Red Sparrow (19 page)

Dominika had always displayed an interest in his job, his duties as a diplomat, and Delon had grown accustomed to describing his work, pleased to have someone show an interest. Now he could do something for her, and the next evening Delon came to Nadia’s apartment straight from the embassy carrying his briefcase, and produced a twenty-page report from the embassy’s Commercial Section on investment challenges and opportunities in Russia. He read through it with her. The word
Confidentiel
was printed on the top and bottom of each page.

More sessions, more documents. When Delon could not bring out originals, or copy them, he would take adequate pictures of documents with his cell phone. They worked with his technical dictionaries in French and with hers in Russian. As befitting a language teacher, Dominika was mastering the vocabulary, and he could see with the pride of a tutor that she likewise
was mastering the issues regarding international trade and energy. Delon set his jaw with conviction. He would teach her, train her, make her an expert. He loved her, he told himself.

To solve the problem of leaving embassy documents overnight so Dominika could study, Delon himself began making copies for her, a step not so important for the SVR in terms of document copy—the overhead cameras in the ceiling above the table could focus on a single comma—but as an act of commission, an irreversible step beyond the regulations of embassy security. Dominika knew he was hers now. For Delon, the fiction of “vocabulary study” faded into the fiction of “educating Nadia,” which was morphing now into an overwhelming devotion to her, to do whatever she asked. This motivation was stronger than any agent salary she could have offered, stronger than any blackmail threats from a bedroom sting. If he realized he was dealing with Russian intelligence, he never acknowledged it.

Simyonov watched the progress and called another meeting, making a show and raving about moving forward, about bedding the diminutive Frenchman. “Go ahead,
you
take him to bed,” said Dominika to Simyonov and the men around the table. “Which one of you wants to fuck him?” The room fell silent.

Dominika tried to be a little softer. “Look,” she said. “The next step is supremely delicate.” She had to move Delon first to agree to contact his daughter, then gently to ask her to provide defense secrets. It was like pulling strings to control one puppet that in turn was attached to another puppet. Once his daughter had crossed the line, Delon had to ensure her continued participation. “Once the French defense documents start flowing, the case will be made,” said Dominika.

Simyonov listened sourly and was not convinced. The plan was too complicated. This
diletantka
was insubordinate. But he resolved to wait a while longer. He was confirmed in his plans after another hallway conversation with General Korchnoi. The veteran senior spy said he absolutely agreed with the need to move forward with the recruitment pitch, and commiserated with Simyonov when he heard about Dominika’s headstrong attitudes. “These young officers,” said Korchnoi. “Tell me more about her.”

Ironically, it was the timorous Delon who forced the timeline. Sitting next to Dominika on the couch one evening, reviewing another midlevel commercial document, Delon had impulsively reached out and taken her hands in his. He then had leaned toward her and kissed her tenderly. Perhaps the intimacy of working together finally overcame him, perhaps an instinct about being dragged slowly into the funnel web of espionage made him fatalistic. Whatever had awakened him, Dominika kissed him back tenderly while frantically calculating. They were at a critical juncture of the operation. Sleeping with him now, before she could bring the daughter into the plan, could jeopardize the transition. Conversely, it could cement her control over him. Dominika thought about the glistening jowls, the overhanging bellies of the men in the hot little room on the other side of the wall.

As if he had sensed her indecision, Delon’s lips faltered, his eyes popped open. At the least likely moment he was going to stop. The halo around his head was blazing, incandescent. In that instant Dominika knew she must go forward, they would have to become lovers. She would carry him along, help him seduce her.

She registered a little regret at reaching this stage. He was so trusting and sweet—how unlike her romp with Ustinov. And now she had Sparrow training, prompts from which began popping uncontrollably into her brain.

Dominika put her hand behind his head and pressed their lips together more tightly (
No. 13, “Unambiguously signal sexual willingness
”) and took a trembling breath (
No. 4, “Build passionate response by evincing passion
”). He pulled away and looked at her with wide eyes. She caressed his cheek and then, staring into his eyes, placed his hand on her breast. He could feel her heart beating and she pressed his hand more hotly against her (
No. 55, “Display carnal abandon to authenticate physical arousal
”). She shuddered. Delon was still staring, his hand motionless. “Nadia,” he whispered.

Eyes now closed, Dominika brushed her cheek against his and brought her mouth close to his ear (
No. 23, “Provide aural prompts to spur desire
”). “Simon,
baise-moi,
” she whispered, and they were up and staggering into the dim little bedroom (which was in truth illuminated brighter than Moscow’s Dynamo soccer stadium but with invisible infrared light), and Dominika stepped out of her skirt, shrugged off her blouse, but kept her low-cut brassiere in place (
No. 27, “Employ incongruity of nudity and vestments to whiplash the senses”
), and watched Delon hopping ridiculously out of his trousers while she trailed her hands down her thighs (
No. 51, “Auto-stimulate to generate pheromones
”).

