Red Sparrow

by Jason Matthews

  “Thanks, Chief,” said Nate.

  “You in an apartment? Where did the Embassy put you?” asked Forsyth. The Embassy housing office had that morning deposited him in a comfortable two-bedroom flat in Kruununhaka. Nate had been delighted when opening the double doors to a small balcony with a view of the marina, the ferry terminal, and the sea beyond, and he told Forsyth so.

  “It’s a nice area, an easy walk to work,” said Forsyth. “I’d like you to huddle with me and Marty Gable to get an idea of what we’ve got going.” Gable was the Deputy Chief of Station, whom Nate had not met yet. “We’ve got a couple of good cases, but there’s more we can do.

  “Forget about the internal target, the Finns are allies and we’ve got them covered. Marty and I work liaison, so you don’t have to worry about the internal service. We’ll pass along any unilateral possibilities that we develop.

  “All the usual Arabs—Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinians—they’ve all got reps in town. Might be tricky getting close to them, so think about access agents. Iranians, Syrians, Chinese. Small embassies, and they feel safe here in neutral Scandinavia. The Persians might be looking for embargoed equipment. Check them out on the dip circuit,” Forsyth said, tilting back in his office chair.

  “I want to go after something bigger,” said Nate. “I have to score big after what happened to me in Moscow.” Indeed, thought Forsyth. He saw worry behind the eyes, determination in the set of the jaw. Nate sat upright in his chair.

  “That’s fine, Nate,” said Forsyth, “but any recruitment, as long as it’s productive, is a good recruitment. And you land the big fish by being patient, by working the circuit, by generating a dozen developmental contacts.”

  “I know that, Chief,” said Nate quickly. “But I don’t have the luxury of time. That Gondorf is gunning for me. If it weren’t for you, I’d be back in Russian Ops in front of a computer, pushing a mouse. I never told you how much I appreciate your asking for me.”

  Forsyth had read Nate’s personnel file, sent out to Station when Nate’s lateral assignment had been approved. Not many young case officers with near-fluent Russian. Top marks throughout training at the Farm, and subsequently in “denied area” training for Moscow, the art of operating under constant hostile surveillance. The file also positively noted Nate’s performance in Russia, especially his handling of a sensitive restricted case—no details.

  But Forsyth now saw a distracted young case officer squirming in front of him. With something to prove. Not good, makes you accident-prone, always swinging for the fences with your eyes closed.

  “I don’t want you worrying about Moscow. I talked to some people in Headquarters and you’re fine.” He saw Nate’s face working at the thought of his hall file. “And I want you to listen to me,” said Forsyth. He stopped until he had Nate’s attention. “I want you to work smart, good tradecraft, no shortcuts. We all want the big cases—hell, you’re handling one now—but I won’t accept half-assed operations. Clear?” Forsyth looked hard at Nate. “Clear?” he repeated.

  “Yessir,” said Nate. He got the message, but told himself he was going to find agents, he wasn’t going to flame out as a case officer. He was not going home. He flashed to crazy-quilt images of him in a Richmond country club sitting across from Sue Ann or Mindy, bee-stung lips and frosted hair piled high, as his brothers putted golf balls across the tartan plaid rug into one of Missy’s pink Lilly Pulitzer flats lying on the rug across the club room. Fuck no.

  “Okay,” said Forsyth. “Find your desk. It’ll be the first office down the hallway. Get out of here and go find Gable,” he said, reaching for his in-box.

  =====

  DCOS Marty Gable was sitting at his terminal in another small office one door down from Forsyth’s, trying to figure out how to write a cable to Headquarters without using the word “cocksucker.” Older than Forsyth, Gable was in his late fifties, big and broad shouldered, with white brush-cut hair, blue eyes, and a steel girder for a nose. His forehead was tanned and ruddy, the weather-beaten face of an outdoorsman. Knuckly brown hands dwarfed his keyboard, immobile. He hated drafting cables, hated typing with two fingers, hated the bureaucracy. He was a street guy. Nate stood in the doorway of his office. It was totally bare, unadorned save for a government-issue picture of the Washington Monument on the wall. His desktop was empty. Before Nate could knock courteously on the door frame, Gable swiveled in his chair and looked at Nate with a scowl.

  “You the new guy? Cash?” bawled Gable. The accent was somewhere from the Rust Belt.

