Red Sparrow

Benford contemplated a metal evidence tray at the center of the table. The disc—now out of its SVR outer plastic and Pathfinder inner paper sleeve—lay in the bottom of the tray, on a sterile towel, its surface lightly coated with gray powder. FBI techs had followed procedure and staggered the tests—a ninhydrin swab to raise existing latent prints on the drive, then the spritz of calcium oxide for contrast. Seated around the table, everybody could see the three distinct, single prints on the dull surface. What would it be: a Russian lab rat’s salami thumbprints, or the whorls and ridges of an American mole? Benford knew that MARBLE would not have opened the plastic envelope, he would have been too good, too careful, to touch the actual disc itself. The FEEBs had taken photos and lifts to the laboratory for enhancement. An automated search in the FBI’s print archives was already under way.

Benford was in his car heading back up the GW Parkway toward Headquarters when his car phone rang. It was the deputy chief of the FBI Laboratory Services. “You might want to turn around and come back down here,” the FBI man told Benford. “You are freaking not going to believe the hit we just got.”

“This better be good,” said Benford, looking for the Spout Run exit so he could double back.

“Oh, it’s good, all right,” said the FBI scientist.

BENFORD’S THAI CHICKEN SALAD (LARB GAI)

Finely hand-chop lean chicken breasts with a large knife or cleaver. Season with lime juice and rice wine and sauté until crumbly and white. Let chicken cool and fold in lemongrass, diced garlic, diced chilies, lemon zest, fish sauce, salt, and pepper. Incorporate well. Add chopped cilantro, basil, mint, and scallions. Toss well; serve in lettuce cups with rice.

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The DNA Fingerprint Act of 2005 was in that year drafted, submitted to, and discussed in the Senate Judiciary Committee of Congress, but, for a variety of political reasons unrelated to national security, was deferred twice and taken off the docket. The bill intended to establish a national fingerprint and DNA archive for background checks, criminal and immigration registration, and identification for federal employees in sensitive jobs. Caucus leadership in the Senate had at the time mildly suggested to freshman senator Stephanie Boucher that in the interest of bipartisan comity she join a mixed group of Democrats and Republicans in support of the bill. Even though she personally opposed the notion of a national archive of identity information as an obscene invasion of privacy, Senator Boucher privately assessed that her public support of the bill would strengthen her national-security credentials and play well to the many high-tech aerospace companies in her state. She even participated in a televised bit of dumb crambo. Legislators agreed to be fingerprinted and for DNA samples to be taken in front of reporters. Senator Boucher smiled for the cameras as a technician swabbed the inside of her cheek, prompting one off-camera staff aide to wonder how many separate DNA nucleotides would be found inside that mouth at any given time.

The result of this bit of bipartisan theater almost a decade ago—long forgotten by her and unbeknownst to her SVR handlers—was that the fingerprints of Senator Stephanie Boucher resided in the FBI’s IAFIS database. When a partial right thumb and smudged index and middle fingerprints were lifted off the classified Pathfinder Satellite Corporation disc taken from the SVR laboratory in Moscow, it took the automated system approximately ten minutes to identify Boucher’s latents from among the more than twenty-five thousand civilian prints stored in the system.

Benford and FBI counterintelligence chiefs for the next days huddled in conference rooms on both sides of the Potomac, not so much to argue about primacy in the case, or to debate the finer points of a full-court investigation of the senator, but to determine how to keep the White House, the National Security Council, the Capitol Police, the US Senate, the California state legislature, the City Council of Los Angeles, and the California State Raisin Growers Association from leaking details of the investigation to the media. “The last thing we need is for Boucher to panic and defect to the Russians,” said Charles “Chaz” Montgomery, chief of the Bureau’s National Security Division.

“Nonsense,” said Benford, gathering up maps after a long session to discuss surveillance. “Sending Boucher permanently to Moscow would be better than detonating a neutron bomb in Red Square.”

The CIA and FBI formulated their tactical plan for blanket coverage on the street, and for telephone, mail, and trash covers. Boucher didn’t know it, but she had become the flaxen-haired milkmaid walking alone on the gray moor as the first howls of the hounds came up out of the fog, from the boggy ravines, over the rocky ledges. It was already too late to run.

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