The Kremlin's Candidate: A Novel

Dominika would be busy in the next weeks, and she would have to alter her mode of operating. She’d have to concoct a reason to go out alone without an escort, to put down a signal for a personal meet with Ricky Walters, and make arrangements for a foreign trip in the near future. That would take a few weeks to arrange. Dominika had a lot to pass to her handlers, and she desperately needed reliable, secure commo. She still hadn’t decided whether to tell Benford and Nate that she had saved Nate’s life in Hong Kong. But for now, she had to get ready for a party.

The Georgievsky Hall in the Grand Kremlin Palace was an endless series of massive and ornately decorated coffered ceilings supported by spiraled-fluted marble columns at each pier, with intricate capitals and plinths, an ivory and gold arcade of dazzling opulence illuminated by colossal chandeliers hanging in a line from each dome, three, four, five, six of them, with galaxies of lights reflecting off the polished parquet floor inlaid with colored pieces of precious wood, set in patterns as complex as a Tabriz carpet from Persia. The room was filled to capacity with the boisterous Moscow foreign diplomatic corps, jostling and carrying flutes of champagne above their heads as they pressed through the throng. The oligarchs milled quietly in a corner, each wondering whether, when, and under what pretext their pre-Putin fortunes would be appropriated. The siloviki

kept loose station around the president as he halfheartedly worked the crowd, dispensing an infrequent wry grin, or very rarely, a lopsided smile, which clearly he managed at a grave cost.

High-ranking Russian military officers from the army, navy, and air force stayed segregated in their herds, respectively green, navy, or light blue, like grazing herds of African antelope, the kudus apart from the sables, separate from the impalas. Dominika had known Gorelikov would stuff her closet with fabulous frocks. Two from Paris (a Vuitton and a Dior) and one from Milan (a Rinaldi), but she had worn the more demure Dior, a silk champagne-pink beaded floral-print gown with hourglass bodice, ruched waist, and low-cut plunge. Gorelikov steered her around the crowd, making introductions. She already knew the buffaloes on the Security Council and the secretary of the Council, dour Nikolai Patrushev, who stayed with her for a few minutes chatting, while looking down the front of her dress. Nikolai drifted off when Bortnikov eased up and kept Dominika amused for fifteen minutes whispering in her ear to point out the known and suspect foreign-intelligence officers from the respective embassies.

“That’s the German BND representative?” asked Dominika. “He looks like a godovalyy bychok

, a breeder hog. He cannot be active on the street.” Bortnikov pointed to a thin man with white hair talking to a group of diplomats. “The American Chief of Station Reynolds, capable, cunning, and tricky,” said Bortnikov. “His officers are active on the street, but we have not detected their activities . . . yet.” Keep up the good work, Dominika telegraphed to the American.

Suddenly Gorelikov excused himself and made his way through the crowd, weaving his way around obstructions halfway down the length of the one-hundred-meter room. Russian naval uniforms had gathered at a doorway to greet another arriving group of a dozen foreign naval officers—Bortnikov whispered they were Americans, a US Navy delegation—and there seemed to be as much gold braid and as many chests full of ribbons on the Americans as on the Russians.

“What are they doing here?” asked Dominika.

Bortnikov shrugged. “Some fool discussions proposing joint naval cooperation against Somali and Malay pirates,” he said. “Patrushev has decided we do not have the time or the resources for such adventures, but we invited them anyway for appearances and to collect assessment data on these admirals. Some day we may face them in battle,” Bortnikov said, chuckling. Dominika watched as Gorelikov, Patrushev, and the Russian admirals stiffly greeted the American contingent, which was accompanied by the US ambassador and a phalanx of aides, including, to Dominika’s alarm, the youthful Ricky Walters, her case officer in Moscow for personal meets. Bogu moy, my God, if he saw Dominika would he have the wits to keep expressionless? She resolved not to go near the Americans for the entire evening, slightly incongruous behavior for the new Director of SVR, who would be expected to get right in the faces of US Navy visitors. The thought tickled an ancillary fact she could not retrieve.

Dominika kept quartering the room, “cutting the pie,” like they taught her a hundred years ago at the Academy, circling in the opposite direction, to stay away from the Americans, but to also keep them in sight. Could she dare scribble a note and try to slip it into Walters’s pocket? To say what? What if Gorelikov saw her? No. A thousand times no.