Red Sparrow

9

Dominika reported to the Fifth the next morning, still exhausted by the flight from Kazan. Walking down the long headquarters corridor with light green walls, she went to Simyonov’s office to report for duty but was told the colonel was out and to come back later. Instead they sent her to Personnel, then to Registry, then to Records.

She walked around a corner in the hallway and came upon Simyonov himself, talking to a white-haired man in a dark gray suit. She noticed the man’s bushy white eyebrows and kindly smile. His liquid brown eyes narrowed as Simyonov made a brief introduction: General Korchnoi, chief of the Americas Department, Corporal Egorova. She vaguely knew the name, was aware of his seniority. Compared to the pale aura around Simyonov’s head, Korchnoi was bathed in a flaming mantle of color, as bright as Dominika had seen in anyone. Purple velvet, deep and rich.

“The corporal just returned from the course at Kazan,” said Simyonov with a smirk. Everyone in the Service knew what that meant. Dominika felt the blood rush to her cheeks. “And she is assisting in the approach to the diplomat, the case I was telling you about, General.”

“More than just assist,” said Dominika, looking at Simyonov, then at Korchnoi. “I graduated from the Forest in the last class.” She ignored Sparrow School, cursing Simyonov under her breath. She knew what Simyonov was doing, but she sensed nothing from the older man. Hard to read.

“I heard about your record at the Academy, Corporal,” said the general enigmatically. “I am glad to meet you.” Korchnoi shook her hand with a dry, firm grasp. Simyonov looked on, smiling, thinking this would be the first of many senior officers who would try to dive down the front of her blouse. She’d be working in the front office of some general (and on his leather couch) within six months. Surprised and flattered, Dominika shook his hand, thanked the general, and continued down the corridor. The men’s eyes followed her.

“More steam than a banya in Yakutsk,” whispered Simyonov when Dominika had walked around the corner. “You know she’s the niece of the deputy?”

Korchnoi nodded.

“Niece or not, she’s going to be a pain in the ass,” muttered Simyonov. Korchnoi said nothing. “She wants to be an operator. But look at her, she’s built to be a vorobey. That’s why Egorov sent her to Kazan.”

“And the Frenchman?” asked Korchnoi.

Another snort. “Polovaya zapadnya. A straight honey trap. A matter of weeks. He’s a commercial type, we squeeze him dry, and it’s done.” He nodded his head down the hallway. “She wants to read the file, to get involved. The only thing she’s going to get involved in is what’s between the Frenchman’s legs.”

Korchnoi smiled. “Good luck, Colonel,” he said, shaking hands.

“Thank you, General,” said Simyonov.

They had pointed her to a corner of the French Section of the Fifth Department. She had stared at the windowless angle of the walls as they met at the corner of the chipped desk, which was bare save for a cracked wooden in-tray. Two fat file folders were thrown rudely on her desk. Simyonov had finally released them to her to get her off his back. The dull blue covers with black diagonal stripes were dog-eared, spines fuzzy from sweaty hands. Osobaya papka. Her first operational file. She opened the cover and drank in the words, the colors.

The target was Simon Delon, forty-eight, first secretary in the Commercial Section of the Embassy of France in Moscow. Delon was married but his wife remained in Paris. He traveled infrequently to France for conjugal visits. As a geographical bachelor in Moscow, Delon had been noticed by the FSB almost immediately. They assigned a single watcher at first, but as time passed and interest in him peaked, he was covered in FSB ticks. They spent a lot of time with their krolik, their rabbit. A twelve-man team took him to work and put him to bed. Photos spilled out of an envelope stuck between the pages of the file. Delon walking alone along the river, alone watching the skaters at the Dynamo rink, alone eating at a restaurant table.

Dominika smoothed the creased blue surveillance flimsies. They had used the mirror to watch a long-legged hooker slide her hand up Delon’s leg in a little escort bar off Krymskiy Val Ulitsa. Subject uncomfortable, nervous, refused (unable?) to pick up hooker, read the entry. Poor devil, he didn’t belong there, thought Dominika.

Technical annex: An audio implant in a living-room electrical outlet produced hours of tape: 2036:29, Sounds of dish in the sink. 2212:34, music softly played. 2301:47, retired for night.

They had spiked his phone from the central exchange to cover the weekly call to his wife in Paris. Dominika read the transcripts in French. Madame Delon was impatient and dismissive on one end, Delon small and silent on the other. A sexless, joyless marriage with an impatient woman, an unknown transcriber had written in the margin.

Sometime during the assessment process, the SVR had elbowed its way in and declared primacy over the FSB—it was a foreign case, not domestic. The second volume of the file began with an operational assessment, written in the abbreviated style of the semiliterate Soviet, the kind of writing they had mocked at the Academy. Subject potential for operational exploitation excellent. No identifiable vices. Sexually unfulfilled. Access to restricted information good. Assessed to be retiring and unaggressive. Susceptible to blackmail given lucrative marriage. And so on.

