“I won’t let anything happen to it,” said Hannah, serious again. “Besides, if anyone tries to play it back without pressing the right buttons, it scrubs the entire digital file in two point three seconds.”
“You seem to have all the right equipment,” said Dominika.
“We have a lot of toys, sure,” said Hannah, “but the most important thing is your security. That’s my only job.”
Dominika could even hear the cadence of Nate’s words as Hannah repeated the cant. They trained together, how lovely. And now I’m standing in the forest with this little gladiator, who’s telling me she’ll take care of me. Dominika thought an uncharitable thought. “I feel safer with you already,” she said, talking to the recording device, talking to Nate.
Hannah looked at Dominika for a second. She’s perceptive too, thought Dominika. Is that bitchy enough for you?
“There’s more,” said Dominika. “Tell them that Yevgeny is still cooperating, and he will tell me anything I want to know.” Did you hear that, Neyt? “Yevgeny just told me there was a request from Zarubina for satellite imagery support to survey a proposed meeting site in Washington, DC. Yevgeny was preparing a formal memo to the Space Intelligence Directorate at Vatutinki. He showed it to me … for a kiss.” Stop it, enough. “I copied the coordinates.” Dominika handed Hannah a slip of paper. “I assume Zarubina intends to use it for TRITON.” Hannah looked at the paper and read the coordinates aloud for the recorder, then tore the paper into pieces and stuffed them into a small bottle of clear liquid that she shook violently. Acetone to destroy the handwritten note, Hannah explained, smiling. Cute smile, thought Dominika. Smart girl, she thought.
Marta sat on a fallen tree trunk, shaking her head. Really, now, jealousy does not become you.
“Captain Egorova, this is huge,” whispered Hannah. “Nathaniel is going to freak. This could lead us to TRITON.” Hannah’s young face was alight.
It’s Nathaniel now, thought Dominika, looking at her face. There’s not a false bone in her body. Candy-red halo, powder and strawberries, and those Roman curls. Hannah pulled her sleeve up and checked her watch.
“We’re past our time limit,” said Hannah. “Is there anything else? Do you need anything? Is your SRAC gear okay?” Dominika nodded. She tamped down the urge to ask about her and Nate—she would not appear nekulturny. Hannah scanned the woods around them again and shook her head—negative, nothing moving.
“I’ll see you again at site SKLAD—it’s ‘warehouse’ in English. You remember?”
Dominika nodded.
Hannah looked down at her feet, then up into Dominika’s eyes. “It was great to meet you,” she said. “You’re an amazing person, doing an amazing job.”
Dominika searched her face for the fissure of sarcasm or toadying. Her halo held steady. “It is good to meet you too,” said Dominika. “We will work well together. Please pass my regards to Nathaniel and the rest of them. You’re doing the same job now that he did.”
“I read the whole file,” said Hannah. “Nate’s a fantastic case officer. He helped me prepare for this assignment. He helped me a lot.”
Dominika saw the emotion, saw how quickly she swallowed it down. She couldn’t make herself dislike this woman.
“He’s totally dedicated to supporting you,” said Hannah suddenly. “Totally. We all are.” The chemical message on the Pheromone Channel was unambiguous: Whatever may have happened, for whatever reasons, he loves you. It doesn’t matter what I feel, he’s yours. Hannah almost took Dominika’s hand and shook it, almost impulsively reached out to give her a quick hug, but she stopped herself. She turned, flipped up the hood of her jacket, and walked uphill, swallowed by the shadows, leaving DIVA immobile for a second until she turned and headed downhill toward the river.
Udranka walked down with her. Kak tebe ne stydno, she whispered, shame on you.
Yevgeny left his hairy thigh draped over Dominika’s haunches as he panted for breath. She had turned onto her stomach, partly to furtively mop her face but primarily so she wouldn’t have to look at the forested ears and nostrils, the corrugated toenails and torn cuticles. Bozhe moi, my God, even his khuy was feathered in downy hairs like a Kamchatka brown bear. Sparrows used seduction to further the strategic goals of the homeland—sexpionage was the combination of the two oldest professions—but Dominika was having sex with bottle-bristle Yevgeny to keep herself alive: He was her only source of information about how the TRITON case was progressing.
