Jason Matthews - Red Sparrow

Soak dried mushrooms and strain. Add soaking liquid to beef stock and boil mushrooms for four hours. Sauté finely diced onions in butter until golden and add to soup. Whisk in cornstarch, stir, and simmer until thickened. Season and serve with a dollop of sour cream and parsley.

Benford sat insemidarkness in his office, the covcom message alert cable on the small square of visible desk amid the landfill chaos of the rest of it. He had read MARBLE’s cryptic message twice, hearing his voice as he read the words, seeing him conserving the limited characters allowable in a burst transmission. He bellowed to his secretary to fetch Nate and Alice immediately. While he waited, he read the message again:

One: SWAN definitely in US. V says SWAN material best since 50s. Poss he working out of capital city. Golov likely handler. Nasarenko claims work overload, discs and technical data.

Two: V running canary trap. Nasarenko told big source suffering shingles. I told he recovering eye surgery. Other variants likely.

Three: V renewing op vs NN. I assigned to direct (!) V niece in my dept, targeted against NN.

Four: Anticipate travel Rome coincide with EBES conference. Will advise when out. niko.

Benford’s eyes lingered on the lowercase n in the niko signature, which in simple terms was the “no duress” indicator, but which more specifically meant that MARBLE had not composed the message with a circle of men standing around him, one of whom was prying the little finger of his left hand straight up, close to the breaking point, as he wrote what they wanted.

SWAN was a mole in the US government. Game on. That this was considered by the Russians the best case in years suggested SWAN’s intelligence had quality as well as quantity; it meant to Benford that the United States was hemorrhaging information. When Alice stuck her head in the door, Benford told her he was assigning her a single project, starting right now.

“I have the double agent thing in Brazil,” said Alice bluntly. She was not afraid of contradicting Benford.

“That bullshit can wait,” said Benford without looking up from his desk. “I want you to drop everything and compile a list. It’ll be unlike anything you have ever done before.”

“Do tell,” said Alice, vaguely looking for a place to sit. She found none and remained standing in front of Benford’s desk.

“It’s going to be a little unconventional, but that’s right up your alley, Alice,” said Benford. He looked up. “I want you to draw up a Top Ten list for me. I want you to identify the ten biggest secrets in the United States government. It could be military, political, domestic, cyber, banking, space, energy, Islam, or the tattoo on Pat Benatar’s ass, I don’t care—”

“On whose ass?” asked Alice.

“Pat Benatar, the pop singer,” said Benford defensively. “Start with the Pentagon and their hottest SAPs, military secrets, that’s what excites the Russians the most. Find out what DoD considers their ultrasensitive projects. Long-term. Expensive. Strategic. Get the deputy director for military affairs to make a call to SecDef if necessary. Politely ask them to get off their asses and hurry up. Then when we see what they consider the crown jewels, we can begin reviewing the BIGOT lists.” Alice moved to the door just as Nate entered. As they squeezed past each other, Alice turned to him.

“Do you know who Pat Benatar is?” asked Alice.

“Never heard of him,” said Nate, clearing files off a small chair and sitting down. “Is he the FBI guy in Boston who covered the New England thing?”

“Forget it,” said Benford. “Thank you, Alice, get started on that right away, will you?” Benford turned to Nate and handed him the copy of the MARBLE message. He could see Nate’s cheeks color as he read about Dominika. Nate reread the message as if he could squeeze more information out of the spare lines. He looked up at Benford.

“She’s alive.”

“Not only is DIVA alive, but it appears she made it through the wringer,” said Benford. “And now her uncle has had the inexpressible good sense to assign her to MARBLE.” Benford thought again of MARBLE’s succession strategy.

“Do you think she’ll come out with MARBLE to Rome?” asked Nate.

“I suggest you take a cold shower,” drawled Benford. “She may never be totally trusted, or alternatively she may be fully reinstated. Right now we take advantage of the fact that an agent recruited by you—DIVA—and narrowly cleared in a recent CI investigation has been assigned by an unsuspecting Center to seduce you with the goal of eliciting the name of the senior SVR officer you handle—MARBLE—who coincidentally is DIVA’s new boss and who is directing her in the operation to unman you, his case officer.” Benford looked at Nate from between twin towers of newspapers and file folders, the medieval alchemist who’s misplaced the philosopher’s stone.

“You love this shit, don’t you?” said Nate.

“I expect you to deal with ambiguity. If you are not capable of it, you should leave immediately.” Benford glowered at Nate.

“Well, how would you proceed?” said Benford, throwing him the bone.

Nate took a breath and tried to clear his mind of Dominika. “The message tells us that they still have no clue about MARBLE, his identity.”

“And how do you conclude that?” asked Benford.

“Egorov is dangling different variations of stories about SWAN in front of various department heads. It shows he’s desperate.”

“What else?” said Benford.

“If Egorov has been feeding his top managers barium meals, it suggests he expects he will get results, that one of the variants will get back to him.”

“And?” said Benford.

“And that suggests he has someone inside the US government who would be positioned to hear a variant and report back. In the Intelligence Community. SWAN?”

“It could,” said Benford. “What other tidbit in the message could help us do something about finding SWAN?” Nate looked down again, then up at Benford.

“Give me a clue,” Nate said.

“Nasarenko.”

Nate looked at the message again. He looked up suddenly.

“We know the variant told to Nasarenko,” said Nate, “so we spread that variant around, carefully, keeping track of who we flog it to. If Nasarenko’s fortunes suddenly change, we have a place to start, a finite list of people.”

“And Vanya Egorov’s barium meal turns into a barium enema,” said Benford. “In all of this, please do not forget that he’s impatient and desperate. You represent a shortcut for Egorov to solve the one problem that will keep him off the bascule of the guillotine. He’s concentrating on you.” Nate was thinking about Dominika again, and Benford saw it in his face, and groaned theatrically.

“Enough about you, disappointing as that may be,” said Benford. “Clear your mind and tell me what you would do in the immediate matter of SWAN. If MARBLE is correct, the case is being run here in Washington, by the rezident himself.”

“If Golov personally is handling SWAN, that’s a weak point for them,” said Nate. “I think we should consider covering the rezident .”

“Brilliant. But how do we work Golov? What would you do?” asked Benford, nudging Nate forward.

“We starve him for a month. We surveil him pretty close, shut him down. Look, don’t get mad, but we should bring the FEEBs into this. If we’re going to be playing with Golov in downtown Washington, the FBI has to be involved. The FCI guys, foreign counterintelligence, are the best, real spy chasers, and the Gs know what they’re doing on the street. Awesome surveillance team.