Red Sparrow

by Jason Matthews

  They were walking back, along the broad corridor of the ground floor, Korchnoi speaking easily, making lists for her, directing her to begin filling the folder with details, schedules, gambits. Dominika saw that he was pleased, and gratified, and not at all suspicious or worried. Why should he be? Dominika was an excellent protégée. Betraying him was difficult, but it was necessary. That was how it had to be.

  Coming toward them in the corridor along the opposite wall was Line F executioner Sergey Matorin. He seemed not to recognize her. Dominika’s vision started to narrow. She felt fear, then an aerosolized rage that had her measuring the distance between her fingers and his eyes. Could the general sense the woolpack of her hatred? Did he not see the trail of bloody footprints, or the black shroud that billowed around Matorin? Could he not hear the musical note of the chine of his scythe as he dragged it behind him? Matorin’s milky white eye passed over her as he continued down the corridor. As he walked he hugged the wall like a ray swimming over a sandy ocean floor, trailing thick, elemental black smoke, like blood in the water. Looking after him, Dominika shuddered at the thinning hair on the back of his skull, and at his empty fingers that grasped and ungrasped, waiting to hold a knife.

  =====

  Eight o’clock, and a rainy night. Vanya Egorov was driven through the Borovitskaya Gate in the western corner of the Kremlin, tires drumming over the slick cobblestones, past the Grand Palace and the Cathedral of the Archangel, and left past Building Fourteen to a yawning, deserted Ivanovskaya Square. His official Mercedes eased through the narrow gate to the inner courtyard of the mustard-yellow Senate building and pulled to a stop under a dimly lit porte cochere. The last time he had been inside these walls was to receive his second star. Tonight he had to show he deserved to keep it.

  An aide knocked once, opened the door, and stepped aside. The president’s office was relatively small and richly paneled. A green marble pen set was the only object on the surface of his desk; the lights in the wall sconces were dialed low. The president was in a dark suit and white shirt with no tie. Egorov tried not to notice that Putin was in his stocking feet, his shoes pushed underneath his chair. The president was sitting at a small inlaid table in front of his desk, his hands folded in his lap. No papers, no news wires, no television. Egorov sat down at the little table.

  “Good evening, Mr. President,” he said. Putin’s face as usual was a mask, but tonight he looked tired.

  “General Egorov,” said Putin, who looked at his wristwatch, then fixed his electric eyes on Vanya’s face. Go. And keep it brief. Egorov modulated his voice.

  “The communications manual acquired from the Americans continues to be a rich source of critical data and cyber opportunities in the future.” Putin nodded once, blue eyes unblinking.

  “Our sensitive asset in Washington, SWAN, is providing comprehensive technical information on US military space vehicles. The Kosmicheskie Voyska, the Space Forces, rate the intelligence as excellent. My rezident in Washington—”

  “You mean my rezident,” said Putin.

  “Of course; your rezident, General Golov, is handling SWAN with utmost care,” said Egorov, telling himself to watch it, with him in this mood.

  An aide knocked and brought in a tray with steaming tea in delicate filigree podstakanniky, silver spoons balanced over the rims of the glasses, a sugar cube in each. The tray was placed on a nearby conference table in the corner of the room, along with a silver salver of madeleines. Both were out of reach and remained untouched.

  “Go on,” said Putin after the aide had left.

  “We continue to search for a mole run by the CIA, probably in the Service. It is only a matter of time before we unmask him.”

  “It is important that you do so,” said Putin. “More evidence that foreigners, the Americans, are working to disrupt our government.”

  “Yes, Mr. President. It’s doubly important. The mole threatens the security of our assets—”

  “Like SWAN,” said Putin. “Nothing must happen to her, no komprometirovat, no international flaps, no failures.” Egorov noted with interest that the president correctly knew the gender of SWAN. He knew he hadn’t mentioned it before.

  “We have identified the CIA officer who handles this mole. I am initiating an operation against him to obtain the name of his agent.”

