The following morning at SVR headquarters, First Deputy Director Ivan “Vanya” Egorov reviews surveillance reports with his counterintelligence chief, Alexei Zyuganov. Egorov, a politically ambitious officer with Putin’s patronage, is furious about the missed opportunity to catch MARBLE and orders Zyuganov to identify the traitor Nate met.

That afternoon at the US Embassy, Chief of Station Gordon Gondorf confronts Nate, accuses him of incompetence, and prematurely ends his Moscow tour. Nate defends his actions, understanding that this will damage and maybe end his career. When Gondorf dismisses him, Nate calls him a coward.

Three days later, Nate departs for a lateral assignment to Helsinki Station at the request of its Chief, Tom Forsyth, who has already sent a welcoming note. An FSB team photographs Nash as he boards his flight. Egorov views Nate’s transfer as an opportunity to continue operations against him in Finland, where the SVR can operate fairly freely to continue to investigate MARBLE’s identity.

Twenty-five-year-old Dominika Egorova dines with wealthy oligarch Dimitri Ustinov at an opulent Moscow restaurant. Ustinov, who has publicly feuded with Putin, is infatuated with Dominika and gives her a priceless Fabergé cigarette case. Dominika, operating for the SVR, feels contempt for him but maintains her seductive act.

Dominika possesses synesthesia, perceiving emotions as colored auras. Her mother Nina was a brilliant violinist whose career was destroyed by Soviet politics; her father Vassily was a professor who secretly despised the system. At 10, Dominika entered the Moscow State Academy of Choreography and became a rising ballet star. At 20, she was selected as prima ballerina, but a jealous rival sabotaged her by deliberately injuring her foot and ending her dance career. Shortly after, her father died of a stroke.

At her father’s funeral wake, her uncle Vanya Egorov—the SVR’s First Deputy Director—recruited her for a small favor, leveraging her grief and threatening her mother’s housing situation. Before leaving the ballet academy, Dominika engineered her revenge through the discovery of Sonya and Konstantin having sex, ending their careers.

Returning to the present, Dominika accepts Ustinov’s invitation to his apartment.

Dominika and Ustinov arrive at his lavish penthouse. In his enormous bedroom, she resolves to complete her mission and, after taking a Benzedrine tablet, begins seducing him. As they make love, SVR assassin Sergey Matorin appears and garrotes Ustinov from behind. Dominika is trapped beneath Ustinov’s convulsing body as he dies, his blood covering her.

Matorin drags the corpse aside and strokes Dominika’s foot—a gesture that echoes a similar act he committed before killing a captive girl in Afghanistan, the act that earned him the nickname Khyber. He tells Dominika to get dressed for an appointment with her uncle.

A week after Ustinov’s assassination, Dominika is summoned to Vanya’s office at SVR headquarters. He commends her performance but orders her never to speak of the incident, an off-book operation to kill off one of Putin’s rivals.

Sensing that Vanya is weighing whether to kill her or bring her into the SVR, Dominika assures him of her discretion. When Vanya offers her a low-level archives position, she counters by requesting admission to the Academy of Foreign Intelligence. This is surprising, as women are very rarely trained as operatives. Vanya calculates that the academy would keep her under strict control and serve as a political win for him. He agrees.

In the cafeteria later, Dominika is overcome by nausea and flashbacks to Ustinov’s murder. She notices Matorin eating at another table, staring at her—his aura is a swirling black.

Dominika begins training at the SVR’s Academy of Foreign Intelligence. As the only woman in her class, she faces hostility. When a male classmate tries to rape her in the communal shower, she stabs him in the eye with a loose faucet handle. Nearly expelled, she is saved by Vanya’s intervention and placed on probation.

Dominika excels in her studies and flourishes in streetcraft exercises, using her synesthesia to detect surveillance teams. Her instructors nickname her “mushka”—front gun sight. She also begins one-on-one psychology lessons with an instructor named Mikhail; sensing his attraction, she initiates a sexual encounter, and Mikhail never reports it.

Just before her final exams, Vanya reveals that she will attend the Kon Institute—Sparrow School—for seduction training. Horrified, Dominika protests, but Vanya threatens her career and her mother’s security. Defeated, she agrees, and as she leaves, she gives him a chilling stare.

Nate arrives in Helsinki, observed by SVR surveillance reporting to Vanya. He meets his new Chief of Station, Tom Forsyth, a seasoned officer who welcomes him but sternly warns against taking operational shortcuts to redeem himself after Moscow. Nate also meets Deputy Chief Marty Gable, a gruff and streetwise veteran.

Over lunch, Gable asks Nate about the Moscow incident and tells him that failure can lead to growth. He recounts his own career-damaging moment in Istanbul, where he shot a PKK enforcer to save a young Kurdish agent’s life; the diplomatic fallout landed him at a desk at Headquarters until Forsyth brought him to Helsinki. Forsyth’s own demotion and placement in Helsinki came after he insulted an arrogant Senate aide during a briefing when he was Chief of Station in Rome. Gable concludes that the three of them will help Nate regain his operational footing.

Dominika and 11 other trainees arrive at Sparrow School, a secluded mansion near Kazan. Dominika is assigned the alias “Katia.” She befriends Anya, a gentle trainee who later comes to Dominika’s room in distress and initiates a sexual encounter; Dominika complies out of pity.

Training escalates into enforced nudity sessions, live demonstrations, and assigned sexual encounters with military cadets, all filmed and critiqued. Anya hangs herself, and Dominika finds her body. Staff treat the death as inconsequential, and instruction continues. At the end of the course, Dominika returns home before dawn to reunite with her mother.

Dominika reports to the Fifth Department at SVR headquarters for her first operational assignment. In the corridors, she encounters General Korchnoi, whose genuine purple aura impresses her. She is assigned the case of Simon Delon, a lonely French commercial diplomat in Moscow. At a planning session, she argues that the case is weak—Delon lacks sufficient access to justify a risky entrapment operation. Simyonov, in charge of the operation, insists that they proceed, and Dominika walks out.

The next day, she receives an anonymous note in purple ink, suggesting that Delon has a daughter and that Dominika should follow her instincts. Dominika returns to the planning session and reveals that Delon’s daughter, Cécile, has access to classified French defense documents, making Delon valuable as a path to her. Simyonov reluctantly agrees to let Dominika run the operation her way.

Dominika carefully cultivates Delon over several weeks, building genuine trust. He falls deeply in love with her and begins photographing and copying embassy documents. Against Dominika’s advice, however, Simyonov orders a premature raid. SVR officers burst in while Dominika and Delon are together; when one officer slaps and insults Dominika, she attacks him and is dragged to an observation room where Simyonov gloats over Delon’s interrogation. Dominika rages that they have destroyed the operation before securing the daughter.

They attempt to extort Delon for his complicity, but he confesses to the French ambassador the next morning, as Dominika predicted he would. He is transferred home to Paris, consigned to duties without classified access. The operation ends without recruiting Cécile as a source.