Jason Matthews - Red Sparrow

“You too,” said Nate. “This is going to be fine.”

“See you in a couple of days,” she said, pulling on a pair of gloves, ready to open the door. Waiting. Sound of dishes in the sink. Looking at him, Mona Lisa smile.

“I want you to be careful,” he said. She looked over his shoulder toward the little moon-blasted bedroom, but he didn’t blink, and her heart fell a little.

“ Spokoinoi nochi, Neyt.” She never made a sound going down the steps.

They walked around putting out the lamps, getting ready to go home. It was already tomorrow. Forsyth was talking as they buttoned up the apartment. “No ripples, no hovering, no heroics, is that clear?” Gable was drawing the curtains, flicking off the light in the bathroom.

“Got it,” said Nate.

“I mean, if we hit a bump tomorrow, we don’t launch in specwar mode,” Forsyth said.

“Right, I understand,” said Nate, knowing what was coming, trying not to patronize his chief.

“If there’s trouble, what we do is assess the trouble. Then we make the decision to act. But it is going to be critical that Dominika play out her role in the exchange, to sell the swap. If she stumbles, no matter what the reason, the operation is gone.”

Gable came back into the room. “By this time tomorrow the SVR has got to be jerking one another off that they got away with the authentic goods. No doubts, sheer joy in Moscow.” They were all pulling on their overcoats. What had to be said, had to be said now, because once outside on the street they walked away in different directions, no good-night hugs.

“So what I’m hearing is that we let her walk into a shitstorm to sell the con,” said Nate, trying to keep his voice even.

“‘Sell the con’?” said Gable. “This ain’t Las Vegas. We’re gonna protect her every way we know how. But you gotta get on board, nugget. Get your head straight, this is as big as it gets.”

The three of them split up in the frosty air. Nate took the long walk around to his car, trolleys weren’t running that late. He felt a little of the Vaseline still left under his door handle, and he got into his car and stared at the dashboard, and his vision tunneled, and he was parking in front of her apartment, and pounding on her door, and she was in his arms, her nightgown clinging and thin over her body, and she was showering him with kisses, and his cloudy vision popped and he shook his head clear and started his car and drove home, looping around the fringes of the city, watching his mirrors.

FORSYTH’S SOUBISE

Boil rice in salted water for five minutes. In separate French saucière, lightly caramelize seasoned onions in butter. Stir in rice, cover, and cook gently in medium oven, stirring occasionally, until golden. Before serving, stir in heavy cream and grated Gruyère.

Forsyth, Nate, anda tech named Ginsburg perched gingerly on red velvet Empire chairs in an elegant room in the Kämp Hotel. They looked skeptically at the flocked silk wallpaper and satin canopy over the bed. Traffic noise on Norra Esplanaden came faintly through the sheers across the tall French doors. The three CIA officers sat around a low gilt side table, which was covered by two laptops, a cell phone, a miniature signal receiver, and an encrypted Motorola SB5100—the bulky radios were more secure than cell phones, especially in the likely event that the Russians were monitoring all channels during the hotel-room meeting. The laptops displayed two images: Number one was of Dominika’s room at the Kämp, essentially identical to the one in which they were sitting. It was, in fact, the room next door. Laptop number two showed the interior of that room’s large adjoining bathroom. Both images were from an upper corner, near the ceiling, a bird’s-eye, 270-degree view.

Per Volontov’s instructions, Dominika had rented the room several days in advance, which gave the techs time to do an entry. The Station had worked overnight to install two wireless cameras, one mortised into the ornate plaster ceiling molding of the bedroom, the other secured inside a forced-air vent in the bathroom. The cameras transmitted an encrypted signal to the receiver that then was displayed on and recorded by the laptops. Each remote-head camera—the size of a Zippo lighter—also contained a miniature digital microphone that provided audio.

Gable was on the street in a parked van at the front of the Kämp with LEGATT Maratos and three other Special Agents from the FBI’s counterespionage office in Washington. To Maratos’s barely concealed fury, Forsyth had vetoed any FBI presence in the hotel room, partly to contain and control the FEEBs, but mostly to prevent them from seeing Dominika. They were not going to expose her as an asset to the FEEBs.

The FEEBs had played hardball in Washington. They refused to agree to permit the volunteer, whoever he was, to depart Helsinki and return to the United States before they popped him. Too many things could go wrong, they argued. What they really meant was that they couldn’t survive the political blowback if the UNSUB, the unknown subject, got away. Cake-eaters in Headquarters therefore agreed that the FEEBs would wait till the Russians had cleared the area before taking him down. They said, “Sure, sure,” when the CIA insisted that Forsyth, and only Forsyth, would give the go-ahead to arrest.

“Everybody understands the sequence of events, right?” said Forsyth in his office the day before. He was looking pointedly at Maratos.

“Yeah, yeah we got it. This isn’t our first bust,” said Maratos. “Just be sure you call us when you find out the little cocksucker’s name.”

“Elwood, I want to stress that you have to wait for my go signal. You’ll put my source’s life in jeopardy if you go in too hard too soon,” said Forsyth.

Maratos looked up at Forsyth in annoyance. “I said I got it, Jesus. I got it.”

Gable had told Nate that his job for this operation was to shut up and listen, but Nate spoke up anyway, looking directly at the FBI man. “If you guys fuck this up, better have your wife start your car every morning.” It was a howling breach of etiquette.

“You little shit,” said Maratos. “Is that a threat against a federal officer?”

Nate had been about to respond when Forsyth snapped, “Shut the fuck up, both of you.” Maratos thought to say something else but kept his mouth shut.

The radio on the table clicked twice, the signal from Gable in the van that Volontov and Dominika had entered the hotel lobby. Three minutes later, laptop one showed the door opening and Volontov, Dominika, and a short young man entering the room. Dominika carried a briefcase. The volunteer was dark-complexioned, had an unruly shock of black hair, and heavy eyebrows. He wore a blue Windbreaker and carried a black duffel bag slung over his shoulder. What the camera did not record was what Dominika saw. The air around him was suffused with a soiled yellow cast, like a fever wind or the sky before a tornado. She knew what Volontov was going to do to him—Dominika knew the young man was lost. They sat in chairs around a low table. The audio picked up Volontov speaking in Russian and Dominika translating. It was eerie to hear Dominika’s voice coming out of the laptop.

At Volontov’s insistence the young man identified himself as John Paul Bullard, a midlevel analyst in the National Communications Service. He described his work and his need for money. He patted the duffel bag and repeated his demand that Volontov pay him a half million dollars for the manual, the cover sheet of which he had already provided. Volontov spoke again and Dominika asked the young American how they could be sure it was genuine.

Bullard zipped open the duffel and handed Dominika a bound manual the size of a thin telephone book. She handed it to Volontov, who spent three seconds riffling the pages before he handed it back to Dominika. He said something to Bullard that Dominika translated. They would have to examine the document privately before determining its exact value. Bullard said, “It’s genuine, all right, it’s the real thing.”