Red Sparrow: A Novel

by Jason Matthews

  “A small detail at this stage,” said Vanya, waving his hand. “Concentrate on positive results.”

  “Of course,” said Zyuganov, deferring to his chief. He turned to Korchnoi. “You will, of course, keep Yasenevo advised of your status, the meetings, locations.”

  Korchnoi nodded pleasantly. “Of course, I will report regularly, security and tradecraft permitting.”

  “Thank you,” said Zyuganov.

  Korchnoi and Dominika walked down a corridor in headquarters. They each knew the other’s secret now. It was unspoken, but each glance between them now was more knowing, the bond like leg irons—unbreakable and, perhaps, a bit uncomfortable. She walked beside him steadily, a little hitch in her walk, but really she was flying. She would see Rome for the first time, would see Nate again.

  Dominika sensed the general’s agitation. He was unsettled and nervous. She looked over at him as they waited at the elevator. “What is it?” Now their every interaction was significant, every question touched the towering secret they shared.

  “Something is not right. We must take great care on our little Roman holiday,” he said to her. “From now on you must do exactly as I say. Likha beda nachalo.” Trouble is the beginning of disaster. The elevator doors opened and closed, as if swallowing them whole.

  In his own office, Zyuganov was on the phone. The walls of the smallish room were covered with photographs of Zyuganov and SVR colleagues, at the seashore, in front of a dacha, standing together in a delegation. Most were gone now, purged by his own hand, he was tickled to note.

  He nodded his head and said, “Da, da,” into the phone as if receiving detailed instructions.

  “Yes, sir, it is clear. I know exactly what must be done. Yes, sir.” He cradled the phone and keyed the intercom.

  “Summon Matorin. He is to come immediately.”

  Pro serovo rech a servy, navstretch, thought Zyuganov, sitting down behind his desk. Speak of the gray one, the gray one heads your way.

  MARBLE’S RUSTIC TOMATO SAUCE

  Sauté diced onions, sliced garlic, and anchovy fillets in olive oil until aromatics are soft and fillets have melted in the pan. Add tomato paste in center of pan and fry, stirring, until rust-colored. Add chopped ripe tomatoes, crushed dried oregano, peperoncino, and a chiffonade of fresh basil leaves. Season to taste. Reduce sauce until thick, add a splash of balsamic vinegar to finish. Garnish with fresh, torn basil leaves and serve over pasta or meatballs.

  31

  Officers in the Washington rezidentura brewed tea, read newspapers, watched CNN and RTR-Planeta, and occasionally peeked through window blinds last raised in 1990. Cable traffic—both incoming and outgoing—was down. Lunch dates came and went, appointments were missed, new contacts were going cold. The consecutive weeks of FBI vehicular and foot surveillance had been unprecedented, crushing, stifling. After the first month, the Center had directed a stand-down of all operational activity until further notice, and requested the rezidentura prepare a security assessment to explain the situation. There were no explanations.

  Even the elegant Rezident Golov was not immune. He confirmed trailing vehicular surveillance on him personally twenty of the last thirty nights, and he desperately needed to get black. The backup meeting with SWAN was approaching and he could not miss her a second time. There was no telling how she would react.

  Those ten nights that neither Golov nor his Zeta countersurveillance team were able to detect even the remotest hint of coverage were, perversely, the worst nights. The nights of not knowing, of not being totally certain. Did the Americans have some new technique, some new technology? The devil knew what their strategy was. But he had to get black.

  Everything must be done to protect SWAN, but she was a security nightmare. She continued to refuse all reasonable proposals to improve her security—electronic communication, messaging, discreet hotel meets, prearranged alternates to cover missed meetings—she wouldn’t have any of it. “If I have my ass at the meeting,” she had said to Golov, “you can damn well have your ass there too.” Impossible woman. Golov yearned to turn SWAN over to a low-profile illegals officer, but Moscow forbade it, especially after the compromise of the illegal in New London.

  Golov therefore was confronted by one of the most classic of espionage conundrums—having to meet a sensitive asset on a predetermined night, at a predetermined site, regardless of conditions on the street. An abort was unacceptable, impossible. Tonight was the next scheduled meeting with SWAN. He had to make it.

