Red Sparrow

Boucher looked up at the men, squinting in the sunlight. She purposely had not gathered her cover-up around her, and it hung loosely on her shoulders, slightly revealing the curve of her small breasts. “What are you talking about?” she asked. “Are you crazy? Do you think you can barge into my house without making an appointment?” Missy sat silent at the table, looking back and forth at the men and her boss.

“Senator, I’m going to have to ask you to stand up,” said the FBI agent. “I need you to come inside the house and get dressed.” He began reciting a Miranda warning as he gently took Boucher by the arm to lift her out of the recliner.

“Take your hands off me,” said Boucher. “I’m a US senator. You fuckers just bit off more than you can chew.” She turned to the plump Missy, still sitting motionless at the table. Missy was mentally reviewing how the day had begun (with a half hour of syncopated grunts and wailing from the bedroom) and how it was progressing (with the FBI arresting her boss). She wondered how it would end. “Missy, get on the phone. I want you to make three calls right away,” said Boucher. Montgomery was courteously helping the senator get to her feet.

“Call the fucking attorney general this minute. I don’t care where he is or what he’s doing, I want him on the phone. Second, call the chairman of the SSCI, same drill, I want him on the line in five minutes. Then call my lawyer and tell him to get over here instantly.” Boucher turned to the FBI men standing in a semicircle around her. “Your boss at Justice will impale you on a spit, and my lawyer will roast you over an open flame.” Missy hurriedly gathered her papers, but an FBI agent gently said, “I’m going to have to take these papers, miss, sorry.” Missy looked once at the FBI agent and then at her boss, and rushed inside the house.

The FBI agents walked Boucher across the deck toward the main wing of the house. In the living room, Boucher pulled brusquely away from the restraining hand on her arm. “I told you dickheads to take your hands off me,” she said. “This is outrageous, you have no right accusing me. Where’s your evidence, where’s the proof?” She walked stiffly to the couch and sat down. There was a hairline crack in her unassailable confidence and arrogance now; she wanted to buy some time, give her lawyer time to get here. Golov’s constant yammering about security, maybe she should have paid more attention. Still, the FBI didn’t know squat. Golov was a pro, no way they could prove a thing. She did not contemplate the possibility that it was she, Boucher, who may have compromised everything. “I’m waiting for my attorney,” she said, crossing her arms across her chest.

“Senator, we have properly identified ourselves as federal officers. We have read you your rights. Do you understand these rights?” Boucher stared at him, refusing to answer. “If you do not understand these rights, I will repeat them. If you do so indicate that you understand them, and keeping these rights in mind, do you wish to speak to us now?”

Boucher figured that any temporizing and delay would be in her interest. The calls to Washington and to her lawyer would soon result in a flurry of action that would string this out for months or years. Boucher told herself that if they had not caught her red-handed, they couldn’t prove shit. Allegations, flawed conclusions, unsubstantiated associations. She knew all about this kind of trench warfare. She could brawl with the best of them. She looked up at the FBI agents and said, “I’m not answering any of your questions.”

Special Agent Montgomery snapped his fingers and reached around for the briefcase. He took out a folder and laid it on the coffee table in front of Boucher. She opened the file and saw a timeline of classified briefings that she had attended at Pathfinder Satellite Corporation, and records of personal bank accounts reflecting a dozen unexplained cash deposits from unknown sources, each for exactly $9,500, totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars. She remembered demanding mad-money payments, and how Golov tried to dissuade her. The Capitol Hill instincts in her head told her this was still circumstantial, a good lawyer could create doubts, obfuscate, keep the ball rolling. Boucher looked up at Montgomery, defiant. “Just a lot of paper. Doesn’t mean squat.”

“Senator, please take a look at the last document in the file.” Boucher flipped over the penultimate page at the bottom of the file, a brilliantly clear black-and-white photograph of a disc with the Pathfinder logo on it, white and smudged with powder. “We acquired this disc with your latent prints on it from Moscow,” said Montgomery. Boucher did not speak. The living room was quiet; muted music came from the bedroom wing, Yanni’s Out of Silence album with John Tesh on keyboards, Missy’s favorite. Montgomery cleared his throat and slid a one-page document, single-spaced, across the table at Boucher. It had an embossed FBI logo at the top.

“What’s this?”