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CHAPTER 1
Uzbekistan--Tashkent--14 Uzbekiston
Malikov Family Residence
9 February, 0929 Hours (GMT+5:00)
They gave it an hour after the husband left, just to be certain he hadn't forgotten anything, that he wouldn't be coming back, before they knocked on the door. Four of them went to do it, while another two waited in the second car, the engine idling.
The two who waited were jealous of the four who went. They thought they were missing the fun.
All were men, and all wore business suits of the latest style, acquired for them in Moscow and Paris and Switzerland, then altered by tailors here in Tashkent, men who were paid pennies to adjust clothing worth thousands. All six finished their look with neckties of silk and shoes of Italian leather and cashmere-lined kidskin gloves. A few wore overcoats as stylish as the suits they covered, to ward off the howling chill that blew down out of the mountains in Kazakhstan to the north.
The only thing that marred the line of their clothing, each in turn, was the slight bump at hip or beneath an armpit, where they carried their guns.
Back before Uzbekistan had declared its independence from the creaking and cracking Soviet Union, before the failed hard-liner coup in August of 1991, when they were still called the KGB, none of them would have dreamed of wearing--let alone owning--such finery. Signs of Western excess, such garments would have flown in the face of Communism. Certainly they would have made a mockery of the subtleties required for their work.
But those days were long past, and fewer and fewer of them remembered a time when orders came from Dzerzhinsky Square. They weren't KGB, and they weren't Communists. They called themselves the National Security Service now, the NSS, and if they believed in anything anymore, it was in power and money, in that order. They were the secret police, and they didn't care who knew it. They were beholden to--depending upon whom you spoke to--one of two people. Either they marched to the tune played by their nation's leader, President Mihail Izmaylovich Malikov, the man who had led the country since he declared its independence in August 1991, or they danced to the music played by his elder child, his daughter, Sevara Malikov-Ganiev. That's where the true power was. While President Malikov's other child--his only son--Ruslan, had influence and friends of his own, they paled in comparison to that held by both his father and his sister.
This was why the four NSS men who entered Ruslan Mihailovich Malikov's house at half past nine on a frigid February morning had no hesitation whatsoever in arresting his wife, Dina, for espionage and treason. This is why they did not hesitate to beat her in front of her two-year-old son when she tried to keep their hands from her body. This is why they did not hesitate when they had to drag her, flailing and screaming, down the stairs and out onto the street.
And this was why they did not hesitate at all when it came time to torture her.
They hooded her once they had her in the car, and they bound her hands, and when she made a noise, they struck her, telling her to be quiet. Best as Dina Malikov could tell, they didn't drive for long or very far, and when the car stopped, she was dragged from the vehicle, and felt the instant bite of winter on her skin. They propelled her down echoing corridors, yanking and shoving her, sometimes pulling her hair, sometimes her shirt. There was the cold sound of heavy metal sliding on concrete, and someone shoved her so hard then that she couldn't keep her feet, falling to the floor. Red light exploded across her vision as she was hit in the head again, and when she could see once more, the hood had been removed.
She'd seen this room before, but never in person. It was larger than she'd thought it, lit by a string of naked bulbs that dangled from the ceiling, shining too bright, banishing all shadows and all illusions of the safety to be found in them. The floor was cold, poured concrete, the walls of gray cinder block. The odors of urine and mildew and cigarette smoke combined, still not strong enough to obscure the scent of feces.
There was a table, wooden and stained, and three chairs, also wooden. A video camera stood on a tripod in one corner, and beside it, on the floor, a red metal toolbox. Other tools lay nearby, devices designed for one purpose that could be redirected to another, far crueler. Against the opposite wall, a claw-footed old bathtub sat, anchored by two pipes, one to fill it, one to drain it.
Three men stood staring at her. Two of them she didn't know, didn't recognize, but the third she did, and that terrified her more than any of what had come before, because it drove home to her exactly how bad things were going to get. As they had taken her from her home, as they had dragged her and beat her, she had allowed herself the illusion of hope, that Ruslan would return, that her marriage would offer her some protection, that she might survive. But looking at Ahtam Zahidov as he removed his suit jacket and carefully draped it over the back of one of the chairs, for the first time, Dina Malikov thought she was going to die.
"Dina," Zahidov said, and he gestured to her with his left hand, absently, and the two other men took this cue to move forward, and they began to strip her. She struggled, alternately cursing and pleading with them, with Zahidov, and Zahidov merely watched, and the other two hit her in the back and the belly until she had no air, until she couldn't struggle any longer. The two men tore the clothes away from her, mocking her, mocking her husband, and when she was finally naked they forced her to the table. Again, she tried to fight them, and again they beat her until she could not, and they laid her across the tabletop, and they held her down.
Ahtam Semyonovich Zahidov moved behind her, and put one hand on the back of her neck, and with his other forced himself inside her.
"Where did you get the tape?" Zahidov asked. "Who gave it to you?"
She tried not to sob, shaking on the floor, tears and blood mingling on her face.
"Who gave it to you?" Zahidov asked.
She drew a long inhale, feeling the air burn her torn lips. "My husband--"
"Is in Khanabad for the day, making nice with the Americans at their air base, and will not be home until evening." Zahidov canted his head to one side, as if seeing her for the first time. "Tell us what we want to know, and you will be home before he returns. Back with your boy. He needn't ever know what happened here."
She spat at him.
"We can blame the extremists, Dina," Zahidov said, his voice soothing with reason. "He doesn't ever have to know."
