McCullough looked at Perry first, then the Admiral. Both shook their heads.
Then he looked back to Richard. “In that case, Ambassador, you can count on the President’s opposition. You’ll be crushed, and still held responsible for your crimes. We’re done here.”
The three men stood, and Perry led the way out. Richard sat in his seat, stunned at the sudden reversal. Unless he could get the Republican leadership to back him, then he had no hope. Right now, that didn’t seem likely at all.
The door opened again, and the young Diplomatic Security Agent stuck his head in the room. “Ambassador? I’m to lead you out the back door.”
Anthony. May 8.
In the ten years of Anthony’s career as a reporter, he’d been through a lot of rundown and messy airports.
But Kabul International Airport took the crown. It was stifling hot inside the airport, where the air conditioning had apparently failed. Crowds of Afghani men competed for space with soldiers from half a dozen nations, most of them armed with automatic weapons, which they displayed with surprising casualness.
He cleared Customs surprisingly easily. He’d only brought one change of clothing, an audio recorder, his phone and laptop. He would wear the same clothes for the entire trip, which would, with any luck, see him departing again in less than twenty-four hours.
That’s if he didn’t get delayed in the war zone, held up by Customs or local officials. And assuming Karatygin would even meet with him. And if Karatygin did, assuming he let Anthony leave alive.
A lot of assumptions.
As he left the secured area and walked toward the baggage claim, he saw a man holding up a sign with his name. Soldier. Former soldier, rather, now with a private military contractor. His uniform was indistinguishable from the US Army Combat Uniform, although it bore no insignia. A pistol was holstered at his right hip and a rifle slung over his shoulder. The Kevlar vest he wore looked heavy.
“Anthony Walker? I’m Iggy Mann. You got any bags?” His voice was the thick molasses of northern Alabama.
Anthony lifted the bag on his shoulder, saying, “Nice to meet you. This is all I’ve got.”
“All right. Let’s get going. We want to get to Charikar fairly quickly if you want to see Karatygin. Word has it his people are pulling out tonight.”
Anthony cursed under his breath. He waved Iggy onward then followed him.
A small convoy of vehicles sat in the sun outside the building. Black sports utility vehicles with wide wheelbases and shaded windows.
“We’re in the middle vehicle. You get in the back.”
Anthony followed. The Washington Post was paying a fortune for this escort. It was unusual, but then again, Afghanistan was a very dangerous country. He opened the back door of the SUV and tossed his bag in, then took one last look at the airport.
Several signs were above the doorways, the largest one reading WELCOME TO KABUL in English. Armored vehicles with large mounted machine guns were at each end of the terminal, and two tanks flanked the road.
“Get in,” Iggy said from the front passenger seat. His tone was irritated. “I don’t need you getting shot before we even get there.”
Anthony nodded, sliding over the seat and pulling the door closed behind him. Immediately, all three vehicles in the small convoy started moving. The first one stayed fifty meters ahead of them, and as it left the airport, he saw a man pop up through the sunroof, assault rifle in hand.
“All right,” Iggy said. “I don’t know how much they briefed you before you left the States.”
“Nothing. I don’t know anything.” Anthony’s tone was nervous.
Iggy shook his head. “Great. Whatever. Here’s the deal. If everything goes right, it’s an hour drive. If it goes wrong, it might be tomorrow. Soon as we get out of the airport we go down Russia Road through the city. That’s the most dangerous part, because parts of the drive, we don’t have any distance view or open fields of fire. We’ll be going balls to the walls, moving through traffic as fast as we can to clear the city. All right?”
“Yeah.”
“Wear your seatbelt,” Iggy said, a smirk on his face. “Once we clear the city, it’s a straight shot up A76 until we get there.”
“And Karatygin is still there?”
Iggy shrugged. “Last night he was. I hear they’re getting restless. The Russians still got a price on Karatygin’s head, and the US wouldn’t mind seeing him die too. On the highway we’ve got to worry about the Taliban hitting us, but once we’re in Karatygin’s camp, it’s US drones. Either way you end up dead. So every step of the way, you listen to me. Clear?”