Dominika sat back and looked at the pages and thought about her Academy training. It was clear that this was a small case, with a small target, and with a small payout. Delon might be a lonely little man, vulnerable perhaps, but his access in his embassy was low-level. The Fifth didn’t have anything better than this, this navoz, this manure? Simyonov was building this up, inflating the case, it was clear. She had gone through the Academy, had endured whore school, only to find herself now among a different kind of prostitute? Was the entire Service like this?

She took the elevator to the cafeteria, took an apple, and went out onto the terrace in the sunshine. She sat away from the bench seats, on a low wall along a hedge, flicked off her shoes, closed her eyes, and felt the warmth of the bricks on her feet.

“May I join you?” said a voice, startling her. She opened her eyes and saw the tidy figure of General Korchnoi of the Americas Department standing before her. His suit coat was buttoned and he stood with his feet together, as if he were a maître d’. The sunlight made his purple halo deeper in color, almost with a discernible texture. Dominika jerked upright, fumbling with her flats, trying to get them back on. “Leave your shoes off, Corporal,” Korchnoi said with a laugh. “I wish I could take mine off and find a fish pond in which to dangle them.”

Dominika laughed. “Why don’t you? It feels wonderful.” Korchnoi looked at the blue eyes and the chestnut hair and the guileless face. What sort of provisional officer would make that outrageous suggestion to a general-grade officer? What kind of junior graduate would have the nerve? Then the head of the SVR Directorate responsible for all offensive intelligence operations in the Northern Hemisphere leaned down and pulled off his shoes and socks. They sat in the sun together.

“How is your work, Corporal?” asked Korchnoi, looking at the trees around the terrace.

“It is my first week. I have a desk and an in-box, and I’m reading the file.”

“Your first case file. How do you like it?”

“It’s interesting,” Dominika said, thinking about the general shabbiness of the file, the dubious conclusions, the spurious recommendations.

“You don’t sound entirely enthusiastic,” said Korchnoi.

“Oh, no, I am,” said Dominika.

“But… ?” said Korchnoi, turning toward her slightly. The sunlight cast a spidery shadow on his bushy eyebrows.

“I think I need time to become familiar with operational files,” said Dominika.

“Meaning what?” said Korchnoi. His manner was gentle, reassuring. Dominika felt comfortable speaking to him.

“After I read the file, I did not agree with the conclusion. I don’t see how they arrived at it.”

“What part don’t you agree with?”

“They are looking at a low-level target,” she said, consciously not giving too many details, mindful of security. “He is lonely, vulnerable, but I don’t think he is worth the effort. At the Forest they spoke often about squandering operational resources, about not chasing unprofitable targets.”

“There was a time,” said Korchnoi, testing her, “when women were excluded from the Academy. There was a time when it would have been unthinkable for a junior officer to read into an ongoing operation, much less comment on it.” He looked up at the midday sun and squinted. Royal purple.

“I’m sorry, General,” Dominika said mildly. She knew, was certain, that he was not angry. “It was not my intention to criticize, or to speak inappropriately.” She looked at him squinting up at the sun, quiet, waiting. She had an instinct to speak her mind to this man. “Forgive me, General, I meant only to comment that I think the case is weak. I cannot see how they arrived at the operational conclusions. I know I have scant experience, but anyone could see this.”

Korchnoi turned to look at Dominika—she was serene and confident. He chuckled. “You are supposed to read with a critical eye. And those idiots at the Academy are right. We have to be more efficient. The old days are over. We have difficulty forgetting that.”

“I did not mean to be disrespectful,” said Dominika. “I want to do a good job.”

“And you are right.” Korchnoi smiled. “Marshal your facts, order your arguments, and speak up. There will be disapproval, but keep on. I wish you luck.” He rose from the wall, holding his shoes and socks. “By the way, Corporal, what is the name of the target?” He saw her hesitate. “Just curious.” Dominika in a flash knew this was not the time to be a novice. If he didn’t already know the name, he could find out in ten seconds.

“Delon,” she said. “French Embassy.”

“Thank you.” And he turned, still holding his shoes and socks, and walked away down the path.

She expected nothing less, but the difficulties began during the daily planning sessions. Holding the two-volume file in her arms, Dominika entered the conference room and sat at the end of a faded table with three officers, all draped in browns and grays, from the Fifth Department (responsible for France, Benelux, Southern Europe, and Romania). She sensed the lack of energy in the room. There was no emotional output from these men, no imagination, no passion.

An enormous map of Eurasia covered an entire wall, several telephones were on a dusty credenza at the end of the room. The men stopped talking when she entered. Rumors were already circulating about the beautiful Sparrow School graduate. Dominika returned their stares, barely registering the hard faces, the question-mark smirks. Browns, grays, dingy colors from dingy minds. Cigarette butts filled the cheap aluminum ashtrays in the center of the table.

“Are there any preliminary comments?” asked Simyonov at the far end of the table. He was as expressionless and uninterested as he had been when Dominika first met him. He looked at the three faces around the table. No one spoke. He turned toward Dominika, daring her to speak. She took a breath.

“With the colonel’s permission, I would like to discuss the target’s access,” Dominika said. She could hear her heartbeat.

“We have assessed his access,” said Simyonov. His tone implied that Dominika was not to concern herself with the intricacies of the operation. “He is a worthwhile target. What is left now is to determine an approach,” he said, looking at the officer seated beside him.