The sob escaped her without her meaning it to, the shame scorching through her, hurting more than her body itself. Ruslan would believe it, if she told him, if she blamed the Islamic extremists, if she blamed Hizb-ut-Tahir, he would believe it. She could be home, she could hold Styopa again, hold her baby again, and Ruslan would come home. So easily he would believe it, he would want to believe that she had been taken, had been kidnapped, that it was the Islamic extremists who had wanted her as a hostage, but she had escaped, somehow, some way, and she could tell him, and he wouldn't know, he wouldn't ever have to know what had happened, what had really happened, what
Zahidov had done, had let the others do, all it took was a name, one name--
"Just tell me who, Dina," Zahidov said. "Tell me, and this will all end."
She blinked through her tears, through the glare of the lights at him, sitting in the chair, looking at her like he was her friend.
Dina Malikov shuddered, and closed her eyes, and said, "I can't."
She heard him sigh, a sound of mild disappointment almost lost in the size of the room, and then she heard the rasp of metal on metal, as the toolbox was opened.
In the end, she told Zahidov everything.
She told him the name of the NSS officer who had given her the videotape documenting the torture of Shovroq Anamov's sons while the old man watched, helpless to ease the suffering of his children. The tape that recorded the obviously false confession of the old man as he swore up and down that, yes, he had been south to Afghanistan, yes, he had met with the terrorists, yes, he had helped arrange the bombings that had struck the market in Tashkent in the spring. The tape that showed the tears running down the old man's face and captured his keening when his eldest boy, shocked one time too many, stopped moving the way a human being moved, and instead jerked like a fish on the end of a line.
She told Zahidov how she arranged to get the tape out of the country, how she'd made contact with a junior political officer at the American Embassy by the name of Charles Riess, how it had happened at the Uzbek Independence Day party this past December, hosted by Ambassador Kenneth Garret at his residence, just outside of town. How it had been Riess she'd been passing information to, so Riess could in turn pass it on to the State Department. How it was her fault that the White House was withholding another eighteen million dollars in aid to their ally Uzbekistan.
She told Zahidov everything.
In the end, though, it wasn't enough.
In the end, they put her in the tub and filled it with boiling water.<
The NSS officer who had served as her informant was arrested before nightfall, and shot before midnight.
Zahidov would have done it himself, but he was too busy arranging the arrests of the extremists responsible for the kidnapping, rape, and murder of Dina Malikov. One of them was a schoolteacher in Chirchik who had continued to try to incorporate passages from the Qur'an into his lessons. The other two had also insisted on practicing their religion outside the manner permitted by the state, and one of them, a woman, had led a group of forty in signing a petition to be presented to President Mihail Malikov demanding their right to worship as Muslims. All three were arrested by midmorning the next day.
Near the home of the schoolteacher, half buried beneath rocks, was discovered the body of the missing Dina Malikov. She had been horribly beaten and burned, her teeth shattered and the nails of her fingers and toes torn from their digits.
She was so disfigured, in fact, that Ahtam Zahidov had to send a request to Ruslan Mihailovich asking that he come at once, to identify his wife's body.
CHAPTER 2
London--Vauxhall Cross, Operations Room
10 February, 1829 Hours GMT
Paul Crocker had known Operation: Candlelight was a bad idea the moment it crossed his desk.
He'd known it the same way he'd known his elder daughter had become sexually active, long before he'd heard the fact from his wife, Jennie. He'd known it the way he'd known that he'd been passed over for promotion to Deputy Chief, long before his C, Sir Frances Barclay, had smugly confirmed it for him. He'd known it the way he'd known he was losing Chace when she came off the plane at Heathrow eighteen months earlier, and he knew it the way he knew that Andrew Fincher would be a poor replacement for her when Donald Weldon, in his last act as Deputy Chief of Service, railroaded Crocker into taking the agent on as his new Head of the Special Section.
Part of it was instinct, part of it was experience, honed from almost twenty-five years in Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service, through countless operations all over the globe. Jobs he'd worked, jobs he'd planned, jobs he'd overseen. The successes, and more important, the failures.
Candlelight had been bad news from the start, and what Paul Crocker saw now on the main plasma screen of the Ops Room wall--or more precisely, what he wasn't seeing--only drove the point home.
He should have been looking at a live satellite transmission from Kuala Lumpur, where, according to the callout on the world map on the wall, Operation: Candlelight was "Running," and the local time was two-thirty in the morning. He should have been seeing what Minder One, Andrew Fincher, was seeing, as the Head of the Special Section made his way along the harbor to the target site. He should have been hearing it as well, the susurration of the water, the hushed transmissions relayed between Fincher and Minder Two, Nicky Poole, stationed at the ready point with the SAS brick, waiting for Fincher's go signal.
But no, instead, Crocker got static. Static to look at on the plasma wall, in the box above Southeast Asia where the feed should have been coming through, and static to listen to on the speakers, instead of the low calm of the voices of men, preparing to do work.
Julian Seale, seated at the map table to the left of where Crocker now stood, glaring at the garbled screen, coughed politely.
"Might want to do something about that," Seale said.
"You think?" Crocker snapped, not bothering to look at him. Instead, he strode forward, to the Mission Control Desk, where William Teagle was frantically attacking his keyboard with his fingers. "Bill, what the hell's happened to the feed?"
"Checking now, sir." Teagle twisted in his chair, turning to another of the consoles surrounding him at the MCO station. Teagle was new on the desk, only three months in, and Candlelight was his first major operation, and Crocker thought the stress of it showed on the man's face, the perspiration shining on his forehead. If he'd been inclined to it, Crocker might've been sympathetic. As it was, he didn't have the time.
"Is it the upgrades?" Seale asked Crocker.
Crocker frowned at the plasma wall. "Possibly."
