The Kremlin's Candidate

by Jason Matthews

  “The people here are trying, resisting and demanding their rights. But I do not know if they will succeed,” said Grace.

  “I know the rest of the world hopes they will succeed,” said Nate.

  “So do I,” said Grace.

  “It would be a worthy effort, to help Hong Kong stay free,” said Nate. “Something with meaning.” He stopped and came off the gas, putting it in neutral, not wanting to overdo the theme. They could come back to it; at the right moment, Nate could tell her specifically how she could help. Work for CIA.

  “I could see that,” said Grace. “Right now I devote myself to the hotel, nothing else. And yoga is my only escape.”

  “I have to be honest with you,” said Nate. “When you showed me that Kundalini Awakening, I was a little startled, scared even. I didn’t know what had happened to you.”

  Grace laughed. “Do you want to learn a little more? I can tell you about the chakras, the energy points in your body. They’re very important; they control everything,” said Grace. Okay, stud, keep this under control.

  Nate so far had kept things platonic, despite the black bra and the arched back, and the cursory kisses. He could imagine Benford’s reaction if it became known that he had recruited Grace Gao by bedding her; it would be an affirmation of Benford’s lingering belief that Nate should no longer be employed by CIA. He had not dwelled on it in some time, but now Nate contemplated what a nightmare it would be if he got kicked out of the Agency, and returned home to Richmond, Virginia, where his family all along had brayed that Nate wouldn’t make it as a spook, never mind that his downfall took ten years and not two, as they had predicted. So how do you handle this Chinese beauty who wants to show you her chakras?

  They sat on the floor facing each other, cross-legged, knees nearly touching. Grace took the wide copper bowl off one of the altar tables, put it on the floor beside them, and struck the rim lightly with a small wooden dowel. The bowl gave off a clear, smooth note like the chime of a grandfather clock. “Singing bowl,” said Grace, “to clear your mind.” She ran the dowel around the lip of the bowl, which began a pulsing hum that grew into a second bullfrog tone overlaying the first. She stopped stroking the bowl, and the tones slowly faded. She shifted herself slightly forward so their knees touched.

  “There are seven chakras in your body, and they all represent different emotions,” said Grace. She took a small bottle out of her dress pocket, unscrewed the cap, and tilted it forward to wet the tip of her finger. The dizzying fragrance of ylang-ylang enveloped them, and Grace dragged her fingertip along the sides of Nate’s neck, on the undersides of his wrists, and on his ankles. “The oil will help you relax,” she said.

  She touched the top of his head. “This is the seventh chakra, the violet chakra, the crown, which brings bliss.” She leaned forward and kissed his forehead.

  “This is the sixth chakra, the indigo chakra, the brow, which controls intuition.” She kissed his eyelids.

  “The fifth, blue, the throat for healing.” She moved lower and nuzzled his throat with her lips. Jesus, she’s heading south, is there a Captain Picard chakra?

  “The fourth, green, the heart for love.” Grace unbuttoned his shirt and kissed his chest.

  “The third, yellow, the solar plexus for purpose.” Her lips grazed his stomach.

  “The second, orange, the spleen for desire.” She ran her fingers around his navel.

  Grace moved her hand between Nate’s legs and underneath his body, pressing up through his khakis on the fleshy pad of his perineal muscle. “The first, the root chakra, red, controlling passion,” she said. She kept her fingers there, and looked into his eyes.

  At a time like this, with Grace’s ylang-ylang-infused fingers pinpointing his first chakra, Nate unaccountably and psychotically flashed to Kramer, his case officer–colleague in Vienna, who once told him that the perineum was commonly called the “taint” because “t’aint your balls, and t’aint your butt.” Nate wondered what that nugget was doing now. He shook himself as Grace removed her hand.

  “And when you awaken Kundalini,” said Nate, trying not to squirm, “these chakras do what, exactly?”

  “The energy expands from the root chakra, like an uncoiled snake, up the spine to the head, like an electrical current. It brings a profound consciousness.”

  “I can feel mine expanding as we speak,” said Nate. Grace scooted forward to sit on Nate’s folded legs, and wrapped her legs around his back. She put her arms around his neck and looked into his eyes. They were inches apart, from noses to crotches, and Nate could feel her body heat, like sitting too close to a woodstove.

