Red Sparrow

29

Benford sat in semidarkness in his office, the covcom message alert cable on the small square of visible desk amid the landfill chaos of the rest of it. He had read MARBLE’s cryptic message twice, hearing his voice as he read the words, seeing him conserving the limited characters allowable in a burst transmission. He bellowed to his secretary to fetch Nate and Alice immediately. While he waited, he read the message again:

Benford’s eyes lingered on the lowercase n in the niko signature, which in simple terms was the “no duress” indicator, but which more specifically meant that MARBLE had not composed the message with a circle of men standing around him, one of whom was prying the little finger of his left hand straight up, close to the breaking point, as he wrote what they wanted.

SWAN was a mole in the US government. Game on. That this was considered by the Russians the best case in years suggested SWAN’s intelligence had quality as well as quantity; it meant to Benford that the United States was hemorrhaging information. When Alice stuck her head in the door, Benford told her he was assigning her a single project, starting right now.

“I have the double agent thing in Brazil,” said Alice bluntly. She was not afraid of contradicting Benford.

“That bullshit can wait,” said Benford without looking up from his desk. “I want you to drop everything and compile a list. It’ll be unlike anything you have ever done before.”

“Do tell,” said Alice, vaguely looking for a place to sit. She found none and remained standing in front of Benford’s desk.

“It’s going to be a little unconventional, but that’s right up your alley, Alice,” said Benford. He looked up. “I want you to draw up a Top Ten list for me. I want you to identify the ten biggest secrets in the United States government. It could be military, political, domestic, cyber, banking, space, energy, Islam, or the tattoo on Pat Benatar’s ass, I don’t care—”

“On whose ass?” asked Alice.

“Pat Benatar, the pop singer,” said Benford defensively. “Start with the Pentagon and their hottest SAPs, military secrets, that’s what excites the Russians the most. Find out what DoD considers their ultrasensitive projects. Long-term. Expensive. Strategic. Get the deputy director for military affairs to make a call to SecDef if necessary. Politely ask them to get off their asses and hurry up. Then when we see what they consider the crown jewels, we can begin reviewing the BIGOT lists.” Alice moved to the door just as Nate entered. As they squeezed past each other, Alice turned to him.

“Do you know who Pat Benatar is?” asked Alice.

“Never heard of him,” said Nate, clearing files off a small chair and sitting down. “Is he the FBI guy in Boston who covered the New England thing?”

“Forget it,” said Benford. “Thank you, Alice, get started on that right away, will you?” Benford turned to Nate and handed him the copy of the MARBLE message. He could see Nate’s cheeks color as he read about Dominika. Nate reread the message as if he could squeeze more information out of the spare lines. He looked up at Benford.

“She’s alive.”

“Not only is DIVA alive, but it appears she made it through the wringer,” said Benford. “And now her uncle has had the inexpressible good sense to assign her to MARBLE.” Benford thought again of MARBLE’s succession strategy.

“Do you think she’ll come out with MARBLE to Rome?” asked Nate.

“I suggest you take a cold shower,” drawled Benford. “She may never be totally trusted, or alternatively she may be fully reinstated. Right now we take advantage of the fact that an agent recruited by you—DIVA—and narrowly cleared in a recent CI investigation has been assigned by an unsuspecting Center to seduce you with the goal of eliciting the name of the senior SVR officer you handle—MARBLE—who coincidentally is DIVA’s new boss and who is directing her in the operation to unman you, his case officer.” Benford looked at Nate from between twin towers of newspapers and file folders, the medieval alchemist who’s misplaced the philosopher’s stone.

“You love this shit, don’t you?” said Nate.

“I expect you to deal with ambiguity. If you are not capable of it, you should leave immediately.” Benford glowered at Nate.

“Well, how would you proceed?” said Benford, throwing him the bone.

Nate took a breath and tried to clear his mind of Dominika. “The message tells us that they still have no clue about MARBLE, his identity.”

“And how do you conclude that?” asked Benford.

“Egorov is dangling different variations of stories about SWAN in front of various department heads. It shows he’s desperate.”

“What else?” said Benford.

“If Egorov has been feeding his top managers barium meals, it suggests he expects he will get results, that one of the variants will get back to him.”

“And?” said Benford.

“And that suggests he has someone inside the US government who would be positioned to hear a variant and report back. In the Intelligence Community. SWAN?”

“It could,” said Benford. “What other tidbit in the message could help us do something about finding SWAN?” Nate looked down again, then up at Benford.

