Red Sparrow: A Novel

by Jason Matthews

  “Be serious,” Benford said. He still had an eight-track tape deck at home.

  “Should we pop the window?”

  “No. Second story,” said Benford, who unlaced his shoe, walked over to a rubber utility cable stapled to the side of the house, and knotted the shoelace around it, leaving a loop hanging free.

  “Prusik knot,” said Benford, and he showed Nate how to stand up in the loop with one foot and slide the friction hitch upward, a foot each time, to climb the cable until he could reach the unlocked second-story window. Where the fuck did he learn that? thought Nate, as he signaled that he was in.

  The upper room was an empty, disused bedroom. Nate walked to the door and looked down into the house. He whistled for the dog, but nothing stirred. He imagined a Russian illegal would have a Doberman or Rottweiler silently guarding the house.

  Nate crept silently down a wooden staircase, the thick mahogany banister creaking as he descended. Tiptoeing through a 1950s-style kitchen that smelled of wheat and seeds and oil, Nate unlocked the back door and let Benford in. “The place feels empty,” Nate said. He and Benford walked through the downstairs rooms silently. The feeling of risky trespass enveloped them. The house smelled like a health club. Liniment and dusty radiators, no air moved, incongruous for a bright summer day.

  The house had two front rooms, dining and living rooms, with windows that looked out onto the street. Chintzy, lacy curtains were drawn across all the windows. Spidery sunlight dappled the threadbare throw rugs laid on dark-stained hardwood floors. The furniture was heavy, dark, overstuffed furry pieces with doilies—actual doilies—on the arms and backs of the chairs and sofa. The mantelpiece above a sooty fireplace was lined with Bakelite mugs and figurines—a sea-captain mug, a Spanish girl with a mantilla. One lampshade had a pom-pom fringe around the lower edge. A wrought-iron fireplace poker set stood beside the hearth. Benford’s mouth worked as he surveyed the décor. “She must have cleaned out half the Portuguese antique shops in Fall River to decorate.”

  Off the living room was a small office with a desk and a low bookcase stuffed with magazines and newspapers. On the desk was a small pile of utility bills and a white and blue porcelain schooner with Ahoy painted on the bow.

  “Check the desk,” said Benford. “I’m going upstairs to look around.” Nate registered the ridiculous feeling of not wanting to separate from Benford, but nodded and pulled out the drawers one by one. Empty. As he closed the bottom drawer he felt resistance and heard the crunch of paper. He pulled the drawer all the way out and saw a rolled-up piece of paper at the end of the recess. He reached and pulled it out, unrolled it on top of the desk. It was a blueprint, a single sheet, with cross-sectional drawings of parts and electrical connections. The page was labeled Section 37, fasteners and brackets. Submarine parts? Santini worked in supply and procurement at Electric Boat. Was this a classified document? Why did she have it at home, stuck at the bottom of a drawer?

  Benford meanwhile had gone upstairs into the bedroom. A four-poster bed was made with a quilt in a floral pattern with three large pillows at the head with lacy pillowcases. The single closet had blouses and slacks hanging uniformly on hangers. Several pairs of shoes on the floor, all sensible and made for walking, were lined up neatly. No pictures, no mementos, no personal items, a house that could be abandoned in ninety seconds. The bathroom was neutral, the medicine cabinet nearly empty. A toothbrush, bottle of aspirin, a twin pack of saline Fleet enemas. The pervasive smell of liniment.

  Returning to the bedroom, Benford pulled out the single drawer of the bedside table. No books, porn, vibrators, or lube. Under a piece of felt he found a piece of paper with a long list of handwritten dates and times. June 5, 2100; June 10, 2200; June 30, 2130. Transmission schedule. She probably carried the laptop and encryption card with her. Standard meeting sked with a handler from the Russian Consulate in New York. A penetration of the submarine program. Benford closed the drawer and started downstairs to tell Nate.

  Nate had just finished checking the backs of the other drawers again, but found nothing. He rolled up the blueprint to take upstairs to show Benford. Walking out the door, he stopped. Jennifer Santini was standing in the living room looking at him. A duffel bag was on the floor at her feet. Nate realized that they had never actually seen her before. Huh. She works out. With weights. On steroids. She apparently had just gotten home from the gym. Why wasn’t she at work?