  “This is called Yab Yum, sitting like this,” she said. “The union of wisdom and compassion.” She took his hand, pressed it on her heart, and held it there. “Can you feel my heart? Let me feel yours.” They sat motionless, eyes closed, hands on each other’s hearts, foreheads lightly touching. “Now we cannot move for a thousand years until we achieve Samadhi,” she said.

  “Samadhi—whatever that means—is going to happen sooner than that,” said Nate. “I’m just warning you.”

  “Stop talking,” she said. “Samadhi is a state of mind. Concentrate.” Nate felt her breath deepen, and her heartbeat slowed, and he could hear it in his head, and he could feel his own heartbeat exactly matching hers. Her legs were wrapped tightly around him, her heels hooked softly into his back. Nate suddenly felt a lightness in his pelvis, his legs, his spine, and his arms. A loud rushing noise filled his head, as if he were in an underground grotto above a thundering waterfall. The lightness moved into his head, behind his eyes, and under his tongue.

  “Do you feel it?” whispered Grace. Nate nodded. “Samadhi is wonderful,” she said. “It can carry you, carry you over mountains, and across the oceans. What is over the ocean for you, Nate? What is in your heart?”

  “A woman far away,” he said, his eyes still closed, marveling at the feeling in his brain, and at his answer, which just popped out of his mouth before he could think. Grace shifted closer to him, her arms around his neck.

  “Breathe with me,” she said, inhaling deeply. She put her mouth on his and started inhaling and exhaling into his mouth, surrounding him in hot velvet and electricity. Her breath controlled his breath. She rocked slightly and leaned forward, so their expanding stomachs touched. Grace whispered into his lips.

  “Who else is in your heart?” she said. Nate thought of Agnes in Palos Verdes, and Hannah killed, and white-haired General Korchnoi murdered, and Gable gone, and Benford, Forsyth, and Burns who were his colleagues and family, and the bucket-headed image of PLA General Tan, that profligate beetle whom Nate had just recruited, and he almost said his name out loud. Shit, what is this?

  Nate, struggling, blinked three times, very quickly, and she knew she had lost him, at least for now. She moved back slowly, sliding off him.

  * * *

  * * *

  Dominika sat in the armchair, legs crossed, squeezing her thighs together, sweating. She had forced herself to sit still as she watched the monitor and imagined the feel of Nate’s body pressed against Grace in Yab Yum, and her lips tingled imagining those kisses. Thank God she didn’t have to hide an orgasm, sitting a meter from the appalling Rainy Chonghuan, who was watching the screen with his mouth open. She had panicked when Grace had dabbed Nate’s neck with fragrant oil, but she realized this was not the assassination night.

  That last kiss. She was astounded by Grace’s apparent skill in dragging Nate into a meditative state, something she knew she could never do. Strangely she was not mad at him—seeing him after all these months on a high-resolution screen was a shock, and she felt a million kilometers away. She knew he had not planned for this to happen, that he was working on the Chinese woman, and it was she who had initiated the contact. To be sure, Dominika would break a vase over his head when (if) she saw him next, but she realized she still loved him; he had said he loved a “woman far away,” which she knew meant her. She was the first person he
thought about from his Yab Yum–addled subconscious. Oh, how this espionage got in the way of their lives.

  But right now jealousy, pique, longing, and horniness were superfluous. Dominika didn’t know if Nate could resist the mind-warping blandishments of this gorgeous Chinese girl, but she knew that whether or not the MSS pried the name of Nate’s agent out of him, they would very soon reach the point where they would give Zhen the order to eliminate him. He was a beetle in a matchbox and they were going to step on him.

  Rainy Chonghuan watched the screen as Grace said good night to Nate at the front door to the apartment. He ordered the technicians to shut down the surveillance monitors and microphones, and turned to Colonel Egorova.

  “You can see Zhènniǎo is extensively trained and meticulously prepared,” he said. “She uses the mystical aspects of this yoga to manipulate her targets, to employ tao qu de zuo fa, elicitation methods. If she succeeds, it will happen next time. If at the conclusion of the next contact the American does not reveal the name of the mole, the order to eliminate him will be given.”

