Red Sparrow 02 - Palace of Treason

by Jason Matthews

  Gable shrugged. “A long time ago, sort of where you are now. Only I didn’t have a fucking sensitive mentor like you got. Now all you need is to listen to my goddamn wisdom, grow some brains, and act like a top pro.”

  “What happens to two scorpions in a brandy glass?” said Nate.

  Gable flipped the soggy cigar butt into the fire, and drained his drink. “They can’t get traction so they get face-to-face, lock pincers, and sting each other over and over. They’re immune to their own venom. It’s a fucking metaphor for marriage.”

  RUNZA

  Sauté chopped onions and pureed garlic until soft. Season, add fresh dill and fennel (or caraway) seed. Add ground beef and brown, then mix in shredded cabbage, cover, and cook until the cabbage is wilted. The mixture should be fairly dry. Roll out bread dough into five-inch squares, cover centers with filling, fold corners over, and seal the edges. Bake in a medium oven until golden brown.

  13

  Director of the National Clandestine Service Dick Spofford sat at his desk on the seventh floor in CIA Headquarters. Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out onto the tops of the lush trees lining the George Washington Memorial Parkway and the Potomac River beyond. His office was modest—all the seniors’ offices on the top floor were surprisingly small—with a couch and two chairs along one wall, a built-in bookshelf running behind the unprepossessing desk, and a small circular conference table in an opposite corner.

  The third most senior officer in CIA, the DNCS—pronounced “dinkus”—directed the Clandestine Service and all foreign operations. His office was decorated with relatively inexpensive prints, mostly travel posters of the golden age of steamship travel, the Italian Lake District, and lighter-than-air dirigible service between New York and Berlin in 1936. An incongruous note was struck, however, by Spofford’s displayed collection of small, plush animal figures—penguins, monkeys, starfish, buffaloes, leopards, puppies, a cross-eyed octopus—on the bookshelf behind him. Spofford was unaware of the furtive, incredulous glances as CIA’s Five Eyes liaison partners—the Aussies, Brits, Canadians, and Kiwis—first noticed the cuddly menagerie.

  Spofford leaned back in his ergonomic executive office chair—an Aeron, the model designated for Senior Intelligence Service rank of SIS-Four and above—and closed his eyes. His special assistant, Imogen, was tucked inside the kneehole of his desk, kneeling between his legs and moving her hand in a motion that recalled setting a handbrake. Spofford checked his watch: Leadership Committee in fifteen minutes. As it turned out, he didn’t have that much time.

  During a particularly energetic tug, Imogen’s shoulder hit the underside of Spofford’s desk—or, more precisely, the emergency alarm button under the desk drawer, which sounded a silent alarm in the nearby control room of the Office of Security, and which resulted in the immediate appearance in the DNCS’s office of three Security Protective Officers and a two-person Emergency Medical Services team. The SPOs holstered their weapons as Imogen emerged from beneath the desk with cramping hands over her head. The woman on the EMS team privately noted that Mr. Spofford’s handbrake might now benefit from a touch of the defibrillation paddles in her emergency kit. The cross-eyed octopus grinned from the bookshelf.

  The precipitate retirement of Dick Spofford (“our work is not done; I will be with you all in spirit”) set into motion a silent race for the DNCS position among senior officers who could reasonably be considered in line for the job: The three associate deputy directors (for Operations, Military Affairs, and Congressional Affairs) were leading contenders. ADD/O Borden Hood had his own public relations problems, recently having impregnated a young GS-11 reports officer during a foreign Stations inspection tour. The director passed on Hood.

  The ADD/Mil, Sebastian Claude Angevine (French, pronounced On-je-VEEN, but widely known to subordinates as “Angina”), was tall and slim, with an enormous head topped by wavy hair, and a Roman nose down which he was accustomed to look. He had come up into the Clandestine Service through the security track—he started as a polygrapher, a career detail Seb Angevine took great pains to conceal. His frequent claim to have graduated from the Naval Academy was suspect. He ran Military Affairs badly—the Pentagon barely tolerated him. Imperious, self-absorbed, unaware, vindictive, and unloved, he expected the promotion to DNCS as head of Operations: It was his due.