The entirety of the Ops Room had seen a renovation in the past year, from the plasma screens to the computers to the secure communication arrays that kept the SIS headquarters here in London in touch with stations and agents around the world. It had been long overdue, and when it had happened, Crocker had believed it to be a good thing, and it had given him hope for his new Deputy Chief of Service, Alison Gordon-Palmer. It had been Gordon-Palmer who had forced the proposal through the FCO, it had been Gordon-Palmer who had bullied C into securing the necessary funding, and it had been Gordon-Palmer who had gone out of her way to consult with Crocker as to just what the upgrades should entail. By the end of the process, Crocker had come to believe two things about the new DC.
First, that even without a background in operations, Alison Gordon-Palmer understood the Ops Directorate's importance in the grand scheme of SIS, and as such, Crocker could count her as an ally; and second, he wanted to maintain that relationship, because he now had no doubt how dif?cult his life would become if she decided he was her enemy.
Crocker turned back to Seale, calling across the room. "They don't know we're coming? You're certain?"
Seale shook his head. "Our intel puts the cell in place and standing by until the morning, when they're supposed to meet their friends in the Straits. They're being careful, but they've got no reason to think we're on to them, Paul, none at all. Not unless something's happened on your end. But nobody from the Company's tipped the Malaysians."
"I've half a mind to send an abort, call the whole thing off." Crocker looked back to the wall, at the static, ?ghting the urge to grind his teeth. "If we let them slip, any chance we can catch them on the water before they try to take the tanker?"
"How?" Seale asked. "They get into the Straits of Malacca, we're going to lose them."
Crocker nodded quickly, as if to say that yes, he got the point. "Dammit, Bill, what's happening with the fucking feed?"
"Lost the signal, sir," Teagle said, turning to another screen.
"There's a tracking error on the CVT-30, I think. I can't bring it back up."
Behind him, Crocker heard Seale mutter a curse. He turned, covered the distance to the Duty Operations Desk and Ronald Hodgson in three long strides, saying, "Ron, get onto the MOD, now. Tell them we need to piggyback their link to Candlelight, and we need it ?ve minutes ago."
Ronald Hodgson nodded, already reaching for one of the four telephones arrayed around his station.
Crocker turned to Seale, said, "You're certain we can't abort? Try to take them at sea instead?"
"Be a totally different op."
"I know."
Seale unfolded his ankles, rose from his slouch in the chair to his feet, one hand brushing down his necktie. One of perhaps two handfuls of African Americans holding senior postings in the CIA, Seale had come to London as COS only four months prior, ?lling the post vacated by his predecessor and Crocker's friend, Angela Cheng. Where Crocker ran to lean, even lanky, Seale went broader, exhibiting perhaps more strength than speed. The two men were roughly the same age, each sneaking up on ?fty within the next year, each married, each with two children. Viewed together, they formed a strange complement, both physically as much as professionally.
"God, they try for the tanker and it goes wrong, Paul," Seale said. "We'll have the G-77 screaming at us like we were selling naked pictures of their mothers. And if the JI takes the Mawi Dawn, they'll be sitting on two hundred thousand gallons of lique?ed natural gas. That blows up, windows will be shattering all the way to Bangkok. It'll be the Revenge of Krakatoa."
"I know that, too."
"Worse if they plow the ship into Singapore Harbor."
Crocker grunted, shoving a cigarette into his mouth, not wishing to contemplate the scenario any further, nor to imagine the destruction. Bad enough that the Straits of Malacca were perhaps the most dangerous waters in the world, rife with piracy. Bad enough that Jemaah Islamiyah made its home in Malaysia, with a government ?lled with its sympathizers and supporters. Put the two together, add one supertanker ?lled with LNG and one box of disposable lighters, and, yes, perhaps Seale was overstating the potential damage.
But only slightly.
From the MCO Desk, Bill Teagle uttered a small cry of triumph. "Signal, sir! Audio only, but better than nothing."
"Let's hear it."
There was a shriek of static from the speakers on the plasma wall, and then the voice of Andrew Fincher, Minder One, came through, choppy and littered with squeaks and pops from the satellite. Crocker could make out the sound of Fincher's movement, the rustle of his clothing beneath his words.
" --- on approach now . . . see lights on the second ?oor, no signs of movement . . . hold on . . ."
Crocker's scowl deepened. It might have been the radio and the patch, but to his ears, Fincher sounded beyond nervous. When he glanced to Seale, now standing beside him, he saw from the other man's expression that he'd heard the same thing.
There was another crackle, then Minder Two's voice, as Poole transmitted. "Songbird, this is Nightowl. We're at stage one, taking position, please stand by."
"Nightowl, Songbird. Con?rmed. Let's make this fast, right? I've got a bad feeling here. I don't want to be out here any longer than I have to."
"Songbird, understood. Moving to position one, stand by."
Silence from the radios.
"Your man Fincher sounds like he's about three steps ahead of panic," Seale murmured softly. "You want to tell me why he's taking the lead and not Poole?"
"Fincher's Minder One, he worked as the KL Number Two before coming into the Special Section. He knows the ground."
"Four years ago he knew the ground. Poole's ex-SAS, he knows the drill."
"Which is why Poole's the liaison with the brick and not Fincher."
"Yeah, but Fincher --- "
"I don't have anyone else, Julian," Crocker snapped. "Lankford's in Gibraltar, and Fincher is Head of Section. If it was KL, I had to send Fincher with Poole. I couldn't hold him here in reserve."
From the corner of his eye, Crocker saw Seale frowning at him.
"Fincher's a tool, Paul," Seale said. "You can hear it in his voice --- he's not made for this."
