Red Sparrow

“Fucking guy,” said Gable when Maratos left, “thinks espresso means ‘nonstop train’ in Spanish.”

It was a certainty that, if they let them, a dozen FBI Special Agents would descend on Helsinki wearing cargo pants, tactical boots, and New York Yankees ball caps. All the Station could do would be to try to keep the FEEBs under control. Forsyth told Nate to have the exfiltration plan for DIVA spun up and ready. They might have to get her out if there was a flap and the Russians started looking for reasons why.

Then something happened in Headquarters. There must have been a big meeting, and they started paying attention to the danger to DIVA. Some later said it was Simon Benford, Chief of Counterintelligence, who threw one of his well-known histrionic fits, warning that inattention to the counterintelligence threat to this agent would ensure “a pig’s breakfast.” The result was two cables that arrived on the third day, two days before the meeting at the Kämp. The first was tagged From Chief Europe, direct for COS. The second had been drafted by Benford with characteristic economy bordering on rudeness. That cable proposed an operational gambit that astounded even Marty Gable, an old whore who had an ashtray in his office made from a human skull from either Cambodia or Miami—he claimed he could not remember which.

The first cable read:

1. Please confine future traffic on reference information to this channel. Appreciate ref. Hqs assigns top priority to preventing the potential illegal sale to SVR of US classified material. Station directed to coordinate with Embassy FBI representative, who has been briefed by FBI Hqs in Washington. Hqs confirms to Station that FBI has primacy in all investigatory and law-enforcement matters involving threats to the national security and Amcits suspected of a federal crime, per Title II of the Intelligence Reform Act of 2004 and Executive Order 12333 and 50 USC 401.

2. Request Station fully support FBI investigation as required. Hqs of course is concerned that any arrest could affect security of Station asset GTDIVA. Submit Station should increase measures to vouchsafe DIVA’s operational security.

3. Please report developments by immediate precedence cable, including NIACT. Hqs standing by to assist as required. Fair winds and smooth sailing.

The second cable read: