Jason Matthews - Red Sparrow

“Can you pick the lock?” asked Nate, standing behind Benford looking through the curtain.

“Be serious,” Benford said. He still had an eight-track tape deck at home.

“Should we pop the window?”

“No. Second story,” said Benford, who unlaced his shoe, walked over to a rubber utility cable stapled to the side of the house, and knotted the shoelace around it, leaving a loop hanging free.

“Prusik knot,” said Benford, and he showed Nate how to stand up in the loop with one foot and slide the friction hitch upward, a foot each time, to climb the cable until he could reach the unlocked second-story window. Where the fuck did he learn that? thought Nate, as he signaled that he was in.

The upper room was an empty, disused bedroom. Nate walked to the door and looked down into the house. He whistled for the dog, but nothing stirred. He imagined a Russian illegal would have a Doberman or Rottweiler silently guarding the house.

Nate crept silently down a wooden staircase, the thick mahogany banister creaking as he descended. Tiptoeing through a 1950s-style kitchen that smelled of wheat and seeds and oil, Nate unlocked the back door and let Benford in. “The place feels empty,” Nate said. He and Benford walked through the downstairs rooms silently. The feeling of risky trespass enveloped them. The house smelled like a health club. Liniment and dusty radiators, no air moved, incongruous for a bright summer day.

The house had two front rooms, dining and living rooms, with windows that looked out onto the street. Chintzy, lacy curtains were drawn across all the windows. Spidery sunlight dappled the threadbare throw rugs laid on dark-stained hardwood floors. The furniture was heavy, dark, overstuffed furry pieces with doilies—actual doilies—on the arms and backs of the chairs and sofa. The mantelpiece above a sooty fireplace was lined with Bakelite mugs and figurines—a sea-captain mug, a Spanish girl with a mantilla. One lampshade had a pom-pom fringe around the lower edge. A wrought-iron fireplace poker set stood beside the hearth. Benford’s mouth worked as he surveyed the décor. “She must have cleaned out half the Portuguese antique shops in Fall River to decorate.”

Off the living room was a small office with a desk and a low bookcase stuffed with magazines and newspapers. On the desk was a small pile of utility bills and a white and blue porcelain schooner with Ahoy painted on the bow.

“Check the desk,” said Benford. “I’m going upstairs to look around.” Nate registered the ridiculous feeling of not wanting to separate from Benford, but nodded and pulled out the drawers one by one. Empty. As he closed the bottom drawer he felt resistance and heard the crunch of paper. He pulled the drawer all the way out and saw a rolled-up piece of paper at the end of the recess. He reached and pulled it out, unrolled it on top of the desk. It was a blueprint, a single sheet, with cross-sectional drawings of parts and electrical connections. The page was labeled Section 37, fasteners and brackets. Submarine parts? Santini worked in supply and procurement at Electric Boat. Was this a classified document? Why did she have it at home, stuck at the bottom of a drawer?

Benford meanwhile had gone upstairs into the bedroom. A four-poster bed was made with a quilt in a floral pattern with three large pillows at the head with lacy pillowcases. The single closet had blouses and slacks hanging uniformly on hangers. Several pairs of shoes on the floor, all sensible and made for walking, were lined up neatly. No pictures, no mementos, no personal items, a house that could be abandoned in ninety seconds. The bathroom was neutral, the medicine cabinet nearly empty. A toothbrush, bottle of aspirin, a twin pack of saline Fleet enemas. The pervasive smell of liniment.

Returning to the bedroom, Benford pulled out the single drawer of the bedside table. No books, porn, vibrators, or lube. Under a piece of felt he found a piece of paper with a long list of handwritten dates and times. June 5, 2100; June 10, 2200; June 30, 2130. Transmission schedule. She probably carried the laptop and encryption card with her. Standard meeting sked with a handler from the Russian Consulate in New York. A penetration of the submarine program. Benford closed the drawer and started downstairs to tell Nate.

Nate had just finished checking the backs of the other drawers again, but found nothing. He rolled up the blueprint to take upstairs to show Benford. Walking out the door, he stopped. Jennifer Santini was standing in the living room looking at him. A duffel bag was on the floor at her feet. Nate realized that they had never actually seen her before. Huh. She works out. With weights. On steroids. She apparently had just gotten home from the gym. Why wasn’t she at work?

Jennifer was in her late thirties, of average height. She was dressed in skintight spandex shorts stretched by tree-trunk legs, calves and quadriceps bulging. Her arms, shoulders, and neck were corded with muscle, her jawline bulged. She wore a tight tank top that covered not feminine breasts but dinner-plate-sized pectorals with nipples. She had brilliant green eyes, the whites bluish with health and vitality. Her face was etched around her mouth and a sharp, straight nose. Her forehead was deeply creased by the frown splashed across her face. She wore her red hair slicked tight to her head, pulled back in a ponytail, a bullet, a torpedo, an assembled action figure, a crossover SUV with the parts cobbled together.

In that final instant of appraisal, Nate noticed that she had beautiful feminine hands, with manicured nails painted a light pink. She was barefoot and her feet likewise were pretty and delicate, with painted toenails in the same soft color. The sound of Benford clumping down the stairs triggered Jennifer to move, blindingly fast, toward Nate. With hideous power she swatted a lamp off a side table at him as she closed the distance in two long strides. Nate ducked the lamp, which smashed against the wall behind him, but straightened to find himself face-to-face with her, a rock-hard forearm against his throat, pushing him back against the living-room wall, while taking thunderous, sweeping clouts at him with her free arm. Nate put both hands on her forearm and pulled. Nothing.

Nate hammered on her arm, but she stayed with him, crushing against his throat with those Schwarzenegger arms and Grace Kelly hands. Nate threw an overhand punch at her face, his fist glancing off her cheek with no apparent effect. Her face was inches from his, and she bared her teeth with the effort. Nate expected her to bite his lips off. As she continued hitting him with looping punches, insane, disjointed thoughts ran through Nate’s mind: (1) His luck he has to corner the one Russian illegal in the world who isn’t the bird-watching accountant; (2) What in Christ the men in her office must think about her as she sits at her desk every morning; and (3) What, if anything, does this cyborg do for sex? Then, absurdly, Nate thought about what Dominika was doing at this very moment; where was she? An inexpressible sadness swept over him as he thought that Dominika might be dead, and his head bounced off the wall and his throat constricted and he thought that this freak was part of the machine that killed her.

Benford appeared at the bottom of the stairs and stood in shocked immobility. Jennifer looked for a second at the tubby, rumpled man—he would be dessert after the main course—and Nate raked her shin with his shoe and stomped on one pretty, Lolita-pink foot, which made Jennifer ease up an inch, and Nate slid sideways away from her pinioning arm and kicked the spandex bulge between her legs with his instep as hard as he could. Jennifer grunted like a man, held herself with both hands, and thumped heavily on the floor, then fell over on her side, doubled up.