Red Sparrow

by Jason Matthews

  “There’s not going to be a next meeting. At least not with you. You’re too hot now. They ID’d you a dozen times last night, your Econ cover is gone, you’ll have half the surveillance directorate in Moscow on your ass from now on,” said Gondorf. He was visibly relishing the moment.

  “They always knew this cover position. I always had coverage, you know that. I still can meet assets,” said Nate, leaning against a chair. Gondorf had a dummy hand grenade mounted on a wooden base on his desk. The plaque on it read COMPLAINT DEPARTMENT. PULL PIN FOR FASTER SERVICE.

  “No, I don’t believe you can meet agents. You’re now a shit magnet,” said Gondorf.

  “If they put that many resources on me we can bankrupt them,” argued Nate. “I can drain their manpower by driving all over town for the next six months. And the more coverage I get, the better we’ll be able to manipulate them.” Stand your ground.

  Gondorf was unimpressed and unconvinced. This young case officer stud represented too much of a risk to him personally. Gondorf had his sights set on one of the big component jobs in Headquarters next year when he returned to Washington. It wasn’t worth the risk. “Nash, I’m recommending that your tour in Moscow be curtailed. You’re too hot and the opposition will be looking for a way to pick you off, catch your agents.” He looked up. “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you get a good follow-on assignment.”

  Nate was shocked. Even a first-tour officer knew a short-of-tour expulsion submitted by a COS—whatever the reason—could derail a career. He also was sure that Gondorf would use back channels to hint that Nate had fucked up. Nate’s unofficial reputation, his “hall file,” would take a hit, it would affect his promotions and future assignments. The old feeling of standing in black quicksand started coming back.

  Nate knew the truth: He had saved MARBLE last night with quick and correct action. He looked down at Gondorf’s impassive face. They both knew what was happening and why. So to Nate there didn’t seem to be any point not to finish the conversation with a flourish. “Gondorf, you’re a gutless pussy who’s terrified of the street. You’re fucking me to avoid your responsibility. It’s been an education serving in your Station.”

  As he left the office, Nate noted that the absence of a screaming tirade from his chief was indeed the measure of the man.

  =====

  Kicked out of Station short of tour. Not as bad as getting an agent killed, stealing official funds, or fabricating reports, but still a disaster. How it would affect future assignments, promotions, Nate couldn’t tell, but the news would get around the minute the cable from Gondorf hit Headquarters. Some of his classmates from training were already on their second tours, making their bones. Rumor had it that one of them already had been offered a chief’s job in a small Station. The additional months of training for Moscow had put Nate behind the curve, and now this.

  Even as he told himself not to fixate, Nate fretted. He had always been told to keep up, of the necessity of not falling behind, of the absolute requirement to win. He grew up in the genteel southern equivalent of a cage match where generations of Nashes had been raised in the Palladian family mansion on the bluffs along the south shore of the James. Nate’s grandfather and his father after him, respectively founder and reigning partner of Nash, Waryng, and Royall in Richmond, had sat in green-shaded studies, and sucked their teeth, and shot their cuffs. They had nodded approval as Nate’s brothers, one implausible with Julius Caesar curls, the other sweating and outrageous in a gamine comb-over, wrestled in their suits on the carpet, and learned just enough of the law, and married chesty belles who stopped talking when the men came into the room, blue eyes searching for approval.

  But what y’all suppose we do about young Nate? they had asked one another. Graduated from Johns Hopkins with a degree in Russian literature, Nate sought refuge in the spiritual, ascetic world of Gogol, Chekhov, Turgenev, a world that brick-paved Richmond could not invade. His brothers howled and his father thought it a waste. It was expected that he would attend a law school—he was preapproved for acceptance at Richmond—and eventually fill a junior partner’s chair at the firm. The graduate degree in Russian from faraway Middlebury was therefore a problem, and the subsequent application to the CIA a family crisis.

  “I believe you’ll find the life of a civil servant less than fulfilling,” his father had said. “I frankly cannot see you happy in that bureaucracy.” Nate’s father had known past directors. His brothers were less circumspect in their criticism. During a particularly riotous holiday meal, they started a family pool to predict how long Nate would last in the CIA. The high field was three or fewer years.

