Palace of Treason (56 page)

Dominika was free of the grimy-necked court of oligarchs at Strelna, free of the sucking noises as brittle-haired women cleaned their teeth after dinner with silver toothpicks, free of midnight caresses by her pajama-clad president. She landed at Charles de Gaulle International Airport on the first morning flight from Saint Petersburg and called CIA’s SENTRY number, repeating her designator and telling the operator she was in Paris, the name of her hotel, and her newly purchased cell-phone number. It usually took Nate forty-eight hours to get there.

The last time Dominika stayed at the Hotel Jeanne d’Arc in the Marais she had been dragged to the cobbles and kicked by a long-haired
voyou,
a thug in a leather jacket, sent by Zyuganov to damage her. Dominika remembered the flat
click
of her lipstick gun as she put an expanding bullet into the chest of the second black-jack-wielding attacker. Now she had two such single-shot electric pistols in her purse—the only weapons she could travel with on such short notice—with real lip gloss inside each. One Russian red, the other nude pink. One for TRITON, the other for Zyuganov.

So now Dominika the Sparrow becomes Dominika the assassin, Vladimir’s whore killer. This is totally perverted,
she thought, looking at the malevolent little tubes on the hotel bed, the infernal instruments of her Service. She had killed men before, to save Nate and Gable, but this was different. Would Zyuganov be armed, traveling as he had, on the run? As much as she despised him, as much as
he
wanted to destroy
her,
could she press the lipstick tube against his temple and press the button? Could she contrive to walk past TRITON on the street, let him go by, then pivot and shoot him in the back of the head? She thought the answer was yes, she would kill to protect herself or Nate. She would be destroying everything she hated. But at what cost?

The rage against the
siloviki,
the bosses, against her Service, and against the blue-eyed judo man with the rolling gait, sustained her. Was her soul worth the spectacular access she would gain for her friends at CIA? Would Nate—wry, clever, passionate Nate—tell her nothing was worth losing her soul, not all the secrets in the world. Would he?

Udranka was in the corner of the room looking out the window. Why don’t you ask him? she said.

There was a soft knock at the door. Dominika went to the door, slipped the chain, and opened it, keeping a lipstick down by her side. Nathaniel stood there, dressed in a light outer coat, collar up, hands in his pockets. His purple halo filled the corridor, then rushed into her room, swirling around her. He smiled at her, then noticed the lipstick in her hand.

“Is that what I think it is? Didn’t the chambermaid bring enough towels?” Nate whispered in Russian. Dominika shook her head.

“
Parshiviy,
jackass, I was just thinking about you,” said Dominika. She pulled him inside, closed the door, and tossed the lipstick onto the bed. She threw her arms around his neck and they kissed; her head swam with the feel of his lips, with the feel of his arms around her. They parted and looked silently at each other, then Nate put his hands in her hair and brought their mouths together again. Dominika pulled away.

“Stop for a minute. I want to tell you Hannah saved my life the night she died,” said Dominika, blinking quickly to stop her welling eyes.

“I think I know,” said Nate.

“She led surveillance away from me; I was a hundred meters away,” said Dominika. “They got excited and hit her with a car, probably by accident.”

“I went to the funeral in New Hampshire,” said Nate. “The family was devastated.” His eyes were shiny too. They looked at each other, and she telegraphed “I know about her” and he telegraphed back “I’m sorry” and they didn’t say any more about it, for Hannah’s sake.

“How did you get here so quickly?” Dominika asked.

“We knew Angevine was heading here the night he escaped. Gable and I have been in Paris for two days,” said Nate. “Benford arrived last night. We’re tearing the town apart. We’ve been sending SRAC messages to you nonstop.”

“After delivering the general at the beach, I was stuck at Strelna. Is he safe?”

“A pain in the ass, but safe,” said Nate. “Benford was seriously exercised that you disregarded instructions not to use the exfil plan. Now you have no contingency available.”

Dominika shrugged. “Who’s Angevine?” she said.

“TRITON to you,” said Nate.

“I have TRITON’s local cell-phone number, the one he gave the embassy,” said Dominika quickly, remembering. “They gave it to me before I left Strelna.” Nate immediately called it in to Gable, who was working on phone and name traces at the US Embassy.

“I am going to call his number, play a Russian from the Center, to try to get him to meet me,” said Dominika.

Nate brushed a strand of hair away from her face. “To do what?” he asked, smiling. “Take him into custody?”

Dominika waited for him to stop fiddling with her hair. “No. To kill him.” Nate stopped what he was doing. “And then I’m going to kill Zyuganov. He arrived here sometime last night.”

Nate took her hands in his. “That’s all a little ambitious, don’t you think?”

“Do you think so?” said Dominika, taking her hands away. “Putin’s orders.” She briefly explained everything, including Putin’s midnight visit to her room, his instructions to her, and his promise to promote her. Nate’s halo flared and Dominika suppressed a smile.

“He had his hand underneath your nightgown?” said Nate.

“Do not tell me you’re
revnivyy,
” said Dominika. She put a hand on his arm. “
Dushka,
you are attractive when you are jealous.”

An hour after arriving in Paris, Nate and Gable stood in Chief of Station’s Gordon Gondorf’s office. Gondorf’s deputy, a long-suffering senior case officer named Ebersole, stood in the corner of the room, leaning against the wall. He knew Gable slightly from an Asian tour. Nate saw Gable shake hands and slap his back, Gable-code that he liked and approved of this officer. Gable’s planet had two moons: He either approved of you or thought you were an ignoramus.

