Red Sparrow 02 - Palace of Treason

by Jason Matthews

  Montgomery rubbed his face. “Well, that’s what I want to talk to you guys about. We have an ace,” said Montgomery, flipping a sheet of paper. “We know the Russian meeting site is in Meridian Hill Park.”

  “A thin advantage,” said Nate. “SVR will be looking very carefully at the park for days in advance, especially during the nighttime hours before the meeting. They’re going to see a big team staked out, no matter how good they are. A squelch break on a radio, someone with binoculars, it’s unavoidable.”

  “Okay, I’ll accept that, but I’ve been thinking about a solution,” said Montgomery. “We have two guys on the Gs. They’ve bounced around a little—”

  “Bounced around, meaning what?” said Benford.

  “Different jobs,” said Montgomery.

  “Why?” said Benford.

  “They have authority issues,” said Montgomery, folding his hands together on the table.

  “Meaning what?” said Benford.

  “Meaning they speak their minds,” said Montgomery.

  “As in …, ” said Benford.

  “As in telling their supervisors to pound sand,” said Montgomery.

  “And you want to saddle us with these unstable Gemini twins in a critical operation that could cost an agent’s life exactly why?” said Benford.

  “Because I believe they are the best street operators I’ve seen in twenty-five years,” said Montgomery. “If Zarubina is a clairvoyant witch on the bricks, Fileppo and Proctor are warlocks.”

  Benford looked over at Nate, who nodded slightly. “The three of us in the park, no one else, no radios. We bag TRITON before he can talk to Zarubina,” said Nate.

  “That’s what I was thinking,” said Montgomery. “Put the three of you in loincloths and give you blowguns. Might work.”

  Benford shifted in his seat, thinking. “When can we meet these warlocks of yours?” he said.

  “They’re waiting outside,” said Montgomery, and went to the conference room door.

  Fileppo and Proctor came in and sat on either side of Montgomery. Both were dressed casually in jeans and Clarks low-top desert boots. The one on the left wore a plain black sweatshirt, the other a zip-necked fleece pullover.

  “This is Donnie Fileppo and Lew Proctor,” said Montgomery. Nate reached over the table and shook their hands. Both had serious grips. Nate estimated that Donnie Fileppo was around twenty-five, with close-cropped brown hair, a high forehead, and eyes that flicked from face to face. Lew Proctor was slightly older, with laugh lines around his eyes and a buzz cut. They both sat slumped in their chairs and looked with feigned disinterest at the CIA men.

  “So it’s Donnie and Lew?” asked Benford.

  “Yeah, his full name is Donatello,” said Proctor, leaning forward to look around Montgomery at Fileppo. He kept his features serious, but his eyes laughed. “It’s mostly a girl’s name in Italy.” Fileppo did not look at Proctor.

  “Have you guys ever worked solo surveillance?” said Nate. “We have a big problem and we need two foot soldiers to help me cover a park downtown.”

  “What park?” said Fileppo.

  “Who against?” said Proctor.

  “You don’t need to know until we consent to your participation,” said Benford. Nate didn’t look at him, but recognized the tone: Vintage Benford, being disagreeable to test his interlocutors. Fileppo shrugged.

  “We can’t help you with your scary-big problem if we don’t know the frigging target and park,” said Proctor. Montgomery shifted in his seat.

  “Special Agent Montgomery said you guys are pretty good on the street,” said Nate.

  “Good enough,” said Fileppo. “What street you come up on?”

  “Moscow,” said Nate.

  Proctor nodded.

  “That’s why this is so important,” said Nate. “It has to go right or someone dies in Moscow.”

  “Not to mention that a fucker American traitor working for fucking Moscow gets away with it for a fucking long time,” said Benford.

  “We fucking can’t have that, can we, Donatello?” said Proctor.

  Nate went out on the street with Fileppo and Proctor. Montgomery had not exaggerated: They were smooth, fast, physically conditioned, used barely noticeable hand signals, and could change their profiles with the flip of a hoodie or the change of a jacket to its shucked-inside-out material. Fileppo even did parkour—urban freerunning. He could run at a twelve-foot wall, take two steps on the bricks as if walking up it, and leap the rest of the way to the top.