She had been back to Line KR for a week. Zyuganov was the same: swirling black clouds of envy and deceit. The interservice counterintelligence board had been abuzz over Dominika’s uncanny performance in detecting something fishy about General Solovyov and recommending his recall from Athens, a brilliant piece of intuitive tradecraft. Zyuganov, frantic with jealousy and Putin-envy, was now sweating to get a confession out of the old soldier, so far without results. Yevgeny said it was for this reason the general had been put under house arrest in his small apartment in the northwestern suburb of Khimki. A live-in guard watched the old bachelor—where was he going to go without a passport? Give him a month’s rest, then start again.
Yevgeny had missed her while she was away. He had come over after work, and they sat in the living room of Dominika’s little apartment and munched on kotlety Pozharskie, minced chicken cutlets fried to a golden brown with spicy ajvar sauce. As they ate, Dominika pulled on Yevgeny’s strings with delicate fingers to get him talking. There was a lot, but Yevgeny could talk and eat at the same time.
Zarubina was now managing TRITON by means of personal meetings. She had flattered, complimented, suggested, cajoled, and directed TRITON to collect increasingly spectacular intelligence from the very heart of CIA. Yevgeny called her a genius, an artist. At the top of the list: Zarubina had been directed to task TRITON with discovering whether there was another American mole inside the Center—a mole who filled the gap when the traitor Korchnoi had been eliminated. The Blue-Eyed Serenity in the Kremlin had ordered his intelligence services—all of them—to find out. They all grimly noted the unmasking of the Caracas recruit. And the recall of the GRU general from Athens had caused a furor. The Americans were busy again, they told themselves, and they knew, just knew, that there were even worse enemies out there. They’re looking for me, thought Dominika.
There was more, but Yevgeny’s pilot light was on, and Dominika led him coquettishly into her tiny bathroom, where she hosed him down with the handheld shower like a draft horse and played a sexy game with the soap bar and rubbed him dry, then took him into the bedroom and turned her mind off and raked his back with her nails and put her heels on his furry butt, and closed her eyes and felt the sweat on his face drop onto her forehead and lips.
She almost started crying then, thinking about Nate and how they had quarreled, and how things had gone wrong with LYRIC, and something started in her mind, a wispy thought that she couldn’t catch yet, so she filed it away and timed her faked orgasm to Yevgeny’s barnyard finish—she went with the side-to-side tossing head and a big groan—after which he collapsed onto the bed with a ham-hock leg still cocked across her. When his breathing slowed, Dominika started pulling the string again.
“It did not escape Zarubina’s notice that you were called again to the Kremlin to be congratulated,” said Yevgeny, still breathing hard. “You know, Zarubina is going to be the boss someday, and she’s got her eye on you. You’re set,” said Yevgeny, patting Dominika’s buttocks. “Just don’t forget your friends.”
Udranka sat incongruously atop the armoire in the corner of the bedroom, swinging her legs. It really is too much, isn’t it? But you don’t have to like it, she said, you just have to do it.
The summons came from the president’s secretariat two days after her return, but the car that had been sent for her careened past the Kremlin Borovitskaya Gate and continued another kilometer into the swanky Tverskoy District, past the display windows on Tverskaya filled with the sorts of shoes, clothes, and lea
ther goods that do not exist in Mother Russia outside the MKAD ring road, and pulled into a broad, immaculate alleyway marked SHVEDSKIY TUPIK, Swedish Blind alley. Building No. 3 was a modern eleven-story brick-and-glass high-rise, incongruous amid the Soviet baroque buildings in the neighborhood, and clearly someplace special judging by the Federal Guard Service security booth outside the main entrance.
An aide was waiting to take Dominika up in a soundless elevator with no buttons. The doors opened to a luxurious living room with parquet floors and elaborate moldings on the walls and ceiling. At the end of the room President Putin was standing at a sideboard, talking on a telephone. He was dressed in a khaki sports shirt under a leather vest with zippered pockets. Three other people—two men and a woman—were on nearby brocade couches and chairs, all of them sitting in a funky yellow cloud. Dominika walked across the parquet, her heels clicking on the wood. She remembered what Gable had said about wearing heels the next time she saw the president. She wore a dark navy suit with dark tights. As usual, her hair was up in the regulation service style. The people had stopped talking and were watching her cross the room, ballerina smooth and statuesque. Enveloped in his usual Arctic blue, President Putin put down the telephone, shook hands, and then took her arm to walk Dominika away from the guests and back toward the waiting aide and the still-open elevator doors. In her heels, Dominika was taller by a head.
