The Kremlin's Candidate: A Novel by Jason Matthews (7)

Behave Like a Bull

The Uzbekistan Restaurant on Neglinnaya Ulitsa in Moscow’s theater district was a Central Asian seraglio lavishly decorated with framed mirrors, chandeliers, and overstuffed banquettes littered with kilim pillows. Dominika pushed through the brushed copper door into the restaurant, registering the aroma of baked lamb laced with cardamom, coriander, and fenugreek. She brushed past the maître d’, squeezed between opulent tables in the main room, and took the three steps up to the raised dining level. At the back of this private space, under a purple-and-blue striped canopy, sat Dominika’s Sparrow, Ioana Petrescu. She was sipping a glass of white wine and did not wave or otherwise acknowledge seeing Dominika approach. Ioana had lost the tan from her time in Greece, but was elegant in a pair of leather pants, and wore a red silk blouse with a bateau neck. There was the familiar pulsing crimson halo around her head and shoulders, the aura of passion, and lust, and heart, and soul.

“I automatically thought I’d have to buy new lingerie for babysitting your nuclear scientist, but then I remembered he’s not interested. So instead I bought a fur coat to keep me warm in Vienna,” said Ioana in French, without a word of greeting.

“It’s coming out of your pay vorishka, you sneak-thief. Did you find the right apartment? It’s going to be important to keep him safe. When he comes to you for dinner, or when we have meetings, you have to make sure he arrives clean. Those maniacs watch their people closely. And the IAEA is like a small village: everybody knows everybody else’s business.” Ioana nodded.

“I found a house on the island, a riverside beach cottage on the other side of a little lake called Kaiserwasser half a mile from the International Center, five minutes’ walk from IAEA. He can walk to the house and back in fifteen minutes, if he has to. The houses are summer rentals; they’re all empty now. The Danube feeds the lake and surrounding inlets, the neighborhood is very wooded, and the cottage is quiet and cozy. A shame the professor doesn’t care for fun.”

Dominika laughed. Ioana hated the Sparrow life as much as she had. She was smart and efficient, which is why Dominika drafted her to do the preliminary ops work in Vienna.

“Have you considered that the professor is not interested in fun with you? With your backside spreading north and south, he may not be attracted.” In truth, Ioana’s buttocks were like sculpted marble from years of championship volleyball.

“I have decided I like you less and less each year,” Ioana said.

“Forget about your zadnitsa, your fanny,” said Dominika. “Did you install the recorder in the cottage?”

Ioana nodded. “A long-play wire recorder in the cupboard. Two wireless pickups around the chairs and table. The machine is voice-activated so I don’t have to turn it on. Not as good a job as a tech could do, but you can’t see a thing.” More to tell Benford, but it could wait until the next SRAC shot. She already was up to the character limit for tonight’s transmission.

“We’ll go back to Vienna after I return from New York. It will be time to talk to him again by then.”

“Buy me something expensive in New York,” said Ioana.

“You already bought yourself a mink,” said Dominika.

Ioana shook her head. “A watch; the one that shows phases of the moon.”

“You need a $10,000 Swiss watch so you’ll know how long to play the French flute with a recruitment target?”

“From someone who used to faire une turlutte before breakfast, that’s a bit rich,” said Ioana.

“A wristwatch is out,” said Dominika. “Maybe a pair of shoes with round heels instead.”

“Liking you less and less.”

“What are we eating?” said Dominika, looking at the time. She still had two hours.

“There’s chicken with mushroom cream, like our ciulama de pui in Romania,” said Ioana. “Even beastly Uzbeks know our food is best.”

“Slava Bogu, thank God for Romanian food,” said Dominika, ordering two plates, which arrived quickly. Tender pieces of chicken in a rich sauce suprême of cream and mushrooms fortified with egg yolks and sour cream, served with Russian mashed potatoes. The women looked at each other after the first bite, approving.

They ate in silence. Ioana was content knowing that Colonel Egorova depended on her and was satisfied with her. This late dinner was proof of that. Dominika trusted her to rent the Vienna safe house. There would be other operations, maybe even the possibility of being made an officer in the Service. Egorova would take care of her.

