Red Sparrow: A Novel

by Jason Matthews

  “May I join you?” said a voice, startling her. She opened her eyes and saw the tidy figure of General Korchnoi of the Americas Department standing before her. His suit coat was buttoned and he stood with his feet together, as if he were a maître d’. The sunlight made his purple halo deeper in color, almost with a discernible texture. Dominika jerked upright, fumbling with her flats, trying to get them back on. “Leave your shoes off, Corporal,” Korchnoi said with a laugh. “I wish I could take mine off and find a fish pond in which to dangle them.”

  Dominika laughed. “Why don’t you? It feels wonderful.” Korchnoi looked at the blue eyes and the chestnut hair and the guileless face. What sort of provisional officer would make that outrageous suggestion to a general-grade officer? What kind of junior graduate would have the nerve? Then the head of the SVR Directorate responsible for all offensive intelligence operations in the Northern Hemisphere leaned down and pulled off his shoes and socks. They sat in the sun together.

  “How is your work, Corporal?” asked Korchnoi, looking at the trees around the terrace.

  “It is my first week. I have a desk and an in-box, and I’m reading the file.”

  “Your first case file. How do you like it?”

  “It’s interesting,” Dominika said, thinking about the general shabbiness of the file, the dubious conclusions, the spurious recommendations.

  “You don’t sound entirely enthusiastic,” said Korchnoi.

  “Oh, no, I am,” said Dominika.

  “But . . . ?” said Korchnoi, turning toward her slightly. The sunlight cast a spidery shadow on his bushy eyebrows.

  “I think I need time to become familiar with operational files,” said Dominika.

  “Meaning what?” said Korchnoi. His manner was gentle, reassuring. Dominika felt comfortable speaking to him.

  “After I read the file, I did not agree with the conclusion. I don’t see how they arrived at it.”

  “What part don’t you agree with?”

  “They are looking at a low-level target,” she said, consciously not giving too many details, mindful of security. “He is lonely, vulnerable, but I don’t think he is worth the effort. At the Forest they spoke often about squandering operational resources, about not chasing unprofitable targets.”

  “There was a time,” said Korchnoi, testing her, “when women were excluded from the Academy. There was a time when it would have been unthinkable for a junior officer to read into an ongoing operation, much less comment on it.” He looked up at the midday sun and squinted. Royal purple.

  “I’m sorry, General,” Dominika said mildly. She knew, was certain, that he was not angry. “It was not my intention to criticize, or to speak inappropriately.” She looked at him squinting up at the sun, quiet, waiting. She had an instinct to speak her mind to this man. “Forgive me, General, I meant only to comment that I think the case is weak. I cannot see how they arrived at the operational conclusions. I know I have scant experience, but anyone could see this.”

  Korchnoi turned to look at Dominika—she was serene and confident. He chuckled. “You are supposed to read with a critical eye. And those idiots at the Academy are right. We have to be more efficient. The old days are over. We have difficulty forgetting that.”

  “I did not mean to be disrespectful,” said Dominika. “I want to do a good job.”

  “And you are right.” Korchnoi smiled. “Marshal your facts, order your arguments, and speak up. There will be disapproval, but keep on. I wish you luck.” He rose from the wall, holding his shoes and socks. “By the way, Corporal, what is the name of the target?” He saw her hesitate. “Just curious.” Dominika in a flash knew this was not the time to be a novice. If he didn’t already know the name, he could find out in ten seconds.

  “Delon,” she said. “French Embassy.”

  “Thank you.” And he turned, still holding his shoes and socks, and walked away down the path.

  She expected nothing less, but the difficulties began during the daily planning sessions. Holding the two-volume file in her arms, Dominika entered the conference room and sat at the end of a faded table with three officers, all draped in browns and grays, from the Fifth Department (responsible for France, Benelux, Southern Europe, and Romania). She sensed the lack of energy in the room. There was no emotional output from these men, no imagination, no passion.