Anthony nodded.
Iggy turned back to the front. “This must be a pretty big story for you to risk this much.”
It was, Anthony thought. It was the biggest story.
The moment they pulled out of the airport, traffic was dense. Buildings crowded both sides of the street, both the streets and the sidewalks crowded with people. The overriding impression color wise wasn’t that different from Baghdad—dun colored buildings surroundings dun colored streets and people with dun colored clothing. Colorful signs decorated many of the buildings, but the general impression was one of disrepair. Trash littered the street, in some places piled up deeply in corners of buildings. Clearly the city had little in the way of sanitation workers.
A white pickup truck pulled in between the front and middle vehicles of the column. Four men wearing turbans and sporting Kalashnikov rifles lounged in the back of the truck, which had no license plate.
“Mother fucker,” Iggy said. He gripped his rifle and gave directions into the radio. “Casey, let the white truck mosey on by.”
Moments later, the SUV ahead of them moved to the left side of the road—blocking oncoming traffic—and let the white pickup go by. Once it was gone, they sped up, racing through traffic.
At one point in the ride, they were caught in a square full of pedestrians. The truck in front inched forward, honking its horn, with the two behind pushing their way. Iggy squirmed around in his seat, trying to look in every direction at once. He spoke into the radio again. “Casey, you need to move it a little faster. We’re sitting ducks right here.”
Anthony didn’t hear the response. But the brake lights were still showing on the vehicle in front of them. Until the man in the sunroof raised his rifle high in the air. He fired a short burst, the staccato sound echoing across the square. Immediately the crowd scattered, everyone running as quickly as they could away from the vehicles.
The tiny convoy sped up, the road ahead of them completely clear. Less and less buildings to the right, and then they were headed out of Kabul into the open countryside of Afghanistan.
“How dangerous is this road?”
Iggy looked back at Anthony and smirked in response to the question. “From one day to the next it’s peaceful as a cow farm or deadly as a snake’s nest. All depends on how the Taliban is feeling today.”
Anthony nodded. “How are they feeling today?”
Iggy lit a cigarette, filling the cab with acrid smelling smoke. “Pretty cranky, I guess. With US troops withdrawing, it’s a matter of time. Taliban’s been probing, attacking new areas. Ganging up on the roads around Kabul. It’s like they’s a vulture hovering, waitin’ to dive in the minute the mountain lion is gone.” He winked at Anthony. “Kabul’s the carcass.”
Anthony shuddered. Iggy was almost certainly right. It wasn’t hard to see what was happening in Afghanistan, and from what he’d seen, violent incidents were up nearly twice as much the year before. The main difference was the ongoing withdrawal of US troops. Before long, Afghanistan might be a Taliban stronghold all over again.
“Anyways,” Iggy continued, “we got a pretty good system. We don’t like driving this highway if we can avoid it, but when we do, we usually make it without any losses. That’s our job.”
Usually. That was reassuring. Anthony decided to go over his notes for his story. If he could keep himself occupied
, maybe he wouldn’t have to think about the possibility of getting blown up in the Afghan countryside. The SUVs were moving quickly now, very quickly. But they didn’t have to worry about traffic, because there wasn’t any.
Anthony slid his laptop out of his bag. He had a lot of notes, and a lot of loose ends to track down.
George-Phillip’s interview had lined up perfectly with Adelina Thompson’s, which was incredibly valuable. What it gave him was a clear timeline of when Richard Thompson was out of the country and events surrounding her marriage and Carrie and Andrea’s parentage. He had a copy of the police report, provided by Julia, and a scan of portions of Adelina’s diary, also thanks to Julia. He had their brief interview with Nick Larsden before his death, naming Oz. He had George-Phillip’s suspicion that Oz was Oswald O’Leary—his longtime aide and assistant.