On the sidewalk outside the restaurant, they kissed on both cheeks and without a word of farewell, Ioana walked north on Neglinnaya Ulitsa. Dominika watched her go, leather pants hissing like a snake, and thought how she would have preferred to be going with Ioana for a nightcap. But there was work to do, and Ioana had nothing to do with it and could know nothing. She would be porazheny, amazed if she knew.

Carrying the heavy bag with her signaling equipment over her shoulder, Dominika started walking south on Neglinnaya, feeling the ice water flow into her chest as she went operational. It was a transformation both mental and corporeal, the mark of a street operator, partly learned, partly instinctive. Her pulse quickened and she tamped down the adrenaline rush in her neck and shoulders. Dominika’s vision became acute—crystal clear and focused on the middle distance. Her hearing likewise was tuned to the timbre of the street around her—she heard car engines, the hiss of tires on wet cobbles, and the shuffle of footsteps on the sidewalk. It was late; Moscow traffic, while never nonexistent, would be light. She had to determine her status: she had to know she was surveillance-free, she had to get black.

Walk south on Neglinnaya, stair-step west, use the empty high-end walking street Stoleshnikov, luxury stores dark, surveillance would shy away from this funnel, this choke point, so look for the squealing, leapfrogging units hurrying to get ahead, negative, turn north on Bolshaya Dmitrova, cross street for a snap look, parked car with sidelights on, negative, past Muzykalnyy Teatr, its bas-relief columns illuminated, woman with shopping bag, second hit, but she’s hurrying home, disregard, and cut through Petrovskiye Vorota, leafy walking path lined with empty weekend market stalls, no flanker silhouettes under the trees, get to the little car parked under the sooty overhang of the Rossiya Theatre, no stakeout units, no finger smudges around the door locks, get in, pause, smell the car for the lingering reek of an entry team, proceed, check the trapped glove box, tape still in place, pull out in traffic, ignore horns, look for trailing units reacting, swerving to keep up, keep windows down, hear the street, feel the street, north out of town on Tverskaya, change lanes, watch for reaction, keep speed slow, lull coverage, no turn signal, merge onto the M10, gradually increase speed, traffic sluggish, articulated trucks belching smoke, headlights slotting behind? Negative, Sokol District coming up, pay attention, take split onto Volokolamskoye Shosse, lighter traffic, goose it, watch for reaction, negative, nearing timing point, black ribbon of Mosky Canal, check time, Svoboda overpass coming up, reach into the oversized purse on the passenger seat, feel for the button under the fabric, light rail overpass for number six tram coming up, check mirror, clear, now, two-second, low-power burst, 1.5 watts waking up the SRAC receiver buried six inches under the grassy rail embankment under the catenary lines, yellow light inside the purse winking green, electronic handshake, message received, message to Nathaniel, secrets in the night, moles in our midst, ICBMs and warheads, now the roar of the tunnel underpass, check mirror, drifting, steer straight, don’t jackrabbit away, looping ramp to the elevated E105 ring road, traffic faster now, your six is still clear, past sleeping towns, Strogino, and past Myakinino, and past Druzhba, the Rodina dark, Mother Russia in shadow, her countrymen snug in their homes, believing only what their blue-eyed tsar told them to believe, eating only what the tsar fed them, hoping only for what the tsar let them hope for, fatigue now from gripping the steering wheel for so long, watch for the exit, west on Rublevskoye, take it slow, left, right, left, natural reverses in the triangle formed by Rublevskoye, Yartsevskaya, and Molodogvardeyskaya, look for swirling coverage, negative, cross Rublevskoye and east on Kastanaevskaya, her building, Number nine, dark windows, half-covered by ivy, bulb burned out over the entrance, dim staircase, she’d have to finger the key into the lock of her apartment door.

She rested her forehead against the steering wheel. Kastanaevskaya at this early-morning hour was completely lined with parked cars, both sides of the street. Cursing, Dominika had to cruise several blocks west before she found an empty spot near an all-night Almi pharmacy, its green neon sign coloring nearby trees and the scrawny grass verge in front, its front door reinforced with bars and opened remotely by the duty clerk. Trash paper swirled in the empty lot. Dominika locked her car door and started walking on the darkened sidewalk toward her building. The neighborhood was deathly silent. She clutched the oversized tote with the stiff bottom that was the concealment for her SRAC unit, antenna wires and transmit button sewn into the leather, standby and receive LED lights concealed as interior compartment snaps.

