Red Sparrow 02 - Palace of Treason

by Jason Matthews

  “Spasibo, thank you, Mr. President,” said Dominika. “I only did my duty.” Not too much sugar, she thought; just a teaspoon. “I regret that the izmennik, the traitor, found refuge in the West, that he did not pay for his betrayal.”

  Putin’s blue halo flared. “No, he was destroyed,” he said bluntly, without inflection. Through the shock Dominika thought, Nate is safe. Then, They killed the general. Silence in the sun-drenched room. “Now you know a secret,” Putin said, one corner of his mouth curling a fraction. This Putin smile surfaced from the mineshaft of his soul, a mortal threat all the same, and the bitter revelation bound her to this new tsar, this imperator, her neck in the noose and the bit in her mouth. But he had just confirmed it: They had killed Korchnoi on the bridge, meters from freedom. The old general had dreamed of retirement, of a life without risk, devoid of fear.

  Dominika breathed through her nose and looked at Putin’s impassive face. Out of some obscure memory, Dominika recalled that Khrushchev’s favorite Cold War threat had been the earthy, peasant curse Pokazat kuz’kinu mat’—I’ll show you Kuzka’s mother—which meant I’ll annihilate you. Well, call Kuzka’s mother, Mr. President, thought Dominika, because I’m going to punish you. Over the taste of copper in her mouth, the edgy secret that soared above it all, the ice-cold diamond in her breast, was that she was CIA’s new penetration of her service. Not even this blue-eyed python knew that.

  “You can depend on my discretion, Mr. President,” said Dominika, returning his unblinking stare. He cultivated the image of a clairvoyant, the inescapable reader of men’s minds and hearts. Could he see into her soul?

  “I look forward to excellent and speedy results in the matter of the Iranian scientist,” said Putin. “The Paris operation was satisfactory, the debriefing next week will be critical. I want regular progress reports from you.” Obviously he already had been briefed. Zyuganov. You swivel-eyed dwarf, Dominika thought. Did you also tell Putin how I got this black eye? Putin’s stare never left her face. “Of course, you will work under the guidance of the director and Colonel Zyuganov,” he said. His meaning was clear: He was ordering Dominika to work within the hierarchy of the Service, but also expected her to report directly to him, a vintage Soviet tactic to drive wedges between and place informers among ambitious subordinates. The cerulean cloud above his head blazed in the sunlit room.

  CIA’s beautiful mole inside the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service nodded, counting the pulses pounding in her breast. “Of course, Mr. President,” she said. “I will keep you informed of everything I do.”

  KREMLIN MUSHROOM APPETIZER

  Aggressively sauté thinly sliced mushrooms in oil until brown around the edges. Add greens (spinach, chard, or kale) and capers, and cook until wilted. Season, then stir in mustard and vinegar and let thicken, spooning sauce over mushrooms and greens. Serve lukewarm or cold.

  3

  The endless buzz of Athens traffic on Vasilissis Sofias Boulevard was audible through the grimy windows of the CIA Station, windows that had been shuttered and curtained since the bureaucrats cut the ribbon on the chancery in 1961. Athens Station, a warren of interconnecting offices, hallways, and closets, had not been repainted since then: An Electrolux canister vacuum from the 1960s lay forgotten in the back of a coat closet beside a 1970 Martin flattop guitar with no strings that generations of officers assumed had a concealment cavity for bringing documents across borders, but no one could remember how to open it.

  Deputy Chief of Station Marty Gable walked into CIA case officer Nate Nash’s small office. Nate had half a tiropita, a triangular cheese pie, on his desk that he had bought on the street for breakfast, and he brushed the flaky crust off his pants as he stood up. Gable reached over him and took the last half of the pie, popped it into his mouth, and chewed, while looking around Nate’s new office. Gable swallowed, picked up a framed snapshot of Nate’s family, and held it to the light. “This your folks?” Nate nodded. Gable put the photo down. “Handsome looking bunch. You’re adopted then, or what, forceps delivery?”

  “It’s great being in your Station again, Marty,” said Nate. He respected the stocky Gable, maybe was even fond of him, but he wasn’t about to say that out loud. Nate had started his third tour two months ago in the bustling anthill that was Athens Station, happily again under the sponsorship of urbane Chief of Station Tom Forsyth and his cynical, profane deputy.

