The Kremlin's Candidate: A Novel

Dominika walked for three hours, searching for and finding relatively quiet side streets, stripping away repeats, possibles, ghosts, and suspects. If her cell phone was beaconed and her route plotted later, she would be guilty only of executing a thorough and professional surveillance detection run. She used Union Square as a surveillance trap, knowing that any team scurries to cover exits along all sides of a park and inadvertently show themselves. She scanned the outer edges of the park. Nothing. She plowed up endless, bustling Fifth Avenue, the Empire State Building coming closer with each block—beckoning, bigger, taller, and somehow more substantial than the Vystoki, Stalin’s gothic Seven Sisters skyscrapers in Moscow. Nothing showed behind her. Occasional switches to the other side of the street revealed no telltale behavior of handing off the eye. She reversed her direction by taking a taxi south, past the Washington Square Arch, bailing out and walking through the urban campus of New York University to detect pedestrians who stood out among younger casual students. Nothing.

Dominika popped into The Smile restaurant on Bond Street—she liked the look of the weathered boards on the ceiling and the rich brick walls—and asked to use the phone behind the bar, explaining in an exaggerated French accent to the skeptical barmaid in a dirty apron that she was from France, and that her mobile phone did not receive service in New York. Besides, I’m calling my CIA handler to discuss foiling a Kremlin attack on the political and security foundations of America, with the express goal of preserving your gravy-stained way of life.

She left her phone in her coat pocket, and hung the coat on a wall hook away from the bar. Bratok answered on the first ring. She told him about her cell phone and the old lady at the hotel, his low chuckle reassuring and comforting. He kept his comments short and cryptic, they’d reviewed meeting procedures a hundred times. “Five o’clock, go to the museum and wait outside. Got it? I’ll be looking out for you.” The line went dead. Gable had just told Dominika to rendezvous with him at the Monkey Bar, at three o’clock. The power-lunch restaurant was renowned for the iconic celebrity murals on its walls (hence “the museum”). Gable had also cryptically told her she’d be countersurveilled as she walked to the restaurant on East Fifty-Fourth Street. She wondered whether it would be the old team again, whether she’d see Nate’s slim features across the street, whether she’d hear his voice, and whether he’d sit beside her close enough to touch him, feel the heat of his body, smell him . . . Stop it.

Gable was chewing an unlit cigar and driving a wheezing, beat-up sedan with torn plastic seats and an Orthodox cross hanging by a plastic chain from the rearview mirror.

The officers from Benford’s CID countersurveilling Dominika gave Gable the all clear, and he had pulled up, thrown open the passenger door, and scooped her off the sidewalk in front of the Monkey Bar. Once rolling, he put fingers to his lips, nodding at the cell phone in her hand. He made two violent right turns, narrowly missed a pedestrian, and careered through crosstown traffic at high speed, shooting the gaps between taxis, trucks, and buses. After one near collision, Dominika reached up, grabbed the swinging cross, and theatrically kissed it. Gable winked at her, delighted. He ran a red light and cut left across oncoming traffic to turn onto Ninth Avenue in the direction of Dominika’s hotel. In classic alteration of surveillance detection run (SDR) pace, Gable now drove south slowly in the right lane, letting honking, gesticulating New York drivers pass him. They were black, no tails. After ten blocks, he swerved to the curb in front of a dingy storefront restaurant with “Turkish Cuisine” written in a faux mosaic over the door. He gestured for Dominika to leave her phone under the seat, and follow him into the restaurant.

The place was dark and cozy, with copper trays and ceramic nazarlik, blue evil-eye talismans, mounted on the walls. Gable ordered a çoban

salad, two kebabs, and kiymali ispanak, sautéed ground beef, spinach, and rice. “You’ll love it,” said Bratok. “Nash and I used to eat it at a Turkish joint in Helsinki.”

“Helsinki,” said Dominika, staring. “Skol’ko let, skol’ko zim, so many summers, so many winters; it seems like a million years ago.” Gable looked at her while chewing a piece of bread.