The Kremlin's Candidate

by Jason Matthews

  Dominika knew this was all a sticky spiderweb. Gorelikov’s medal was presented to him today with her present for two reasons: Putin was establishing that Gorelikov was senior, and that men gave important medals to other men, a Slavic reminder of her subordinate gender. Everyone knew the president greatly preferred the company of men—the siloviki comprised only men, but Egorova was edging toward becoming a potential insider. The second reason was this was a medal for eliminating a dissident, a look inside the furnace. Kill as I command, and you will be rewarded. There was still another nuance: though a handsome reward, the villa carried with it the hint of setting up one’s mistress in her own residence, connected to the master’s manor by a secret garden path. As the levsha zhena, the left-hand wife, you are expected to be ready for the tsar, bathed and perfumed, on satin pillows, your ruby fruit wet and swollen, waiting for the discreet scratching on the garden door, day or night.

  He expected her to be his left-hand wife. Dominika swallowed the familiar rage in her gut that joined the anguish in her heart for Repina. All the villas and all the ribbons in the world could not lessen what this queer little blond schemer was doing to her Russia as citizens waited for their delinquent pension checks to buy bread. Putin and his inner circle—Does this include me, am I now a silovik, wondered Dominika, as a luxury dacha recipient?—had starved the country. And no end in sight, she thought, to this corruption, and no end in sight to my life as a spy. She wondered whether General Korchnoi had felt the same, committed to this mortally dangerous work, strangely fueled by midnight adrenaline, yet trapped with no way out. God, how she needed Nate right now.

  This all skittered through her mind in a second. Putin was saying something, and she struggled to focus.

  “We now must wait for fortune to smile on MAGNIT,” said Putin. “In the meantime, Colonel, I want you to renew the liaison relationship with the Chinese MSS general; what is his name?”

  “General Sun,” said Dominika.

  “He claims his service has a counterintelligence problem, and they want our assistance. I don’t trust them at all. See what he has under his fingernails, find out what he wants from us. We don’t need any surprises from Beijing. Men’she znayesh’, krepche spish’,” said the president. “The less you know, the more soundly you sleep.”

  “Yes, Mr. President,” said Dominika.

  “And now lunch,” said Putin. He led the way down a parquet-floored corridor with white walls picked out in gold leaf, and onto a broad sunny terrace ringed by a heavy white balustrade. At the center of the terrace, under a billowing canopy, was a table set for three, with sparkling crystal and elegant plates with blue and gold borders. On each plate was a ramekin, swaddled in a nest of snowy linen. Dominika could smell the heavenly aroma of crabmeat and Imperial sauce. The tops of each ramekin were baked golden brown, and the sauce still bubbled around the edges.

  “Crab Imperial,” said Gorelikov. “Marvelous. We used to eat this in Odessa as students.”

  “Try a forkful, and see if this is not better,” said Putin. The delicate crabmeat melted in Dominika’s mouth. An ice-cold Vernaccia was the perfect wine, and she accepted a second glass. But the image of Daria Repina floated in front of her: the sun went behind a cloud, and the piquant Imperial sauce in her mouth turned to copper.

  Dominika would add this news about the murder to her thermos concealment for tomorrow’s personal meeting, but she would withhold Blokhin’s name. He was hers, and she vowed to kill Sergeant Iosip Blokhin herself someday.

  * * *

  * * *

  “Didn’t I tell you the president had his eye on you?” said Gorelikov in the official car back to Moscow.

  Dominika smiled. “It’s quite an honor. I can hardly believe it,” said Dominika. “And congratulations on your award.” Gorelikov bowed graciously.

  “I was a bit surprised to hear about Repina, though,” said Dominika. “What actually happened? You could have told me, Anton, seeing as how I was meeting SUSAN.” Gorelikov waved her comment away.

  “Repina was beginning to embarrass the Russian Federation, the Russian people, and the president,” said Gorelikov. “We previously sent emissaries discreetly requesting that she moderate her activities and manifestoes. She chose to ignore those requests.”

  “So Blokhin was assigned to eliminate her? In America, in midtown New York City? What would have happened if there had been a mishap? This is bad operational security. I should have been warned. Really.” Gorelikov patted her hand on the center armrest.

