Red Sparrow

The next day they were back around the table piled high with photographs and surveillance reports. The ashtrays were overflowing. Dominika walked to her place at the end of the conference table. The men ignored her. They were reviewing Delon’s profile, a smoke-polluted exercise conducted with disinterest and one eye on the wall clock. There were no primary colors from any of them. They walked through his habits and patterns, as described by the teams, arguing about places where they could engineer contact. Bored as usual, Simyonov looked up at Dominika. “Well, Corporal, do you have any ideas about contact points? Assuming you have reconsidered your earlier objections to the operation.”

Dominika kept her voice steady. “I have reread the file, Colonel,” she said, “and I still believe this man is not a valid target.” Heads around the table did not come up this time; the men kept their eyes on the papers in front of them. This vorobey was not long for the Fifth, they thought, possibly not long for the Service.

“Still you take this line? How interesting,” said Simyonov. “So we drop him, is that your recommendation?”

“I said no such thing,” said Dominika. “I believe we should indeed pursue him as a target, exploiting his lonely solitude.” She flipped open the cover of the file in front of her. “But the ultimate target, the end goal of the operation, should not be Delon himself.”

“What nonsense are you talking?” said Simyonov.

“It’s already in the file. I completed a bit of extra research,” said Dominika.

Simyonov looked around the table, then back at Dominika. “The case has been thoroughly researched already—”

“And discovered that Monsieur Delon has a daughter,” interrupted Dominika.

“And a wife in Paris, yes, we know all that!”

“And the daughter works in the French Ministry of Defense.”

“Unlikely,” fumed Simyonov. “The entire family was traced. The Paris rezidentura checked all local records.”

“Then it appears they missed something. She is twenty-five years old, unmarried, lives with her mother. Her name is Cécile,” said Dominika.

“This is preposterous,” said Simyonov.

“She was mentioned only once in the transcripts. I checked the foreign directories in Line R’s library,” said Dominika, flipping more pages in the file. “Cécile Denise Delon is listed in the Rue Saint-Dominique registry. That means the central registry at the Defense Ministry.” Dominika looked around the table at the faces staring at her. “That suggests, as far as I could determine, that she has access to classified defense bulletins distributed daily to the government. She is one of the custodians of planning documents for the French military. She likely handles the dissemination and storage of a wide variety of French military budget, readiness, and manpower reports.”

“Conjecture, at this point,” said Simyonov.

“We don’t know where the French store their nuclear secrets, but I wouldn’t be surprised—”

“There’s no need for idle speculation,” said Simyonov. The yellow fog around his head was growing, and getting darker too. Dominika knew that he was frustrated, angry, calculating, and she knew that her defiance and insubordination were already more than enough to have her cashiered from the Service.

The room was deathly still. Simyonov’s antediluvian Soviet instincts were alerted; the bureaucrat in him calculated. His thoughts in an instant proceeded in the nature of the traditional KGB functionary: This little tsarevna with the big last name is making me look lacking and stupid. How can I profit in the end from her work? If this maneken is correct, the rewards could be huge, but so are the risks. An operation targeting the French Ministry of Defense would need to be approved all the way to the top.

“If this is true,” he said stingily, “there could be an added benefit.” He spoke as if he had known all along. He flicked ash into the ashtray.

She could read his oily, humid mind. “I agree with you, Colonel. It’s Delon’s real potential, it’s what makes him worth pursuing, what makes it worth the risk to recruit him.”

Simyonov shook his head. “The daughter is in Paris, twenty-five hundred kilometers away.”

“Not so far, I think,” said Dominika, smiling. “We will see.” Simyonov was unsettled by that smile. “Of course, we’ll have to develop a more detailed profile about the relationship between father and daughter.”

“Of course, thank you, Corporal,” Simyonov said. A few more minutes of this and she would be taking over the Fifth Department. All right, he thought, she could do the preparatory work, as much as she liked. As the operation proceeded he’d ensure she’d be on her back with her legs in the air with the cameras rolling, and that would take care of that.