“I’m afraid that’s not entirely correct,” said Dominika. Heads came up to look at her. What was this? An attitude? From an Academy graduate? From a Sparrow? Eyes swiveled toward Simyonov for his reaction. This was going to be good.

Simyonov slouched over the table, hands in front of him. Today he radiated a faint yellow glow. This man was not going to stand for any contradictions. His eyes were red and watery, his gray hair lay slack on his head.

“You are here, comrade,” he said, “to assist in the approach to the Frenchman. Matters of access, handling, and production will be the responsibility of the officers of this department.” He leaned a little farther forward and stared at Dominika. Heads swiveled back in her direction. Surely that would be the end of the discussion.

Dominika kept her hands clasped firmly on the file folders in front of her to keep them from trembling. “I’m sorry to contradict you, comrade,” said Dominika, echoing his word, an anachronism. “But I was assigned to participate in this operation as an operations officer. I look forward to being included in all phases of the case.”

“An operations officer, you say?” said Simyonov. “A graduate of the Forest?”

“Yes,” said Dominika.

“When did you graduate?” he asked.

“The most recent class,” said Dominika.

“And since then?” Simyonov looked around the table expectantly.

“Specialized training.”

“What sort of specialized training?” asked Simyonov quietly.

She had prepared for this. Simyonov knew very well where she had been. He was trying to humiliate her. “I audited the basic course at the Kon Institute,” said Dominika, her lips tight against her teeth. She was not going to back down to these lichinki, these maggots. She cursed Uncle Vanya in the same breath.

“Ah, yes, Sparrow School,” said Simyonov. “And that, precisely, is why you are here. To participate in the entrapment of the target, Delon.” One of the men at the table nearly, but not quite, stifled a smirk.

“I’m sorry, Colonel,” said Dominika, “I was assigned to this department as a full member of the team.”

“I see,” he said. “Have you read Delon’s papka?”

“Both volumes,” said Dominika.

“Admirable,” he said. “What preliminary observations do you have about the case and its merits?” Smoke drifted to the ceiling as the room fell silent. Dominika looked at the faces appraising her.

She swallowed. “The issue of his access is critical. The target, Delon, in his capacity as a midlevel commercial officer, does not have access to classified material sufficient to justify a politically delicate chernota.”

“And what do you know of blackmail?” Simyonov said evenly, slightly amused. “Just out of the Academy and all?”

“Delon himself is not worth the effort,” repeated Dominika.

“There are a number of analysts in Line R who would disagree with you,” said Simyonov, his tone hardening. “Delon has access to French and EU commercial data. Budget figures. Programs. Investment strategies, energy policies. You would throw this information away?”

Dominika shook her head. “Delon knows nothing that one of our low-grade assets in any of a half dozen French commercial or trade ministries in Paris could not provide directly. Surely that avenue would be a more efficient way to service general requirements?”

Simyonov, face hardening, sat back in his chair. “You apparently learned quite a lot at the Academy. So, you would propose that the department not validate the operation? That we disengage and do nothing against the target, Delon?”

“I say only that the potential risk of compromising a Western diplomat in Moscow is not justified by his low potential as a source.”

“Go back and read the file again, Corporal,” said Simyonov. “And come back when you have something constructive to add.” They all stared at Dominika as she rose from the table, collected the file, and walked the long length of the room to the door. She kept her back straight and focused on the door handle. She closed the door to muffled murmurs and chuckles.

The next morning Dominika arrived at her empty desk to find a plain white envelope in her spavined in-box. She carefully slit it open with a thumbnail and unfolded the single sheet of paper. Written in purple ink in a classic script was a single line:

Delon has a daughter. Follow your instincts. K.

The next day they were back around the table piled high with photographs and surveillance reports. The ashtrays were overflowing. Dominika walked to her place at the end of the conference table. The men ignored her. They were reviewing Delon’s profile, a smoke-polluted exercise conducted with disinterest and one eye on the wall clock. There were no primary colors from any of them. They walked through his habits and patterns, as described by the teams, arguing about places where they could engineer contact. Bored as usual, Simyonov looked up at Dominika. “Well, Corporal, do you have any ideas about contact points? Assuming you have reconsidered your earlier objections to the operation.”

Dominika kept her voice steady. “I have reread the file, Colonel,” she said, “and I still believe this man is not a valid target.” Heads around the table did not come up this time; the men kept their eyes on the papers in front of them. This vorobey was not long for the Fifth, they thought, possibly not long for the Service.

“Still you take this line? How interesting,” said Simyonov. “So we drop him, is that your recommendation?”

“I said no such thing,” said Dominika. “I believe we should indeed pursue him as a target, exploiting his lonely solitude.” She flipped open the cover of the file in front of her. “But the ultimate target, the end goal of the operation, should not be Delon himself.”

“What nonsense are you talking?” said Simyonov.

“It’s already in the file. I completed a bit of extra research,” said Dominika.

Simyonov looked around the table, then back at Dominika. “The case has been thoroughly researched already—”

“And discovered that Monsieur Delon has a daughter,” interrupted Dominika.

“And a wife in Paris, yes, we know all that!”