  “You know your operation best,” said Dominika, casually, wondering if there was a wet spot on the back of her skirt. “But eliminating the American now seems premature. Your girl is making good progress. You could potentially learn additional secrets from this officer about CIA operations in China.”

  Rainy shrugged. “Beijing insists,” he said. “She will invite him for another dinner in two days, and we shall see what happens. Zhènniǎo will stay in this apartment from tonight, in case the American becomes lonely and amorous, and decides to visit unannounced.”

  “And how will you eliminate the target?” said Dominika.

  Rainy Chonghuan showed a muddy riverbank smile. “Zhènniǎo is an expert with firearms, edged weapons, the rope, and a variety of classical weapons. She is also expert in hand-to-hand combat. Her knowledge of poisons and toxins is encyclopedic,” said Rainy. “The requirement, as in most cases such as this, is to mask the hand of the Service. She will choose the appropriate method.”

  “It doesn’t sound like she will have any trouble,” answered Dominika, suddenly overwhelmed. The lingering terror waiting for her back in Moscow if she were exposed by the mole in Washington came back to her suddenly. Both she and Nate were teetering on the knife-edge of ruin.

  KYI SAW’S BURMESE TOMATO SALAD

  Slice medium tomatoes into crescents, cut cherry tomatoes in half, and slice sweet onion into crescents and place in a bowl; add toasted sesame seeds, crushed peanuts, dried shrimp powder, diced chilies, and chopped coriander. Deep-fry garlic and additional onions until crispy and add to bowl. Whisk lemongrass vinegar (or substitute rice wine vinegar), canola oil, fish sauce, lime juice and palm sugar, and pour over salad. Mix gently with hands and garnish with reserved fried garlic and onions and a chiffonade of cilantro. Goes well with a rare steak.

  30

  Emptiness

  Zhen disliked staying in the honey-trap apartment. Her personal flat was in a smaller building in Mid-Levels, where she was surrounded by her books, yoga materials, and comfortable furniture. Staying in this nearly empty apartment was an inconvenience. It, moreover, meant the assassination phase was near, and although she had no compunction about eliminating a target, she was always depressed at the conclusion of an operation. She enjoyed the hunt: engineering first contact, coyly developing the relationship, the heady thrill of seduction, and the dizzying anticipation of the final act, up to the moment she eased a steel needle between the cervical vertebrae of the neck, or looped a silk rope around a throat, or watched a victim’s eyes grow in alarm as the chest-constricting effects of a poison were first felt. But afterward there was an emptiness, a depression, a melancholy. An emptiness that yoga helped relieve.

  Zhen always told herself that she worked as a poison-feather bird to feed her stomach, but she practiced yoga to feed her soul. Practice gave perspective, energy, and the strength to accept what she could not change. But there were some things she could indeed change. Her unhappy childhood and subsequent exploitation as a teenaged concubine, and the humiliating scurvy years in Nightingale School and at the Institute in Beijing learning to kill increased her resolve never to let anyone mistreat her again. The first time had been in London, at university, where she had been singled out as a shy exotic by a group of male students, the majority of whom were simply bullies, but one of them had wanted more. Zhen did not bring any of the usual weapons from the institute with her to the United Kingdom, except for two gongfu shàn, pleated kung-fu fighting fans, one black, one red, wide and delicate with expanding wings of edged metal affixed to the fan folds. These were medieval martial-arts weapons and Zhen could make them flutter like birds wings, snapping them open and closed with a report like a gunshot.