  That afternoon he reviewed his surveillance detection route with the Zeta Team. Golov told them he wanted to try to channel any trailing coverage into a dymohod, a stovepipe, to expose surveillance and, more important, to try a breakout—escaping surveillance altogether. They designated a code number on the encrypted radios that would signal whether the stovepipe had worked. They reviewed the route once again.

  Golov knew this was madness. Only an asset as valuable as SWAN would make him take these risks, but the Center was insistent. Golov had to try.

  He kicked off in midafternoon, the middle car in a simultaneous departure by eight of his officers in eight cars who exited the embassy gates on Wisconsin Avenue, each headed in a different direction. FBI watchers in the lookout post transmitted starburst starburst, a stampede departure, designed to overload surveillance and get a few cars free. The starburst call-out was also heard by the CIA’s Orion Team. They were interested only in the rezident, and they patiently listened for the watchers to call out Golov, who was driving his own vehicle, a gleaming black BMW 5 Series sedan. Golov headed up Wisconsin Avenue, his Zeta Team already deployed to the west of Wisconsin. Golov crossed Western Avenue, the border between the District and Maryland, and turned south, reversing his course into the grid pattern of American University Park, using the neighborhood streets to drift sideways, reverse direction, pull up to the curb, and wait. After fifteen minutes the Zetas signaled, No apparent surveillance. They had missed two static Orion cars that had been in place on the margins of AU Park.

  Golov stairstepped west again along residential streets while his team moved to parallel his route. They did not get the slightest whiff of the familiar swirling movement of active FBI surveillance because there was none. The Zeta Team covered Golov as he pushed west downhill to Canal Road and crossed the Chain Bridge into Virginia. This was called by a static Orion car sitting on the intersection of Arizona and Canal Roads, the single route onto the only Potomac River crossing into Virginia between Georgetown and the Beltway. The Orions were tempted to flood suburban Virginia but the team leader, a sixty-five-year-old former surveillance instructor by the name of Kramer, told them to hold. He instead directed three cars to parallel Golov’s directional axis on the Maryland side of the Potomac. They were going north along the river anticipating the route. TrapDoor was in play.

  One Orion—a grandmother when she wasn’t tracking SVR officers—held at the parking lot of Lock 10 on the C&O Canal National Park. Another grandmother drove four miles to the Old Angler’s Inn on MacArthur Boulevard, took a garden table in the waning light, ordered a sherry, and tried to guess which of the couples at the other tables were having affairs.

  Kramer directed a third Orion—this one a great-aunt—another four miles north to the village of Potomac, where she ordered an early dinner salad at the Hunters Inn. As the three women waited, they recorded a score of license plates and marked a dozen loitering people. The list of possibles grew. Were any of them waiting for the black BMW? The two remaining Orion cars—the team was small that day—separated. One covered the upper reaches of River Road southeast of Potomac, the other parked at the entrance of the C&O Canal National Park, where American traitors like Walker and Ames and Pollard and Pelton over the years had pulled misshapen garbage bags of Russian money out of rotting tree trunks. The Orions all sat still and waited, keeping off the radios, their eyes scanning, checking, programmed to catch the profile, the gleam, the shape of the black BMW. If Golov continued into Virginia
, they lost; if he headed back to Maryland but away from Potomac, they lost. They were content to wait. It was how TrapDoor worked. There would be other days and nights. All they had to do was be right once.

  As it turned out, they lost. Golov crossed back into Maryland on I-495, part of a high-speed loop that enabled his Zeta Team to begin setting up on the final leg of the route, the dymohod, the stovepipe, the long, meandering Beach Drive, which traced the gerrymandered Rock Creek Park in and out of the woods and creek bed south all the way to Georgetown. Hearing the distinctive squelch breaks designating “all clear,” Golov exited Beach at the bottom of Rock Creek and parked on Twenty-Second Street in the West End, leaving the Zeta Team to continue south. If the FBI had managed to place a beacon on Golov’s car—unlikely; it was never left unattended and was swept weekly—the feds would find it a block away from either the Ritz-Carlton or the Fairmont and about fifty restaurants along the K Street corridor. They would be welcome to check all those and more. He locked his car and walked six blocks to the familiar entrance of the Tabard Inn. It was dark now, and the interior of the inn was warmly lit.