“And the daughter works in the French Ministry of Defense.”

“Unlikely,” fumed Simyonov. “The entire family was traced. The Paris rezidentura checked all local records.”

“Then it appears they missed something. She is twenty-five years old, unmarried, lives with her mother. Her name is Cécile,” said Dominika.

“This is preposterous,” said Simyonov.

“She was mentioned only once in the transcripts. I checked the foreign directories in Line R’s library,” said Dominika, flipping more pages in the file. “Cécile Denise Delon is listed in the Rue Saint-Dominique registry. That means the central registry at the Defense Ministry.” Dominika looked around the table at the faces staring at her. “That suggests, as far as I could determine, that she has access to classified defense bulletins distributed daily to the government. She is one of the custodians of planning documents for the French military. She likely handles the dissemination and storage of a wide variety of French military budget, readiness, and manpower reports.”

“Conjecture, at this point,” said Simyonov.

“We don’t know where the French store their nuclear secrets, but I wouldn’t be surprised—”

“There’s no need for idle speculation,” said Simyonov. The yellow fog around his head was growing, and getting darker too. Dominika knew that he was frustrated, angry, calculating, and she knew that her defiance and insubordination were already more than enough to have her cashiered from the Service.

The room was deathly still. Simyonov’s antediluvian Soviet instincts were alerted; the bureaucrat in him calculated. His thoughts in an instant proceeded in the nature of the traditional KGB functionary: This little tsarevna with the big last name is making me look lacking and stupid. How can I profit in the end from her work? If this maneken is correct, the rewards could be huge, but so are the risks. An operation targeting the French Ministry of Defense would need to be approved all the way to the top.

“If this is true,” he said stingily, “there could be an added benefit.” He spoke as if he had known all along. He flicked ash into the ashtray.

She could read his oily, humid mind. “I agree with you, Colonel. It’s Delon’s real potential, it’s what makes him worth pursuing, what makes it worth the risk to recruit him.”

Simyonov shook his head. “The daughter is in Paris, twenty-five hundred kilometers away.”

“Not so far, I think,” said Dominika, smiling. “We will see.” Simyonov was unsettled by that smile. “Of course, we’ll have to develop a more detailed profile about the relationship between father and daughter.”

“Of course, thank you, Corporal,” Simyonov said. A few more minutes of this and she would be taking over the Fifth Department. All right, he thought, she could do the preparatory work, as much as she liked. As the operation proceeded he’d ensure she’d be on her back with her legs in the air with the cameras rolling, and that would take care of that.

“Very well, Corporal, since you uncovered this interesting detail, I want you to draw up your own thoughts about contact with the target Delon,” he said to Dominika.

“With your permission, Colonel, I have already drawn up a plan to engineer first contact,” said Dominika.

“I see…”

The Fifth Department officers pushed back in their chairs and crushed their unfinished cigarettes in the ashtrays. Jesus, the gossip about this Sparrow had been limited to blue eyes, how she filled out her regulation skirt, the size of her chest. No one had mentioned anything about her yaitsa, her set of balls. They filed out of the room, leaving Dominika to gather the paper scattered around the table, the new girl left behind to clean up the room. She didn’t mind. She stacked the papers, piled them on top of the dog-eared folders of Delon’s file, and walked out of the conference room, closing the door behind her.

In the Arbat, at number 12 Nikitsky Bulvar, there is a small restaurant called Jean Jacques. It is something like a French brasserie, noisy, smoky, filled with the winey aroma of cassoulets and stews. Tables covered with white tablecloths are jammed nearly edge to edge on a black-and-white tile floor, bentwood chairs tucked in tight. The walls are covered in wine bottles on shelves to the ceiling, the curving bar is lined with stools. Jean Jacques is always crowded with Muscovites. At lunchtime, if one is alone one shares a table with a stranger.

Midday on a rainy Tuesday, Jean Jacques was even more busy than usual. Customers stood inside the front door or under the canopy outside, waiting for single seats to come free. The din was overwhelming, cigarette smoke hung heavy. Waiters scurried between tables, opening bottles and carrying trays. After a fifteen-minute wait, Simon Delon of the French Embassy in Moscow was shown to a two-cover in the corner of the room. A young man sat in the other seat, finishing a deep bowl of Dijonnaise stew thick with vegetables and chunks of meat. He dipped black bread into the gravy. As Delon sat at the table, the young man barely looked up in acknowledgment.

Despite the crowds and the noise, Delon liked the restaurant, it reminded him of Paris. Better still, the Russian lunchtime practice of seating strangers together occasionally provided an opportunity to be seated beside a cute university student or an attractive shopgirl. Sometimes they even smiled at him, as if they were together. At least it would look that way from across the room.

Delon ordered a glass of wine while he looked at the menu. The young man sitting across from him paid his check, wiped his mouth, and reached for his jacket on the back of his chair. Delon looked up to see a stunning dark-haired woman with ice-blue eyes walk toward his table. He held his breath. The woman actually sat down in the seat just vacated by the young man. She wore her hair up, there was a single strand of pearls beneath her collar. Under a light raincoat she was wearing a beige satin shirt over a darker chocolate-colored skirt, with a brown alligator belt. Delon took a ragged pull of his wine as he peeked and saw how the shirt moved over the woman’s body.

