Red Sparrow

12

Through the open office door, Forsyth watched Nate work on the cable covering the last developmental lunch with Egorova. Nash was pushing the development now, but skeptically. It was slow going with the Russian, and Nate’s confidence was still shaky. He was desperate to log a success, but banging your head against the wall took its toll. Inevitably, the stakes were getting higher. With every contact with Egorova, Forsyth knew that Headquarters would push harder, offer outside assessment, begin asking for ops tests. If Nate brought her to recruitment, they’d insist on interviews and a polygraph. The most recent Headquarters response to Nate’s contact reports was, as Gable said, “already a fucking harbinger of things to come in the future.”

Forsyth knew the signs. The last line presaged interference from Headquarters if the case really started taking off. The buzzards would be circling, but a stampede of visitors wouldn’t start until the weather turned warmer, thought Forsyth. He called Nate into his office at the end of the day. “Have a seat, Nate. Your last cables on DIVA were really first-rate, objective, with good case-officer assessment,” said Forsyth.

“Thanks, Chief,” said Nate. Privately, he wasn’t so sure. He knew the growing audience who saw his cables would read them with an increasingly critical eye.

“Your tradecraft is tight, keep it that way. MARBLE’s a priority, of course, but after that make sure your pursuit of DIVA is undetectable to her embassy.” Forsyth thought for a moment. “That translator you met, what’s his name, Tishkov, he was an interesting nugget. But working two Russians in the same embassy probably is not a good idea, especially since DIVA is coming out to play. Maybe you can save Tishkov for later.”

Nate thought that if he didn’t recruit Dominika, all the Tishkovs in Helsinki wouldn’t help him. Too many expectations. And Forsyth pointed out another danger. “This case is on Headquarters’ scope now, big-time. Everyone’s nose is going to be in it. If you recruit her, all the heat-seekers will come out of the woodwork.

“Right now you have to figure out whether DIVA has the inclination to doubt her system. Is she willing to listen to you and let you lead her to make the big decision?” Forsyth sat back. “Not a bad job, sitting with a beautiful Russian, trying to convince her to spy for you. Okay, get out of here and have fun. Door’s open anytime you have a question.”

Gable took him to a little bistro owned by Greeks and made him try the scrambled eggs, fluffy and laced with onions and tomatoes. Over eggs and multiple beers that night, Gable tried to lighten Nate’s mood about the DIVA case. “Don’t try to get her in bed before you recruit her. She will correctly conclude that you fucked her to get her to sign up. Recruit her first, then you’ll be able to enjoy two of life’s singular pleasures: Running an SVR officer, and eating breakfast in bed with cunty fingers.” Gable threw back his drink and ordered two more for them.

“Golly, Marty, I feel I’m really growing under your coaching,” said Nate, rolling his eyes. “All I know is I have to get her to relax, to like me. What happens if this starts getting emotional?”

Gable looked over at him with a face. “Please. There’s no such thing as a case officer falling in love with an agent. It’s not allowed. It cannot be done. Get it out of your head. Go ahead and bang her if you must, but love?”

The large main room of the SVR rezidentura in the Russian Embassy in Helsinki was dotted with plain wooden desks, set up in vaguely staggered rows. None of the desks had a terminal, but most had electric typewriters with odd lacquered turquoise covers sitting on small metal typing tables. These were specially produced JAJUBAVA typewriters manufactured in Moscow under license for the SVR and FSB, and securely pouched to overseas rezidenturi, to ensure the machines were not tampered with.

The low-ceilinged room was harshly lit by overhead fluorescent tubes also imported from Moscow for the same reason. They hummed and blinked and reflected milk-white off the scratched glass desktops. Along the exterior walls, the small dormer windows—the rezidentura was on the attic level of the Russian Embassy—were secured first by exterior bars, then by bolted steel shutters, then double-paned glass, and finally by heavy gray curtains, the hems of which trailed ragged on the floor. Worn deer trails in the bare carpet ran between the desks. The shabby room smelled of stale cigarettes and cold black tea in paper cups.