  An enormous map of Eurasia covered an entire wall, several telephones were on a dusty credenza at the end of the room. The men stopped talking when she entered. Rumors were already circulating about the beautiful Sparrow School graduate. Dominika returned their stares, barely registering the hard faces, the question-mark smirks. Browns, grays, dingy colors from dingy minds. Cigarette butts filled the cheap aluminum ashtrays in the center of the table.

  “Are there any preliminary comments?” asked Simyonov at the far end of the table. He was as expressionless and uninterested as he had been when Dominika first met him. He looked at the three faces around the table. No one spoke. He turned toward Dominika, daring her to speak. She took a breath.

  “With the colonel’s permission, I would like to discuss the target’s access,” Dominika said. She could hear her heartbeat.

  “We have assessed his access,” said Simyonov. His tone implied that Dominika was not to concern herself with the intricacies of the operation. “He is a worthwhile target. What is left now is to determine an approach,” he said, looking at the officer seated beside him.

  “I’m afraid that’s not entirely correct,” said Dominika. Heads came up to look at her. What was this? An attitude? From an Academy graduate? From a Sparrow? Eyes swiveled toward Simyonov for his reaction. This was going to be good.

  Simyonov slouched over the table, hands in front of him. Today he radiated a faint yellow glow. This man was not going to stand for any contradictions. His eyes were red and watery, his gray hair lay slack on his head.

  “You are here, comrade,” he said, “to assist in the approach to the Frenchman. Matters of access, handling, and production will be the responsibility of the officers of this department.” He leaned a little farther forward and stared at Dominika. Heads swiveled back in her direction. Surely that would be the end of the discussion.

  Dominika kept her hands clasped firmly on the file folders in front of her to keep them from trembling. “I’m sorry to contradict you, comrade,” said Dominika, echoing his word, an anachronism. “But I was assigned to participate in this operation as an operations officer. I look forward to being included in all phases of the case.”

  “An operations officer, you say?” said Simyonov. “A graduate of the Forest?”

  “Yes,” said Dominika.

  “When did you graduate?” he asked.

  “The most recent class,” said Dominika.

  “And since then?” Simyonov looked around the table expectantly.

  “Specialized training.”

  “What sort of specialized training?” asked Simyonov quietly.

  She had prepared for this. Simyonov knew very well where she had been. He was trying to humiliate her. “I audited the basic course at the Kon Institute,” said Dominika, her lips tight against her teeth. She was not going to back down to these lichinki, these maggots. She cursed Uncle Vanya in the same breath.

  “Ah, yes, Sparrow School,” said Simyonov. “And that, precisely, is why you are here. To participate in the entrapment of the target, Delon.” One of the men at the table nearly, but not quite, stifled a smirk.

  “I’m sorry, Colonel,” said Dominika, “I was assigned to this department as a full member of the team.”

  “I see,” he said. “Have you read Delon’s papka?”

  “Both volumes,” said Dominika.

  “Admirable,” he said. “What preliminary observations do you have about the case and its merits?” Smoke drifted to the ceiling as the room fell silent. Dominika looked at the faces appraising her.

  She swallowed. “The issue of his access is critical. The target, Delon, in his capa
city as a midlevel commercial officer, does not have access to classified material sufficient to justify a politically delicate chernota.”

  “And what do you know of blackmail?” Simyonov said evenly, slightly amused. “Just out of the Academy and all?”

  “Delon himself is not worth the effort,” repeated Dominika.

  “There are a number of analysts in Line R who would disagree with you,” said Simyonov, his tone hardening. “Delon has access to French and EU commercial data. Budget figures. Programs. Investment strategies, energy policies. You would throw this information away?”

  Dominika shook her head. “Delon knows nothing that one of our low-grade assets in any of a half dozen French commercial or trade ministries in Paris could not provide directly. Surely that avenue would be a more efficient way to service general requirements?”

  Simyonov, face hardening, sat back in his chair. “You apparently learned quite a lot at the Academy. So, you would propose that the department not validate the operation? That we disengage and do nothing against the target, Delon?”