“Captain, thank you for coming,” Putin said. “I congratulate you on another fine piece of work.” Putin’s cupid-bow mouth moved slightly, perhaps indicating pleasure, or even mirth. “It seems like Athens is lucky for you.” His eyes locked onto hers, and Dominika, not for the first time, wondered if he could read her mind.
“Thank you, Mr. President,” said Dominika, the only possible response in this insane moment.
“I regret I have to leave shortly; otherwise I would offer something and introduce you to some people,” said Putin, nodding to the group on the couches and chairs. “I am hosting a conference at the state complex at Strelna for the next ten days. Do you know the Constantine Palace?”
“I visited as a child with family from Saint Petersburg,” said Dominika, remembering the magnificent baroque palace and formal neoclassical gardens stretching to the sea. The grander Peterhof and Oranienbaum Palaces were on the same stretch of coast, south of Petersburg.
“Of course. Your family was from there,” said Putin. Yes, thought Dominika, my grandmother hid in a well as the Bolsheviks burned the house.
“Well, you are overdue for another visit,” said Putin. He was inviting her. But surely not as the only guest? What do I do, Forsyth? Benford?
“One of the cottages is prepared for a private gathering, people you should be introduced to,” said Putin, gesturing for the aide to escort her back to the lobby. “You already know Govormarenko.”
Sure, the energy-czar pig who’s helping you siphon off profits in the Iran deal, thought Dominika. God grant there is no hot tub in the gym. “You’re too kind, Mr. President. I may take advantage and visit relatives in the city at the same time.” She shook Putin’s hand—dry and firm—and stepped into the elevator.
“Make sure the captain’s name is at the gate,” said Putin to the aide. The elevator doors closed but Dominika could still feel his eyes on her.
KOTLETY POZHARSKIE—CHICKEN CUTLETS
Soak bread in milk and combine with ground chicken, butter, salt, and pepper, and incorporate into a paste. Form into small patties, dip in egg wash, and dredge in bread crumbs. Fry lightly in butter until golden brown. Serve with pureed potatoes and ajvar sauce.
32
Benford was late for his own meeting. He had been at a briefing downstairs in PROD on the progress of the W. Petrs seismic-isolation floor on its surreptitious water odyssey through continental Russia to Iran. The German SBE had alerted Berlin Station that the massive machinery had left the factory. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency in concert with CIA had been tracking it via a third-generation INDIGO EYE optical-imaging satellite that from its elliptical polar orbit two hundred miles up could read the name on the square stern of the barge that was plowing through the lakes north of Saint Petersburg, then southeast, down the Volga on its way to the Volga River Delta at Astrakhan to the Caspian Sea.
In a darkened room Benford was shown projected photos of the massive cargo, shrink-wrapped in white vinyl, covered across its girth with a dun-colored tarp, and secured Gulliver-style with dozens of interlaced straps. An insufferable imagery analyst from NGA with bullfrog eyes explained that orbital drift known as precession—Benford’s glare stopped him from explaining Kepler’s Third Law—meant that the bird’s observational corridor would be pushed westward with each subsequent orbit. That meant, the self-satisfied analyst continued, the low earth-orbiting INDIGO EYE would lose the barge once it entered the Caspian. Benford continued staring at this unpleasant person, who hurriedly added that coverage accordingly would be assumed by a stealthy SOLAR FIST surveillance drone launched from the US Air Force base at Incirlik, Turkey, which could transit the five hundred kilometers of Azeri and Iranian airspace undetected and loiter for five days over the fetid Caspian, making lazy eights at an altitude of twenty kilometers.
At the end of the session, the goggle-eyed briefer—How appropriate that an imagery officer has bug eyes, thought Benford—smugly offered that drones would replace operations officers in five years. Benford stiffened. PROD officers in the room fell silent. “Thank you for your unsolicited comment,” said Benford to the briefer. “No doubt you can look down a man’s pants with your drones from a great height. But your drones cannot divine what he intends to do with his prick, with whom, and when.”