  Dinner breaks were instructive: Neither man drank during duty hours. After-hours beers were limited to two. Conversation was raucous and profane, but Nate recognized the ticks of top surveillance pros who worked well together: They finished each other’s sentences, looked over the other’s shoulder, and signaled something of interest by a minute jerk of the chin. Each knew what the other was going to do before he did it. Nate ran them along Connecticut Avenue—their backyard—and it was like watching two Cape hunting dogs work in tandem. They covered practice rabbits—unsuspecting civilians—up close, then dropped back, anticipated turns, and got ahead of them or followed from across the street. They supported each other flawlessly.

  Fileppo used his baby face to get past doormen. Proctor could play the downtown urban courier and roam freely through office buildings. Both could read mail in eleven-point type upside down on receptionists’ desks. They were rogues, pirates, Visigoths. After two days Nate told Benford it was okay—the three of them were going to cover Meridian Hill Park for the next five consecutive nights.

  The park was a twelve-acre wooded hill in the Columbia Heights neighborhood, two and a half miles north of the White House. Set on a steep hill, the park had twisting pathways, statuary, and graceful cement stairways. The centerpiece of the park was a two-hundred-foot Italianate cascading fountain with thirteen descending basins—each bowl filled and then emptied into progressively larger bowls, increasing from five to twelve feet wide, eventually flowing into a graceful curved reservoir at the bottom. Top to bottom the decline in elevation was a mild terraced drop of fifty feet. Broad cement aggregate stairways ascended on either side to meet at an upper pool and columned terrace at the top of the cascade.

  Nate, Fileppo, and Proctor split up and covered the upper level of the park—a grassy mall bordered by linden trees—then rotated to case the lower level, including the cascade. They couldn’t know whether the Russians had people periodically out, security scouting, so the plan was to then exit the park separately and walk two blocks past stately row houses on W Street to a sandwich shop called Fast Gourmet. Nate looked for Fileppo and Proctor as he walked over, but they were nowhere in sight. They were playing with the CIA guy with the Moscow creds, to show him they could.

  Fast Gourmet was a modest shop, with display case, counter, and two tables, in the back of the cashier’s building in a gas station on the corner of W and Fourteenth Streets. Fileppo was already inside ordering three Chivito sandwiches on soft rolls. Proctor walked in two minutes later. No one talked while they waited for their food. Nate had not exactly bonded with the two FBI guys, but they shared an unspoken collegial regard for one another—they recognized skills and appreciated fellow top pros.

  “It’s going to be the terrace at the top of the cascade,” said Proctor finally, sitting at one of the little tables. “Two entrances on the west side off Sixteenth, still lots of foliage.”

  “Definitely,” said Fileppo, pulling up a chair. “It’s the only logical place. Forget the upper mall. The terrace is screened from above by the wall, and you can see all the way down to W Street. Nothing’s coming up those stairs unobserved.” Nate was looking dubiously at his Chivito, piled high with grilled steak, cheese, boiled egg, and marinated onions, and oozing an unidentified sauce.

  “Escabeche,” said Fileppo, following Nate’s look. “The onions are marinated in vinegar.”

  “From Uruguay,” said Proctor. “Best in DC.”

  Nate took a bite
and had to confess that it was magnificent. He wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Okay,” he said, “you’re Zarubina. How do you come in? Where do you put your CS, your countersurveillance? From what direction is TRITON coming?”

  “Russians like to control the meeting site. It’s their MO,” said Proctor. “She’ll pop in by one of the side stairs to the upper terrace and watch our boy come up one of the stairways either side of the cascade.”

  “If she brings CS, they’re going to be in the trees, and in the park above the fountain,” said Fileppo. “They’re going to be watching outward for a big team, for cars and radios. They’re there to call an abort and to protect their old lady.”

  “She’s supposed to be unreal on the street,” said Nate.

  Fileppo and Proctor looked at each other. “We’re unreal,” said Fileppo, and Proctor nodded. They put down their sandwiches and bumped fists.

  “Jesus, before you guys move in together, tell me how we set up on this site,” said Nate.

  He got two blank looks from Fileppo and Proctor, which lasted a noticeable three seconds. “Here’s our gut feel; tell us what you think,” said Proctor. “Donnie and I will be at the bottom of the cascade. We move around separately, screening behind the reflecting pool, the balustrades, hedges, and walls. If it’s before ten, there’s gonna be some casuals in the park. If it’s after ten, the Russians will have to deal with park police making sure the place is empty.”