  “Nash. Nate Nash,” said Nate, as he walked to the desk. Gable remained sitting but extended his frying-pan hand. Nate tensed for the inevitable bone-crushing grip.

  “You took your time getting here. You recruit anyone on the way in from the airport?” Gable laughed. “No? Well, there’s time after lunch,” he said. “Let’s go.” On the way out of the Station, Gable stuck his big Rottweiler head into several offices along the hallway, checking to see what the other Station case officers were doing. They were empty. “Good,” said Gable, “everyone’s ass out on the street. The fucking world as it should be.”

  Gable took Nate to lunch in a grubby little Turkish restaurant in a small snow-filled alley near the train station. The steamy single dining room had half a dozen tables, a pass-through window from the kitchen, and a framed portrait of Atatürk on the wall. People were yelling in the kitchen, but when Gable went to the window and clapped his hands the noise stopped. A thin dark man with a black mustache and an apron parted the bead curtain and came out of the kitchen. He embraced Gable briefly and was introduced as Tarik, the owner. The Turk shook hands loosely without looking into Nate’s eyes. They took a corner table and Gable pulled out the chair he wanted Nate to sit in, against the wall with a view of the door. Gable sat with his back to the other wall. Speaking Turkish, Gable ordered two Adana kebabs, two beers, bread, and salad.

  “I hope you like spicy,” said Gable. “This little shithole has the best Turkish food in the city. There are a lot of immigrants from Turkey around here.” Gable looked at the kitchen. He leaned forward. “I popped Tarik about a year ago, support asset, you know, pick up mail, pay rent on a safe house, keep his ear to the ground. A couple hundred a month and he’s happy. If we need to, we can tap into the expat community in Helsinki.” Gable straightened as the food came, two long flat kebabs speckled with red pepper, grilled a dark brown. A large broiled flatbread, splashed with melted butter, was underneath. Raw onion salad sprinkled with dark red sumac and lemon was piled on the side of the plate. Two sweating bottles of beer were plunked on the table as Tarik muttered, “Afiyet olsun, may it be good for you,” and withdrew.

  Gable began eating before Nate picked up his fork. He wolfed food, talking and moving his big mitts in the air. “Not bad, eh?” he asked of the kebabs, his mouth full. He upended his beer and drank half the bottle. His jaws snatched at the food, gazelle going down the gullet of a crocodile. Without preamble or embarrassment, he asked Nate what the fuck had happened in Moscow between him and that asshole Gondorf.

  Mortified, his worries rekindled, Nate explained briefly, a few sentences. Gable pointed at him with his fork. “Listen up: Remember two things about this fucking business. You can never mature as an operator unless you’ve failed, large, at least once. And you’re judged by your accomplishments, the results you bring, and how you protect your agents. Nothing else matters.” The other half of the bottle disappeared and Gable called for another. “Oh, and there’s another thing,” he said. “Gondorf’s a douche bag. Don’t worry about him.”

  Gable was finished with his entire plate before Nate even had gotten through half of his. “Did you ever fail in your career?” he asked Gable.

  “Are you kidding?” said Gable, tilting back his chair. “I was in the shit so often I rented the top floor of the latrine. That’s how I got here. After the most recent train wreck, Forsyth saved my ass.”

  =====

  Gable’s career had been spent pr
imarily on the Shithole Tour—Third World countries in Africa and Asia. Some case officers make their bones in the restaurants and hotel rooms and sidewalk cafés of Paris. Gable’s world was one of midnight meetings on deserted dirt roads in red-dust-covered Land Rovers. Other officers tape-recorded their meetings with government ministers. Gable wrote secrets into a sweat-damp notebook while sitting with agents sour with fear, making them concentrate, making them stay fucking on topic. They would sit in the heat, engine block ticking, with the windows up, watching the heads of the mambas part the tops of the tall grass on either side of the vehicle. Nate had heard that Gable was a legend. He was loyal to his assets, then to his friends, then to the CIA, in that order. There was nothing he hadn’t seen, and he knew what was important.

  Gable sat back and sipped his beer, started talking. Last assignment was in Istanbul, big fucking town, good ops, Dodge City. Spoke pretty good Turkish, knew where to go, who to see. Pretty fast he’d recruited a member of the PKK, the benighted Kurdish separatist terror group from eastern Turkey. They’d been leaving bombs in briefcases in government buildings, or shoeshine kits in the bazaar, or paper sacks in trash cans in Taksim Square.