“Give me a clue,” Nate said.

“Nasarenko.”

Nate looked at the message again. He looked up suddenly.

“We know the variant told to Nasarenko,” said Nate, “so we spread that variant around, carefully, keeping track of who we flog it to. If Nasarenko’s fortunes suddenly change, we have a place to start, a finite list of people.”

“And Vanya Egorov’s barium meal turns into a barium enema,” said Benford. “In all of this, please do not forget that he’s impatient and desperate. You represent a shortcut for Egorov to solve the one problem that will keep him off the bascule of the guillotine. He’s concentrating on you.” Nate was thinking about Dominika again, and Benford saw it in his face, and groaned theatrically.

“Enough about you, disappointing as that may be,” said Benford. “Clear your mind and tell me what you would do in the immediate matter of SWAN. If MARBLE is correct, the case is being run here in Washington, by the rezident himself.”

“If Golov personally is handling SWAN, that’s a weak point for them,” said Nate. “I think we should consider covering the rezident.”

“Brilliant. But how do we work Golov? What would you do?” asked Benford, nudging Nate forward.

“We starve him for a month. We surveil him pretty close, shut him down. Look, don’t get mad, but we should bring the FEEBs into this. If we’re going to be playing with Golov in downtown Washington, the FBI has to be involved. The FCI guys, foreign counterintelligence, are the best, real spy chasers, and the Gs know what they’re doing on the street. Awesome surveillance team.

“Total coverage, they’ll make so much noise that Golov will call a dozen aborts in a dozen tries. He won’t be able to meet SWAN. The Center will start getting nervous. Golov will start sweating. They’ll be frantic about losing contact with their agent. And we can only guess at the effect it will have on SWAN.”

“All right, so now you’ve made him nervous. He’s still too good to make a mistake on the street,” said Benford, “and he’ll have CS covering him too.”

“That’s okay,” said Nate. “One dark and stormy night we let him go surveillance-free. He’ll see he’s black, his countersurveillance will confirm it, and he makes the decision to make the meeting. And we have the Orions and TrapDoor up and running ahead of him. That’s when we maybe get a glimpse of a nervous SWAN pacing on a street corner, or pick up the license plates of an out-of-place car parked wrong. And we keep trying till we hit.”

Benford nodded approval. The kid had been on the other end, staring into the FSB barrel on the mean streets of Moskva. Benford knew what an agent’s vulnerabilities were, what scared his handler. Nate was coming along, he noted with satisfaction.

Benford owned the Orions, kept them off people’s screens, didn’t loan them out. Who would want them, the geriatric surveillance team of retired field officers? Clunky cars, black socks and sandals, bird-watcher’s binoculars. The size of the team was fluid, grew or shrank depending on personal schedules, grandchildren’s visits, or doctors’ appointments. It was the very nature of the Orions—slow, patient, thoughtful—that made them so effective. It was impossible to goad them with provocative countermaneuvers. They watched, waited, faded in and out. They caressed their targets, they sniffed delicately, they flooded and ebbed like the tide. But they never stopped coming at you.

And they used TrapDoor. Only a certain kind of surveillance team could make TrapDoor work, a different kind of coverage, a philosophy, the difference between a dog chasing a car and a cat watching a bird. They had worked on it for some time. The Orions had perfected it, grease pencil on laminated maps, the overall compass vector telegraphed by a rabbit who is, after all, nothing but human. Never mind the twists and turns, the reverses and funnels, tell me where he’s going, where he’s headed.

They had brought federal surveillance experts in to observe the Orions, wanted to train other teams to get the same results, wanted to put a label on their black magic. Predictive coverage based on profile analysis, they wrote. Situational projections supporting discreet surveillance, they wrote. Anticipatory deployments determined by “route of march” balanced by mitigation of acceptable risk, they wrote.

Pretty much all nonsense, the Orions said. It was about developing a feeling, making a guess, taking a chance. The feds blinked at them. Think of it this way, said the sixty-eight-year-old team member who early in his career had tapped the GRU telephone exchange from the Berlin Tunnel. We’re an amoeba. You know, protoplasm, flexible, soft, stretching out ahead on either side, flowing along the edges. The experts smiled politely. How the hell do you put that in a field manual?

During street demonstrations, the experts looked for the Orions in the usual surveillance-team positions. They had disappeared. This isn’t coverage, the target has been left unobserved, where is the team? But when the rabbit arrived at the site, the Orions were waiting, parked in the neighborhood, in the park, at the crossroads, waiting so quietly that they didn’t see them. Crackpot ideas, alchemy, said the feds, thanks very much. They left the Orions to Benford.