Crocker didn't respond, instead ?shing out his lighter and ?nally giving ?ame to the cigarette that had been waiting for the last three minutes. The fact was, he agreed with Seale, not that Fincher was a "tool" per se, but that he was wrong for the job.
A year and a half ago, after Chace had left, Crocker had scrambled to ?nd a replacement, spending six weeks poring through personnel ?les. The traditional method of advancement among the Minders was promotion through attrition; Minder Three became Minder Two as Minder Two became Minder One and on and on, each agent replacing the next as his or her predecessor was promoted out of the Section, retired, or perished. The problem was that when Chace departed, she'd taken the lion's share of operational experience with her. When she'd left, Poole had just under a year as a Minder, and Lankford less than half that.
Under those circumstances, Crocker had been unable, and in fact unwilling, to promote either of the remaining Minders. They simply didn't have enough experience, let alone enough seniority.
It was Weldon who'd proposed Fincher, and it had been the second time the former Deputy Chief had tried to get Crocker to take the man into the section. The ?rst time, Crocker still had Tom Wallace as Minder One, and Chace as Minder Two, and it had been a relatively simple matter to ?nd an agent in training at the School who wanted to join the Special Section. This time, though, the board had shifted to Weldon's favor, and Crocker had found himself powerless to block the move. SIS employed roughly two thousand of?cers, and of those two thousand, very few had what it took to be a Minder. To Crocker's eyes, that included Fincher.
There was simply nobody else, and with the Deputy Chief championing him to C, Crocker had been left with no other choice but to accept Fincher as his new Head of Section.
It wasn't that Andrew Fincher was a bad agent. He'd served three tours prior to coming aboard as a Minder, the ?rst in KL, the second in London, on the Central Asian Desk, his third in Panama. He'd distinguished himself in both KL and Panama, resourceful and capable, but, in Crocker's view, overly concerned with avoiding risk. What had helped Fincher more than anything was his penchant for making the right friends inside the Firm. Starting with his second tour, he'd begun to make it known that he'd very much like to come to work in the Special Section, and that had made Crocker suspicious. Once he was aboard, the suspicions were con?rmed.
Fincher wasn't a bad agent, but he was station-oriented and excessively cautious, two things that translated to a lack of initiative, something that a Minder, in Crocker's view, had to have in abundance. He couldn't send a Minder into the ?eld on a job only to have the agent hesitate and dither before deciding on a course of action, or, worse, repeatedly clear his intentions with both Station and London. In a Special Operation, there just wasn't the luxury of time. Worse, though, was the fact that Fincher didn't see anything wrong with his caution, and in fact, Crocker suspected the man believed he was a better agent than he actually was. As far as Paul Crocker was concerned, all other factors aside, that alone made Andrew Fincher absolutely wrong for the work. He wanted his Minders to think they weren't good enough.
In fact, it was what he needed them to believe for them to do their job.
Chace had been the shining example of the principle, marrying ambition, passion, and self-loathing in a seamless blend.
"Video, sir," Ronald Hodgson said.
"Put it up, for God's sake."
The empty rectangle on the plasma screen ?ickered, then ?lled with a grainy image, dark enough that it took Crocker a moment before he could begin to discern details. He was looking at three men, all of them in plain clothes, all with their torsos clad in body armor, sitting in what he presumed was the back of the van they'd acquired for the operation. Two of the men held MP-5 submachine guns, ?tted with ?ash suppressors. The third was Nicky Poole, wearing a radio headset, crouched by the side door, one hand to his ear, straining to listen.
"Where's the audio?" Crocker demanded.
"Switching to the MOD stream now, sir."
There was another crackle from the speakers.
"Songbird, Nightowl. Status?"
No response.
"Songbird, Nightowl, respond please."
On the plasma wall, in its rectangle, Crocker watched as Poole adjusted his position, shifting on his haunches, checking the radio in his hand. He could make out the frown of concentration on Poole's face.
"What the fuck is going on?" Seale muttered. "Where is he?"
"Songbird, Nightowl, respond."
Nothing.
Oh, sweet Jesus, no, thought Crocker.
Over the speakers came the sound of a rattle, something striking the side of the van. Crocker heard one of the SAS swearing softly, watched as Poole pulled away from the door as three MP-5s came up, and then the side door slid back, and the camera ?ared as its aperture tried to adjust to the abrupt change in light sources.
"Friendly!" Crocker heard Poole hissing. "Jesus, friendly, don't fucking shoot him!"
The image resolved again, and Crocker watched as Poole yanked Fincher into the van, one hand on his shoulder, more concerned with ef?ciency in the move than comfort. The camera readjusted as the SAS trooper wearing the rig moved back. The view canted at an angle, and over the speakers came the bang of the door sliding closed again.
Poole leaned in on Fincher. "What the fuck happened, what are you doing here?"
Fincher shook his head, trying to catch his breath. Poole, still with his hand on Fincher's shoulder, shook the other man.
"What the fucking hell happened? Dammit, Andrew!"
Fincher coughed, pulling himself away from Poole's grip.
"They made me. I had to withdraw. We've got to abort."
Crocker cursed, hearing Seale echoing him. He swung toward the Duty Ops Desk. "Ron, MOD, now! Get me a patch to Candlelight, they cannot abort!"
"Open line, sir." Ron handed Crocker the telephone handset.
Crocker put the phone to his ear, could hear the sounds of consternation coming from the Ministry of Defense's operational command post. "D-Ops, who am I talking to?"
"Lance Corporal Richard Moth, sir."
"Put Colonel Dawson on the line."
"Yes, sir."
