Jason Matthews - Red Sparrow

Dominika suspected the truth as she lay facedown on her bed in her SVR-provided apartment and wept for her friend. She had been a true friend—a big sister she never had—and it was monstrous, inconceivable, that They would have harmed her. But why? As she ran things through her mind, the memory of her telling Marta about Ustinov came back in a chilling rush. Did They know about that? Did Marta mention it to someone? Would a slip on her part result in the disappearance of a colleague, an officer of the Service, from sleepy little Helsinki, in the twenty-first century, in a sane, civilized world? She closed her eyes and felt the bed spinning, and she was in Ustinov’s love nest, on his blood-soaked revolving bed. Thinking back, she remembered Volontov’s face had shown fear, his orange halo was ragged with it.

She got up, walked to the window, and looked up at the night sky. She scorned herself. Trained intelligence officer. A real operator. Relentless seductress. They used her, were using her still, as a little chess piece, a little pawn. Whoever it was that Nate was handling, she could understand that person a little better now, appreciate the hate that must sustain him.

Dominika more than ever was confirmed in her decision not to report on Nate. It had been like a draft of cold air sweeping across her. But her little games were passive, weren’t they? She saw Marta’s face in the glass. How could she make Them atone for what They had done to her? How could she destroy them, Volontov, Uncle Vanya, all the others?

Tears ran down her cheeks. She cried for Marta, for her father, perhaps for herself too. She cried for Russia, but she knew she no longer believed. She turned away from the window, eyes closed. Something broke loose inside her and she swept a little ceramic bud vase—Marta had bought it for her at the Sunday market—off a side table with her arm, her teeth clenched and fists bunched.

Back in the rezidentura, filled with dread, Volontov was waiting for official censure in some form. Instead he received a sympathetic call on the “Vey-Chey,” the VCh phone, from Vanya Egorov, who commiserated that service in the field, on the front lines, was not without risk. There had been defectors in the past, there will be defectors in the future. We deplore them, he said, and we must be vigilant, but it’s impossible to prevent all of them. Egorov asked Volontov to concentrate on managing secure operations, and especially to focus on the “special project” with his niece and the young American. “Of course, General,” said a relieved Volontov. “I believe we are making good progress on that front.”

Chush’ sobach’ya . Bullshit, thought Egorov, and ended the call. Vanya knew that his niece must have mentioned at least part of the Ustinov story to this Yelenova woman, a serious mistake, but one he had to overlook for the time being. It was actually a stroke of luck that Yelenova subsequently let it slip in front of the mouth-breather Volontov, who blessedly had the wit to call him. It was only a matter of dispatching Matorin, then a relatively simple konspiritsia to send the investigator for show, to wrap up all the loose ends. God, if the president had gotten wind of this breach—Egorov didn’t want to think about it.

On the Finnish-Russian border three kilometers west of Vyartsilya, Russia, through an uninhabited tract of dense pines and rolling hills, the Soviets after World War II had established an infiltration route past the towers, border wire, and plowed strips. The Finnish side was always lightly patrolled. For decades, cleared KGB border guards periodically were assigned to the area to allow agents to pass through unmolested. The more techniques changed, the more they stayed the same: Routes through the minefields in 1953 were marked by stakes driven into the snow with cloth strips tied to them. Since 2010, the correct route through the field was marked by plastic pylons fitted with infrared strobes visible only with night-vision goggles.

A week earlier, Matorin had infiltrated Finland using this route, was picked up by a Directorate S support illegal on country road number 70, and was driven four hundred kilometers south on Rural Route 6 and finally into the city on state highway E75. The Spetsnaz killer had gone directly to Yelenova’s apartment, killed her at midnight, and put her body in a rubber military body bag. He had sanitized the apartment, then signaled the illegal, who, in the early morning hours, drove Matorin and Marta’s body back north to the Vyartsilya bolt-hole. The illegal then returned to Helsinki. The next morning, using real Finnish documents, the illegal and his lightly disguised wife left the country at Haarparanta, ostensibly for the start of a nice vacation in Sweden. They would never return to Finland, further complicating the investigation into what had happened to Marta Yelenova. The entire operation had taken a little less than forty hours.

The sunlight was rising through the pinewoods of Vyartsilya, casting long, delicate shadows that crept up the snow-covered hills. Guards from the Federal Security Service stood in elevated tower B30, watching the tree line with binoculars. The sun came up behind the tower, over the tops of the pines, bathing the whole area in golden light. “ Vot, ” said one of the men. There. A single thin figure came out of the trees. He was dressed in a white snowsuit with a hood, and wore snowshoes. The guards saw he moved steadily through the drifts, his long shadow stretched out behind him. He dragged a small equipment sled on a tether. An oblong shape lay on the sled, shrouded in white nylon. Marta Yelenova had returned to the Rodina.

MARTA’S LAST MEAL—PYTT I PANNA

In foaming butter, separately and aggressively brown cubed beef, potatoes, and diced onions until crisp. Incorporate ingredients in the skillet with additional butter, season and reheat. Form a well in the mixture, and break a raw egg into it. Stir the egg into the hash before serving.

Nate sat withGable in the India Prankkari in Kallio, at the back, looking out the windows. The restaurant was nearly empty. Gable had insisted on ordering rogan josh, fragrant, spicy, oily vermilion lamb stew. They ate it with soft bread, a fiery relish of tomatoes and ginger, and copious amounts of beer. Gable compared his first spoonful to a Nepalese rogan josh he had tasted around a campfire in Dhahran a hundred years ago, waiting at the airstrip beside the Pilatus that had infiltrated the four Tibetans into China.

“Fucking Scandinavians cannot prepare Indian food,” he said, chewing. “With them it’s all reindeer and punk berries in cream sauce, boiled potatoes. Chef reaches for parsley and they have a stroke.” As usual, food was disappearing into Gable’s craw at a prodigious rate.

“Four little guys, sherpas, tough as nuts, trained ’em for a month, going to pop in and pop out, splice a relay on a PLA trunk line running along the border, literally in the shadow of Everest and Kanchenchunga. The fucking end of the world. They flew in over the mountains, were supposed to walk out… but they never came back. Chicom patrol probably got ’em.” He was silent for a minute, then waved for more of the relish, and they started talking about the DIVA case, how to kick-start it. Nate couldn’t pin her down, he couldn’t turn the corner with her. She wasn’t softening, he was wasting precious time. Gable stopped chewing and stared at him when Nate admitted he had grown to like her.

“She’s willing to come out, to engage, we debate stuff, but there’s no give,” said Nate.

“You ever think she’s working on you, not the other way around?” said Gable, chewing.

“Not impossible,” said Nate. “But there’s no handle she’s been working on. No career bullshit, no money, nothing.”