  The director hurried into the DCI’s conference room, a folder in his hands. His executive assistant slipped in behind him, closed the outer door, and took a seat against the wall. The director looked around the table at his executive team: his deputy, the executive director, the line deputy directors—known as the DDs and including Ops, Intel, Science, Admin—and the other program DDs from Congressional Affairs, Military, and Public Affairs.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he said as he opened the folder. Angevine sat close to the head of the table, making sure the gold cuff links with embossed CIA logo—a gift from the director last year—were visible outside the sleeves of his suit.

  “With Dick Spofford retiring,” the director said, “we’ve had to move quickly to determine who will take his place. The ops chair is not one we can leave empty … not even for a little while.” He flipped a sheet of paper in the folder, as if consulting notes. Here it comes, thought Angevine: When the director finished announcing that he, Angevine, would be the new DNCS, he would say only how much he appreciated the opportunity, how he acknowledged the trust bestowed on him, how greatly he looked forward to working with everyone around the table to accomplish the important mission that lay ahead. Or something like that.

  He looked across the table at Gloria Bevacqua, ADD for Congressional Affairs, and smirked inwardly. What a hot mess: Asian slaw-stained pantsuit in primary colors with a knockoff Hermès scarf worn as a shawl. Feet bulging out of chunky-heeled Mary Janes. Legs by Steinway. Baked goods were always on a sideboard in the outer office of CA. DNCS, yeah right.

  Talk in the seventh-floor executive dining room was that she was already bragging that she was going to be named DNCS, but rumors traded in the EDR were unreliable. This plus-sized fireplug had no significant experience in CIA, much less in operations: She had been brought over to Langley a year ago from Capitol Hill by the director. The thought of her heading the National Clandestine Service was laughable.

  “The job of running the NCS has evolved,” said the director. He means he needs me, an experienced administrator, thought Angevine. “The DNCS needs to bring in the entire Intelligence Community: Defense, NSA, NGA.” He’s referring to my DoD account, thought Angevine. “And managing Congress, the oversight committees, is arguably one of the most important components of the job,” the director said. What’s he talking about? “So while everyone around this table is eminently qualified and was seriously considered, I’m pleased to announce that Gloria will be taking over Operations. I’m confident Borden will support her in every way, as I’m sure you all will.” Bevacqua looked around the table and nodded at everyone. She spoke briefly, saying how much she looked forward— It was too fucking much, thought Angevine.

  Angevine sat still in his seat, a mild expression on his face, eyes glued to that motherfucking backstabbing cocksucker director. He didn’t know that he had been passed over because the director—himself a hybrid, the former chief of staff for a senator—thought Angevine’s “douchebagnitude” was too high, even for the DNCS position.

  The DNCS job was mine, thought Angevine. I was perfect for it. He was constitutionally unable to contemplate that the director did not think Angevine was perfect for the job. For the next half hour, Angevine didn’t see anything, didn’t hear anything: His mouth tasted like zinc. The meeting broke up and Angevine was caught at the door with Gloria Bevacqua. He stopped to let her go first—they both couldn’t have squeezed through together in any case.

  “Congratulations,” muttered Angevine. Gloria wore a hair clip on one side. Her hair was watery blond with competing peat moss–colored roots.

  “Thanks, Seb,” said Gloria with a sideways smi
rk. In a flash, Angevine knew that this had been cooked from the start—they’d known for weeks. More treachery.

  “I’ll want to reach out to Defense HUMINT in the coming months,” said Gloria. Why don’t you bring them one of your twelve-inch pies? thought Angevine.

  “Yes, of course,” said Angevine. Gloria knew that meant “Fuck you,” but from her years on Capitol Hill she was used to dealing with recalcitrant pretty boys.

  “Look, I know you wanted the job, but James wanted to go in a different direction,” she said. So the director is James now, thought Angevine. He had a direction in mind for them all.

  “How nice for you and James,” said Angevine. He felt a rage welling up inside him and looked down at Gloria with contempt. She saw it and decided to rock this mincing beanpole in his place.