From the speakers, Crocker could hear Poole cursing at Fincher. "You've fucking blown us, you fool!" "They made me, dammit! What was I supposed to do?"
On the screen, Crocker watched as Poole sat back, yanking the headset from his head. The expression he was seeing on Minder Two's face was much like the one Crocker imagined was now gracing his own.
In his ear, from the telephone, Crocker heard, "Paul? James. What the hell is your man playing at?"
"God only knows. Listen, Colonel, you've got to give them the go order."
"If they've been blown --- "
"I understand the risk. They've got to move now, Colonel, there's no choice."
"Hold on."
Crocker looked back to the video feed, watching. After a sec-ond's pause, a squawk came over the speakers, and he watched as Poole hastily put his headset back into place.
"Nightowl, go."
From the telephone, Crocker heard Dawson's voice, distant, relaying the go, repeating the order twice, to make it clear.
On the screen, through the speakers, Poole said, "Nightowl con?rms, we are go, repeat, we are go."
Crocker was sure he saw Fincher blanch.
There was a rush of movement then, Poole reaching for the MP-5 that had been waiting for him as the camera jerked, heading to the doors of the van. The screen ?ared again, resolved, and now the view was jumping up and down, and Crocker could see Poole and the other two SAS troopers racing along the street, turning now between buildings, running hard, then slowing. They reached the door, two of the troopers taking entry positions, and the one wearing the camera made the breach, and Poole tossed the ?rst grenade, and the sound of the explosion came back at them in the Ops Room, muf?ed by the speakers.
Then the shooting started.
CHAPTER 3
Uzbekistan -- Tashkent -- Husniddin Asomov Avenue
11 February, 1213 Hours (GMT+5:00)
If he hadn't been so focused on chasing the hare, Charles Riess supposed he'd have seen the car coming. But then again, if he'd seen the car coming, Ruslan Mihailovich Malikov might never have made contact with him, so all in all, Riess figured it more than made up for the scraped knee and sprained ankle.
They'd started the run up on the northeast edge of Tashkent, about ten in the morning, just north of the Salor Canal, setting off in pursuit of a particularly sneaky son of a bitch from the Embassy's Consular Division named Bradley Walker. Turned out his surname was more than a little misleading, and with the fifteen-minute head start that Riess and the twenty-seven other Hash House Harriers had given to Walker, he'd led them on a merry chase. Most times, you could count on the run being completed in about an hour, so everyone could get to the more serious business of drinking.
Most times.
Walker had been given the go, running with a bag of flour to lay trail -- or more precisely, to lay false trail -- and Riess and the others had stood in the freezing morning, stamping their feet and blowing on their hands. In another two weeks the winter would be over, and Uzbekistan's traditionally temperate climate would return, but for now it was cold enough that Riess seriously considered forfeiting his participation altogether, just so he could return to his home on Raktaboshi Avenue and crawl back into bed. Another of the Harriers, joining them from the German Embassy, had seemed to read his mind, making a joke about calling the run on account of the weather. Riess had looked north, into Kazakhstan, and seen snow on the mountains.
The chase began, the pack setting off in pursuit of the hare, heading first toward the Botanical Gardens. Riess had run long distance in college but quit upon entering the State Department, only to pick it up again after he'd met Rebecca. They'd met early in his first posting, Tanzania, and it had been part of their courtship, what Riess had supposed was some Darwinian hardwired leftover proof-of-virility ritual. He'd gotten as far as picking out a ring and preparing a speech, had scouted locations in Dar es Salaam, just to find the right place to propose.
Then the Embassy had been bombed and eighty people had been wounded, and eleven had died, and Rebecca had been one of those eleven.
Now when he ran, Riess sometimes imagined Rebecca was running alongside him, and that was how he remembered her, and it made the going easy, despite the cold. Today, he soon found himself leading the pack. He stood five ten when his shoes were off, and one-seventy-eight on the bathroom scale after a shower, wearing nothing but his towel, with long legs Rebecca had described as spindly. If his German/English heritage had given Riess anything, it was a runner's body.
He ran, eyes open for the trail, and just before the zoo, he saw what he was certain, at the time, was a smudged arrow of flour, pointing him toward the northwest. He pressed on, crossing the Jahon Obidova, heading northwest now, down along the Bozsu Canal. Splotches of flour appeared every hundred meters or so, keeping him on track, and behind him, he could hear the singing and laughter of the pack. Riess felt the warmth of his own breath as he ran through the clouds of condensation he was making.
It was when he saw trail indicating that Walker had crossed the canal that it occurred to Riess that this chase wasn't going to be as easy as he'd thought it was.
It was an hour later, circling the TV tower along northern Amir Temur, that he realized that Walker had been planning this run for days, if not weeks, and had been laying false trails for it as well. He doubled back, heading south down Amir Temur, in the direction of the square, and it was as he crossed Husniddin Asomov that the BMW shot through the intersection, its horn blaring, and like an idiot, Riess looked to find the source of the sound rather than getting out of the way.
And it sure as hell looked like the car was going to hit him, so Riess did what people normally do in such circumstances: he dove, trying to reverse his direction, off the street. He was certain he could feel the front fender of the car brushing his sneaker as he tumbled, and then he was on the ground, trying to roll back to his feet, and that was when he twisted his ankle, and went down again, this time harder, and losing a few layers of skin off his knee as a bonus.
Riess rolled onto his back, sitting up, pulling his right knee to his chest with both hands, hearing himself curse. He was dimly pleased to realize that he was swearing in Uzbek. He'd have to drop a line later to the folks at Arlington who'd spent forty-four weeks beating the tongue into his head.
