A summary of Chingiz Abdullaev’s "The Woman’s Instinct"

This book is a crime detective story about a career intelligence officer’s infiltration into the inner circle of the unofficial overlord of the criminal underworld, where official calculation clashes with genuine passion. The supreme criminal arbiter here is not a crowned thief, but a respectable banker with connections in the highest echelons of power. Work on the novel was completed in 2000, amid the redistribution of commodity markets and a fierce battle between security agencies for control of the country’s shadow financial flows.

This work is the fifth in the "SVR: Marina Chernysheva" series and was also published under the title "Ladies Remain Still." Previously published in this series were "Evil in Your Name," "Treason in Your Name," "A Woman’s Revenge," and "Create Your Own World."

Hunting on Rublevskoe Highway

Valentin Davidovich Rashkovsky, owner of the Armada commercial bank, secretly leads a council of crime bosses across the CIS. At closed meetings at the Prague restaurant in the capital, the influential financier personally distributes shares of the criminal common fund and resolves disputes between internecine clans. Any suspicion is punished mercilessly. On the eve of key events, a hitman agrees to eliminate the banker for triple the fee from the supposed client and is blown up the next day in a car bomb.

The peace is shattered suddenly. Early in the morning, the oligarch’s government armored motorcade is ambushed while making a sharp turn onto a country highway. A grenade launcher salvo destroys the limousine. Instead of the tycoon, his seventeen-year-old daughter Anna, who was on her way to a private Swiss school, was in the wrecked car. The chief of security shields her from the bullets.

The injured schoolgirl, who suffered severe injuries, was rushed to the hospital’s intensive care unit.

Retired KGB General Nikolai Fomichev, using his personal intelligence service, rescues wounded robber Alexei Forin from a safe house, after which the captive is interrogated at an abandoned dacha outside Moscow under the cruel threat of using concentrated acid. Out of fear, the robber immediately reveals his accomplices. Unknown assassins murder Fyodor Sukhodolov, the organizer he named, in a Moscow building entrance half an hour before the bank’s men arrive. Akper Imanov, the younger brother of the deceased head of security, coldly strangles Forin with his belt on his boss’s orders and secretly transports the body out of town in the trunk of a car. All traces of the conspirators are lost.

Operational combination with Hemingway

Intelligence begins its infiltration. Police chief General Igor Nikolaevich recruits forty-two-year-old Colonel Marina Chernysheva, who holds a PhD in crisis psychology and speaks three European languages fluently, to carry out a top-secret operation. Karpotin’s former assistant was terrified of flying. The bank urgently needed a cool-headed agent for its constant international assignments. The agent’s training is being provided by Alfred Zinner, a former leading psychoanalyst in the East German Stasi security service, who has thoroughly studied the childhood psychological trauma of the target. Valentin was raised alone by his domineering mother. His father, a factory worker, served a nine-year prison sentence, which fostered the adult banker’s latent dependence on confident, mature women of a certain age.

Initial contact is established through the Philology Department of Moscow State University, where the aunt of a successful businessman, Elizaveta Alekseyevna Dobronravova, is an associate professor and clearly remembers Chernysheva’s long-ago thesis defense. Marina is followed in class by student Andrei Kamyshev. The son of a high-ranking ambassador stands for hours under the windows of a safe house, endures a beating from undercover operatives, and gives his beloved rare Madrid books. The intelligence officer allows the young man into her bed. The next maneuver is a visit to the admiral, who is suffering from a massive heart attack, in the hospital room across from the oligarch’s injured daughter. Hemingway’s errant English attracts the attention of the magnate.

Leonid Dmitrievich Kudlin, the oligarch’s deputy, unexpectedly shows up at a secure research institute with an offer of a fantastic salary of ten thousand dollars. A test is scheduled at the Sato restaurant. Academician Veniamin Denisovich Zhuravlev subjects the candidate to a sophisticated professional quiz over fried fish and strong tequila. The candidate’s bold confessions astound the professor. The distinguished psychologist writes an enthusiastic report on the candidate’s innate leadership talent, emphasizing the inappropriateness of appointing such a brilliant researcher to a modest clerical position. The manager is alarmed by the candidate’s impeccable performance.

In the luxurious Armada office, the applicant astonishes the billionaire with a bold professional opinion. Instead of being sycophantic, the woman openly recommends returning valuable Peredvizhniki paintings from government offices to a single museum hall, calling the practice of distributing originals "mercantile bad taste." Her forthrightness delighted the billionaire. The owner of a financial empire signs an order appointing the colonel as his personal assistant. Within hours, bank consultants open a foreign currency credit card for the new employee, worth twenty-five thousand dollars, for the urgent purchase of a formal wardrobe. Tomorrow, she flies to England.