  “I say only that the potential risk of compromising a Western diplomat in Moscow is not justified by his low potential as a source.”

  “Go back and read the file again, Corporal,” said Simyonov. “And come back when you have something constructive to add.” They all stared at Dominika as she rose from the table, collected the file, and walked the long length of the room to the door. She kept her back straight and focused on the door handle. She closed the door to muffled murmurs and chuckles.

  The next morning Dominika arrived at her empty desk to find a plain white envelope in her spavined in-box. She carefully slit it open with a thumbnail and unfolded the single sheet of paper. Written in purple ink in a classic script was a single line:

  Delon has a daughter. Follow your instincts. K.

  The next day they were back around the table piled high with photographs and surveillance reports. The ashtrays were overflowing. Dominika walked to her place at the end of the conference table. The men ignored her. They were reviewing Delon’s profile, a smoke-polluted exercise conducted with disinterest and one eye on the wall clock. There were no primary colors from any of them. They walked through his habits and patterns, as described by the teams, arguing about places where they could engineer contact. Bored as usual, Simyonov looked up at Dominika. “Well, Corporal, do you have any ideas about contact points? Assuming you have reconsidered your earlier objections to the operation.”

  Dominika kept her voice steady. “I have reread the file, Colonel,” she said, “and I still believe this man is not a valid target.” Heads around the table did not come up this time; the men kept their eyes on the papers in front of them. This vorobey was not long for the Fifth, they thought, possibly not long for the Service.

  “Still you take this line? How interesting,” said Simyonov. “So we drop him, is that your recommendation?”

  “I said no such thing,” said Dominika. “I believe we should indeed pursue him as a target, exploiting his lonely solitude.” She flipped open the cover of the file in front of her. “But the ultimate target, the end goal of the operation, should not be Delon himself.”

  “What nonsense are you talking?” said Simyonov.

  “It’s already in the file. I completed a bit of extra research,” said Dominika.

  Simyonov looked around the table, then back at Dominika. “The case has been thoroughly researched already—”

  “And discovered that Monsieur Delon has a daughter,” interrupted Dominika.

  “And a wife in Paris, yes, we know all that!”

  “And the daughter works in the French Ministry of Defense.”

  “Unlikely,” fumed Simyonov. “The entire family was traced. The Paris rezidentura checked all local records.”

  “Then it appears they missed something. She is twenty-five years old, unmarried, lives with her mother. Her name is Cécile,” said Dominika.

  “This is preposterous,” said Simyonov.

  “She was mentioned only once in the transcripts. I checked the foreign directories in Line R’s library,” said Dominika, flipping more pages in the file. “Cécile Denise Delon is listed in the Rue Saint-Dominique registry. That means the central registry at the Defense Ministry.” Dominika looked around the table at the faces staring at her. “That suggests, as far as I could determine, that she has access to classified defense bulletins distributed daily to the government. She is one of the custodians of planning documents for the French military. She likely handles the dissemination and storage of a wide variety of French military budget, readiness, and manpower reports.”

  “Conjecture, at this point,” said Simyonov.

  “We don’t know where the French store their nuclear secrets, but I wouldn’t be surprised—”

  “There’s no need for idle speculation,” said Simyonov. The yellow fog around his head was growing, and getting darker too. Dominika knew that he was frustrated, angry, calculating, and she knew that her defiance and insubordination were already more than enough to have her cashiered from the Service.

  The room was deathly still. Simyonov’s antediluvian Soviet instincts were alerted; the bureaucrat in him calculated. His thoughts in an instant proceeded in the nature of the traditional KGB functionary: This little tsarevna with the big last name is making me look lacking and stupid. How can I profit in the end from her work? If this maneken is correct, the rewards could be huge, but so are the risks. An operation targeting the French Ministry of Defense would need to be approved all the way to the top.