At one end of the room there were two offices. One was glassed in—the classified file room—with the clerk sitting at a desk in a circle of light from a gooseneck lamp. The room was lined with tall safes, some of whose drawers were open, others closed and secured by irregular yellow wax seals, as if someone had been throwing fried eggs at them. The other office was totally private, the windowless office of Rezident Volontov.

The half dozen officers in the SVR rezidentura kept their heads down over their work as Volontov’s voice came through the closed door of his office. It was obvious that he was dressing down the newly arrived junior officer from Moscow, Egorova.

“Moscow has been hectoring me for progress reports,” yelled Volontov, leaning over his desk. “They want to see more results against the American.” The orange cloud around his head was like smoke, swirling and unsettled. He’s feeling the pressure, thought Dominika.

“I am making progress, Colonel,” said Dominika. “We have had a dozen encounters, all of them discreet. He has made no indication that he has reported the contact to his superiors, a significant development.”

“Don’t tell me what’s significant and what isn’t. I directed you, the Center directed you, to document each of the meetings with Nash. Why aren’t you drafting telegrams for my review and dispatch to Yasenevo?”

“I have drafted telegrams. You yourself told me to combine several messages in summary format. I cannot write about contacts until they actually materialize.”

Volontov slammed his desk drawer shut with a bang, and the orange smoke swirled. “You’ll do well to be respectful and leave the sarcasm for another time. Now I want you to accelerate this slow waltz with the American. You’ll remember that the ultimate goal is to elicit information that may lead to the identification of a traitor. It is urgent, paramount, that you do.”

“Yes,” said Dominika, “I understand the ultimate goal. I drafted the operational proposal in the first place. Everything is progressing.”

“That includes observing whether he seems to be preparing for an imminent operation, whether he is going on a trip, whether he is nervous, or distracted, or apprehensive.”

“Yes, Colonel, I know all these things. I am confident I will be able to discern changes in his schedule.” Dominika wasn’t sure she could; their relationship was stuck, it seemed.

Volontov pretended to look thoughtfully at Dominika. His eyes flitted from her chin to her waist and in between. “Many of the indicators we are looking for,” he said, sitting back, “are perhaps most discernible the better one knows the target. In my experience,” said Volontov, “the more intimate the relationship, the more intimate the conversation.” In your experience with Moroccan tea boys, thought Dominika. She tamped down a cold rage as she looked at the warts on Volontov’s neck.

“Very well, Colonel. I am to meet the American again next week. I will remember your guidance concerning intimacy, and I will report progress. I will propose additional meetings in the hope we can discover his work schedule. Does that meet with your approval?”

“Yes, yes, it’s fine. But do not underestimate an emotional dependence. Do you understand?” Orange haze swirling around his head, nerves, fear.

The words came out before she could stop them. “Why don’t you just come out and say it?” said Dominika, coming out of her seat. “Why don’t you just order me to get on my back? I am an officer of the Service. I serve my country. I won’t let you talk to me that way.” Her body was trembling with rage and frustration. Before the scowling Volontov could react, Dominika wheeled and walked out of his office, slamming the door behind her. If it had been any other junior officer, Volontov thought bitterly, I would have followed him into the outer office, stripped the hide off him with a birch branch, then shipped him home under escort to the Lubyanka basement. Let this one go for now, he thought. With her pedigree, it’s safer this way.

Eyes watched Dominika burst out of Volontov’s office and make her way red-faced to her desk in the corner, hard against the angle of a dormer. She sat gripping the edge of her desk, head bowed. This is some hothead, thought her colleagues. They had heard Dominika’s voice raised. Was she some kind of fool? Best to keep away from this samoubiystvo, this suicide waiting to happen, they all thought. All except one.

