Red Sparrow

by Jason Matthews

  =====

  Dominika dreamed about prison, in her bed, or sitting in a chair in the living room while her mother washed bedsheets sour from the poison that was leaving her body. She backed into the hall closet and closed the door on herself and stood wedged in the dark to relive the cabinets—smell and sound, click-clack, click-clack—and for the pleasure of knowing she could come out into the light whenever she liked. She wrapped her wrists together with panty hose and strained the knot tight with her teeth, to feel her pulses. After all the edgy urges left her, she cried silently, tears wetting her cheeks. Her mother played the violin every day now, a half hour at a time, while Dominika sat on the floor and stretched, and lifted her legs until her stomach screamed, and pushed up from the floor until her arms shook. Her mother washed her, sitting in the tub the first night, but now Dominika stood in the bath alone, seeing the marks disappear, watching herself heal. She nodded to herself in the mirror. She was getting better, and with the feeling of redemption the coda of a vermilion fugue, a red fury, repetitively welled up around her. It was a deep rage, one easily enough controlled, one that would last, one on which she could feed.

  =====

  Dominika Egorova sat in a chair in front of the paperless desk of her uncle in his office on the executive fourth floor of SVR headquarters in Yasenevo. Outside, the snow-blasted pine forest stretched out of sight, beyond them the bare fields and the flat horizon. Sunlight streamed through the picture windows, illuminating half her uncle’s face but plunging the far side of it into shadow. Half his beastly yellow aura was mottled, the other half sparkled in the sunlight. Vanya Egorov sat back, lit a cigarette, and looked at his niece. She was dressed in a plain white shirt buttoned at the neck and a blue skirt. Her dark hair was carefully combed. She looked thinner and pale.

  “Dominika,” Vanya said, as if she had just returned from a cruise on the Volga. “I was gratified to hear that the unpleasantness is over. The investigation of the Helsinki matter is concluded.”

  “Yes,” she said, staring at a point on the wall behind him.

  Vanya looked carefully at her. “You must not be concerned. Every officer who is active in operations will at some time in his or her career be involved in an investigation. It is the nature of our business.”

  “Is it the nature of our business to be tied dripping wet in front of an air conditioner for four hours every day?” She said it calmly, without inflection.

  Vanya looked sourly at her. “Animals,” he said. “I shall order a review.”

  A review of your own promotion prospects, thought Dominika. She nodded at the new plaque on the wall.

  “Congratulations, Uncle, on your promotion,” she said. Vanya looked at the citation and ribbon, and fingered the rosette on his lapel.

  “Yes, thank you very much,” said her uncle. “But what about you? What shall I do with you?” As if she were being given a choice, she thought. But she had something in mind.

  “Now that I have returned, I am ready to report wherever you wish to send me. It is your decision, of course, but with respect, I would very much not like to return to the Fifth. Would it be possible to resume the place offered me in the Americas Department by General Korchnoi?”

  “I will ask him,” said Vanya. “I’m sure he would agree.”

  “There is something else,” Dominika said. She thought of them all and her prison cell and felt the tightening in her throat and knew her face and neck would be flushed (No. 47, “Infuse the neck and face to authenticate emotion, or the advent of climax”). Vanya waited.

  “I want to continue working on Nash,” she said suddenly, holding his eyes in hers. Vanya sat back and looked thoughtfully at her.

  “Quite a request,” said Vanya. “You know Colonel Volontov thought your progress against the American was too slow.”

  “With respect, Colonel Volontov is a beast of burden,” said Dominika. “He has no appreciation of an operation. He is doing nothing to further your interests or those of the Service. Now that I’m away from his lecherous stares, I no longer care about his opinions.”

  Vanya turned and looked out the plate-glass window. “And what about Nash?”

  “I developed a close friendship with the American,” said Dominika. “We saw each other frequently, just as you envisioned. Before I left Helsinki we had become… intimate.”