Deadly provocation in the capital

Meanwhile, a deadly game of intelligence is unfolding in Moscow’s criminal underworld. Police Lieutenant Colonel Konstantin Tsapov, nicknamed the Magician, has been infiltrating the gangster scene, persistently searching for the true perpetrators of the assassination attempt on a country highway. Informants are being killed one after another. Before the detective’s very eyes, an unknown sniper kills the crime boss Tsygan with a well-aimed shot to the head as he leaves a diner. The capture is instantaneous. Colonel Viktor Avdonin, the head of a secret counterintelligence group, unsuccessfully tries to persuade the captive to participate in a series of secret political assassinations. Tsapov flatly refuses.

Avdonin’s group’s special operation was based on a cold-blooded calculation to pit the two factions against each other. The secret unit deliberately staged an attack on the motorcade carrying the oligarch’s young daughter, hoping to provoke the powerful father’s insane wrath and unleash a full-scale bloodbath between the capital’s Caucasian and Slavic criminal clans. The cunning plan failed. Tsapov forces investigator Savely Polukhin to reveal details of the plot in front of a hidden microphone of police commanders. Avdonin was arrested at home. The Federal Security Service leadership hastily labeled the arrested group as lone criminals, hushing up the criminal case to preserve departmental honor. Fomichev dies of a heart attack.

Negotiations on the banks of the Bosphorus

The plane delivered the girl to London. In the British capital, the secretary becomes closely acquainted with the financier’s second wife, Oksana Borisovna, who cynically declares her willingness to turn a blind eye to her husband’s affairs for the sake of preserving her family status and guaranteed material abundance. The call changes the route. Rashkovsky hastily takes a regular flight to an Istanbul hotel for late-night negotiations with Scottish banker Mr. Adams regarding a large government loan. The oligarch offers an exorbitant collateral: two and a half billion dollars from the criminal organization’s shadowy foreign accounts are presented as a guarantee for the return of the International Monetary Fund’s bailout tranches for the Russian economy.

An emergency meeting of the highest-ranking criminal authorities convenes in the Swissotel apartments. Rashkovsky harshly suppresses mutual accusations between thieves-in-law Valerian Gogoberidze and Kerim Guseinov, forcing those present to sign bank guarantees in exchange for state immunity in Moscow. The gangsters agree without question. Behind the scenes, Kudlin orders a luxurious, expensive fashion model from Bolivia to demonstratively humiliate the modestly dressed intelligence officer. The billionaire hands the girl over to his bodyguard. Leaving his noisy entourage of businessmen, the weary banker unexpectedly invites Marina for a long, late-night stroll through the old Turkish quarters, unescorted.

The couple wanders without bodyguards. In the historic Hadjibaba restaurant, the reserved, stern businessman transforms into a surprisingly subtle, well-read, and charming conversationalist, captivating his companion with genuine warmth and a deep knowledge of world culture. A rapprochement proved inevitable. At dawn in a hotel room, an all-consuming mutual passion flares up, sweeping away professional barriers, the calculations of the Center’s psychologists, and the caution of an experienced foreign intelligence colonel. Pretense gives way to feeling. A joint nighttime stroll across the Golden Horn bridge finally breaks the cold wall of official alienation between the agent and the subject of months-long operative development. A brief truce ensues.

Junction at a suburban motel

In Moscow, Kudlin methodically unravels Chernysheva’s cover. A two-hundred-thousand-dollar bribe to the traffic police chief backdates the registration of the official Zhiguli. The news flies to London. Zinner calls directly to the presidential apartments with a belated demand to immediately drop their belongings and flee in a prepared car. It was too late to leave. Rashkovsky, without bodyguards, takes his companion to a secluded suburban motel.

A heartbreaking, frank explanation takes place in a hotel room. The owner of the Armada openly admits to having uncovered the deception and, unexpectedly, insistently offers to quit the dangerous secret service forever for a comfortable life together in Europe, under the reliable protection of his colossal financial power. The colonel refuses. Leaving the sleeping man in the motel, Chernysheva returns to the hotel, seals her company credit card in an envelope, and hurries to Gatwick Airport. A morning flight takes the fugitive away. A few days later, the central press announces Valentin Rashkovsky’s official return to his homeland.