So they began looking at Golov, and the assessment began. Quite a distinguished gentleman, still a proto-commie, smooth and unruffled. Get to know him, said Benford, and mind the CS team covering him. Stay loose, observe, stay invisible.

“All right,” Benford said, “it’s time to put Mr. Golov out of work for a while.” The next morning the FBI Gs were outside the embassy of the Russian Federation on Wisconsin Avenue, slumped in their Crown Vics, wearing Oakleys, with Bring it in their faces and two hundred fifty horses under their hoods.

Closed sessions of the SSCI to discuss “intelligence matters” were held in Room 216 of the Hart Senate Office Building on Constitution Avenue. Designated HS, for “Hart Senate,” in congressional directories, the building was a nine-story black-glass-and-marble tower, not at all like the more elegant neoclassical Dirksen and Russell Senate Office Buildings. Arriving alone, Benford crossed the soaring atrium lobby and took the stairs to the second floor. At Room 216, he entered the outer office, registered with the guard behind the counter, and surrendered his mobile phone. He stepped through the open gray steel vault door into the committee room. He was early for the session and the room was empty except for aides distributing folders at each position on the raised oak dais. Of course the dais was raised, thought Benford. Senators enjoyed looking down at witnesses.

Invisible behind the marble- and wood-paneled walls, ceiling, and floor of the committee room was a hatchwork grid of copper filaments continuously pulsing energy that ensured that, once the latches dogged the vault door tight against the copper finger stock around the frame, no signals could penetrate into or escape out of the room.

In the 1980s, in an attempt to eavesdrop on sensitive SSCI testimony, the Russians had mounted an operation to leave behind recording equipment in the room that could be retrieved later, a simple technique to negate the electronic chastity belt. The audacious plan had been foiled by a janitor who found the device (which had been glued beneath a chair in the audience gallery during an infrequent open session of the committee) and turned it in to the Capitol Police, who promptly passed it to the FBI. Rather than replacing it and feeding the Soviets disinformation for years, thought Benford, looking around the august chamber, the FBI had exulted in a “foreign find”—a listening device planted by the opposition—and ground the recorder to pieces under its heel, an opportunity squandered.

Benford was the only person seated at the witness table. An aide placed a small card with his name in front of him. At the members’ insistence, Benford held a counterintelligence briefing every three months for the SSCI, a session that only the fifteen members of the committee were permitted to attend. Senators long accustomed to staff aides hovering nearby grudgingly complied with the requirement that no staffers be permitted in the room, which meant that few if any notes would be taken.

Members rarely missed Benford’s quarterly CI brief, generally reckoned to be the most concise and informative presentation available from anywhere inside the Intelligence Community. But for a single member of the committee, the SSCI treated him with respect. Only Senator Stephanie Boucher from California seemed to harbor intense dislike for IC witnesses, specifically those from the CIA. As the members trickled into the room and sat down, Boucher looked down at Benford with a scowl. Benford ignored her and made a note in the margin of his briefing outline. The committee members were seated, the staff aides filed out, the vault door was swung shut. As it closed, a small green light came on over the door. The chairman simply said, “Mr. Benford,” to indicate that he should begin.

Benford quickly highlighted developments in a Chinese cyber case on the West Coast, but referred members to COD, the Computer Ops Division in the CIA, nicknamed the “codpieces,” for a more detailed briefing on the nature of the threat. Benford moved to a sensitive case wherein the CIA and FBI had detected officers of the DGSE, the French External Intelligence Service, servicing a dead-drop site in upstate New York. A joint briefing with the FBI’s French Regional Ops Group, nicknamed “FROG,” on French activities inside the continental United States was being prepared. Benford turned the page of his briefing book.

“Senators, the CIA, along with the US Navy and the relevant contractor, has finished the preliminary damage assessment from the Russian illegal in New London, Connecticut.” Benford looked down at his notes. “While the Pentagon is still preparing a report on the long-term ramifications of the penetration of the navy program, initial conclusions are that the Russians did not acquire sufficient technical intelligence to materially degrade the operational viability of the platform—”

“Excuse me, Mr. Benford,” said Senator Boucher. Her fellow senators recognized the attack display and braced themselves. “Why do you use platform when you can just as clearly say submarine when talking about them?”

