The Kremlin's Candidate

by Jason Matthews

  Putin laughed. “Not tonight. Don’t worry, no one’s listening.” Not tonight, how charming. Audio emplacements switched off for tonight.

  Every time he got close to her, he was struck by how beautiful she was. Her blue eyes were mesmerizing, and it was as if she could read minds, a psychic skill he himself believed he possessed. Her lush body triggered his organic covetousness: he wanted to own her, to dominate her, to wrap his fingers in her chestnut hair and drag her across the room, simply to validate the power he had over her. He knew very well she was independent and intelligent, and that her operational accomplishments far exceeded his own tepid overseas KGB career in the eighties in communist East Germany. But that did not matter. His control over others—including trusted friends among the siloviki—was based in fear, or money, or family, or simply by bestowing access. With Egorova, it would be different. Putin this evening intended to dominate her with carnality. As a former Sparrow, she would get the message.

  Putin shucked off his tracksuit pants as Dominika shrugged off the satin shirt, and flicked off the overhead chandelier, leaving only the soft glow of a small bedside lamp bathing her soft curves in pink light. If Putin saw the silver stiletto scars on her rib cage, he did not mention them; after all, they represented the sacrifices his vassals necessarily made to preserve the Rodina, or more precisely, his Rodina. Putin whipped the coverlet off the bed and onto the floor like a matador performing the extravagant pinwheel rebolera pass of the cape.

  Putin then wordlessly placed a red foil pack of Hussar brand condoms on the nightstand for reasons not entirely clear, since he made no move to put one on. These were produced exclusively in Russia after a government decree banned imported American Durex prophylactics, alleging the US product promoted the spread of HIV, a transparent bit of dezinformatsiya in retaliation for US sanctions. Hussar condoms were known in Moscow as Russian-roulette rubbers because of their unreliability—never mind their overwhelming odor of petroleum. This shortage of reliable prophylactics had resulted in the appearance of numerous black-market products on the street, including the infamous silver packages of condoms printed with a caricature of the president above the English logo, “I’ve Got Something to Putin You.” Samizdat, protest materials, had greatly changed since the days of Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov, thought Dominika. What does he expect me to do with this? she wondered. She slid the president’s condom package into the nightstand drawer.

  He gently pushed Egorova onto the bed on her back, and knee-walked on the mattress closer. He grabbed her ankles and spread them to either side, like haggling drumsticks apart on a roast goose. He saw her face was swollen with desire, her breasts heavy, her nipples distended. No one could fake those responses, not even a Sparrow. He mashed his hands on her breasts, then planted them on either side of her head, and loomed over her, looking at her face. Putin had bedded plenty of women since his divorce from Lyudmila Putina after thirty years of marriage—the gymnast Kabaeva, the skater Butyrskaya, the boxer Ragosina. All of them blond, all of them champion superathletes, but this Egorova was different, somehow more continental, less a Slav broodmare. She was also his new SVR Director, a cool operator who started as a Sparrow, had exposed the traitor Korchnoi, and had killed opponents in the field. She kept her counsel, knew operations, appeared discreet and loyal, and Gorelikov approved of her. Other lovers would appreciate the blue eyes, or the smile, or the charitable spirit, or even the exuberant libidinousness, but Vladimir valued other attributes. He wedged his knees between her legs.

  Putin liked to plunge straight in, right away, feeling the pinch of the dry spots, looking for the sharp intake of breath, the wince at the initial plunging penetration. He liked when they gasped like that. Then when the woman had finally wetly flowered open, he favored a measured metronome pace—no jackrabbit sprints for him, not with his judo-damaged disc—pounding his pubic bone hard against the woman’s sex to elicit huffing grunts of pleasure at each wet slap. He liked that too, their animal huffs of pleasure. He was in control. Egorova’s breasts oscillated with each shock, her head was back, mouth slightly open, breathing through her nose. Vladimir felt he was really giving her a workout—her eyes were clenched closed.

