Red Sparrow (13 page)

Read Red Sparrow Online

Authors: Jason Matthews

Tags: #Thriller

Gable sat back and sipped his beer, started talking. Last assignment was in Istanbul, big fucking town, good ops, Dodge City. Spoke pretty good Turkish, knew where to go, who to see. Pretty fast he’d recruited a member of the PKK, the benighted Kurdish separatist terror group from eastern Turkey. They’d been leaving bombs in briefcases in government buildings, or shoeshine kits in the bazaar, or paper sacks in trash cans in Taksim Square.

One day Gable got into a taxi driven by a Kurd kid, twenty, twenty-one years old. Sounded sharp, drove okay. Listen up, you got to keep your eyes open, all the time. He had a hunch, an instinct, so he told the kid to stop at a restaurant, invited him to eat with him, this Kurd kid. He had to stare down
the fat Turk motherfucker behind the counter, they all hated Kurds, called them “mountain Turks.”

Kid ate like he was hungry. Talked about his family. Gable smelled PKK, so he hired the taxi for a week of driving around. Hunch paid off. Kid was a member of a local cell but didn’t buy the terrorism bullshit. A little respect, five hundred euros a month, a nice little recruitment. All because Gable kept his eyes fucking open in a taxi. Don’t forget that.

The kid started with useless shit, but Gable straightened him out—called
agent handling
for a fucking reason—and they focused on cell leaders, how they got their orders, how the couriers traveled. Not bad, but Gable pushed the kid, and they started getting the locations of PKK warehouses where they stored the Semtex or whatever they were using, Nitrolit from Poland. Then he started passing the names of the bomb-makers.

It was getting good and we had to keep a cold compress on the Turkish National Police because they wanted to wrap them up, “capture them dead,” they used to say. COS in Ankara was happy and the suits in Headquarters were bobbing their heads. Then Gable got cocky, lost the bubble; lesson for Nate, you always have to keep the bubble.

Young Kurd lived in Tepebaşi, fundo neighborhood down the hill from Pera, the old European quarter. Gable normally met the kid in his taxi, driving around town, never stopping, nighttime always, on the fly. Broke the rules and visited the kid’s house to meet the family. At his house. The kid had invited him, it would have been an insult to refuse, got to be culturally sensitive, goddamn it. Besides, Gable wanted to see where his agent lived. Listen up, you always know where your agents live, you never know whether you’re going to have to dig them out of the woodwork some night.

The street was steep, lined with peeling wooden row houses, faded splendor, narrow front steps, double front doors, etched-glass sidelights, all broken and boarded. Former European neighborhood, now littered with garbage and smelling of drains. In Istanbul you get used to smelling sewage, actually smells sort of sweet. Anyway, it was getting dark and lights in the houses were starting to come on. Evening call to prayer had just ended.

Gable had come down the hill dreading it. This was going to be an awkward hour full of shy, downcast eyes and endless glasses of tea. Fuck it, part of the job. As he approached the house he heard screams. His agent’s front door was open. Something breaking. Fuck, not good, neighbors would be
gathering soon. Gable thought it would be a circus in approximately two minutes. He started drifting away from the house. Pretty dark by now, no one would notice him.

Trouble was, at the front door two guys were marching Gable’s agent out of the house by the armpits. The kid’s wife was slight and dark with almond eyes from the south slopes of the Taurus Mountains, torn T-shirt, barefoot. She was right behind them, screaming, beating at the men. A baby about two years old stood in the doorway buck-naked, crying. These two dickheads were as skinny as Gable’s agent, but there was no resistance, maybe because one of the dickheads held a pistol.

Jesus Christ, the kid’s in trouble with the PKK. Maybe spent the extra money, maybe bragged about his new foreign friend. Listen up, it goes south that fast. You got to protect them, sometimes you got to do it for them. The PKK took a medieval view when dealing with countrymen they thought were traitors.

Gable could have walked away. Saw the baby girl in the door—cute little thing, bubble butt and slobbering nose—and he thought,
Naw, fuck it.
Stepped up to the first step of the house and smiled at the dickheads. They stopped and let go of the kid, who fell on his ass on the top step. Little wife stopped screaming and looked at Gable, big fucking
yabanci,
foreigner with big knuckles. A dozen neighbors edging around, all Kurds. Fucking neighborhood was dead quiet, not a sound, water running down the center of the street. The dickhead with the pistol yelled something in Kurdish, sounded like sash weights in a washtub.