  His application to the Central Intelligence Agency had nothing to do with escaping the suspenders and cuff links, with the crushing absoluteness of Richmond, or with the inevitability of the colonnaded mansion overlooking the river. It had nothing to do with patriotism either, really, though Nate was as patriotic as the next person. It had everything to do with the hammer in his chest when he at ten years of age made himself walk along the ledge of the mansion three floors up, level with the hawks over the river, to beat down the dread, to confront the raptors of fear and failure. It was about the strain between him and his father and grandfather and omnivore brothers, raucously demanding compliance from him while practicing none themselves.

  It was the same hammer in his chest during interviews as he applied to the CIA, the heartbeat he had to still as he dissembled and jauntily affirmed how much he liked talking to people and meeting challenges and confronting ambiguity. But as the heartbeat slowed and his voice steadied, he had the quite remarkable epiphany that he actually could be coolheaded, and he could confront things he didn’t control. Working in the CIA was something he needed.

  But real alarm slammed through him when a CIA recruiter informed Nate that it was unlikely his application would be accepted, mainly because he had no postgraduate “life experience.” Another interviewer, more optimistic than the other, confidentially told him his excellent Russian test scores made him a very attractive candidate. It took the CIA three months to decide, during which time his brothers noisily revised the family pool predicting the date of his return from the CIA. They were no less noisy when the envelope arrived. He was in.

  Report for duty, sign the endless forms, file into a dozen classrooms, the months in Headquarters, cubicles, and conference rooms with the uninterested briefers and the eternity of projected presentations. Then finally the Farm, with the macadam roads running straight through the sandy pine forests and the linoleum dorm rooms, and the stale homerooms and the classrooms carpeted in gray, and the numbered students’ seats which belonged previously to last year’s heroes, to heroes forty years ago, faceless recruits, great spies or not, some gone wrong, the traitors, some long dead and remembered only by those who knew them.

  They planned clandestine meetings and attended mock diplomatic receptions, mingling with loud, red-faced instructors wearing Soviet Army uniforms and Mao suits. They walked wet-to-the-knee through the piney woods, peering through a night scope and counting paces until they came to the hollow stump and the burlap-wrapped brick, the owls in the branches congratulating them for finding the cache. They were laid over the hot ticking hoods of their vehicles at pretend roadblocks, as instructor “border guards” shook sheaves of papers in their faces and demanded explanations. They sat in swaybacked American Gothic farmhouses along lonely country roads and drank vodka and convinced gibbering role players to commit treason. Through the pines, the slate-black river was furrowed by the talons of dusk-feeding ospreys.

  What instinct enabled Nate to excel in practical exercises? He didn’t know, but he left the drag of family and Richmond behind and ran effortlessly on the street, under surveillance, coolly meeting instructor-agents bundled in coats and wearing implausible hats. They said he had the eye. He started to believe it, but the jackdaw challenges of his brothers hung over his head like a blunt instrument. Nate’s nightmare was failing, getting kicked out, showing ba
ck up in Richmond. They dropped people from training without warning.

  “We look for integrity from you students,” said a tradecraft instructor to the class. “We send people home for trying to G-2 the scenarios for upcoming problems. Just to max the exercises,” he said loudly. “You get caught with an instructor notebook, or any other restricted course material, it’s an immediate drop from the program, people.” Which, to be perfectly honest, thought Nate, meant, Try it.

  They were a class, but of individuals, all dreaming of first assignments, first tours to Caracas, Delhi, Athens, or Tokyo. The ache for class standing and first choice of assignments was acute, and culminated in excruciating receptions in the student center hosted by various Headquarters divisions, a bizarre sorority rush week for fledgling spies.

  At one of these end-of-training cocktail parties, a man and a woman from Russia House took him aside and told him he was preapproved and accepted in the Russia Division, so he didn’t have to request assignments elsewhere. Nate mildly asked if he couldn’t use his Russian language to chase Russians in, say, the Mideast or Africa Divisions, but they smiled at him and said they looked forward to seeing him in Headquarters at the end of the month.

