The Kremlin's Candidate: A Novel

Blokhin appraised Nate’s left leg, which was already swollen and purple and bent unnaturally to one side. Nate could feel the grooves in the arm of the chair as he dug his nails into the soft aluminum; other men and women had clawed against the pain as he was doing now. For all Blokhin’s many talents for mayhem, sophisticated interrogation was not his specialty. “I require the name of the Russian traitor working for the Americans,” he said.

Nate lifted his sagging head, and a bead of sweat dropped off his nose. Pain radiated up his leg to his gut. “You’re supposed to ask the first question before you hit the prisoner, zhopa, asshole,” he whispered.

Faster than Nate could tense up, Blokhin brought the rebar down on Nate’s captive left hand, rebreaking his little finger, shattering three of five metacarpophalangeal joints where the digits meet the palm, and pulverizing the small bones of the intercarpal articulation of the wrist. Nate’s ruined hand swelled immediately, and his knuckles became dimples. The pain was overwhelming, sharp, electric, radiating up his arm to his armpit and across his chest, the associated nerves reacting to the crushing blows of the steel bar. Roaring like an animal made him hyperventilate and helped the pain. The cable tie on his left wrist was now cutting into his flesh as his hand turned purple.

Nate growled as Blokhin leaned close, coyly resting the tip of the rebar on Nate’s undamaged right forearm, a hint of more to come. “The name of your asset in Moscow?” asked Blokhin.

“Someone close to the top,” stuttered Nate, “but I cannot recall the name, so fuck you.” Through his pain, Nate heard the three senior officials behind him stir in their seats. That was it; Putin suspected everyone, even his closest advisers, and he was treating them just as Stalin had habitually denigrated his lieutenants. That’s why they were present—to observe and sweat a little, for Putin’s amusement. But where was the august Gorelikov? Was he above suspicion? “Wait,” slurred Nate, as Blokhin tightened his grip on the rebar. “There is one name I know. Conspirators meet at Blokhina’s house, your mother’s house, after the sailors leave.”

More stirring sounds behind him. The American would pay for his smart mouth.

Blokhin walked behind Nate’s chair and looked at the three senior officials with a sneer. Bortnikov was fidgeting, whether from witnessing the beating or from anxiety was unclear. Patrushev’s face was ashen: the PhD and former engineer had no stomach for this. Egorova’s handsome face was a disinterested mask, her crossed legs were still. She looked bored. She was the only proven killer in the room, and since their New York trip, Blokhin had wanted to overpower her, then hog-tie her, then break her bones. He would see if he could get her to vomit over Nash’s beating.

Openly opposing Egorova was not feasible now, especially if the rumors of her relationship with the president were true. Oh yes, Blokhin had been briefed on many things. Besides the two guards, a young Kremlin aide with cat’s eyes was standing against the wall, observing the Security Council members intently. He would doubtless report back to the president. And there were three smoked glass globes in the ceiling concealing cameras. Blokhin scanned their faces again, turned, and without any windup hit Nate from behind on the point of his right elbow, snapping the constraining cable tie, splitting open the olecranon, the tip of the elbow, like a burst roasted chestnut, and subsequently dislodging the synovial joint between the head of the radius and the radial notch of the ulna. Nate’s arm hung limply off the armrest, his elbow joint in pieces and severely dislocated. He would have been unable to lift his arm even if it had flopped into a flame. Nate howled in pain but stopped himself, trembling, and managed a croaking laugh, which enraged Blokhin, who swung the bar in a flat arc at Nate’s left shoulder not covered by the chair back, fracturing the acromion and shattering the coracoid process of the clavicle. The shock made Nate pass out with a spectral groan, and his head and chest flopped forward until restrained by the leather strap around his chest.