“Submarine, then, thank you, Senator,” said Benford. He waited for the codicil. Boucher expostulated briefly on the outmoded capabilities of US subs as compared with the Dolgorukiy class of ballistic submarines just now making their appearance in the Russian Navy. She is well-read, thought Benford. The senator swerved again.

“But wouldn’t you say that the real counterintelligence issue, the real teachable moment coming out of New London, is that neither American intelligence nor law enforcement had the wit to detect, locate, and apprehend a Russian illegal officer operating in the United States for nearly half a decade? This illegal moreover had infiltrated the program with apparent ease, despite background and security checks.” Boucher tapped a pencil on the blotter in front of her.

“Since the end of the Cold War, Senator, the classic use of illegals is extremely rare. Even the Russians acknowledge that it is a costly and inefficient way to collect intelligence,” said Benford. He would under no circumstances mention how they had gotten onto the illegal in the first place.

“That’s not at all what I asked, Mr. Benford. Pay attention. I asked which agency, in your opinion, is the more incompetent: the CIA or the FBI?”

“I have no opinion on the matter, Senator,” said Benford. “In the aftermath of the New London affair we, unfortunately, have bigger fish to fry.”

“What kind of fish?” asked Boucher.

“We have indications that the Russians are running a separate reporting source. Someone with good access. We are just starting; there’s nothing confirmed,” said Benford.

“Stop this tap dance,” snapped Boucher. “What are you talking about?”

Benford took an audible deep breath. He closed his briefing book and folded his hands on top of the cover. He looked at the Senate seal on the wall above the members’ heads. “We have fragmentary information that there is a high-level penetration of the US government with exceptional access to national security secrets currently being handled by the SVR.”

“How close are you to identifying this leak?” asked the senator from Florida.

“We do not know who, what, or where,” said Benford. “We’re checking every possibility.”

“Sounds like you don’t have the slightest idea,” said Boucher.

“Senator, these investigations take time,” offered the senator from New York.

Boucher laughed. “Yeah, I know all about these investigations. Hundreds of people keeping busy and drawing salaries, but no one seems to catch anyone.”

Benford let the members talk among themselves for a minute before raising his voice again. “As we try to develop more information, we do have an unsubstantiated report that the individual in question might suffer from an incapacitating condition—shingles. It may be useful later, as we narrow our search and begin cross-checking.”

“This is all inconclusive,” said Boucher, turning toward the dais. “If my committee colleagues have no objection, I must excuse myself for another important meeting of a separate committee.” She turned to Benford. “I’m done for today.” Boucher rose from her seat, gathered her classified folder, and walked to the door. The other senators rustled papers and fell silent as Boucher opened the massive door and left the room.

Benford did not raise his head. It was done. Fifteen of them had heard “shingles.” Two days earlier three undersecretaries of defense in a Pentagon briefing had heard the same thing, and in three days so would the special assistant to the president and senior director for Defense during a brief to selected NSC staff.

As he snapped his briefcase shut in the empty SSCI committee room, Benford pictured the jowly faces in the Kremlin and thought, You want a canary, comrades, I’ll give you a canary.

General Korchnoi had been summoned to the Director’s secure conference room on the fourth floor of Yasenevo by Vanya Egorov’s aide. Dimitri had called him the instant he stepped into his office, even before Korchnoi had hung his coat in the closet and sat down to review morning traffic. It sounded urgent. The general looked wistfully at the covered plate of sirniki, hot cheese pancakes with sour cream that his secretary had left for him and that he had planned to munch as he read. They would grow cold and rubbery before he could get back. As he left his office, he rolled up one of the pancakes and stuffed it into his mouth.

Since he had discovered that Vanya was playing games, setting canary traps, dredging for the CIA mole within the SVR, Korchnoi’s double life hardened from a now-familiar baseline of danger into one of imminent, guilty dread. For fourteen years he had lived under constant pressure; he had learned to accommodate it, but there was a difference between spying undetected and being hunted.

As he pushed through the front doors of Headquarters each morning, he was never sure whether he would be greeted by stone-faced security officers who would hustle him from the lobby into a side room. Every time the phone rang on his desk, he could never know it was not a summons to a windowless room filled with unsmiling faces. Every weekend outing was a potential ambush arrest on a wooded country road or in a lonely dacha.