  “Fascinating,” said Putin, a former KGB officer, “but you do not need my approval to conduct such an operation.”

  “It is a complicated konspiratisa,” said Egorov, circling around the subject. “I intend to direct one of our officers to engage the American, to compromise him. I want the name of his agent.”

  Putin’s mask shifted slightly, whether from discomfort or vicarious pleasure, Egorov could not tell. “I want discretion, and moderation. I do not condone the physical abduction of this CIA officer. This is not done between rival services. The consequences would be unmanageable.” The president’s voice was silky, the cobra flaring its hood. A porcelain Fabergé clock on a side table tinged the half hour. The tea across the room had grown cold.

  “Of course. I am taking all precautions, Mr. President. Apart from my direction, a senior officer is supervising the action in the field against the American.”

  “And the younger officer—a woman, correct?—was recently cleared in a counterintelligence investigation?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Egorov, looking at the liverwurst lips as they moved.

  “And do I remember correctly that this young woman is your niece?” He looked Egorov in the eyes. “The daughter of your late brother?”

  “Family is the best security,” said Egorov lamely. This was a show of omniscience, of strength, designed to shock, then awe subordinates. Like Stalin used to do. “She will follow my directions.”

  “Have her engage the American, but I do not condone active measures. It is out of the question.” Putin obviously knew the option had been discussed.

  “As you wish, Mr. President,” said Egorov.

  Nine minutes later Egorov’s footsteps were ringing down the grand staircase as he scurried to his waiting car. He collapsed in the backseat, contemplating the disasters that lurked in the career of ambition. As his Mercedes flashed under the Borovitskaya archway, Vanya did not see another official car, less grand, heading toward the Senate building he had just left, carrying his Line KR counterintelligence chief, the diminutive Alexei Zyuganov.

  KREMLIN MADELEINES

  Make a genoise batter by mixing eggs and salt until thick, then add sugar gradually, and vanilla extract. Fold in flour and beurre noisette to form a thick batter. Pour into greased and floured madeleine molds and bake in moderate oven until edges are golden brown. Unmold and cool on a wire rack.

  27

  United States Senator Stephanie Boucher (D-California) was not accustomed to driving or parking her own car, or to walking down a corridor unescorted, or even to opening her own doors. As vice chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, she had a phalanx of interns and staffers to carry her in a sedan chair if she wished. She could have used some help right now: The front bumper of her car kissed the bumper of the car ahead of her with a quiet crunch. This motherfucking parallel parking. Senator Boucher twisted the wheel and touched the gas. Her rear wheels hit the curb, the front of the car still sticking out into the street. Boucher banged the steering wheel with the heel of her hand. She eased forward to get a new angle. A car behind her honked. Take the spot or move on.

  Senator Boucher rolled down the passenger-side window and screamed, “Fuck you,” at the other car as it squeezed by. Boucher knew she should be more discreet; she was a known face—a celebrity, even—on the Hill, but that cocksucker was not going to honk at her and get away with it. On the fourth try, Boucher managed to ease into the space. It was early evening on a dark and leafy N Street in Washington, D.C. As she locked the car, she saw that her left rear tire was up on the curb, but the hell with it. She turned and walked along the sidewalk past the elegant brownstones, their Geo
rgian doorways lit by beveled glass lanterns.

  Boucher was forty years old, short and thin, with a boyish figure, her legs toned and slim. Piercing green eyes and a button nose were set off by shoulder-length blond hair. Her mouth was her only feature that was not consistent with the image of vibrating energy and corporate power. It was small and frowny and thin-lipped and pinched—a mouth that would as soon bite down as pucker up.

