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Quotations (25)

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***Please read quotes after having read the book unless not concerned with spoilers. There are 61 quotes posted in goodreads as of this morning. Mine are collected as I read the novel and likely many duplicated*** Twenty-seven-year-old…
MARBLE was short and stocky, with deep brown eyes separated by a fleshy nose. He had bushy white eyebrows, which matched his full head of wavy white hair, giving him the appearance of an elegant boulevardier. === The middle-aged Muscovite…
He was active and prominent in the changeover from KGB to SVR in 1991, chose the right side during Kryuchkov’s abortive 1992 KGB coup against Gorbachev, and in 1999 was noticed by the phlegmatic First Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir…
Nate’s liternoye delo, the operational file: Young, active, disciplined, good Russian. Behaves himself regarding women and alcohol. No drugs. Diligent in cover position in the Embassy Economic Section. Effective while on the street, does…
“Energy, population decline, natural resources, client states. Forget all that. Russia is still the only country that can put an ICBM into Lafayette Square across from the White House. The only one, and they have thousands of…
Dominika gave him a smile that only recently she had come to recognize had an effect on people. === Two figures in a darkened room filled with vermilion Bach, two klikushy in a forest glen, planning mayhem. === …different secrets nowadays,…
Dominika gravely explained that when the music played, or when her father read aloud to her, colors would fill the room. Different colors, some bright, some dark, sometimes they “jumped in the air” and all Dominika had to do was follow…
The men in the room looked at one another and back to her, and she read them like a hymnal. === Ustinov’s apartment sprawled on the top floor of a massive neoclassical building in the “Golden Mile” section of the Arbat. === …in one corner…
They had told her the sidewalk outside Ustinov’s apartment was stained with the tears of his one-night stands. === Informally, he was a chistilshchik, a “mechanic,” an executioner of the Russian secret service. In the KGB years, this…
The only women involved in field operations were the co-opted wives of rezidenturi officers, and the vorobey, the trained “Sparrows” who seduced recruitment targets. === Russia’s elite, the Sword and Shield of yesterday, the Globe and Star…
The irony was that America was in decline, said the lecturers, no longer the high-and-mighty US. Overextended in wars, struggling economically, the supposed birthplace of equality was now divided by class warfare and the poisonous politics…
“You got performance anxiety,” he drawled. “The longer you stare at your pecker, the softer it’s gonna be. Keep trying, but ease off the accelerator.” === …Get to work on her, for Christ’s sake. I have an idea how we can blow air up her…
Call it the Mozambique, double-tap center mass, third round forehead, suppose it was invented over there or something. === …like the old days, only there aren’t any good old days… === This school, this mansion secluded behind walls topped…
They were fledgling “Ravens” now, trained in a smaller villa down the road, three of them expert in the art of seducing the vulnerable and lonely women targeted by the SVR—the minister’s spinster secretary, the ambassador’s frustrated…
…Anyway, go after her, hard. Take your time, in a hurry.” === …I handle the CIA’s best asset, a high-level penetration of your frigging monolithic service, to thwart the worldwide evil designs of the Russian Federation and your lupine…
“Perhaps we’ll be like the two girls buying sausages. The butcher has no change, so he gives them an extra sausage. ‘What are we going to do with the third sausage?’ whispers one girl. ‘Quiet,’ her friend says. ‘We’ll eat that one.’ ”…
At the end of two years’ internal service in Moscow, he droned, an additional bonus of a quarter million dollars would be deposited in her account. Finally, on the mutually agreed-upon date of her retirement from service, the CIA would…
“For ten years he thought every Soviet agent was a double, every volunteer was dispatched, every piece of information was disinformation. He was charming and poisonous and paranoid and utterly convinced that his night sweats were reality.…
1985, the Year of the Spy, all victims of Ames, and Hanssen, victims of inexplicable treachery that fed them all to the belching blast furnaces of the Soviet Union. === She was dressed in skintight spandex shorts stretched by tree-trunk…
…his empty fingers that grasped and ungrasped, waiting to hold a knife. === Egorov was driven through the Borovitskaya Gate in the western corner of the Kremlin, tires drumming over the slick cobblestones, past the Grand Palace and the…
…the little blond harridan was masterful, but nothing they could do, no regime of tradecraft or technical tools, could guarantee SWAN’s safety indefinitely. === Za dvumya zaitsami pogonish’sya ne odnogo ne poimaesh, he thought. If you…
…I want you to identify the ten biggest secrets in the United States government. It could be military, political, domestic, cyber, banking, space, energy, Islam, or the tattoo on Pat Benatar’s ass, I don’t care—” === TrapDoor work, a…
The DNA Fingerprint Act of 2005 ... was deferred twice and taken off the docket. The bill intended to establish a national fingerprint and DNA archive for background checks, criminal and immigration registration, and identification for…
…nestled among the pines of Likavittos Hill. From the soaring balcony they could see the spotlighted Parthenon, and the flat sprawl of city lights winking all the way to the horizon, and the black strip of the sea, and the harbor lookout…
The crowded courtyard was littered and dirty, bleak walls of unfinished cinder block were topped by a jumbled lattice of barbed wire, the familiar ocher walls of the Y-shaped, five-story building were unmistakable. Lefortovo…