Red Sparrow

“I have the impression that you knew this young man rather better than you reported during your assignment in Helsinki,” said Korchnoi. He paused and stirred the sauce slowly, the only sound in the kitchen. Korchnoi’s voice was very soft. He would try it. “How did they recruit you?” he asked.

Dominika was still. She looked across at him. She opened her mouth but couldn’t speak. This was where the risk, the danger that defined her secret life culminated; this was much worse than resisting the brutes in Lefortovo. Her hands shook as she put down her wineglass. Korchnoi was stirring the sauce, the kitchen was filled with his expanding purple bubble, she could feel his overwhelming will. Protect yourself, you are the only one who can save yourself, leave, get out of here. Then Korchnoi, the canny master, said a remarkable thing.

“Dominika, I can see it, I am giving you the opportunity to tell me, to trust me. I will not harm you.” My God, what an interrogator he would make, but her intuition told her he was telling the truth, he would protect her; she wanted him to help her, to share her burden, she needed it.

“I started out by following orders, trying to develop him, just as he was developing me,” she said, physically shaking. “It was a race to see who would recruit the other first.” She still resisted, she was still hanging on to the lip of the cliff. This was an evasion, not an admission.

He wasn’t going to let her slide. “Yes, of course,” said Korchnoi. “But listen to me very carefully. I asked you how they recruited you.”

Dominika’s voice was almost inaudible, she was sleepwalking. He raised an eyebrow, and she decided, she placed her beating heart in his hand, she stepped off into space. “They didn’t recruit me. I chose to work with them. It was my decision. So I did, on my own terms.”

Korchnoi filled a pot with water from the sink, put it on a second burner, and threw a handful of salt into the water. He motioned her to come to the stove, handed her the spoon. Dominika stood over the sauce, stirring. “It wasn’t a matter of love at all,” she said in a small voice. “It was my choice.”

Korchnoi did not reply, but she knew she was safe. She was soaring over the cliff now, the wind roaring around her, the sea below exploding against the rocks, and she was flying. She knew she was safe with him.

Korchnoi was satisfied. He did not view her admission as weakness or folly or stupidity. He saw how she had calculated, how she had assessed his intentions, but most important, how she had accepted mortal risk, based on her extraordinary intuition. A formidable combination. Her admission also demonstrated her trust in him. That was important. She would need to trust him in the near future.

Now it was he who had to take a chance. In fourteen years he had never slipped, but they had to be partners if this succession strategy was going to work. Telling her would be as difficult for him as it just was for her.

They stood shoulder to shoulder at the little cooking element, the gas hissing through the burners, the sauce simmering in the pan. The wooden spoon made a soft sound, almost a musical note, against the thin aluminum as Dominika pushed the thickening tomatoes around. She turned her face toward Korchnoi; up close her beauty was matchless, but she didn’t use it. “What do we do now?” she asked quietly. “Are you going to report me?” She wanted him to say it, to declare it.

“I shall report you if you overcook the pasta,” said the general, twisting a fistful of dry bucatini so it fell into the boiling water in a fan pattern. “And watch the sauce doesn’t burn on the bottom. I’m taking off my coat and tie.” He started down the little hall to his bedroom, then stopped and turned to her. Now.

“Perhaps you’re wondering,” he said. “My grief can’t bring her back, but since my wife died, I have not believed in the cause; my heart was hardened toward Them forever. I did my work, but I never again became one of them. They did not earn my loyalty, nor do they deserve yours now. They warrant our contempt.” It was done. He stood looking at her: her eyes were wide; her agile mind grasped the implication before he finished loosening the knot of his necktie. She spoke in a whisper.

“It’s you? You are the one they are looking for? You’re the—” Korchnoi put a finger to his lips to silence her.

“Mind the sauce, keep stirring,” he said, turning down the hallway, leaving Dominika staring after his gray head and purple mantle.

=====

“We assess the potential for success as good, the operational risk as minimal,” said General Korchnoi. “We are ready to initiate, in Rome. I am familiar with the city.”

“Go on,” said Vanya. They were seated on the couch in his office. Zyuganov was in a chair to one side.