The Kremlin's Candidate: A Novel

Putin noticed Dominika wore the pearl necklace he had given her—she wondered if Gorelikov’s DNA still lingered between the pearls—his previously thunderous expression cleared slightly, and he half smiled at her, which did not escape Bortnikov’s or Patrushev’s notice. Not good, especially if word got around that Director SVR was wearing the chemise cagoule for the president. In Sparrow School that meant they were intimate, referring to the medieval woman’s long nightgown with the demure single embroidered hole for copulation, the Middle Age precursor to crotchless lingerie. That would not do.

The night before, after their return from Cape Idokopas, the president had called on Dominika at her new apartment on Kutuzovsky Prospekt, coming up via the underground garage elevator. He ostensibly wanted to discuss counterintelligence, but obviously the president was looking for a return bout with her. Putin was on the boil that evening—it was the day of MAGNIT’s arrest, and four days after Gorelikov’s disappearance—but his worries did not minutely affect his carpenter-like performance in bed: the presidential wood saw was again wielded steadily but without inspiration, leaving Dominika to daydream about Nate, and to wonder if she could risk visiting him in jail. He was in Butyrka Prison, but in the wing for political prisoners where inmates were treated more mildly. It did not at all mean he was out of danger; dissident attorney Sergei Magnitsky died in the same cell block in Butyrka after being beaten, then denied medical care. Dominika stilled the impulse to raise the matter of a Nash spy swap while still in bed with Putin, chiefly because the president was not susceptible to postcoital euphoria.

After sex, the evening wasn’t over, for the president uncharacteristically lingered to chat, so Dominika padded around her spacious new kitchen in a black V-neck, knee-length cotton slip with one spaghetti strap carelessly hanging off the shoulder and her hair tied with a ribbon. She didn’t wear a black satin thong underneath, in case Volodya fancied kitchen-counter sex (No. 81, “Béchamel thickens only with stirring”) before he left.

Sitting on a modern bar stool in Dominika’s deluxe kitchen of stone and wood, Vladimir Putin was content. The headlines about Audrey Rowland’s arrest did not overly concern him, as grievous a loss as it was. Lurid news like this was good for Russia’s image, was good for his

image as muzhestvennyy, the virile leader who ran spies around the world. The world would know that the secret services of Russia were omniscient apex predators that could penetrate the governments of his enemies, discover their secrets, and exert his will over them. Of course, spies could suffer reverses, but Putin enjoyed seeing foreigners—governments, or companies, or individuals—moderate their behaviors in fear of his wrath. His active measures were creating lasting discord in the West, at minimal cost, and if he wanted to unseat an American politician, he had only to release an embarrassing, unencrypted email through WikiLeaks run by that languid dupe hiding in that exiguous Latin embassy in London. Partisan political hysteria now gripping American society would do the rest.

And he was having his bullish way with Egorova, a delectable bonus. He looked at Dominika’s legs as she reached for an upper cabinet and saw how the ballet dancer’s calf muscles flexed when she was on tiptoe. He did not at all mind the whispered gossip in the Kremlin already swirling in the hallways that the two of them were bedmates. No one would dare utter such gossip aloud, and it simply validated that the SVR belonged to him, just as the FSB belonged to him, just as the siloviki

belonged to him.

To go with the Georgian champagne she had opened, Dominika assembled a quick Mediterranean appetizer with ingredients available only at the special government commissary on the ground floor of her building: marinated artichoke hearts with capers and olives on bruschetta under the broiler, a contorno she first tasted in Rome while meeting with Nate. They were newly in love then, and had fed each other with their fingers, giggling and drinking Asti. It occurred to her that her thoughts always returned to her Neyt. Take care lest the tsar sees it in your face.

She bent to take the tray out of the oven, feeling his eyes on her haunches. Time for her pitch. She was better at this than he was, but she had to be careful. She reverted to more formal address. “Mr. President, given the events of the last four days, I have a suggestion I would like you to consider,” said Dominika. Putin sipped a glass of champagne she had poured for him.