benford was thinking. He otherwise would never, ever, have revealed one agent’s identity to another.
“He’s in the mili
tary attaché’s office at the embassy,” said Dominika. “A one-star senior man in a junior position, kicked out of Moscow. I’ve interviewed him, he’s old-school army, bitter, hates Putin, a real dinosaur—” Dominika stopped and looked at the CIA men. Utter silence in the room. “Solovyov is LYRIC?” she whispered.
“Atta girl,” said Gable, getting up to unwrap the food.
They passed around plates of eggplant salad, feta cheese, grilled sausages, boiled zucchini in vinegar, flaky spinach pie, Greek beans, and toothpick meatballs. Dominika drank ouzo with ice and water along with Gable, while the others drank a dry white Moscofilero. Benford had flakes of phyllo crust on his tie.
“Thanks to you we know that LYRIC was fingered by TRITON, an incomplete identification,” said Benford. “TRITON’s last report to Zarubina reveals for the first time that LYRIC is reporting from Athens, not from Moscow, and we can anticipate that Zyuganov will move quickly. Ironically, Dominika, he sent you here to get you out of the way, but Zyuganov inadvertently put you right on top of the target.” Dominika put down her plate and stared at Benford. Forsyth was observing her intently.
“So it appears we will lose LYRIC as an active source sooner rather than later,” said Benford. “You’re on a counterintelligence inspection for Line KR. If, based on your interview of General Solovyov, you send a cable to the Center reporting his inconsistent behavior, evasiveness, and resentful attitude, and recommend Solovyov’s recall to Moscow for interrogation based on suspicion of espionage, you will have uncovered yet another CIA mole.”
Silence in the room that Nate estimated lasted twenty endless seconds.
“I won’t do it,” said Dominika quietly. “I will never again be responsible for the death of a decent man fighting alone against the chudovishcha, the monsters in my country. I won’t.”
“Calm yourself,” said Benford. “The day the recall cable arrives from GRU Headquarters in Moscow, LYRIC will disappear, defected to the West, incidentally validating your CI recommendation to investigate him.”
“LYRIC is retired in safety and Domi, you’ve got another feather in your cap,” said Forsyth. “Zyuganov won’t be able to mess with you.”
“You will smuggle Solovyov out of Greece and to the United States?” said Dominika, looking at their faces.
Forsyth nodded.
“I have to be sure,” she said, clenching her jaw.
“He will never again set foot in the Aquarium. He will be gone,” said Benford. “Nathaniel has made the preparations.”
“Don’t spook her, for Chrissake,” said Gable.
The moon over Hymettus was blood orange from the pall of urban exhaust over the city, even after midnight. Everyone had left the safe house except Dominika and Nate, who would leave together last and drive out. The others had staggered their departures, vectoring away in different directions to avoid contaminating TULIP in the unlikely event they were spotted by hostile surveillance—Russian security, Greek cops, Hezbollah scouts trolling for trouble. Athens was a dangerous, mixed-up city: part Balkan, part Mediterranean, part Beirut.
Nate darkened the living room, then opened the curtains to the terrace, and they stood outside, close together in the Athens night, smelling the black pines on the hill behind them. Dominika’s head was bent in troubled thought, the clasp of her pearls visible on the back of her graceful neck. Nate knew she was struggling with the prospect of throwing the noose around LYRIC’s neck. She didn’t know General Solovyov at all, but she recoiled from the Judas touch. Nate knew she trusted them to exfil him in time, but she was still nervous about turning him in. Nate stepped closer behind Dominika and snaked his arms around her waist. She covered his hands with her own but didn’t move.
“I know you’re worried,” said Nate quietly. “But he’ll be out of the country two hours after we initiate the escape plan.” Dominika patted his hands as if to reassure a child, then turned to face him.
“Do Boga vysoko, do Tsarya daleko, God is high up, and the tsar is far away,” she whispered. Anything can happen, and there’s no remedy.
“Of course the tsar is far away,” said Nate. “Is there a situation Russians don’t have a proverb for?” He pulled her closer, crushing her body against his. She smiled, relaxing a little, and put her arms around his neck, but really there was no remedy for the accumulated ice in the soul, the fatigue that only the best agents can live with year after year. She looked into Nate’s eyes and saw the swirl of purple behind his head that never changed. She knew he was concerned about her. And he could read her moods as well as she could read his colors.
She wanted him, she needed him, and they had all night in an anonymous apartment, insulated from danger. She walked with him into the penthouse and sat on the couch, which held the lingering scent of Gable. Goddamn Gable. His odorant molecules swirled around them, and even as they kissed, Gable wouldn’t leave them alone.
