The Kremlin's Candidate: A Novel

She threaded through pedestrians on the sidewalk, and as if to match the frenzy of these streets, unrelated thoughts came to her voley-nevoley, all in a rush. My God, how do you check for opposition coverage on these streets? Was the shashlik

from these food trucks edible? Did they have gopniki, street toughs, in New York? It would be impossible to pick out surveillance in this crush of bobbing heads, faces of every color and every ethnicity, appraising eyes, twitching hands, and shuffling feet. Overhead a fog bank of peoples’ colors, indistinguishable, useless, was overwhelming. As Chief of Line KR counterintelligence, she knew how her colleagues in the New York rezidentura

blithely reported managing operations on these streets—she’d reported it all to Benford for the last five years. But now, seeing it firsthand, she knew the truth. That’s why the Center uses illegals here for the really sensitive cases, she thought. Who could find surveillance in this woodwork?

The Jane Hotel in the West Village was something out of a movie, chosen for her by Gorelikov for its small size and anonymity. An annoyingly voluble bellhop at the front desk had grinned at her (Russians reserve smiling for their friends and family members—to smile with no reason is a sign of a fool) and insisted on telling her that the hotel had been a sailor’s boardinghouse at the turn of the century, and that survivors of the Titanic in 1912 had recuperated here. Dominika thanked him, then ignored him. The lobby was high Victorian, a riot of colored mosaic pilasters and leafy palms in tarnished copper kettles. The bar/lounge was Bohemian crazy, filled with a thousand candles, velveteen upholstered couches, zebra-print armchairs, a brown-leather hippo, and a toffee-colored stuffed bighorn sheep with a cowbell around its neck, standing high atop the fireplace lintel. It would be fun to seduce Nate in this hideaway.

Walking down the dim wainscoted corridor to her room she felt the shipwrecked spirits of 1912 around her. As she fumbled with her key card, an old woman in a woolen suit and matching pillbox hat came out of a room at the end of the corridor. Under the ridiculous hat her white hair was up in a bun, and she wore half-moon glasses. She shuffled soundlessly toward Dominika on the threadbare carpet, her right hand running along the wooden wall panels for balance. Dominika flattened against the wall to make space for the biddy to pass. Behind the glasses, the old woman’s eyes locked onto Dominika’s for a second; they were the color of amber. Hunter’s eyes, wolf’s eyes, raptor’s eyes. A strong blue aura around her head. Cunning, calculation, deception. What was the starukha

, the old crone, looking at? She didn’t belong in this trendy hotel either. Dominika suddenly knew: They were watching her. This old woman was a bird dog to report that Dominika had arrived. The MAGNIT case was running on many different levels. The old lady slowly disappeared around a corner.

Dominika’s room was train-compartment narrow, with a ship’s berth instead of a bed. She imagined making love with Nate in this little room, her foot braced on the far wall for purchase. She left her suitcase and purse on the bed, stuffed the EKHO phones, a small snap wallet with money, and her own mobile phone into a shoulder bag, which she zipped shut. She must not lose the phones to be delivered to SUSAN. The old lady in the hallway was a wake-up call: Dominika had no doubt that They would use her personal phone to track her movements as well as hot-wire it to listen to her conversations. Into the other coat pocket she clipped the fat ballpoint pen with pointed metal tip—a tactical fighting spike—that was her only weapon.

She hit the street, wanting to get away before Blokhin appeared, determined to clear her six so she could call Bratok. Never mind the FBI, now she had to worry about Gorelikov’s tricks, her own countrymen following her. Did Gorelikov’s vliyaniye, his influence, extend to the streets of New York? Who would they be, the people checking up on her? Well, she had survived this long spying for Nate and the others, and wasn’t about to be played. As she left the hotel and walked east, she put on the big fashion sunglasses that were designed by the boys in Line T, with beveled mirrors ground into the outer edges of each lens, which permitted a limited view behind her. You didn’t rely on such toys—detecting coverage on the street was much more complicated—but it did not hurt to have them.