The Kremlin's Candidate: A Novel

When Dominika arrived at the safe house, Academician Ri was out at the weekly street market in Voula, the sun-bleached seaside suburb of Athens on the southern coast, buying produce so his Romanian house sitter, Ioana, could prepare lemon meatballs with celeriac like her mother used to make. Even after he had spent a year experiencing the culinary delights of Vienna, Ri’s starved North Korean palate still craved meat, vegetables, and rich sauces, and Ioana had been preparing hearty meals for the two days since he arrived in Athens after slipping out of Vienna before the start of a long weekend.

“We have quite the proper domestic scene here,” said Ioana to Dominika, who took off her sunglasses as she entered the little second-floor rented apartment, all whitewashed walls and marble floors with balcony sliders completely open to the balmy sea breeze. “He’s a strange duck—separate bedrooms, doesn’t want back rubs, and doesn’t look at me in my undies. He shops for food, I cook, he washes the dishes, then he watches English-language news all night. Devours it.”

Ioana Petrescu was a veteran Sparrow, tall and broad shouldered, a former volleyball player, fluent in English, French, and Romanian, and with level 4 Russian. She had a degree in Slavistics from the University of Bucharest. She disliked most people—officials, SVR officers, and Russians in general—but worshipped Dominika, who was a sister in arms, a former Sparrow who treated her as an equal. With her Dacian goddess face, Ioana could have made a fortune in the West modeling, but her cross-grainedness kept her working as an SVR Sparrow for Dominika, once whispering that she relished the nuances of seduction in a properly managed honey trap. There was a bit of the predator in her, which endeared her to Dominika even more. She was perceptive, educated, irascible, irreverent, and skeptical. Dominika protected Ioana inside the Service, kept the philandering colonels and generals away from her, and valued her canny assessments of targets. The two women were friends—Dominika planned to eventually extract her from the Sparrow cadre and bring her into the Service on a permanent basis as an officer.

“Does he mention why he posted the letter to the Vienna rezidentura?” said Dominika. “What does he want? Is he going to defect?”

“I do not wish to defect,” said a voice at the door. They hadn’t heard him come in. Ri Sou-yong carried a brimming plastic string bag from which protruded a head of celery and the leaves of a leek. He set the bag on the kitchen counter and sat down in a chair opposite the women. He was short and slight, dressed in a simple white shirt, slacks, and sandals. He had jet-black hair, a ruddy moon face with high cheekbones and a light mole on his chin, like Chairman Mao. “May I assume your colleague is the representative from Moscow?” he asked Ioana. “I will not ask for names.” He turned to Dominika. “Welcome. Thank you for coming all this way to see me. I have information for you.” He went into the back room and came back with a creased button-and-string manila envelope and handed it to Dominika. “Please excuse the condition of the envelope. I had to smuggle it out of my office under my clothing. But I hope the contents make up for its disheveled appearance.”

Dominika emptied a sheaf of pages onto the coffee table. The documents were written in Korean script; they may as well have been Paleolithic scratchings on cave walls in Lascaux.

Ri instantly read Dominika’s blank stare, and blushed in contrition. “I apologize for the Chosŏn’gŭl, the Korean script, but I know that original scientific documents have more intrinsic value than translated or transcribed ones.” This is quite the little perfectionist, thought Dominika, appraising the deep-blue halo around his head. A thinker, brilliant, anticipates reactions.

“Quite so, professor,” said Dominika, “but a peddler of spurious information might bring documents whose value cannot be immediately established.” It was a discourteous suggestion made to gauge his reaction. In the back of her mind, this still could be a North Korean intelligence trap concocted for some inscrutable reason by the infantile mind of the Outstanding Leader or whatever they called the butter-bean chairman these days. By habit, she and Ioana both subconsciously listened for the crunch of gravel footsteps on the driveway outside. Ri smiled and clapped his hands.

“Quite right, indeed; you are prudent to raise the question,” he said.

“And we still have not heard exactly why you requested this meeting or precisely what you are offering, or what specifically you expect in return,” said Dominika.

“I will answer your questions, gladly,” said the little man, with a little bow.