Red Sparrow: A Novel

by Jason Matthews

  Dominika looked from Nate to Forsyth to Gable, sipped her tea, kept going. There was a second page in the envelope, with three torn strips as if yanked out of a three-ring binder. TOP SECRET/UMBRA top and bottom of the page, boldface title US National Communications Grid, an upper corner trimmed diagonally. Volontov was nervous, made her read the warning notice under the title to him twice: “Unauthorized distribution,” “If found, return to Office of Coordination,” “Misuse subject to prosecution.”

  Volontov’s face was gray, he barked at her to make a copy. His Soviet sycophant juices were flowing, and he puffily told her he was going to pouch the original title page directly to First Deputy Director Egorov, top priority, more secure that way. Forsyth looked at Gable, and Gable was standing up, throwing on his coat, when Dominika lifted her sweater and pulled a folded piece of paper from her waistband and slid it across to Forsyth—she’d made a second copy. The Americans clustered around; Gable tapped the torn diagonal corner and muttered, “Fucker’s cut out the serial number,” then looked at Dominika and said, “I thought I told you never to do that again,” then leaned over and kissed the top of her head and went out. The Station’s NIACT cable would be in Washington in thirty minutes. Gable liked sending night-action cables and waking the doughnut-eaters in Langley.

  Volontov had been in torment the rest of the day, said Dominika. He had called her into his office half a dozen times, an orange Ferris wheel of anticipation around his head. Even he realized that this could be a colossal intelligence windfall. Near the end of the day he decided that he would call Vanya Egorov directly to inform him of the sensitive and potentially spectacular development, and to alert him to the incoming pouch. Let the deputy director see how he, Volontov, personally was handling the operation.

  Volontov shut his door to make the call on the VCh phone, and Dominika had heard the gratuitous laughter and the servility in the repeated, barked “Da, da, da,” a real l’stets, how do you say it, she asked, buttock-kisser? Close enough, said Forsyth. Volontov summoned her for the tenth time that day and archly informed her that the deputy director of course had ratified Volontov’s suggestion that Dominika, and only Dominika, would assist the rezident in this operation. She would prepare the funds—she was told to draw only $5,000. She was directed to rent the room at the Kämp. She would translate during the meeting with the American. Start now, he said, dismissing her with a wave.

  Unbeknownst to Dominika, Volontov also called in his Line KR referent, the former Border Guards prodigy. “I want you to countersurveil a meeting I’m having at the end of the week. In the lobby of the Kämp Hotel. Just sit and watch.”

  “A meeting?” said the counterintelligence officer. “How many men will we need? Of course we’ll be armed.”

  “Idiot. Just you. No weapons. Just sit in the lobby. Watch me meet a contact. Stay there. Then watch me leave. Is that clear?” said Volontov. The KR man nodded, but he was disappointed.

  Nate hustled Dominika out of the safe house after an hour. Moscow Rules from now on: No unnecessary meetings. No daytime meetings. Look for surveillance, assume surveillance. Curtail ostensible social contacts. Stay close to the embassy until after the Kämp Hotel rendezvous was complete. Volontov would be on edge, jumpy, might draw in the strings, watch everyone. They would take no chances, no risks. “There’s a cobra in the toilet bowl,” said Gable back in the Station. “We have to proceed very carefully. Anything happens to blow the meeting, anything—this shithead American gets arrested, the SVR doesn’t get the manual—Dominika is the only other person in the SVR who knows about the volunteer.”

  Forsyth sent a restricted-handling cable reminding Headquarters of the risk to DIVA. Chief Europe for one was shocked, shocked, to read Forsyth’s recommendation that Station simply identify the traitor and let the FBI settle his hash after he returned to the United States. Chief Europe could not countenance a plan that would result in the grave loss of national security information—not as long as his hand remained at the tiller of Europe Division.

  When the Legal Attaché of the American Embassy, a fifty-two-year-old Special Agent of the FBI named Elwood Maratos, barged into Forsyth’s office to coordinate the “takedown,” they knew Headquarters had briefed the walk-in all over Washington. Maratos had distinguished himself during a twenty-five-year career as a bank-robbery investigator in the Midwest, and he put his feet up in the office, showing the soles of his shoes to Forsyth and Gable, and said this was a clear case of espionage committed by an American citizen, and therefore under the strict purview of the FBI.