  One day Gable got into a taxi driven by a Kurd kid, twenty, twenty-one years old. Sounded sharp, drove okay. Listen up, you got to keep your eyes open, all the time. He had a hunch, an instinct, so he told the kid to stop at a restaurant, invited him to eat with him, this Kurd kid. He had to stare down the fat Turk motherfucker behind the counter, they all hated Kurds, called them “mountain Turks.”

  Kid ate like he was hungry. Talked about his family. Gable smelled PKK, so he hired the taxi for a week of driving around. Hunch paid off. Kid was a member of a local cell but didn’t buy the terrorism bullshit. A little respect, five hundred euros a month, a nice little recruitment. All because Gable kept his eyes fucking open in a taxi. Don’t forget that.

  The kid started with useless shit, but Gable straightened him out—called agent handling for a fucking reason—and they focused on cell leaders, how they got their orders, how the couriers traveled. Not bad, but Gable pushed the kid, and they started getting the locations of PKK warehouses where they stored the Semtex or whatever they were using, Nitrolit from Poland. Then he started passing the names of the bomb-makers.

  It was getting good and we had to keep a cold compress on the Turkish National Police because they wanted to wrap them up, “capture them dead,” they used to say. COS in Ankara was happy and the suits in Headquarters were bobbing their heads. Then Gable got cocky, lost the bubble; lesson for Nate, you always have to keep the bubble.

  Young Kurd lived in Tepebaşi, fundo neighborhood down the hill from Pera, the old European quarter. Gable normally met the kid in his taxi, driving around town, never stopping, nighttime always, on the fly. Broke the rules and visited the kid’s house to meet the family. At his house. The kid had invited him, it would have been an insult to refuse, got to be culturally sensitive, goddamn it. Besides, Gable wanted to see where his agent lived. Listen up, you always know where your agents live, you never know whether you’re going to have to dig them out of the woodwork some night.

  The street was steep, lined with peeling wooden row houses, faded splendor, narrow front steps, double front doors, etched-glass sidelights, all broken and boarded. Former European neighborhood, now littered with garbage and smelling of drains. In Istanbul you get used to smelling sewage, actually smells sort of sweet. Anyway, it was getting dark and lights in the houses were starting to come on. Evening call to prayer had just ended.

  Gable had come down the hill dreading it. This was going to be an awkward hour full of shy, downcast eyes and endless glasses of tea. Fuck it, part of the job. As he approached the house he heard screams. His agent’s front door was open. Something breaking. Fuck, not good, neighbors would be gathering soon. Gable thought it would be a circus in approximately two minutes. He started drifting away from the house. Pretty dark by now, no one would notice him.

  Trouble was, at the front door two guys were marching Gable’s agent out of the house by the armpits. The kid’s wife was slight and dark with almond eyes from the south slopes of the Taurus Mountains, torn T-shirt, barefoot. She was right behind them, screaming, beating at the men. A baby about two years old stood in the doorway buck-naked, crying. These two dickheads were as skinny as Gable’s agent, but there was no resistance, maybe because one of the dickheads held a pistol.

  Jesus Christ, the kid’s in trouble with the PKK. Maybe spent the extra money, maybe bragged about his new foreign friend. Listen up, it goes south that fast. You got to protect them, sometimes you got to do it for them. The PKK took a medieval view when dealing with countrymen they thought were traitors.

  Gable could have walked away. Saw the baby girl in the door—cute little thing, bubble butt and slobbering nose—and he thought, Naw, fuck it. Stepped up to the first step of the house and smiled at the dickheads. They stopped and let go of the kid, who fell on his ass on the top step. Little wife stopped screaming and looked at Gable, big fucking yabanci, foreigner with big knuckles. A dozen neighbors edging around, all Kurds. Fucking neighborhood was dead quiet, not a sound, water running down the center of the street. The dickhead with the pistol yelled something in Kurdish, sounded like sash weights in a washtub.

