Zyuganov ominously had received no call about these setbacks from the president or the director—in Stalin’s day the hollow cessation of communication from the top meant only one thing: Kiss the wife and kids good-bye. The one call he had received was doubly alerting. Govormarenko telephoned on the secure line—Since when did a civilian use encrypted government communications? Since Putin handed him the receiver, that’s when—to curtly announce that his continued participation in the matter of the cargo now en route to Iran would no longer be required. Govormarenko mouthed the explanation that the deal was concluded, the last of the monies were being deposited, and the intervention of the Service could be brought to a close. Zyuganov knew very well what that meant: There would be no vyplata, no spoon of sugar—no payoff—for his work putting together the operation. It also meant that his connections to the siloviki around Putin likewise were being severed, like mooring lines on a departing ship, dropping one after another from the pier into the water.
Egorova. Zyuganov closed his eyes and saw her on the stainless-steel table in the Butyrka prison cellar as he worked his way up her body with an iron bar—feet, shins, knees, pelvis, stomach, ribs, wrists, arms, collarbone, throat. He would use a bent spoon on her eyes. She would flop like a screaming leather bag of broken glass. Investigators still wanted to talk about Yevgeny. He did not experience even a second of remorse about staving in the skull of his moronic deputy—Yevgeny had told everything he knew, but nothing that could nail Egorova. Zyuganov’s options were narrowing, his career standing was tottering, his prospects were bleak. His career: Bog ne vydast, svin’ja ne s’est, God won’t give it away, pigs won’t eat it.
Mother. She had survived four decades in the Soviet grinder, a high administrative functionary successively in the NKVD, KGB, and SVR, through Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko, and Gorbachev, through the dissolution of the Soviet Union, through the turmoil with drunken Yeltsin into the proto-Soviet moonscape of Putin. She had retired with honors and was now zampolit, political officer in the Russian Embassy in Paris, a ceremonial position, a reward for a lifetime of loyalty to the Rodina. She had brought him into the Service under her patronage. Maybe she could help him now. He picked up the secure Vey-Che phone and ordered the operator to connect him with Paris. He would tell her all the details. Mamulya, Mommy would know what to do.
Dominika had been at the guesthouse in Strelna for three days. She had no way of knowing what had happened with the TRITON meeting, and she expected and anticipated sudden exposure, the tramp of footsteps coming for her, the icy blue-eyed stare as she was led away from the madhouse charade of this power weekend. She was already surfeited with the cloying cream sauces, the endless ranks of chilled vodka bottles, the rose-scented sheets, the limitless views of the gunmetal sea, the piped-in patriotic songs—Putin’s favorite was “From What Begins the Motherland”—for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There had been a steady stream of guests—fat-bellied oligarchs, nicotine-fingered ministers, sloe-eyed models, and dissolute actresses—and they socialized together in groups in the salons, dining rooms, and terraces, then separated and came together again in different groups, in clouds of greedy yellows, fearful greens, or, occasionally, the blues of intellect.
Govormarenko, in a dingy yellow haze, early on took it upon himself to introduce Dominika to the arriving luminaries, transmitting with an arm around her waist a “she’s with us” message, and the eyes would narrow and the heads would nod, and the women would appraise her jutting dancer’s glutes, and the men would stare at her top hamper, and Govormarenko’s hand would snake around her waist to steer her toward another introduction. Dominika initially planned to break the little finger of his encircling hand by bending it back to his wrist, but she quickly assessed this train of events and the opportunity it presented. She could not send a SRAC shot to Hannah—Oh God, Hannah is gone—but she knew what Nate would say, and Gable, and she could hear Benford’s voice, so she smiled and joked with the men, hinted darkly about her work in the Service, and flattered the women with clotted foundation on their collars and salt rings under the arms of their blouses.
