Jason Matthews - Red Sparrow

He knew Dominika was already out of the starting gate, the critical stage. Her flat voice was a distillate of anger, fear, her desire to lash out. She had already told him enough to cook her three times over. Now came the infinitely delicate moment when she would pull back and go away, or she would make the decision that she would become a CIA source.

“Dominika,” he said, “I already told you I wanted to help you. I already asked you what you needed. What do you want to do?”

Dominika took her hand out of his, her cheeks flushed. “I don’t regret anything,” she said.

“I know you don’t,” said Nate. There was no sound in the room. “What do you want to do?” he asked softly.

It was as if she could read his mind. “You’re very clever, aren’t you, Mr. Neyt Nash?” she said. “I came here to cry on your shoulder, to tell you about my mission against you, to tell you I helped you.”

“I am grateful for all that,” said Nate, not wanting to show how scandalously relieved he was.

Dominika could see it in his face nonetheless. “But you’re not asking me to work with you to avenge Marta, nor to get back at my uncle, or Volontov, or the rest of them, nor to try to reform my beloved country.”

“I don’t have to tell you any of that,” he said.

“Of course you don’t,” she said. “You’re too careful for that.” Nate looked at her without saying anything. “All you do is ask me what I want to do.”

“That’s right,” said Nate.

“Instead, suppose you tell me what you want me to do.”

“I think we should begin working together. Stealing secrets,” Nate said immediately, his heart in his mouth.

“For revenge, for Marta, for Rodina, for—”

“No, none of those,” interrupted Nate. Gable’s words came into his head. Dominika looked at him. His purple halo had spread like the rays of a rising sun. “Because you need it, Dominika Egorova, because it helps you feed that temper of yours, because it’ll be something you own, for once in your life.”

Dominika stared at him. His eyes were steady, open. “That’s a very interesting thing to say,” she said.

The best recruitments are the ones where the agents recruit themselves, his instructor had bellowed at the Farm. Remember that, no surprises, a natural evolution, he had said. Well, this was hardly a natural evolution of the phased recruitment. Nate felt as though he had just run Class Four rapids in a bathtub.

It was an hour later and Dominika had never actually uttered, Yes, I will do it. No agent makes the decision with a handshake and a signature. Instead Nate just got her to start talking about it. He had told her, “Whatever you decide, I promise we will work safely,” which is the standard catechism when addressing agents. You mean it, but everyone—case officer and agent alike—knows that long-term survival for an agent, especially inside Russia, is unlikely. But the bland comment got a reaction.

“To do this work correctly we cannot avoid risks. We both know that,” said Dominika archly. She said “we,” thought Nate.

“And we’ll start slowly, carefully… if we decide to start at all,” he said.

“Exactly,” said Dominika. “ If we decide.”

“And we’ll proceed as quickly or as slowly as you want,” said Nate.

“Your side can examine my motivaciya at their leisure. If our collaboration turns out to be unsatisfactory, I will tell you and we will agree to the okonchanie, the termination of our relationship.” They apparently had the same agent-handling cant in the SVR.

She was through the first stage. It was getting late. Dominika stood and reached for her coat. Nate helped her, watching her eyes, the corners of her mouth, her hands. Was this going to stick? They stood looking at each other for a moment. She turned to him at the door, offered her hand. He took it and said, “ Spokoinoi noci, ” good night, and she left quickly, making no sound in the stairwell.

After Dominika left his apartment, Nate stayed up, jotting notes, remembering what she had told him. He resisted the idiotic urge to walk to the Embassy, wake up the Station, begin writing cables to Headquarters. Recruitment. SVR officer, Sparrow cadre, her uncle runs the whole outfit, assassinations. It’s a spy movie, for Christ’s sake. He couldn’t wait to get into the Station tomorrow.

His high spirits evaporated. He tossed in bed, throwing the bedclothes off. The Dead Sea fruit turned to ashes in his mouth. He had to secure the recruitment, make sure of her commitment; she could back out, a lot of agents did. When he put her in harness, he’d have Headquarters breathing down his neck. What’s her motivation? How much salary? What’s her access? What do you mean, she didn’t sign a secrecy agreement? This was very sudden. Is she a provocation?

Production. They were going to want results, fast. They would ask first for the best information she could get, and that would be dangerous. The little men in the little offices with the little beady eyes would want to validate her as a bona fide asset. Everything would be a test, they would not be satisfied until her information was corroborated, until she was “boxed,” passed a polygraph. Push her too hard, or push in the wrong direction, and they’d lose her, Nate knew that. And if he lost her after claiming a recruitment, there would be the knowing looks from Headquarters. Case was bogus from the start.

That was just the beginning. If Dominika was caught, the SVR would kill her. It didn’t matter how she was caught: a mole in Headquarters, a mistake in handling, hostile surveillance, or simply bad luck, the lights coming on with her standing in front of an open safe drawer with a rollover camera. Nate turned over in the bed.

There would be an interrogation and a trial, but they wouldn’t care about the facts. Uncle Vanya wouldn’t save her. They’d walk her, barefoot and wearing a prison smock, to the basement of the Lubyanka or Lefortovo or Butyrka. They’d push her down the hallway lined with chipped steel doors into the room with a drain in the sloping floor, and the hooks in the ceiling beams, and the stapled, waxed-cardboard coffin standing upright in the corner of the room. They’d shoot her behind the right ear even before she was halfway into the room, no warning, and they’d look at her lying facedown on the floor before picking her up, wrists and ankles, and dropping her into the cardboard coffin. That simple. That final.

ROGAN JOSH

In a mortar, roughly grind chopped onions, ginger, chili, cardamom, clove, coriander, paprika, cumin, and salt into a smooth paste. Add bay and cinnamon. Add heated clarified butter. Cook until fragrant. Add cubed pieces of lamb, stir in yogurt, warm water, and pepper. Bake in medium oven for two hours. Sprinkle with coriander.

The recruitment ofDominika was not in any sense normal. She was a trained intelligence officer, but she now had to learn how to become a spy. It wasn’t a natural transformation. Cement the bond, Forsyth had said.

Station’s first move, therefore, was to make extremely discreet inquiries into the whereabouts of Marta, to demonstrate their concern. Gable arranged a meeting with a cooperative liaison officer from Supo. No trace of the Russian woman. The security video of a possible crossing at Haaparanta was inconclusive. A tearless Dominika thanked Nate for trying.

They kept the BIGOT list way down, the registered tally of officers cleared to read into the operation, though they couldn’t do much about the Headquarters end. The case was already in Restricted Handling channels, which was bullshit, said Gable, because only about a hundred people read the cables. They still tried to limit distribution. Forsyth and Gable had done this before, knew the more carefully they started the case the longer the intel stream would last. Nate felt his resolve building—protect her at all costs. Do not fail, do not fail her .