She took a small pair of square reading glasses out of an alligator clutch; they perched on the end of her nose as she looked at her menu. She sensed him looking at her and she raised her eyes. He dove back behind his menu in a panic. Another peek, he took in the elegant fingers holding the menu, the curve of her neck, the eyelashes over those X-ray eyes. She looked at him again.

“Izvinite, excuse me, is there something wrong?” said Dominika in Russian. Delon shook himself and gulped self-consciously. He looked to be in his fifties, with strawlike brown hair combed across a big head balanced on a skinny neck perched on narrow, rounded shoulders. Small black eyes, a pointy nose, and pursed mouth topped with a little mustache completed the whiskered-mouse effect. One point of his collar slightly stuck out of his blue-black suit, and the knot of his tie was small and uneven. Dominika resisted the impulse to tuck in his collar and straighten his tie. She knew his birth date, what kind of aspirin was in the cabinet above his bathroom sink, the color of the bedspread on his lonely bed. Well, she thought, he certainly looked like a commercial attaché.

Delon could barely look her in the eye. Dominika sensed the effort he made to speak to her. When he finally did, the words were the palest of blue, not unlike the cornflower blue that had defined Anya at Sparrow School. He took a breath and Dominika waited. She already knew her assessment of him was correct, that her plans for him were beginning.

“I beg your pardon,” said Delon. “I’m sorry, I do not speak Russian. Do you speak English?”

“Yes, of course,” said Dominika in English.

“Et français?” asked Delon.

“Oui,” said Dominika.

“How wonderful. I did not mean to stare,” he stammered in French. “I was just thinking how fortunate you were to be seated. Have you been waiting long?”

“Not too long,” said Dominika, looking around the restaurant and at the front door. “In any case, it looks like the crowd is less.”

“Well, I’m glad you got a seat,” said Delon, running out of things to say.

Dominika nodded and looked back down at the menu. Fortune had nothing to do with Dominika getting that particular seat in the corner of the room. Every customer that day in Jean Jacques was an SVR officer.

A second chance encounter at Jean Jacques provided the excuse to introduce herself in alias “Nadia” to the owlish little diplomat. Another bump on the sidewalk outside the brasserie days later somehow gave him nerve enough to suggest that they lunch together. After that they tried another restaurant for lunch. Delon was excruciatingly shy, with courtly good manners. He drank in moderation, spoke haltingly about himself, and furtively mopped at his glistening forehead as he watched Dominika absentmindedly brush a strand of hair behind her ear. Over the space of these contacts, Delon’s reticence began fading, while his azure aura was strengthening. It was what she was looking for.

Delon had accepted without suspicion the legend that Nadia was a language teacher at Liden & Denz in Gruzinsky Street. He studiously did not react when she spoke of an estranged husband, a geologist, working out east in another time zone, and he feigned polite disinterest when Dominika vaguely mentioned her small apartment whose only redeeming feature was that she did not share it with anyone. Privately, Delon’s thoughts raced.

Simyonov wanted to move fast, he wanted Dominika to lure the little man into bed and drop the house on him. Dominika resisted, stalled, pushed back to the limits of insubordination. She knew Simyonov intended to use her as a Sparrow, that his vision in the recruitment attempt stopped at a sex-entrapment operation, that he had no appreciation of the promise in the case. She argued forcefully for a period of careful development of Delon, doubly important because of his daughter’s potential as a stupendous source. He would need to be brought along gently. Simyonov controlled his temper as this curvy Academy graduate lectured him, reported progress, and proposed next steps.

It was a classic razrabotka, developmental, over the following weeks. Dominika took Delon through the stages of casual acquaintance to comfortable friendship, watching how he relaxed with her, grew cautiously more familiar, how he hid his growing longing for her. She anticipated his desires, prompted him, hinted how she was becoming fond of him. He could scarcely believe it. The Frenchman was besotted with her, but Dominika knew he was too timid, too fearful to ever push himself at her. There could be no recruitment of him if he felt deceived or compromised, she decided. The recruitment would come based only on friendship, on Delon’s growing infatuation, on his eventual inability to refuse her anything.

They met once a week, then twice a week, then began meeting on the weekends for walks around town, visits to museums. By mutual inclination they were discreet. They both were married, after all. They talked about his family, a carefree childhood in Brittany, his parents. Dominika had to be soft. Delon was a turtle who would jerk his head back under his shell if startled.

In time, Delon spoke haltingly about a loveless marriage. His wife was several years older than he, tall and patrician, she ran things her way. Her family had money, lots of it, and they had married after a brief courtship. Delon told Dominika that his wife had resolved to make something out of him, grand ideas of position and title, abetted by her family’s influence. When his reticence and mildness revealed themselves, his wife had turned her back on the marriage. She preserved appearances, of course, but she did not mind the separation required by his diplomatic assignment. His standing in the Foreign Service depended on her.