“I don’t care,” said Dominika, intuition telling her Nate was struggling. “Whatever happens, we have each other. Nothing else is important. Not what I do, not what you do. Not what we will do.” They each had their own blinky thoughts: Yevgeny-Hannah, Hannah-Yevgeny.
Udranka and Marta, sitting in two chairs, applauded. Go away you sluts, Dominika told them. But her Rusalki mermaids lingered, watching and smoking.
They sat close, seeing each other for the first time. It was always like that with them, a heady discovery, more the start of something primal than the resumption of it. Dominika drank him in: She registered that her loose-limbed boy had changed in the last two years. He was thicker in the shoulders, wiser in the eyes. His purple aura still blazed steadily; it never changed. She took his hands and kissed the tops of them. These hands had changed too—they were less delicate, somehow rougher. She kissed his palms and leaned in to mash her mouth on his, breathing through her nose when he put his hands on her breasts. She pulled away when he started fiddling with the zipper on her dress and stood up in front of him. “Terpeniye yest’ dobrodetel’, patience is a virtue,” she whispered.
Dominika unzipped her dress and let it fall off her body. In the glancing moonlight, Nate noticed the curves and contours of her thin body as if he had never seen her before, the swell of her breasts in her brassiere, the slow expansion of her rib cage as she breathed, the silver-shiny diagonal scar on her thigh from a battle long ago. Her face was sharper, more elegant than ever, with a hint of stress around the eyes and at the corners of her mouth. She looked at him appraising her and held his eyes as she knelt between his legs, running her hands along his thighs and pushing him back as he made to sit up.
“You do not have permission to move,” said Dominika, her eyes never leaving his face, even as she snaked the belt from around his hips and tugged down first his zipper and then his khaki pants and showed him, slowly, a little of No. 17, “Stamens and pistils,” blue eyes locked on his, one strand of hair in front of her face.
She was a glutton for the smell and taste of him, and with one hand she lifted his shirt and raked her nails along the two similar, tallow-wax shiny scars that crisscrossed his stomach from that same once-upon-a-time battle. What she was doing to him was in fact warping her own mind—never mind that Nate was flexed with head back and eyes closed—and Dominika trailed her free hand unseen between her own legs. She flashed to No. 51, “Battre les blancs en neige, beat egg whites until stiff,” and soon her eyes fluttered and closed and she groaned and stopped moving, her face partially covered by more of her hair that had fallen into her eyes.
When she got her brain back she blinked at him, wiped her upper lip, and giggled. “Am I nekulturny, not waiting for you?” said Dominika.
“Worse than uncultured,” said Nate. “I give up trying to keep up with you. No man could hope to.” Dominika started touching him again, her hands together as if holding an ax handle, insidious, persistent.
“Do not try to keep up,” she said conversationally. “That is my advice to you.” She kept moving and his legs started trembling. Nate felt tho
se familiar leather straps tightening inside him. Dominika was staring at him, watching the havoc she was creating, as if she were a bystander. The now-vibrating straps in Nate’s groin were getting tighter. “Dushka,” whispered Dominika, coaxing him. “Dushka, dushka, dushka.” Then the couch started spinning, and the walls collapsed, and the picture windows exploded, and the roof caved in. Dominika blinked at him, watching him regain consciousness.
“Les rubyat, schepki letyat,” she whispered, when you chop wood, woodchips will fly.
Groaning, Nate sat up and they kissed. He brushed a strand of hair out of the corner of her mouth, and she wiped her face with her hand. The old line came to mind. “Why didn’t you tell me I was in love with you?” said Nate. Dominika started laughing.
Udranka and Marta, sitting across from them, looked at each other and rolled their eyes.
Wearing his shirt, Dominika boosted herself onto the kitchen counter and watched as Nate, radiating purple and wearing only his boxer shorts, sliced an onion and garlic and sautéed them in fragrant green olive oil. He sliced roasted peppers into thin strips and added them to the pan. He opened a can of peeled tomatoes and squeezed them beneath the surface of their juice to avoid squirts. The hand-smashed tomatoes went into the pan—with a pinch of sugar—to start bubbling with the rest. Nate held a bushy branch of dried oregano over the pot and gently crushed some leaves into the stew. He reached for a square tin of paprika.
“Paprika,” said Nate, holding up the tin. “Have you ever tasted it?”
“What a strange word, ‘paprika,’ ” said Dominika, deadpan. “No, we did not have such things in my village, living alongside our pigs in the living room.” Nate smiled and added a dash. “Another strange word is ‘tupitsa,’ ” said Dominika. “Do you know it?” Nate knew it meant “dunce”; he shook his head that he didn’t understand, but Dominika knew he did.
The pan was simmering, and Nate turned on the little oven and put slices of country bread on the upper rack. When they were golden he rubbed each slice with a clove of garlic.
Palace of Treason Page 36