Jason Matthews - Red Sparrow

The exchange for MARBLE was scheduled the next day at 1400 Zulu. Perhaps because they were all keyed up, perhaps because Forsyth worried about Gable, perhaps because he knew Nate had been frozen out of the operation and was headed to Washington, he took Nate out for a beer.

They were sitting under pale plane trees at the Skalakia Taverna in Ambelokipi down the hill from the Embassy. Nate had been mooning around the Station, waiting for his flight, and Forsyth felt sorry for the kid; he’d been through a lot, been scratched up pretty good. Forsyth knew what else was nagging at him, apart from Nate’s usual fretting about his hall file and career.

So Forsyth walked him down Mesogeion and up the steep flight of stairs to the polished wood entrance of the taverna, and they sat outside listening to the city quiet down for the midday break. Nate asked Forsyth if DIVA was back in Russia now, after she had blown MARBLE up, then tossed back his beer and signaled for another.

Forsyth looked at him pretty sharpish, and Nate told him he had read the Restricted Handling file in the office when Maggie wasn’t looking and knew the whole story, about Benford’s plan, about Dominika burning MARBLE. Didn’t we try to protect our assets? How could she? Russians. MARBLE wouldn’t have done it; he was a guy apart.

Forsyth leaned into it, gave it to him between the eyes, told him he had his head up his ass. Forsyth said that he was considering kicking it farther up his ass for sneaking the RH traffic. Dominika hadn’t known about the plan to burn MARBLE, Forsyth said; she was following orders, doing what Benford had told her to do, she had no knowledge of the canary trap, of the fatal words she was told to repeat. She was directed not to tell Nate any of it. She had discipline, she was the professional. She had broken down when they told her about MARBLE.

Nate was silent for ten minutes. He told Forsyth he was going to the safe house to see her. “Don’t bother,” said Forsyth. “We closed it up yesterday. She’s with Gable, and even I don’t know where Gable is.” He told Nate about Benford’s spy swap, about the two-lane highway bridge in Estonia. “We’re playing this by Moscow Rules—well, Narva Rules, anyway—because we have only one shot at this.”

Nate’s jaw was set. “Tom, I have to see her. You have to help me.”

“I couldn’t if I wanted to,” said Forsyth. “There’s one point on the surface of the globe where it’s possible that she will show up tomorrow, and that’s fifty-fifty.” Nate understood that Forsyth was telling him because he would let him go.

For Nate, the next twenty-four hours were a journey of self-loathing and guilt. He started the physical journey after getting up from the table and walking away from Forsyth, who let him go and knew what he was going to try to do, because if he didn’t try, it would be even worse than it was now. He had a day to get there. The Athens traffic didn’t move and the white Aegean light shone through the windows of the taxi and the sweat ran down his back onto the plastic seats and he threw the euros down and went into the terminal and bought a bag and a toothbrush and a T-shirt and a ticket on the next flight to Germany, to Munich, and the cattle in line didn’t move and he almost started yelling but limped through security and didn’t even register the lift as they took off and he wondered why the plane was flying so slowly over the Alps and the articulated bus in Munich circled the whole airport twice before coming to a halt at the sliding doors and he told himself not to hurry up the stairs, cameras were everywhere, and his stitches were acting up, itching. The endless concourse in Munich with a knackwurst and a beer, which he threw up five minutes later, and the two VoPos, cops with MP5s, asking him for his passport and boarding pass, almost told them he was too much in a hurry, and the epaulets in the booth looking at him for an extra beat, and he wanted to reach through and grab his papers but willed his hand to stay at his side, wet and trembling. The waiting lounge was full of lumpy Balts with string-tied suitcases and he wanted to shoulder his way through them and get to the gate but they clumped in front of him and the announcement of a two-hour delay sent his sour stomach sinking and he checked his watch for the hundredth time as he sat in the cracked plastic chair, hearing the Balts chatter, and smelled them eat bread and sausage and he made it to the bathroom in time and vomited on an empty stomach, an agony, and he lifted his shirt to check that he hadn’t popped any stitches and his skin was pink and hot to the touch but nothing was leaking. Back out at the gate, he fell asleep in a sweat, seeing her face and hearing her voice. Someone kicked his feet going by and he woke to get in line, semiconscious and numb with a buzz in his head and packed tight and they made him wait on the tarmac until they resolved the technical difficulty, twenty minutes, forty minutes, an hour and the Balts wouldn’t stop talking and Nate’s head buzzed and his ears would not clear when they took off and the flight attendant asked him if he was all right. Two hours later, and they weren’t descending because of the fog and they were going to divert to Helsinki, he couldn’t bear that, and he closed his eyes and put his head on the seatback and the fog lifted in time and the customs table was stainless steel in the dinky-modern Tallinn airport and the anonymous, throwaway mobile phone purchased at the airport didn’t work and the rental car had a steering wheel that was loose on the column but he didn’t have time to swap cars and the little engine rattled and he was going too fast and fucked up on the roundabout outside Tallinn and went south on the E67 until a sign told him he was headed for goddamn Riga and he got turned around and on the E20 with the double-carriage rigs buffeting the wobbly little car and the radar cop pulled him over and took his time before tearing off the ticket and saluting him and the towns rolled past, alien names in an alien moonscape of flat hills and windbreak trees beside muddy farms and it was Rakvere, then Kohtla-Järve, then pissant Vaivara and the city limits of Narva, dingy Narva, and it was afternoon and the clouds were thick across the sky and he found the castle and the bridge, Russia across the water, but something made him get out of there, Don’t heat up the site, the last scrap of operational discipline. He drove around town hoping for a glimpse of her but there was no chance and he fought the guilt and the shame and dredged up the last scrap of operational discipline, and he sat in a parking lot downtown, the car rocking as the trams went by, and Nate’s hands trembled and he sat behind the fogged-up windshield, the minute hand on the dash was ticking backward, and he splashed cold water on his face and armpits and stomach—the stitches still itched—in the gas station and looked at his face, one side black-and-blue, like the Phantom of the Opera, some lover he had been, and he shrugged on the Greek flag T-shirt and ate a Narva sandwich with lettuce going brown on the edges and the lard oozing onto the waxed paper and Forsyth had told him sundown so he started the car and he couldn’t feel his legs and feet on the clutch and he drove back toward the bridge, but the striped sawhorse was already up and the jeep was parked sideways on the center line and he told the soldier he was part of the clambake down the road, but the blue eyes beneath the forage cap and the buzz cut didn’t understand “clambake” and was staring again at Nate’s passport when he popped the clutch and went around the sawhorse and heard the police whistle but didn’t think they would shoot and up ahead he saw a van and a jeep and Benford standing there and his vision blurred, Don’t know if it’s the wobbly steering wheel or me, and he let out the clutch and coasted down toward him, quietly, the last scrap of operational discipline left to him.