Dominika had told Nate that as a result of President Putin’s continued sponsorship, he had hinted that he might soon promote her to the rank of general and, just possibly, give her the Directorship of the SVR, an astounding development that Nate immediately reported to Langley on his THRESHER encrypted satellite phone that was approved for limited use in NATO countries. Gobsmacked by the notion that his star agent might soon be running the SVR, Benford had spilled coffee on his tie, already liberally spotted with crab bisque and mayonnaise.
In one blink, DIVA would have access to all SVR secrets; would automatically claim a seat at the National Security Council; and would become a fledgling member of the siloviki, Putin’s gaggle of insiders with access to not just secret plots roiling the halls of the Kremlin, but also the plans and intentions of the circumspect and coy Vladimir Vladimirovich, whom many foreign observers had analyzed, but few genuinely knew.
“It helps, not hurts. When I acquire intelligence assets, it raises my stock,” said Dominika to Nate, sopping up tomato sauce with a crust of bread. “No one in that crowd besides Bortnikov of the FSB, the internal service, recruits foreigners. The president was a KGB officer; he appreciates the accomplishment.”
“But there’s added risk,” said Nate. “If word leaks out, for instance, that CIA knows the North Koreans are using US railgun technology, you’re immediately compromised as the obvious source. Moscow’s got too many ears in Washington.”
Dominika poured two more glasses of wine. “If your people cannot keep secrets, perhaps I should not tell you secrets.”
“That’s a fine solution,” said Nate.
“Well, then tell Benford to prosmatrivat the information, how do you say it?”
“Compartment the intelligence,” said Nate, who was fluent in Russian. “In Washington that means only a thousand people will read your reports—the air force, navy, Department of Energy, ODNI, DIA, NSC, FBI, and half the committees on Capitol Hill. We have a single leak, you’d be on the Center’s short list of suspects in a week.”
“And then I suppose you’d get your wish for me to defect,” said Dominika, smiling. From the beginning, for seven years, she vowed that she’d never accept exfiltration. She was spying to save her Russia, and nothing else mattered, she would not contemplate fleeing. Nate knew the higher she rose in the SVR, the more exclusive her reporting would become, and the more likely she could be compromised by a leak from Washington. She had to keep a low profile, and CIA had to increasingly obfuscate that she was the source of exceptional reporting.
To the extreme annoyance of Benford, Nate had been preaching for a year that they should exfiltrate Dominika before she was compromised. She’d had two close calls, and once had even been interrogated in Lefortovo prison after an operational flap. She’d survived that ordeal and been cleared, but Moscow teemed with counterintelligence bloodhounds, jealous rivals, and political enemies who would relish destroying a competitor, especially the lissome Egorova, the rising star. Nate argued that losing her would be a dereliction of their duty to keep her safe, and it would be debilitating to future CIA recruitments worldwide. Plus, even in safe retirement, she would be an invaluable observer and a useful operational adviser.
Gable and Forsyth disagreed with Nate, but provisionally understood, having themselves extracted blown agents before. But Benford was furious that Nate was rocking the boat and distracting the asset with his mewling arguments. Simon was old school: run your assets and gather the intel until the bitter end, then extract them, if possible. If the agent got the chop, it was the hard reality of operations. Benford’s operational catechism was codified in an age when an agent could climb over the Berlin Wall, or wait for a rubber raft on a Baltic beach to escape the Iron Curtain. Now moles were caught in cyberstings and by drone surveillance and facial-recognition software. The tenets of espionage were immutable—go forth and steal secrets—but technology was changing the Game.
It didn’t help that Nate, despite an unreal gift for denied-area ops and surveillance detection, was the junior officer in the quartet of officers who oversaw the DIVA case, and thus, despite the tradition of civilian informality in CIA that belied its wartime military OSS roots, should have known to speak only when spoken to. They all knew Nate was spoony over Dominika and dreamed of settling down with her behind a white-picket fence. But the DIVA case was too valuable to consider pulling the plug. Gable advised Nate with characteristic candor.
“Listen up, rookie,” he said. “You recruited her cuz she had access. Now her access may reach all the way to the top. You pitched her and put her in harness. Now you’re her handler, and it’s all on you. You use everything in your limited bag of tricks to keep her alive and productive. Everything. Anything. But she’s an asset and you run her like a pro, got it? Now go put on your big-boy pants and shut the fuck up.”
* * *
* * *
Dominika took the dishes in, came back out, and sat on his lap. “I don’t want you to worry,” she said. “There will be hundreds of people in Moscow who will read the same reports I give you, providing plenty of cover. And I’ll be the one investigating any leaks; I will be the Russian Benford!”
Nate shook his head like a dog. “You’re saying that I’m sleeping with the Russian Benford? Better get off my lap. The image will stay with me for months, maybe years.”
Dominika laughed and ignored him. “I will travel quarterly to Vienna to debrief Academician Ri. My Sparrow Ioana is relocating there to be close to him, to keep him calm, and to rent a place nearby where we can meet. We can discuss the case and you can lecture me, and I will continue to, how do you say it, straighten you out? Vypravlyat?”
“You’re going to straighten me out?” said Nate, pulling her close. “I’m the handler here. I’m sure you remember.”
“In some circumstances I become the handler,” said Dominika, lifting his T-shirt over his head. “And yes, I will straighten you out.” She deftly pulled the drawstring of his trousers, lifted her skirt, and sat back on his lap, wiggling to seat herself more deeply on him. “Are you straightened out?” she whispered. She rocked back and forth, moaning softly, Nate’s face buried in her bosom. Then the dried-out, flimsy wicker chair fell apart, dumping them on the still-warm marble of the warped little balcony. Farther north, the gods on Mount Olympus looking down from above the alluvial pans of Thessaly might have said this was a portent of things to come.
They moved onto the bed, laughing, Nate holding a bruised elbow. Dominika rested her head on his shoulder. It had been a short time together, yet she was full of bien-être, a contentment, a tender proximity with Nate that she had not felt during other hurried and dangerous meetings. Perhaps it was the brassy Aegean sun, the salt air, and lying in bed with him, smelling his body and the wisterias and watching the hummingbirds. Nate laughed as Dominika scolded them in Russian, showing the little birds the correct technique for drawing nectar from a stamen; halfway through her demonstration he had stopped laughing and was bucking his hips off the mattress. The bullfrog horn of the night ferry from Rhodes bellowed congratulations from the sea.
Dusk. Surcease. The kerosene lantern attracted a giant emperor moth, silver wings printed with spots as luminous as owls’ eyes, and it dive-bombed around the flame, casting shadows as big as bats on the walls. Dominika propped herself on one arm and Nate made her repeat the next contact skeds for Vienna in a month, with preliminary and secondary meeting sites, recognition paroles and countersigns, alternates and safety signals, including brush passes with Ioana, who would be a cutout. This would be an important follow-up debrief to hear more about the Noko nuke program, and see if they could develop any identifiable information on the US source of the technology leak.
“I wish you would let someone else meet the Korean in Vienna,” said Nate, worrying the bone one last time. “Surely you can designate another officer, someone who speaks Korean or someone who knows weapons design.”