  Boucher was ascending the power chain on the Hill, young to be a senator, but she knew she had earned her position on the Select Committee on Intelligence with fierce preparation and hard work. She sat on other committees as well, but none were as prestigious as SSCI. Twelve years ago she had been elected to Congress after a hardscrabble campaign in a Southern California district replete with defense and aerospace contractors. She became adept at appropriations and at holding the bag of money over people’s heads to get what she wanted. Ascending to senator had been the next logical step, and now, in her second term, as newly named vice chair, she had a hand in legislation, appropriations, and oversight within the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and the Intelligence Community. Abrasive, impatient, and abusive during committee hearings, she tolerated Defense for the commerce it brought to her home state. She recognized the political unassailability of DHS, which she privately thought was a collection of third-stringers operating in a world they scarcely understood, trying to do brain surgery while wearing catchers’ mitts.

  But it was for the Intelligence Community—the conglomerate of sixteen separate agencies—that Boucher reserved her most bitter, thin-lipped excoriation. Defense Intelligence organs—DIA and DH—did not concern her. They were career soldiers thrashing over their heads in the foreign intelligence milieu when all they really wanted was a clear photo of the next bridge beyond the next hill. The Department of State’s INR had some brilliant analysts, but State rarely collected secrets anymore. Their analysts needed to get out in the sun more, get some vitamin D. The FBI were the reluctant brides, forced into a domestic intelligence role they neither understood nor welcomed, inevitably reverting to their button-down cop roots, preferring to run stings on Arab teenagers in Detroit rather than build networks of long-term sources.

  But these were just the crowd. Senator Boucher really had the wood for just one agency, the CIA. She loathed the intelligence officials who sat before her in the committee room, slouched in their chairs, at turns earnest and evasive. Boucher knew they were lying to her every time they spoke, confident, slick, smiling, and knowing. She knew the briefing papers they carried in their zippered security bags were so much wallpaper, concealing the real story. “The hardworking men and women of intelligence,” they’d say, “the National Clandestine Service,” they’d puff, “the gold standard of intelligence collection” they’d announce. These were the familiar phrases that drove Boucher up the wall.

  =====

  It was during her first term as a freshman congresswoman that Boucher had met seventy-five-year-old Malcolm Algernon Philips, an on-again, off-again lobbyist, lavish party-giver, and behind-the-scenes power broker in Washington. Philips knew everyone in town and, more important, knew (in Washington parlance) who was spanking whom, with what, and why. His many admirers would have been scandalized to learn that the silver-haired, impeccably dressed Philips had since the mid-1960s been a talent spotter for the KGB, recruited as a young socialite when Khrushchev was still premier. Though the Russians paid him well, Philips was in it for the sheer joy of gossip, repeating secrets, breaking confidences, and wielding the power that came along with it. He cared not a whit about what the Russians did with his information. The Russians in turn displayed an uncharacteristic patience with Philips. They did not push him to elicit secrets or pay bribes or filch documents. They were content to let him spot candidates for recruitment from within the maelstrom of official Washington. He had been doing it for nearly forty years, and he was very good at it.

  During a winter dinner party at his Georgetown home, Philips’s finely tuned antennae detected in the junior congresswoman from California something in addition to the usual Capitol Hill cocktail of ambition, ego, and greed. A private lunch with Boucher six weeks later confirmed his suspicions. Philips told his KGB handler that he might have found the perfect engine for their needs. Stephanie Boucher was, Philips assessed, utterly devoid of a sentient conscience. Notions of right or wrong did not occupy her thoughts. Neither did patriotism, nor loyalty to God or family or country. She was concerned only about herself. If it suited her, Philips reported, Stephanie Boucher would not think twice about the morality of spying for Russia.

  She grew up in the South Bay, in Hermosa Beach, every day wearing cutoffs and surfing and smoking and fending off the smooth golden boys. Her father was pathetic, letting her mother whore around; she grew to despise her parents. Then her father surprised them both. She was eighteen when her father shot her mother, at the time in the arms of a FedEx deliveryman. Stephanie broke down for a while, but she rallied and made it shamefacedly through the University of Southern California, then graduate school, then drifted into local politics with a growing conviction that friendship was overrated and that relationships were worth it only if they could be exploited for personal advancement. Some of her mother’s DNA stuck, however, and along with serial misanthropy, Stephanie progressively discovered she liked sex, a lot, the kind with no commitment. She had to control herself as her political career blossomed, but it was always there, right beneath the surface.

