Red Sparrow

On the Finnish-Russian border three kilometers west of Vyartsilya, Russia, through an uninhabited tract of dense pines and rolling hills, the Soviets after World War II had established an infiltration route past the towers, border wire, and plowed strips. The Finnish side was always lightly patrolled. For decades, cleared KGB border guards periodically were assigned to the area to allow agents to pass through unmolested. The more techniques changed, the more they stayed the same: Routes through the minefields in 1953 were marked by stakes driven into the snow with cloth strips tied to them. Since 2010, the correct route through the field was marked by plastic pylons fitted with infrared strobes visible only with night-vision goggles.

A week earlier, Matorin had infiltrated Finland using this route, was picked up by a Directorate S support illegal on country road number 70, and was driven four hundred kilometers south on Rural Route 6 and finally into the city on state highway E75. The Spetsnaz killer had gone directly to Yelenova’s apartment, killed her at midnight, and put her body in a rubber military body bag. He had sanitized the apartment, then signaled the illegal, who, in the early morning hours, drove Matorin and Marta’s body back north to the Vyartsilya bolt-hole. The illegal then returned to Helsinki. The next morning, using real Finnish documents, the illegal and his lightly disguised wife left the country at Haarparanta, ostensibly for the start of a nice vacation in Sweden. They would never return to Finland, further complicating the investigation into what had happened to Marta Yelenova. The entire operation had taken a little less than forty hours.

The sunlight was rising through the pinewoods of Vyartsilya, casting long, delicate shadows that crept up the snow-covered hills. Guards from the Federal Security Service stood in elevated tower B30, watching the tree line with binoculars. The sun came up behind the tower, over the tops of the pines, bathing the whole area in golden light. “Vot,” said one of the men. There. A single thin figure came out of the trees. He was dressed in a white snowsuit with a hood, and wore snowshoes. The guards saw he moved steadily through the drifts, his long shadow stretched out behind him. He dragged a small equipment sled on a tether. An oblong shape lay on the sled, shrouded in white nylon. Marta Yelenova had returned to the Rodina.

MARTA’S LAST MEAL—PYTT I PANNA

In foaming butter, separately and aggressively brown cubed beef, potatoes, and diced onions until crisp. Incorporate ingredients in the skillet with additional butter, season and reheat. Form a well in the mixture, and break a raw egg into it. Stir the egg into the hash before serving.

16

Nate sat with Gable in the India Prankkari in Kallio, at the back, looking out the windows. The restaurant was nearly empty. Gable had insisted on ordering rogan josh, fragrant, spicy, oily vermilion lamb stew. They ate it with soft bread, a fiery relish of tomatoes and ginger, and copious amounts of beer. Gable compared his first spoonful to a Nepalese rogan josh he had tasted around a campfire in Dhahran a hundred years ago, waiting at the airstrip beside the Pilatus that had infiltrated the four Tibetans into China.

“Fucking Scandinavians cannot prepare Indian food,” he said, chewing. “With them it’s all reindeer and punk berries in cream sauce, boiled potatoes. Chef reaches for parsley and they have a stroke.” As usual, food was disappearing into Gable’s craw at a prodigious rate.

“Four little guys, sherpas, tough as nuts, trained ’em for a month, going to pop in and pop out, splice a relay on a PLA trunk line running along the border, literally in the shadow of Everest and Kanchenchunga. The fucking end of the world. They flew in over the mountains, were supposed to walk out… but they never came back. Chicom patrol probably got ’em.” He was silent for a minute, then waved for more of the relish, and they started talking about the DIVA case, how to kick-start it. Nate couldn’t pin her down, he couldn’t turn the corner with her. She wasn’t softening, he was wasting precious time. Gable stopped chewing and stared at him when Nate admitted he had grown to like her.

“She’s willing to come out, to engage, we debate stuff, but there’s no give,” said Nate.

“You ever think she’s working on you, not the other way around?” said Gable, chewing.

“Not impossible,” said Nate. “But there’s no handle she’s been working on. No career bullshit, no money, nothing.”

“Yeah, and what would you do if she showed up with nothing on under her raincoat? Think you’d call that a recruitment peg?”

Nate looked at Gable, nettled. “I don’t think she’d go with that kind of approach. Just a gut feeling.”