Delon adored Cécile, their only child. A photo of her revealed a slight, dark-haired young woman with a willowy smile. She was a lot like Delon, shy and tentative and reserved. With growing familiarity and trust, he finally revealed to Dominika that his daughter worked at the Defense Ministry. He of course was immensely proud of her young career, which had been arranged by his wife and influential father-in-law. Delon spoke with good humor about his hopes for his daughter. A good marriage, a strong career, a comfortable life. That he was willing to talk about Cécile was an important milestone in the development.

Over the rim of a demitasse at a café, Dominika one afternoon asked Delon whether he worried about the future, worried that his wife would leave him, worried that his daughter would meet the wrong man and be trapped in a melancholy life like his own. Delon looked at Dominika—the object of his growing affection—and for the first time should have felt the silken touch of the SVR glove brush against his cheek. A danger signal. But he ignored the frisson, distracted by her blue eyes and tumbled hair and, he was scandalized to admit to himself, the horizontal stripes of the jersey that traced the curve of her breasts. Still they continued their chaste friendship. Outings ended with awkward good-byes, red-faced handshakes, and, once, a hurried, perfumed kiss on the cheek that made his head swim.

“What are you waiting for?” raved Simyonov. “We’re here to trap this robkij francuz, this timorous Frenchie, not to write his biography.”

“This is no time to be stupid,” Dominika said to Simyonov, knowing she was committing a grave offense of discipline. “Let me run this and I will have the Frenchman and his daughter recruited,” she pleaded.

Simyonov seethed, the pulsing yellow fog around him paled, then strengthened, then paled again. He was dissembling, planning treachery, she was sure. She continued crowding him, with her argument but physically as well, standing right up to him. The ensnarement of Delon was nearly complete. He was ready for the hook, she was sure of it. He wanted to start spying for her, he just didn’t know it yet. She remembered a phrase from her old pensioner instructors during the ops course.

“Don’t worry, comrade,” Dominika said. “This svekla, this beet, is almost cooked.” She felt like a veteran repeating it.

“Look,” said Simyonov, pointing his finger at her, “forget the old bullshit jokes and wrap this target up. Stop wasting time.” But even as he scolded, he could sense the nuances Dominika was building into this operation, refinements that he knew were beyond him and were in consequence not at all to his liking.

Dominika finally invited Delon to her ostensible apartment in northern Moscow, near the Belarus train terminal and not far from the language school where she claimed to work. It was a small two-room flat with a sitting room, an attached kitchen with curtained lavatory, and a tiny bedroom. The carpet was threadbare, the wallpaper faded and bubbled with age. A battered teapot on a single-element propane stove was too old to whistle. It was small and dingy, but a Moscow apartment not shared with relatives or work colleagues was still an inexpressible luxury.

Another unappreciated—for Delon—aspect was that the walls, ceilings, and fixtures were peppered with lenses and microphones. The apartments on both sides, above, and below were likewise SVR-controlled units. The energy draw from this apartment block alone could have air-started a Tupolev Tu-95. Sometimes, late at night, you could hear the transformers humming in the basement.

“Simon, I need your help,” Dominika said, opening the door to her apartment. A clutch of blue flowers in his hand and a bottle of wine under his arm, Delon immediately looked concerned. This was the third visit to Nadia’s apartment, and previous visits had been limited to chastely listening to tapes, drinking wine, and conversation. Dominika put a little panic into her voice and shook her head. “I accepted a temporary job as an interpreter, French to Russian, for the ITFM trade fair next month. To make a little extra money. What was I thinking? I don’t know any of the vocabulary for industry, energy, commerce—in either language, for that matter.”

Delon smiled. Dominika noted that his blue aura glowed with confidence and affection. They sat down on the little divan in the tiny living room. He knew all about the fair, it was his job. At least six SVR technicians beyond the walls watched and recorded the scene. “Is that all?” said Delon. “In a month I can teach you all the French words you’ll need.” He patted her hand. “Don’t worry.” Dominika leaned toward him, took his face in her hands, and planted a big vaudeville kiss on his lips. She had calculated the time and the nature of the kiss carefully. Showy and girlish as the smooch may have been, it nevertheless was the first time Delon had felt Dominika’s lips. “Don’t worry,” he repeated shakily. He could taste her lipstick. The blue words now were uniformly colored and darker. He had decided.

Dominika had always displayed an interest in his job, his duties as a diplomat, and Delon had grown accustomed to describing his work, pleased to have someone show an interest. Now he could do something for her, and the next evening Delon came to Nadia’s apartment straight from the embassy carrying his briefcase, and produced a twenty-page report from the embassy’s Commercial Section on investment challenges and opportunities in Russia. He read through it with her. The word Confidentiel was printed on the top and bottom of each page.

More sessions, more documents. When Delon could not bring out originals, or copy them, he would take adequate pictures of documents with his cell phone. They worked with his technical dictionaries in French and with hers in Russian. As befitting a language teacher, Dominika was mastering the vocabulary, and he could see with the pride of a tutor that she likewise was mastering the issues regarding international trade and energy. Delon set his jaw with conviction. He would teach her, train her, make her an expert. He loved her, he told himself.

