Red Sparrow

by Jason Matthews

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  Benford sat at a conference table in the basement of FBI headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington. The table was littered with the remains of lunch ordered out from several local restaurants. This was a working lunch, no executive dining room for them now. Benford had ordered a Thai chicken salad called larb gai, succulent ground chicken with onions and chilies, basil, and lime, so highly seasoned that he was blowing contentedly like a steam boiler while others around the table finished their more conventional Episcopalian lunches of sandwiches or soup.

  The table was divided evenly between CIA and FBI, mostly senior-level officers from technical and counterintelligence divisions. When the courier from Moscow arrived with MARBLE’s pouch, Benford—even Benford—agreed to let the FBI handle the forensic dissection of the package, to ensure proper procedure. “These federal automatons,” said Benford earlier to Nathaniel, “have been speaking to me about maintaining the ‘evidentiary chain’ as regards MARBLE’s package. If he has in fact recovered an actual disc containing top-secret information, passed by hand to the Russians from SWAN, then according to our FEEBish colleagues we must begin thinking about considerations of admissible evidence and securing convictions and such things.” Benford had uncharacteristically deferred to them.

  Benford contemplated a metal evidence tray at the center of the table. The disc—now out of its SVR outer plastic and Pathfinder inner paper sleeve—lay in the bottom of the tray, on a sterile towel, its surface lightly coated with gray powder. FBI techs had followed procedure and staggered the tests—a ninhydrin swab to raise existing latent prints on the drive, then the spritz of calcium oxide for contrast. Seated around the table, everybody could see the three distinct, single prints on the dull surface. What would it be: a Russian lab rat’s salami thumbprints, or the whorls and ridges of an American mole? Benford knew that MARBLE would not have opened the plastic envelope, he would have been too good, too careful, to touch the actual disc itself. The FEEBs had taken photos and lifts to the laboratory for enhancement. An automated search in the FBI’s print archives was already under way.

  Benford was in his car heading back up the GW Parkway toward Headquarters when his car phone rang. It was the deputy chief of the FBI Laboratory Services. “You might want to turn around and come back down here,” the FBI man told Benford. “You are freaking not going to believe the hit we just got.”

  “This better be good,” said Benford, looking for the Spout Run exit so he could double back.

  “Oh, it’s good, all right,” said the FBI scientist.

  BENFORD’S THAI CHICKEN SALAD (LARB GAI)

  Finely hand-chop lean chicken breasts with a large knife or cleaver. Season with lime juice and rice wine and sauté until crumbly and white. Let chicken cool and fold in lemongrass, diced garlic, diced chilies, lemon zest, fish sauce, salt, and pepper. Incorporate well. Add chopped cilantro, basil, mint, and scallions. Toss well; serve in lettuce cups with rice.

  35

  The DNA Fingerprint Act of 2005 was in that year drafted, submitted to, and discussed in the Senate Judiciary Committee of Congress, but, for a variety of political reasons unrelated to national security, was deferred twice and taken off the docket. The bill intended to establish a national fingerprint and DNA archive for background checks, criminal and immigration registration, and identification for federal employees in sensitive jobs. Caucus leadership in the Senate had at the time mildly suggested to freshman senator Stephanie Boucher that in the interest of bipartisan comity she join a mixed group of Democrats and Republicans in support of the bill. Even though she personally opposed the notion of a national archive of identity information as an obscene invasion of privacy, Senator Boucher privately assessed that her public support of the bill would strengthen her national-security credentials and play well to the many high-tech aerospace companies in her state. She even participated in a televised bit of dumb crambo. Legislators agreed to be fingerprinted and for DNA samples to be taken in front of reporters. Senator Boucher smiled for the cameras as a technician swabbed the inside of her cheek, prompting one off-camera staff aide to wonder how many separate DNA nucleotides would be found inside that mouth at any given time.

  The result of this bit of bipartisan theater almost a decade ago—long forgotten by her and unbeknownst to her SVR handlers—was that the fingerprints of Senator Stephanie Boucher resided in the FBI’s IAFIS database. When a partial right thumb and smudged index and middle fingerprints were lifted off the classified Pathfinder Satellite Corporation disc taken from the SVR laboratory in Moscow, it took the automated system approximately ten minutes to identify Boucher’s latents from among the more than twenty-five thousand civilian prints stored in the system.

