Red Sparrow (22 page)

From the other end of the buffet, Dominika watched Nash fetch another scotch for Tishkov. Tishkov was now telling his own story, holding on to Nash’s arm as he spoke. Nash laughed, and Dominika could actually see him applying the force of his charm on the man. Attentive, charming, discreet, Nash was putting Tishkov at ease.
He’s a spy,
thought Dominika.

Dominika looked beyond Nash and Tishkov at Volontov halfway down the room. The warthog
rezident
was oblivious to a textbook encounter between an American intelligence officer and a potential target. Nash looked up for a second and quickly scanned the room. Their eyes met and caught for a beat, Dominika looked away, and Nash quickly turned his attention back to Tishkov. He didn’t register seeing her. But in that split second, Dominika felt a jolt, the first-time electric zing of seeing your target up close. Her quarry. They used to call them the Main Enemy.

Dominika eased back behind the column and watched the American. Fascinating, that easy-standing attitude. The younger man was keeping the older Tishkov interested. Confident but not
nevospitannyi,
not boorish or swaggering, nothing like her former colleagues in the Fifth.
Sympatichnyi
. Her earlier nerves about making contact, about engaging with the American, evaporated. She itched to approach him right then, get into his space, into his head, as she had practiced with Mikhail in Moscow, using her face and figure to get his attention. A simple matter of edging closer, a quick introduction . . .

No. Calm yourself.
With Tishkov around, Dominika would not approach him. Instructions from the Center regarding Nash were specific. Contact must be private, unofficial, and no one in the embassy was to know, save Volontov. She would stay professional, exacting, calculating. It was what the operation required, and she was not going to deviate. To meet him, Dominika needed a better strategy than simply planning to attend all the diplomatic functions in Helsinki for the next calendar year.

Several days later, fate supplied Dominika the opportunity she needed, at a venue she could not have predicted. Despite a modest street entrance under
an unassuming neon sign, the Yrjönkatu Swimming Hall in downtown Helsinki was a neoclassical gem, built in the 1920s, located several blocks from the train terminal. Copper Art Deco lamps along a balustraded mezzanine above the elegant pool cast movie-set shadows on the gray marble pilasters and glimmering tile floors.

Thanks to constant swimming-therapy sessions at ballet school, Dominika was a strong and devoted swimmer. She began going to the pool, a few blocks from her apartment, as an outlet. She favored the noon hour. Going in the evenings was too dark, too cold, the walk home alone too depressing. Besides, she was becoming increasingly lonely and fitful. Volontov, reflecting Moscow’s impatience, was pressing her for progress on meeting Nash; he didn’t care that engineering a plausible, random “bump” on a target, even considering the smallish size of Helsinki, was not automatic.

Dominika’s breakthrough came when she was asked by Volontov to complete an urgent update report to Yasenevo. She missed her noonday swim. So she went after work, despite the dark and cold. And saw Nate come out of the men’s locker room and walk around the edge of the pool, a towel draped around his neck. Dominika was sitting at the far end of the pool, legs trailing in the water, when she saw him. Without haste she got up and moved closer to one of the marble pillars and watched him. He swam smoothly and powerfully. Dominika watched his shoulders bunch and flex as he plowed through the water.

Dominika fought down her nervousness. Should she take the plunge, literally and figuratively? She could wait and report to Volontov that she had discovered one of Nash’s patterns and that she was moving ahead with plans to establish contact. But that would be viewed only as a delay. She should move now, this instant:
Privodit’ v dejstvie,
they had said at the Academy, throw the operation into action. This was a perfect chance for a first contact that would seem random and uncontrived.
Move.

Dominika was wearing a modest one-piece racing suit and a plain white swimming cap. She slipped into the water and slowly made her way across several lanes to the one beside Nate’s. She began swimming slowly down the lane, letting Nash pass her, then pass her again on the next length. She timed his third overtaking pass to occur at the end of the pool as Nate made a relaxed open turn and started another lap.

Dominika began swimming to stay even with Nash, which she found she
could do with ease. Neither was swimming very hard. Through her goggles, Dominika could see his body underwater, rolling rhythmically in a smooth freestyle. At the far wall, Dominika and Nate both touched at the same time and started the return lap to the deep end. By this time, Nate noticed another swimmer keeping pace with him. Looking underwater, he saw it was a woman, sleek in a racing suit, stroking smoothly and strongly.

Nate dug a little harder to see if a dozen deeper pulls would draw him slightly ahead of the mystery swimmer. She stayed even, without apparent effort. Nate pulled harder, flexing his lats. She kept up. Nate increased his kick rate slightly and checked. She was still there. The wall was coming up and Nate decided to go at it hard, nail a flip turn, and crank up his stroke rate to the opposite wall.
Let’s see if she can hit a turn and finish with a sprint.
He took a breath as he came up to the wall. Nate’s legs came over his shoulders, his feet slapped explosively on the tiles, and he came off the wall clean and hard, ready to motor. He cycled his arms, elbows high, driving, pulling, the metronome
chop chop chop
of them entering the water filling his ears. He cranked up his kick and felt the lift of the bow wave around his head and shoulders. Smooth and fast, he limited breaths to one side, away from the girl. There would be plenty of time when he touched to wait for her to come churning up to the wall. For the last five yards, Nate stretched and glided, turning on his side to face in the girl’s direction. But she was already there, her wake hitting the wall as he touched. She had touched him out. She looked over at him as she stood up in the shallow end, peeled the cap off her head, and shook her slightly damp hair.