  The three of them had been an effective team, having run several world-class operations over the last years. In Moscow during his first tour, Nate had handled MARBLE, CIA’s best clandestine agent in Russia, until the general was shot during the spy swap they had arranged to rescue him. During his second tour in Helsinki, Nate had recruited young SVR officer Dominika Egorova—code-named DIVA—and together with Forsyth and Gable had engineered her return to Moscow as CIA’s next generation mole in the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service.

  The loss of MARBLE to the Kremlin’s treachery had affected them all, but Nate most of all had changed since that evening when he cradled MARBLE’s head in his lap, watching his agent’s blood ooze over asphalt wet with the Estonian fog, shimmering in the reflected light of the spotlights. He normally was nervous and earnest and ambitious. But Nate now had become darker, focused, less concerned about managing his career, about detractors and competitors.

  “Fuck ‘It’s great being in your Station again, Marty,’ ” said Gable. “We got a walk-in downstairs; Marine Guard just called. Let’s move.”

  As he bounded down the stairs beside Gable, Nate’s brain geared up. A walk-in, an unknown person off the street. Go. The clock started the minute the walk-in arrived. The marines in the embassy foyer would have checked him for weapons, taken any packages from him, and buttoned him up in the walk-in room, a windowless, tech-filled interview suite with video, audio, and digital transmission equipment.

  Go. A walk-in, could be anything: A madman with aluminum foil inside his hat to ward off alien radio beams, an undocumented exile pleading for a US visa, an information peddler who that morning had memorized a newspaper article and hoped to serve it up as secrets worth a few hundred dollars.

  Go. Alternatively, a walk-in could be a bona fide volunteer—foreign intel officer, diplomat, scientist—with colossal intelligence that he was willing to pass to the Americans for money, or because of a crisis of ideology, or to exact revenge against a tyrant of a boss, or to spite a system in which he no longer believed.

  Go. A good volunteer is a free recruitment, access established, intel ready to harvest. Volunteers over the years were the best cases, the ones they carved in stone.

  Go, go, go. Find out who he is, do a lightning assessment, flip him, arrange recontact, and get him out of the embassy as soon as possible. If he’s Russian, North Korean, or Chinese, he’s on a clock, his embassy counterintelligence watchdogs will note how long he’s unaccounted for. Thirty minutes tops.

  On the embassy ground floor, Gable nodded to the marine standing outside the door and they pushed their way inside the room. The fish sauce smell of vomit hit them in the face. Sitting in a plastic chair at the small desk was an old bum, his rumpled suit coat wet down the front with puke, trousers spotted and dusty. He probably was in his sixties, with gray stubble on his cheeks, eyes red and rheumy. He looked up as the two CIA officers came into the room.

  “Christ,” said Gable. “Like we have time for this crap. Get him out of here.” Gable gestured toward the door, signaling for Nate to call the marine. They’d walk the old drunk to the basement garage and ease him out via the loading dock. Stop the clock. False alarm.

  Nate quickly assessed the man. He didn’t look like an old Greek coot: hands strong and nails trimmed. Shoes muddy but expensive. Disheveled hair cut short at the ears. He sat straighter when they entered the room, not like a drunk. A little wind chime tinkled in his brain. “Marty, wait a minute,” said Nate. He sat in the chair beside the old man, tried to breathe through his mouth to avoid the cat urine smell of him.

&nbs
p; “Sir,” said Nate, trying English, “what can we do for you?” He heard Gable shift his feet impatiently. The old man looked up into Nate’s face.

  “Not good English,” said the old man, but his bass voice was strong. More wind chimes. “I give informations,” he said softly, as if the words caused him pain.

  “We already got the recipe for muscatel,” said Gable, crossing his arms.

  “Not understand,” said the old man.

  “Sir, who are you?” said Nate. The old man blinked and his eyes filled with tears. Gable whispered, “Oh for Chrissake.” When the old guy wiped his eye, Nate saw his wristwatch: steel link band, heavy case, “pobeda” (victory in Russian) written on the dark face. Soviet army watch? He remembered Russian Afghanistan vets wore them.