Korchnoi got off the elevator and walked past the portraits. Hello, old walruses, he thought. Have you caught me yet? He entered the executive conference room to see Vanya Egorov sitting on the corner of the table laughing at something Line KR Chief Alexei Zyuganov was saying. This is the little domovoi, the little goblin, who stuffed rags into prisoners’ mouths before shooting them in the forehead because their cries for mercy bothered him, thought Korchnoi. Zyuganov watched as the general walked across the room toward them.

Egorov’s big marble head glistened, and his shirt was fresh and starched. He hugged his old friend and waved him to a seat. “I wanted to meet here, Volodya, because they can set up the projector. Since you’re now directing the operation, I wanted to show you some extra material.” He picked up a remote control and pushed a button. Projected on the wall was a grainy photograph of Nathaniel Nash, hands in the pockets of a coat, hunched against the cold, walking along what looked like a Moscow street. “You wouldn’t know this man, Volodya, but he is the CIA officer Nash, who is handling the traitor. He was posted to Moscow for less than two years and left approximately eighteen months ago.”

Korchnoi wondered first whether the surveillance photo of Nate had been taken while he was on the way back from one of their meetings. Then he wondered whether this was all sarcastic drama to bait him. Would the conference-room doors burst open to admit rushing security men? Was Egorov this devious, would he be inclined to torment him this way? No, Korchnoi thought, it’s nothing. This is your life, breathe it in, circle the abyss, stay cool.

“This Nash was very skillful. But for one bungled near miss, we never were able to determine even a mote of his activities.” Egorov paused to light a cigarette. He offered the pack around the table. Korchnoi filed away the words that seemed to confirm he was still safe. Unless this was all Egorov’s elaborate red herring.

“I personally believe that the traitor is in the Service,” said Egorov, while Zyuganov looked evenly at the image of Nash on the screen. Were they playing with him? Korchnoi thought. Zyuganov easily could be this diabolical.

“It is an assumption you’re making about the Service,” prattled Zyuganov. “One thing is sure. The Americans would not run the extraordinary risk of meetings in Moscow to handle a low-level source.”

Say something, be casual. “If you’re both right, brothers,” said Korchnoi, “and he’s a big fish and he’s in the Service, then the short list of candidates would be the Director, you, Vanya, and the twelve department heads, including Lyosha and me.” Korchnoi saw their sour looks. What was he doing? This was exhilarating madness.

“That, of course, is not considering that it could additionally be your special assistant, or a secretary, or a communications-code clerk, or a hundred other employees with indirect access to cable reading boards, their bosses’ in-boxes, and to unguarded conversations in anterooms and the cafeteria. Clerks in Records see more sensitive paper in a day than the three of us combined see in a week.” Korchnoi could tell from Zyuganov’s expression that he had already calculated all that. All the more people to interrogate.

Korchnoi decided to stop there. Too much analysis, too many pat phrases. Egorov ground out his cigarette. “You are exactly correct, Volodya. There are too many possibilities. We’ll catch this svoloch only if we get a creditable internal lead, or if we catch him or his handler on the street. These two options could take months, even years. That’s why our third option is the only one.”

“Ogovoreno, agreed; your niece is our best chance,” said Korchnoi. This scene was unthinkable, improbable, impossible. He suppressed insane, cackling laughter. He was discussing finding the spy, flushing him out, exposing him, catching him.

Zyuganov swiveled in his chair, his feet not touching the carpet. “And if your niece does not succeed in a reasonable amount of time? Perhaps we then consider other means.”

Egorov turned to him quickly. “Absolutely not. I have received instructions from the highest levels. No ‘active measures’ in this operation. Is that clear?” Zyuganov swiveled a little more, a faint smile on his face.

“You’re right,” said Korchnoi. “In the history of our Service, in the history of postwar intelligence operations, no service has ever intentionally harmed an officer of an opposing service. It is not done. It would create havoc.” Zyuganov swiveled.

“Volodya, relax. If we wanted to try the rough stuff, I’d be talking to Line F, not you,” said Egorov, laughing. Korchnoi saw Zyuganov’s right eyelid twitch. “No, what I want is an elegant operation, nuanced, brilliant, that will produce quick results and will leave the Main Enemy wondering what hit them, wondering how they lost their sensitive asset and marveling at the SVR’s skill and cunning.”

MARBLE’S SIRNIKI PANCAKES

Thoroughly blend soft goat cheese, eggs, sugar, salt, and flour into a sticky dough. Refrigerate. Drop small balls of the dough into flour, coat well, and flatten into thin discs. Fry in melted butter over medium heat until golden. Serve with sour cream, caviar, smoked fish, or jam.