Dominika’s magnificent radar registered the absence of sexual overtures from any of the men at the weekend retreat. To be sure, there were undisguised stares and furtive sidelong glances, but it was as if some invisible letter Z had been hung around her neck, zapovednyy, reserved, forbidden, hands off. But reserved for whom? After an initial and halfhearted flirtation from Govormarenko—his principal interest was food and drink—he did nothing more than paw at her waist and occasionally contrive to bump a shoulder against the side of her breast. It was clear that the only alpha male in the mansion had sprayed the tree trunk, and the lesser omegas of the pride could read territorial pheromones very well.
Udranka’s spirit, sitting by the shore and singing the sweet song of the Rusalka, threw back her head and laughed. You’re Putin’s pussy.
Khorosho, very well. Dominika resolved to be CIA’s penetration not only of SVR but also of Putin’s wheeling circle of vultures in business, politics, and government. The president spoke to her whenever he saw her, a fact noted by one of the actresses who, by her dismayed expression, clearly had previously been one of Vladimir’s wind-up toys. The president certainly was a dandy, dressed in open-necked shirts and fitted jackets. He had a jaunty sailor’s roll when he walked. He was usually accompanied by a statuesque beauty who, it was whispered, had been a rhythmic gymnastics dancer—a Russian and Olympic champion. The rumor was confirmed on the second day, in the sprawling, mirrored basement gymnasium filled with machines and free weights, when the blonde, dressed in spandex, demonstrated some routines, including lying on her chest and bringing her legs back over her body so her toes touched the floor on either side of her head. The president, dressed in a heavy, woven judogi tied at the waist with a black belt, beamed at his soft pretzel.
Now the judo demonstration. To the delight of the overdressed guests who lined the enormous gym mat, Putin began grappling with a chunky man in his twenties, and threw him with great force each time they grabbed each other’s lapels. The president was not thrown, ever—the young man knew how to fall and roll in this job. After one particularly violent takedown—Putin used hane goshi, the spring hip throw—a woman cried out in alarm and was shushed as if she were interrupting a pianist at a concert. After ten minutes, Putin straightened, wiped his face with a towel, and walked over to the nuzzling knot of sycophants, who politely applauded. Putin acknowledged the applause with Olympian modesty. His eye caught Dominika, standing in the back of the crowd.
“Captain, do you know judo?” Putin asked. Faces turned toward her.
“No, Mr. President,” said Dominika.
“What do you think?” Putin said. Faces were swiveling between the two.
“Very impressive,” said Dominika.
“I understand you were trained in Sistema,” said Putin. Faces turned again, expectant.
“Yes, Mr. President,” said Dominika. She hoped she wasn’t sounding like a cow.
“How would you compare judo against Sistema?” said Putin, draping the towel around his neck.
“It would be difficult to compare, Mr. President. For instance, I could identify only four ways to kill you during your sparring session.” The nervous woman gasped again, and they all looked at Putin’s face for his reaction. Putin’s blue halo was pulsing, and the corners of his mouth twitched.
“The notorious reserve of the external service,” said Putin to the crowd. He walked across the gym to the broad staircase leading up to the dining room, content to let the buzzing guests follow him and his blue aura like geese. The woman brushed past Dominika with her nose in the air, and a sweating industrialist mopped his face with a handkerchief and shook his head at Dominika, but she knew she had scored positive points with Putin. He was one-dimensional, primal, nationalistic, instinctive, afflicted with a world lens that registered only blacks and whites. But he was a natural conspirator who was concerned with o
nly one thing—sila—power, strength, force. It was from having and keeping sila that everything else derived: personal wealth, Russian resurgence, territory, oil, global respect, fear, women. He consequently respected others who displayed strength. Dominika just hoped she hadn’t overdone it.
That night, Dominika was on the terrace after dinner talking to a ferret-faced man from Gazprom who was predicting that, by controlling natural gas exports, Russia would reclaim the Baltic countries as integral republics in thirty-six months. Dominika imagined Benford’s face when he read that. A white-coated attendant approached, stood with his heels together, and said that Captain Egorova was required in the president’s study.