The conversation with Rezident Volontov festered inside Dominika for the five days before she was to meet Nate again, this time for dinner at a local restaurant. At night, in her apartment, she looked at her reflection in the dark glass of the window, the lights of Punavuori showing through the treetops. Who are you? she asked herself wearily. How much will you take? How she longed to wipe the eye of the beast, to puncture the desiccated self-importance of these users and falsifiers. To do so publicly was suicidal. No, better a secret revenge, undetectable, something delectable she could hold inside her, something she knew that They did not know.

Volontov was just the latest nadziratel in a procession of hoggish overseers in her life and career, but he was here and now, and she wanted to damage him, to extinguish the grimy orange halo around his warty face. She had to put her building rage into a box and calculate. The operation against Nate was critical to Volontov; he feared failing the Center. She could get back at him—at Them—by ruining it. How to do it without destroying yourself? Later that evening, she stopped with the toothbrush still in her mouth and looked at herself in the mirror. You could give the American a surprise, drop your cover, let him know you’re SVR.

Izmena. Treason, that was what it would be. Gosudarstvennaya izmena. High treason. But it would ruin Volontov’s case, put the Americans on guard, would rock Nate back on his heels. It would be interesting to see his surprise when he learned that she was an intelligence officer. He would respect her for that, he would be impressed. He would respect her.

Come on, are you insane? Have you forgotten discipline? Responsibility to the Rodina? But this was not an act against Russia. She was getting back at Them, knocking over their dominoes, not selling state secrets. She would be in control, she would determine how far was far enough. No, it was madness, and trouble, and impossible. She would have to find her satisfaction elsewhere. She brushed her hair and looked at the tapered handle of the brush, imagining it seated firmly between Volontov’s buttocks. Then she turned off the light and went into her bedroom.

At the end of the week, Nate and Dominika were sitting in the ersatz Ristorante Villetta in Töölö at a corner table. The restaurant was classic Italian in Helsinki. A plastic canopy with Italian colors jutted out from the first floor of the apartment block in which it was located. Inside, the requisite red-and-white tablecloths and runny candles completed the décor. The weather was still cold, but winter would break soon, a few more feet of snow, then the short spring would give way to delicious summer, with the harbor full of sails and the ferries running. Dominika and Nate had arrived separately, as usual. Under her winter coat she wore a black belted knit dress and black wool stockings. The dress clung to her as she hung her coat over the back of her chair.

Nate wore a suit, but he had stripped off his necktie, and his shirt, in a blue pencil stripe, was open at the neck. He had left the Embassy two hours before and had driven up the E12 until Ruskeasuo, cut west, and come back south on surface streets, entering Töölö only after having seen ARCHIE parked on a side street with the left-hand visor down. All clear.

Nate had huddled with Gable the day before. “Get her talking about work,” Gable had said. “She’s an SVR officer, that’s her guilty secret.” Nate nodded. He squirmed, agonizing over the need for a breakthrough moment. Forsyth had praised him, Gable was nothing but encouragement, but Nate was getting antsy. He needed to turn a corner, and right now.

They chatted for a minute while looking at the improbable oversized menus. “You are quiet tonight,” said Dominika, looking at him over the top of the menu. Same majestic purple. He never changes, she thought.

“Hard day at the office,” said Nate. Keep it nonchalant. “I was late for a meeting, left figures out of a cable, my boss was not happy and told me so.”

“I cannot believe you are not excellent in your work.”

“Well, I feel better now,” Nate said, ordering two glasses of wine from the hovering waiter. “You look nice tonight.”

“Do you think so?” He was paying her a compliment. How confident he seemed.

“Yes, I do. You make me forget my boss and work and the lousy day.”

His boss. She wondered what he really thought. Dominika looked back down at the menu, but she had trouble focusing on the print.

“You are not alone, Nate. My superior also scolds.” She could feel her heartbeat in her ears. She took a swallow of wine, felt it light up her stomach.