The chief was another matter. Nate had not seen Gordon Gondorf since Moscow, when Nate had been monstrously, unfairly, summarily sent home short-of-tour by his vindictive chief. Gondorf (universally known as Gondork) was perpetually in a state of hysteric professional trepidation. Everyone—superiors, subordinates, fellow chiefs of Station, host-country liaison officers—to Gondorf represented trouble, a potential rival who he knew,
just knew,
sooner or later would derail the shrill locomotive of his career.

He was short with a whippet’s face and carefully combed thinning hair. He had gnawed cuticles, M&M eyes set too close together, and little feet characteristically shod in strange, high-sided loafers that officers in his Station called “pilgrim shoes.” Typically, Gondorf was unaware of anything his officers thought, said, or did. More representative of Gondorf’s virtuosity as COS was a large poster on his office wall of a kitten hanging by its forefeet from a branch with “Hang in There, Baby!” in large letters along the top.

Seeing him again, Nate remembered hearing how Gondorf had extirpated the entire South America Division with mismanagement, miscalculation, and neglect. He was infamous within the division for issuing preposterous edicts—Gondorf’s Twelve Rules—regulating the conduct of Stations and chiefs to ensure there were no troubles, flaps, or scandals and, sadly by extension, no operational successes. After that divisional tour de force, Gondorf should have been locked head and wrists in a pillory and put on display in the Memorial Garden in front of the Headquarters building as was his due, but instead, in the inimitable custom of the Office of Personnel’s senior-assignments staff, he was assigned as COS to prestigious Paris Station to keep him out of Washington (and derivatively to inflict him upon the French, who were finicky and obstreperous).

Briefing Gondorf on urgent and dangerous operations was always tricky, like sneaking up on a grazing deer: Too fast, too direct, and he’d bolt from any perceived danger. Nate told him about TRITON’s escape to Paris, about the risk to a sensitive asset, but omitted specific mention of Dominika. Gondorf would have wet himself.

Nate paused after ten minutes. Gondorf was sitting behind his desk, fiddling with his fingers, and Nate thought he would be rolling ball bearings in his hand if he could. Nate shot a glance at DCOS Ebersole, whose face was expressionless—strictly Easter Island—doubtless learned behavior to survive in the underground-bunker environment of Gondorf’s Station.

“So we need unilateral phone traces on Angevine’s US mobile number,” said Gable to Gondorf. “We don’t want to go to the French and risk exposing our source. And we want to look for this guy ourselves, without the cops. And we have to do this fast.”

“What you want and what’s going to happen are two different things,” said Gondorf. His voice was quivery, like a guinea pig’s if it could talk. “I’m not risking pissing off the French just for your mole hunt. You shouldn’t
have let the guy escape.” His eyes darted to the faces in the room, calculating pushback. He didn’t calculate on Gable.

“It’s time to listen closely, Chief,” said Gable. “The life of an asset is at stake. Not maybe, not later. Right now.” Gable stood up and leaned over the desk. “If you won’t get the cement out of your ass, then I’m taking Ebersole here upstairs and we’re going to run traces on the cell number and try to geo-locate the fucker’s phone. If we get a hit, then Nash and I are going to draw two Brownings from your weapons locker, hit the street, and look for the guy. If I have to shoot someone—inside or outside this embassy—to save the agent, I fucking will.” Gable’s buzz-cut head loomed over Gondorf, who avoided looking at him.

Gondorf silently tabulated the half dozen serious bureaucratic infractions just committed by this lummox from Headquarters, not the least of which was a thinly veiled threat of bodily harm. “I’m ordering you two jerks to stand down,” he said. “I want you both out of my Station and out of the country immediately.” It was the best he could do, with this Rottweiler drooling over his desk.

Nate stood up. “Let’s get out of here,” he said to Gable.

“Simon Benford is arriving tonight,” said Gable to Gondorf. “You can tell him what we can and can’t do.” He turned to the DCOS. “Can you take us upstairs and get us going?”

During the last five minutes Ebersole had also silently calculated the shift of tectonic plates. He knew what was right, what was necessary, what was righteous. If he was sent home by a vindictive Gondork, it would be a blessing. “No more Brownings in the inventory,” said Ebersole, “but I have two nine-millimeter H&K P2000s for you.”

“What holster?” asked Gable, stretching this out to fuck with Gondorf.

“Nylon Bianchi belt rig,” said Ebersole. “The best.”

“Let’s go,” Gable said.

As they filed out, a fuming Gondorf pointed at Nate. “Nash, you always were a fuckup.”

It occurred to Nate that the immediate absence of anything close to hatred or resentment meant he was over Gondorf, over the anxiety of his early career. He was now fully invested in major-league ops the likes of which Gondorf would never fathom. He stopped at the door. “Gordon, I personally regret that our relationship has not grown since we last worked
together,” he said. “At that time I recall that you were afraid of the street. Nothing much has changed.”

Nate patted the ridiculous poster on the wall as he left. “Hang in there, baby,” he said.

They struck out on tracking a US phone but the next day, after running the local number of Angevine’s prepaid French cell provided by Dominika, they logged a hit in fourteen minutes. The Station was able to geo-locate Angevine’s instrument based on signal strength on the network downlink. They determined that his phone was, for most of the day, physically located somewhere on the Île Saint-Louis. They could not further pinpoint the location since the twenty-seven-acre island had no physical cell towers and moreover delineated the boundary of the fourth arrondissement with the fifth. There was a “soft” cellular zone on both islands in the Seine, but it was enough of a lead to know he was there. Quick traces in the reverse-directory did not reveal any Angevines in the neighborhood.