  Benford and FBI counterintelligence chiefs for the next days huddled in conference rooms on both sides of the Potomac, not so much to argue about primacy in the case, or to debate the finer points of a full-court investigation of the senator, but to determine how to keep the White House, the National Security Council, the Capitol Police, the US Senate, the California state legislature, the City Council of Los Angeles, and the California State Raisin Growers Association from leaking details of the investigation to the media. “The last thing we need is for Boucher to panic and defect to the Russians,” said Charles “Chaz” Montgomery, chief of the Bureau’s National Security Division.

  “Nonsense,” said Benford, gathering up maps after a long session to discuss surveillance. “Sending Boucher permanently to Moscow would be better than detonating a neutron bomb in Red Square.”

  The CIA and FBI formulated their tactical plan for blanket coverage on the street, and for telephone, mail, and trash covers. Boucher didn’t know it, but she had become the flaxen-haired milkmaid walking alone on the gray moor as the first howls of the hounds came up out of the fog, from the boggy ravines, over the rocky ledges. It was already too late to run.

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  The California house owned by Senator Boucher was a low-slung, slate-roofed, Prairie-style five-bedroom hilltop retreat on Mandeville Canyon Road in Brentwood with a view of the Pacific on one side and the waffle-iron lights of Los Angeles on the other. A black-bottomed pool and sprawling paved deck in the center of the U-shaped house fizzed under the hazy sunlight. The sliding glass doors of the bedroom wing were open and music drifted out, languorous, careening, enticing, k. d. lang and Miss Chatelaine.

  Stephanie Boucher lay on the sheets of an immense bed with an imposing black ash headboard of a certain Scandinavian severity. The slash of black contrasted with a bedroom done in beiges and creams. The senator was naked; a band pulled her hair back tightly on her head. Next to her lay a man half Boucher’s age. In his midtwenties, he played in one of those outfield positions either for the Dodgers or the Angels, Stephanie couldn’t remember which. He was asleep, naked, an ebony baby grand glistening with morning sweat, the rippling muscles of his back like the stones in a creek bed. He lay on his stomach, feet crossed at the ankles.

  Stephanie slowly moved to the edge of the bed, trying not to wake what’s-his-name. It was less a matter of being considerate than it was of not wanting to stir him to additional exertions. Last night had been enough, hours of it, some of it significantly painful. Legs weren’t designed to bend that far, certain body parts were meant to be used in only one direction. But it was the only way to fly, she thought as she slid off her side of the bed, her back and thighs and belly itchy.

  She looked into the bathroom mirror and combed her hair, and saw her mother’s face, in the little bedroom of the little house in Hermosa, swollen and slack and sitting up in bed sharing a cigarette with a man, sometimes old and fat, sometimes young and skinny, tattoos and mustaches and buzz cuts and ponytails, and Stephanie would close the door and look at the wall clock in the kitchen and wish, just once, her timid, frightened father would come home from work early. After the funeral, and the trial, Stephanie looked into another mirror and told herself that no one was going to help her if she didn’t he
lp herself, which was why she had called her father to come home that final afternoon.

  =====

  Senator Boucher reclined on a padded steamer chair by the side of the pool and picked at a shrimp salad laced with cumin and dill. She had thrown on a white cotton cover-up to spare her assistant the discomfort of seeing her topless as they worked. This latest staff aide, a jumpy, size-fourteen nail-biter named Missy, was sitting at a table covered with papers. Missy was the senator’s third personal assistant in the last twelve months. The bleached bones of previous staffers on Team Boucher littered the landscape from Washington to Los Angeles. Missy read from a folder, reviewing the senator’s upcoming California schedule. There would be two speaking events in San Diego and Sacramento, a visit to Pathfinder Satellite in Los Angeles for a classified briefing, and a fund-raising dinner in San Francisco. She had to return to Washington no later than Tuesday of next week, in time for the appropriations vote on supplementals for the Pentagon. Boucher told Missy to remind her also to order a top-to-bottom review of the CIA’s classified budget. She would ram unpleasant things up the CIA’s fanny in the next few months.