“So we’re both in hot water. What did you do?”

“It’s not important,” Dominika said. “He is an unpleasant person, nekulturny. And ugly. He has warts.” How many rezidents in Helsinki have warts? she thought.

“What’s that, nekulturny?”

As if you don’t know, thought Dominika. “He is a peasant, no culture.”

Nate laughed. “What’s his name? Have I met him on the dip circuit?”

She had changed her mind five times in the last two days, had ultimately decided to steer clear of silly games. She looked at Nate across the table. He was munching grissini, grinning at her. No! Izmena! Treason!

“His name is Volontov, Maxim,” she said, hearing her own voice through someone else’s ears. Bozhe moi, my God, she thought, I’ve said it. She looked at Nate closely. He was scanning his menu and did not look up when she said the name. The halo around his head did not change.

“Nope, I don’t think I’ve met him.” Nate felt the hairs on his arms stand up. Holy shit. What’s she doing? She just declared herself.

“Well, you are fortunate, then,” Dominika said, still staring at him. Nate looked up from the menu. Had Dominika made a mistake and let the rezident’s name slip out? She looked back at him evenly. No. She had deliberately said it.

“Why is he so bad?” asked Nate.

“He is disgusting, an old Soviet bastard. Every day he stares at me; what is the expression in English?” Dominika kept looking at Nate evenly.

“He undresses you with his eyes,” said Nate.

“Yes,” said Dominika. No reaction from him. Had he missed what she just said? My God, had she gone too far? Then, suddenly, she knew she didn’t care. She had slid down the slope, and now was custodian of a mortally dangerous secret. Are you happy now, durak, you little fool?

“He sounds horrible… but I can understand why he stares.” Nate looked at Dominika and smiled a boyish grin. Jesus, he thought, this came out of the blue. Is this a signal to me? Is she being coy? He looked at her unwavering blue eyes. Her chest rose and fell under the wool dress. Her fingertips gripped the edges of the ridiculous enormous menu.

“Now you are being nekulturny,” she said. Did he already know? Was he so good, to hide his reaction?

“Well, it sounds like we both have trouble at work. We can commiserate.”

“What does ‘commiserate’ mean?” asked Dominika. Blue-eyed stare.

“Crying on each other’s shoulders,” Nate said. Purple, steady and warm.

Dominika didn’t know whether to laugh or scream. Stay professional. “Crying we can save for later. I am hungry, let’s order,” she said.

It was a Monday morning when a restricted-handling cable from Headquarters was passed to Nate, informing the Station that MARBLE had communicated via covcom that he would be arriving in Helsinki in two weeks as part of a Russian trade delegation participating in a two-day Scandinavian/Baltic economic summit. MARBLE relayed that he was using the delegation as cover for travel. He would stay under Line KR’s radar that way. He was further covered by being operational, in town to attempt to bump the senior member of the Canadian delegation, Assistant Trade Minister Anthony Trunk, who the SVR thought was a valid recruitment prospect based on the minister’s predilection for men in their early twenties.

A senior Canadian official and a pidor, to boot. The Americas Department had primacy, and MARBLE was the logical candidate to travel to Helsinki to sniff at Trunk’s cologne-scented personage. The trip was approved by the Center. As MARBLE knew would happen, instructions were issued to exclude the Helsinki rezidentura from both the conference and the operation. MARBLE had subsequently signaled in his satellite burst transmission that he would be able to meet with CIA handlers late at night after the daily sessions and celebratory dinners concluded. Risky, but possible.

A Headquarters Russia analyst would arrive two days before the start of the conference to help prepare current intelligence requirements for the meetings. A long list of follow-up questions generated by MARBLE’s previous intelligence reports was cabled to Station. At the bottom of the list, as always, the softly phrased counterintelligence questions: Do you have knowledge of any moles in the US government? Are you aware of the compromise of any US classified material? Do you know of any intelligence operations being directed against US persons or systems? Mild, opened-ended questions designed to open the furnace door and look inside.