  “If this is true,” he said stingily, “there could be an added benefit.” He spoke as if he had known all along. He flicked ash into the ashtray.

  She could read his oily, humid mind. “I agree with you, Colonel. It’s Delon’s real potential, it’s what makes him worth pursuing, what makes it worth the risk to recruit him.”

  Simyonov shook his head. “The daughter is in Paris, twenty-five hundred kilometers away.”

  “Not so far, I think,” said Dominika, smiling. “We will see.” Simyonov was unsettled by that smile. “Of course, we’ll have to develop a more detailed profile about the relationship between father and daughter.”

  “Of course, thank you, Corporal,” Simyonov said. A few more minutes of this and she would be taking over the Fifth Department. All right, he thought, she could do the preparatory work, as much as she liked. As the operation proceeded he’d ensure she’d be on her back with her legs in the air with the cameras rolling, and that would take care of that.

  “Very well, Corporal, since you uncovered this interesting detail, I want you to draw up your own thoughts about contact with the target Delon,” he said to Dominika.

  “With your permission, Colonel, I have already drawn up a plan to engineer first contact,” said Dominika.

  “I see . . .”

  The Fifth Department officers pushed back in their chairs and crushed their unfinished cigarettes in the ashtrays. Jesus, the gossip about this Sparrow had been limited to blue eyes, how she filled out her regulation skirt, the size of her chest. No one had mentioned anything about her yaitsa, her set of balls. They filed out of the room, leaving Dominika to gather the paper scattered around the table, the new girl left behind to clean up the room. She didn’t mind. She stacked the papers, piled them on top of the dog-eared folders of Delon’s file, and walked out of the conference room, closing the door behind her.

  In the Arbat, at number 12 Nikitsky Bulvar, there is a small restaurant called Jean Jacques. It is something like a French brasserie, noisy, smoky, filled with the winey aroma of cassoulets and stews. Tables covered with white tablecloths are jammed nearly edge to edge on a black-and-white tile floor, bentwood chairs tucked in tight. The walls are covered in wine bottles on shelves to the ceiling, the curving bar is lined with stools. Jean Jacques is always crowded with Muscovites. At lunchtime, if one is alone one shares a table with a stranger.

  Midday on a rainy Tuesday, Jean Jacque
s was even more busy than usual. Customers stood inside the front door or under the canopy outside, waiting for single seats to come free. The din was overwhelming, cigarette smoke hung heavy. Waiters scurried between tables, opening bottles and carrying trays. After a fifteen-minute wait, Simon Delon of the French Embassy in Moscow was shown to a two-cover in the corner of the room. A young man sat in the other seat, finishing a deep bowl of Dijonnaise stew thick with vegetables and chunks of meat. He dipped black bread into the gravy. As Delon sat at the table, the young man barely looked up in acknowledgment.

  Despite the crowds and the noise, Delon liked the restaurant, it reminded him of Paris. Better still, the Russian lunchtime practice of seating strangers together occasionally provided an opportunity to be seated beside a cute university student or an attractive shopgirl. Sometimes they even smiled at him, as if they were together. At least it would look that way from across the room.

  Delon ordered a glass of wine while he looked at the menu. The young man sitting across from him paid his check, wiped his mouth, and reached for his jacket on the back of his chair. Delon looked up to see a stunning dark-haired woman with ice-blue eyes walk toward his table. He held his breath. The woman actually sat down in the seat just vacated by the young man. She wore her hair up, there was a single strand of pearls beneath her collar. Under a light raincoat she was wearing a beige satin shirt over a darker chocolate-colored skirt, with a brown alligator belt. Delon took a ragged pull of his wine as he peeked and saw how the shirt moved over the woman’s body.

  She took a small pair of square reading glasses out of an alligator clutch; they perched on the end of her nose as she looked at her menu. She sensed him looking at her and she raised her eyes. He dove back behind his menu in a panic. Another peek, he took in the elegant fingers holding the menu, the curve of her neck, the eyelashes over those X-ray eyes. She looked at him again.