The Kremlin's Candidate: A Novel

“Mr. President. Are you always this poetical?” She walked up to him, put her hands on his shoulders, and pressed against him, flattening her breasts on his chest. Their mouths were inches apart. A thumbnail into his eye. A wristlock to lead him onto the balcony, a mighty heave over the wall, and Russia will be done with you. Instead, Dominika brushed her lips against his and peeled his T-shirt over his head. The musk deer scent of him came back to her—part gaggy cumin and cinnamon cologne, part day-old armpit and crotch. If it had been Nate, she would have run her chin and lips over every inch of him to inhale his sweetness, but not now. She stepped back and pulled open the top three snaps of her shirt, which hung open, revealing a hint of cleavage (No. 95, “Keep the banya door slightly open to create more steam”).

Putin put his hands inside her shirt and ran his fingers around her nipples. “I think in these circumstances we can dispense with ‘Mr. President,’ ” he said. Perhaps to illustrate, he trailed his fingers down Dominika’s flat stomach, then lower, running his fingers along her pubis, then pushed up and in. The trained Sparrow stifled a flinch—men were always stuffing their fingers everywhere prematurely, as if they were looking for the light switch—and instead closed her eyes and whispered “Oh, Volodya,” the affectionate diminutive of Vladimir. “I do not know what to call you,” she whispered, “lest someone overhears our intimacy.” What I’m asking you, you, svinya, is whether you’ve bugged this whore’s cottage.

Putin laughed. “Not tonight. Don’t worry, no one’s listening.” Not tonight, how charming. Audio emplacements switched off for tonight.

Every time he got close to her, he was struck by how beautiful she was. Her blue eyes were mesmerizing, and it was as if she could read minds, a psychic skill he himself believed he possessed. Her lush body triggered his organic covetousness: he wanted to own her, to dominate her, to wrap his fingers in her chestnut hair and drag her across the room, simply to validate the power he had over her. He knew very well she was independent and intelligent, and that her operational accomplishments far exceeded his own tepid overseas KGB career in the eighties in communist East Germany. But that did not matter. His control over others—including trusted friends among the siloviki—was based in fear, or money, or family, or simply by bestowing access. With Egorova, it would be different. Putin this evening intended to dominate her with carnality. As a former Sparrow, she would get the message.

Putin shucked off his tracksuit pants as Dominika shrugged off the satin shirt, and flicked off the overhead chandelier, leaving only the soft glow of a small bedside lamp bathing her soft curves in pink light. If Putin saw the silver stiletto scars on her rib cage, he did not mention them; after all, they represented the sacrifices his vassals necessarily made to preserve the Rodina, or more precisely, his Rodina. Putin whipped the coverlet off the bed and onto the floor like a matador performing the extravagant pinwheel rebolera pass of the cape.

Putin then wordlessly placed a red foil pack of Hussar brand condoms on the nightstand for reasons not entirely clear, since he made no move to put one on. These were produced exclusively in Russia after a government decree banned imported American Durex prophylactics, alleging the US product promoted the spread of HIV, a transparent bit of dezinformatsiya in retaliation for US sanctions. Hussar condoms were known in Moscow as Russian-roulette rubbers because of their unreliability—never mind their overwhelming odor of petroleum. This shortage of reliable prophylactics had resulted in the appearance of numerous black-market products on the street, including the infamous silver packages of condoms printed with a caricature of the president above the English logo, “I’ve Got Something to Putin You.” Samizdat, protest materials, had greatly changed since the days of Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov, thought Dominika. What does he expect me to do with this? she wondered. She slid the president’s condom package into the nightstand drawer.