  Keep your eyes closed so you won’t have to look at his blond moon-pie face or his doughy eunuch’s chest she thought; there must be at least one albino—a cousin or nephew—in his family, the genes are there. At least there was no slobbering into her mouth. In bed with Nate, groaning into each other’s mouth while she came was ecstasy, but thank God she didn’t have to “Suck on Putin’s Tongue,” which should be the title of a song by the dissident Russian girl band Pussy Riot. And she knew Russian men of his generation did not do the other, put their mouths down there, and he had been too impatient to ask her to put him in her mouth. Thank God for Russian priggishness.

  Putin had put his legs over her spread thighs, pinning her like some animal on the veldt, showing his teeth. And Nate is on a plane to Moscow, by my own hand, and Agnes is in the closet looking at me through the louvers, fucking this man, watching his khuy splitting me apart, and I know she loves Nate too. Will she understand what is happening?

  The wrecking-ball stroke of the tsar of all the Russians never changed, just a steady rhythm devoid of all the heady variations of positions, or pillow talk, without the ecstasies of edging or beads, or what she had seen in Hong Kong with those crazy chakras. The president’s blue eyes never left her face, looking for the slightest trace of feigned reaction, which, she was sure, would equate in his mind as deception, and the equivalent of disloyalty. Fake an orgasm with Vlad, baby, and you’re off his favorites’ list. Not even Benford would have calculated that bit of tradecraft.

  At Sparrow School they intensely studied (and filmed hundreds of women experiencing) sexual climax, including the physical rhythmic contractions, the psychosomatic euphoria, and the chemical release of endorphins during the refractory period. Sparrows faking orgasm, therefore, were trained to avoid the novice’s display of histrionic screaming, head thrashing, hair tossing, and the clawing of the partner’s back. A pro Sparrow instead knew the orgasmic subtleties of a change in respiration, a stiffening of the limbs, the brief, racking shudder(s) through the body, followed by the frantic levitating off the bed if the man touched overly sensitive plumbing sooner than five minutes after. Dominika put on her Sparrow mask of pleasure-pain, as if waiting for salvation, for ecstasy, at the hands of her blue tsar. Then the impossible happened.

  It started as a little buzz in her stomach—the whisper hints of a real orgasm, not faked—that radiated to her crotch, then grew, and hovered like an antique vase on the edge of the mantelpiece after an earthquake, waiting for the next trembler that would set it wobbling over the edge to the floor below. This cannot be happening, she thought. Not with this lizard cleaning her chimney. The sensation grew; her orgasm was going to happen if she let it, and it would be a big one, it had been too long without Nate, a time of prolonged stress, and she had built up a lot of, well, kilowatts, that were ready to arc and burn someone’s eyebrows off. She no longer used her grandmother’s long-handled hairbrush, for she assumed her official residences—here and in Moscow—were filled with audio and video. Bogu moy, my God, the vase on the mantelpiece started chittering, vibrating closer to the edge.

  This cannot happen. This will not happen, she thought. Even as she began the Sparrow School routine for Putin’s benefit (No. 44, “A single snowflake will start the avalanche”), Dominika shut down her real climax, chased it away by thinking about Bratok, banished it back to her spleen, or her liver, or wherever it resided. It was easy enough to do, considering the dibbuk, the ogre who was hunched over her, nose-whistling as he plowed in and out.

  Putin was himself laboring; it was catching up to him too: the image of this unattainable Venus, head back, throat offered to him, eyes white in their sockets, was having its effect, not to mention the quite remarkable sensation of her pubococcygeus muscle actually milking his organ with the result that he fe
lt the telltale gathering in his groin, the insidious thickening of his member, and finally the leaden palsy that sweeps over the limbs at the moment of spuskat, of ejaculation. He said nothing, blinked once—his expression did not change—and disengaged the moment he was done, wiping his face, sliding off the bed, and collecting his tracksuit pants off the floor. The tsar was not one for kissy endearments, or stroking of hair, or tender embraces in the soft après-sex twilight. It was sufficient that he had deposited on his bedewed Director of Foreign Intelligence, an SVR general, the imperial spoor that marked one of the boundaries of his predatory range.