  “And if your mole-man is on those stairs going up, we’ll rush him before he gets halfway,” said Fileppo.

  “How are we going to know a guy on the stairs is mole-man?” asked Nate, watching these two work out the details.

  “Hundred percent Zarubina uses a simple safety signal—flick a lighter, take off a scarf, put a white paper sack on the railing,” said Proctor. “Positive signal, something he can see even in the dark. She’ll be telling us when he comes.”

  “And that’s when we stick him,” said Fileppo. “No way the two of them are gonna say one word to each other, much less pass anything.”

  “Yeah, Donnie gets spun up during takedowns. But you’re going to wait for me, right?” said Proctor to Donnie.

  “I don’t get ‘spun up,’ ” said Fileppo. “Where do you get that shit?”

  “You always do,” said Proctor.

  Jesus, they sound like an old married couple, thought Nate as he concentrated on his sandwich.

  “Okay, you guys are down below,” said Nate, “and I want to be right up Zarubina’s ass, real close. Any ideas?” He was okay with asking these experts their opinion: Nate’s specialty was detecting and defeating hostile surveillance; these guys were surveillance and it would pay to listen to them.

  “There’s only one place,” said Fileppo. “The wall of the upper terrace behind the upper pool has three deep alcoves with a candle-jet fountain in each—you know the fluffy columns of water about three feet high. You gotta stand in ankle-deep water at night, but with dark clothes, squatting behind the bubbles, and the noise of all the water—fountains, cascades, basins—you’re invisible. You just gotta wade across the upper pool and you’re right behind her.”

  “Maybe wear a pair of knee-high rubber boots,” said Proctor.

  “I scare her shitless coming out of the dark, speaking polite Russian and not letting her leave,” said Nate. “You guys put flex cuffs on dickhead, then you hit the button and call everybody in, right?” said Nate. Benford and Montgomery had arranged for a dozen Washington metro police units, three FBI vehicles, a van, and an ambulance to be in holding positions in a ring four blocks away from the park. On receiving an electronic signal from Proctor’s SHRAPNEL message unit—essentially an encrypted pager developed by CIA—they would light up Columbia Heights. No other radios, cell phones, or electronics—the Russians listened as well as watched.

  TRITON would be arrested. Zarubina, with her diplomatic immunity, would be courteously detained until the Russian Consul from the embassy could spring her. Per the well-known Cold War drill, he would serenely maintain that Zarubina had been walking in the park to take the night air. Then he doubtless would rave about fascist American police procedures. A PNG expulsion—persona non grata—would follow and Zarubina would return to the bosom of the Rodina to answer questions from a pair of blue eyes over a mouth pursed in annoyance.

  And Dominika would avoid the cellars yet again, thought Nate. She would be safe.

  URUGUAYAN CHIVITO SANDWICH

  Stack a soft roll with thin slices of caramelized, grilled flank steak, melt mozzarella over the meat under the broiler, then add boiled ham, fried pancetta, diced green olives, sliced hard-boiled egg, thin-sliced onion marinated in vinegar and sugar, lettuce, tomato, and aioli. Cut the sandwich on the bias and serve.

  37

  Time check. 2219. 10:19 p.m. If something was going to happen, it could be now: Neither CIA nor SVR clandestine meetings were ever set exactly for the hour or half hour—too predictable. Despite the cool evening, Nate sweat under a black plastic hooded poncho and rubber boots as he crouched in the pitch-black of the fountain alcove behind the upper pool. The floor of the alcove was slick with algae, and the shin-high water smelled metallic and toxic. Looking through—around—the bubbling column of fountain water, Nate could barely see the empty terrace and silvery cascade basins below. Beyond the cascade the park was dark, backlit faintly by orange city-glow.

  The damn fountain jets were fouled or something, and the water column pulsed irregularly, high then low, splashing Nate’s poncho, which was keeping him only moderately dry. Nate worried that the water would make a noticeable rattle off the plastic, but there was a lot of covering noise—the three echoing and splashy alcove fountains emptying into the upper pool, arpeggio waves spilling into cascade basins below. Two previous nights of waiting in this stinky water wonderland had made him wish he had assigned either Fileppo or Proctor to the fountain alcove—let one of them squat for hours in a recirculated, copper-pipe-rancid ribollita, with green things floating around his boots like Italian veggie soup. But he knew he had to be here up top: He had to freeze Zarubina, and FBI personnel had to be the ones to lay hands on an American citizen arrestee for legal reasons. Okay, TRITON, you fucker, come on in.