He was like a mating turtledove in bed, fluttering, feathery, weightless as he lay on her body. He nuzzled gently between her breasts; she hardly felt him, but she arched her back, threw out her legs (
No. 49, “Generate dynamic tension in the extremities to hasten nerve response
”) and focused for an instant on the aperture in the light fixture on the ceiling, but his head was lifting from between her breasts to look at her again, and she met his eyes and he sighed and fluttered more energetically on top of her. Dominika closed her eyes (
No. 46, “Block distractions which derail responsiveness
”) and called his name again and again and felt a building tremor run through his body, and she helped him (
No. 9, “Develop the pubococcygeus muscle
”), and he whimpered, “
Nadia, je t’aime.
”

She ran her fingers along his neck and whispered, “
Lyubov’ moja,
” my love, and knew what was happening when the door to the bedroom exploded inward and the orange-tinted bulb (better contrast for the digital cameras) in the overhead fixture flooded the room with light and three men in suits crowded into the room. Their shirt collars were wet and their eyes shone like pig eyes in a truffle forest. They had been watching from next door, and the smells of their sweat and day-old shirts and week-old socks filled the room.

The minute the door opened, Dominika sat up in bed and clasped the terrified, shrinking Delon to her like a favorite doll and started screaming in Russian for them to get out. She knew Simyonov was blowing her careful recruitment to smithereens. He could not wait, he had to proceed according to his artless script. It was a blow against her. She was paying for her glib performances around the conference table, her disrespectful interruptions. She remembered trying to talk like one of the old boys: “This beet is almost cooked,” she had said. Well, the old boys were showing her who ran things.

They tore Delon from her, dragged him off the bed, and marched him naked to the living room. They pushed him on the couch and threw him his crumpled trousers. He looked up at the hulking men without comprehension. Dominika continued swearing at them from the bed as she gathered up a sheet to cover herself and get to her feet. She was nearly blind with rage
and her body, throat, head felt tight, and her ears were filled with a rushing sound.

She was determined to drive them out of the room and retrieve the situation. Before she could stand, the third man grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her off the bed and into the living room. When Delon saw her being manhandled he made to rise, but the other two men pushed him back down. The man spun Dominika to face him and slapped her across the cheek. “
Shalava, suka!
” he spat, and threw her to the floor. Staged scenario or not, Dominika looked up at the bastard who had called her a slut and a whore, and measured the distance to his eyes.

Dominika got to her feet and let the sheet fall to the floor. Every eye in the room was transfixed by her body, chest heaving, legs braced. Her foot flashed out in a feint, and the SVR man bent forward to protect himself. Dominika quickly reached out and dug the nails of her thumb and forefinger into the septum between his nostrils, pinched hard, and pulled him toward her, a torture-cell NKVD come-along from the 1930s. Dominika pulled the howling and unresisting thug’s head sharply downward against the little table in the room—littered with French Embassy commercial documents—the corner of which caught him on the cheek, knocking the table and the papers over and dropping the man into a heap on the floor. He didn’t move. From the couch Delon looked at her in disbelief.

The entire sequence had taken less than ten seconds. One of the other SVR men grabbed Dominika and hustled her out of the apartment, frog-marched her down the hall, and shoved her into another room. “Take your hands off me,” she said as the door slammed shut in her face. The man was gone. A voice came from the back of the room.

“An effective performance, Corporal, a strong finish to a discreet intelligence operation.” Dominika turned to see Simyonov sitting on a couch in front of two monitors. One screen showed the apartment, a man bending over the insensate lump on the floor, while the other man stood over Delon, who was still holding his trousers in his hands, his face looking up at him, upturned as if in prayer. The other screen replayed Dominika and Delon in bed. With the sound muted, their lovemaking looked clinical, staged. She ignored it.

Dominika clutched the sheet around her with one hand while fingering her throbbing cheek with the other. “
Zhopa!
Asshole! We would have gotten
it all,” she screamed. Simyonov did not respond. His eyes darted from one monitor to the other. “He would have recruited his own daughter for me,” she raved. Simyonov did not turn to look at her but muttered, “He will do so at any rate.” He pointed a remote and the sound came from the live monitor. The two SVR men were now screaming at Delon, who sat motionless on the couch. Dominika took another barefoot step into the room toward Simyonov, seriously contemplating driving a thumbnail into his eye. “Don’t you know he will not succumb to blackmail? He is not brave enough. Do you really think . . . ?”

Simyonov turned to her as he lit a cigarette. His eyes blazed yellow. “If it doesn’t work, we can log it into your copy book as a failure, then,” he said. “It’s not your decision and it never was,” he said, smiling at her. “And this Service is not your private preserve.” He turned to the silent monitor. Dominika dully watched herself wrap her legs around Delon’s waist.

“What is the purpose of replaying the bedroom film, comrade?” she said to Simyonov. He did not reply but blew cigarette smoke at the ceiling.

“Given the fact that Serov struck you, I will not initiate charges against you for what you did to him.” He pointed at the other monitor and at Serov, still unconscious on the floor. “You have quite a temper, don’t you,
Vorobey
? It should be an asset to you in your budding career.” He smiled again and nodded at the door to an adjoining room.

“There is a change of clothing in there if you want to get dressed, Corporal. That is, unless you choose to remain naked all night.” Dominika went into the little room and quickly threw on a formless smock and plastic belt, a pair of black tied shoes. The approved look for the last fifty years for the Modern Soviet Woman.