The BMW had come to a stop, and Riess saw it was an older model, maybe ten years old, and the driver's door opened, and a man came out from behind the wheel, looking concerned, asking if he was all right. Riess' first thought was that it was funny that he'd been hit by a man who looked just like President Malikov's son.
"Are you all right, can you stand?" the man asked him, reaching down to take hold of Riess by the upper arms. "Can you stand?"
"It's all right," Riess said. "I'm all right."
"I didn't see you running like that, I'm very sorry. Are you sure you're okay?"
Riess nodded, trying to figure out what to say next. He wasn't a spook, he wasn't one of Tower's cadre of case officers, he was the Deputy Chief Political Officer for the U.S. Mission to Uzbekistan, most often referred to as a poloff. He'd had some basic training in tradecraft, mostly security, ways to keep himself safe, ways to determine if he was being targeted. But when it came time for cloaks and daggers to be handed out, Riess' job was to stay at the embassy and well out of the way. Even working with Dina Malikov had been a stretch, a job he'd only undertaken at the request of his ambassador.
He wasn't a spook, but he knew what this was, and he was quick enough to know that if Ruslan Malikov was trying to make contact with him covertly the day after his wife's body had been found outside of Chirchik, the odds were that they were both being watched.
Riess let Malikov help him to his feet, wincing as he tried to place some of his weight on his ankle. The pain ran around the top of his foot like barbed wire, and he hissed. Malikov put one arm at the small of his back to support him.
"Do you need a hospital? I can take you to the hospital."
"No, I think I'll be okay." Riess tried it again, stepping gingerly and gritting his teeth, and found that if he turned his foot inward slightly, the pain wasn't quite so intense. Malikov's hands came off him, and Riess hobbled experimentally.
"You're certain?"
"It's okay," Riess said. "Really, it'll be fine. Just needs some ice. I'll handle it when I get home."
Malikov studied him, as if trying to discern the truth of the statement, then nodded and moved around the BMW, back to the driver's side. Without another word, he climbed behind the wheel, slammed the door, and pulled away, back into the thin traffic on the avenue.
Riess grimaced, swore again, louder, mostly for the benefit of anyone who might have been listening. He had to assume he was being watched now, even if he couldn't see the watchers, even if he was, just perhaps, being paranoid rather than prudent. It took him a few seconds to realize that what he needed to do next was exactly what he'd been doing before, and he hobbled back toward the street, and spent the next three minutes trying to hail a cab to take him to the Meridien Hotel, near Amir Temur Square.
Once in the taxi and in traffic, Riess leaned back in his seat and reached around, behind his back, to where Malikov had slipped the note into the waistband of his sweats. It was a small square of paper, folded over several times, and easy to conceal in his palm, and so Riess did as he bent forward to check his sore ankle. He slipped the paper into his sock.
The cab dropped him at the hotel, and he hobbled up the steps and into the lobby to find that the others were already there, in the bar, with the hare, who was now drunk almost beyond all comprehension. Lydia Straight, the press attaché at the Embassy, saw him and thus initiated the first round of heckling.
"Chuck! You made it!"
Jeers followed.
Riess showed Lydia his middle finger and took the offered beer from Walker's somewhat unfocused grip. He drank it while leading a rendition of "The Real Story of Gilligan's Island," then started a second while joining in on the traditional version of Elton John's "Rocket Man," before excusing himself to the restroom. He used the sink first, running water to wipe the sweat from his face and the grime from his hands, then wet a paper towel to use in cleaning his skinned knee. When he finished, the only other patron in the men's room had departed, and Riess moved to the toilet stall, where he dropped his sweats, sat on the toilet, and only then retrieved the note.
It was written in English, which surprised him, all in careful block capitals, painstakingly laid onto the paper.
charles --
i know what my dina was doing for you and your ambassador, and for this my sister have her murder.
my father is sick and not for last long. it will be between my sister and myself that is to rule. i am your man now. i want for my country more to be like yours. i will do what ever it will takes.
my sister knows this and will try to have me murder soon.
i will do what ever it takes.
The note was unsigned, and Riess figured that was because a signature didn't much matter. He read it again, slower, just to be sure he understood what was being said, then got to his feet, pulling up his sweats. He flushed the toilet, and used the rush of water to hide the noise of the tearing paper. He waited until the toilet refilled, dropped the fragments into the bowl, and flushed a second time. When the bowl refilled again with nothing but dirty water, he left the stall, relieved to see that he was still alone in the bathroom.
Riess returned to the bar in time for another drink and the second chorus of "Put Your Thighs on My Shoulders," then sang the raunchiest version of "Rawhide" he knew as a duet with Lydia. They were on the third verse when the management asked them, politely, to leave.
He took a cab home, showered, changed, and then called the Residence using the house phone. The line had been checked by the Embassy's security staff only three weeks ago as part of their standard evaluation, and Riess was as certain as he could be that it wasn't bugged. Even so, when the Ambassador came on the line, he kept things vague, asking when would be a good time to come see him.
"This what I think it is?" Ambassador Garret asked him.
"Yes, sir."
"DCM is hosting a dinner tonight at his residence for a couple of the DPMs, including that bastard from the Ministry of the Interior, Ganiev. Come late, Chuck. Come very late. Hour of the wolf."
"Hour of the wolf," Riess agreed.
"How?" Ambassador Garret asked.
"They boiled her to death," Riess answered. He tried to make the declaration merely factual. He failed.
"Jesus Christ." Garret passed a broad hand over his face, wiping the sleep away from his eyes. "Jesus Christ, she's his daughter-in-law, she's married to Ruslan, and Malikov let the NSS lobster-pot her?"