  “And you believe you could have determined his activities?” He continued staring out the window, his yellow crown increasing in intensity. He’s going to agree, thought Dominika. It’s too important for him.

  “Without a doubt,” said Dominika. “Despite Colonel Volontov’s unhealthy interest, Nash’s pylkyi, his ardor, was growing.” Dominika did not take her eyes off her uncle. “Unfortunately, prison and my interrogation somewhat derailed our romance.”

  Vanya considered the whole idea. He desperately needed some action on the matter of the mole. His niece knew Nash better than anyone else did, and she certainly seemed motivated. But she was different in a way—the Lefortovo experience certainly had affected her—she seemed obsessed, driven now. Was she sweet on Nash? Did she want to spend more time outside Moscow, in the West, did she… ?

  “Uncle, I was cleared,” prompted Dominika softly, reading his thoughts. “They told me I was reinstated, my record is clean. I’m the best officer, the best chance, to engage the Americans and identify the Russian traitor. This operation is a challenge for me now. I want to go up against them again.”

  “You seem quite sure,” said Vanya.

  “I am. And you should be. It was you who created me,” said Dominika. She saw how Vanya swelled up at that, his vanity was like a yellow balloon above his head.

  “And how would you proceed?” asked Vanya. Dominika knew she had one thread to pull, gently.

  “I would rely on your advice and guidance, and that of General Korchnoi.”

  “In this matter, General Korchnoi has not been briefed,” said Vanya.

  “I assumed that his department would be the logical place from which to work,” said Dominika. “If you have another idea…”

  “I will consider bringing Korchnoi in,” said Vanya. The peppery uncle considering something he already has decided on, thought Dominika.

  “Whatever you decide, we would keep it strictly razdelenie. I would clear operational steps directly with you or whomever you designate.”

  “You know Nash is concluding his assignment in Helsinki?” said Vanya. He searched her face for a reaction, found nothing.

  “I did not know,” said Dominika. “But it does not matter. There’s nowhere he can hide.”

  =====

  Gossip channels in Yasenevo started humming. Word was out that Egorov’s niece was back in the building, back from Finland; that was where the Service just scored a big success, very hush-hush. Did Egorova have anything to do with that? Rumors about an investigation? The usual malfeasance or something else? She looked the same, but different, thinner. Something in the way she looked back at people, crazy unblinking eyes. Now working in a private room in Korchnoi’s Americas Department. Special job for the deputy director’s niece, no surprise, but not just semeystvennost’, not just the expected nepotism. Just look at those eyes, nutcracker eyes—not the ballet.

  She had petitioned General Korchnoi, asking his permission to join his department. He had paused and looked at her from under bushy white eyebrows, his purple mantle majestic. “I commend you for your fortitude in Lefortovo,” he said quietly. Dominika flushed. “We will speak no more of that,” said Korchnoi.

  That afternoon Korchnoi had sat with the deputy director and sipped brandy and was briefed on Vanya’s operation to reestablish the relationship between Dominika and the American in pursuit of the mole. Korchnoi showed he was impressed, asked Vanya to approve bringing Dominika to the Americas Department. “It is the best place from which to work the problem,” said Korchnoi.

  “Volodya,” Vanya said, the depth and length of their friendship apparent in his use of the affectiona
te diminutive, “I need your imagination on this problem. I need something new.”

  “Between us, I will be surprised if we cannot come up with something,” said Korchnoi. Vanya refilled their glasses. “And strict secrecy on all of this,” he said, sipping cognac. “We don’t want to alert the mole to the noose tightening around his neck.”

  SHCHI—RUSSIAN CABBAGE SOUP

  Boil cubed beef, chopped onion, celery, shredded carrots, and whole garlic in water for two hours. In a separate pot, cover sauerkraut and heavy cream with boiling water and steep in a medium oven for thirty minutes. Boil cubed potatoes, celery root, and slivered mushrooms until soft. Combine all ingredients; season liberally with salt, whole peppercorns, bay leaves, and marjoram and boil for twenty minutes. Cover pot with cloth, set in low oven to steep for thirty minutes. Serve with sour cream and dill.