  “Fucking guy,” said Gable when Maratos left, “thinks espresso means ‘nonstop train’ in Spanish.”

  It was a certainty that, if they let them, a dozen FBI Special Agents would descend on Helsinki wearing cargo pants, tactical boots, and New York Yankees ball caps. All the Station could do would be to try to keep the FEEBs under control. Forsyth told Nate to have the exfiltration plan for DIVA spun up and ready. They might have to get her out if there was a flap and the Russians started looking for reasons why.

  Then something happened in Headquarters. There must have been a big meeting, and they started paying attention to the danger to DIVA. Some later said it was Simon Benford, Chief of Counterintelligence, who threw one of his well-known histrionic fits, warning that inattention to the counterintelligence threat to this agent would ensure “a pig’s breakfast.” The result was two cables that arrived on the third day, two days before the meeting at the Kämp. The first was tagged From Chief Europe, direct for COS. The second had been drafted by Benford with characteristic economy bordering on rudeness. That cable proposed an operational gambit that astounded even Marty Gable, an old whore who had an ashtray in his office made from a human skull from either Cambodia or Miami—he claimed he could not remember which.

  The first cable read:

  1. Please confine future traffic on reference information to this channel. Appreciate ref. Hqs assigns top priority to preventing the potential illegal sale to SVR of US classified material. Station directed to coordinate with Embassy FBI representative, who has been briefed by FBI Hqs in Washington. Hqs confirms to Station that FBI has primacy in all investigatory and law-enforcement matters involving threats to the national security and Amcits suspected of a federal crime, per Title II of the Intelligence Reform Act of 2004 and Executive Order 12333 and 50 USC 401.

  2. Request Station fully support FBI investigation as required. Hqs of course is concerned that any arrest could affect security of Station asset GTDIVA. Submit Station should increase measures to vouchsafe DIVA’s operational security.

  3. Please report developments by immediate precedence cable, including NIACT. Hqs standing by to assist as required. Fair winds and smooth sailing.

  The second cable read:

  1. Reference GTDIVA report received. DIVA developing into exceptional source.

  2. Please express Hqs compliments.

  3. Concur that even slight misstep in dealing with ref volunteer will put scrutiny on DIVA. In event worst-case outcome, please ensure exfil contingency plan is in place. Hqs prepared for defector processing and resettlement.

  4. FBI law enforcement equities notwithstanding, Hqs goals are to identify volunteer, affect his arrest without alerting SVR, and permit rpt permit SVR to take receipt of manual without raising Russian CI suspicions. FBI will be briefed on covert action opportunity and will follow Station direction to achieve CA goals.

  5. For Station background, separate DoD compartmented program last year produced modified manual (GTSOLAR) identical to copy offered for sale in Helsinki. Exact nature modifications classified, will result in technical disinformation and misdirection.

  6. Iden OSWR researcher couriering SOLAR manual departing Washington evening 17th expected arrival morning of 18th. Please meet and accommodate.

  7. Submit asap operational proposal to substitute SOLAR manual by immediate precedence. Disregard guidance in previous cable.

  They worked it out, called i
n the techs, called one more meeting with DIVA on the night before the contact. They showed her the drawings, copied her hotel room key, ran her through the steps. Made her look at the drawings again. It’s all right, Neyt, she said. An edge to her voice, nerves showing. Talked about the risk, her exposure, but she didn’t want to hear it. Her blue eyes searched his face when he rolled out the map, marking the corner where they would pick her up if she was on the run. She heard the concern in his voice.

  Was this about her, she thought, or about the operation? Nate the handler was back, his aura unchanged.

  Things were too serious, so they broke for a late dinner, and it was Forsyth’s turn. He didn’t cook much, but Dominika gaped at him in an apron, bathed in blue, wearing oven mitts, pulling a saucière out of the oven. He knew one dish, a soubise, buttery braised rice and caramelized onions. In case of disaster, and so they wouldn’t starve, Gable had bought lamb kebabs from a take-out place. They ate without talking. Then a look at the clock; she’d better get home.