  “Shlykov guaranteed that there are seldom mishaps when Blokhin is assigned a mission,” said Gorelikov. “Besides, I did not want you burdened with the foreknowledge of the impending action. You sound upset that Repina was dealt with,” he said. Tread softly here, but show a little flag, thought Dominika.

  “I have scant sympathy with citizens who would harm our country,” lied Dominika. “But I will tell you something, Anton. If I had known of the plan to assassinate Repina, I would have tried to disrupt the plot. Russia is skilled and ingenious in achieving its goals—and no one more so than the president himself—but destroying dissidents sullies the Federation and makes them enduring martyrs. We must abandon the old ways.”

  Gorelikov looked at her, then turned to stare out the car window. “I happen to agree with you,” he whispered, “but the president knows his mind, and has the requisite experience. I have mentioned to him the exact views you have just expressed, and he realizes the cost, and is willing to pay the price. Kak auknetsya, tak i otkliknetsya, what you shout into the forest, so shall the echo come back to you.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Gorelikov called Dominika back to the Kremlin the next day, ostensibly to backbench a meeting of the Security Council, but in reality to introduce her to the most powerful men in the realm—a coming-out appearance for the soon-to-be SVR Director. These siloviki could be potential allies or, if their interests diverged, lethal adversaries. They all obviously respected Gorelikov, and wondered whether Dominika was more than a rising SVR star, or merely the new pintle-maid of the president. To a man, they dropped their eyes to assess her jutting top hamper, today draped in a black wool knit dress, which accentuated her curves. First there was Nikolai Patrushev, former Director of the FSB, now influential secretary of the Security Council, with thinning hair, a lined narrow face, a slash of a mouth, and the hook nose of a Cossack, all backlighted by a yellow halo of cunning and distrust. He was marginally polite before turning away. Dangerous.

  Then Alexander Bortnikov with the surprising cerulean halo, strong and constant, suggesting ratiocination and regard. The FSB Director was sixty-five years old, slight, and shorter than Dominika. He had a high, broad forehead and startling gray-blue eyes that crinkled at the corners whenever he smiled. He had a large mole on his left cheek and a fleshy nose, a hint of the raptor in him. Dominika knew he was an engineer by training, and it was whispered that it was he who had directed the FSB operation in London to spike dissident former KGB officer Litvinenko’s afternoon tea with enough lethal Polonium-210 to heat an apartment block in Voronezh for a month. Dominika knew Bortnikov would be wise, sly, cautious, and cunning—he also would be her security service counterpart for internal domestic security if Dominika was handed the Directorship and SVR’s foreign intelligence portfolio. She resolved to establish good relations with him.

  Finally there was Igor Korobov, an air force lieutenant general and Chief of the GRU, crisply uniformed, with a shaven head, steel-blue eyes, and the green aura of career trepidation from being head of military intelligence in a club of former KGB cohorts. Major Shlykov hovered behind Korobov, doubtless currying favor by kneading his chief’s buttocks periodically. Korobov nodded stiffly at Dominika, but Shlykov ignored her. You tried to torpedo me in New York, you bastard, she thought. Worse, you sicced Blokhin on me—he would have left me in some alley after eliminating Repina, if he’d had the chance. She measured the inches from his smirking face.

  G
orelikov stepped between them before Dominika could put her thumbnail in Shlykov’s eye and whispered for her to take a seat against the wall behind him, as Putin gaveled the Council to order. For the next utterly unreal two hours, the Council discussed Operation OBVAL (Landslide), which was conceived, refined, planned, and proposed by Shlykov, who guaranteed success and stunning results. The covert action, whereby Russian weapons and explosives would be smuggled to Kurdish guerilla separatists to be used in terror attacks in Istanbul to destabilize Turkey, was a massive active measure on the extreme end of the scale. Gorelikov and Bortnikov opposed the plan, both pointing out that the military aspect was exceptionally risky and that such a supply-the-rebels-with-guns operation was laughably 1960s Soviet primitive. Bortnikov called it a reckless misadventure—all the more so in Turkey with its vigilant and aggressive police and security services. Lieutenant General Korobov disagreed, saying this insurgency would destabilize the southern flank of NATO, a theme he knew, all of them knew, would gain the president’s favor. Which way would it go?