  22

  Nathaniel Nash walked aimlessly down a light-green corridor of CIA Headquarters. The hallway was empty, stretching into the waxed-floor distance of D Corridor past where it transitioned into E Corridor and the DI. To an operations officer, passing through Directorate of Intelligence territory was like walking in a mysterious jungle. Heads would peer around corners and jerk back, doors would open an inch and slam shut. A braying laugh, a howler monkey in the forest canopy, the booming notes from across the river of a hollow teak log being struck with sticks.

  Helsinki was a memory, a torment. Dominika had been swallowed up, disappeared, status unknown, welfare unknown, “contact with agent broken,” wait till she comes out again, perhaps a station officer meets her at a dip party halfway around the world, maybe in ten years, maybe never. Or wait till another agent hears how she was sent to lagerya, the camps, or when the Moscow watchers read in Pravda how she died. The ongoing tap on Helsinki rezidentura communications revealed nothing of her fate.

  A month after Dominika’s recall, Nate had asked Forsyth if he could go LWOP. He artlessly said he thought he’d travel to Moscow, privately, to see if he could find out what had happened to her. The usually unflappable Forsyth lost his temper.

  “You want to go to Moscow?” Forsyth raved. “An officer of the CIA with knowledge of Moscow operations wants to enter Russia as a private citizen, without diplomatic immunity? A CIA officer the SVR knows was active in their capital committing espionage? Is that what you’re telling me?” Nate did not reply. Gable, hearing the shouting, came into the office. “What’s your plan, Nate?” said Forsyth. “Do you plan to storm the Lubyanka, blow her cell door, shoot your way up to the roof, and hang-glide to the West?”

  “It would be too far to hang-glide from Moscow,” said Gable. “Otherwise, it’s a wicked good plan.”

  “I’m going to tell you this once,” said Forsyth. “You do not have my permission, or that of the Central Intelligence Agency, to go on leave without pay, to leave this duty post, or even to remotely contemplate travel to the Russian Federation. We do not know whether DIVA is in trouble, nor do we know her current location or status. We wait for word. We collect intelligence.” Nate slumped in his chair.

  “If she’s in trouble, we’ll eventually hear,” said Forsyth. “You are not responsible for this; you did not put a foot wrong. DIVA was an agent, we protect agents, we run risks, we run them, the best ones we run against horrendous odds. And sometimes we lose them, despite all the tradecraft and all the precautions. Do you understand me?” Nate nodded.

  “The long and short of it, Nate,” said Gable later in his office, “is shut the fuck up. We have lots to do. Get to work, for Christ’s sake. Stop mooning around. It’s like a Jane Austen novel.”

  =====

  In Headquarters, it made sense for Nate to be reassigned to CE/ROD, which stood for Central Eurasia/Russian Ops Desk, the “Hot RODs,” the elephant’s graveyard for officers returning from Moscow, still feeling the yips from constant surveillance. There were also officers who had swung and missed at a Russian in Malaysia or Pretoria or Caracas, and there were the first-tour cherries who were in the pipeline for Moscow, all puffed up and serious, never having tasted the asshole-shrinking fear of having an agent’s life depend on how well you use your mirrors.

  Chief ROD sat in his Langley office, a small corner space with a sealed, double-paned window looking out onto the triple-vaulted roof of the cafeteria between the Original and New Headquarters Buildings. C/ROD was in his fifties, a slight man with liver spots on his cheeks and thinning white hair combed across the top of his nearly bald head. A wiry white mustache and heavy-rimmed glasses gave him the look of a professor; the rack of pipes on his desk added to the fiction, for C/ROD was anything but a donnish academic.

