“Blyad, whore, did you hear?” said Number Two, coming in front left.
Dominika stepped slightly right as Number One reached out to grab her. He smelled sour—urine, beer, tobacco, and pigsty. She covered the top of his right hand with her left hand and bent his wrist down and back. He howled as Dominika pivoted with him to the left, blocking Number Two, then continued pivoting to swing Number One, on his toes with pain, into Number Three in a tangle of legs and arms. She held on to Number One’s wrist and turned him again into Number Two, foreheads cracking together. Number Three was coming in fast, his arm raised above his head. Knife. Leaning back, Dominika turned Number One into the line of the downward slash. The blade flensed down the side of Number One’s shaved head and cut his ear off at the root. Dominika let the bellowing Number One drop to the ground holding his head, his neck black with spurting blood. She instantly stepped forward with a corkscrew punch, driving the three keys clamped between her right knuckles into the right eye of Number Three, feeling ocular fluid spurt over the back of her hand. She raked the keys out of the eye socket, across his nose, and into his left eye, a glancing blow. Maybe he’d still be able to see out of that eye later. Number Three collapsed shrieking Suka, covering his bloody face with trembling hands.
It had taken three seconds, and two of them were on the pavement writhing amid gouts of spattered blood, but Number Two was almost on her, and she knew if he knocked her down, all three would swarm her, maddened by their pain, and slam her skull against the concrete until they saw gray brains in the streetlight. Without thinking, Dominika dipped her shoulder as she grabbed the leather handles of her purse, and swung it in a flat arc into the left temple of Number Two. The four pounds of steel-bodied SRAC components sewn into the bottom of the tote bag hit skull bone with a flat metallic sound. Number Two wobbled, and sat down with a thump, cross-eyed.
Breathing hard, Dominika looked at them on the sidewalk, one facedown and unconscious, the other curled up and whimpering, the third still sitting up, staring but not seeing. These three roaches had come close to ruining everything, to exposing her, to sending her to the basement room in Butyrka Prison with the pine-log wall designed to catch ricochets, and the drains in the sloping, brown-stained cement floor placed to sluice away the fluids of the executed prisoners. Five years of unimaginable risks, of narrow escapes, of precious intelligence—measured in linear feet—passed to the Americans, of countless meetings in countless safe houses, only to be nearly unseated by three besotted gopniki two blocks from her apartment. This was another charming part of her Russia too, these louts who were as indolent, and cruel, and predatory as Putin’s inner circle sitting in the jeweled halls of the Kremlin. They were the same cancer. She risked her life, and tonight they had almost ended it. She could be in a freezing cell awash with sewage, or dead and staring out of a cardboard coffin with a cloth tied under her jaw to keep her mouth closed, these animals . . .
In a rage, Dominika stepped up to the dazed punk, set her feet, and swung her stiffened arm under his chin and into his throat—a Spetsnaz killing stroke—fracturing the hyoid bone and rupturing the larynx. He fell backward and began gasping, eyes staring at the top of the trees.
“Ublyudok, bastard,” said Dominika, watching his legs jerk.
She was still shaking so badly three minutes later that the sticky apartment key skittered over the lock before she could open the door with two hands. She left the lights off except for a small lamp near the front door. Her skirt was spotted with something dark and wet. The SRAC message downloaded to her laptop blinked once, flashed green for two seconds—she read the word “Istanbul”—then it went black, with the words “error 5788” appearing on the screen. Chyort, damn it! The gopnik’s head apparently was harder than the components. Now she would have to trigger a cringingly dangerous personal meeting with an officer from Moscow Station—Why couldn’t Nate come to meet her?—to exchange the damaged equipment for a new SRAC set.
She left her clothes in a pile on the floor, kicked off her shoes, and looked at herself in the mirror. The skin between her knuckles had been torn by the keys, and her hand throbbed. The little lamp cast a shadow over the curves of her body. Five years was a long time. Her figure was softer now, her rib cage didn’t show, and her breasts were fuller. Thank God her stomach was still flat, and her hips had not spread to all points of the compass. The French bikini wax had been a silly impulse, but she was getting used to it. She was satisfied that her legs and ankles were slim.
Looking at herself suddenly deformed into an out-of-body dream; the image in the mirror was someone else. An unbearable melancholy washed over her. She stifled a sob, momentarily overwhelmed by her situation, by tonight’s danger, and by her whole existence as a spy. Look at you, she thought. What are you doing? Who are you? A ridiculous fanatic fighting alone in the dark, overwhelming dangers arrayed against you, the odds of surviving slim, your friends far away, separated from the man you love. How long will you last? How did her mentor General Korchnoi—he spied for CIA for fourteen years—summon the will and determination to keep going? Dominika blinked as tears slid down the cheeks of the revenant in the mirror. It wasn’t her; it was someone else crying.
CIULAMA DE PUI—IOANA’S CHICKEN WITH MUSHROOM SUPRêME SAUCE
Cut chicken into small pieces, boil in salted water with rough-cut carrot and onion until tender. Make a Suprême Sauce by melting butter, then stir in flour, add chicken stock, egg yolk, and sour cream to make a velvety sauce. Sauté thin-sliced mushrooms in butter, add to the sauce, and finish cooking without boiling. Add chicken pieces, chopped parsley, season, and simmer. Serve with Russian mashed potatoes. (Mix mashed potatoes with sour cream, heavy cream, egg yolks, dill, and butter. Spread half of potatoes on greased pan, layer with caramelized onions, cover with remaining potatoes, and top with sour cream. Bake uncovered.)
7
Polestar of Humanity
Two aides escorted her down the brilliantly lighted corridor, while Dominika composed her features for a last-minute meeting with Gorelikov, probably routine, but she always half expected the room would be full of security goons gathered there to arrest her. The life of a spy.
She was on the third floor, residential wing of the Senate building, where Lenin and Stalin both had maintained comfortable apartments and where Stalin’s second wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, in 1932 committed suicide. With a revolver probably, thought Dominika, after she realized she was married to the messenger of Lucifer on Earth. An aide knocked on a plain wooden door, waited a beat, and then indicated that she should go in. Anton Gorelikov stood from behind the desk in his Kremlin office, a corner room on the north angle of the three-sided Senate building. The office was spacious, lined with bookcases, and richly carpeted in deep red. An ornate crystal chandelier hung from the center of the ceiling. Gorelikov’s desk was littered with papers and folders in assorted colors. How many other operations are you hatching around the world? Dominika thought. Today Gorelikov wore a blue shadow plaid suit by Kiton, a light-blue shirt by Mastai Ferretti, and black knit Gitman Bros. tie. He was more elegant than a London banker—no match for the damp tubs of suet on the Kremlin Security Council.