The Kremlin's Candidate: A Novel полностью

As he left the room, sliding his balaclava back over his head, he looked at his handiwork: Only one thing missing, he thought. Colonel Dominika Egorova should be lying on the carpet alongside Repina, staring at the ceiling. D’yavol, the Devil. He’d tailed her after her return from meeting the illegal, but had lost her too easily—the isotope device was too weak. Shlykov said she was good on the street, and she was, better than anyone he’d encountered before, but she was a spy, after all. He knew she’d eventually make a mistake, and then Blokhin would crush her, like stepping on a snail in the garden.

BLOKHIN’S KOREAN BARBECUED RIBS

Rinse flanken-style ribs in cold water. In a separate bowl, mix soy sauce, brown sugar, rice wine, sesame oil, black pepper, and cayenne. Combine onion, garlic, pears, and ginger, and process to a smooth purée, then add to the soy mixture. Add toasted sesame seeds and a splash of water to thin. Pour marinade over ribs and toss to cover. Chill overnight, then bring to room temperature and discard marinade. Grill or broil until caramelized. Serve on lettuce leaves with ssamjang paste, pickled peppers, kimchi, cucumber salad, and steamed rice.

11

Pitch and Roll

Director Alexander Larson owned a Georgian row house on P Street NW in DC, but on the weekends he regularly escaped to his late father-in-law’s five-bedroom ranch house near Edgewater, Maryland, on the banks of Pooles Gut, a narrow tidal creek that emptied into the South River below Annapolis, one of the hundreds of tributaries that made up the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Down the sweeping lawn from the house, there was a fixed pier alongside a paved boat-launching ramp. An extended garage behind the house contained two small boats on trailers: one a twenty-five-foot black rigid inflatable boat (RIB) with a center steering console, a Decca radar mounted on an aluminum frame aft, and two 115 hp Mercury outboards, beasts that could push the RIB along at forty knots. The RIB was used by the DCIA’s protective detail and had a waterproof locker just forward of the steering console in which were stored two .223-caliber Colt M4A1 carbines.

The second vessel at the back of the garage was Larson’s pride and joy: a seventeen-foot Lyman Runabout built in 1961, with a restored lapstrake hull, graceful flared bow, and mahogany spray rails and brightwork. The distinctive angled windshield and the jaunty Lyman pennant on the bow marked the Runabout as a classic, but not as much as the 1955 forest-green, teardrop Johnson Seahorse 25 hp outboard, an antique refurbished to flawless working order, and perfect for running the smooth-riding hull ahead of frequent Chesapeake squalls at twenty knots, or slow trolling for striped bass at nine knots. Two Shimano fishing rods were in beckets along the gunwales with expensive Tekota trolling reels. In a seat locker under the aft banquette were two tackle boxes with lures, jigs, and spoons.

Alex Larson was not a fanatical fisherman, but he enjoyed solitary time out on his boat, and loved preparing striped bass à la Fiorentina, the way he had first tasted it in Rome. His wife did not enjoy going out into the middle of the bay, which could get quite rough and make the round-bottomed Lyman pitch and roll like a floating ninepin, especially in a beam sea at lazy trolling speed. Simon Benford had once reluctantly agreed to go out with Alex, but the plunging and yawing made him green, and he detested handling live bait, so he vowed the next time to stay ashore and drink Larson’s scotch while his friend caught dinner.

At 0600 hours on a crisp fall day, the cloudless eastern sky was going pink as the two agents of DCIA’s protective detail backed both trailers into the green water of the creek. They knew Larson would be walking down from the house in fifteen minutes with a thermos of coffee, a flask of bourbon (which they knew he hid from his security guys), and a roast-beef sandwich wrapped in foil made by his housekeeper. The agents today were Bennett and Scott, each with five years’ experience on the detail and more than ten years’ time in Special Forces. They had examined the undersides of both boats for limpet mines on the keel, checked the lockers on the Lyman, and started the Johnson outboard to let it warm up. Before the Old Man came down from the house, they snapped 30-round magazines into their M4s, charged and snapped the bolts closed, safed the weapons, and put them back into the footlocker. They both additionally carried 17-round, 9mm Glock 17s in Frontier Gunleather CC1 holsters under their sweaters and foul-weather jackets—they knew from experience that once out on the bay, it could get cold and wet in a hurry. They weren’t experienced watermen, but they knew the basics.