Red Sparrow

“Yeah, okay, no problem. But what about Forsyth? What happened?” Nate had to keep dodging around pedestrians on the snowy sidewalk as Gable bulled his way through the afternoon crowds. They got to a corner and waited to cross. Nate saw a coffee shop on the opposite side of the street. “Quick cup of coffee? Come on, I’ll buy.” Gable looked at Nate sideways and nodded.

Over coffee and a short brandy, Gable told the story. Forsyth was considered one of the shit-hot Chiefs of Station in the Service. Throughout his twenty-five-year career, Forsyth came up the ranks with a brilliant record. As a young officer he recruited the first-ever North Korean reporting asset. Before the Wall came down, he directed a Polish colonel who brought Forsyth the complete war plans for Warsaw Pact Southern Command. A few years later, he recruited the Georgian defense minister, who, in exchange for a Swiss bank account, arranged for a T-80 tank with the new reactive armor to be driven at 0300 across the shale beach at Batumi and up the ramp of a heavy landing craft leased by the CIA from the Romanians.

As he moved up, Forsyth was one of the senior managers who had done the work and knew what the Game was about. Case officers loved him. Ambassadors came to him for advice. Seventh-Floor suits at Headquarters trusted him, and at age forty-seven he was rewarded with the plum COS Rome job. Forsyth’s first year in Rome was, as expected, a solid success.

What no one expected was that politically savvy Tom Forsyth would tell the supercilious staff aide of a senator visiting Rome on a congressional delegation to shut up and listen instead of talking during a Station briefing. She had questioned the “condign wisdom” of a controversial and compartmented Rome Station operation. The twenty-three-year-old political science major from Yale with twenty months of experience on the Hill had moreover personally criticized Forsyth’s management of the case by saying she thought the “tradecraft employed was, in a word, subpar.” This elicited from the usually phlegmatic Forsyth a cryptic “Go fuck yourself,” which days later resulted in the Headquarters notification that the senator had complained, that Forsyth’s Rome assignment was curtailed, that he was being relieved for cause.

After the usual righteous letter of reprimand in Forsyth’s file, the Seventh Floor quietly offered Forsyth the COS Helsinki job. The offer was made to demonstrate to Congress that Headquarters sympathized with Forsyth’s reaction to fatuous oversight inflicted on hardworking field operators during Codel shopping junkets camouflaged as fact-finding trips. Offering Forsyth Helsinki was, in addition, an insincere and calculated offer because no one thought Forsyth would accept. The Station was one-sixth the size of Rome’s, in arguably the least important of four somewhat sleepy Scandinavian countries, a post for a junior COS. They expected Forsyth to decline, find a place to park himself, and leave in two years when he became eligible to retire.

“By accepting the assignment he basically told the Seventh Floor to go fuck themselves,” said Gable. “A half year later he got me as his deputy, and yesterday you arrive. Not that you’re a fuckup.” Gable laughed. “You’re just known as one.”

Gable saw Nate’s face, the faraway stare. Okay, he told himself, this kid has a worm in his guts. He’d seen it before, the talented case officer too fucking afeared for his rep and future to be able to relax and let it flow. That whey-faced Gondorf had rattled the kid, should be ashamed of himself, and now he and Forsyth had to get Nash thinking straight. He made a mental note to talk to the COS. The last thing Station needed was a c/o who didn’t know the right time to pull the recruitment trigger.

TARIK’S ADANA KEBAB

Purée red bell and hot peppers with salt and olive oil. Add purée to ground lamb, chopped onion, garlic and parsley, finely cubed butter, coriander, cumin, paprika, olive oil, salt, and pepper. Knead and shape into flat kebabs; grill until almost charred. Serve with grilled pide bread and thinly sliced purple onions sprinkled with lemon and sumac.

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