  “Look, Seb,” she said with a mocking smile, “don’t take getting passed over too hard. Chicks still dig you.” Angevine froze, actually froze at this towering insult from this … this sweaty sagouine, this slob. She walked away from him down the corridor.

  Angevine sat at his desk looking blankly around his office, which was hung with pictures and commendations and awards—he had a decent vanity wall going. But now the framed exhibits mocked him. He turned his hate for Bevacqua over slowly in his mind. The other pèdès, those perverts on the seventh floor, were nothing. The director had betrayed him, but almost certainly with Bevacqua’s encouragement. And now she was going to run the Clandestine Service? She was going to direct espionage operations and manage covert actions?

  Over the next week, Angevine’s rage bubbled and developed an edge like cheap Chianti in a plastic carboy. He wanted to damage them, to drag his hand across the icing of the pristine wedding cake, to tread through just-smoothed cement. He felt he owed the Agency no loyalty now—as if he had ever felt loyalty—and his petty spirit and mean motives set him to contemplate doing something monumental, really staggering. There would have to be a big payday too—very big.

  Seb Angevine’s late mother, Christine, had been an employee of the US Department of State, a career diplomat who specialized in the “consular cone,” an expert in US consular law regulating, among other things, the issuance of visas to foreign citizens to visit or work in or immigrate to the United States. In the nature of most career officers in Consular Affairs, Christine was earnest and awkward, knew the Talmudic Foreign Affairs Manual (FAM) as if she had drafted it herself. She was short and slight, with bird-bone wrists and thin brown hair demurely done up in a bun. Christine was working on permanent spinsterhood: She essentially had given up on men.

  Christine was in her late forties when she was posted to the US Embassy in Paris as consul general. The Consular Section had a large staff that Christine directed with her trademark introspective competence. Her young subordinates acknowledged her expertise and felt a little sorry for her, but did not particularly like her.

  The allure of France was not lost on Christine, but she was at a loss as to how to find romance. Her two-year assignment was almost over; a return to Washington was imminent. It was a rainy fall afternoon, during a Consular Corps luncheon—dreary monthly events convened in elegant restaurants and attended by self-indulgent, foreign consuls general—when she met Claude Angevine. He was busy seating the arriving diplomats, unfolding napkins, and handing out menus when their eyes met. Claude bowed from the waist and smiled—a coal hopper of Gallic charm. Christine nodded at him and thought the moment very Emily Brontë. Claude’s thoughts ran more along the lines of a K-3 visa (for a foreign spouse of an American citizen).

  Claude was single, nearly fifty, tall, and dramatic, an ectomorph with a large head, long fingers, and a plowshare nose. He ran his fingers through impossibly wavy hair while speaking his sexy accented English. An intense courtship ensued—there were some initial awkward moments for Christine involving, well, the bedroom and sex, but he was charming, attentive, and told her he loved her. After three months Christine and Claude became engaged. Shortly thereafter they were married, transferred to the United States, and Christine got pregnant.

  Their son, Sebastian, grew tall, looking very much like his father and, as a result of the latter’s nose-in-the-air example, acting more and more like him. In both father and son, Francophile self-regard mixed with sedulous bad manners, a preoccupation with money, and the unshakable expectation that they were owed things in life. Father spoke to son in French, the better to sneer at others. The delicate Christine had never been able to cope with the lofty disdain of her husband, and suffered Sebastian’s evolving adolescent disrespect in silence; father had taught son well. Then Claude abandoned the family and returned to France, now an expat US citizen—Sebastian was twenty—and Christine retired from State and wilted smaller and smaller, until she died.

  Without support or a place to live, Sebastian graduated from college and joined the US Navy, went shakily through training, and evaded sea duty by applying to and joining the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. He found he did well chasing down bad checks, investigating rape cases, and tracking stolen supplies. He treasured the leatherette wallet with the NCIS badge, and he liked flashing it under people’s noses. Then the position-vacancy call came out and he jumped at the chance to learn to be an NCIS polygraph operator—additional specialist credentials to brandish. A duty assignment to Annapolis on the security staff conducting clearance polygraphs for the Naval Academy plebes gave him the chops to claim “he had been at Annapolis”—not exactly a ring-knocker, an actual graduate, but close enough.