  He was through, and provisionally accepted. He was part of the elite.

  Now came lectures about modern Russia. They discussed Moscow’s Dam-oclean politics of natural gas, hanging plumb over Europe, and the Kremlin’s chronic inclination to sponsor rogue states in the name of fairness, but really to make mischief and, well, to prove Russia was still in the Game. Furry men lectured about the promise of post-Soviet Russia, and elections and health reforms and demographic crises, and about the heartbreak of the curtain being drawn closed again, and behind it the icy blue eyes that missed nothing. The Rodina, sacred Motherland of black earth and endless sky, would have to endure a while longer, as the chain-wrapped corpse of the Soviet was exhumed, hauled dripping out of the swamp, and its heart was started again, and the old prisons were filled anew with men who did not see it their way.

  And a flinty woman lectured about a new Cold War, about the sly disarmament negotiations and the new supersonic fighters that can fly sideways but still show Red Star roundels on the wings, and Moscow’s rage over a Western missile defense shield in Central Europe—oh, how they resented the loss of their elegant slave states!—and the sabers scraping in the rusty scabbards, familiar music from the days of Brezhnev and Chernenko. And the point of it all, they said, the point of Russia House, was the unceasing requirement to know the plans and intentions behind the blue-eyed stare and the smooth blond brow, different secrets nowadays, but the same as ever, secrets that needed stealing.

  Then a retired ops officer—he looked like a Silk Road peddler, but with green eyes and a lopsided mouth—came to Russia House for an informal presentation.

  “Energy, population decline, natural resources, client states. Forget all that. Russia is still the only country that can put an ICBM into Lafayette Square across from the White House. The only one, and they have thousands of nukes.” He paused and rubbed his nose, his voice deep and throaty.

  “Russians. They hate foreigners only a little less than they hate themselves, and they’re born conspirators. Oh, they know very well they’re superior, but your Russki is insecure, wants to be respected, to be feared like the old Soviet Union. They need recognition, and they hate their second-tier status in the superpower stakes. That’s why Putin’s putting together USSR 2.0, and no one is going to stand in his way.

  “The kid who pulls the tablecloth and smashes the crockery to get attention—that’s Moscow. They don’t want to be ignored and they’ll break the dishes to make sure it doesn’t happen. Sell chemical weapons to Syria, give fuel rods to Iran, teach Indonesia centrifuge design, build a light water reactor in Burma, oh, yeah, people, nothing’s out of bounds.

  “But the real danger is the instability all this creates, the juice it gives the next generation of world-stopping crazies. People, the second Cold War is all about the resurgent Russian Empire, and don’t kid yourselves Moscow is gonna sit back and see how the Chinese navy handles itself when—not if—the shooting starts in the Taiwan Strait.” He shrugged on a shiny suit coat.

  “It’s not as easy this time around; you men and women will have to figure it out. I envy you.” He lifted his hand. “Good hunting,” he said, and walked out. The room was quiet and they all stayed in their seats.

  Nate was now in the vaunted Moscow pipeline, dipped in specialized training, compartmented internal ops training, and as the Moscow tour loomed, he studied operational vocabulary in Russian, and he was allowed to review the “books,” the agent files, read the names and examine the flat-faced passport photos of the Russian sources he would meet on the street, under the nose of surveillance. Life and death in the snow, the tip of the spear, as big as it comes. His Farm class was dispersed and largely forgotten. Now there were other lives at stake. He could not—would not—fail.

  =====

  Three days after his talk with Gondorf, Nate was sitting in a small restaurant in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, waiting for his flight to be called. He ordered a “sanwitz Cubano” and a beer off the greasy menu.

  The Embassy had offered to send an admin facilitator with him to help with tickets and passport control, but he had politely refused. The night before, Leavitt had brought out some beers at the end of the workday, and they sat around talking quietly, avoiding the obvious subjects, certainly not mentioning what all the other officers thought, that Nate’s career in general and reputation in particular were going to take a hit. Good-byes were strained.