  Dominika saw Putin looking at her down the length of the chamber table. What was she going to do if the Pale Moth (one of the president’s old KGB nicknames) tried to hoist a leg over her one night in her luxury dacha?

  Then it happened. Gorelikov leaned back toward her and whispered, “What do you think?”

  “Yes, Colonel,” said Putin from head of the table. “What do you think of OBVAL?” Twenty faces turned to look at her. Bozhe moy, mother of God, she thought.

  She looked around the table, then directly at Shlykov, sitting behind his chief. “Strich porosenk,” she said. “Like shearing a pig—lots of screaming but very little wool. A fool’s errand, and one countered easily by Turkey and the United States.” Especially when I alert Benford. There were guffaws around the table, and wily Bortnikov of the FSB appraised her anew. Gorelikov was delighted. The GRU contingent sat sullenly. Putin sat with his hands folded, his Stonehenge face impassive.

  Dominika realized she was being drawn into her first Kremlin intrigue. Gorelikov intended to usurp the MAGNIT case, and Shlykov had to be brushed aside. Discrediting his paramilitary scheme in Istanbul was a start. Dominika studied the patrician Anton, saw his blue halo pulse, and read his mind. Why bring her into this? Because as counterintelligence Chief of Line KR, Dominika could credibly criticize Shlykov’s tradecraft, operational planning, and judgment if there was a flap. Gorelikov knew Dominika would line up on his side: He knew Shlykov’s boorish and dismissive attitude had made him an opponent—oh, this was how quickly sides were drawn up in these jeweled hallways. Allies, competitors, self-interest, personal grudges, career traps, and blood feuds; these were the swirling mosaic politics of the Kremlin.

  “Do these chiefs know about the MAGNIT and Academician Ri cases?” Dominika asked Gorelikov when they were alone. She would meet Ri in ten days. Ioana was already in Vienna, preparing the Danube cottage. Dominika reminded Gorelikov that they’d have to prioritize cases, hoping to elicit a name for MAGNIT, but Anton was cautious.

  “No one knows about MAGNIT, besides GRU, and we won’t disseminate it, not yet, especially not after recent developments. In time, a few members of the Security Council will be briefed, but not all of them.”

  “What developments?”

  “We received a report from SUSAN last night. MAGNIT is being looked at by the US president to become part of his administration. Nothing specific, but it is unprecedented—the Kandidat Kremlevskogo, the Kremlin’s Candidate in Washington. MAGNIT may be offered something important. We will wait patiently and see what our harvest will be.”

  “Will you brief me eventually on MAGNIT? Or shouldn’t I ask?” Be direct, confidential, a little piquant; that’s what he likes.

  “Of course, once the case stabilizes,” said Gorelikov, tickled at her pluck. “The president agrees completely. MAGNIT is a political case now, a Director’s case, one he wants handled only by an illegals officer. Not you. Not me. Only SUSAN. Period.”

  Gorelikov had just given her the lead to the extra pages she would have to prepare for tomorrow’s personal meeting with a Moscow Station officer: MAGNIT, the Kremlin’s Candidate. Dominika mentally drafted the additional intel: Vienna meeting with Ri; her new Black Sea dacha; the Repina assassination; Shlykov’s urban terror plot in Istanbul; Gorelikov’s prediction that she would be given the Directorship of SVR. She was going to need a bigger thermos bottle.

  Dominika was unsettled; this was too much. Putin was like a raging Siberian blizzard boiling across the steppes, headed for the little cabin, a blizzard whose icy fingers would work their way under the eaves, pry up the roof, splinter the bolted door, and collapse the walls to devour the huddled beings inside. Beregites, beware Benford, the blizzard is approaching.

  PUTIN’S CRAB IMPERIAL

  Combine diced red bell pepper, minced parsley, lemon juice, raw egg, mustard powder, paprika, celery salt, bay leaf, black pepper, red pepper flakes, Worcestershire sauce, mayonnaise, and melted butter in a bowl and whisk until smooth. Gently fold in lump crabmeat, spoon into ramekins, and bake in a medium-high oven until bubbly. In a separate bowl, make Imperial sauce by whisking mayonnaise, light cream, lemon juice, and Worcestershire sauce. Top each ramekin with Imperial sauce, butter-moistened bread crumbs, and paprika, and place under broiler until golden brown. Serve with a green salad.

