The Kremlin's Candidate: A Novel

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.