Palace of Treason

by Jason Matthews

  The blonde’s leather wallet had some euros, a phone card, and a visa photo of an attractive brunette with a wry smile. No identification, no nationality. The clothes and the shoes didn’t tell her anything and the wire-rimmed glasses were neutral. Who was she? Dominika set her jaw, leaned over the staring eyes, and opened the mouth wider and saw the signature of bad Russian dentistry—a mouth full of oxidized steel fillings, brown decay in the margins between enamel and mercury, and the scalloped pockets on the gums. So this was most certainly a deputation from Moscow. She did not have the slightest doubt from whom, but he must have had a plan to cover himself. Dominika stuffed the little photograph into her purse. She sat shakily on the couch and stared at the woman on her back, still showing off her fillings.

  As she sat doubled over, Dominika had the quite startling epiphany that during the ten minutes of fighting this termagant, she had seen no human colors around her head, not even the black bat wings of pure evil.

  The pain was worse now, radiating around to her back. Breathing hurt. She knew she had no other option than to return to her embassy. She needed discreet medical attention and she needed assistance in getting out of the country immediately. When the hotel staff found this strangled gorgon in her hotel room the police would search for her, she would be arrested, there would be damaging publicity and immense displeasure back home. She had to disappear from Greece. She would say only that she had been mugged by an unknown assailant. Only she and Zyuganov would know the truth, and it would be their mortal shared secret, the sheathed knife on the table between them.

  When Dominika did not appear at the safe house that night, Gable and Nate closed up and CIA went into the familiar mode that was the default strategy when an internal asset misses a meeting: Maintain a low profile; wait for recontact. Athens Station reviewed possible reasons Dominika would be a no-show—embassy event, sudden orders from Moscow to return, trouble on the street. Nate had been shaken by the LYRIC fiasco, and now his other agent was unaccounted for.

  “She can take care of herself,” said Gable in the Station, unconvincingly. “We finished all our business, checked her out again on Red Route Two and the transmitter; she’s got the meeting sites down and her SRAC net back home is working. We got a capable case officer to meet her in Moscow. The last evening was gonna be rapport building and a few drinks, unless of course Johnny Fuckfaster was planning something more.”

  Nate ignored him. “I’m going to do a flyby of her hotel, just to check.”

  Forsyth was sufficiently worried that he nodded okay. “Quietly,” he said.

  Nate did more than a flyby. He found the right alley, slid a square of stiff plastic past the service door latch, went up the back stairs of the Lovable Experience 4 until he saw the crime tape on the third-floor landing, found the room with more tape stretched across the doorjamb, eased open the door, and saw the blood and broken furniture and gouges in the walls.

  The Station obtained a grisly autopsy photograph from a cooperative Greek cop, so at least they knew it wasn’t Dominika in the refrigerated drawer downtown, but all agreed that little Zyuganov had tried another hit on their agent with an assassin who, judging from the morgue photo, may or may not have been a woman. Protracted discussion in restricted cables and over the secure phone included suggestions: Pull DIVA out now (Nate); give her a small squeeze bottle of Red Katipo spider venom to squirt into Zyuganov’s tea mug (Gable); and multiple suggested drafts for SRAC messages to warn her (Forsyth). In the end, Benford overruled everyone, insisting that Dominika knew very well the dangers and a torrent of conflicting messages would only distract her. Benford said his go-to girl Hannah would be briefed on the situation so she would know the issues when the two women met on the street.

  In a final call to Forsyth, Benford admitted to the chief that he was worried. “Goddamn it, Tom, DIVA’s poised on the threshold of getting inside the Kremlin and developing significant new access, but the blade keeps swinging closer and closer. I don’t know how long she’ll survive.”

  “You want to consider pulling her out?” said Forsyth. “It’s what Nash recommends.”

  No,” said Benford. “Keep her alive as long as you can, but we have to play the game regardless of the cost.”

  “Simon, that’s a little stringent, even from you,” said Forsyth.

  “Yeah, you’d be stringent, too,” said Benford, “with that motherless TRITON somewhere in this building.”

  All DIVA traffic was in a highly restricted cable compartment with a BIGOT list of a dozen cleared readers, maintained as a counterintelligence-accountability document. Not even the CIA associate deputy director for Military Affairs, Seb Angevine, was privy to operational traffic on DIVA caroming between Athens, Moscow, and Headquarters. But he did attend the daily deputies’ meeting in the director’s conference room on the seventh floor, and he did hear the hoggish Gloria Bevacqua, the deputy director for operations, whispering to the director during the sycophantic milling at the end of every meeting that LYRIC had ignored warnings and returned to Moscow, almost certainly to be arrested, and that she had not concurred with the plan to turn him in.

