The Kremlin's Candidate: A Novel by Jason Matthews (10)

Cradle Snacking

The bohemian charm of Staten Island left behind, Dominika and Gable were sitting shoulder to shoulder on the banquette in the back of a little bar in Chelsea on Hudson Street called Employees Only. It was late and the bar was half-full. A small plate of Parmesan frico cups filled with tomato salad sat untouched between Gable’s beer and Dominika’s wine. Dominika had just finished telling Gable about her trip to Staten Island, going into the Vanderbilt mausoleum, and the spooky meeting in the dark with the illegal. Gable shook his head and took a sip of beer.

“You didn’t see her face at all?” Gable said.

“Not even the color of her hair,” said Dominika. “She stayed in the shadows the whole time. She was very good. I did not push it.”

“Jesus wept. And you think she uses Staten Island to meet agents?” asked Gable.

“She said it was well-suited for operations,” said Dominika. “But Staten Island goes on forever. How could you cover it?” Gable shrugged.

“Facial-recognition software in cameras at the ferry terminal might pick her up,” said Gable.

“If we knew what she looked like, perhaps,” said Dominika. “But we do not.”

“Yeah, tell me something I don’t know,” said Gable. “She could drive her ass over one of the bridges too.”

“May I tell you an idea about how we could identify her?” said Dominika. “I am thinking we could take a page out of the old KGB handbook.” Gable drank some more beer.

“I could order two more drinks if this is going to take long,” he said. Dominika smiled and patted his arm.

“Terpeniye, patience, Bratok, you will like this,” she said. “Now listen. Before I leave New York, I ordered SUSAN—yes, ordered her most sternly—to retrieve my encrypted personal mobile phone from a dead-drop site of her choosing in Manhattan, for destruction and secure disposal.”

“And she went for that?”

“I used my colonel’s voice on her. Russians respond to bullying.”

“You sure as hell don’t,” said Gable.

“That is because you never bully me,” said Dominika.

“I’m too scared to,” said Gable. “Okay, you dead drop your phone, we set up an ambush, and bag her ass? That’s no good; it puts you in hot water.”

“I am not thinking of an ambush, which we must avoid for exactly that reason. We just have to pass the physical item in a timed drop at a site of her choosing, someplace that offers her absolute security. No ambushes, no surveillance at the site.”

Gable looked sideways at her. “I’m waiting for the punch line,” he said.

“We dust the cell phone with metka.”

“Smegma?” said Gable, being obtuse. “What the hell’s that?”

Dominika laughed. She knew the obscure word from Sparrow School. “You are a real krutóy páren, a sharp fellow. You know very well what I said. Metka, not smegma. Spy dust, like the KGB used in Moscow to track Americans. I’m sure Benford has chemists who could prepare a compound.”

“Moscow will still wonder how they lost their sleeper,” said Gable.

Dominika shrugged. “They will not connect me with her eventual arrest, not if you catch her months later by using spy dust. Of course, the Kremlin will be annoyed, but the Center will rationalize that twenty years as an illegal in the United States exceeds all expectations of survival,” said Dominika. “I know the Russian mind; they will be looking for someone to blame, but if we do this right, Line S will never divine how she was identified, nor will they appreciate the irony that metka was used against them, after all these years. SUSAN will naturally follow orders and destroy the phone, leaving no evidence but her invisibly contaminated hands.”

“Not bad. I’ll run it by Benford.” He picked up his phone, pushed a speed dial, and Westfall appeared in the bar two minutes later, gulping as he shook Dominika’s hand again, mumbling like an embarrassed butler. Dominika got up and gave Westfall a chaste hug of greeting, with the result that he turned vermillion. Gable repeated a summary of Dominika’s plan to him, told him to call Benford on the secure line and get working on it. They had two days to cook up their own batch of metka. Lucius bowed that he understood.

Gable shook his head at Westfall’s awkwardness. “You gonna click your heels like a Prussian?”

Dominika dug her elbow into Gable’s ribs. “Leave him alone,” she said. “Lucius, do you understand the plan?” Lucius nodded.

“We do this right, Domi’s in the clear, and sugar britches glows in the dark until Christmas,” said Gable.

“What is this sugar britches?” said Dominika.

“Skip it, figure of speech.”

