Red Sparrow (68 page)

“This is about you, of course,” said Korchnoi. “It always is about you, Vanya.”

“
Zalupa,
dickhead,” said Egorov, flicking his ash to the floor. “You have gravely damaged the Service. You have damaged your country, forsaken Russia.” He was playing it up for the microphones, thought Korchnoi.

“
Zalupatsia
is more like it,” said Korchnoi, Vanya playing the big man, taking airs. “What is it you want, Vanya? Why are you here?”

Vanya looked at Korchnoi for a second, then looked at the equipment on the table. “I came to tell you that it was my niece, your protégée, Dominika, who elicited the information that led to your arrest. She is a hero, and you are the
plodovyi cherv,
the cankerworm.”

There it was, their succession
konspiratsia
. Korchnoi said a silent word of congratulations to Benford.

Vanya watched Korchnoi’s face to gauge his reaction, and was satisfied to see the older man look down, as if in defeat. He gathered up his cigarettes and pounded on the cell door. Walking down the cement corridor past the
steel doors, Vanya calculated. Loss of SWAN balanced out by the arrest of Korchnoi. Dominika.
Get her back
.

Mysheniye voznya
. Mice games. Line T technical officers carefully moved the covcom equipment back to MARBLE’s apartment building in Strogino, to originate the transmission from the usual coordinates. A knot of quiet men huddled on the roof looking out over the blue-black Moskva River and hit
SEND
and waited for the
rukopozhatie,
handshake, from the satellite over the Arctic Circle. The uppercase “NIKO” signature on the covcom transmission told Benford that MARBLE’s message had been written by someone else, or by MARBLE under duress. Whatever the case, it meant that his arrest had finally come. Even though he and MARBLE had gone over and over the plan, Benford’s instincts recoiled at the thought of his agent sacrificing himself, and he silently mourned the loss.

His Mercedes covered the twenty-five miles on the deserted Rublyovo-Uspenskoye Highway in fifteen minutes, but Vanya had to wait at the reception building for ten minutes before the duty vehicle arrived to take him through the black fir and pine forest to the neoclassical front entrance of Novo-Ogarevo. Vanya checked his watch. Nearly midnight, and he inwardly shuddered at the late-night summons to the secluded presidential dacha west of Moscow.
Just like you-know-who,
thought Vanya. Uncle Joe made men wait till three a.m. in an anteroom superheated by a roaring fireplace.

This was different than Stalin. Egorov was ushered down a curving flight of steps into a massive basement gymnasium that stretched the entire width of the building, brimming with machines and weight stacks glittering in the overhead lights. Egorov dryly noted that his Line KR chief, Alexei Zyuganov, was sitting in a chair next to an exercise station.
A witness,
thought Vanya,
bad sign.

President Putin was shirtless, his hairless chest slick, the veins in his arms popping. His hands were through the grips of two nylon suspension straps, anchored to an overhead bar. The President of All Russias leaned
forward against the straps and, by extending his arms like Christ on the Cross, lowered himself face forward, nearly parallel to the mat, a foot off the floor. Shaking with exertion, he raised himself up by bringing his arms together, then lowered himself, then up again. That little
ulitka,
that escargot Zyuganov, never took his eyes off Putin. A matter of seconds before he would be licking the sweat off his benefactor’s chest.

Putin continued raising and lowering himself, with hissing exhalations of breath, then stopped at maximum extension, raised his head, and looked at Egorov with eyes the color of an old glacier. Motionless. Levitating. Another second, and up again.

“I want her out of Greece, back in Russia,” said Putin thinly. He mopped his face with a towel, threw it backhanded at Zyuganov, who caught it, flustered. Putin stared, his eyes bored into Egorov’s, an unsettling habit, featuring himself as a clairvoyant, a savant. Some believed the president could read minds.

“I am working through several contacts,” said Egorov. “The Greeks are furious.”

Putin held up his hand. “The Greeks are incapable of such outrage, they’re puffed-up little birds,” said Putin. “We will show them Kuzka’s mother.”
In other words, he’ll bury them,
thought Egorov,
right after he finishes with me.

“The Americans are behind the Greeks; they control everything,” said Putin, moving to a bench machine with stainless handles. “They will try to direct this to their advantage, to discredit Russia,
to embarrass me
.” There it was, the ultimate transgression. Egorov refrained from replying. Zyuganov squirmed in his seat. Putin lay back on the bench and began pressing the handles above his head. A weight stack behind his head rose and fell as he pumped.

“Egorova is a hero,” Putin said, the clanking plates echoing in the massive room. “I’m not interested in the details, or in the difference between tradecraft mistakes on the street and bureaucratic bungling in Yasenevo.