To solve the problem of leaving embassy documents overnight so Dominika could study, Delon himself began making copies for her, a step not so important for the SVR in terms of document copy—the overhead cameras in the ceiling above the table could focus on a single comma—but as an act of commission, an irreversible step beyond the regulations of embassy security. Dominika knew he was hers now. For Delon, the fiction of “vocabulary study” faded into the fiction of “educating Nadia,” which was morphing now into an overwhelming devotion to her, to do whatever she asked. This motivation was stronger than any agent salary she could have offered, stronger than any blackmail threats from a bedroom sting. If he realized he was dealing with Russian intelligence, he never acknowledged it.

Simyonov watched the progress and called another meeting, making a show and raving about moving forward, about bedding the diminutive Frenchman. “Go ahead, you take him to bed,” said Dominika to Simyonov and the men around the table. “Which one of you wants to fuck him?” The room fell silent.

Dominika tried to be a little softer. “Look,” she said. “The next step is supremely delicate.” She had to move Delon first to agree to contact his daughter, then gently to ask her to provide defense secrets. It was like pulling strings to control one puppet that in turn was attached to another puppet. Once his daughter had crossed the line, Delon had to ensure her continued participation. “Once the French defense documents start flowing, the case will be made,” said Dominika.

Simyonov listened sourly and was not convinced. The plan was too complicated. This diletantka was insubordinate. But he resolved to wait a while longer. He was confirmed in his plans after another hallway conversation with General Korchnoi. The veteran senior spy said he absolutely agreed with the need to move forward with the recruitment pitch, and commiserated with Simyonov when he heard about Dominika’s headstrong attitudes. “These young officers,” said Korchnoi. “Tell me more about her.”

Ironically, it was the timorous Delon who forced the timeline. Sitting next to Dominika on the couch one evening, reviewing another midlevel commercial document, Delon had impulsively reached out and taken her hands in his. He then had leaned toward her and kissed her tenderly. Perhaps the intimacy of working together finally overcame him, perhaps an instinct about being dragged slowly into the funnel web of espionage made him fatalistic. Whatever had awakened him, Dominika kissed him back tenderly while frantically calculating. They were at a critical juncture of the operation. Sleeping with him now, before she could bring the daughter into the plan, could jeopardize the transition. Conversely, it could cement her control over him. Dominika thought about the glistening jowls, the overhanging bellies of the men in the hot little room on the other side of the wall.

As if he had sensed her indecision, Delon’s lips faltered, his eyes popped open. At the least likely moment he was going to stop. The halo around his head was blazing, incandescent. In that instant Dominika knew she must go forward, they would have to become lovers. She would carry him along, help him seduce her.

She registered a little regret at reaching this stage. He was so trusting and sweet—how unlike her romp with Ustinov. And now she had Sparrow training, prompts from which began popping uncontrollably into her brain.

Dominika put her hand behind his head and pressed their lips together more tightly (No. 13, “Unambiguously signal sexual willingness”) and took a trembling breath (No. 4, “Build passionate response by evincing passion”). He pulled away and looked at her with wide eyes. She caressed his cheek and then, staring into his eyes, placed his hand on her breast. He could feel her heart beating and she pressed his hand more hotly against her (No. 55, “Display carnal abandon to authenticate physical arousal”). She shuddered. Delon was still staring, his hand motionless. “Nadia,” he whispered.

Eyes now closed, Dominika brushed her cheek against his and brought her mouth close to his ear (No. 23, “Provide aural prompts to spur desire”). “Simon, baise-moi,” she whispered, and they were up and staggering into the dim little bedroom (which was in truth illuminated brighter than Moscow’s Dynamo soccer stadium but with invisible infrared light), and Dominika stepped out of her skirt, shrugged off her blouse, but kept her low-cut brassiere in place (No. 27, “Employ incongruity of nudity and vestments to whiplash the senses”), and watched Delon hopping ridiculously out of his trousers while she trailed her hands down her thighs (No. 51, “Auto-stimulate to generate pheromones”).

He was like a mating turtledove in bed, fluttering, feathery, weightless as he lay on her body. He nuzzled gently between her breasts; she hardly felt him, but she arched her back, threw out her legs (No. 49, “Generate dynamic tension in the extremities to hasten nerve response”) and focused for an instant on the aperture in the light fixture on the ceiling, but his head was lifting from between her breasts to look at her again, and she met his eyes and he sighed and fluttered more energetically on top of her. Dominika closed her eyes (No. 46, “Block distractions which derail responsiveness”) and called his name again and again and felt a building tremor run through his body, and she helped him (No. 9, “Develop the pubococcygeus muscle”), and he whimpered, “Nadia, je t’aime.”

She ran her fingers along his neck and whispered, “Lyubov’ moja,” my love, and knew what was happening when the door to the bedroom exploded inward and the orange-tinted bulb (better contrast for the digital cameras) in the overhead fixture flooded the room with light and three men in suits crowded into the room. Their shirt collars were wet and their eyes shone like pig eyes in a truffle forest. They had been watching from next door, and the smells of their sweat and day-old shirts and week-old socks filled the room.

The minute the door opened, Dominika sat up in bed and clasped the terrified, shrinking Delon to her like a favorite doll and started screaming in Russian for them to get out. She knew Simyonov was blowing her careful recruitment to smithereens. He could not wait, he had to proceed according to his artless script. It was a blow against her. She was paying for her glib performances around the conference table, her disrespectful interruptions. She remembered trying to talk like one of the old boys: “This beet is almost cooked,” she had said. Well, the old boys were showing her who ran things.

