“Okay. So the FEEBS check after hours the offices of the leading literary magazines in Manhattan—how many of them can there be—and see whose spaces glow under a black light,” said Gable.
Dominika held up a cautionary finger. “There is some need for attention with metka. The KGB had difficulty with overcontamination. In a week, SUSAN will shake many hands, distribute memos, and conduct business lunches in restaurants. In several months, everyone in publishing in New York will be covered in the stuff, not to mention half the talent agents in the United States.”
“No one’s gonna worry about them,” said Gable, finishing his beer.
* * *
* * *
Iosip Blokhin was walking down Hudson Street in Chelsea, head pointed down, fixated on the sidewalk, bulling forward without apparent regard for other pedestrians, lampposts, or garbage cans. He did not care about the incongruity of wearing a massive pair of wraparound fisherman’s sunglasses at ten o’clock in the evening, and he ignored the occasional stares from amused passersby. He looked like a sightless wrestler without the tapping white cane. The glasses were in fact developed by Line T to detect faint residual traces of nuclear isotopes in order to track a target at undetectable long ranges. Blokhin was tracking Dominika, on the secret express orders of Major Shlykov, and unbeknownst to Anton Gorelikov. Shlykov had instructed Blokhin to begin tailing “Miss SVR tits,” after her Staten Island meeting (even Shlykov would not meddle with that) but continuously thereafter until they departed New York. Shlykov wanted Blokhin to ensure that the SVR would not steal the MAGNIT case, and that Dominika was not meeting with officers from the New York rezidentura preparatory to claiming primacy, or engaging in any number of bureaucratic maneuvers to usurp the case. Shlykov stipulated to Blokhin that Egorova was not to know about the surveillance—he would not risk the wrath of Gorelikov—so coverage was to be invisible.
“She’s supposed to be good on the street, so let her go if you can’t cover her discreetly,” Shlykov had told Blokhin. “Do not let her see you.”
The Spetsnaz gorilla picked his teeth. “What if I see her doing something interesting?” he said quietly.
Shlykov had looked at the scarred forehead. “Like what?” he said.
“Like meeting someone I don’t recognize,” said Blokhin.
Shlykov looked him in the eyes. “It could be an officer from the rezidentura.”
“Perhaps. But if it’s not someone I know, it could be a double deal. Maybe even on Gorelikov’s orders.”
“What are you saying?” said Shlykov.
Blokhin looked at his hands. “Egorova is not yet Director of SVR, and she is already causing problems. When they give her a star she’ll be untouchable.”
Shlykov turned away from Blokhin to shuffle some papers. “You already have one problem to eliminate.”
“Why leave a second one to fester?” asked Blokhin.
“Only if you are one hundred percent. No traces.”
“Chemu byt, tomu ne minovat,” said Blokhin, “things that were meant to be will happen, no matter what.”
With Shlykov’s brevet to operate against Egorova, Blokhin waited for Dominika’s departure for Staten Island, entered her hotel room, and using a tool resembling a grommet punch, sunk a pinhead-sized disk of the medical isotope Palladium-103—used for cancer radiation treatment—into the leather heels of the three pairs of shoes in her little closet and returned them exactly as he had found them, after an appraising sniff at each shoe. The tiny Palladium tags in her shoe heels would leave luminous orange dots viewable by special gamma glasses on pavement, flat carpet, marble, or wood, but would be scattered and obscured in leaves, grass, or sand. Palladium-103, moreover, had been chosen as a surveillance tool for its rapid decay rate, which would ensure a target would not inadvertently discover the tracking technique. The orange dots therefore would just support “over-the-horizon” surveillance but had a tendency to dissipate in adverse weather or on less than ideal surfaces. Stronger, more pervasively radioactive isotopes had been ruled out when tests on Gulag prisoners resulted in an unacceptable rate of bone marrow cancers and foot amputations.
Blokhin was trying to follow Egorova in Chelsea from her hotel using “trailing-bread-crumb” surveillance but the brisk temperatures and a light mist were dissipating the tag marks. When he lost the trail for the third time, he crossed the street to see if he could pick up the trail, but after another thirty minutes, he gave up. There were two more days, and perhaps something would develop.
* * *
* * *
As Dominika sat in the little bar next to Gable, her face blanched and a shot of ice went up her spine. She saw through the bar’s far window Blokhin’s thick body walking on the sidewalk. In five seconds he would be past the window directly opposite their banquette table. All he had to do would be to look inside—the interior was brighter than the street outside—and he would see Dominika sitting alone with a man in a city she didn’t know, had never visited before and conclude only one thing. Spion. Spy. She grabbed Gable’s arm in a panic; the banquette trapped her, and she couldn’t slip under the table. She pointed with her chin and whispered “Blokhin, outside.”
Gable didn’t hesitate, and he moved so fast that Dominika felt his arms around her shoulders in a twisting clinch that had his broad back to the window and Dominika totally screened before she felt his lips on hers. “Move,” Gable growled into her mouth, and she ran one hand through his crew cut. His arms were like steel around her, and his kiss was dry and firm. He smelled like soap and leather. She opened one eye and looked out the window and saw that Blokhin was gone. “Clear?” whispered Gable.
“Give it ten seconds more,” said Dominika, giggling, her cheek against Gable’s. He let her go and sat back, looking at her ruefully.
Dominika knew there was not a thought of sex in the kiss. Gable had reacted as quickly as he would have drawn his pistol on a gomer with an AK-47 in a Beirut alleyway—he just used what was available: an enveloping smooch. But Gable for all his gruffness was chaste to her, always had been. Nate had told her once that a young Gable had been married when he joined the Agency a million years ago to a beauty who was on her way to becoming a first-rate concert pianist. But the Life in the Third World claimed more of Gable than his bride was willing to give, and his frequent absences, the constant moving, and having to boil the tap water to kill the Giardia parasites was too much. She left Gable the morning that F-sharp above middle C wouldn’t play, and she lifted the lid on the baby grand and found a horned puff adder asleep on the felt hammers. Gable resolved to patch things up, but a year later she died in a crash on an icy highway four miles from home. Gable was in Peru facilitating the kinetic retirement of a local drug dealer who had brought a knife to a gunfight when they told him. He never married again, but Nate had whispered that her name was Moira—he never talked about her, except once to Nate. That’s what the Life leaves you, Nate had said to Dominika during one of his harangues about defecting.
Gable’s face was serious over the near miss with Blokhin. “Is this gonna be trouble?” he asked. “Was he tracking your phone?” Dominika shook her head.