  She didn’t open the door, waited a beat, pulling up her collar. “Good luck tomorrow,” she said. And she’s the one under the blade, thought Nate.

  “You too,” said Nate. “This is going to be fine.”

  “See you in a couple of days,” she said, pulling on a pair of gloves, ready to open the door. Waiting. Sound of dishes in the sink. Looking at him, Mona Lisa smile.

  “I want you to be careful,” he said. She looked over his shoulder toward the little moon-blasted bedroom, but he didn’t blink, and her heart fell a little.

  “Spokoinoi nochi, Neyt.” She never made a sound going down the steps.

  They walked around putting out the lamps, getting ready to go home. It was already tomorrow. Forsyth was talking as they buttoned up the apartment. “No ripples, no hovering, no heroics, is that clear?” Gable was drawing the curtains, flicking off the light in the bathroom.

  “Got it,” said Nate.

  “I mean, if we hit a bump tomorrow, we don’t launch in specwar mode,” Forsyth said.

  “Right, I understand,” said Nate, knowing what was coming, trying not to patronize his chief.

  “If there’s trouble, what we do is assess the trouble. Then we make the decision to act. But it is going to be critical that Dominika play out her role in the exchange, to sell the swap. If she stumbles, no matter what the reason, the operation is gone.”

  Gable came back into the room. “By this time tomorrow the SVR has got to be jerking one another off that they got away with the authentic goods. No doubts, sheer joy in Moscow.” They were all pulling on their overcoats. What had to be said, had to be said now, because once outside on the street they walked away in different directions, no good-night hugs.

  “So what I’m hearing is that we let her walk into a shitstorm to sell the con,” said Nate, trying to keep his voice even.

  “ ‘Sell the con’?” said Gable. “This ain’t Las Vegas. We’re gonna protect her every way we know how. But you gotta get on board, nugget. Get your head straight, this is as big as it gets.”

  The three of them split up in the frosty air. Nate took the long walk around to his car, trolleys weren’t running that late. He felt a little of the Vaseline still left under his door handle, and he got into his car and stared at the dashboard, and his vision tunneled, and he was parking in front of her apartment, and pounding on her door, and she was in his arms, her nightgown clinging and thin over her body, and she was showering him with kisses, and his cloudy vision popped and he shook his head clear and started his car and drove home, looping around the fringes of the city, watching his mirrors.

  FORSYTH’S SOUBISE

  Boil rice in salted water for five minutes. In separate French saucière, lightly caramelize seasoned onions in butter. Stir in rice, cover, and cook gently in medium oven, stirring occasionally, until golden. Before serving, stir in heavy cream and grated Gruyère.

  20

  Forsyth, Nate, and a tech named Ginsburg perched gingerly on red velvet Empire chairs in an elegant room in the Kämp Hotel. They looked skeptically at the flocked silk wallpaper and satin canopy over the bed. Traffic noise on Norra Esplanaden came faintly through the sheers across the tall French doors. The three CIA officers sat around a low gilt side table, which was covered by two laptops, a cell phone, a miniature signal receiver, and an encrypted Motorola SB5100—the bulky radios were more secure than cell phones, especially in the likely event that the Russians were monitoring all channels during the hotel-room meeting. The laptops displayed two images: Number one was of Dominika’s room at the Kämp, essentially identical to the one in which they were sitting. It was, in fact, the room next door. Laptop number two showed the interior of that room’s large adjoining bathroom. Both images were from an upper corner, near the ceiling, a bird’s-eye, 270-degree view.

  Per Volontov’s instructions, Dominika had rented the room several days in advance, which gave the techs time to do an entry. The Station had worked overnight to install two wireless cameras, one mortised into the ornate plaster ceiling molding of the bedroom, the other secured inside a forced-air vent in the bathroom. The cameras transmitted an encrypted signal to the receiver that then was displayed on and recorded by the laptops. Each remote-head camera—the size of a Zippo lighter—also contained a miniature digital microphone that provided audio.

