The Kremlin's Candidate: A Novel

A swarthy young man leaning against the ferry rail in front of Dominika was obviously a local from Staten Island, dressed in a sports jersey, his dark hair slicked back. He noticed Dominika and came to sit beside her on the plastic molded seat. He flirted, charming and irreverent, his face close, pointing out landmarks as the ferry plowed across New York Harbor, including the arching Verrazano-Narrows Bridge—he called it the Guinea Gangplank although it was unclear to Dominika why—connecting the two boroughs of Brooklyn and Staten Island. Dominika could understand about half of what he said, but smiled and looked where he pointed. When she told him she was from France, he winked at her and knowingly said “Nice wines.”

The thrumming of the ferryboat engines moderated, then the deck shook as the engines were put full astern to ease the nose of the ferry into the exit ramp at St. George Terminal on Staten Island. Time to go, time to turn on, time to go to work. Dominika slung her bag over her shoulder, and nodded vaguely to the young man. Moving quickly, she followed the signs to the adjacent rail platform to board the southbound train. Quick checks to either side did not pick up the loitering passenger, or the too-long look from the young woman on the sidewalk, or the ticket clerk diving for the phone.

No coverage, she thought, as she stepped into a train car. As the doors closed, Dominika saw with annoyance that the young man had boarded the next car, and was staring at her through the window of the connecting door. She didn’t have time for this: a Romeo following her, thinking he might get lucky with a hot tourist from France.

The train rattled and swayed and stopped frequently at suburban stations. A different world was unraveling in front of Dominika’s eyes on each side of the tracks. Commercial areas had petrol stations on every corner; there were supermarkets with tomatoes stacked on display in front, and she counted restaurant after restaurant—most of them claiming they made the best pizza in New York. Was this even New York City? The train clanked past working-class neighborhoods of tidy two-story houses, shingled, with lean-to greenhouses and tiny fenced yards, some of which had curious aboveground swimming pools hardly big enough to hold a person. On every roof was a gray satellite TV dish, all pointed up in the same direction. The houses were nothing like the luxurious dachas of the siloviki

; these were not rich people, but these houses looked comfortable. The cars parked along the street were big and relatively new. If this was not wealth, it was at least prosperity on a wide scale. In Russia, they would say blagopoluchiye, bread buttered on both sides, well-being. Not many people, not even in Moscow, were living lives with such possessions, with such abundant food. Her countrymen struggled to survive, they despaired of improving their lives, they dared not think grand thoughts or speak the truth. They could not

choose.

Dominika had memorized the strange names of the train stations: Grasmere, Old Town, Dongan Hills, Jefferson Avenue, Grant City. People bustled on and off as the train doors opened and closed—no observable surveillance behavior, nothing amiss. She could see the young man in the next car watching her through the glass. The next station was her waypoint, New Dorp, where she had to get off. She stepped out to the platform and quickly walked in the middle of a crowd of passengers up the steep exit staircase to street level and onto a broad boulevard with light traffic. On the opposite corner stood an Italian bakery owned by someone named Dominick. Perhaps I will have a bakery someday named Dominika’s, she thought. Idiot you don’t know how to bake.

She went inside, assaulted by the heavy aroma of fresh bread, noting there were no lines at the counter, was no one screaming for service, no churlish salesperson cursing at customers. She bought something called a calzone, which looked like an oversized chebureki, a Russian meat pie. This calzone was baked golden brown with a fluted edge, and was served with a small cup of tomato sauce.

Dominika sat at one of a few tables by the window and checked the street. The persistent Romeo was loitering on the opposite sidewalk, smoking. An American gopnik, but he didn’t look as tough as the Moscow species. Bozhe, God, she didn’t need this distraction right now. The mixture of sausage, peppers, and onions inside the calzone was delectable and oozed out, and she wiped her mouth with a paper napkin. Izobiliye, she thought, abundance. This was an American neighborhood bakery, not a state store, one of hundreds in this borough alone. Enough. Get moving.