The Kremlin's Candidate: A Novel

Rowland’s delo formular, her operational file, was flipped onto Dominika’s worn metal desk in SVR headquarters in Yasenevo district in southwest Moscow, by a warty, dismissive section chief. He told her to read it, go home, change into something water soluble, get to the Metropol by 2100 hours, and compromise the American. Dominika’s short fuse flared and she told the pudgy deputy to go to the Metropol himself since it was obvious the target preferred pussies (which in Russian came out significantly more profane).

As if he had been listening via a microphone in her cubicle, Uncle Vanya called four minutes later, assuring Dominika this would be the last such assignment—hereafter she would be an ops officer on assignment in Helsinki and the Sparrow seductions would cease. “Take this assignment, please, don’t tell me no,” Vanya had said, his voice suddenly edgy. “Your mother would tell you the same thing.” Translation: follow orders or your mother with her rheumatoid arthritis and spinal stenosis will be out on the sidewalk by the time the real Moscow winter arrives.

Four hours later, with a tab of Sparrow-issue Mogadon, a mild benzodiazepine relaxant, under her tongue, Dominika sat at the Chaliapin Bar next to an already bleary-eyed Audrey Rowland, who looked sideways at the antique Ottoman necklace Dominika wore around her throat, the hammered silver pendants of which were rattling in the deep vee of her breasts.

“Service at this bar leaves something to be desired,” said Audrey, apparently assuming Dominika spoke English. “I thought this hotel was five stars.” The tumbler in front of her was empty.

Dominika leaned close and whispered conspiratorially. “Russians sometimes need a little encouragement,” she said. “I know this barman; he can be a bit contrary, we say upryamyy, like a mule.” Audrey laughed and watched as Dominika ordered two iced vodkas that were served instantly and with great deference. Audrey ignored the barman, drank the vodka in one gulp, and appraised Dominika with heavy-lidded eyes. She could not know that the barman and three other patrons in the bar were all from Line KR, countersurveillance assets looking for opposition coverage as Dominika moved on the tall American woman. The bar was clean; Audrey was alone.

Dominika did not have to work it too hard. A light legend—cover story—that she was a salaried office worker was sufficient, and really couldn’t afford drinking at the Metropol but once a month. She told jokes about Russian men, gently steering the conversation, holding on to Audrey’s wrist occasionally, establishing physicality, straight out of the Sparrow manual. Dominika purposely showed no curiosity about Audrey’s work or her navy career. There was no need to elicit: Audrey showed herself to be utterly self-absorbed and inclined to talk about herself—a narcissist perhaps, ego will be a button with this one, thought Dominika, who asked what her hometown of San Diego was really like, eyes wide and interested. Audrey said that she was the only child of a naval aviator father and a quiet mother (biographical facts already in her SVR file), then went on at length about growing up a lithe surfing California beach girl, which Dominika suspected was fiction. Audrey was an unmik, a physics geek, and looked it. After the third vodka, Dominika became serious and cocked her head toward the barman.

“Russian men. Beware of them. Not just stubborn, but mostly bastards too,” she said. Audrey pried the story out of a seemingly reluctant Dominika in stages. Drying her eyes with a cocktail napkin embossed with the “M” logo of the hotel, she eventually told Audrey of her broken engagement with a fiancé who had been unfaithful by sleeping with a cashier who worked at the GUM department store in Red Square, a total fiction.

“She was a little harlot with hair dyed purple, newly arrived from some rural oblast, how do you say, some unimaginable province,” said Dominika. “Two years we were engaged, and it was over in a night.” Audrey patted Dominika’s hand, incensed at the nameless philandering fiancé. The “hook” was always more believable by adding incongruously specific detail like the dyed hair (No. 87, “The short stories of Pushkin stir the imagination” was the relevant tagline, and one of scores memorized at Sparrow School to illustrate tradecraft points).