“I am sure,” said Dominika, looking sideways at him. “Westfall, do you know what it means?” Westfall gulped, shook his head, and left, saying he’d call Benford right now. Dominika felt even sorrier for him than before.

“Okay. So the FEEBS check after hours the offices of the leading literary magazines in Manhattan—how many of them can there be—and see whose spaces glow under a black light,” said Gable.

Dominika held up a cautionary finger. “There is some need for attention with metka. The KGB had difficulty with overcontamination. In a week, SUSAN will shake many hands, distribute memos, and conduct business lunches in restaurants. In several months, everyone in publishing in New York will be covered in the stuff, not to mention half the talent agents in the United States.”

“No one’s gonna worry about them,” said Gable, finishing his beer.

Iosip Blokhin was walking down Hudson Street in Chelsea, head pointed down, fixated on the sidewalk, bulling forward without apparent regard for other pedestrians, lampposts, or garbage cans. He did not care about the incongruity of wearing a massive pair of wraparound fisherman’s sunglasses at ten o’clock in the evening, and he ignored the occasional stares from amused passersby. He looked like a sightless wrestler without the tapping white cane. The glasses were in fact developed by Line T to detect faint residual traces of nuclear isotopes in order to track a target at undetectable long ranges. Blokhin was tracking Dominika, on the secret express orders of Major Shlykov, and unbeknownst to Anton Gorelikov. Shlykov had instructed Blokhin to begin tailing “Miss SVR tits,” after her Staten Island meeting (even Shlykov would not meddle with that) but continuously thereafter until they departed New York. Shlykov wanted Blokhin to ensure that the SVR would not steal the MAGNIT case, and that Dominika was not meeting with officers from the New York rezidentura preparatory to claiming primacy, or engaging in any number of bureaucratic maneuvers to usurp the case. Shlykov stipulated to Blokhin that Egorova was not to know about the surveillance—he would not risk the wrath of Gorelikov—so coverage was to be invisible.

“She’s supposed to be good on the street, so let her go if you can’t cover her discreetly,” Shlykov had told Blokhin. “Do not let her see you.”

The Spetsnaz gorilla picked his teeth. “What if I see her doing something interesting?” he said quietly.

Shlykov had looked at the scarred forehead. “Like what?” he said.

“Like meeting someone I don’t recognize,” said Blokhin.

Shlykov looked him in the eyes. “It could be an officer from the rezidentura.”

“Perhaps. But if it’s not someone I know, it could be a double deal. Maybe even on Gorelikov’s orders.”

“What are you saying?” said Shlykov.

Blokhin looked at his hands. “Egorova is not yet Director of SVR, and she is already causing problems. When they give her a star she’ll be untouchable.”

Shlykov turned away from Blokhin to shuffle some papers. “You already have one problem to eliminate.”

“Why leave a second one to fester?” asked Blokhin.

“Only if you are one hundred percent. No traces.”

“Chemu byt, tomu ne minovat,” said Blokhin, “things that were meant to be will happen, no matter what.”

With Shlykov’s brevet to operate against Egorova, Blokhin waited for Dominika’s departure for Staten Island, entered her hotel room, and using a tool resembling a grommet punch, sunk a pinhead-sized disk of the medical isotope Palladium-103—used for cancer radiation treatment—into the leather heels of the three pairs of shoes in her little closet and returned them exactly as he had found them, after an appraising sniff at each shoe. The tiny Palladium tags in her shoe heels would leave luminous orange dots viewable by special gamma glasses on pavement, flat carpet, marble, or wood, but would be scattered and obscured in leaves, grass, or sand. Palladium-103, moreover, had been chosen as a surveillance tool for its rapid decay rate, which would ensure a target would not inadvertently discover the tracking technique. The orange dots therefore would just support “over-the-horizon” surveillance but had a tendency to dissipate in adverse weather or on less than ideal surfaces. Stronger, more pervasively radioactive isotopes had been ruled out when tests on Gulag prisoners resulted in an unacceptable rate of bone marrow cancers and foot amputations.

Blokhin was trying to follow Egorova in Chelsea from her hotel using “trailing-bread-crumb” surveillance but the brisk temperatures and a light mist were dissipating the tag marks. When he lost the trail for the third time, he crossed the street to see if he could pick up the trail, but after another thirty minutes, he gave up. There were two more days, and perhaps something would develop.