  Gable was on the street in a parked van at the front of the Kämp with LEGATT Maratos and three other Special Agents from the FBI’s counterespionage office in Washington. To Maratos’s barely concealed fury, Forsyth had vetoed any FBI presence in the hotel room, partly to contain and control the FEEBs, but mostly to prevent them from seeing Dominika. They were not going to expose her as an asset to the FEEBs.

  The FEEBs had played hardball in Washington. They refused to agree to permit the volunteer, whoever he was, to depart Helsinki and return to the United States before they popped him. Too many things could go wrong, they argued. What they really meant was that they couldn’t survive the political blowback if the UNSUB, the unknown subject, got away. Cake-eaters in Headquarters therefore agreed that the FEEBs would wait till the Russians had cleared the area before taking him down. They said, “Sure, sure,” when the CIA insisted that Forsyth, and only Forsyth, would give the go-ahead to arrest.

  “Everybody understands the sequence of events, right?” said Forsyth in his office the day before. He was looking pointedly at Maratos.

  “Yeah, yeah we got it. This isn’t our first bust,” said Maratos. “Just be sure you call us when you find out the little cocksucker’s name.”

  “Elwood, I want to stress that you have to wait for my go signal. You’ll put my source’s life in jeopardy if you go in too hard too soon,” said Forsyth.

  Maratos looked up at Forsyth in annoyance. “I said I got it, Jesus. I got it.”

  Gable had told Nate that his job for this operation was to shut up and listen, but Nate spoke up anyway, looking directly at the FBI man. “If you guys fuck this up, better have your wife start your car every morning.” It was a howling breach of etiquette.

  “You little shit,” said Maratos. “Is that a threat against a federal officer?”

  Nate had been about to respond when Forsyth snapped, “Shut the fuck up, both of you.” Maratos thought to say something else but kept his mouth shut.

  The radio on the table clicked twice, the signal from Gable in the van that Volontov and Dominika had entered the hotel lobby. Three minutes later, laptop one showed the door opening and Volontov, Dominika, and a short young man entering the room. Dominika carried a briefcase. The volunteer was dark-complexioned, had an unruly shock of black hair, and heavy eyebrows. He wore a blue Windbreaker and carried a black duffel bag slung over his shoulder. What the camera did not record was what Dominika saw. The air around him was suffused with a soiled yellow cast, like a fever wind or the sky before a tornado. She knew what Volontov was going to do to him—Dominika knew the young man was lost. They sat in chairs around a low table. The audio pic
ked up Volontov speaking in Russian and Dominika translating. It was eerie to hear Dominika’s voice coming out of the laptop.

  At Volontov’s insistence the young man identified himself as John Paul Bullard, a midlevel analyst in the National Communications Service. He described his work and his need for money. He patted the duffel bag and repeated his demand that Volontov pay him a half million dollars for the manual, the cover sheet of which he had already provided. Volontov spoke again and Dominika asked the young American how they could be sure it was genuine.

  Bullard zipped open the duffel and handed Dominika a bound manual the size of a thin telephone book. She handed it to Volontov, who spent three seconds riffling the pages before he handed it back to Dominika. He said something to Bullard that Dominika translated. They would have to examine the document privately before determining its exact value. Bullard said, “It’s genuine, all right, it’s the real thing.”

  At Volontov’s nod, Dominika got up from her chair with the document and the briefcase and walked into the bathroom. Per his detailed instructions the day before, the rezident wanted the manual in the false bottom of the briefcase as soon as possible in case this was a Western provocation, a trap. The windowless bathroom was the place to secure it.

  Forsyth whispered into the radio, “All okay, hold.” Laptop two showed the bathroom door opening and Dominika’s head filled the screen. She closed the door, placed the briefcase on the bathroom vanity. Moving quickly, she bent to the floor and pushed the kick plate of the vanity, which opened inward on three piano hinges. Dominika pulled an identical-looking manual, modified under a microscope by a score of eggheads and meticulously prepared—down to the missing cover page—out of the concealment cavity and pushed Bullard’s original manual into the space. The hinged kick plate swung closed. Dominika pressed two rivets in the lid of the briefcase. With the pressure, the inside lining of the briefcase opened to reveal a false bottom, into which Dominika put the modified replacement manual. She snapped the concealment cover closed, and shut the briefcase lid with a click.