  Jennifer was in her late thirties, of average height. She was dressed in skintight spandex shorts stretched by tree-trunk legs, calves and quadriceps bulging. Her arms, shoulders, and neck were corded with muscle, her jawline bulged. She wore a tight tank top that covered not feminine breasts but dinner-plate-sized pectorals with nipples. She had brilliant green eyes, the whites bluish with health and vitality. Her face was etched around her mouth and a sharp, straight nose. Her forehead was deeply creased by the frown splashed across her face. She wore her red hair slicked tight to her head, pulled back in a ponytail, a bullet, a torpedo, an assembled action figure, a crossover SUV with the parts cobbled together.

  In that final instant of appraisal, Nate noticed that she had beautiful feminine hands, with manicured nails painted a light pink. She was barefoot and her feet likewise were pretty and delicate, with painted toenails in the same soft color. The sound of Benford clumping down the stairs triggered Jennifer to move, blindingly fast, toward Nate. With hideous power she swatted a lamp off a side table at him as she closed the distance in two long strides. Nate ducked the lamp, which smashed against the wall behind him, but straightened to find himself face-to-face with her, a rock-hard forearm against his throat, pushing him back against the living-room wall, while taking thunderous, sweeping clouts at him with her free arm. Nate put both hands on her forearm and pulled. Nothing.

  Nate hammered on her arm, but she stayed with him, crushing against his throat with those Schwarzenegger arms and Grace Kelly hands. Nate threw an overhand punch at her face, his fist glancing off her cheek with no apparent effect. Her face was inches from his, and she bared her teeth with the effort. Nate expected her to bite his lips off. As she continued hitting him with looping punches, insane, disjointed thoughts ran through Nate’s mind: (1) His luck he has to corner the one Russian illegal in the world who isn’t the bird-watching accountant; (2) What in Christ the men in her office must think about her as she sits at her desk every morning; and (3) What, if anything, does this cyborg do for sex? Then, absurdly, Nate thought about what Dominika was doing at this very moment; where was she? An inexpressible sadness swept over him as he thought that Dominika might be dead, and his head bounced off the wall and his throat constricted and he thought that this freak was part of the machine that killed her.

  Benford appeared at the bottom of the stairs and stood in shocked immobility. Jennifer looked for a second at the tubby, rumpled man—he would be dessert after the main course—and Nate raked her shin with his shoe and stomped on one pretty, Lolita-pink foot, which made Jennifer ease up an inch, and Nate slid sideways away from her pinioning arm and kicked the spandex bulge between her legs with his instep as hard as he could. Jennifer grunted like a man, held herself with both hands, and thumped heavily on the floor, then fell over on her side, doubled up.

  Benford looked at Nate, then back at the beast on the floor. Nothing in his thirty years of mole-hunting, spy-catching, illegals-baiting was ever like this. Especially not when Jennifer suddenly sat straight back up like an unstoppable serial killer at a lakeside summer camp. She picked up the glass-and-wood-topped coffee table in front of the couch and threw it across the room at Benford standing on the bottom step of the staircase. Benford called upon some hidden burst of speed—perhaps held in reserve from his two years as equipment manager of the Princeton Varsity Heavy Eights in the late 1960s—and pounded back up the stairs just as the coffee table hit the very spot on which he had been standing, smashing wood and glass and knocking out two sturdy balusters. Benford did not stop moving up the stairs, and disappe
ared above the second-floor landing.

  Jennifer turned back to Nate, who now stood in the middle of the living room. In the last seconds, he had moved a few steps and had taken the iron poker from its stand near the fireplace and was holding it by his side. Her ponytail swinging, Jennifer rushed at Nate again, her bare feet lightly slapping the wooden floor. Nate bizarrely remembered his hand-to-hand instructor’s name was Carl, took a half step forward, snapped his wrist, and hit Jennifer on the side of the neck with the poker, like in close-quarters training, the brachial plexus. The shock of the impact ran up Nate’s arm. It was like hitting the trunk of a holm oak.