“I . . .” clank,

“want . . .” clank,

“her . . .” clank,

“back.” Clank.

Vanya Egorov heard the clanking weight stack in his head, like Satan’s bilge pump, all the way back to Moscow.

In the backseat of a separate, less luxurious car, also speeding back to Moscow, Zyuganov knew he had a narrow opportunity to cement his standing. He assessed that Egorov was hours away from being cashiered, purged, perhaps jailed. Putin would not reinstate him, regardless of the outcome with Egorova. There were too many failures, too many mistakes. If he, Zyuganov, could retrieve Egorova, promotion and rewards would cascade around his head. He could never have guessed that the CIA would be calling him to discuss that very thing.

PASTA ALLA MOLLICA (ANCHOVY SALSA)

Toast bread crumbs until the “color of a monk’s tunic.” In a separate pan, sauté anchovy fillets in oil until they dissolve into a paste; add sliced onions, garlic, and red pepper flakes and continue cooking until onions brown. Toss cooked, drained spaghetti into pan with anchovy-onion salsa, add parsley and lemon juice, and mix well. Sprinkle with bread crumbs and serve.

   
39   

After her arrest,
Dominika had been quietly turned over to Forsyth by the Greek police and had been moved to a new safe house in the beach town of Glyfada. On a windy, rainy afternoon Benford and Forsyth told her that there were “indications” almost certainly confirming the arrest of General Korchnoi by the FSB. She had set her face, emotionless. Another loss.

“We lived with the possibility it could happen,” said Benford.

“But why now?” said Dominika. “We would have worked together. How did this happen?” Benford noticed that her concern was only for Korchnoi. She was not thinking about herself.

“We’re not sure,” said Benford. “After the loss of the US mole, Line KR has been looking for the leak. It could have been a mistake he made.”

Dominika shook her head.

“After fourteen years? I do not think so. He was too good.” Forsyth studiously did not look at Benford. Forsyth’s blue mantle was paler today, perhaps he was tired. In contrast, Benford exuded an inky blue.
He is working, thinking, plotting,
she thought. Dominika knew something was not right.

Benford looked at his hands when he spoke. “You know, Dominika, Volodya had great admiration for you.” Dominika watched him carefully, how he held his hands. He definitely was working.

“I believe he envisioned you as his replacement, to continue this work. We thought we had two years, perhaps three, to build this together. We could not have known. So now it falls to you, sooner than we want, but it falls to you, nonetheless.” Dominika turned to Forsyth, who reached out to pat her hand, but she moved it slightly out of his reach. There was a lot of blue fog in this room, she thought.

“I am heartbroken over the arrest of the general. I will never forget him,” said Dominika slowly. “But you are direct,
Gospodin
Benford. With him gone, you are telling me that it is
otvetstvennost,
how do you say it,
my
responsibility,
to continue the struggle. That’s it, isn’t it? It remains only for me to decide whether I will continue working.” She stopped and looked at them, reading their faces. “
Gospodin
Forsyth. What do you and
Bratok
think?”

“I would tell you exactly what Marty Gable told you,” said Forsyth. “Follow your heart, do what you believe.” Benford looked over at him, mouth pursing in annoyance. Forsyth could have been a little goddamned more persuasive.

“Your reasons to join us were complicated,” said Forsyth, who knew what he was doing, to whom he was speaking. “Friendship with Nate, your despair over the disappearance of your friend, being undervalued and mistreated by your own Service. Having control of your life and career. Nothing about that has changed, right?”

“You should be a college professor,” said Dominika, watching him waltz.

“We don’t want to overwhelm you,” said Forsyth.

“Yes, we do.” Benford laughed. “Damn it, Domi, we need you.” Inky blue like the tail fan of a peacock.

She looked at the bandage on her leg. “I am not sure I can agree,” she said. “I must consider it.”

“We know you will,” said Forsyth. “If you do agree, the most important thing will be to get you back to Moscow quickly, securely. And that’s why we three are the only ones who know where you are.”

“Not even Nathaniel?” Dominika said.

“I’m afraid not,” said Benford, his color unchanged.
At least he’s telling the truth,
thought Dominika.

Awake early, Dominika stood barefoot in the spacious living room of the safe house. The triple doors were folded back, opening the whole room to the wide, marble-floored balcony over which stretched a blue canvas awning that lightly billowed and popped in the last puffs of the onshore sea breeze. Across the Glyfada coast road, the Aegean sparkled in the morning light of a sun still low on the horizon. Dominika felt the warmth building on the
marble floor. She was wearing a belted cotton bathrobe and her hair was a tousled mess. A clean bandage was tight around her thigh. Gable had gone out for bread.