Red Sparrow

She saw his guilty regret, and the washed-out color around him. Her own demons flew out of the cave like bats at sunset and she became Egorova, feeling the anger building, the goryachnost, the temper that General Korchnoi had warned her about. She stood up.

“I’m going back to my hotel for a shower and change of clothes,” she said.

“Negative,” said Nate, slipping into agent-handling mode. “It’s the one place they can find you—and us. Benford definitely said—”

“Gospodin Benford might do without a wash and a change. I cannot. I will take ten minutes.” Nate did some fast calculations. Stick with her? Cut her loose and meet her later? He had seen her face, knew the signs. She was furious at him; it would be best not to let her alone, she might disappear out of spite. Some report that would make back in Langley.

“Okay, ten minutes, no longer,” said Nate, taking her arm. She smoothly took it away.

The Grande Bretagne Hotel stood in the sunlight of Syntagma Square, gilt railings and wrought-iron porte cochere glinting in the white light. Upstairs, Nate stood awkwardly in the huge sitting room, with elegant groupings of tables, chairs, and lamps, a thick Wilton underfoot. He looked into the bedroom as Dominika shrugged off her dress—he remembered the black lace bra and panties—and she bent to pull off her sandals, turning to face him, a defiant lingerie model against the backdrop of the massive silk headboard of the bed. Her seminakedness whipped at his senses, and she knew it, she could read him. She took a provocative step forward into the living room.

“Do I distract you?” she said, lifting her arms. She was seething.

“Dominika, stop it,” said Nate.

“Please tell me,” she said, pulling the cups of her bra tight. “Do I disorient you? Is the plan working?”

“Admirably. I cannot think that you could do your duty any better, Corporal Egorova,” said Sergey Matorin, stepping out of the walk-in closet between the bedroom and the bathroom. He spoke Russian that sounded like a truck transmission filled with gravel. He was dressed in a dark sport coat, black shirt and slacks, and wore slip-on moccasins. He casually tossed a zippered pouch and a black cloth sheath onto the bed and began shrugging out of his sport coat, never taking his eyes off Nate. Black.

Silence, then electric shock and no hesitation, not a second, as the scraps of black lace launched at Black, her arms around his neck, a knee driving into his crotch. Nate noticed ballet muscles in her legs and her buttocks bunching as Black grunted and pushed her chin back and punched her in the throat, a killing blow, and she fell back on the rug, in her lacey undergarments, gasping.

Nate needed more time to get there in slow motion, thinking, Someone’s going to have to die, dead, as in killed, because Black had heard them talking and they were a cell phone call away from meltdown, and he put his shoulder down and smelled ammonia and drove the thin body back against a little Hepplewhite in the corner, which made a crack when it splintered. They both pushed off the floor and three stones hit the side of Nate’s face, bang, bang, bang, oh, fuck, Spetsnaz open-hand technique, and he locked the ropy arm and kicked behind the knee and Black fell and rolled and popped back up, cloven hooves high and smiling. Nate felt for a piece of furniture, and slung it at Black’s feet, then stepped in to smell the ammonia again, and he started low and brought the heel of his hand up and through the chin, trying to remember other long-ago hand-to-hand techniques, as Black rolled again and reached the bed and pulled the whispered sheath off, and the blade was up and the point was making little circles, and it was time to back away, seriously, because this was no good and there were no weapons immediately at hand, nothing long enough and hard enough to deal with this bastard and the silver edge of the otherwise blue-mottled steel.

The windpipe strike had not killed her, as there were black lace panties and black lace cups holding the big blue-and-white vase, Ming, Limoges, Wedgwood, whatever, smashing it between Black’s shoulder blades in a shower of shards, and he went down on one knee, but there was the whistle of the spinning slash and the blood started, a thin line on her thigh and diagonally across her belly, then she was red and slick, and she staggered back and fell with a bump, sitting up and looking at her legs, one wet, the other dry.