  She was outwardly languid, but breathing hard and sweaty between the breasts. Dominika’s thoughts raced madly in the postcoital asylum that was her brain. She had to get rid of the president. Agnes in the closet probably had to pee. Would the freshening land breeze prevent Benford’s USV—due in fifty minutes—from landing on the beach below? Ugh, her thighs were sticky. As a trained Sparrow, Dominika knew that a healthy man ejaculates approximately 5 milliliters (a teaspoon) of semen, which contains approximately one hundred million sperm. That meant one hundred million melon-headed Putin spermatozoa with whippy tails were all on the move inside her, intent on annexing her cervix like the Crimean peninsula. (Thank God for the Agency-issued IUD, a copper coil PARAGARD device developed [purely by coincidence] by Lockheed in 1962 during the design phase of the SR-71 Blackbird supersonic reconnaissance aircraft.) The president was saying something, and Dominika stilled the cascade of her disjointed thoughts.

  “I would like you to have this,” said Putin, sliding a long velvet box onto the end table. “Wear it tomorrow at the concert.” Tomorrow’s entertainment was to be a live performance by a hugely famous American music artist, also well-known as a vocal and committed progressive activist who, despite the absence of demonstrable human rights in Russia, found he could accept $5 million from the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation to appear at Cape Idokopas to entertain the siloviki. Dominika opened the case. Nestled inside was a priceless strand of multicolored South Sea and Tahitian pearls, each one 114 millimeters, as big as marbles, sea green, gold, ivory, and mocha, a sublime strand.

  “Mr. President, these pearls are magnificent. I couldn’t possibly . . .”

  Putin put up his hand to quiet her, took the strand from the box, and fastened it around her neck, where a separate pearl nestled heavily in the hollow of her neck. Personal gifts exchanged between governmental colleagues—Dominika’s pizda in exchange for the pearls—did not pose the slightest conflict of interest in this tsar’s Russia. “I would like you to accept them,” he said.

  Dominika fingered the pearls. “Thank you, Mr. President,” she said. “And thank you for a wonderful evening.” His blue halo glowed.

  CIA star asset DIVA saw Vladimir Vladimirovich to the door. She did not kiss him good night, with all the shining raccoon eyes of the security detail fixed on her in her silk kimono from the darkness. They shook hands instead, the feel of the president’s calluses scratching her palm.

  * * *

  * * *

  The electric whine of the golf carts speeding uphill faded. It was dead quiet inside, but the pines outside stirred noisily in the breeze. No audio bugs working tonight in the dacha, right? Dominika retrieved Agnes from the closet and they walked downstairs in silence. Dominika opened another bottle of champagne and poured two glasses, leaning on the marble island with her elbows, her head in her hands, exhausted. Forty minutes to the arrival of the USV.

  Agnes ran her fingers through her white forelock. “Half a cup of white vinegar with a teaspoon of baking powder,” she said, also leaning on the marble top. They were like two cowpokes at a bar.

  “What?” said Dominika, looking at her glass.

  Agnes shook her head. “Not to drink; it’s a homemade douche solution. I assume you’d rather not carry the president around with you all night.” Dominika laughed. She liked this Polish Cold Warrior. Thank God she could carry Dominika’s message to Benford personally. And thank God Dominika would be able to get her out of Russia in one piece. But she didn’t have vinegar and there was no time.

  “How often does this happen?” asked Agnes.

  “This is the first time,” said Dominika, trying not to sound defensive. She noted Agnes’s nonjudgmental expression. “But I expect his attention will grow more acute now that I am a member of his inner circle.”

  “It’s important not to blame yourself. No self-recrimination, not ever.”

  “I don’t dwell on anything but doing what I have to,” said Dominika.

  Agnes nodded. “In Poland, it was the same for me. I slept with half the politburo for their secrets, and with three Soviet colonels on the military advisory staff in Warsaw.”

  “I trust you sleep well at night? No nightmares?” said Dominika, impressed.

  Agnes averted her eyes. “And what does Nathaniel think about this?”

  Dominika stiffened. Here it was. “What Nate and I have together is apart from all this. What we have together is despite all this,” said Dominika, with an edge in her voice. Agnes looked down at the floor.

  “Tell me,” said Dominika, standing straight to look at Agnes squarely. “What is it exactly that you and Nate have together, if I may ask?”

  “You can rest easy, General Egorova,” said Agnes softly. “We worked together, and I love the boy, but his heart belongs to you. You have nothing to fear from me.” The two women knew the unspoken parts, which needed no further discussion.