  Nate held up his hand. “Give him a minute,” he said.

  “My son dead, Ossetia, bomb.” Nate recognized the cadence and accent—a Russian?

  “My daughter dead, gerojin.” Russian for “heroin,” thought Nate.

  “My work closed. I come to Greece, izgnanie.” Russian word for “exiled.” What the fuck? Gable had shut up by now, and Nate leaned forward, forgetting the stench.

  “Sir, who are you?” he asked again.

  “Govorite po-russki?” the old man said, do you speak Russian? Nate nodded, and looked over his shoulder at Gable.

  “Do you know Glavnoye Razvedyvatel’noye Upravleniye, the GRU?” said the old man in Russian. He had straightened in his seat, his eyes darting between Nate and Gable.

  “What?” said Gable. “What?”

  “I am from the GRU Generalnyi Shtab, the GRU of the General Staff.”

  “What office?” asked Nate, holding up his hand to fend off Gable for a second.

  “Ninth Directorate of the Information Service, under Lieutenant General S. Berkutov.” He raised his chin and his voice boomed.

  “Holy fuck, Ninth Directorate, GRU,” said Nate out of the side of his mouth.

  Gable leaned over. “Identification, documents,” he said.

  The old man understood the word dokumenty, and pulled out a faded red booklet. “Voyennyi bilet,” he said to Nate.

  “Military ID card,” said Nate, looking at the bio page. The sepia-tone picture was attached to the page by a grommet. “Lieutenant General Mikhail Nikolaevich Solovyov,” Nate read, emphasizing the rank. “Born 1953, Nizhny Novgorod.” He flipped to the second page. “Here it is, Directorate Nine, GRU.” He handed Gable the booklet. Gable went to a small cabinet in the corner of the room, unlocked the doors, and fired up the digital equipment. The old man’s ID booklet would be copied, the images encrypted and transmitted to Langley in the next fifteen seconds. Gable also texted the Station upstairs to start traces—they would be listening in real time to the audio of this interview.

  “What did you mean when you said ‘exile’?” said Nate in Russian. The old man’s eyes flashed.

  “I directed the Ninth for three years,” he said. His words came out rapid fire now. “Do you know the work of the Ninth?” He closed his eyes as he recited. “Analysis of foreign military capabilities. Clandestine acquisition of technology to counter adversary weapons systems. Coordination with our domestic armaments industry.” Nate translated for Gable.

  “Yeah, what’s he doing in Greece?” said Gable. The old man nodded, guessing what the question was.

  “There is a struggle inside GRU now. Putin”—he spat the name—“is placing his people everywhere. There are many contracts to exploit, many rubles to siphon off. I opposed changes in my Directorate, exposed corruption.” His voice dripped with contempt. “I was reassigned to the Russian Embassy in Athens. In the military attaché office, subordinate to a colonel. They may as well have sent me to the camps.”

  “And you came to us,” said Nate, knowing the answer.

  “I have given thirty years to the service, to the country. My wife is dead. My son was in the army; he was killed six months ago, a needless civil war. My daughter died alone in an abandoned Moscow tenement with a needle in her arm. She was eighteen.” He was sitting up straight now, as if giving a military briefing. Nate was still, letting him talk, for the next step was the critical one.

  “Last night I drank vodka and walked in the street. I am a lieutenant general. I wear the Zolotaya Zvezda, the Golden Star. Do you know what that is?”

  “Hero of the Russian Federation, replaced the Soviet star,” said Nate.

  The old man’s eyes narrowed, surprised that Nate knew. “And za Voyennye Zaslugi, the medal of Military Merit, and Orden Svyatogo Georgiya Pervol Stepeni, the Order of St. George, First Class.” He looked back and forth between Gable and Nate, wanting them to be impressed.

  “I have a lifetime of information,” he said, tapping his forehead. “I am still in contact with many loyal officers working in secret projects in Moscow and elsewhere. My duties allow me to make inquiries, to request data. I will educate you about GRU, the technology-acquisition operations, about Russian weapons systems.” Nate translated.

  “Get him to tell you why,” said Gable softly. Despite not understanding Russian, he was reading the old man as well as Nate now; he knew how close they were.