  He was an old whore, with a dozen foreign assignments under his belt. He had made his bones working the Cuban target and had shifted in midcareer to the Russian target when it was revealed that the entire stable of the CIA’s Cuban agents—half a hundred of them, recruited and handled and producing intelligence for three decades—had with two exceptions been double agents controlled all along by the General Directorate of Intelligence in Havana. The revelation so demoralized a dozen veteran officers who had devoted their entire professional lives to Cuban operations that the DGI could not have destroyed the CIA’s Cuban Section any better if they had blown it up.

  Now C/ROD was busy managing Russian cases around the world. Running existing agents, a score of the best ones solid producers. MARBLE was still the sine qua non of ROD’s stable, but there were other potential acquisitions coming up, developing nicely.

  Every morning he would read the “daily board”—historically a three-inch stack of printed telegrams, now a cascade of ops cables scrolling luminously down his screen from young officers in Stations around the world about their “developmentals.” A global palette of events from Rio or Singapore or Istanbul, descriptions of contacts, budding friendships, drunken evenings spent knee-walking with Russian second secretaries or attachés or, most exhilarating, with suspected intelligence officers from the SVR or GRU.

  A recent cable made him remember. The young and convivial wife of a CIA case officer posted to a dusty African capital had shared her grandmother’s recipe for fried cheese pancakes with the new bride of a quite formal GRU major. The women bonded as the young Russian wept over the platter of golden cakes. She was homesick and thinking of her own grandmother. Feed her enough pancakes and he may flip, thought C/ROD.

  Against this backdrop, once, or twice, or five times a year, somewhere in the world, there would be a recruitment. A human in a state of need would say da to the offer, whether gentle, oblique, fraternal, or simply a business proposition. And then cable traffic would increase as Headquarters and the Station in question plunged into the arcana of production, validation, tradecraft, and, in a few delicious, exceptional cases, internal handling on the asset’s return to Moscow.

  There were problems, as always. Recruitment targets lost their resolve in the light of a hangover dawn. Others could not—could never—summon the nerve to brave the wrath of their system. A few escaped the pitch simply by reporting the Americans’ offer to their superiors, to be hustled back to Moscow, out of reach, on the next available Aeroflot flight.

  And there was the dark side of the Game, a reminder that the opposition was not always in defensive mode. The bombshell cable, one a year, sometimes a rash of them, reporting that a young CIA officer somewhere around the world was himself or herself the object of a Russian recruitment attempt, usually because the Center was making a point or was trying to exploit a perceived vulnerability. The last flurry had come the year CIA salaries had been frozen by Congress, and the Russians were asking around, “Who needs money?” or “Who is disillusioned?”

  To this world of ebb and flood, C/ROD had another, immediate problem. He had been wondering how he could open the door to the zoo cage and get Nate Nash the hell out of the office and back to the field. The covcom message that came in last night provided the answer.

  C/ROD liked Nate, was thoroughly familiar with his record. He saw the
inner fire, guessed at the emotional component, recognized firsthand the personal doubts of the thinking case officer, doubts that colored successes and caused brooding over setbacks. He knew about the DIVA case and how it colored Nash’s days and nights. C/ROD stood and went to the door of his office, leaned against the jamb. Marty Gable would have bellowed for Nash. C/ROD was quieter than that. He waited till Nash caught his eye and gestured with his head to come see him.

  “MARBLE signaled,” C/ROD said, putting a cold pipe into his mouth. “He’s coming to New York, UNGA, for a couple of weeks.” Nate sat up in the chair, a bird dog on point. “It’s been some time since we’ve seen him; there’ll be a lot to cover. You free right now to start prepping?” C/ROD was amused at the look on Nate’s face. “Go introduce yourself to Simon Benford in CID before you go. He’ll want you to cover the CI leads carefully, not to mention MARBLE’s current security situation.” Nate nodded and rose to leave the office.

  “Hold on,” said C/ROD. “When you see Benford… don’t say or do anything stupid, okay? Try really hard. I talked to him about this upcoming session with MARBLE. I’ll quote him directly. ‘Tell the case officer to scare me with his brilliance in managing these meetings with MARBLE.’” Nate turned to look at him.