The first thing she saw on entering the room was that there were no armed men lined along the walls to take her away. Putin was sitting behind an ornate desk covered by green felt under a heavy piece of glass. He wore an open-necked shirt under a preposterous velveteen smoking jacket—his notion of what a chentelman wore after dinner. He motioned Dominika to a chair and stared at her in silence for ten seconds. Dominika willed herself to look back at him. Had TRITON delivered her name? Was the door going to blow in and security thugs fill the room? Putin’s halo was steady; he did not appear outwardly agitated. He continued looking at her, his hands flat on the glass. How tiresome this Svengali act was; Dominika wanted to slap his blue eyes crossed.
“Rezident Zarubina is dead,” said Putin. “She died last night during a meeting in Washington.” Was this a trap? She wasn’t supposed to know about TRITON. Play dumb.
Dominika kept her face closed down. “My God,” she said. “How did she die?” Satisfactory. But do they know my name?
“Heart attack,” said Putin, “while trying to escape from an ambush.”
Too bad, Baba Yaga. I guess your broom couldn’t fly you to safety, thought Dominika. “Ambush? How can this be? Zarubina was too good on the street,” said Dominika, shaking her head. “But what about the source?” Do you know my name?
“Status unknown,” said Putin, still looking at her. Is this a game he is playing? Does he know something else?
“Mr. President, this is a disaster. But in my work, when we speak of ambushes, we speak of foreknowledge, of setting a trap. Besides Zarubina and her team, the only two people in Line KR who knew the location of any Washington, DC, meeting sites were Colonel Zyuganov and Major Pletnev. Madame Zarubina kept very close control on such operational details.”
“Pletnev is dead too,” said Putin.
This time Dominika did not have to feign surprise. Poor hairy Yevgeny, but now he’s no longer a danger. Her mind was racing, calculating, evaluating the risk of what she was going to do. “Pletnev dead?” said Dominika. “Did Colonel Zyuganov kill him?”
Putin leaned forward on the desk. “That’s an interesting question,” he said. “Why would you think that?” Putin smelled intrigue like a croc smelled a carcass in the river. And like crocodile Stalin, Vladimir Putin knew the value of keeping subordinates at one another’s throats. Dominika registered his animated interest, took a deep breath, and told Putin about Zyuganov’s boycott of information in Line KR, about how Yevgeny was frightened of him, about Zyuganov’s fixation on and determination to uncover the mole.
“He is unsettled and imbalanced,” said Dominika, as casually as she could. “He treated Yevgeny like a barn animal. Pletnev told me some of his troubles and, frankly, asked me for advice on operational matters.” It won’t hurt Yevgeny now to say he talked out of school. “And you have seen how Colonel Zyuganov tracked my vehicle, how he thought I was involved in the disappearance of Solovyov—I, who originally identified the general as suspicious.” Dominika paused for effect. “The colonel is under immense strain. He has grown erratic.” Mentioning Solovyov was safe; Govormarenko had gossiped about the general’s disappearance.
“I have remarked on it,” said Putin. “What do you make of him?” Softly, obliquely, thought Dominika.
“Mr. President, based on the little Major Pletnev confided in me, this all came to a head two days before Zarubina was reportedly to acquire a CIA mole’s name. There is great turmoil. Zyuganov sends police to arrest me here, and now you tell me that he has killed Pletnev, and the unbeatable Zarubina is ambushed.”
“What are you saying, Captain?” said Putin. Time for the desinformatsiya, the deception.
“These mishaps are nothing less than Zyuganov protecting himself, with the aid of the Americans. And who searches loudest and most noisily for the mole? The mole himself, Mr. President.” Putin’s blue eyes never left her face, but his cerulean halo pulsed, and Dominika knew he believed her.
That night in her bedroom at the mansion Dominika could not sleep. The medieval and massively heavy dinners continued: Tonight it had been carved roast beef, veal medallions, buzhenina, baked ham, roast duck and patychky, breaded Ukrainian meat skewers served with a fiery Moldovan adzhika pepper sauce. Cream- and butter-sauce boats sailed in formation between silver candlesticks. There were platters of herring, salmon, and sturgeon in dill and sour cream, and kulebyaka, salmon in puff pastry. Pelmeni and vareniky dumplings were ladled from tureens like hatchlings poured out in a fish farm. Chafing dishes of buttered vegetables; terrines of pork, salmon, and boar; and casseroles of mushrooms, truffle-laden, steaming when spooned out, covered the table. Govormarenko had joked loudly to Putin that delicacies from Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova were all the more savory, to appreciative laughter from guests with full mouths. A yellow haze enveloped the table.