  That mental image prompted Boucher to look across the pool at the open bedroom doors. Her shortstop was still asleep, thank God. She would get her driver to take him to the ballpark or Malibu or—

  Movement. Quite a lot of it. The housekeeper escorted four men onto the pool area from the main wing of the house. Three wore suits and white shirts with muted ties, laced shoes, and aviator shades; one carried a briefcase. The fourth man was Nate, dark-haired and thin. He wore a blazer over a cotton shirt, jeans, and loafers. Boucher watched them come across the deck. Her brain, overheated and mazy, registered a whiff of danger. Whoever these bureaucrats were, she would break some balls, act pissed at this interruption. They didn’t give her a chance to build up a head of steam.

  “Senator Stephanie Boucher,” said the oldest of the three suits, “I am Special Agent Charles Montgomery from the National Security Division of the FBI.” He opened a black wallet to display official identification. His two colleagues did the same, but young Tab Hunter behind them didn’t make a move. “You’re under arrest for espionage as an agent of a foreign power in violation of USC Title 18, Sections 794(a) and 794(c) of the Espionage Act of 1917.”

  Boucher looked up at the men, squinting in the sunlight. She purposely had not gathered her cover-up around her, and it hung loosely on her shoulders, slightly revealing the curve of her small breasts. “What are you talking about?” she asked. “Are you crazy? Do you think you can barge into my house without making an appointment?” Missy sat silent at the table, looking back and forth at the men and her boss.

  “Senator, I’m going to have to ask you to stand up,” said the FBI agent. “I need you to come inside the house and get dressed.” He began reciting a Miranda warning as he gently took Boucher by the arm to lift her out of the recliner.

  “Take your hands off me,” said Boucher. “I’m a US senator. You fuckers just bit off more than you can chew.” She turned to the plump Missy, still sitting motionless at the table. Missy was mentally reviewing how the day had begun (with a half hour of syncopated grunts and wailing from the bedroom) and how it was progressing (with the FBI arresting her boss). She wondered how it would end. “Missy, get on the phone. I want you to make three calls right away,” said Boucher. Montgomery was courteously helping the senator get to her feet.

  “Call the fucking attorney general this minute. I don’t care where he is or what he’s doing, I want him on the phone. Second, call the chairman of the SSCI, same drill, I want him on the line in five minutes. Then call my lawyer and tell him to get over here instantly.” Boucher turned to the FBI men standing in a semicircle around her. “Your boss at Justice will impale you on a spit, and my lawyer will roast you over an open flame.” Missy hurriedly gathered her papers, but an FBI agent gently said, “I’m going to have to take these papers, miss, sorry.” Missy looked once at the FBI agent and then at her boss, and rushed inside the house.

  The FBI agents walked Boucher across the deck toward the main wing of the house. In the living room, Boucher pulled brusquely away from the restraining hand on her arm. “I told you dickheads to take your hands off me,” she said. “This is outrageous, you have no right accusing me. Where’s your evidence, where’s the proof?” She walked stiffly to the couch and sat down. There was a hairline crack in her unassailable confidence and arrogance now; she wanted to buy some time, give her lawyer time to get here. Golov’s constant yammering about security, maybe she should have paid more attention. Still, the FBI didn’t know squat. Golov was a pro, no way they could prove a thing. She did not contemplate the possibility that it was she, Boucher, who may have compromised everything. “I’m waiting for my attorney,” she said, crossing her arms across her chest.

  “Senator, we have properly identified ourselves as federal officers. We have read you your rights. Do you understand these rights?” Boucher stared at him, refusing to answer. “If you do not understand these rights, I will repeat them. If you do so indicate that you understand them, and keeping these rights in mind, do you wish to speak to us now?”

  Boucher figured that any temporizing and delay would be in her interest. The calls to Washington and to her lawyer would soon result in a flurry of action that would string this out for months or years. Boucher told herself that if they had not caught her red-handed, they couldn’t prove shit. Allegations, flawed conclusions, unsubstantiated associations. She knew all about this kind of trench warfare. She could brawl with the best of them. She looked up at the FBI agents and said, “I’m not answering any of your questions.”