He scanned over his notes. George-Phillip’s original investigation report fingered Richard Thompson as the primary mover in the Wakhan massacre, aided by Prince Roshan, Leslie Collins and Vasily Karatygin. Roshan and Collins had everything to lose if the truth came out. But Karatygin might not. He’d once been a major in the Soviet Spetznaz, or Special Forces. He’d converted to Islam and joined the mujahideen in the early 1980s, and because of his knowledge of Soviet tactics, training, and equipment he’d quickly moved to the top of Ahmad Shah Massoud’s militia.
Except now, Massoud was a provincial governor. And he’d long since disassociated from his former ally. Karatygin had surfaced after the US invasion in 2001. He now ran an “import-export” operation, which Anthony took to mean smuggling. Probably weapons and heroin. Anthony didn’t think the odds were very good that Karatygin would be willing to talk. But it was a possibility. Maybe he’d been sitting in the desert for the last thirty years as Collins and Thompson and Roshan rose to the top of their nation’s security organizations, while Karatygin hid out in caves from the Taliban. Maybe he was a little bit resentful. Or maybe he was worried about what would happen when and if the Taliban took over again. Anthony didn’t know what he might be worried about, but he hoped that by the time he asked Karatygin the operative questions, he’d have figured something out. Karatygin had agreed to meet, but he hadn’t raised the issue of the Wakhan massacre—yet.
Some things just didn’t make sense. Oswald O’Leary might be Oz, but why? He’d been George-Phillip’s confidante for thirty years. Why would he betray George-Phillip? What possible reason did he have? Was he somehow linked to Richard Thompson? Or was it something even more insidious?
At the sound of a gunshot, Anthony looked up suddenly. The vehicle swerved, accelerating suddenly.
Iggy turned around, his rifle at the ready and his eyes scanning everywhere. “Sniper fire,” he said. “Probably from the village off to the left. Don’t worry about it; the odds of a hit are pretty slim. The bigger issue is making sure we don’t slow down or panic.”
To Anthony’s eyes, the headlong rush down the twisting highway appeared to be panic. But he wasn’t in a position to say anything at all. He knew little about the country and even less about current on-the-ground conditions.
A few minutes later they reached an indefinable moment where Iggy and the driver appeared to relax. In the distance, Anthony could see a cluster of buildings too small to be considered a town and too large to be a village. Buildings made from cinderblocks and tan stone abutted each other in a tangled and unrecognizable jumble. The only color were clotheslines scattered through the village, brilliant greens, reds and blues waving in the air, brightly colored pennants of resistance against the chaos and grim fundamentalism sweeping the nation once again.
Before they reached the village, the small convoy turned on a road slightly to the left then circled around. On a hill a quarter mile from the town was a walled compound.
Iggy pointed. “Karatygin’s camp.”
Anthony stared in fascination. Men—obviously armed—were positioned along the tops of the walls and in a tower overlooking the entire area. It wasn’t a camp; it was a fortification. He felt a chill as he wondered if he’d leave this compound alive. The only thing protecting him was the GPS tracking device he carried and the fact that the Post knew exactly where he was.
The convoy pulled to a stop at the gate of the compound. Two guards armed with what appeared to be US military issue M16 rifles guarded the gate. But these men were clearly not Americans. They wore linen trousers and tunics, loosely fitting, with combat boots and no helmets. Both had long unkempt beards. Anthony watched helplessly as the guards questioned the men in the front vehicle of the convoy. There was nothing he could do to influence the situation right now other than sit tight and wait. And hope they didn’t all get shot. There were six armed guards in the convoy, but Anthony didn’t think they’d last long if Karatygin’s compound was full of hostile people.
The gate opened, and the guards waved them in. The driver started the SUV moving, and Anthony stuffed his notebook away.
Iggy turned around in his seat. “Keep your mouth shut until I tell you it’s okay. These guys are dangerous.”
Coming from Iggy and his crew of armed veterans, that was saying something.
Inside the compound were half a dozen small buildings clustered around one larger building in the center. As they pulled to a stop, Anthony could see that armed guards were stationed all around the square, weapons at the ready. Iggy and the driver got out. Anthony followed suit. The ground was uneven rock.