Dominika lay in the four-poster bed under a spectacular rose-colored goose-down comforter, listening to the ticking of an antique ormolu Empire mantel clock and the competing faint buzz of the sea outside her window. She had one more day in the extended weekend and was positively itching to get back to Moscow, to spin up her SRAC equipment, and to send a flurry of messages reporting everything that had happened. And it was certain that SRAC messages from Nate and Benford to her had been preloaded and would be waiting for the electronic handshake from her unit. She was on fire to know the status of TRITON, the circumstances of Zarubina’s death, whether LYRIC was safe, and the small matter of whether she was safe. Hannah’s spirit would be riding with her back to Moscow, she knew, and would be with her when she made her SRAC runs, working the mirrors, wide-eyed and laughing.
How she longed for Nate. The stress of the past days—the drive to Saint Petersburg, waiting on the exfil beach, watching and smelling and tasting this ghastly Putin menagerie—had exhausted her. She missed Nate’s touch, longed to feel his lips. God, she wanted him. Dominika lay still under the billowing comforter and moved her hand between her legs. Grandmother’s long-handled hairbrush—the tortoiseshell talisman that had helped her decipher her first adolescent urges—was in the luxurious tiled bathroom across the room, too far away. It didn’t matter: She closed her eyes and saw Nate. Udranka laughed outside the window as Dominika’s head pushed back deeper into the pillows, and her breath came in puffs through barely parted lips, and her eyes jounced around under closed eyelids, and the jolts started down her legs, to her curling toes. After a few delirious seconds her breath slowed and she blinked her eyes open, wondering for an instant where she was. Her thighs trembled with tiny aftershocks, and she wiped the dew off her upper lip. Then the impossible happened.
There was a soft rattle of the door handle and the door began to open. Dominika half sat up. The leading edge of a brilliant blue halo appeared slowly around the door. Bozhe moy! My God, thought Dominika, it can’t be.
Marta, voluptuous, lush, abundant—with a mane of hair around her face—sat across the room on a couch, legs crossed, a cigarette dangling from her lips. Dominika’s dead sister and fellow Sparrow blew a stream of smoke straight into the air, looked at the swinging door, and then at Dominika. What are you prepared to do? she whispered.
The president slipped into Dominika’s bedroom—presumably knocking was not a consideration when Vlad had something on his mind. He walked slowly, passing through a shaft of
moonlight from the ocean-side window that turned his blue halo turquoise. As he rounded the corner of her four-poster bed, Dominika hurriedly tried composing herself under the comforter—she had been thinking about Nate and her nightgown was gathered above her waist. Was the president’s sudden appearance in her room the result of video coverage in her suite? Had the president watched grainy night footage of the stirrings of her trembling hand beneath the comforter? If he had, he moved quickly.
The president was wearing a plain dark-blue silk sleep shirt and pajama pants—Dominika drolly noted that there were no heraldic devices on the breast of the shirt, no Romanov double eagles, no hammer and sickle, no red star. Putin pulled up a delicate antique chair and sat beside the bed, close to Dominika, as if he were a country doctor come to take a patient’s temperature. Dominika sat up and was about to pull the comforter demurely to her chin but instead let it drop to her lap—What did it matter, she was Putin’s Sparrow after all—and reached to snap on the little coral-shaded bedside lamp. She saw the president’s eyes flicker over the bodice of her sleeveless nightgown and the swell of her breasts under the lace.
Across the room, on the Recamier sofa the two of them—Marta and now Udranka—sat watching, her dead Sparrows there to give her strength. Hannah’s ghost would not be here, not her, not for this.
Red Sparrow 02 - Palace of Treason Page 49
