The Kremlin's Candidate: A Novel

Nate and Gable gone, Benford retired. She had never known any other CIA officers since her recruitment in Helsinki, they were her family, and their comforting presence mitigated the stark solitude of her life as a spy. Now she felt alone, even though she was at the pinnacle. She started drafting a reply, husbanding characters as she typed on the flexible display while her throat closed tight in despair.

1. Contact with president two nights per week. He sharing opinions of siloviki—Patrushev now in disfavor. He discussing Russia clandestine alliances with Iran, North Korea. Will advise.

2. Regret inform officer Nash died as a result of injuries sustained during unauthorized interrogation.

DIVA.

END END END

With burning eyes and trembling lip, Dominika pushed “send,” and the message was transmitted. She remembered what Agnes had said: “Nate came to rescue you and I came to help Nate. So I suppose all of us lost.” Everyone indeed had lost, but Dominika was running the SVR, and she moved inside the Kremlin, and astride President Putin, ironically back to her hated Sparrow roots in a hopelessly febrile world without her Neyt. She sighed and shuddered.

Then DIVA got back to work in her large office with the panoramic view of the pine forest and the endless horizon of her beloved Rodina.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

With each completed book, I find the list of people whom I must thank grows exponentially.

My thanks first to my agent, Sloan Harris, who is responsible for guiding my second career as a novelist (which occasionally has proven more delirious than my first career) and who continues to advise, encourage, and inspire me as a colleague and friend. I add my thanks to the team at ICM, including Esther Newberg, Josie Freedman in Los Angeles, Heather Karpas, Heather Bushong (in case President Putin sues), and Alexa Brahme, for their aeonian support.

I gratefully acknowledge my editor, the supranatural Colin Harrison, without whose discerning novelist’s eye and literary acumen this book would not exist, period. Many thanks, too, to the entire Simon & Schuster family, including Carolyn Reidy, Susan Moldow, Nan Graham, Roz Lippel, Brian Belfiglio, Jaya Miceli, Jen Bergstrom, Irene Lipsky, Colin Shields, and Gary Urda. Special thanks to Sarah Goldberg for her unremitting support, Katie Rizzo, and Valerie Pulver for infallible copyediting. At S&S Audio, thanks to Chris Lynch, Elisa Shokoff, Tom Spain, Sarah Lieberman, Tara Thomas, Elliot Rambach, and Jeremy Bobb, who narrated all of the Red Sparrow Trilogy audiobooks.

I thank colleagues in CIA’s Publication Review Board for their consistent and timely support in reviewing the manuscript. Any errors in fact or language are the author’s, and any similarities to characters in the novel with real people are wholly coincidental. This is a work of fiction.

My appreciation, too, to all my fellow officers in the Directorate of Operations—especially to the CT class of November 1976, for a lifetime of memories and frequent expressions of support. Among these, I must mention the late Stephen Holder, who provided a primer of authentic and obscure operational terms used by the Chinese Intelligence Service, and the late Jack Platt, who taught us, blaspheming, about double corners and trailing surveillance. Former partners and close friends from an allied service, Alasdair and DT, variously advised the author, including passing along several exceptional family recipes, normally more closely held than politburo minutes.

As usual, friends and family contributed endlessly. Yogini Alison introduced me to the sublime essence of yoga; Steve and Michael revealed the mysteries of New York and Staten Island, the latter occasionally more sublime than yoga. Kelly demonstrated the ancient and silent code gestures of the Chinese folded fan. My brother William and sister-in-law Sharon read the manuscript and made helpful suggestions. Brother William also continued in his role as the author’s science adviser. How a university professor of economics knows about electromagnetic railguns is a puzzle. I suspect he has one in his apartment. Daughters Alex and Sophie continued in the Sisyphean task of explaining modern music, current fashion, and popular English usage to the author.

Finally, I thank my wife, Suzanne, for being the better half of a tandem couple in CIA for three decades, for raising two independent and accomplished young women as daughters, for her hours of help with the manuscript, and for her aplomb in good times and bad.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

© DAVID MOORE