As Dominika sat in the little bar next to Gable, her face blanched and a shot of ice went up her spine. She saw through the bar’s far window Blokhin’s thick body walking on the sidewalk. In five seconds he would be past the window directly opposite their banquette table. All he had to do would be to look inside—the interior was brighter than the street outside—and he would see Dominika sitting alone with a man in a city she didn’t know, had never visited before and conclude only one thing. Spion. Spy. She grabbed Gable’s arm in a panic; the banquette trapped her, and she couldn’t slip under the table. She pointed with her chin and whispered “Blokhin, outside.”

Gable didn’t hesitate, and he moved so fast that Dominika felt his arms around her shoulders in a twisting clinch that had his broad back to the window and Dominika totally screened before she felt his lips on hers. “Move,” Gable growled into her mouth, and she ran one hand through his crew cut. His arms were like steel around her, and his kiss was dry and firm. He smelled like soap and leather. She opened one eye and looked out the window and saw that Blokhin was gone. “Clear?” whispered Gable.

“Give it ten seconds more,” said Dominika, giggling, her cheek against Gable’s. He let her go and sat back, looking at her ruefully.

Dominika knew there was not a thought of sex in the kiss. Gable had reacted as quickly as he would have drawn his pistol on a gomer with an AK-47 in a Beirut alleyway—he just used what was available: an enveloping smooch. But Gable for all his gruffness was chaste to her, always had been. Nate had told her once that a young Gable had been married when he joined the Agency a million years ago to a beauty who was on her way to becoming a first-rate concert pianist. But the Life in the Third World claimed more of Gable than his bride was willing to give, and his frequent absences, the constant moving, and having to boil the tap water to kill the Giardia parasites was too much. She left Gable the morning that F-sharp above middle C wouldn’t play, and she lifted the lid on the baby grand and found a horned puff adder asleep on the felt hammers. Gable resolved to patch things up, but a year later she died in a crash on an icy highway four miles from home. Gable was in Peru facilitating the kinetic retirement of a local drug dealer who had brought a knife to a gunfight when they told him. He never married again, but Nate had whispered that her name was Moira—he never talked about her, except once to Nate. That’s what the Life leaves you, Nate had said to Dominika during one of his harangues about defecting.

Gable’s face was serious over the near miss with Blokhin. “Is this gonna be trouble?” he asked. “Was he tracking your phone?” Dominika shook her head.

“I did not carry the phone today. I made sure I was black before I met you tonight, absolutely, but yes, I think he was looking for me. He knows where my hotel is, he could have done a long tail from there and was just casting blind along my general route to see if he could pick up my scent. We call it promyvochnyye ptitsy, to flush a bird, an old technique. Gorelikov swore Blokhin wasn’t in New York to check up on me, but I don’t believe it. I will see if he asks about where I was tonight. Na Volosok ot, a close call. Imagine being caught in such a big city.”

She looked at him, tilting her head. “It is not just shooting bad men; you also kiss very well, just like James Bond. I had no idea. But after tonight I can no longer call you Bratok, big brother. It would be inappropriate, after kissing you. I’ll have to call you ledenets from now on.”

“Don’t start with me,” growled Gable, blushing. “The fuck’s that mean?”

“Ledenets,” said Dominika. “Sugar candy, like your sugar britches.” Gable blushed some more, and Dominika laughed, slid over to him, kissed his cheek, and mussed up his crew cut with her fingers. He wouldn’t look at her, which she found endearing.

A slovenly waiter sidled up to the table with the bar bill, having watched the old guy and Chesty McThrust necking in the corner. Gable glowered at him. “What’re you looking at?” he said. Dominika was red in the face from holding in laughter.

“Nothin,’ ” said the waiter. “No law against cradle snacking.” Dominika clapped a hand over her mouth, eyes streaming.