  Big Mouth began waving the pistol, pointing it at the kid, at the wife, shaking it like a finger. Kid was one hundred percent dead if Gable didn’t do something. Fuck it, anyway, because this was the absofuckinglutely end of the case, the kid would have to skip Turkey if he wanted to stay alive. PKK guy came down a step and continued yelling at Gable. Ignored the beady eyes, focused on the pistol. Little fuck’s knuckles whiten on the grip, you know you got about three seconds. Barrel started coming up.

  Gable was carrying a Hi-Power in a Bianchi belt loop behind his hip. He cleared the Browning and shot the Kurd, pop-pop-pop. Call it the Mozambique, double-tap center mass, third round forehead, suppose it was invented over there or something. Dickhead’s eyes opened, fell straight down in a heap. Slid skull-first down the stairs. Pistol bounced after him, Gable picked it up, threw it clattering down a sewer grate, got to be a million guns in Istanbul’s sewers. Gable’s spent brass hadn’t hit the pavement before the neighbors bolted like fucking squirrels, going in all directions, shutters slamming up and down the hill.

  The Kurd kid held his wife. Wondered if the kid realized their new life started right then, maybe, the wife probably did, looked smart, nipples showing through that T-shirt. Gable looked at the other PKK guy, who’s seen Jesus, or Muhammad, whatever, and the guy held his hands in front of him, palms out, walked down the steps, and ran down the street into the dark.

  Gable gave the kid five grand to clear out, couldn’t get any more out of Headquarters. Don’t know where they went, maybe they’re in Germany or France. Five Kurdish kids learning German. When they turn twenty, Nate’s son can find and recruit them. Fucking crazy. Okay, now the point of this long fucking story.

  Aftermath was a veritable shitstorm, I kid you not, Gable said. First it was the Consulate and the hysterical Consul General, tinny voice like a music box, then the Embassy in Ankara, then the knife-and-fork set at the State Department. Diplomat involved in fatal shooting, they were very upset, a lot of weeping. Grave repercussions. Had to leave Istanbul. The Turkish National Police gave me a plaque and a farewell dinner; they were delighted. Turkish cops love a good shoot-out. But everyone else was seriously pissed, and official CIA investigation hadn’t even started.

  Gable waltzed around with Office of Security at Headquarters for a month. After forty hours of conversation they settled on “deficient tradecraft.” COS Ankara didn’t back Gable up, too much political heat, sounds like Gondorf, doesn’t it? Plenty of assholes to go in your career. Gable’s prospects for foreign operations were over for the indefinite future, it seemed, and he was stuck in a four-by-four cubicle on the Turkish desk in Headquarters, listening to a twenty-three-year-old new hire on the other side
of the partition talking on the outside line to her girlfriend about getting up the nerve to fellate her boyfriend that weekend. None of the young officers even wore wristwatches, goddamn it: they told time with their fucking phones, or tablets, or whatever they’re called.

  Gable didn’t feel sorry for himself, it was operations. All this happened to him, but for the right reason. Listen up, the most important thing is your agent, his security, saving his life. It’s the only thing.

  At about the same time, Forsyth had just concluded his own personal shitstorm, but had bounced back and landed in Helsinki. He heard Gable was fucked—that was nothing new—and sent for him as his number two, like the old days, only there aren’t any good old days, it’s a myth. The ecstatics at Headquarters were happy to let Gable go to Finland as DCOS, no one else wanted the job and they wanted him off the desk, bad influence.

  “So here we are, three fuckups, in the field, operating near the fricking Arctic Circle. And you and me drinking beer in a Turkish hash house.” Gable finished his beer and yelled, “Hesap.” When Tarik came out of the kitchen, Gable motioned to Nate. “He’s paying.” Nate laughed.

  “Wait a minute,” said Nate. “What do you mean, Forsyth went through his own shitstorm? What happened to him?” Nate dug out a few euros and handed them to Tarik. “Keep the change.” Tarik smiled thinly, nodded to Gable, and retreated to the kitchen. “You overtipped, rookie,” said Gable. “Don’t let them get used to you paying out. Got to keep them hungry.” Gable got up and shrugged on his coat.

  “Bullshit,” said Nate. “You paid that young Kurd five grand to get him out of Dodge, but even you admitted he was burned, useless. You didn’t have to pay him squat.” Nate looked at Gable as they turned out of the alley and walked in front of the train station. Gable avoided looking back at him, and Nate knew that Gable was more than just a tough guy. But he wasn’t going to test the limits anytime soon.