“We’ll give it some time, to insulate DIVA, then go up to New York with fifty UV flashlights and bag us an illegal,” said Benford.
After New York City—even including Staten Island—feeling the energy, and prosperity, and freedom of America, Dominika had returned to Moscow, which in comparison she now found sluggish, gray, and sad. Back in her office, she attacked her in-box and read through the backlog of SVR global counterintelligence developments. Overseas rezidenturi reported three separate recruitments—in Venezuela, Indonesia, and Spain. The Signals Intelligence Agency, the FAO, had developed access to an encrypted military communications channel in the Baltics. The rezidentura in Washington, DC, reported the beginning of discreet developmental contact between an SVR intelligence officer operating under nonofficial business cover and a Congresswoman from California. The legislator was showing herself to be amenable to a lucrative consulting contract on international development policy and multilateral foreign assistance. The Washington rezident cautiously predicted that an eventual recruitment would be based on money—the representative had previously been implicated in a House banking scandal involving check kiting—and was judged to be corrupt and venal.
These were important intelligence tidbits, but she could not report them to Langley for lack of functioning SRAC equipment. Last weekend, she had buried the SRAC gear damaged in the fight with the street toughs in a hole in Vorontsovsky Park, ten kilometers outside the ring road southeast of Moscow, on the forested grounds of the abandoned eighteenth-century neo-Renaissance Vorontsov-Dashkov Manor. It would be decades before the excavations for the high-rise developments inexorably spreading out from Moscow would reach this far, and by then the city might well be renamed Putingrad, with homeless zombies roaming the dystopian suburbs. By then she hoped she would be lying on a sun-drenched veranda somewhere tropical, sipping rum while Nate painted her toenails Island Pink and, maybe, she dreamed, with a little girl at their feet chattering to her dolls in Russian and English. Would my children be synesthetes? What would Nate say after all these years of keeping the secret? Would we be happy together? Will it ever happen?
Dominika instead minutely printed her report in pencil on both sides of two sheets of water-soluble paper—it would dissolve to mush instantly on contact with liquid—and rolled the sheets into a tight tube. She unscrewed the bottom of a clunky Russian Pukat-brand thermos bottle and slid the paper into the narrow space between the interior glass vacuum chamber and the plastic outer case. In an emergency, throwing or whacking the thermos against a hard surface would shatter the inner-glass chamber, flooding the space between the outer shell, rendering the paper the consistency of ovsyanaya kasha, Russian oatmeal. If you had to use this prehistoric destruction device (Nate had showed it to her in Finland), you already were probably stopped at the roadblock about to be carted off, but it was effective. The personal meet was in two days, and pray God they’re sending someone smart. She fantasized it would be Nate coming out of the shadows to wrap her up and kiss her forever in the fog-shrouded woods.
Then the inevitable courtly call from Gorelikov, welcome back, congratulations on the meet with SUSAN, and the president would see them this afternoon at his Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow in the Odintsovo District on the Rublyovo-Uspenskoye Highway. The yellow mansion, nestled among pines, with its classical peaked façade and four Corinthian columns, seemed small and modest when compared with the regal apartments of the Kremlin. They were shown into a living room of pale blue with peach-colored satin curtains, sat at a small antique table, and listened to a clock ticking from a corner bookcase across the room. Anton Gorelikov was stylish as usual, in a tailored dark suit and starched tape-stripe shirt. Delicate ceramic cuff links in blue and green showed at his sleeves. The blue halo about his head and shoulders was like a diadem, and glowed in exultation.
They were served tea in elegant podstakanniki glasses emblazoned with the double-headed eagle of the new Russian Federation, ironically similar to the bygone imperial eagle of the Romanovs and the tsar. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, thought Dominika, The more things change, the more they stay the same. A young aide in a light-blue suit stood against the wall near the door, eerily blending into the blue paneling like some color-adaptive rain forest lizard, so that only his face was visible and seemed to be floating in the air. Dominika reflected that disembodied heads floating in the air seemed normal in a Putin residence.
The little gold and ormolu clock chimed eleven, and at that instant the door opened and the president walked in. How does he do that? thought Dominika. Was he outside the door, hand on the knob, waiting for that infernal clock to chime? Or was the clock connected to an unseen power source and made to chime as the president entered?
Vladimir Putin was, as ever, dressed in a navy suit, white shirt, and trademark aquamarine tie. His blue halo likewise was pulsing with energy. Why shouldn’t it be? He had consolidated his hold on Crimea and secured his Black Sea naval base; the rearguard action in Eastern Ukraine kept Kiev off balance; alliances with Damascus and Tehran were paying dividends politically, and he was a major player once again in the Great Game. Oil. Munitions. Uranium (ROSATOM even owned 20 percent of America’s mined uranium). And there was more.
Activniye meropriyatiya. Active measures, political subversion, propaganda, media manipulation, forgeries, and assassination. Gorelikov’s campaigns in Europe and the United States were shaking the trees of NATO, the EU, and those upstart pricks in the Baltics. That maniac Kadyrov kept Chechnya quiet, and his own presidential domestic approval rating was holding steady at 85 percent. Gorelikov was conceiving new mayhem, and Egorova was a new talent, a steady hand in the field. The president wondered how steady her hand would be in bed. He had checked: no husband or significant other, a former Sparrow, and the resident expert in honey traps. He was sure Egorova would figure into his further plans, especially with his gift today. The president nodded to Gorelikov and Dominika, and sat down. An aide put a square velvet box on the table in front of the president, and read from a sheet of paper.
“Medal ordenia «Za zaslugi pered Otetchestvom» I Stepeni,” he bellowed. “Medal for the Order ‘for Merit to the Fatherland,’ first-class. Awarded to citizens of the Russian Federation for outstanding achievements in various fields of industry, construction, science, education, health, culture, transport, and other areas of work.” Other areas of work, thought Dominika.
The president opened the velvet box and stood. Dominika and Gorelikov also stood, and Putin presented the box to Gorelikov. Nestled on a bed of blue satin was a starched claret ribbon with a tooled hanging gold medallion with the ubiquitous double eagle. Order for Merit to the Fatherland. Putin stepped up and pinned a small red ribbon bisected by a single yellow stripe to the lapel of Gorelikov’s suit. Gorelikov bowed slightly and shook the president’s hand. The aide unobtrusively reached over and took the velvet box, softly snapped the lid shut, and left the room. In the nature of commendations for clandestine missions, the award would be stored in the Kremlin—Gorelikov would not be allowed to hang the medal in his office or take it home. All he could do was finger the rosette in his lapel and bask in the knowledge of his accomplishment.