Red Sparrow

MARBLE took another sip of water. “What I conclude, dorogoy drug, my dear friend, is that this wouldn’t be a Director’s Case if it were not in Washington, inside your government.”

“You think SWAN’s here?” MARBLE nodded. “How do we find him?”

MARBLE shrugged. “I will redouble my efforts to identify him. In the meantime, you might look at Rezident Golov in Washington. He would have the stature to meet someone senior. And he is a britva, as sharp as a razor on the street.”

He got up and walked to the window to look out over the street. “So many games,” he said to the city below, “so many dangers. I will be glad to see an end to it.”

“As long as we’re speaking of dangers,” said Nate, “what is your status? Are you secure? What are they doing to find their leak?” Nate avoided the word krot, mole, with all its connotations.

“I will have to save that for our next meeting,” said MARBLE, looking at his watch. “There’s nothing urgent, so it will keep.”

MARBLE turned, walked to the bed, and put on his overcoat. Nate straightened the old man’s twisted collar, patted him on the shoulder. They no longer had to worry about metka. MARBLE looked at him affectionately. “We can discuss the most fascinating subject—me—in two days. The conference ends at midday. We can have dinner and talk all night.” He looked out the window again. “I love this city. I would like to live here someday.”

“And someday you will,” said Nate, thinking it was unlikely that MARBLE would be permitted to relocate here. It would depend on the nature of his retirement, specifically if he was alive to retire. MARBLE walked to the door with his arm in Nate’s arm. Nate desperately wanted to ask whether MARBLE had heard something—anything—about Dominika, but he could not. Per the strict catechism of compartmentation, he had never told MARBLE about Dominika’s recruitment, nor her mission to unmask the mole through Nate. Agents simply didn’t know other agents.

Instead Nate said, “We’re hearing that Vanya Egorov recently was promoted.”

“Vanya is reckless,” said MARBLE. “I’ve known him for twenty years. He wants to run the Service but does not have enough support yet in the Kremlin, with you-know-who. He needs an operational success to please the oboroten, his werewolf master. If he does well with SWAN, perhaps it will help him, but he needs something more, something dramatic.”

“Such as?” asked Nate.

“To catch me, for instance.” MARBLE laughed. “I don’t wish him luck.” MARBLE grasped Nate’s hand warmly. Something was on his mind, Nate could sense it.

“Is there anything else?”

“I have a request, a message that I would like you to pass along,” said MARBLE.

“Of course,” said Nate.

“I would like to speak to Benford, if he has the time to come to New York in two days’ time. I must discuss something with him.” MARBLE looked into Nate’s eyes.

“Do you want me to pass him a message?” Nate said.

“Nate, I do not wish you to feel offended, but I must speak directly to Benford. Do you understand?” MARBLE searched Nate’s face but saw nothing other than affection and regard.

“Of course I do, Uncle,” said Nate. “He will be here.”

MARBLE opened the door; Nate saw the instinctive, undetectable beat as the old man checked the corridor. “Spokoinoi nochi,” said MARBLE.

“Vysypat’sja,” said Nate. “Sleep well.”

=====

A change of hotel at Benford’s insistence, and Nate waiting in Bryant Park to pass MARBLE the room number, the basalt-and-gold battlements of the former headquarters of the American Radiator Company bathed in milky footlights against the city night glow. A bear hug at the door, it had been four or five years, and they sat, and the radiator rattled, and the Manhattan taxi horns came up from West Fortieth through the window glass. A bottle of brandy half-full and two glasses filled and refilled. They were not quite old friends, but Benford had followed MARBLE for fourteen years. Once a year he had read the file, watching it expand, like a swimming pool filled from a garden hose, fat with contact reports describing the precious outside meetings each year, twice a year, in Paris, or Jakarta, or New Delhi.

The MARBLE file was the well-thumbed chronicle in twenty volumes of the life of an agent, a wife’s death, a widower’s sadness, the unexpected trips out to the West, the hurried arrangements to meet. CIA medals presented, three of them, and taken back, saved for a rainy day. Thank-you notes from handlers and chiefs and directors, and the implausible certificates commending MARBLE for “preserving democracy around the world.” Problems over the years solved, big and small, and the deposits to the retirement account, the yellow flimsies bookmarking each six-month chapter of the odyssey.