Palace of Treason

30

Dominika returned briefly to the embassy to see if she could pick up anything else on LYRIC, but there was nothing new: The old fool had departed on an early-morning flight. He expected to be met at Domodedovo airport by a young protocol officer and driven to GRU Headquarters in a black Mercedes. Instead, the attentive officer would escort him to the hospitality lounge off the main terminal, where five men in suits would seize his wrists and his ankles and there would be an arm around his neck to hold him still, and they would unbutton his shirt and take off his shoes, and welcome him back to the Rodina. He was lost.

Dominika stayed a while longer at the embassy, swallowed a wedge of Russian vegetable pie from the embassy canteen without tasting it, and then walked to her hotel. It was midday and the sun was hot on her head. She was dulled and numb over the LYRIC situation. They had done it to her again or, rather, she had done it to herself. She knew the CIA men were out of their minds with concern: They had just lost an agent, partly through bad luck, partly thanks to an old man’s obstinacy, partly through inattention. But she was back in the familiar tar pit, up to her hips in it. Welcome to the life you chose.

She daydreamed, walking head down on the dusty sidewalk of Ambelokipi toward her hotel, about escaping. How would she frame it, how would she tell Nate she wanted him to take her to America, right now, and put her in a house near a lake surrounded by pine trees, a house with a fireplace, and make slow love in the mornings? You’re a little genius, she thought. A real dreamer. Who are you kidding? This deep-freeze existence of hers would continue until she died, exposed by a traitor, or shot by a sniper, or butchered by a maniac assassin.

Marta walked beside her, smoking and looking at the young men on the sidewalk. Clear your mind, she told her, concentrate, love your man, and don’t be afraid.

Love your man. Dominika cleared her mind as she got her hotel room key from the desk and walked up the narrow stairs, dark and cool compared to the heat of the street. She wanted to change out of her sweater and dress for the evening reception at the embassy, from which she would then slip away to see Nate and Gable at a late-night meeting. She decided she would tell them both she was sorry tonight. Dominika had bought a sheer, black bodyshirt from the Wolford lingerie store in Kolonaki that she would wear under a short jacket and skirt — not formal, but slutty professional. You could see through the gauzy material and she (or Nate) could open the crotch snaps with one hand.

She didn’t recall that she had drawn the shades in the little sitting room, and something came grunting at her from the little bedroom on the right, a blur, and a shock, and the feel of steel arms around her waist, and Dominika twisted to her left while stepping wide, but the arms didn’t let go, and she was picked up bodily and slammed against the wall with demonic force and the person was an indistinct shadow but not a man, not with that scent, not with those chest pillows, and Dominika hit the blond head with her elbow while reaching low with her other hand and driving a stiff ridge hand strike between her legs, and got a chuffing noise for her effort, and the arms came away from her waist, but then snaked around her throat, and the woman put a knee in the small of Dominika’s back and tried to pull her to the floor, but Dominika scrabbled at a little ceramic lamp with a seashell pattern on the shade and reached around, and smashed it against the side of the bitch’s head, and the arm let go and Dominika turned to look at her, she was holding her cheek, dressed in a T-shirt and wraparound skirt, and had big shoulders, big legs, eyes the color of slate, and that blond hair lying tight on her skull, and without warning she exploded from a standing start and drove her shoulder into Dominika’s stomach, driving both of them backward onto a glass coffee table, which shattered, and the woman kept driving with her legs, pushing through broken wood and glass, getting a purchase and hitting at Dominika’s head, and her ribs were on fire; she put a thumb into one of those river stone eyes, but the beast just grunted and shook her head, and Dominika knew she could not beat this woman for sheer strength, and she fought a wave of desperate fear, thinking wildly about screaming for help as the face pressed closer to her, showing her teeth, and Dominika felt broken glass under her hand and she swiped a shard across the woman’s face from above her left eyebrow diagonally downward across the fleshy nose to the lower right cheek, a pirate scar, and the woman rolled off, holding her face and wiping it with the T-shirt, braless breasts visible when she lifted the shirt, large dark brown nipples, and then the woman exploded forward again like a wounded Cape buffalo, blood streaming down her face, and Dominika was hunched over, holding her ribs together and trying to breathe, when the banshee threw a looping punch that landed above Dominika’s left ear with white light exploding in her head, and real rage came then and Dominika ignored her ribs and threw a snap punch, then another, at the woman’s face with no effect and they both went backward onto the couch, legs intertwined and holding on to hair and clothes, each one trying to get on top, and the couch jumped a little off its legs with the thrashing around, and the beast heaved up on top of her, turned Dominika on her stomach, mashing her face into the couch, Dominika could feel dripping blood on her cheek and got a blocking hand up between her throat and the cord before it was strained tight, but she could still pass out with enough pressure — thank God it wasn’t piano wire and with a lurch borne out of desperation Dominika rocked violently twice, sending the couch over on its back with a crack of wood, dumping them both against the wall and Dominika knew if she wasn’t first on her feet in that confined space she was dead, so she put both hands under the woman’s chin and a foot in her stomach and pushed, then rolled away and got to her feet, the cord still loosely around her neck but the beast was wiping her face again, her breasts glistening pink in the dim light of the room, and she was stepping casually over the upturned couch, and Dominika backed away, bracing for another buffalo charge, and on a whim said, Suka ty zlo’ebuchaya, you’re a fucking bitch, to goad her, because Dominika had about one move left, and when Blondie came, arms reaching for her throat, Dominika ducked and took the left arm over her shoulder, did a quarter turn, and pulled down against the hinge of the elbow, separating the distal humerus from the radial head and splintering the olecranon, the point of the elbow, with a sound like a cracked walnut shell, but the woman barked once with the pain but kept coming, with a low moan from her chest, one arm swinging free, one eye blinking away the blood, and Dominika could barely raise her arm to pull the blood soaked T-shirt to swing the woman in a flat circle and lift a foot to kick her behind the knee joint, and the sodden T-shirt tore down the front as the woman toppled, unable to break her fall with her limp broken arm, hitting the rug with her cheek, her head bouncing once on the floor and Dominika bent over the stirring woman, flipped her over, took three turns around her neck, and got out of range of that one good arm by scurrying above the woman’s head, putting her feet on her shoulders, and pulling with her arms’ she kept pulling the electric cord, the only way she could stay away from those hands and teeth, the only way she could exert enough pressure, both feet braced, leaning back with the ends of the cord wrapped around each fist, and Dominika pulled, turning her head to vomit a little, whimpering with the exertion, and the waves of pain in her ribs were worse, and the woman’s blood-streaked face slowly tilted back to look at Dominika upside down and the flattened breasts shuddered and the saliva and blood ran the wrong way up her face’ she kept pulling, and the woman’s good arm scrabbled at the treble-wrapped cord cutting into her neck and her bellow of dying rage came out as a rasping gargling, and the legs started kicking and the woman bucked twice, breasts flopping, and she kept pulling, but the air was full of buzzing sounds, and Dominika kept pulling, and her vision was tunneling now, black-rimmed and fuzzy, and she came back, five minutes or twenty-five minutes later, she couldn’t tell, and the woman was still staring at her, and Dominika took her feet off her shoulders and knee-walked around her, looking sideways at the corpse in case she started moving again, but there was no rise and fall of the chest or diaphragm, and her skirt was wet from waist to hem and her feet were cut from the glass, and one elbow was bent too far one way, and Dominika could barely take a breath, but the virago was dead. She had killed it.

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 who, 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 fly-by her hotel, just to check.”

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

Nate did more than a fly-by. In late afternoon, 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 Four Hotel 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 that, 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: To pull DIVA out now (Nate); to 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. 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 had 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 that they had another mole. And the “plan to turn him in,” was that a garble? Egorova had returned miraculously from Athens and immediately had requested to go on sick leave, claiming she had been attacked on the street and had been 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.

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.