  Agnes looked at her watch. “When does that damn boat arrive?”

  “Exactly at midnight about thirty minutes from now,” said Dominika. “You must carry back the thumb drive that explains the whole situation, MAGNIT’s identity, and Nate’s status. It’s absolutely critical that you talk to Benford or Forsyth. Even if you have to call them from a phone booth in Varna, just tell them CHALICE.”

  “Do you have something that is waterproof that I can carry the thumb drive in?” asked Agnes “I don’t want to risk getting seawater on it.” Dominika ran upstairs, dug out the thumb drive, and stuffed it into the now unwrapped Hussar condom from the bedside table drawer and tied a tight knot in the rubber. Back downstairs, she flipped it to Agnes.

  “Are you serious?” she said, holding the rubber between thumb and forefinger.

  “Don’t worry,” said Dominika. “One owner, never been driven, low mileage.”

  “Okay, now it’s waterproof. But if I don’t get the message to Benford in time, you are in grave danger, isn’t that so?” asked Agnes.

  Dominika nodded. “If you consider that the execution chamber in Butyrka Prison constitutes grave danger, then you are correct.”

  “So if something befalls you, something catastrophic, and Nate eventually is released, it leaves the field open for me, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Absolutely,” said Dominika, staring at her. “He would be all yours.” This was one cat hissing at another, establishing the relationship. Agnes’s crimson halo was steady and bright. She would not betray the cause any more than Dominika would, and they both knew it. Agnes looked again at her watch.

  “All right,” she said. “Let’s get down to the beach.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Dominika left Agnes downstairs briefly while she dressed in tights, black stretch top, and rubber-soled shoes to walk on beach rocks. She stood stock-still when she heard voices downstairs. The man’s voice was unmistakably that of Gorelikov. The words were indistinguishable but the tone was pure Anton: courtly, polite, and modulated. Agnes’s voice was also calm, but Dominika couldn’t make out her words either. Bogu moy, my God, what possible cover story could explain Agnes’s presence in the personal dacha of the Director of SVR? Old school chums? A shared interest in the decorative arts? Saving water by taking showers together? Dominika set her jaw, and walked downstairs, to confront disaster.

  “Anton, what are you doing here at this hour?” asked Dominika. “You just missed the p
resident. He left a few minutes ago after a glass of champagne.” Dominika nodded at Agnes as if to say her presence was totally natural. Gorelikov looked from Dominika to Agnes then back to Dominika. Go ahead, assume we’re pizdolizi, girlfriends.

  “I have just had the pleasure of meeting this young lady,” said Gorelikov. “She tells me she is one of the restoration experts from Warsaw who arrived this morning. In the same group as the American.” This was trouble, undiluted, unmitigated danger. Dominika felt the ember of rage alight in her gut.

  “You recall my proposal to let the American roam the compound freely so he would lead us to the mole?” said Anton. “That idea was vetoed, chiefly on your insistent recommendation, for very logical, very good reasons.” Gorelikov walked to the island and poured himself a glass of champagne. “I resolved to conduct my own modest experiment and follow this young woman who seemed to know the American. A coincidence? The other Poles stayed in the dormitory drinking complimentary vodka. Except Ms. Krawcyk, who walked for some time through the compound on a most circuitous route. And she ends up here at midnight, after the president’s visit, and now we’re all drinking champagne out of a crystal chalice.” That word. They stood looking at each other. The pistol was in the kitchen drawer, a step away. It was unlikely that Anton was armed. Not his style. Dominika knew this was the end, unless she was prepared to react violently to eliminate the threat. Whatever scaly beast lived inside her, it crouched at the entrance to the cave, talons gripping the dirt, ready to spring.

  It was Gorelikov who broke the silence, looking at Dominika. His voice was calm, his face pacific. “I suppose it is the nature of espionage that the more monstrous the betrayal, the more effective the operation. You enjoyed the confidence of your peers, the Kremlin, and the president. What is more, I trusted you. Imagine the irony. You are Director of the SVR, reporting to the Americans, even as we influence events to place MAGNIT as DCIA.” He put down his glass and smoothed his hair. “Where does that leave us? What shall we do to resolve—”