“You swim beautifully,” Nate said in English. “Are you on a team?”

“No, not really,” said Dominika. Nate took in her strong shoulders, elegant hands holding the wall, plain short nails, and those blue eyes, electric, wide. Nate had pegged her accented English as Baltic or Russian. There were a lot of Finns who spoke English with a Russian accent.

“Are you from Helsinki?” asked Nate.

“No, I’m Russian,” said Dominika, watching his face for a reaction, for contempt, dismissal. Instead, there was the brilliant smile.
Go ahead, Mr. CIA,
she thought.
What will you say now?

“I saw the Dynamo Swim Team compete in Philadelphia once,” said Nate. “They were very good, especially in the butterfly.” The water of the pool sloshed over his shoulders, reflecting his purple haze.

“Of course,” said Dominika. “Russian swimmers are the best in the world.” She was going to say,
As in all sport,
but kept quiet.
Too much,
she thought,
settle down. All right, contact made, nationality established, now set the hook.
Tradecraft from the Forest. She moved to the ladder to climb out of the pool.

“Do you come here in the evenings?” Nate asked when Dominika said she had to go. The muscles in her back flexed as she climbed up the ladder.

“No, my schedule is irregular,” said Dominika, trying not to sound like Garbo, “very irregular.” She searched his face; he looked disappointed. Good. “I don’t know when I will be back, but perhaps we’ll meet again.” She felt his eyes on her as she climbed out of the pool and walked into the women’s locker room.

As it turned out, Dominika and Nate met again at the pool two days later. She nodded noncommittally to his wave. They swam more laps, swimming side by side. Dominika played it slow, indifferent. She was correct, reserved, a conscious counterbalance to his shambling American informality. She constantly told herself not to be so nervous. When he looked at her she knew from his expression that he was unsuspecting.
He doesn’t know what this is,
she thought with a thrill. The CIA officer doesn’t know who he’s up against. When it was time to go, she again got out of the pool without delay. This time she looked back at him. An unsmiling wave. That was enough for now.

Over the course of several weeks they met five or six times, and not one of them was by chance. Dominika had cased the Torni Hotel, diagonally across the street from the pool entrance. Most evenings Dominika would be in the sitting room at the window observing his arrival. As far as she could tell, he never was accompanied by anyone. He was surveillance-free.

Dominika tried to build momentum in minute and undetectable stages. As they continued meeting at the pool it was natural that they introduced themselves. Nate said he was a diplomat in the American Embassy working in the Economic Section, Dominika said she was an administrative assistant in the Russian Embassy. She heard him recite his cover legend, and gave her own.
He’s very natural,
thought Dominika.
What sort of training do they get?
Typical, trusting American, incapable of a true
konspiratisa
. He looked at her without guile, his purple halo never changed.

God, she’s serious,
thought Nate.
Typical Russian, afraid of putting a foot wrong.
But he liked her reserve, her underlying sensuality, the way she looked at him with her blue eyes. He especially liked the way she pronounced his name, “Neyt.” But he gloomily told himself she could not have access to secrets.
Come off it, she’s just a beautiful Russian Embassy clerk. Twenty-four, twenty-five, Muscovite, Foreign Service, junior admin, remember to get the patronymic and family name off the registration card at the pool. To have gotten out of Moscow this young, she probably has a sugar daddy.
Not hard to believe, looking at that face, the body underneath the spandex. Unattainable. Nate decided to send in traces, just for form’s sake, but knew he’d be moving on.

This was not a honey trap against a hapless European on her home turf, Dominika told herself. This was an operation in the foreign field against a foreign intelligence officer. She was Center-trained, she knew she would have to reel him in carefully. She had filed an initial contact report to Yasenevo, detailing the first few contacts. Volontov was pressing for forward movement.

A couple of weeks, no response from Langley on the trace cable.
Typical, but who cares?
thought Nate. It was enough to meet her occasionally and drink in that face. He had gotten her to smile twice, her English was good enough to get a joke. He wasn’t going to spout off in Russian and scare her.

One evening, as they finished swimming, they turned to climb the ladder to get out of the pool. They bumped into each other. Her suit clung to her curves. Nate could see her heartbeat beneath the drum skin of spandex. He offered Dominika his hand climbing up the ladder. Her hand was strong, hot to the touch. He held it for a beat and let go. Face impassive, no reaction. He held her eyes for another beat. She took off her swim cap and shook her hair.

Dominika knew he was looking at her, kept calm, distant. What would he say if he knew she had been trained as a Sparrow, if he knew what she had done with Delon and Ustinov? She would not, absolutely not, seduce him. She would hear the cackles all the way from Moscow. No, she was going to accomplish this with discipline, with cleverness.
Move it forward,
she thought.
Time to start opening the human envelope, to shake up that frustratingly consistent purple mantle.

Dominika said yes to Nate’s suggestion that evening that they stop for a
glass of wine in a neighborhood bar. His face had lit up with surprise, then pleasure. Seeing each other in street clothes on the sidewalk seemed strange. Dominika sat firmly on the other side of the little table, nursing a glass of wine.