He left and hurried to the alchemist’s cave he called his office. Sitting in chairs around a desk mounded with papers were his trusty savants in CID, Margery Salvatore and Janice Callahan. Benford sat down and scowled at them. They knew not to speak. Benford was a man possessed, knowing that a mole reporting to the Russians was inside CIA.
“Pardon my language,” said Benford, “but fuck. Since we became aware of the mole in CIA, we have curtailed the OSI double-agent operation to deny this TRITON a channel to the Russians. In so doing, we aspired to flush TRITON out into the open, and into personal contact with SVR rezident Zarubina. From DIVA’s reporting we know that this has happened, but alas, fucking FBI coverage of Zarubina has revealed nothing. She is cautious on the street, aborts when she doesn’t like the vibe, and is unpredictable. It is damn difficult to cover her discreetly.”
“Let’s shut her down with heavy coverage on the street,” said Janice. “Make her make a mistake.”
“Might work,” said Margery. “But if they see too much pressure it’s as likely the Center will put TRITON on ice until they dispatch the illegal to the United States to begin handling him.”
“At which time the case goes underwater and TRITON works undisturbed for thirty years,” said Janice. She had handled agents in communist Eastern Europe whose actuarial life expectancy as spies was eighteen months.
“Janice is depressingly correct,” said Benford. “We have a narrowing window during which TRITON is still being met by a Russian intel officer whom we can follow. Zarubina uses aggressive countersurveillance; she regularly manipulates FBI coverage into traps.”
“In all the years, in all the cases, there’s always been the unpredictable, minute element that changes the course of an operation, breaks a mole hunt, anchors a recruitment,” said Margery. “We need that now.”
“Here is a penny, Margery,” said Benford, sliding a coin through the detritus on his desk. “Throw it into the wishing well out front of the building.”
“Margery, save that penny,” said Chief/ROD Dante Helton, walking into Benford’s office. He lifted a stack of files off a chair and dragged it to sit beside Margery. “Simon, look at Moscow 2584; just came in.”
Benford sighed. “Dante, I appreciate your taking time to attend this gathering, which began about twenty minutes ago.�
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Dante pointed at Benford’s monitor. “Look at it right now.”
Benford found the cable, brought his half glasses down off his head, and leaned in, reading. “Hannah Archer had her first personal meeting with DIVA in Moscow at the Sparrow Hills site.” said Benford, turning to look at the three. “Janice, your protégée performed splendidly again.” He read on. “What is more, DIVA provided … holy fucking shit.”
Benford put his finger on the monitor, reading slowly. “Thirty-eight degrees, ninety-two minutes north, seventy-seven degrees, zero three minutes west,” he said, finally turning again to look at each of them.
Though unreservedly loyal to Benford, Margery had long predicted his sudden descent into eccentric senescence—the time had come, apparently. Margery proposed displaying Benford in his dotage for a fee in the ground-floor library as a way to raise money for CIA Family Day.
“Stop what you’re thinking, Margery,” said Benford. “DIVA got this from her deputy in Line KR, Pletnev. I think she’s doing the Sparrow thing with him. She’s got starch, that woman.” Benford extracted a Washington, DC, map book from under a pile of newspapers, triggering a small avalanche of them onto the floor. No one moved to gather them up.
“Zarubina requested overhead imagery of these coordinates,” said Benford, flipping the pages of the book. “The Russians case sites the same as we do. Downtown DC, Meridian Hill Park, in Columbia Heights, between Fifteenth and Sixteenth Streets.” Benford found the page and looked at it.
“Margery, you are a prophet, a Sybil, a haruspex. Zarubina just gave us the site where she’s next going to meet TRITON.”
Seb Angevine had met Zarubina five times since he had gotten back in contact, and he emphatically didn’t like being out on the street with her. Too exposed. He didn’t know shit from tradecraft, but had to admit she picked some pretty cool, out-of-the-way places—urban lanes, alleys, courtyards—that he didn’t even know existed. But he recoiled at the risks of meeting out in the open with the known SVR rezident, and he was jackrabbit nervous the whole time, usually waiting and watching from a concealed position, checking to see she arrived alone, ready to beat feet if there was trouble. Zarubina knew he was doing it, and once had gotten all grandmothery on him, the way she did, and hugged him and said he was a dear to be concerned about her. Fuck you, he thought. I’m concerned about my balls.
Red Sparrow 02 - Palace of Treason Page 41