  More madness, to use the same meeting site twice in a row. At least there had been a cooling-off hiatus since the last rendezvous. Golov entered the inn and walked past the front desk, through the corridor, to the little walled garden in back. This time SWAN had arrived before Golov. She sat at a table hard against the garden wall, smoking. Golov braced for trouble. SWAN had just signaled the waiter for a replacement drink. An empty highball glass was on the table in front of her. She was dressed in a blue suit with a red blouse. A blue stone necklace at her throat matched the suit, and bright red nails matched her blouse. Her blond hair was brushed back off her face, which, in the diffused light of the bulbs in the trees, seemed older and papery.

  “Stephanie, how are you?” said Golov in greeting. He extended his hand but she made no move to take it. He smiled at her and sat down. The waiter arrived with a double scotch for Senator Boucher. Golov, tired and stiff from nearly five hours in the car, ordered a Campari and soda.

  “Anatoly,” said Boucher with mock warmth, “I have been waiting in this stupid little garden for nearly an hour.” She stabbed at a little gold lighter several times before she could light her cigarette.

  “I’m sorry about that, Stephanie,” said Golov, “but I was preoccupied by the necessity of not bringing the entire Federal Bureau of Investigation with me to our rendezvous.”

  “How very professional of you.”

  “We could arrange things a lot more securely if you would consider just a few small changes,” said Golov.

  “Not this again. It’s so very comforting to hear you talk about my security when there’s a full-scale search in Washington for a highly placed Russian agent.” Boucher blew smoke into the air.

  “Indeed? What have you heard? We have no reason to believe your status is compromised,” said Golov. “We are quite certain that neither the FBI nor the CIA has any idea about our relationship. Five people on this planet know who you are, and that list includes you and me. What is this about a search for a Russian agent? Details, Stephanie, please.” This was important. Golov’s scalp itched, a bad sign.

  “I am glad you’re so confident. How, then, do you explain the closed-session briefing I attended, listening to one of those CIA idiots? It sounded like they have leads. They’re looking for someone who suffers from shingles—you know, Anatoly, the painful red lesions on your skin? Like the pain in my fanny?” She tilted her head back and finished her drink, the ice cubes clicking against her teeth. She signaled for another.

  “Stephanie, you don’t have shingles, do you?” asked Golov. He would have to transmit this information instantly, tonight.

  She looked at him with irritation. “That’s not the point. You know as well as I that I cannot jeopardize my position. I’ve worked too long and hard to get where I am.”

  Golov marveled that her colossal ego could translate this deadly serious game as a potential derailment to her career. Did she know the dangers involved? The consequences? “This is exactly why I insist we begin meeting in hotel rooms.”

  “I’ll consider it,” said Boucher. She appraised the waiter as he set her third drink down, staring at him as he walked away. “But now there’s something else,” she said in a flat tone, the one she used during congressional testimonies. “If you people make a mistake and the feds come knocking on my door, I will not go to prison. I won’t go. So I want you to give me something . . . permanent. Something I can take.”

  Golov sat back in his chair and marveled. The mention of a mole hunt has unsettled her, and now she wants an L-pill, a US senator. Where did she hear of this? He reached forward, held both of Boucher’s hands lightly in his fingers, and spoke softly. “Stephanie, that is the most amazing thing I have heard you say. You cannot be serious. You’re speaking of ancient history, of Cold War myths. There is no such thing.”

  “I think you’re lying to me, Anatoly,” she said, smiling thinly as she twisted away from his hands. “Either I get one, or I dissolve our ‘partnership,’ as you call it. When we meet next month—you will be here next month, on time?—I expect a cute little pillbox; make it ivory or mother-of-pearl.”

  “I can still hardly believe it,” said Golov. “I will consult with Moscow, but I doubt they will grant authorization.”

  As was her custom, Senator Boucher waited until the end of their meeting before she dug into her purse and slid a black disc across the table toward Golov. Before putting it into his pocket, he saw the Pathfinder logo inscribed on the side. The senator certainly knew how to play for drama, Golov thought as he watched her walk unsteadily out. Shingles.

