Jason Matthews - Red Sparrow

A change of hotel at Benford’s insistence, and Nate waiting in Bryant Park to pass MARBLE the room number, the basalt-and-gold battlements of the former headquarters of the American Radiator Company bathed in milky footlights against the city night glow. A bear hug at the door, it had been four or five years, and they sat, and the radiator rattled, and the Manhattan taxi horns came up from West Fortieth through the window glass. A bottle of brandy half-full and two glasses filled and refilled. They were not quite old friends, but Benford had followed MARBLE for fourteen years. Once a year he had read the file, watching it expand, like a swimming pool filled from a garden hose, fat with contact reports describing the precious outside meetings each year, twice a year, in Paris, or Jakarta, or New Delhi.

The MARBLE file was the well-thumbed chronicle in twenty volumes of the life of an agent, a wife’s death, a widower’s sadness, the unexpected trips out to the West, the hurried arrangements to meet. CIA medals presented, three of them, and taken back, saved for a rainy day. Thank-you notes from handlers and chiefs and directors, and the implausible certificates commending MARBLE for “preserving democracy around the world.” Problems over the years solved, big and small, and the deposits to the retirement account, the yellow flimsies bookmarking each six-month chapter of the odyssey.

The file captured a chronology of CIA Russia Division chiefs, some prodigious, some less so, who claimed MARBLE’s successes as their own. It likewise documented a genealogy of CIA directors, some formerly admirals or generals who unconcernedly wore their uniforms and ribbons among the spooks in the building that Allen Dulles built, and who carried MARBLE’s occasionally stunning intelligence to the White House, presenting it as the unmistakable fruit of their tenancies. And the file listed the names of the young men and women, MARBLE’s handlers, case officers of the snowy streets and the flyblown lobbies and the ringing stairways, all moved on, some upward, some not.

As was his custom, Benford had read the file annually over the years for the signs of tradecraft fissure, listening for the tapping of the deathwatch beetle in the woodwork. Cynically, Benford looked for signs of the turning, the flip, the falloff in production, the photographic exposures more frequently out of focus or out of frame, the coincidental loss of access. There were no indications of trouble. MARBLE was the best Russian case in the CIA not only because he had survived so long, but also because he kept getting better.

“Nathaniel has told you what I have reported?” asked MARBLE.

“Yes,” said Benford. “We’re going to be busy.”

“The illegal, the submarine matter, the Director’s Case, this SWAN?”

“I read his summary this morning,” said Benford.

“I’m sorry to say that the end of the Cold War has not diminished our leaders’ inclinations to do mischief. In many ways the old Soviets were easier to understand.” MARBLE poured two more glasses of brandy, lifted his glass, and sipped.

Benford shrugged. “We’re probably just as bad. Besides, if we stopped, we’d all be out of a job.”

“Which is what I want to talk to you about,” said MARBLE.

“Volodya, are you telling me you want to stop?” said Benford. “Is there any reason for the timing?”

“Benford, do not misunderstand me. I do not want to quit. When it is time, I would very much like to retire calmly, to move to America, to let you buy me an apartment in this city.”

“You will have all that and more. Tell me what you are thinking.”

“How long I can continue working with you, and the precise nature of my retirement, whether voluntary or kinetic, remains to be seen,” said MARBLE. Benford thought he had never heard an agent refer to the possibility of his arrest and execution as a “kinetic retirement.” MARBLE continued. “One thing is certain. I have two or three years left in the normal course of my career, given Vanya Egorov’s aspirations and the general direction of the Service.”

“You could still become a deputy director,” said Benford with conviction. “You’re respected in Yasenevo, you have friends in the Duma.”

MARBLE took another sip of brandy. “You would have me in harness for another ten years, then? Among the politicians? Benford, I thought we were zakadychnyi drug, comrades. No, my friend, my time is finite. And with some boasting may I say that when I stop working, the intelligence will stop, and the loss will be felt?”

“Correct,” said Benford. “No false modesty need intrude. It will be a grave loss. You cannot be replaced.”

“And then will come the frantic cries of alarm from your masters, the calls to replace the intelligence, the wrong candidates considered, the rush to recruit.”

“A time-honored process, it keeps people like me young,” said Benford. “Volodya, what are you driving at? I can hardly wait for what we call the ‘payoff.’”

“I propose to provide my successor, a replacement to continue the work.”

Benford had seen too much over the years to be surprised, but he did lean closer. “Volodya, with respect, are you telling me you have a protégé? Someone who knows the work we do together?” He thought briefly of the lead sentence of a CI memo documenting that .

“No, she has no idea of our work together. This will come with time, when I train and prepare her.”

“ ‘ Her ’?” said Benford. “You propose to replace yourself, a general in the SVR with thirty years of experience and in charge of the Americas Department, with a woman? I do not object to the gender, but there are no senior women in the Center. I am aware of only one woman ever sitting on the Collegium in the last thirty years. There are junior officers, administrators, clerks, support staff. What kind of access will she have?”

“Calm yourself, Benford, such a person exists.”

“Pray, tell,” said Benford.

“Dominika Egorova, the niece of Vanya Egorov,” said MARBLE.

“You’re not serious,” said Benford, face dead, eyes unmoving, steady hands pouring another brandy. Lightning thoughts one after the other in that wire-snare mind. Jesus H. Christ, she’s alive. The two agents have met. They’re working together. Please God they have not shared their respective secrets while eating borscht in the cafeteria. Young Nash is going to be busy. And finally, in a hot flash: This could fucking work.

“Tell me why,” said Benford with immense skepticism. “Please, Volodya, before the brandy runs out and I start to sober up.”

MARBLE tapped the little table with his forefinger. “Benford, I want you to open your ears. This is a perfect konspiritsia, an opportunity as good as you have ever had in the history of your service.” He tapped the table with each point he made. “She is the perfect solution to our problem. I have considered it carefully. Her last name gives her something of a pedigree, at least until Vanya retires or is purged, but by then she will be on her own way. She is a graduate of the Foreign Intelligence Academy, the AVR, and she graduated with honors. She is intelligent and has spirit.” Looking down, Benford turned the stem of the glass in his hand. MARBLE knew what he was doing.

“You and I know that a good record is not enough,” continued MARBLE. “She has the motivation, a mountain of resentment. Her father died, she was expelled from dance academy, her svin’ya uncle used her in the elimination of a Putin rival. He traded her silence for a slot at the Academy, then broke his word and sent her to Sparrow School. You know what that is, I presume.” Benford nodded.