The Kremlin's Candidate: A Novel

Not that she looked like a dragon. In her thirties, Egorova was slim and narrow-waisted, with legs still muscular from ballet. Chestnut hair piled on top of her head framed a classic Hellenic face with heavy brows, high cheekbones, and a straight jaw. Her hands were long-fingered and elegant, the nails square-cut and unpolished. She wore no jewelry, only a thin wristwatch on a narrow velvet band. Even under her loose summer dress on this spring day, Egorova’s prodigious 80D bust was obvious (the subject of inevitable frequent comment in Yasenevo hallways). But this was nothing compared to her eyes that held his as she watched him look at her chest. Cobalt blue and unblinking, Egorova’s eyes seemed to look inside one’s head to read thoughts, a decidedly creepy sensation.

What no one knew was that Dominika Egorova could indeed read minds. It was the colors. She was a synesthete, diagnosed at age five, a condition her professor father and violinist mother made her swear never to reveal, ever, to anyone. And no one knew. Her synesthesia let her see words, and music, and human moods as ethereal airborne colors. It was a great advantage when she danced ballet and could pirouette among spirals of red and blue. It was a bigger advantage in the hated Sparrow School when she could see the gassy cloud around a man’s head and shoulders and gauge passion, and lust, and love. As she entered the Service as an operations officer, it was a superweapon she used to assess moods, intentions, and deceptions. She had lived with this ability—a blessing and a curse—picking out the reds and purples of constancy and affection, or the yellows and greens of ill will and sloth, or the blues of thoughtfulness and cunning and, only once, the black bat wings of pure evil.

Bondarchuk’s yellow halo of craven bureaucratic panic pulsed around his shoulders. “You have no authority to initiate an operation in my area of responsibility,” he said, twining his fingers nervously. “To pitch a North Korean is doubly risky. You have no idea how these giyeny, these hyenas, will react: diplomatic protest, cyberattack, physical violence; they’re capable of anything.”

Dominika had no time for this. “The hyena you refer to is Ri Sou-yong, Academician Ri, deputy of the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center in North Korea, the institution that is working diligently on designing a nuclear warhead to use against the United States. We need a source inside their program. With Chinese encouragement, the North Koreans are as likely to launch a missile at Moscow as at Washington in the next five years. Or perhaps you disagree?”

Bondarchuk said nothing.

“I sent you the operational summary. Ri has been at the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, in Vienna for a year,” said Dominika. “Never a wrong step, unwavering loyalty to Pyongyang, politically reliable. Then he mails a letter. He wants to talk to Moscow. Conscience? Despair? Defection? We shall see. In any case, calm yourself. This is not a coercive pitch; he called us.”

“You burned a perfectly good safe house from my list for this unknown target, with no guarantee of success,” said Bondarchuk.

“Complain to Moscow, if you wish,” snapped Dominika. “I’ll deliver your written demarche personally to the Director, explaining you would have met the target openly on the street.” Dominika’s foot bounced like a sewing machine. The man was an imbecile among imbeciles in the Service. “We have two days to soften him up. This is a furtive weekend away from his Vienna security detail. He’s at a beach house in Voula with a housekeeper-cook,” she said.

Bondarchuk sat back in his swivel chair. “The so-called housekeeper, the twenty-five-year-old Romanian student, she wouldn’t happen to be on your payroll?”

Dominika shrugged. “One of my best. She’s already provided useful insights into his midlife crisis,” she said.

Bondarchuk laughed. “I’m sure she’s providing other useful insights. You Sparrows are all alike,” he said, implicitly including her.

Dominika stood. “Do you think so? Can you tell we are all alike?” she said, all ice. “For instance, is the woman you’re seeing every Thursday afternoon a Sparrow from the Center, would you say, Colonel? Or just your Greek mistress? Can you guess? And if you refer to me as a Sparrow ever again, your own midlife crisis will arrive ahead of schedule.”

Bondarchuk sat rooted in his chair, his yellow halo quivering as Dominika walked out.