The various guards stirred, then went silent, as a tall Afghani walked out of the center building. He was dressed in traditional Pashtun clothing, loose linen pants and a tunic that hung to his knees. Nothing about his clothing indicated anything unusual about his position. But the guards looked slightly more alert, held their weapons a little higher, and stood a little closer to the convoy.
“Which one of you is the reporter?” the man asked.
Anthony swallowed. “I am.”
The man approached and looked him over. “Anthony Walker.” The words were a statement.
“Yes.”
“Come this way. Vasily would like to meet you.”
This was it. Anthony shrugged his bag higher on his shoulder and followed the man into the darkness of the largest building. They moved through a darkened foyer, down the hall and into a brightly lit whitewashed room. A large window opened into a courtyard, lush with palms and other vegetation. The room had hardwood floors—highly unusual in Afghanistan—and lush Persian rugs. Colorful wall hangings in bright patterns hung from three walls.
A reupholstered couch was against the opposite wall, with two bare wooden chairs facing it. A man lay on the couch, his back propped up on pillows. He was pale and gaunt, with wispy white hair, and held a paperback book with bright red Cyrillic letters across the front. His eyes were sunken, with nearly black circles under them, and one eye was pale with a cataract.
Clearly this was Vasily Karatygin. And just as clearly, he was sick or dying. His obvious illness, however, didn’t reduce the man’s size—he was extremely large and muscular, with a lip swollen on one side and a crooked nose. Both clearly the result of a fight probably decades in the past.
The man looked up from his book as Anthony entered. He spoke some words—in Pashto, Anthony presumed—to the man escorting him inside, who answered in a subservient tone.
Finally Karatygin said, in English, “So, you’re the reporter who wishes to question me about Richard Thompson. Have a seat.”
Anthony was jolted by the words. Nowhere in his remote communication with Karatygin’s representatives had he specified the reason for his visit. He swallowed nervously, hoping that Karatygin had no plans to have him murdered.
Then he took a seat and said, “Yes. I’m Anthony Walker with The Washington Post.” Anthony took his recorder out of his bag and displayed it for Karatygin.
Karatygin smiled, curling his lower lip back, revealing a long black scar on his lip and several missing teeth. Anthony pressed record.
“I am Vasily Karatyg
in.”
“I never mentioned Richard Thompson,” Anthony said. “Why do you believe he’s the reason I’m here?”
“You obviously would never make much of a spy, Mister Walker. It’s obvious. Thompson is in the news a great deal these days—as is the massacre at Wakhan. I can only presume that you are here to ask me questions about both.”
Anthony stared at Karatygin. Of course he was right, and in retrospect, it was obvious. He shrugged and said, “Yes. That’s what I’m here for.”
Karatygin stared at him for a moment. The smile was curving back into a menacing snarl. “At one time I would have simply had you killed for your presumption.”
Anthony looked back. He didn’t want to push right now.
Karatygin’s face softened. “You are a lucky man, Walker. Lucky indeed.”
Anthony didn’t respond. Instead, he simply waited, not knowing what Karatygin was getting at.
He didn’t have to wait long. Karatygin said, “When I was a boy, Walker, it was a different world. I was a good communist, raised in a good communist family. None of that drugged religion for me. But one day I was in a fistfight at school. I was fourteen years old.”
Karatygin’s face looked wistful as he spoke. “My mother was at work, and my father long dead. So when I arrived home our tiny flat was empty. I do not know what was in my head, but I took the opportunity to search through my mother’s things. Perhaps I thought I would learn something of my father. Instead, I found the medal of my namesake.”
Anthony raised an eyebrow. Karatygin immediately answered. “Vasily is a Russian form of Basil. She had a Saint Basil medallion in her dresser.”
“I don’t know much about religion,” Anthony said.
Karatygin chuckled. “And you think I did, growing up in the Soviet Union? Hah. It was years before I found out anything. Basil was a father of the Church—a supporter of the Nicene Creed. A man who fed the poor and helped prostitutes and thieves. A saint. This was my mother’s ambition for me.”
“And what now?”
Girl of Vengeance Page 26