  The rezidentura in Washington did careful research on their recruitment target. A picture slowly came together, and everything the SVR saw and heard was consistent with what Malcolm Philips had reported. A recruitment operation was initiated and a progression of SVR officers and influence agents continued to vet the senator. But it was not until Washington Rezident Anatoly Golov—urbane, soft-spoken, and charmingly ironic—made contact that Boucher got a first peek behind the treasure-room door.

  The stock philosophical blandishments of recruitment made little impression on the young woman’s mind. She was not interested in the concept of Amity between Nations, nor in the desirability of a World Balance between modern Russia and the United States. Golov could see all this and did not waste time. He knew what she wanted—a career, influence, power.

  Golov commissioned a series of thoughtful global backgrounders drafted by Service I, which he then shared with the senator “for discussion.” International relations, the global politics of oil and natural gas, developments in South Asia, Iran, and China. These specially prepared briefs on intelligence, economics, and military matters quickly made the senator an expert on her committee. The chairman, impressed by her fluency and scholarship, offered her the vice chair of SSCI. It was not lost on the senator that bigger things were possible.

  As the relationship developed, Boucher never remotely struggled with the notion of espionage. She discussed SSCI hearings and issues during dinners with Golov, a matter of give-and-take, natural for a Washington politician. Golov elicited the information from her as if he were deveining a shrimp. The increasingly frequent payments from him “for expenses” Stephanie considered her due. Boucher had long since passed the point of no return, but it was not necessary to remind her of it. In her mind she was building her advantage, preparing herself for advancement, working toward her goal. The SVR had a member of Congress as an active source. SWAN.

  =====

  Anatoly Golov waited for Senator Boucher in the small garden dining room at the rear of the Tabard Inn on N Street. Tiny lights were threaded through the branches of potted trees in the narrow garden closed off by a tall brick wall. Traffic noise from nearby Scott Circle could have been the murmur of gentle nighttime surf. Golov had been Washington rezident for a year, was personally handling SWAN. He had vast prior experience in operations, and recognized that SWAN could conceivably be the most valuable American source Russia had ever run.

  Even so, he disliked the agent and he disliked the case. In t
ruth, SWAN scared him a little. He thought back to the early days when agents were recruited because of their ideology, their belief in world communism, their commitment to the dream of a perfect socialist state. Now it’s all sharada, a charade, thought Golov. SWAN was a greedy, uncontrolled sociopath.

  He shot the cuffs of his shirt. Golov was imperially tall, his thinning gray hair combed straight back. A long straight nose and delicate jaw hinted at Romanov, but that didn’t matter anymore, not even in the SVR. Golov was dressed in a sublime two-button dark Brioni suit, with a razor-starched white shirt and silk navy tie from Marinella with tiny scarlet dots. He wore black Tod Gommino loafers over charcoal-gray socks. Perhaps he was an elegant European count, perhaps on vacation in the United States. The only jarring note was the plain gold signet ring worn on his little finger. On Golov it was mysterious, hinted at a hidden history.

  Golov was finishing his dinner of an egg-lemon lamb fricassee, red kale sautéed in balsamic vinegar, and pommes de terre aligot as good as he remembered having in southern France. Though he normally did not drink when operational, he needed to fortify—or did he mean numb—himself when meeting the senator. He finished his second glass of Chardonnay and ordered a doppio espresso.

  While the table was cleared, Golov reminded himself once again that SWAN was too important an asset to waste time and technique on trying to mollify, or discipline, or control. What Stephanie wanted, the SVR would give her. She had been passing minutes of SSCI closed sessions, hundreds of digital pages of testimony by defense and intelligence officials on weapons systems, intelligence operations, and US policy the likes of which the Center had never seen, never knew existed. In return the SVR had settled on salary payments in amounts unheard of in the annals of the chronically parsimonious Russian intelligence service.