  Back in his office, Angevine pondered this. The plan to turn LYRIC in? He wrote a note, photographed the item because it had something to do with Russia, and included it in his dead-drop package that week for Russian rezident Yulia Zarubina. The rezident forwarded this latest TRITON report to the Center, eyes only Line KR, which was read by Zyuganov and his deputy, Yevgeny Pletnev, the former with a solar flare of suspicion, the latter with a douche of fear.

  The only way the Americans could know about Solovyov is if they had another mole. And the “plan to turn him in,” was that a garble? Egorova had returned miraculously from Athens and immediately requested to go on sick leave, claiming she had been attacked on the street and slightly injured. Quick recovery, they said: The CI analysts wanted to talk to her; the director wanted to see her; the Kremlin had summoned her. It all stank to Zyuganov.

  When Zyuganov eventually heard that Eva Buchina had been found dead in the Athens hotel room, he was truly amazed that she had been bested in a struggle. How could thin, elegant Egorova manage to beat her? Did the skinny ballerina have someone with her for protection? Nothing would be said about it again; it had to be that way. Whatever happened, Eva had missed, and now, as useful as she had been, her demise was in one way welcome. Eva was uncontrollable: She would have been the pet snake, growing in length and girth, that one day starts looking at you through the glass of the terrarium as if you were the mouse.

  Egorova would have praise heaped on her, and Zyuganov would wait, and watch. He was counting on TRITON to tell him what he wanted to hear.

  RUSSIAN VEGETABLE PIE

  * * *

  Sauté diced onions and mushrooms in butter until slightly brown. Add shredded cabbage and sauté until wilted. Season mixture aggressively with thyme, tarragon, oregano, salt, and pepper. Spread cream cheese on the bottom of a pie shell, cover with a layer of sliced hard boiled eggs, and sprinkle with chopped dill. Add the cabbage-onion-mushroom mixture and seal the pie with the pastry top. Bake in a high oven until the pastry is golden. Let cool before serving.

  31

  Brief-Encounter Site TORRENT. The hard-packed dirt trail ran downhill until it doglegged with another trail coming up from the river walk. The lamp pole at the V-shaped intersection of the two trails was out—the glass globe was broken—and the area was dark; the only light coming obliquely through the tree canopy was from the lights along the river. They twinkled through the autumn-bare branches, which by now had lost almost all their leaves. Leafy or bare, the forest of Vorobyovy Gory, the horseshoe-shaped Sparrow Hills Park on the Moskva River, was dark and spooky. Hannah Archer, sitting against the trunk of a smooth-barked ash tree, shifted her aching legs and checked the luminous dial on her watch, then tucked it away under the sleeve of her black hooded hard-shell jacket.

  Time. Hannah stood up slowly, not making a sound, and dug the Scout PS24 out
of the shell’s side pocket, a thermal imaging monocular with a rubber eyepiece at one end and a lens aperture at the other. Hannah set the lens on “white hot”—a (human) heat source would show up as a ghostly white image against a totally black background—and scanned a hundred-degree arc in front of her in the direction of the ascending trail. Come on, DIVA, thought Hannah, what’s keeping you, girl?

  At the very bottom of the curving trail Hannah saw a phantom coming up through the trees. The figure looked like something ghost hunters photograph in a farmhouse attic, floating and disembodied. Hannah watched her come along the trail, but she now concentrated on the path behind the ghost. No one coming up behind. Hannah smoothly pivoted to hose down the woods on either side with invisible infrared light. Clear. Hannah kept her feet planted and twisted her torso to check the black uphill forest behind her. Nothing. She refocused on the ghost, noting the imperceptible hitch in her stride—not quite a limp, but just noticeable if you looked for it. DIVA.

  Hannah stowed the PS24 and swung her backpack over one shoulder. She stepped out from behind the tree and onto the trail just as Dominika came up. Hannah was a dark shadow, a forest druid in a hood, and she held up her hand.

  “Captain Egorova?” she said softly. “I’m Hannah.” She pulled the hood off her head and the curly blond hair spilled out, the eyes crinkled with intensity, and the guileless smile lit up the woods. With the smile came the candy-red bloom of dedication and appetite and resolve. And passion? As tall as Dominika, perhaps slighter, certainly fit—she vibrated with energy and operational adrenaline. With a nod of apology, Hannah brought out the thermal scope and did a three-sixty scan of the forest.

  She would have handed it to Dominika to try but Moscow Rules included the requirement that the American case officer have no physical contact with the foreign agent for fear of pollinating the Russian source with metka, spy dust, a sticky, colorless fine powder—a compound of nitrophenylpentadienal, also called NPPD—which the FSB surreptitiously spritzed everywhere: on American doorknobs, car handles, floor mats, steering wheels, and in overcoat pockets. From a handshake or unwrapped item, a polluted Russian agent (if under suspicion) would fluoresce like a neon Samsung billboard above Tverskaya Street.