  Anatoly Golov sat in a New England–style rocking chair in a room in the Tabard Inn. The smallish room had florid purple walls, framed posters of French circus animals, was carpeted with a riotous Persian carpet, and featured an oversized four-poster bed in the corner of the room.

  Since his last meeting with SWAN, there had been no abatement in surveillance on rezidentura officers. Instead of risking another long SDR, Golov had received the Center’s approval to attempt a “trunk escape” to get black. On the morning of the meeting day, Golov had lain in the trunk of the car of the economic counselor, breathing pure oxygen from a small tank through a face mask. Three embassy wives drove, with absolutely no regard for surveillance, to Friendship Heights on upper Wisconsin Avenue. Following instructions, the thick-waisted wives parked in the underground parking garage, locked the car, and went shopping.

  Another Russian spouse sitting in the garage watched the parked car for fifteen minutes. There had been no surveillance; it was clean. Carrying shopping bags, the wife simply walked up to the car, tapped lightly twice, and unlocked the trunk to let a cramped and pissed-off Golov out.

  He cursed the SWAN case, and cursed Moscow, and cursed the Service, but he was black, undetected, surveillance-free. The trunk escape had worked. He left the garage and made his way south into the District by walking, getting on random buses, and hailing an occasional taxi. He avoided the Metro system with its ubiquitous cameras. He reached Dupont Circle and killed two hours in bookshops and in a little bistro. At sunset, at the height of rush hour, he walked around the Circle, south down Nineteenth, onto N Street, and four blocks to the Tabard Inn. No sign of surveillance. He had dressed casually, for a change, to blend in on the street, with a muted suede jacket over a brown crewneck, corduroy slacks, and suede walking shoes. Thank God for the good shoes. As he entered the inn he slipped on a pair of heavy-framed eyeglasses with clear-glass lenses.

  Golov sat in the hotel suite and finished a plate of Aegean clams that had been broiled with oregano, goat cheese, lemon, and oil, accompanied by a bottle of chilled Tuscan Vernaccia. He was relieved that he had rented the room, using a forged US driver’s license and traveler’s checks, without a problem. It had been a number of years since Golov had rented a hotel room in alias—that was a young man’s game—and he had relive
d the tense, dry-mouthed drill with cool enjoyment. Despite his foreign accent, and the fact that he had no reservation and no luggage, the oblivious clerk behind the desk was satisfied. This was a distinguished gentleman. He was shown to the small but elegant room on the second floor, where they would be out of the public eye. Privacy was paramount, especially tonight, with what he had to give her.

  He finished his supper, went into the bathroom to splash water on his face, look into the mirror, and again curse the Service. Locking his door, Golov descended to the small lobby and sat in a slightly musty green baize couch facing the front door. He waited, keyed up, an unread magazine in his lap.

  Senator Boucher walked into the place as if she owned it. She didn’t see Golov sitting on the couch—the clear-lens eyeglasses broke up his patrician features—and passed him within two feet. Boucher walked through a room to be seen, not to notice who else was there. Golov silently caught her in the corridor and steered her up the small staircase to the second floor. No one had seen them. Golov unlocked the door and let Boucher enter first. The senator looked around the room and smirked.

  “Anatoly, how cozy, I always suspected you were a romantic.”

  Ignoring the comment, Golov offered SWAN a glass of wine, which she accepted in lieu of scotch. “Meeting indoors improves our security, Stephanie,” said Golov, “but we must choose another hotel for next time. I insist, and so does Moscow.”

  “How very nice for you and Moscow,” said SWAN, holding out her glass for more wine. “Did you bring me my . . . vitamins? Tell me you did, Anatoly, and I will be very happy.”

  Golov thought of an agent he once ran in East Beirut, a Maronite Christian, who had gotten so accustomed to demanding money and gifts before sharing his information that the situation became impossible. Golov had directed a KGB Vympel team to sink his weighted body off Raouché and the Pigeons’ Rocks, past the forty-five-fathom line. He looked at SWAN and daydreamed.