The Kremlin's Candidate: A Novel

As it turned out, Dominika needn’t have worried. A cooperative young lieutenant in the Hong Kong Police who received an envelope every month for “confidential chats” with Bunty Boothby passed the news about the murder and the arrest warrant. The ASIS officer requested an urgent meeting with Nate and COS Burns. They all were seriously shaken to learn that gorgeous Grace Gao was an MSS bird dog. Nate was utterly gobsmacked when Bunty’s agent added that Grace had been part of an MSS operation to suborn Nate and elicit the name of their new PLA recruitment. A close call. But who had killed her? COS Burns paced in the five feet of his cubicle office.

“Right now, it doesn’t matter who whacked her. We’ll find out sooner or later,” he said. He pointed at Nate. “You just avoided the Little Bighorn.”

Nate put his head in his hands. “The university, and the restaurant, I should have seen it,” he said almost to himself. “I was too focused on signing her up.”

“You did nothing wrong,” said Burns. “By the book. I read and released all your cables and contact reports.”

“These things happen, mate,” said Bunty solicitously, one leg hooked over the arm of the couch in Burns’s office. “Tell me at least she gave you a gobby.”

Nate couldn’t leave Hong Kong or Macao by air, for both airports were being watched closely. There were no cruise ships in harbor. Bunty floated the idea that Nate could, just possibly, take a train from Hong Kong Hung Hom Station to Guangzhou’s East Station, and catch a flight to Seoul or Tokyo from there. He thought the MSS would never expect such a bold maneuver. That option would require Nate to wait for an unspecified amount of time for an alias passport from Langley, which was problematic. He couldn’t hide indefinitely in the consulate—too many locals.

Finally, the risk of Nate actually traveling into China to get out of China convinced COS Burns that the option was not viable. CIA Headquarters, meanwhile, was flooding Hong Kong Station with interrogatory cables about the developmental case against Grace, her murder, the continued security of the new asset SONGBIRD, and proposals for smuggling Nate out of Hong Kong. Benford personally spoke to Nate on the secure phone and seemed calm and mild.

“Your performance with SONGBIRD and with this woman was exemplary,” said Benford. “Keep me apprised of your exfil plans, and get back here as quickly as possible.” He hung up before Nate could reply, but from Benford this was a love letter. That was something, at least.

A day later, COS had a plan. They borrowed a uniform from the curious but cooperative assistant military attaché, a commander in the US Navy. The tech officer in the Station matched the color of Nate’s hair in a modified “lip brow” mustache, and gave him slightly longer sideburns and heavy tortoiseshell eyeglasses to round out his face. The next evening, humid and overcast, Commander Nash boarded a bus from the motor pool with twenty consulate employees, the majority of whom were from the Station. The bus drove down Connaught Road, through the tunnel under the harbor, and pulled up to the municipal pier on Canton Road in Kowloon for a public ship visit on the USS Blue Ridge, a six-hundred-foot amphibious command ship and the flagship of the US Navy’s 7th Fleet, making her biannual amicable port call.

As they arrived, Bunty Boothby and Marigold Dougherty were hectoring Hong Kong Police on duty at the foot of the gangplank to be let aboard without invitations. Marigold was in a long dress and heels, yelling at Bunty for forgetting the invitations at home, calling him a nong and breaking into tears. The busload of consulate employees arrived, and the overwhelmed police privates hurriedly did a head count and let everyone on board. They didn’t blink at Nate in all the confusion. Bunty toasted Nate in the wardroom, thanked him for being a mate, and noted that Beijing would be “mad as a cut snake” when they eventually realized that Nathaniel Nash was out of China. At the end of the evening, a young petty officer switched places with Nate and got off the ship while Nate stayed aboard, out of sight.

The Blue Ridge

departed Hong Kong the next morning and returned to fleet headquarters in Yokosuka, Japan, in three days, a transit of fifteen hundred nautical miles, during which time Nate stayed in his cabin, ate alone in the officers’ mess, and watched half a dozen movies. He brooded about Grace; he wondered about Dominika and the mole hunt, the briefing for the DCIA candidates, and his standing with Benford and Forsyth, and waited in uneasy anticipation of what they had in mind for him next. Overseas assignment? Secondment to FBI? A tiny cubicle in the basement of Headquarters?

He didn’t know why, but he had a feeling—he just knew—that he would see Dominika very soon.

ZHÈNNIǍO’S SHĒNGCÀI—LETTUCE SOUP