Big Mouth began waving the pistol, pointing it at the kid, at the wife, shaking it like a finger. Kid was one hundred percent dead if Gable didn’t do something. Fuck it, anyway, because this was the absofuckinglutely end of the case, the kid would have to skip Turkey if he wanted to stay alive. PKK guy came down a step and continued yelling at Gable. Ignored the beady eyes, focused on the pistol. Little fuck’s knuckles whiten on the grip, you know you got about three seconds. Barrel started coming up.

Gable was carrying a Hi-Power in a Bianchi belt loop behind his hip. He cleared the Browning and shot the Kurd, pop-pop-pop. Call it the Mozambique, double-tap center mass, third round forehead, suppose it was invented over there or something. Dickhead’s eyes opened, fell straight down in a heap. Slid skull-first down the stairs. Pistol bounced after him, Gable picked
it up, threw it clattering down a sewer grate, got to be a million guns in Istanbul’s sewers. Gable’s spent brass hadn’t hit the pavement before the neighbors bolted like fucking squirrels, going in all directions, shutters slamming up and down the hill.

The Kurd kid held his wife. Wondered if the kid realized their new life started right then, maybe, the wife probably did, looked smart, nipples showing through that T-shirt. Gable looked at the other PKK guy, who’s seen Jesus, or Muhammad, whatever, and the guy held his hands in front of him, palms out, walked down the steps, and ran down the street into the dark.

Gable gave the kid five grand to clear out, couldn’t get any more out of Headquarters. Don’t know where they went, maybe they’re in Germany or France. Five Kurdish kids learning German. When
they
turn twenty, Nate’s
son
can find and recruit
them
. Fucking crazy. Okay, now the point of this long fucking story.

Aftermath was a veritable shitstorm, I kid you not, Gable said. First it was the Consulate and the hysterical Consul General, tinny voice like a music box, then the Embassy in Ankara, then the knife-and-fork set at the State Department. Diplomat involved in fatal shooting, they were very upset, a lot of weeping. Grave repercussions. Had to leave Istanbul. The Turkish National Police gave me a plaque and a farewell dinner; they were delighted. Turkish cops love a good shoot-out. But everyone else was seriously pissed, and official CIA investigation hadn’t even started.

Gable waltzed around with Office of Security at Headquarters for a month. After forty hours of conversation they settled on “deficient tradecraft.” COS Ankara didn’t back Gable up, too much political heat, sounds like Gondorf, doesn’t it? Plenty of assholes to go in your career. Gable’s prospects for foreign operations were over for the indefinite future, it seemed, and he was stuck in a four-by-four cubicle on the Turkish desk in Headquarters, listening to a twenty-three-year-old new hire on the other side of the partition talking on the outside line to her girlfriend about getting up the nerve to fellate her boyfriend that weekend. None of the young officers even wore wristwatches, goddamn it: they told time with their fucking phones, or tablets, or whatever they’re called.

Gable didn’t feel sorry for himself, it was operations. All this happened to him, but for the right reason. Listen up, the most important thing is your agent, his security, saving his life. It’s the only thing.

At about the same time, Forsyth had just concluded his own personal shitstorm, but had bounced back and landed in Helsinki. He heard Gable was fucked—that was nothing new—and sent for him as his number two, like the old days, only there aren’t any good old days, it’s a myth. The ecstatics at Headquarters were happy to let Gable go to Finland as DCOS, no one else wanted the job and they wanted him off the desk, bad influence.

“So here we are, three fuckups, in the field, operating near the fricking Arctic Circle. And you and me drinking beer in a Turkish hash house.” Gable finished his beer and yelled, “
Hesap
.” When Tarik came out of the kitchen, Gable motioned to Nate. “He’s paying.” Nate laughed.

“Wait a minute,” said Nate. “What do you mean, Forsyth went through his own shitstorm? What happened to him?” Nate dug out a few euros and handed them to Tarik. “Keep the change.” Tarik smiled thinly, nodded to Gable, and retreated to the kitchen. “You overtipped, rookie,” said Gable. “Don’t let them get used to you paying out. Got to keep them hungry.” Gable got up and shrugged on his coat.

“Bullshit,” said Nate. “You paid that young Kurd five grand to get him out of Dodge, but even you admitted he was burned, useless. You didn’t have to pay him squat.” Nate looked at Gable as they turned out of the alley and walked in front of the train station. Gable avoided looking back at him, and Nate knew that Gable was more than just a tough guy. But he wasn’t going to test the limits anytime soon.

The air was cold and Nate flipped up the collar of his overcoat. “You didn’t answer me about Forsyth,” said Nate. “What’s the story?”

Gable ignored the question and continued walking down the sidewalk. “Do you know where the Russian Embassy is?” asked Gable. “China, Iran, Syria? You should be able to get in a car and drive directly to any one of them. You might have to exfil some poor bastard someday. I’ll give you a week to find ’em all.”

“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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