  Special Agent Montgomery snapped his fingers and reached around for the briefcase. He took out a folder and laid it on the coffee table in front of Boucher. She opened the file and saw a timeline of classified briefings that she had attended at Pathfinder Satellite Corporation, and records of personal bank accounts reflecting a dozen unexplained cash deposits from unknown sources, each for exactly $9,500, totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars. She remembered demanding mad-money payments, and how Golov tried to dissuade her. The Capitol Hill instincts in her head told her this was still circumstantial, a good lawyer could create doubts, obfuscate, keep the ball rolling. Boucher looked up at Montgomery, defiant. “Just a lot of paper. Doesn’t mean squat.”

  “Senator, please take a look at the last document in the file.” Boucher flipped over the penultimate page at the bottom of the file, a brilliantly clear black-and-white photograph of a disc with the Pathfinder logo on it, white and smudged with powder. “We acquired this disc with your latent prints on it from Moscow,” said Montgomery. Boucher did not speak. The living room was quiet; muted music came from the bedroom wing, Yanni’s Out of Silence album with John Tesh on keyboards, Missy’s favorite. Montgomery cleared his throat and slid a one-page document, single-spaced, across the table at Boucher. It had an embossed FBI logo at the top.

  “What’s this?”

  “If you have understood the rights as I have explained them to you, this is a confession of guilt to the charges of espionage. Will you sign it?”

  “You think I’m going to sign a confession of guilt?” Boucher could not feel that her cotton shift was hanging open. The FBI agents tried not looking down the front of her cover-up.

  “You’re not being forced or coerced in any way to sign the document. I am simply offering you the option,” said Montgomery.

  Among her many flaws, Stephanie Boucher did not suffer from indecision. She believed in herself and had always thought that she deserved—no, it was owed her—the success, career, wealth, and lifestyle she now enjoyed. The fierce and greedy light that burned in her had long ago fired the conviction that she would not give ground, to anyone, for anything. That meant not letting these cake-eaters arrest her, that meant not losing the power and title and respect of elected office. That meant not going away forever to prison. She would not let that happen. She looked arou
nd at their faces.

  “Okay, I’ll sign,” she said abruptly. The agents looked at one another. One stepped forward and took a pen out of his pocket. It was a white plastic Skillcraft pen with US GOVERNMENT stenciled on the side. Boucher looked at the pen and waved it off. “Missy, get my pen from the desk,” she said. Missy had been telephoning frantically and now walked over to the couch with Boucher’s black-and-beige Montblanc Etoile.

  Boucher unscrewed the cap, leaned over the paper, and scrawled something on the line at the bottom of the document. “This do it for you?” she asked. Montgomery took the document, looked at it, and smiled.

  “I’m not quite sure ‘Suck my dick’ would be admissible in court. We’ll do it any way you like,” he said mildly.

  “Who the hell is that guy?” she said, pointing at Nate. A moment of awkward silence, while all heads turned toward Nate.

  With the agents standing around the couch distracted, Boucher replaced the cap of her pen, grasped the pearl on the end of the pocket clip, drew out the copper-colored needle, and plunged it into a vein on her left arm. Nate was the only one who saw what she had done and he leapt forward toward the couch, batting the pen out of her hand.

  None of the people in Boucher’s living room had ever heard of the golden dart frog, nor did they know that the two-inch, bright-yellow leaf-sitter lived exclusively in the Pacific-coast rain forest of Colombia. An FBI toxicologist with research materials at hand could have informed them that the batrachotoxin secreted from the skin of the tiny amphibian is highly lethal to humans—a neurotoxin that locks the muscles violently into a state of contraction, causing respiratory paralysis and heart failure. It was KGB chemists in Laboratory 12, the Kamera, who first harvested batrachotoxin in the 1970s after they discovered that there is no antidote for the poison and that the toxicity of the compound, as on the point of a treated needle, does not dissipate when dry or over time.