  There was a complicated social protocol as well in the use of fans, ancient Chinese conventions essentially lost on most Britons, but Zhen had studied them because they would be most relevant when she returned to the Orient as a seductress. Drawing a closed fan along the cheek meant “I want you.” Touching the edge of the extended fan lightly with the fingers meant “I want to talk to you.” To tap the lips with a closed fan meant “kiss me.” None of these applied to the rangy British Romeo named Rowdy White who pushed his way into Zhen’s dormitory room one night, and stood amused as she held two puny folded fans in front of her, ready to defend herself. Rowdy’s cumulative experience with fans was limited to the big ostrich-feather variants used by the dancers in the strip clubs off High Street. When Rowdy reached to grab Zhen by the arm the black fan opened with a pop, deflecting his hand. Chuckling to himself, Rowdy again reached for her and the red fan snapped open, blocked his other arm, then folded in the blink of an eye, and snapped down across his wrist. That hurt. He snarled, stepped forward, arms extended, and both fans snapped open with a clatter like pigeons taking flight in a park, and the leading edge of one fan was raked across his face an inch above his eyebrows, slicing his forehead and blinding him as blood streamed into his eyes and down his cheeks. It was Zhènniǎo’s first blood, and she was mildly surprised how easy it had been.

  * * *

  * * *

  She wasn’t hungry but she made a small pot of shēngcài soup, simple lettuce soup, and let it cool on the stove. She opened the balcony door for the night breeze, and sat naked on the big pillow on the floor in the darkened empty living room inhaling great draughts of air, distending first her stomach, then her diaphragm, then her lungs, and expelling her breath in reverse order, pulling her navel in and up, and locking her root chakra. She quietly repeated the Adi Mantra: ong namo guru dev namo, bowing to the teacher within, and continued breathing. She got to her feet and leaned forward into a deep lunge, her body glistening, breasts straining, muscular arms above her head, then flowed into a series of poses, her breath steady and hissing on the exhale. But something was wrong. Her concentration was off tonight.

  She liked the young American, and had to admit to herself that he was decent and charming. His comments about freedom and Hong Kong were obviously recruitment talking points, but she agreed with them. She wondered what he’d be like in bed—she did not sleep with men after Nightingale School—but she didn’t much care whether he lived or died. She was alone in the world, not aligned with anyone, not with Beijing, not with the MSS, not with the hotel to which she devoted all her energies. She knew Nate was CIA, and that he wanted to recruit her. She had used her professional wiles to encourage him, flirted with him, and kissed him, all to maneuver him into the kill zone. Her recruitment was an impossibility, of course—she would never ally herself with the Americans—and besides, the MSS was observing everything. Zhen had been told that she had to elicit, or trick, or fuck the name of a mole out of him but if after two nights she was not successful, she was to assassinate him. It would happen tomorrow night.

  She would take a vial of monkshood distillate mixed with fragrant ylang-ylang oil and using great care—a drop on her own skin could be fatal—apply the
poison on Nate’s skin (she had established the practice of dabbing him with the oil over the last two nights), this time with a bamboo stick applicator. The aconitine would slowly flood his system and kill him hours later, long after he returned home. Zhen got to her feet, folded forward with her palms flat on the floor, and exhaled. She straightened, and walked to the bedroom to take a shower before bed, snapping lights off as she walked through the apartment. She lighted a sandalwood taper and took her shower by candlelight.

  The woody fragrance of sandalwood was a nice change from the ylang-ylang oil, which hung heavy everywhere without dissipating, like the copper stench of stale blood in a charnel house.

  * * *

  * * *

  Nearly midnight. It was a good thing that Benford and Nate were not going to hear what Dominika planned. There were no other options. They were going to kill Nate tomorrow night, and she didn’t even have to think too hard about it. She was going to kill Zhènniǎo, the poison-feather bird, or try to, anyway. Dominika stood in the darkened living room of her MSS guest flat wondering if she would survive the next half hour. She wore black pajama pants and a black T-shirt over a sports bra that flattened her chest and hugged her ribs. She didn’t want to be flopping around if she actually had to engage Zhen hand to hand. She wondered if the Russian Spetsnaz-derived Systema fighting technique she had learned over the years would even come close to what she imagined a Chinese assassin’s martial-arts skill would be. She still had to try. Otherwise Nate was dead.

  Dominika had no intention of standing toe-to-toe with Zhen. She likely had weapons hidden all over the apartment, not to mention bullets, arrows, darts, and daggers, all dipped in lethal compounds. Having seen her move via surveillance monitor, Dominika also knew that Zhen was strong, lithe, and flexible, and no doubt would be able to absorb a lot of punishment in a stand-up fight. Dominika, therefore, had to ambush her and instantly incapacitate her. It would be the only way she could win.