Jason Matthews - Red Sparrow

“I expect you to vitiate the negative aspects of our manipulation of her. Motivate her anew. Sit with her and prepare her for internal handling. Emphasize that she alone holds the key to MARBLE’s freedom,” said Benford.

“Vitiate the negatives, got it. All right. I’ll go out to Glyfada in an hour,” said Gable.

“We have a deadline,” said Benford. “I told the Russians we’re in a hurry. We have days, hours left.”

“Narva,” said Gable. “Estonia. Jesus wept.”

The two Georgians stood at attention in Zyuganov’s office, looking at a spot on the wall above the dwarf’s head. They were midgrade chistilshchiki, mechanics from SVR Department V, the Wet Works, the inheritors of General Pavel Sudaplatov’s Administration for Special Tasks, which had eliminated the Soviets’ enemies at home and abroad for four decades. Zyuganov read from a just-received report from a Greek police informant. The thugs left.

Zyuganov then called for Lyudmila Tsukanova. She entered the office slowly, chubby, hesitant, looking at her polished brown shoes over an ample if doughy bosom cinched tight by a uniform jacket a size too small. Her brown hair was cut unevenly and quite short. Her round Slav face was at first glance rosy with good health, but closer inspection revealed that the thirty-year-old woman suffered from rosacea. The red blotch on her chin looked painful.

Ill at ease, Lyudmila sat and listened to Zyuganov speak steadily for more than half an hour. Uncomfortable as she appeared, Lyudmila’s black eyes, shark’s eyes, doll’s eyes, never left his face. When he was finished, she nodded and walked out of the office.

Beneath the surface, Gable later remarked, Benford had a large case of flop sweat as he laid out the Chinese-puzzle operational schedule in a narrative flood that suggested the drive belt of his tongue had slipped the flywheel of his mind.

“Forsyth, you must remain at Station to deflect the inevitable obstreperous cable traffic from the First Lord of the Admiralty, Chief Europe, and the other savants in Headquarters.

“I will fly ahead to Estonia to take the local young COS in hand and to liaise with the police—KaPo, they’re called, once Russian-trained but now NATO and very earnest and intense. I expect the Center to be active, ticks all over Estonia, to see what they can pick up, even try a snatch to get DIVA back.

“You, Gable, have the most critical task. Hide her, keep her safe. Convince DIVA to return. You have one or two days in which to do this, then deliver her, at the end of the second day, to the bridge in Narva at 1700 local.

“Until that time, under absolutely no circumstances is anyone to use a phone, cell or landline. Moscow Rules, is that clear? Russian SIGINT is every bit as good in tracking mobile phones, and the Center still controls assets in their former satellite.

“I suggest, Gable, that you fly from Greece to Latvia, then make the trip from Riga in the early morning; it’s three hundred sixty kilometers from Latvia on the E67, and the Narva Bridge will be closed by KaPo when the daily traffic subsides and before the night truck traffic begins.

“Gable, you must devote any available time to coach DIVA on the exchange on the bridge. They’ll be looking at her very closely.

“I want MARBLE out of Estonia within two hours of the exchange, out of their reach. The air attaché promised me a C-37 in Tallinn, but Forsyth, please remind him to have the aircraft there; I do not want to have to fly economy on an Estonian Air flight to Trondheim to get him clear.”

Later, as he walked Benford to the departure gate at Venizelos, Forsyth took him by the arm. “Quite an operation you’ve put together here, Simon,” he said. “You will have Russians, Estonians, SVR, and CIA at the bridge, all fingering their weapons nervously. God willing, MARBLE will be standing in the night fog, waiting to be exchanged.”

Benford stopped and turned toward Forsyth. “Tom, Gable and DIVA must stay black. No cell phones, no contact, nothing that would give the Center even the remotest opportunity to attempt a hostile action.”

“Gable’s already disappeared,” said Forsyth. “As of yesterday afternoon, even I don’t know where he is.”

Benford nodded. “We have no choice; we’ve got to move ahead as if she’s already agreed. I want MARBLE there, physically, before they decide to execute him. This is our one chance.” Benford stared out the window at the tarmac. “Gable will convince her. He has to.”

In the Station in Tallinn, Estonia, the young Chief of Station put down his coffee cup and sat up when he read Benford’s cable, relayed by Headquarters. He stuck his head around the corner and called his wife into the office; it was just the two of them, a tandem couple. Together they reread the cable several times. She stood behind him, her chin on his shoulder, making a list of things to do quickly, hotels, cars, radios, binoculars.

Per Benford’s instructions, the young COS called his liaison contact in KaPo, the Kaitsepolitsei, to ask for an urgent meeting. Escort in town? Follow car to Narva? Overwatch at the bridge? Kick our former Russian tenants in the bloody balls? Delighted, KaPo said. Everything will be arranged.

Benford arrived in Tallinn from Venizelos via Tempelhof on Lufthansa. With a brief stop at the Hotel Schlössle in the Old Town, Benford dragged the eager young COS on a pounding casing-and-timing run to Narva and back. A nondescript Lada followed them sporadically on the E20, but disappeared on the outskirts of Narva. The Russians knew where the action was going to be. On the way back to Tallinn, Benford stopped at a highway café grill, to see how the Lada would react. Surveillance proceeded two hundred meters and waited on the side of the highway. Benford made himself stretch out a lunch of boiled sausages, pickles, herring, Baltic rosolje salad, black bread, dark loamy beers. He hoped the goons in the car were hungry.

Benford’s hotel room had been entered, but they had been very good. None of the traditional telltales Benford had left for them had been disturbed. The stray hairs, the talcum, the aligned corners of the notepad on the desk. But they weren’t as good as Benford. COS Tallinn watched, fascinated, as Benford used a rice-grain-sized Stanhope lens concealed on the bezel of his wristwatch to examine the back cover of the decoy cell phone left in a side pocket of his suitcase. Benford looked up, nodded. The microscribe marks on the cover were misaligned. They had pried the back off and probably downloaded the useless memory.

Other preparations were under way. In Saint Petersburg, the director of the SVR office for the Leningrad Oblast was called by Yasenevo on the director’s VCh phone. He was informed only that there would be an exchange. He was told to organize and deploy a team to handle a prisoner for release, and then to escort a “person of importance” from the Narva Bridge to Ivangorod, and then to Saint Petersburg in the shortest time possible.

The director was authorized to call the Saint Petersburg FSB and the oblast Border Guards Service to provide support during the exchange. A Colonel Zyuganov in Moscow ordered and stipulated that there should be no trouble whatsoever during the exchange and that it should be accomplished with the greatest secrecy.

The Saint Petersburg director acknowledged the directions, and subsequently asked for and received approval to transport the important person from Ivangorod to Saint Petersburg by Border Guard helicopter. A Yak-40 executive jet, part of the presidential squadron, would fly the repatriated individual—whoever the devil he was, thought the Leningrad chief—the rest of the way to Moscow.