  A surprisingly feminine shriek came out of Jennifer as she was catapulted sideways into the couch, which overturned backward, doilies flying. She rolled three feet along the floor until she came to rest against the far wall, her face against the baseboard. Breathing hard, his arm tingling and numb, Nate held on to the poker, rounded the corner of the overturned couch, and knelt beside her. One of her legs twitched slightly and the simian muscles in her bottom fluttered. Nate pulled her over to flop her on her back. One of Jennifer’s eyes was open, sightless; the other, mismatched, was rolled up into the back of her head. Her mouth was open but Nate could detect no breathing. Those fucking pink nails against the dark wood floor. One of Jennifer’s pedicured feet lay on top of a doily, like an éclair in a display case.

  The stairs creaked and Benford came up to stand beside Nate. The living room was devastated, broken furniture and ceramics littered the floor. Benford looked down at Jennifer’s lopsided face. “Jesus,” he said.

  “She’s like a fucking Bond villain,” said Nate. “Where do they find these people? I think I bent the poker.” He reached down to feel for a pulse on her neck, but her head flopped over to the other side too loose, too wobbly.

  “Don’t bother,” said Benford. “The cervical neck flexor is gone. The strike tore the spinal cord loose. Avulsion.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” said Nate, whose hands were starting to shake.

  “Avulsion. You separated her neck.”

  Nate wiped his face. “Terrific. Stop me before I kill again.”

  “Are you okay?” asked Benford.

  “Yeah, thanks for the backup. The diversion of you running up the stairs gave me the opening I needed.” Nate stood up and let the poker drop to the floor. “Now what do we do?”

  “I found a transmit sked,” said Benford. “We have to find her laptop and encryption card. Look in her bag. She probably communicated via secure Internet link. That and personal meetings. You?”

  “Some sort of parts blueprint in a desk drawer. We should take this place apart.”

  “Fuck that,” said Benford. “Collect what we have, we can call the FBI in now. Let them search this place with tweezers and baggies. They can go right ahead and explain how they didn’t catch an illegal operating right in their backyard. They can stuff their primacy up their asses.”

  BENFORD’S CREAMED HORSERADISH SAUCE

  Cook a medium béchamel; incorporate butter, Dijon mustard, and grated fresh horseradish to taste. Season with ground black pepper and red wine vinegar. Chill and serve.

  26

  The Moscow summer was coming; the sun actually felt warm on her face. Dominika had started work on the “special project” in the Americas Department under General Korchnoi. Soon after her transfer, the general took her aside and told her they—the general and Dominika—would be taking an operational trip. The general said they were bidden to the First Deputy Director’s office within the hour to discuss it.

  Dominika knew she was deceiving General Korchnoi, using the operation as cover to travel overseas so she could recontact the Americans. She liked and respected the general—he was professional and helpful—and she reflected that she was now taking advantage of someone decent, just as she had been taken advantage of by others. The muck of the cesspool had begun to stick on her haunches too. There was nothing to do about it, she told herself. She would have to betray his trust.

  Back upstairs to Uncle Vanya? She would look him in the face and enjoy it. Her secret had not been discovered by the interrogators at Lefortovo. Dominika Egorova was a CIA penetration of the SVR, and none of them knew it. She had manipulated Uncle Vanya to put her back on the case against Nate. Now she would report early success, arrange more contacts, more foreign travel. The clandestine agent, reactivated.

  What was this fever in her body? The Americans understood her. They had recognized right away the zhazhdat, her thirst for owning this secret, for the power it gave her. Nate’s purple cloud, and Bratok’s purple cloud, and Forsyth’s azure halo, all intense and precious—they knew her better than her own countrymen did.

  She did not know what, exactly, were her feelings for Nate. Thoughts of him while she was in prison had helped her survive the cabinets at the ends of the prison corridors. She tried not to think about their one night together, and she wondered if he thought about her. He had treated her mostly as an asset, a commodity. Did he ever see her as a woman? Did he care for her, Dominika?

  She had to see them, all of them, the Americans, but especially Nate. Sending a message to them from Moscow would have been a frightful risk. Directorate K almost certainly would be watching her periodically, checking. They always did with the rehabilitated. With overseas travel imminent, she could wait.

