Jason Matthews - Red Sparrow

“No one knows how to make a real omelet,” said Gable. “It’s not just cooking eggs and folding them over. That’s bullshit. You have to shake the pan and stir to get the curds small—are you listening?—get them smooth, then form them in the front of the pan. Like this.” He gathered the cooked eggs lightly with a fork, reversed his grip on the skillet handle, tapped it on the stove, and inverted the pan over a plate. Gable’s omelet was a pale-yellow teardrop of softly cooked eggs. “And the fucking center still has to be runny,” Gable said, cutting it open with a fork. “Want some?”

“Jesus, Marty,” said Nate.

“Look, all we can do is wait to see what happens. Not a peep from our side. No movement.” He ate a forkful of omelet. “Let me ask you a question. What’s the most important aspect about this clambake?” he asked.

“You mean the manual, the substitution?” said Nate. “Fuck the manual, what about our agent? They might have Dominika in a chair in the basement right now, and you’re eating omelets.”

“I want her safe as much as you do,” said Gable, “but we wait to see if the Russians believe they pulled off stealing the manual. We wait to hear them slapping themselves on the back. The Fort is looking in real time at the rezidentura traffic. Dominika’s thumb-drive download took; it’s giving us everything, and NSA is reading it all. Total radio silence, but that could mean they’re being extra careful.”

“And if we lose the agent? Is it worth it?”

“You figure it out. We make the Bolshies waste seven years planning cyber attacks against what they think is our infrastructure, for nothing. What’s more important?”

Nate looked over at Gable, who was staring back at him. “Enjoy your fucking omelet,” said Nate.

Forsyth looked up from his desk in the Station at midday. Gable had just heard from his guy who had spent the morning watching from the OP. Nate didn’t like the way Gable’s face looked. “A van left the Russian Embassy at nine o’clock this morning. DIVA and two others. They were carrying a diplomatic bag, and headed to the airport.”

“There’s an Aeroflot flight to Moscow every day at noon,” said Gable, looking at his watch. “That’s in ninety minutes.”

“That’s it?” said Nate. “What are we going to do about it?”

“What we’re going to do is absolutely nothing,” said Forsyth. “The van going to the airport is normal. The first thing they’d do—all last night—is copy the damn thing and prepare the pouch. Now they’re bringing the original back in the bag on the noon flight. Dominika and two escorts. Volontov would do something like that, send her, to kiss ass and get the credit.”

“We don’t know that,” said Nate. “What if they’re escorting her back? What if she’s in trouble?”

“Even if that’s true, what do you suggest?” asked Forsyth. “That manual is going to get to Moscow.”

“Let me go to the airport,” said Nate. “I won’t fuck around. I’ll just scope it out. Maybe we’ll get a feel for what’s happening. We’d like to know what the situation looks like, wouldn’t we, we’d like to be able to report the details, right?”

“No fucking way,” said Forsyth. “You’d be like Romeo yelling for Juliet to come out on the balcony.”

Nate looked over at Gable.

“I can’t stand this,” said Gable. “Any second this dickhead is going to start weeping. Tom, I’ll go with him. I won’t let him step on his dick. We might see who she’s traveling with, get an indication of what’s going on.” Gable looked at Forsyth and nodded.

When Forsyth didn’t say anything, Nate and Gable threw on their coats and pounded down the stairs. With Nate at the wheel, the drive to the airport was on two wheels. They walked along the glassed-in observation mezzanine that overlooked the departure hall. Gable spotted Dominika sitting close to the Aeroflot gate. She was dressed in the same navy suit and white shirt. Her hair was tied with a ribbon. An embassy official sat on either side of her. The yellow canvas diplomatic bag was on the floor between one of the officials’ knees. Dominika looked small and quiet, dressed like a good little functionary, returning to Moscow and the Center.

Gable grabbed Nate by the collar and hustled him behind a broad pillar. “Just stand there. No waving. No movement. If she sees you, we don’t know how she’ll react. If you fuck up, you could kill her.”

Dominika sat between the rezidentura security man and an embassy admin flunky who, when told he was getting a free round-trip home, packed his suitcase full of tinned salmon and music CDs to sell to his neighbors and friends in Moscow. He didn’t even know who the busty young bonbon sitting next to him was, and he didn’t care. The security man on the other side had received whispered instructions about this trip. He was told only that Corporal Egorova would be met at the airport by officials and that he was to turn over the bag directly to the same officers. He was to get a signed receipt for the bag and was granted two days’ leave before he returned to Helsinki. Period.

Dominika was enveloped in the overpowering double wash of the security man’s cologne and the gagging smell of cooked cabbage from the admin sloth. Something caught her eye and she looked up at the observation mezzanine. Standing beside a column in the glass wall was Nate. He stood looking down at her, his hands by his sides, the glass tinted purple. Her breath caught in her chest; she willed herself to stay still. Their eyes met, and she gave an imperceptible shake of her head. No, dushka, she willed her thought to reach him through the glass. Let me go. Nate looked down at her and nodded.

GABLE’S PROPER FRENCH OMELET

Beat eggs with salt and pepper. When butter in pan over high heat has stopped foaming, pour in eggs. Violently stir eggs while shaking pan until eggs begin to scramble. Tilt pan forward to pile eggs at the front. Run fork around edges to fold into the still-wet center, ensuring ends of the omelet come to a point. Change to underhanded grip, tap pan to bring omelet to lip of skillet, and invert pan onto a plate. Omelet should be pale yellow and creamy inside.

Volontov didn’t lookat her when he told Dominika he wanted a summary translation of Bullard’s manual, but the air around his head was suffused with a dark orange cloud. Deception, mistrust, danger. She could feel it. She would have to stay in the embassy overnight, she could sleep on the couch in the dayroom next to Records. The rezident KR thug kept her in his sight the whole time. She was unaware that he had observed the flurry of men pulling the volunteer Bullard to the marble floor of the Kämp lobby, tourists milling, but her intuition told her something was seriously wrong.

Volontov looked at her from across the room, and she felt the acid of the old days, the look of Stalin’s hangmen Dzerzhinsky, Yezhov, Beria, the blank, bloodless look that sent men and women to the cellars. Dominika knew something had happened, she fought a rising surge of panic. They were keeping their distance, always a bad sign, the machinery of distrust had kicked in. Dominika resolved to act as if nothing had happened, to assume an air of innocence. She thought about the safe house, about Nate and Bratok, then she told herself to stop thinking about them, to prepare for what was coming. She began bricking up her mind, burying the secrets as deeply as she could. They mustn’t get at her secrets, no matter how deep they dug.

Two gray men met them at Sheremetyevo, standing shoulder to shoulder in the middle of the terminal. They took the dun-yellow canvas pouch from the security man, who then left the terminal in a separate car. They told her she was required at an interview, walked on either side of her to the waiting car. She rode in silence from the airport in the late afternoon light to a nondescript building in the eastern end of the city. It was off Ryazanskiy Prospect was all she could see, a creaking lift, a long corridor painted green, and she sat there as daylight faded to night. She had not eaten and she had worn the same clothes for two days. A man with glasses opened a door and gestured her to enter a room that was made to look like a private office, but it was unlived-in, a stage set, down to the bowl of roses on the sideboard.