  “Course you have to be careful with it,” whispered Hannah, lowering the scope. “The IR is visible to a simple night-sight goggle, so you have to take short looks.” That smile would be visible to night-vision devices, too, thought Dominika.

  “Come on, let’s walk,” said Hannah and they took the longer uphill leg, deeper in shadow with less ambient light. They quickly set the time for their next brief encounter, always the first piece of business, in case of a sudden interruption and a busted meeting.

  Dominika was impressed. Hannah was fast, complete, and ordered. “They want me to tell you they know why you didn’t show up the last night in Athens,” said Hannah. “They know about the blond woman, the assassin. Are you okay?”

  “Taped ribs, bruised knuckles, sore throat. I told the Center I was mugged. There’s no problem now,” said Dominika. “My boss looks at me like I’m a witch.”

  “They want to know whether you are in danger from your supervisor. They instructed me to tell you that they will pull you out if you request.”

  Dominika looked at Hannah, with that guileless face and the red of passion swirling around her head. “Please thank them,” she said. “I am in no danger and am making progress.” You sound a little old and stuffy next to this nature child, thought Dominika. I wonder if Nate thinks so, too.

  “That’s a relief,” said Hannah. “I could tell Nate was worried.” Indeed. Dominika said nothing. Hannah moved right through her checklist.

  “Here’s the equipment kit for your exfil plan,” she said, pulling out a small duffel wrapped in a larger plastic bag. She held it open so Dominika could lift it out. “Checked and totally clean. You already know what’s in it; you practiced with the same kit. If you have any questions, I can talk you through them via SRAC. Okay?”

  Efficient, confident; she knows what she’s doing. How old? Nate said Twenty-seven? Bozhe, God. “I remember the plan,” said Dominika, feeling like a foreign asset being briefed by her case officer—which is exactly what she was. “I have several things,” she continued. “Please tell them that I have determined where LYRIC is. He is still alive. In fact, the old morzh has confessed to nothing. I saw him in his cell, but he did not see me. Zyuganov is sweating that he won’t get a confession; the interrogation has gone on too long. Now they are worried about his heart. LYRIC is under house arrest in his Moscow apartment, waiting for the second round of interrogation. He won’t make it past Level Two.” Hannah looked over at Dominika, a serious look on her face. “Did you get all that?” said Dominika.

  “Yes,” said Hannah, patting her backpack. “I’m recording everything. I don’t want to miss anything. But what’s a morzh?”

  Dominika didn’t know the English word and tried to explain what a walrus was, and even tried a snorty grunt to illustrate. Hannah covered her mouth with her hand and Dominika started laughing too, and they were in the midnight woods, committing espionage, listening for the fatal snap of a branch, laughing like sisters.

  “You’ll be careful of that recording—my voice—won’t you, Hannah?” said Dominika, resisting the impulse to ask whether Nate would hear it. Of course he would.

  “I won’t let anything happen to it,” said Hannah, serious again. “Besides, if anyone tries to play it back without pressing the right buttons, it scrubs the entire digital file in two point three seconds.”

  “You seem to have all the right equipment,” said Dominika.

  “We have a lot of toys, sure,” said Hannah, “but the most important thing is your security. That’s my only job.”

  Dominika could even hear the cadence of Nate’s words as Hannah repeated the cant. They trained together, how lovely. And now I’m standing in the forest with this little gladiator, who’s telling me she’ll take care of me. Dominika thought an uncharitable thought. “I feel safer with you already,” she said, talking to the recording device, talking to Nate.

  Hannah looked at Dominika for a second. She’s perceptive too, thought Dominika. Is that bitchy enough for you?

  “There’s more,” said Dominika. “Tell them that Yevgeny is still cooperating, and he will tell me anything I want to know.” Did you hear that, Neyt? “Yevgeny just told me there was a request from Zarubina for satellite imagery support to survey a proposed meeting site in Washington, DC. Yevgeny was preparing a formal memo to the Space Intelligence Directorate at Vatutinki. He showed it to me . . . for a kiss.” Stop it, enough. “I copied the coordinates.” Dominika handed Hannah a slip of paper. “I assume Zarubina intends to use it for TRITON.” Hannah looked at the paper and read the coordinates aloud for the recorder, then tore the paper into pieces and stuffed them into a small bottle of clear liquid that she shook violently. Acetone to destroy the handwritten note, Hannah explained, smiling. Cute smile, thought Dominika. Smart girl, she thought.