Benford sat behind the ruin of his desk in the Counterintelligence Division at CIA Headquarters. A three-tray inbox bursting with papers on one side of the desk was missing a foot and tilted dangerously. A dozen three-ring binders were stacked on the other corner of the desk, creating a redoubt from behind which Benford scowled at the two people sitting in his office. Benford was short and slightly paunchy, and this morning his hair looked as if it had been tugged on like a salt-and-pepper beret. His big brown cow’s eyes passed over the two officers sitting in front of him and settled on a sepia-toned framed photograph of James Jesus Angleton, the legendary mole hunter whose fanatic belief that the Soviets were running moles inside CIA had paralyzed Langley’s Russian operations for a decade. The photograph of Angleton, like a number of other objects in Benford’s office, tilted drastically. No amount of straightening would keep the photo frame squared off—every morning it would be slanting again, confirming for Benford his private belief that the spirit of James Jesus resided in his office and knocked the photo askew every night, which suited him just fine.

The two officers sitting in torn bucket chairs with wobbly casters waited. One was Lucius Westfall, the precocious analyst from DI, and Benford’s new aide. In the other chair slouched the laconic technical officer Hearsey, whom Benford liked and trusted. “Show me what you have done,” said Benford. “Time is of the essence. We need to dust her phone tomorrow night.”

Hearsey dug into a zippered pouch, took out half a dozen black-and-white photographs, a large tablet, and what looked like an antique perfume atomizer with a black rubber bulb and an oval glass receptacle. “The photographs are of the various items we used to test adhesion of the compound,” said Hearsey. “Results are what we expected. Fibrous material—clothing, floor mats, bedclothes—retain the material better and for a longer period of time. Other surfaces like plastic, glass, or metal are not as good.”

“The item DIVA will pass the illegal is a cell phone,” said Benford. “It’s our only choice.” Hearsey nodded.

“Yeah, we figured that,” he said. “So we bought a cover she can slip over her phone.” He slid a photograph across the desk to Benford. “It’s made of stretchy silicone that turns out to be sticky as hell, and actually attracts the compound like a frigging lint roller.” He held the tablet up, tapped the corner of the screen twice, and the image of a cell phone in a glass laboratory tray appeared in normal overhead light. “We doused the lights and hit it with ultraviolet.” The cell phone in the next image glowed a luminous green. Benford looked up from the tablet.

“Why green?” asked Benford.

“Why not?” said Hearsey. “The Soviets used luminol and nitrophenyl pentadien. They added hydrochloric acid that turned their compound red under UV light. We didn’t want to mix the same chems, so we used tetrahydro-beta-carboline, the stuff that makes a scorpion carapace glow green under UV. We have a chemist named Bunny Devore in the lab. She loves scorpions, knows all about them, keeps them as pets.” Benford gave Hearsey a look like bent rebar.

“Hearsey,” said Benford, “I am puzzled by why you think I would be even remotely interested in the chemistry, or about this woman and her unsavory interest in predatory arachnids. All I care about is whether the compound is undetectable. Our agent’s life depends on it.” Hearsey held up the antique atomizer.

“Spray a target object about two feet away and let the droplets settle evenly. Don’t worry. It’s invisible; you can’t feel it, you can’t taste it, you can’t smell it. We dissolved the chemicals in methanol so we’re actually spraying a light mist on an object, not like dusting something with fingerprint powder. It fluoresces like crazy under UV light in the ten- to four-hundred-nanometer range, and also shows up on a gas chromatograph.”

“Yes, I’m sure it does all this and more,” said Benford. “How long does it last?”

“We don’t know, simply because we haven’t had enough time to test perpetuation,” said Hearsey. “It adheres well, and propagation—how it transfers—seems good. If your illegal handles that phone cover, then hits a light switch in her office, touches her keyboard, or drinks coffee from a mug, we can find her.” Benford nodded.

“I’ll trouble you to courier this personally to New York today with Westfall, connect with Gable, and explain it all to him. I’ll ask you to spray the phone and its cover yourself—keep DIVA completely away from it—and ensure she can load the phone in a dead-drop site of the illegal’s choosing without contaminating herself.” Hearsey nodded and unfolded his lanky frame to stand up and get going.

“Hearsey, I’m appreciative of the work you have done in such a timely manner,” said Benford. “You have my thanks. I would have in years past written up an exceptional performance award for you, or a laudatory unit citation for your team, but in the achromatic Agency of today, I am reduced instead to presenting you with a gift certificate to the Starbuck’s coffee emporium here in Headquarters so you can enjoy what the gum-chewing young woman behind the counter astoundingly calls a grande café latte, with milk.”

Angleton looked down on them slantidicular from the wall.