  But the navy was for losers, he decided, and after getting out he applied to CIA’s Directorate of Support, to the Office of Security, and the polygraph division. He was twenty-five. More prestige: first Annapolis, now Langley—never mind that he was a security investigator. CIA was the first string. Even the multiple insider euphemisms for the polygraph were cool. He started by “fluttering” new CIA applicants. He administered the periodic reinvestigation “swirls” on CIA case officers. He eventually was given an overseas trip to “box” a newly recruited asset.

  He envied the laconic and sarcastic ops officers he met while abroad. He desired the cachet attached to operations and operators and the foreign field, but frankly wanted to avoid inconvenient and risky overseas assignments. He carefully began planning a safe and profitable career shift to the Clandestine Service: First a lateral assignment to an area desk, pure admin paperwork; then certification as ops-support assistant, tending asset files; then as a special assistant to a division chief, keeping his schedule; then a stint in Public Affairs, learning the art of saying nothing importantly; then hooking on to the coattails of an associate director, more staff work but breathing the air of the seventh floor; then into Congressional Affairs, where one meets future directors; until finally it happened and his patron was confirmed as director, and forty-year-old Sebastian Angevine, fifteen-year veteran of CIA’s administrative track, formerly US Navy, was named CIA’s new associate deputy director for Military Affairs and promoted in rank from GS-15 to SIS-Three with an increase in annual base pay from $119,554 to $165,300. His seventh-floor office soared above the treetops. The telephones on his desk were black, gray, and green. Access to a driver and a midnight-black SUV for getting to meetings at the Pentagon came with the job.

  In less than a year, Seb Angevine was well-known on the seventh floor at Langley, around Pentagon conference tables, and in the National Security Council, though he was less well-known in CIA Headquarters on the operational floors and in the geographic divisions, where he rarely visited. The ambitious security officer morphed into a mid-level federal executive with airs. He wore Ermenegildo Zegna silk ties, Aldridge satin braces, and antique Carrington abalone cuff links. He ran long fingers through leonine hair carefully tended to keep the gray away from his temples. He flirted with women in the office—behind his oblivious back he was considered spotted and greasy, rather than interesting and urbane.

  As he had learned during the formative years coming up, you really did
n’t have to sweat the work—it just sort of flowed around you, nothing but meetings, talking heads, and staff work delegated down the food chain. The other stuff was out of the senior manager’s playbook: Once a year, either propose an amorphous new “program,” or close down an existing program in a display of efficiency and fiscal rectitude; be sure to fire one or more struggling underlings each quarter to prove you’re a leader; and know that there is no limit to obsequiousness and flummery when dealing with superiors. It was really quite easy.

  The rest of it was gravy: access and privilege. Sensitive papers crossed his desk—CIA operational traffic, raw and finished intelligence. That was just the start. He was read into compartmented Department of Defense programs, hundreds of them, binders full of them; CIA and DoD shared a lot. In the Intelligence Community the gravitas of a bureaucrat was measured by the number of clearance designators behind his name: The longer the list, the bigger his popol, and Seb had more than a dozen clearances, including the rare Special Handling/Intelligence Techniques compartment, cynically referred to by secretaries and special assistants on the seventh floor by the acronym SH/IT. Angevine was in the know.

  Okay, the government money wasn’t great, and that rankled. He wanted nice things, perhaps an apartment at the Watergate, the new Audi, a girlfriend who could speak French with him. He liked going out to restaurants and bars, including unwinding at strip clubs such as Good Guys on Wisconsin Avenue. But that took money, and there definitely wasn’t enough. He could trade his tepid federal salary for some big numbers in the private sector, but he wasn’t ready for that yet—besides, they expected performance and results out there. (A lot of high-ranking chiefs in the Service landed big outside jobs at retirement, and most lasted only three years before being fired: You don’t skate in the private sector, especially not with a front-office federal work ethic.) The solution was to stay in CIA for a while longer. So when Dick Spofford was caught making a deposit to his wank account, Seb Angevine had seen the future: He would ascend to the DNCS’s job; the director was his ally and would confirm him. That had all changed now.