"The Ministry of the Interior is claiming it was Hizb-ut-Tahir."
"I know what they're claiming. Jesus Christ."
"Yes, sir."
The Ambassador closed his eyes, then opened them again. "She gave you up. If they tortured her, she gave you up."
"I think it's a safe assumption, yes, sir."
"When was the last time you met with her?"
"On the second, so that's nine days ago now. That's where I got the videotape."
Garret frowned, remembering the recording. "Why'd they kill her?"
"It might have gotten out of control. They're not terribly gentle about these things."
"But they can be, Chuck, they can be. They could have fixed it so they got what they wanted and then sent her back home."
"She would have told her husband."
Garret looked at him, his brow creasing, thinking. "Maybe."
"You think there's something else to it?"
"I think that Dina Malikov was alive on Thursday, dead by Friday, and today, Saturday, her husband arranged a meeting with you to say that he wants to play ball. The timing makes me nervous."
"I got the impression from his note that he'd been looking for an opportunity for a while, sir," Riess said. "Dina's death may have been the impetus he needed to make the move."
"Which may be why they killed her in the first place. If it was the old man who did it."
Riess heard the doubt in his voice. "You think it was Sevara?"
"I think Sevara wants the crown, Chuck. And if Malikov really is coming up on his last legs, she may be trying to clear the way for a run at the throne."
Riess considered, watching as Garret looked away from him to the grandfather clock ticking solidly in the corner study's corner. The Ambassador's mouth tightened to a line, and then he used his broad hands on the broader armrests of his easy chair to push himself to his feet.
"Four in the fucking morning," he said. "Let's go to the kitchen. I need some coffee."
The house was silent and dark. The trip from Riess' house downtown to the Residence on the outskirts of Tashkent normally took half an hour, but at three in the morning, Riess had been able to make it in half that time. The roads had been almost entirely vacant, and he'd driven quickly, in an attempt to flush any possible tails. He hadn't seen any, but that didn't give him much confidence that he'd gone undetected. It didn't really matter; he was known in the Embassy as the Ambassador's legman, much to the annoyance of his immediate superior, Political Counselor T. Lindsay McColl. If Riess was called out to the Residence at half past three in the morning, then it was unusual, but not unheard of.
Riess followed the Ambassador through the house, Garret alternately switching on lights to illuminate their way, turning off others as they no longer needed them. Riess wondered if it was a security measure or a habit. Maybe he did it to keep from disturbing his wife. Whatever it was, Riess was certain there was a purpose to it. In his experience, there was very little that Kenneth Garret, the United States Ambassador to Uzbekistan, did without a very good reason.
Riess' immediate superior in the Mission, McColl, as uptight and self-righteous a Europeanist as Riess had ever met in the Foreign Service, consistently referred to Garret as "the Grizzly," though never while in earshot of the Ambassador. McColl did a poor job of hiding his resentment of Garret, a resentment born, Riess supposed, more of envy than of anything else. Both men shared the same political rank at State, and McColl not only had seniority, but a pedigree, and felt that Garret had robbed him of his rightful ambassadorship. The nickname was meant, therefore, as an insult of the highest order.
But limping after Garret through the Residence, Riess thought it was anything but. Six foot three and easily two hundred and forty pounds, everything on Garret had that ursine sense of scale and restrained power, from the breadth of his chest and the strength in his shoulders down to the thickness of each of his fingers. In all the time Riess had known him, first serving as a junior political officer at the embassy in St. Petersburg where Garret had been posted as Deputy Chief of Mission, and now, six years later, serving as his legman in Tashkent, he'd never once seen Garret exhibit anything but an absolute, controlled calm. No matter what he did, if he laughed, if he despaired, it was all with the same gravitas.
People underestimated the Ambassador to their peril, and while Riess himself had never heard Garret talk about it, it was well known among the Mission staffers just how tall the man could stand. No new arrival to the Chancery in Uzbekistan could make it more than a week before hearing the infamous "Fuck Off, Senator" story.
It went something like this:
Seems that Kenneth Garret had spent a year at CENTCOM as a political adviser after one of his DCM stints. His job had been primarily to offer political insight and counsel to General Anthony Zinni. After CENTCOM, Garret had rotated back to State, and then, the following year, had been nominated as Ambassador to Kuwait by the Clinton White House. It was a done deal as far as the White House was concerned, and even the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had looked to be smooth sailing, a rubber-stamp proceeding.
Except that the Committee in question was chaired by Senator Jesse Helms, and Helms' history with Zinni was, as one of Riess' colleagues had described it, "defined by white-hot hatred," as a result of a particularly harsh facing Zinni had delivered to the Senator following the Gulf War. After the war, Helms had gotten the not-very-bright idea of turning the Iraqi army-in-exile around on Saddam with CIA backing, in an attempt to overthrow the dictator. It was a plan that suffered from a legion of problems, small and large, so many in fact that General Zinni, in a public hearing, had referred to the idea as a "Bay of Goats."
The Senator was not well pleased.
Garret, so the story went, was approached by one of Helms' staffers prior to confirmation. The staffer informed the Ambassador-in-waiting that his confirmation would positively sail on through, but that, during the closed hearing, the Chairman would ask Mr. Garret some pointed questions about General Zinni. And if Mr. Garret then took it upon himself to perhaps criticize the General's judgment and leadership, well, it would be appreciated. Certainly such comments in a closed hearing would be a small price to pay for Mr. Garret to finally achieve a posting of importance and prestige, one he'd been pursuing throughout his professional career.