  It was time to go upstairs. They rode the elevator together in silence. She liked the white-haired spy beside her, the small space was filled with his deep purple spirit, comforting and steady. She knew that beneath the paternal smile was operational brilliance, a keen intellect, unbending patriotism. How had such a decent, thinking man lasted this long in the Service? From where did he draw sustenance? Dominika had no illusions that this old professional wouldn’t be able to detect any misstep on her part. She would have to be careful around him.

  They walked together down the carpeted hallway Dominika knew so well, past the gallery lined with the airbrushed portraits of the Directors. The Gray Cardinals stared at her as she passed. You escaped this time, they seemed to be saying to her. We’ll be watching, they called as she walked past them, their eyes following her.

  Korchnoi studied her face as they arrived at the executive suite and opened the door. He had seen the emotion in her, could feel her bristling. How to harness this? he thought. They entered the office, and Vanya was waiting for them, bluff and bald and backlighted canary-yellow, his ugly, ambitious color, against the windows, a hearty clap on the shoulder for Korchnoi, a sugary welcome for his niece. Dominika knew that the more sugar he spooned out, the more vinegar would fill her mouth.

  Now down to business. The target was still the American, the CIA officer called Nash who held the name of the traitor in his head. Dominika must succeed, for time was of the essence. The general and Dominika would have been surprised that their silent thoughts during this fulsome performance were very nearly identical. Hvastun. Boaster, bouncer, blowhard.

  General Korchnoi spoke, quietly, thoughtfully. This project will require Corporal Egorova to make periodic foreign trips. Is there a problem with that, considering her recent—and highly lamentable—investigation? Uncle Vanya spread his arms as if in benediction. No, of course not. Everything to be left in your capable hands. Getting to the American, recontact, is the point. See to it, then, and let it be done excellently. Vanya winked at her.

  They were walking back, along the broad corridor of the ground floor, Korchnoi speaking easily, making lists for her, directing her to begin filling the folder with details, schedules, gambits. Dominika saw that he was pleased, and gratified, and not at all suspicious or worried. Why should he be? Dominika was an excellent protégée. Betraying him was difficult, but it was necessary. That was how it had to be.

  Coming toward them in the corridor along the opposite wall was Line F executioner Sergey Matorin. He seemed not to recognize her. Dominika’s vision started to narrow. She felt fear, then an aerosolized rage that had her measu
ring the distance between her fingers and his eyes. Could the general sense the woolpack of her hatred? Did he not see the trail of bloody footprints, or the black shroud that billowed around Matorin? Could he not hear the musical note of the chine of his scythe as he dragged it behind him? Matorin’s milky white eye passed over her as he continued down the corridor. As he walked he hugged the wall like a ray swimming over a sandy ocean floor, trailing thick, elemental black smoke, like blood in the water. Looking after him, Dominika shuddered at the thinning hair on the back of his skull, and at his empty fingers that grasped and ungrasped, waiting to hold a knife.

  Eight o’clock, and a rainy night. Vanya Egorov was driven through the Borovitskaya Gate in the western corner of the Kremlin, tires drumming over the slick cobblestones, past the Grand Palace and the Cathedral of the Archangel, and left past Building Fourteen to a yawning, deserted Ivanovskaya Square. His official Mercedes eased through the narrow gate to the inner courtyard of the mustard-yellow Senate building and pulled to a stop under a dimly lit porte cochere. The last time he had been inside these walls was to receive his second star. Tonight he had to show he deserved to keep it.

  An aide knocked once, opened the door, and stepped aside. The president’s office was relatively small and richly paneled. A green marble pen set was the only object on the surface of his desk; the lights in the wall sconces were dialed low. The president was in a dark suit and white shirt with no tie. Egorov tried not to notice that Putin was in his stocking feet, his shoes pushed underneath his chair. The president was sitting at a small inlaid table in front of his desk, his hands folded in his lap. No papers, no news wires, no television. Egorov sat down at the little table.

  “Good evening, Mr. President,” he said. Putin’s face as usual was a mask, but tonight he looked tired.

  “General Egorov,” said Putin, who looked at his wristwatch, then fixed his electric eyes on Vanya’s face. Go. And keep it brief. Egorov modulated his voice.