They tore Delon from her, dragged him off the bed, and marched him naked to the living room. They pushed him on the couch and threw him his crumpled trousers. He looked up at the hulking men without comprehension. Dominika continued swearing at them from the bed as she gathered up a sheet to cover herself and get to her feet. She was nearly blind with rage and her body, throat, head felt tight, and her ears were filled with a rushing sound.

She was determined to drive them out of the room and retrieve the situation. Before she could stand, the third man grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her off the bed and into the living room. When Delon saw her being manhandled he made to rise, but the other two men pushed him back down. The man spun Dominika to face him and slapped her across the cheek. “Shalava, suka!” he spat, and threw her to the floor. Staged scenario or not, Dominika looked up at the bastard who had called her a slut and a whore, and measured the distance to his eyes.

Dominika got to her feet and let the sheet fall to the floor. Every eye in the room was transfixed by her body, chest heaving, legs braced. Her foot flashed out in a feint, and the SVR man bent forward to protect himself. Dominika quickly reached out and dug the nails of her thumb and forefinger into the septum between his nostrils, pinched hard, and pulled him toward her, a torture-cell NKVD come-along from the 1930s. Dominika pulled the howling and unresisting thug’s head sharply downward against the little table in the room—littered with French Embassy commercial documents—the corner of which caught him on the cheek, knocking the table and the papers over and dropping the man into a heap on the floor. He didn’t move. From the couch Delon looked at her in disbelief.

The entire sequence had taken less than ten seconds. One of the other SVR men grabbed Dominika and hustled her out of the apartment, frog-marched her down the hall, and shoved her into another room. “Take your hands off me,” she said as the door slammed shut in her face. The man was gone. A voice came from the back of the room.

“An effective performance, Corporal, a strong finish to a discreet intelligence operation.” Dominika turned to see Simyonov sitting on a couch in front of two monitors. One screen showed the apartment, a man bending over the insensate lump on the floor, while the other man stood over Delon, who was still holding his trousers in his hands, his face looking up at him, upturned as if in prayer. The other screen replayed Dominika and Delon in bed. With the sound muted, their lovemaking looked clinical, staged. She ignored it.

Dominika clutched the sheet around her with one hand while fingering her throbbing cheek with the other. “Zhopa! Asshole! We would have gotten it all,” she screamed. Simyonov did not respond. His eyes darted from one monitor to the other. “He would have recruited his own daughter for me,” she raved. Simyonov did not turn to look at her but muttered, “He will do so at any rate.” He pointed a remote and the sound came from the live monitor. The two SVR men were now screaming at Delon, who sat motionless on the couch. Dominika took another barefoot step into the room toward Simyonov, seriously contemplating driving a thumbnail into his eye. “Don’t you know he will not succumb to blackmail? He is not brave enough. Do you really think… ?”

Simyonov turned to her as he lit a cigarette. His eyes blazed yellow. “If it doesn’t work, we can log it into your copy book as a failure, then,” he said. “It’s not your decision and it never was,” he said, smiling at her. “And this Service is not your private preserve.” He turned to the silent monitor. Dominika dully watched herself wrap her legs around Delon’s waist.

“What is the purpose of replaying the bedroom film, comrade?” she said to Simyonov. He did not reply but blew cigarette smoke at the ceiling.

“Given the fact that Serov struck you, I will not initiate charges against you for what you did to him.” He pointed at the other monitor and at Serov, still unconscious on the floor. “You have quite a temper, don’t you, Vorobey? It should be an asset to you in your budding career.” He smiled again and nodded at the door to an adjoining room.

“There is a change of clothing in there if you want to get dressed, Corporal. That is, unless you choose to remain naked all night.” Dominika went into the little room and quickly threw on a formless smock and plastic belt, a pair of black tied shoes. The approved look for the last fifty years for the Modern Soviet Woman.

Dominika never saw Delon again. The story came out in segments. An SVR informant working in the clerical pool of the French Embassy reported that Delon requested an appointment with the ambassador the next morning. Delon confessed to an “unreported, intimate relationship with a Russian woman.” The little man had shown quite a lot of courage as he described the number and nature of the commercial documents that he had shared, copied, or otherwise compromised. The DGSE chief in Moscow cabled his headquarters in Paris, as well as the Counterintelligence Division of the DST. There had been knowing shakes of the head. A beautiful woman, quoi faire? What could you do?

The Germans would have found him shuldhaft, culpable, and given him three years. The Americans would have pegged the poor sap a victim of sexpionage and sentenced him to eight years. In Russia the predatel’, the traitor, would have been liquidated. French investigators handed down a stern finding of négligent. Delon was transferred home quickly—out of reach—and consigned to duties without access to classified information for eighteen months. He was near his daughter and back in Paris. His ultimate penance was living again in his wife’s elegant, lofty house in the Sixteenth with only the memories—in the sleepless early mornings—of a dingy little Moscow apartment and a pair of cobalt-blue eyes.