The Kremlin's Candidate: A Novel

Frantically drying her feet and legs, Dominika moved fast through the living room—no more chakras to palpitate with vibrating gongs here—opened the front door, ignoring the possibility of a silent alarm, and left it ajar, got into the stairwell, and pulled the handle of the fire-alarm box she had marked the day before. Now she wanted noise and confusion. The peculiar Hong Kong fire alarm was a woop-woop siren that brought tenants out into the hallway as Dominika ran up one flight to her apartment door, pushed it open, and quickly put on a robe, then stood in the corridor, looking uncertain and frightened. Rainy Chonghuan came running down the corridor in a hoisin-stained sleeveless undershirt and boxer shorts, and he protectively bustled her down nine floors in a stairwell crowded with yelling residents, crying children, and a squawking cockatoo in a bamboo cage.

Dominika was booked into a luxury hotel suite in Kowloon that night, her clothes, toiletries, and belongings packed up and delivered to her the next morning. A shaken and embarrassed Rainy told her that fire investigators responding to the alarm had found Zhen Gao murdered in the operational apartment, strangled in the shower. The MSS were convinced that a CIA action team had killed her—likely they had rappelled from the roof—and that the American Nash had probably assisted. There were other theories as they cast wildly for explanations.

“No single person could have caught Zhènniǎo off guard, and bested her in combat,” said Rainy. “There’s no other explanation.”

“It could not have been a random crime? Rape? Robbery?” asked Dominika.

Rainy shook his head. “Impossible. She could have thrown a petty thief over the balcony railing with one arm.”

“An unfortunate and frustrating conclusion to this operation,” said Dominika. “What will you do now?”

Rainy wanted to regain some face in light of this debacle. “The gweilo, the foreign devil Nash, is in Hong Kong temporarily, without diplomatic immunity. Beijing has instructed me to direct the Hong Kong Police to arrest Nash on suspicion of murder. He will be remanded to Stanley Prison until his trial and sentencing, then sent to a

Laogai, a work camp, in western China where he will learn to dig coal in the mines. That is if something worse does not happen to him while he is in custody.”

This was a whole new danger. If Nate was arrested and jailed, the MSS wouldn’t have to assassinate him. They would stage a dramatic show trial, with international coverage. He would die in a prison camp on the windswept steppes of western China. He had to get out of Hong Kong immediately. But would the Station learn about Grace’s death and the arrest warrant in time? Or would Nate blithely appear at her apartment tonight with a bouquet of flowers? Bozhe, God, he could walk right into their arms.

Dominika fought her panic: Would she have to barge into the US Consulate to deliver a warning? She daydreamed about it. The end of her career as a spy and the start of a life together with Nate. It was a warm daydream. He would be astonished to see her in Hong Kong, halfway around the globe. She imagined their first kiss in the lobby of the consulate, not caring who saw them. Snap out of it.

But the MSS made up her mind for her. A female escort stayed in the hotel room with her for the evening, and the next morning Dominika was driven to the airport by a dyspeptic Rainy Chonghuan and put on a direct Air China flight to Moscow, with no further courtesy calls in Beijing proposed or offered. It wasn’t exactly a snub: The Chinese were agitated and bewildered. The MSS, General Sun, and the Minister of State Security, moreover, were mortified over their operational failure, witnessed firsthand and up close by a Russian intelligence officer. The loss of face was too great for her to be received as a guest at the ministry. What would they think if they learned that their exalted guest from a fraternal service was the one who had throttled their highly trained executioner?

Now it was a race against time. Would the Americans learn about the warrant before Nate was rounded up by the Hong Kong Police? She wouldn’t know until tomorrow. The flight would take ten hours. She’d read the SVR Asia reports in the morning. Nate was on his own.