  The only bright spot was that two days before, in response to Gondorf’s short-of-tour notification, Headquarters cabled that a case-officer position in neighboring Helsinki had suddenly come open. Given Nate’s nearly fluent Russian, the abundance of Russians in Finland, his instant mobility as an unmarried officer, and his unexpected availability, Headquarters inquired whether Nate would consider a lateral assignment to Helsinki, effective immediately. Nate accepted, as Gondork bridled at the reprieve, but concurred. Helsinki Station’s formal assignment cable arrived, followed by an informal note from Tom Forsyth, his soon-to-be new Chief of Station in Helsinki, simply saying he was glad to welcome Nate to the Station.

  Nate’s Finnair flight was called and he walked out onto the tarmac with the other passengers toward the plane. High above him, from a glassed-in observation room in the control tower of the airport, a two-man team cranked frames with a long lens. FSB surveillance had followed Nate to the airport to say good-bye. The FSB, the SVR, and especially Vanya Egorov were certain that Nate’s sudden departure was significant. As Nate mounted the aircraft stairs and the cameras clicked, Egorov sat in his office immersed in thought. A shame. His best chance to find the spy the CIA was running was fading away. It would take months, perhaps years, to develop a better lead in this case, if at all.

  Nash was still the key, thought Egorov. He presumably would still handle his source from outside Russia. Egorov decided not to let up on Nash, and the lateral assignment to Finland was an opening. Let’s work him a little in Helsinki, he thought. The SVR could operate virtually at will in Finland, and better yet, they had primacy in the foreign field. No more FSB bum-boys to coordinate with. We’ll see, thought Vanya. The world was too small a place to hide.

  MOSCOW AIRPORT CUBAN SANDWICH

  Slice a twelve-inch loaf of Cuban bread partway through lengthwise and fold flat. Drizzle olive oil on outside and slather yellow mustard inside. Layer glazed ham, roast pork, Swiss cheese, and thinly sliced pickles. Close and press for ten minutes in a plancha or between two hot foil-wrapped bricks (heat bricks for an hour in a 500-degree oven). Cut in thirds on the diagonal.

  3

  Dominika Egorova was sitting at a private corner banquette in the crystal-and-marble opulence of Baccara, the most elegant of the new restaurants in Moscow, located a few steps from Lubyanka Square. The forest of crystal and silver on a dazzling
white tablecloth was unlike anything she had experienced before. She was enjoying herself and, despite the operational nature of the evening, was determined to enjoy the sinfully expensive dinner.

  Dimitri Ustinov sat across from her, humming with horny. Tall, heavily built, with a shock of black hair and a lantern jaw, Ustinov was a leading member of the fraternity of gangster Russian oil and mining oligarchs who had amassed billion-dollar empires in the boom years after the Cold War. He had started as a local enforcer in organized crime, but he had come up in the world.

  Ustinov was dressed in a flawless shawl-collar tuxedo over a ribbed white dress shirt with blue diamond studs and cuff links. He wore a Tourbillon watch by Corum, one of only ten produced each year. His bear-paw hands rested easily over a blue-enameled Fabergé cigarette case, made in 1908 for the czar. He took a cigarette out of the case and lit it with a solid-gold Ligne Deux, snapping it shut with the distinctive musical note of all Dupont lighters.

  Ustinov was the third-wealthiest man in Russia, but for all his wealth he was not the smartest. He had feuded publicly with the government, most notably with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, and had refused to acknowledge or accept government regulation of his enterprises. Three months ago, at the height of the feud, Ustinov airily made obscenely disparaging remarks about Putin on a Moscow TV interview show. People in the know were amazed that Ustinov was still alive.

  Ustinov wasn’t thinking about anything that evening except Dominika. He had seen her at the television station a month after his interview. Her beauty and elemental sexuality took his breath away. He had been prepared to buy the television station on the spot just to meet her again, but it wasn’t necessary. She immediately and delightedly had accepted his invitation for dinner. As he looked at her across the table, Ustinov wanted his thumbprints all over her.