According to the story, Garret embarked on one of his infamous pauses, lasting -- depending on who was recounting the tale -- anywhere from fifteen seconds to an ungodly two and a half minutes, before offering his answer.
"Fuck off."
When the staffer regained his ability to speak, he informed Garret that any confirmation hearing would not occur until the Chairman moved for the nomination to be considered by the Committee, something that Mr. Garret, by his answer, had just guaranteed would never happen. Not just this job lost, no sir. No position requiring a Senate confirmation. Ever.
Nice knowing you, Mr. Garret.
The Clinton White House, on the other hand, upon hearing of what had transpired, rewarded Garret for his loyalty with a position on the National Security Council. And it was on the NSC that Garret remained until Colin Powell came aboard as S and heard the story himself. Didn't hurt that Powell and Zinni were tight, and so Garret found himself back at the State Department, working in Counterterrorism ...a position that became the epicenter of the policy universe only a few months later.
Riess liked the story for a number of reasons, but mostly because it had a happy ending. Helms and his winged monkeys on the SFRC left the Hill, and the moment they were gone, Powell pushed for Garret to get the Uzbekistan job. This was pre-Iraq but post-9/11, and the posting was second in importance only to the Mission in Islamabad, given the situation in Afghanistan. More, it was a reward for loyalty, for a job well done that put Garret in line for even greater things. After Uzbekistan, the Ambassador could expect his next posting to be in Turkey, or Australia, or Moscow, wherever he damn well pleased.
This was, in part, why what Garret was undertaking was so potentially dangerous. If it failed, it could end the Ambassador's career.
And Riess didn't even want to think about what it would do to his.
"I want Ruslan in charge," Garret told Riess. "He's the best bet we have going to turn this country into something resembling a free society."
"I agree."
"Problem is, Ruslan doesn't have the muscle to take over when his old man kicks it. And right now, everyone back in Washington likes the looks of his sister. They think Sevara's their girl. She's made some overtures already, she's indicated her willingness to play ball. As far as the old guard back at State are concerned, she's already halfway into power."
"She's as corrupt as her father is," Riess said. "She's just more subtle about it."
"You don't have to tell me," Garret said. "It's the Kissinger legacy, Chuck. The realists are looking at her as someone who can get the job done, who'll hold the line against the extremists, and who'll continue to support the war. And we can't lose Uzbekistan, we need the conduit into northern Afghanistan."
"We'd get all those things from Ruslan. If we supported him, we'd get all those things, and it'd be better for the country, to boot."
Garret studied him thoughtfully, not speaking for several seconds, and Riess wondered if he'd perhaps stepped over some unknown line. If it had been McColl he was speaking to, he'd never say these things, but the Ambassador had always encouraged him to speak his mind. Even so, Riess worried that he'd gone too far.
"You're going to have those ex-KGB bastards crawling all over you, you know that?" Garret asked, finally. "Even if Dina didn't give you up, Ruslan's contact with you today guarantees it."
"Yes, sir."
The Ambassador gave him a small, paternal smile, then turned to the coffeemaker and proceeded to fill two cups. He handed Riess one, then asked, "You ever meet Ruslan? Before today, I mean?"
"At the Independence Day party -- theirs, not ours. That's it."
"According to Tower, Malikov wants control of the country to stay in the family when he kicks it. Hasn't chosen one kid over the other, as far as the CIA can tell. God knows, if he doesn't designate a clear successor before he kicks it, all hell will break loose. Might break loose anyway, even if he does. The DPMs would eat their own young if they thought it would put them in charge."
"Sevara's married to Ganiev -- "
"Yeah, the Deputy Prime Minister of the Interior, though it's an open secret that she's the one running the Ministry."
"That's not all she's doing," Riess said. "There've been reports of her selling girls into the UAE, that she's formed and armed her own militia. We know she's got her own secret police force, her own courts. And we're not even discussing her legitimate -- and I use the word in the loosest possible sense -- business interests, from her wireless communications company to owning something like three spas and a movie studio."
"Whereas Ruslan has a two-year-old son and has just become a widower."
"Ruslan's the Chairman of the Constitutional Court, which means he's responsible for writing the laws that his father wants written. He's got some people, but it's nothing like what Sevara's assembled. That's never been how he does business."
Garret drained his cup and again looked to the clock, this one hung on the wall beside the refrigerator. He frowned, and Riess knew from the expression on his face that the Ambassador was doing time-zone math, most likely calculating the hour in Washington.
"Have to start with my calls."
"What do you want me to do?"
"Nothing for the time being."
Riess tried to keep the confusion off his face. "Sir?"
"Nothing. Don't try to contact Ruslan, don't go near him. Just do your job, keep McColl happy. He already thinks you spend too much time with me as it is."
"Ruslan believes his life is in danger, sir. If we don't do something -- "
"Easy, Charles. I didn't say I wasn't going to do anything, I just told you to steer clear for the time being." Garret looked at the clock again, frowning. "What's London, five hours behind us?"
"Uh . . . five or six, I think."
"He won't be in yet," Garret said, more to himself than to Riess, then sighed. "I've had enough, Chuck. Thirty years in high diplomacy and not enough time actually spent keeping the people on the ground from being tortured to death. Realpolitik be damned, I've had enough. Malikov goes. One way or another, he goes. We're staging a coup, Chuck. A nice, quiet coup, and when it's over the White House gets to say we did the right thing, even if they'd rather we hadn't done it at all."
"If it works," Riess murmured.
"If it works."
They left it at that, neither of them wishing to say what would happen if it didn't.
Excerpted from PRIVATE WARS © Copyright 2005 by Greg Rucka. Reprinted with permission by Bantam, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.
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