Red Sparrow

“What does ‘commiserate’ mean?” asked Dominika. Blue-eyed stare.

“Crying on each other’s shoulders,” Nate said. Purple, steady and warm.

Dominika didn’t know whether to laugh or scream. Stay professional. “Crying we can save for later. I am hungry, let’s order,” she said.

=====

It was a Monday morning when a restricted-handling cable from Headquarters was passed to Nate, informing the Station that MARBLE had communicated via covcom that he would be arriving in Helsinki in two weeks as part of a Russian trade delegation participating in a two-day Scandinavian/Baltic economic summit. MARBLE relayed that he was using the delegation as cover for travel. He would stay under Line KR’s radar that way. He was further covered by being operational, in town to attempt to bump the senior member of the Canadian delegation, Assistant Trade Minister Anthony Trunk, who the SVR thought was a valid recruitment prospect based on the minister’s predilection for men in their early twenties.

A senior Canadian official and a pidor, to boot. The Americas Department had primacy, and MARBLE was the logical candidate to travel to Helsinki to sniff at Trunk’s cologne-scented personage. The trip was approved by the Center. As MARBLE knew would happen, instructions were issued to exclude the Helsinki rezidentura from both the conference and the operation. MARBLE had subsequently signaled in his satellite burst transmission that he would be able to meet with CIA handlers late at night after the daily sessions and celebratory dinners concluded. Risky, but possible.

A Headquarters Russia analyst would arrive two days before the start of the conference to help prepare current intelligence requirements for the meetings. A long list of follow-up questions generated by MARBLE’s previous intelligence reports was cabled to Station. At the bottom of the list, as always, the softly phrased counterintelligence questions: Do you have knowledge of any moles in the US government? Are you aware of the compromise of any US classified material? Do you know of any intelligence operations being directed against US persons or systems? Mild, opened-ended questions designed to open the furnace door and look inside.

They went down the checklist. Replenishing commo gear was impossible—MARBLE would go through customs on his return from Helsinki. A universal contact plan would be updated. Forsyth vetoed the addition of two senior officers from Headquarters to participate in the debriefings. Nate was MARBLE’s handler and he would do the job.

Now there were preparations no one else could make: Nate receded into the background, went out onto the streets, dropped from sight. By night he cased dark alleys, angled walls, loading-dock stairways—Brief Encounter sites—near the neoclassical splendor of the Kämp Hotel, where the summit would be held and delegates housed. He wandered past cafés, restaurants, the City and Sculpture Museums, pacing distances, measuring angles, determining flow and screening—these would be the Brush Pass sites—all within easy walking distance of the Kämp.

Lastly, during a night of driving rain with sheets of water pouring off the monoliths on the façade of the train terminal, Nate went up the side steps and, just inside the doors, felt the hand, then the heavy weight of the hotel key in his pocket. A thin-faced man, a nonofficial cover officer, an NOC from Europe, had taken a room at the Hotel GLO for a week with a throwaway alias. Every night during the conference, Nate would wait in the hotel room to meet MARBLE when he could get away, wait for the minute scratch at the door, wait to begin the long conversations in the overheated room with the shades down and the television turned up, into the early morning hours, while the city slept and the changing traffic lights reflected endlessly off the wet, empty streets. By the time MARBLE stepped off the plane in Helsinki, the Station was prepared to spend as much time as securely possible with him, without remotely showing an American hair on the street.

=====

It was early evening, after work, and Dominika stood by a window on the mezzanine level of the Torni Hotel across from the swimming pool, waiting for Nate to show. They swam together now at least three days a week, but Nate had not been at the pool for six days straight. Strange, she thought, feeling a little jilted. A week ago, on a windy spring Sunday, they had met for coffee at the Carusel Café on the water in Ullanlinna. There was a growing forest of swaying rigging in the harbor as halyards clanked against aluminum masts and clouds moved across a rare blue sky.