  13

  Natural Enemies

  Ricky Walters hated climbing into the trunk of a car, swaddled in a crinkly silver space blanket, knees bent to fit inside the space, his butt hard against the spare tire. The sweat would start almost immediately, partly nerves, and partly from trapped body heat. Three years ago, a defector told his CIA debriefers that the FSB, in lookout apartments across the street, scanned cars of US diplomats leaving the Moscow Embassy compound from above with infrared scopes to determine if there was a glowing heat source in the trunk, which would indicate a hiding CIA officer (Who else? The knife-and-fork set in the Department of State wouldn’t be caught dead playing these cops-and-robbers games) was trying a “trunk escape” to get black to meet a Russian agent and steal national secrets (of which there were as many in Putinstan as there had been in the cave bear days of the Soviet Union). The space blanket trapped the body heat, and through an IR scope the trunk looked cold and empty.

  In midafternoon, Walters was driven out of the underground garage in the trunk of the Honda sedan of the junior consular officer (a Station colleague) by that officer’s twenty-seven-year-old wife, Helen (who had herself received months of training in surveillance detection). The couple’s two-year-old twins were chattering away in rear car seats as Helen watched her mirrors through multiple turns as she headed for Smolensky Passage Mall in the Arbat, a glitzy collection of shops affordable only to the lithe wives of oligarchs and the less lithe, thick-ankled wives of government ministers and heads of industries who found their positions provided gratifying amounts of disposable income skimmed from the official coffers of the State.

  A last check for the telltale trailing LADA two blocks back—negative, she was totally clear of ticks this afternoon—and Helen entered the ramp to the underground parking garage, punching in the twins’ favorite music disc—Raffi singing about the wheels on the bus going round and round to which the twins resoundingly joined in (the more noise for the FSB-planted microphone in the car the better), and which was also the “ready” signal to Ricky listening from the trunk. Helen rounded the corner of the ramp, totally screened in the gap, ejected the disc (“go” signal) to howls from the twins, popped the trunk, and pulled on the emergency-brake handle to slow the car without showing brake lights. Ricky shed the blanket, rolled over the lip of the trunk, slammed the lid, and darted through a service door up a short staircase, and out into the street. Elapsed time: four seconds. Helen smoothly continued down to park and browse the stores, pushing a two-seat stroller. On the street, Ricky wore a Soviet-style cloth cap, dirty whipcord trousers, a padded light jacket torn at the shoulder, and a p
air of scuffed Duolang “acid-resistant safety shoes” imported from China.

  As he walked, head down, he wedged silicone spacers between his gums and cheeks, and slipped on clear-lens eyeglasses, making himself look older and heavier. He cleared the ritzy Arbat neighborhood, entered Khamovniki District, and walked slowly along Ostozhenka Ulitsa, a broad commercial street. Halfway down the boulevard, Walters loitered at a bright-red public-phone sidewalk kiosk and checked his watch. The standard four-minute window was just opening, and Walters saw the little dusty navy Skoda hatchback approach and pull over to the curb, a box of tissues on the dash. All clear. Ricky lifted the red phone off the cradle and put it back. Clear here. He scooted to the car and got into the passenger seat, scrunching down just enough to mask his profile, and the car moved off. He felt the plastic cover on the seat, a precaution against spy dust, though his Russkie disguise clothes had been kept in the Station and were unlikely to be contaminated.

  This was an agent car pickup, substantially dangerous because a recognizable CIA officer was in the agent’s vehicle, the license plates of which were as good as her name being printed in block letters on the side of the car. The reverse procedure—a case-officer car pickup—was generally preferred but there was still risk: now you had a sensitive source in a US diplomatic-plated vehicle. “Pick your poison,” Gable once told Nash and Dominika during tradecraft practice. “Doesn’t matter who drives and who gets picked up. Just fucking get there black, both of you. That’s all there is to it.”