Once home, she would fit a thin lead into a port inside the bag to download the incoming message from CIA: intelligence requirements, or personal meeting skeds (schedules), or occasionally the rare operational requirement. Since her recruitment five years ago, she had met her CIA handlers overseas—sparingly and cover permitting—to participate in a recruitment, or in a false-flag approach, or in a debriefing, all of them glorious, heady trips to meet her secret CIA colleagues, including Nate, with whom she was still furious, but missed terribly. What message awaited her? Last week’s message had mentioned Istanbul, and Dominika anticipated new instructions.

She thought about Nate as she walked. Bozhe, God, loving him was against all the rules of tradecraft, but Dominika wouldn’t stop, and Nate couldn’t stop. She had told them she was committed, that she was not spying against Russia but for Russia to flush out the Kremlin sewage farm, and send them all back to their filthy little beginnings. So, if she was CIA’s irreplaceable agent, valued beyond all measure, and she wanted to love Nate, they should shut up. Pravil’no? Right? She dreamed of kissing Nate again, in a taxi or an elevator, or pressed hard against a hotel-room door. His hands on her, and—

Dominika saw movement under the trees in front of the pharmacy, silhouettes coming up off the grass, one, two, three, like demons emerging from the underground. They began moving through the trees, parallel to the sidewalk, heads turned toward her. Dominika’s first thought was that somehow the internal security service, the FSB, the spy catchers, had discovered her, knew she was spying for CIA, and had intercepted tonight’s burst transmission to the Americans on Volokolamskoye Shosse. Impossible. How? A mole in Washington? A breach of security in Moscow Station? A cracked cipher? However they did it, all the evidence they needed to bury her was sewn into the oversized purse hanging on her shoulder. Could she resist, somehow get away? How many of them would swarm out of the night and overwhelm her? She’d soon find out. Beside her hands and feet, the only weapon in her purse was a key ring. Keeping an eye on the silhouettes, Dominika laced keys between three fingers of her right hand.

Dominika had been trained—and kept up a weekly sparring session—in Systema Rukopashnogo Boya, the hand-to-hand combat system used by Spetsnaz, the ferocious Russian Special Forces. Systema was an amalgam of classic martial arts, ballistic hand strikes, management of an attacker’s momentum, and devastating strikes against the six core body levers. She had killed, with desperate luck, trained assassins in hand-to-hand encounters. But she knew that in combat, one slip, one missed block, or sustaining a crippling strike would be the end.

The three silhouettes stepped into the light, and Dominika breathed a sigh of relief. Gopniki. Not an FSB arrest team. A gopnik was a male street tough—head shaved, gap-toothed, perpetually slurry eyed and red faced on cans of Jaguar alcoholic energy drink. Invariably dressed in Adidas tracksuits, pointed-toe leather tapochki, and gondonka flat caps, they infested suburban Moscow street corners, bus stops, and city parks, sleeping, drinking, puking, pissing, and mugging passersby. Their byword was bychit, to behave like a bull. They would want her purse, and would bludgeon her to death to get it. She would be just as compromised if these reeking deadheads dragged the purse off her shoulder and found the concealed SRAC burst transmitter as she would if FSB had.

The three were whip-thin and malnourished, but Dominika knew they would be quick and able to absorb punishment. It would be critical to keep them off her. She would trap the lead attacker with a joint hold, and drag him in circles to keep him in front of the other two. She would use the keys to rake their eyes, then sweep their legs with her foot and stomp a high heel into their throats or temples. That was the plan, at least.

“Suka, bitch, give me your purse,” said Number One, stepping toward her, front right. They were indistinguishable from one another, simply incoming threats. Their yellow halos mingled, and matched the color of their crooked teeth.

“Blyad, whore, did you hear?” said Number Two, coming in front left.

