The Kremlin's Candidate: A Novel полностью

She looked at him, tilting her head. “It is not just shooting bad men; you also kiss very well, just like James Bond. I had no idea. But after tonight I can no longer call you Bratok, big brother. It would be inappropriate, after kissing you. I’ll have to call you ledenets from now on.”

“Don’t start with me,” growled Gable, blushing. “The fuck’s that mean?”

“Ledenets,” said Dominika. “Sugar candy, like your sugar britches.” Gable blushed some more, and Dominika laughed, slid over to him, kissed his cheek, and mussed up his crew cut with her fingers. He wouldn’t look at her, which she found endearing.

A slovenly waiter sidled up to the table with the bar bill, having watched the old guy and Chesty McThrust necking in the corner. Gable glowered at him. “What’re you looking at?” he said. Dominika was red in the face from holding in laughter.

“Nothin,’ ” said the waiter. “No law against cradle snacking.” Dominika clapped a hand over her mouth, eyes streaming.

Benford sat behind the ruin of his desk in the Counterintelligence Division at CIA Headquarters. A three-tray inbox bursting with papers on one side of the desk was missing a foot and tilted dangerously. A dozen three-ring binders were stacked on the other corner of the desk, creating a redoubt from behind which Benford scowled at the two people sitting in his office. Benford was short and slightly paunchy, and this morning his hair looked as if it had been tugged on like a salt-and-pepper beret. His big brown cow’s eyes passed over the two officers sitting in front of him and settled on a sepia-toned framed photograph of James Jesus Angleton, the legendary mole hunter whose fanatic belief that the Soviets were running moles inside CIA had paralyzed Langley’s Russian operations for a decade. The photograph of Angleton, like a number of other objects in Benford’s office, tilted drastically. No amount of straightening would keep the photo frame squared off—every morning it would be slanting again, confirming for Benford his private belief that the spirit of James Jesus resided in his office and knocked the photo askew every night, which suited him just fine.

The two officers sitting in torn bucket chairs with wobbly casters waited. One was Lucius Westfall, the precocious analyst from DI, and Benford’s new aide. In the other chair slouched the laconic technical officer Hearsey, whom Benford liked and trusted. “Show me what you have done,” said Benford. “Time is of the essence. We need to dust her phone tomorrow night.”

Hearsey dug into a zippered pouch, took out half a dozen black-and-white photographs, a large tablet, and what looked like an antique perfume atomizer with a black rubber bulb and an oval glass receptacle. “The photographs are of the various items we used to test adhesion of the compound,” said Hearsey. “Results are what we expected. Fibrous material—clothing, floor mats, bedclothes—retain the material better and for a longer period of time. Other surfaces like plastic, glass, or metal are not as good.”

“The item DIVA will pass the illegal is a cell phone,” said Benford. “It’s our only choice.” Hearsey nodded.

“Yeah, we figured that,” he said. “So we bought a cover she can slip over her phone.” He slid a photograph across the desk to Benford. “It’s made of stretchy silicone that turns out to be sticky as hell, and actually attracts the compound like a frigging lint roller.” He held the tablet up, tapped the corner of the screen twice, and the image of a cell phone in a glass laboratory tray appeared in normal overhead light. “We doused the lights and hit it with ultraviolet.” The cell phone in the next image glowed a luminous green. Benford looked up from the tablet.

“Why green?” asked Benford.

“Why not?” said Hearsey. “The Soviets used luminol and nitrophenyl pentadien. They added hydrochloric acid that turned their compound red under UV light. We didn’t want to mix the same chems, so we used tetrahydro-beta-carboline, the stuff that makes a scorpion carapace glow green under UV. We have a chemist named Bunny Devore in the lab. She loves scorpions, knows all about them, keeps them as pets.” Benford gave Hearsey a look like bent rebar.

“Hearsey,” said Benford, “I am puzzled by why you think I would be even remotely interested in the chemistry, or about this woman and her unsavory interest in predatory arachnids. All I care about is whether the compound is undetectable. Our agent’s life depends on it.” Hearsey held up the antique atomizer.

“Spray a target object about two feet away and let the droplets settle evenly. Don’t worry. It’s invisible; you can’t feel it, you can’t taste it, you can’t smell it. We dissolved the chemicals in methanol so we’re actually spraying a light mist on an object, not like dusting something with fingerprint powder. It fluoresces like crazy under UV light in the ten- to four-hundred-nanometer range, and also shows up on a gas chromatograph.”