  “Why? Because they have taken everything from me: my children, my career, my life. They ignored my worth and discounted my loyalty. Now I will take something from them.” Steel in that voice now, determination. Silence in the room, the CIA officers letting him roll.

  “I know you are wondering, it is the question with every dobrovolets, every volunteer. What do I want in return? My answer to you is this: Nothing. You are professionals, you will understand.” More an order than a request. Nate glanced at Gable—revenge and ego; control the former and feed the latter. Time check: twenty minutes. Set the recontact, someplace secure, someplace they can watch for ticks. Get him out the door.

  “I will meet you”—he pointed at Nate—“in two days’ time. You will want dobrosovestnost, bona fides. I will pass the performance data of the Sukhoi PAK FA, the T-50, including the new wing-leading-edge devices—you in the West have nothing like it.”

  And on a rainy night two nights later, on a muddy path in Filothei Park, CIA’s new penetration of GRU, freshly encrypted LYRIC, did exactly that.

  In the years since Nate had joined CIA, he had acquired an appreciation of the villainy of the Russian Federation, and of the dissolute external intelligence service, the SVR, twisted progeny of the old KGB. What fueled this Kremlin kleptocracy, what motivated it, was not to bring back the Soviet Union, nor to reinstill the worldwide dread generated by the Red Army, nor to formulate a foreign policy based on national security requirements. In Russia today, everything happened to maintain the nadzirateli, the overseers, to protect their power, to continue looting the country’s patrimony. Nate wanted to devastate the opposition, to avenge MARBLE, to take away their power.

  Nate was dark—black hair and straight eyebrows—of medium height, and slim from varsity swimming in college. What colleagues and friends noticed however, were darting brown eyes that read faces, weighed gestures, and narrowed with quick comprehension. On the street, those brown eyes scanned ahead, watched the wings, picked up the peripheral anomalies before there was movement. During surveillance exercises as a CIA trainee, instructors noted, first with skepticism, then with approval, that Nate was always switched on. He seemed to sense the pulse of the street—whether it was a Washington, DC, boulevard or a teeming European avenue—and he blended into a crowd, something that taller, or gangly, or redheaded trainees could not do.

  His early fear of failing at his job, despite the signal successes in his young career, simmered alongside his determination not to return to the bosom of his family—father, brothers, grandfather—in Richmond, Virginia. Lawyers who were clannish, boorish, patriarchal, violently competitive, and invidious, they had not individually encouraged Nathaniel in his application to CIA, and had collectively predicted he would be back to the family law practice in a few years. There would be no pill more b
itter than to separate from CIA and return home.

  But as the steel was honed, as Nate accumulated experience and concentrated on operations, there was the remaining ache, the one that wouldn’t fade. It had been more than nine months since DIVA went back inside; she had not agreed to resume operations with them, furious at being manipulated into the spy swap. Nate had agonized every day, every week, waiting for her sign-of-life signal. CIA Headquarters waited patiently for her to change her mind, waited for the alert on the worldwide SENTRY phone system she would make when outside Russia. Her call would instantly dispatch handlers to meet her in whatever city she designated. But the call had not come—they hadn’t heard from her, didn’t know whether she was working, or in prison, or alive or dead.

  Soon after DIVA’s recruitment, Nate had committed the unthinkable operational transgression by sleeping with her. Risking everything. Risking her, his agent’s life. Risking a career that kept him whole and independent, risking the work that defined him. But her blue eyes and edgy temper and wry smile had blinded him. Her ballerina’s body was matchless and responsive. Her passion for her country and her rage at those who coveted power had him in awe of her. And he could still hear the way she said his name—Neyt.

  Their lovemaking had been drastic, clutching, urgent, guilty. They were professional intelligence officers and both knew how badly they were behaving. Typically, Dominika didn’t care. As a woman, she desired him outside the limits of the agent–case officer relationship. Nate could not—would not—commit to such an arrangement, for he worried about his standing, about operational security, about tradecraft. The irony of the situation was not lost on either of them: The hidebound Russian was more willing to break the rules to feed their passion than was the informal, loose-limbed American. But until she reappeared, until he knew she was still alive, Nate had a new Russian to handle.