  Some vestigial Paleolithic instinct made Nate’s scalp creep—there was someone directly above his alcove, on the grassy mall level. There was no moonlight and no shadow; there were no voices. All was silent. But he could feel it, a scalp-crawly sense of a person approaching. A minute later, peering through the damn bubbling water, Nate saw a short figure glide soundlessly in front of him onto the terrace from the right. He held his breath and hoped he was invisible in the clammy black. It was Zarubina—Nate recognized her from the hundreds of photos in the FBI mug book on her. She wore a camel-hair outer coat, a scarf knotted loosely around her neck. Her honey-blond hair was up in a bun, and sturdy legs beneath the hem of her long coat ended in clunky midheel shoes. Zarubina stood quietly by the balustrade above the first of the basins and looked to her left, then turned to the right. She was slowly scanning the reaches of the empty park below her. You urban Apaches better be as good as you say you are, thought Nate, telegraphing to Fileppo and Proctor out there in the dark. Zarubina finished her turns and stood still, head down, a seriously spooky sight, some ancient priestess on the elevated altar, calling in the bat-winged gods. She’s listening, she’s feeling the vibe, thought Nate. Is she feeling the electrons coming out of the tips of my fingers? Jesus, this grandmother can kill DIVA tonight. No she won’t; it will not happen.

  Zarubina turned to look up at the top of the wall at mall level—brilliant black eyes, slightly hooded, passed over Nate’s alcove—and nodded once. Her team would keep looser watch—she had signaled the all clear. She moved closer to the terrace balustrade, put both hands on the cement, and leaned forward like a dictator on a balcony giving a speech to the masses below. She reached up and loosened her scarf from around her neck and draped it over the balustrade so that a discreet co
rner of it hung down. Safety signal. Wait, wait, wait, Nate telegraphed to the men down below.

  Nate didn’t move for two minutes—120 seconds that felt like two hours—and then he saw the head and shoulders of a tall angular figure come up the stairs from W Street. He moved slowly, and started up the left-hand staircase along the cascade. Are you TRITON? The man held his head down, his hands jammed into his pockets. Nate strained to see his face, to identify him from the halls of Headquarters. Come on. The man stopped climbing the broad stairs a third of the way up and raised his head to look at the upper terrace and Zarubina. He saw her darkened figure and took one hand out of his jacket and raised it briefly. Yeah, wave hello. Zarubina did not respond, but the man resumed trudging up the steps. He was halfway up now.

  From the bottom of the stairwell the shadow of a spirit, a winged ogre, flew out of the thick border hedge, planted hands on the brick wall at the bottom of the stairs, vaulted onto the bottom step, and started running up the stairs. Fileppo. At the same instant—how had they timed their moves so closely?—Proctor materialized from inside a privet hedge bordering the opposite stairwell, glided over the steps, and walked, arms outstretched for balance, along the lip of a lower basin to cross the cascade. It looked as though he were walking on water. This took four seconds. Zarubina bellowed like a man as the two figures converged on TRITON, who, with amazing quickness, ran up two steps then sideways straight into a hedge, which swallowed him up amid great crunching and snapping of branches. Proctor and Fileppo both broke right—one into the gap plowed by TRITON, the other through a break in the hedge two steps below. The Cape hunting dogs were on the impala.

  On the fifth second of the action, a flashlight started shining on the lower part of the stairway, a voice called, and the light started coming up. Nate saw the silhouette of a flat-brimmed campaign hat—the lemon squeezers worn by frigging US park rangers. The ranger obviously had heard the sound of exploding foliage and the buffalo trumpeting of a Russian intelligence officer and appeared in order to chase away what he thought were kids. There was no time for this. Nate came out of the alcove, swung down to the pool, caught his poncho liner under one of his boots and went down on his hands and knees in the elbow-deep water. He got up, pounded to the edge, and swung his legs out—his boots were full of water. He shucked them off and looked for the old lady. Zarubina was gone, the terrace was empty. She hadn’t moved either to the left or right. Then he heard the splashing. Caught between Nate splashing like an asshole behind her, and the park ranger coming up at her, she had vaulted the balustrade and was sloshing down the cascade, one basin at a time, to evade contact. It was impossible to see her in the darkness, but she was noisily displacing a lot of water.