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.
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
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.
“I did not carry the phone today. I made sure I was black before I met you tonight, absolutely, but yes, I think he was looking for me. He knows where my hotel is, he could have done a long tail from there and was just casting blind along my general route to see if he could pick up my scent. We call it
