Red Sparrow

“Forget it,” said Benford. “Thank you, Alice, get started on that right away, will you?” Benford turned to Nate and handed him the copy of the MARBLE message. He could see Nate’s cheeks color as he read about Dominika. Nate reread the message as if he could squeeze more information out of the spare lines. He looked up at Benford.

“She’s alive.”

“Not only is DIVA alive, but it appears she made it through the wringer,” said Benford. “And now her uncle has had the inexpressible good sense to assign her to MARBLE.” Benford thought again of MARBLE’s succession strategy.

“Do you think she’ll come out with MARBLE to Rome?” asked Nate.

“I suggest you take a cold shower,” drawled Benford. “She may never be totally trusted, or alternatively she may be fully reinstated. Right now we take advantage of the fact that an agent recruited by you—DIVA—and narrowly cleared in a recent CI investigation has been assigned by an unsuspecting Center to seduce you with the goal of eliciting the name of the senior SVR officer you handle—MARBLE—who coincidentally is DIVA’s new boss and who is directing her in the operation to unman you, his case officer.” Benford looked at Nate from between twin towers of newspapers and file folders, the medieval alchemist who’s misplaced the philosopher’s stone.

“You love this shit, don’t you?” said Nate.

“I expect you to deal with ambiguity. If you are not capable of it, you should leave immediately.” Benford glowered at Nate.

“Well, how would you proceed?” said Benford, throwing him the bone.

Nate took a breath and tried to clear his mind of Dominika. “The message tells us that they still have no clue about MARBLE, his identity.”

“And how do you conclude that?” asked Benford.

“Egorov is dangling different variations of stories about SWAN in front of various department heads. It shows he’s desperate.”

“What else?” said Benford.

“If Egorov has been feeding his top managers barium meals, it suggests he expects he will get results, that one of the variants will get back to him.”

“And?” said Benford.

“And that suggests he has someone inside the US government who would be positioned to hear a variant and report back. In the Intelligence Community. SWAN?”

“It could,” said Benford. “What other tidbit in the message could help us do something about finding SWAN?” Nate looked down again, then up at Benford.

“Give me a clue,” Nate said.

“Nasarenko.”

Nate looked at the message again. He looked up suddenly.

“We know the variant told to Nasarenko,” said Nate, “so we spread that variant around, carefully, keeping track of who we flog it to. If Nasarenko’s fortunes suddenly change, we have a place to start, a finite list of people.”

“And Vanya Egorov’s barium meal turns into a barium enema,” said Benford. “In all of this, please do not forget that he’s impatient and desperate. You represent a shortcut for Egorov to solve the one problem that will keep him off the bascule of the guillotine. He’s concentrating on you.” Nate was thinking about Dominika again, and Benford saw it in his face, and groaned theatrically.

“Enough about you, disappointing as that may be,” said Benford. “Clear your mind and tell me what you would do in the immediate matter of SWAN. If MARBLE is correct, the case is being run here in Washington, by the rezident himself.”

“If Golov personally is handling SWAN, that’s a weak point for them,” said Nate. “I think we should consider covering the rezident.”

“Brilliant. But how do we work Golov? What would you do?” asked Benford, nudging Nate forward.

“We starve him for a month. We surveil him pretty close, shut him down. Look, don’t get mad, but we should bring the FEEBs into this. If we’re going to be playing with Golov in downtown Washington, the FBI has to be involved. The FCI guys, foreign counterintelligence, are the best, real spy chasers, and the Gs know what they’re doing on the street. Awesome surveillance team.

“Total coverage, they’ll make so much noise that Golov will call a dozen aborts in a dozen tries. He won’t be able to meet SWAN. The Center will start getting nervous. Golov will start sweating. They’ll be frantic about losing contact with their agent. And we can only guess at the effect it will have on SWAN.”

“All right, so now you’ve made him nervous. He’s still too good to make a mistake on the street,” said Benford, “and he’ll have CS covering him too.”

“That’s okay,” said Nate. “One dark and stormy night we let him go surveillance-free. He’ll see he’s black, his countersurveillance will confirm it, and he makes the decision to make the meeting. And we have the Orions and TrapDoor up and running ahead of him. That’s when we maybe get a glimpse of a nervous SWAN pacing on a street corner, or pick up the license plates of an out-of-place car parked wrong. And we keep trying till we hit.”