Dominika stepped slightly right as Number One reached out to grab her. He smelled sour—urine, beer, tobacco, and pigsty. She covered the top of his right hand with her left hand and bent his wrist down and back. He howled as Dominika pivoted with him to the left, blocking Number Two, then continued pivoting to swing Number One, on his toes with pain, into Number Three in a tangle of legs and arms. She held on to Number One’s wrist and turned him again into Number Two, foreheads cracking together. Number Three was coming in fast, his arm raised above his head. Knife. Leaning back, Dominika turned Number One into the line of the downward slash. The blade flensed down the side of Number One’s shaved head and cut his ear off at the root. Dominika let the bellowing Number One drop to the ground holding his head, his neck black with spurting blood. She instantly stepped forward with a corkscrew punch, driving the three keys clamped between her right knuckles into the right eye of Number Three, feeling ocular fluid spurt over the back of her hand. She raked the keys out of the eye socket, across his nose, and into his left eye, a glancing blow. Maybe he’d still be able to see out of that eye later. Number Three collapsed shrieking Suka, covering his bloody face with trembling hands.

It had taken three seconds, and two of them were on the pavement writhing amid gouts of spattered blood, but Number Two was almost on her, and she knew if he knocked her down, all three would swarm her, maddened by their pain, and slam her skull against the concrete until they saw gray brains in the streetlight. Without thinking, Dominika dipped her shoulder as she grabbed the leather handles of her purse, and swung it in a flat arc into the left temple of Number Two. The four pounds of steel-bodied SRAC components sewn into the bottom of the tote bag hit skull bone with a flat metallic sound. Number Two wobbled, and sat down with a thump, cross-eyed.

Breathing hard, Dominika looked at them on the sidewalk, one facedown and unconscious, the other curled up and whimpering, the third still sitting up, staring but not seeing. These three roaches had come close to ruining everything, to exposing her, to sending her to the basement room in Butyrka Prison with the pine-log wall designed to catch ricochets, and the drains in the sloping, brown-stained cement floor placed to sluice away the fluids of the executed prisoners. Five years of unimaginable risks, of narrow escapes, of precious intelligence—measured in linear feet—passed to the Americans, of countless meetings in countless safe houses, only to be nearly unseated by three besotted gopniki two blocks from her apartment. This was another charming part of her Russia too, these louts who were as indolent, and cruel, and predatory as Putin’s inner circle sitting in the jeweled halls of the Kremlin. They were the same cancer. She risked her life, and tonight they had almost ended it. She could be in a freezing cell awash with sewage, or dead and staring out of a cardboard coffin with a cloth tied under her jaw to keep her mouth closed, these animals . . .

In a rage, Dominika stepped up to the dazed punk, set her feet, and swung her stiffened arm under his chin and into his throat—a Spetsnaz killing stroke—fracturing the hyoid bone and rupturing the larynx. He fell backward and began gasping, eyes staring at the top of the trees.

“Ublyudok, bastard,” said Dominika, watching his legs jerk.

She was still shaking so badly three minutes later that the sticky apartment key skittered over the lock before she could open the door with two hands. She left the lights off except for a small lamp near the front door. Her skirt was spotted with something dark and wet. The SRAC message downloaded to her laptop blinked once, flashed green for two seconds—she read the word “Istanbul”—then it went black, with the words “error 5788” appearing on the screen. Chyort, damn it! The gopnik’s head apparently was harder than the components. Now she would have to trigger a cringingly dangerous personal meeting with an officer from Moscow Station—Why couldn’t Nate come to meet her?—to exchange the damaged equipment for a new SRAC set.

She left her clothes in a pile on the floor, kicked off her shoes, and looked at herself in the mirror. The skin between her knuckles had been torn by the keys, and her hand throbbed. The little lamp cast a shadow over the curves of her body. Five years was a long time. Her figure was softer now, her rib cage didn’t show, and her breasts were fuller. Thank God her stomach was still flat, and her hips had not spread to all points of the compass. The French bikini wax had been a silly impulse, but she was getting used to it. She was satisfied that her legs and ankles were slim.

Looking at herself suddenly deformed into an out-of-body dream; the image in the mirror was someone else. An unbearable melancholy washed over her. She stifled a sob, momentarily overwhelmed by her situation, by tonight’s danger, and by her whole existence as a spy. Look at you, she thought. What are you doing? Who are you? A ridiculous fanatic fighting alone in the dark, overwhelming dangers arrayed against you, the odds of surviving slim, your friends far away, separated from the man you love. How long will you last? How did her mentor General Korchnoi—he spied for CIA for fourteen years—summon the will and determination to keep going? Dominika blinked as tears slid down the cheeks of the revenant in the mirror. It wasn’t her; it was someone else crying.