The penultimate day in New York. The meeting with SUSAN was concluded, there were no messages from Gorelikov in the Kremlin, and the fund-raising event with Russian dissident Daria Repina was at six o’clock that evening at the Hilton on Sixth Avenue. Dominika made a big show of meeting Blokhin in the morning and walking around Manhattan with him. They had all day. She planned to slip away after the Repina event and meet once more with Gable to spritz her phone with spy dust and emplace it in SUSAN’s Manhattan dead drop site, an unknown pocket cemetery on a residential side street. She wouldn’t have to accompany Blokhin after six o’clock: they were returning separately the morning after, Dominika through Paris and Bucharest, Blokhin through Berlin.
Blokhin wore a jacket with all three buttons tightly secured, bumpkin-style. He was stiff and formal as they walked, affecting not to look at the wonders of the city: the traffic, the people, and the display windows, as cool as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. But Dominika saw him sneaking looks, and she wondered how his Spetsnaz-wired brain was processing the maelstrom of wealth and industry swirling before his impassive face. He walked well-balanced, with his arms at his sides, and his wood-clamp hands hanging loose, free and ready for action. His forehead gleamed in the sunlight. Dominika darted glances at his ruddy profile; he could have been a farmer or an outdoor laborer. Yet the peasant’s face reflected God-knows-what horrors. He did not speak to her, and Dominika elected not to make small talk with him. What would they say to each other in any event? Look how tall the buildings are? How much is that in rubles? What did you use to hang the Afghan president’s mistress off the palace balcony?
Dominika was taller by a head, but Blokhin’s body was thick, no, dense, like stone. From behind there was a small bald spot visible through his thinning hair, but he combed his hair to cover as much of it as he could. They were walking on one of the avenues, moving through the crush of pedestrians, when a lanky street person blocked their path, calling Dominika “honey,” and asking for a dollar. Dominika had seen this several times before and knew there was no danger but Blokhin, perhaps not understanding—he had told Dominika he spoke no English—in a gliding step put his forearm across the beggar’s chest and swept him aside as if walking through a field of ripe wheat. The beggar caught himself, and took a step back toward Blokhin, but the irresistible force of the shove transmitted some jungle warning to avoid confrontation with this cat, and he let them go, shouting obscenities as they walked away.
“You show restraint on the street,” barked Dominika to Blokhin in Russian. “We are here in undocumented alias. Back in Moscow you can kill whomever you want. But not here, not when you’re with me.” Blokhin looked at Dominika as if deciding whether to bite, then looked past her and said obozhdat, wait, and pulled open the door to a bookstore, and went in, Dominika on his heels. The store was enormous, with three floors of books on shelves and tables and people reading in overstuffed chairs, the air laced with the aroma of brewed coffee from a café on the second level. Dominika watched Blokhin scan a store directory, squinting like a Visigoth reading a milepost on the road to Rome, until he walked to the fiction section and found Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, which he looked at closely, riffling the pages.
“You have no English,” said Dominika. “How can you read it?” Blokhin looked at her blankly. “There are editions in the original Russian you could read instead,” she said.
“I want to learn English. I will teach myself,” he said, as casually as if he had declared “I will learn to bake bread.”
Blokhin’s black bat wings spread, then folded. He was lying about something, she decided; perhaps he read English. “Why this book?” said Dominika. It was quite amazing, this squat commando gripping the paperback like a pistol, determined to start reading.
“I have been told about this work. It is a great Russian novel.” Told by whom? Sitting around the Spetsnaz squad room honing bayonets, discussing Dostoyevsky? “It is about permissible murder in pursuit of a higher purpose,” said Blokhin with surprising lucidity. Something you would feel at home with, no doubt, thought Dominika. She left him gazing at the books, left the bookstore, walked to a shoe store three doors down, and began looking at strappy sandals on display. She meant to conduct a little street test: How would Blokhin react when he looked up from his books to find Dominika gone? Was he here in New York to keep tabs on her?
“Do you like this style?” asked Blokhin, suddenly behind her, making her jump. He was slipping a pair of sunglasses into his jacket pocket, and he took the sandal from her and inspected it, rubbing his dill-pickle fingers over the leather. How had he found her so quickly with hundreds of shops fifty meters from the bookstore? She’d have to double-check her status before meeting Gable tonight. Sergeant Blokhin was someone with secret skills, and not just cutting throats. A copy of his novel was in a small plastic bag.
Blokhin then declared himself hungry and insisted they go into a Korean restaurant for barbecued ribs, which he had consumed in great quantities during past joint-commando exercises in North Korea. Blokhin inhaled the gleaming ribs accompanied by mounds of vermillion kimchi, green onion and cucumber salad, and ssamjang, a spicy paste smeared on accompanying lettuce leaves.
Blowing garlic like a contented whale, Blokhin next dived into a sprawling sporting-goods store and spent an hour looking at wire saws, camp hatchets, machetes, and survival knives. His eyes said everything: he expertly appraised each item as a weapon, a killing instrument. “This is an ingenious tool,” said Blokhin, running the teeth of a wire saw lightly over his fingertips. “Loop this over a branch, pull it back and forth with these handles, and it cuts wood like a regular pila, a saw.” Ingenious indeed, thought Dominika. A throat would cut easier than a pine bough.
“You won’t be allowed on the plane with any of this stuff,” Dominika told him in Russian. “Cable the rezidentura to pouch one back for you, or two: one for Major Shlykov as well. I’m sure his trees need pruning too.” Blokhin ignored the comment and put the saw down. Dominika wanted to create just enough enmity between them so that she could feign mounting dislike and impatience, and leave the Repina reception early to rendezvous with Gable.
“It would be wise not to make an enemy of the major,” said Blokhin softly, several minutes later, back out on the street.
“Why is that?” said Dominika.
“Because then you would become my enemy,” he said, the tips of his black airfoils extending slightly behind his head, like a cobra flaring his neck hood in threat display.
* * *
* * *
The Grand Ballroom of the Hilton was a colossal space, lighted by chandeliers and triple-gilded lanterns in recessed circular alcoves high on the walls. A crowd of a thousand people filled row upon row of chairs lined up almost to the back of the room. Loggia levels on either side had been reserved for press; television cameras on tripods bristled and television lights bathed the raised stage, framed with a royal purple velour border and leg curtains. A solitary lecturn and microphone stood center stage. Blokhin wanted to sit in the front row to listen to Repina’s presentation, but Dominika refused, preferring instead an aisle seat halfway back, near the exit doors. Blokhin argued that closer was better until Dominika sat down where she wanted, and refused to budge.
“The seats up close will be in sight of those cameras. You wish to be on the evening news?” Blokhin did not respond but sat down next to her.