They went down the checklist. Replenishing commo gear was impossible—MARBLE would go through customs on his return from Helsinki. A universal contact plan would be updated. Forsyth vetoed the addition of two senior officers from Headquarters to participate in the debriefings. Nate was MARBLE’s handler and he would do the job.

Now there were preparations no one else could make: Nate receded into the background, went out onto the streets, dropped from sight. By night he cased dark alleys, angled walls, loading-dock stairways—Brief Encounter sites—near the neoclassical splendor of the Kämp Hotel, where the summit would be held and delegates housed. He wandered past cafés, restaurants, the City and Sculpture Museums, pacing distances, measuring angles, determining flow and screening—these would be the Brush Pass sites—all within easy walking distance of the Kämp.

Lastly, during a night of driving rain with sheets of water pouring off the monoliths on the façade of the train terminal, Nate went up the side steps and, just inside the doors, felt the hand, then the heavy weight of the hotel key in his pocket. A thin-faced man, a nonofficial cover officer, an NOC from Europe, had taken a room at the Hotel GLO for a week with a throwaway alias. Every night during the conference, Nate would wait in the hotel room to meet MARBLE when he could get away, wait for the minute scratch at the door, wait to begin the long conversations in the overheated room with the shades down and the television turned up, into the early morning hours, while the city slept and the changing traffic lights reflected endlessly off the wet, empty streets. By the time MARBLE stepped off the plane in Helsinki, the Station was prepared to spend as much time as securely possible with him, without remotely showing an American hair on the street.

It was early evening, after work, and Dominika stood by a window on the mezzanine level of the Torni Hotel across from the swimming pool, waiting for Nate to show. They swam together now at least three days a week, but Nate had not been at the pool for six days straight. Strange, she thought, feeling a little jilted. A week ago, on a windy spring Sunday, they had met for coffee at the Carusel Café on the water in Ullanlinna. There was a growing forest of swaying rigging in the harbor as halyards clanked against aluminum masts and clouds moved across a rare blue sky.

Dominika had taken a bus, then the Metro, and finally two taxis to get to the marina. She argued with herself as she walked along the Havsstranden, but in the end had dabbed a little perfume behind her ears. He came on foot, walking across the road, and there was a spring to his step. Nate was his usual charming self, but there was something else. His purple halo was hazy, faded. He was distracted, something was on his mind. When previously they would have spent four, five, six hours together, Nate after an hour said he had another commitment—it was unexpected work, nothing social, he assured her, but he had to go. They had walked a little ways together, and when Dominika suggested that next weekend they might take the ferry to Suomenlinna and spend the day exploring the old fortress, Nate said he would love to, but two weekends from now would be better.

Trees along the street were budding, they could feel the sun on their faces. At a quiet street corner they stood and faced each other. Dominika was heading home, Nate was going the other way. Dominika could feel him; he radiated nervous energy. He was waiting for something to happen, she thought. “I’m sorry I’m such a pill,” said Nate. “It’s just a lot of work. So we go to the fortress in two weeks together?”

“Of course,” she said. “I will look for you at the swimming pool. We can arrange Suomenlinna when we see each other.” She turned to cross the street. What, she asked herself, had possessed her to use perfume? Nate watched her walk away down the sidewalk of the leafy neighborhood, registering the slight hitch in her stride. Her lean dancer’s legs bunched at the calves and she swung her hands easily as she walked.

Then he thought about MARBLE’s imminent arrival. He still had to find an all-clear signal site near the Hotel GLO so MARBLE would know to come upstairs. He took off.

GREEK STRAPATSADA EGGS

In heated olive oil reduce peeled, chopped tomatoes, onions, sugar, salt, and pepper to a thick sauce. Add beaten eggs to the tomatoes and stir vigorously until eggs set into a small, fine curd. Serve with grilled country bread drizzled with olive oil.