by Victor Milán
The knife man knew that sound too. He stopped, then dropped the balisong and put both hands on top of his head.
"What is going on here?" a voice asked in clear but Accented English.
As the hands slackened on the back of his neck, Eddie looked around. A huge open Toyota—no, Liga—four-wheeler had pulled into the compound. It had a padded roll bar with a bullpup Advanced RPK machine gun mounted to it by some kind of jury-rig. A half dozen rough boys in blue skullcaps who had evidently arrived in it had ringed the contestants in and were leveling Kalashnikovs at them from the waist.
A couple of sedans were parked behind the four-wheeler, a Mercedes and whatever Liga called their version of the Cressida, with smoked windows and the foot-long arched housings of smart-satlink phased-array antennas on the trunks. A group of less- casually dressed men were climbing out and approaching.
The man in the lead was clearly the one who had spoken. He was medium-sized, maybe a little thick in the middle, in a Western-style suit. A white turban was wrapped Tuareg-style around his head and face, so only his eyes showed.
Eddie stared. When the FedPol behind him let him go to step back, urged by the men with assault rifles, his knees almost gave. Timur!
For a moment he was tempted. The man was obviously just as crazy as KGB Central was convinced he was, to hang himself out like this in front of half a hundred foreigners, half of whom could be KGB plants, for all he knew—hell, for all Fast Eddie knew.
Most of all, he was exposing himself to Fast Eddie, who was a KGB plant, and whom nobody had bothered to relieve of the Glock in its inside-the-pants holster at the small of his back, hidden beneath the untucked tail of his shirt. A quick draw, a quick shot—fuck it; the whole magazine, just to be sure. That would be it for this new-model Scythian Tamerlane.
Of course, that would also be it for Aleksandr Gorsunov, doing business as Fast Eddie Randolph. But under whatever name, he hadn't joined Spetsnaz intending to live forever. A score like this was worth life itself to a Special Designation trooper of any nationality, easy.
But Arbatov's orders were clear: "Until you receive contrary instructions, under no circumstances are you to harm Timur. If he comes at you with a knife, let him stab you. Further, do not through inaction permit any harm to come to him." It made Fast Eddie feel like one of Isaac Asimov's robots.
The order made small sense to him. In the movies, Special Forces troopies are always disregarding orders when they disagree with them, just as cops are always throwing away whatever civil rights guarantees still survive in order to just go ahead and fuck up anybody they think deserves it. In truth, Special Forces troops are supposed to exercise a degree of initiative, even in the League Armed Forces, where initsiyativa was still a dirty word, and sometimes that can mean constructive disobedience.
But a Special Forces soldier is still a soldier, and soldiers follow orders. The KGB chief director had every legal right to give him orders, and he was bound on his honor to obey to the best of his ability.
Besides, there was his father in America, land of desaparecido and Operation Clean Sweep. The KGB had never been known to rely on mere patriotism or sense of duty when they had other handles to hand.
The masked man—Timur, fuck me, it has to be!—was standing right in front of him now. "What happened here?" he asked. His voice was quiet, but it cut right through the restless wind off the desert.
The two mustache boys pushed forward. "He went crazy. He attacked us. He must be on angel dust—"
The black kid was saying, "No, wait, he was just trying to help me out." Eddie gave him a quick appreciative glance. Having somebody actually back him up came close to being a whole new experience.
Timur held up a hand. Eddie noticed it was soft, the hand pf a middle manager, an intellectual, not a worker or peasant. No surprise there; who'd ever seen calluses on Lenin's hands, or Mao's?
"Enough."
The FedPols looked resentful, as if they were unused to being cut off in mid-denunciation. But at that point the shadow of a two-meter Military Encyclopedic Dictionary illustration of an Afghan dushman fell across them, scowling over a splendid beard. They shut up.
For a moment longer Timur's eyes held Eddie's. Eddie felt his mouth go dry. They were slanted eyes, with a touch of epicanthic fold—Chinese eyes, like so many of these Central Asian Turks had. They seemed to open up all the doors in his head and take a quick look around. Irrationally, he wondered if this was where the false ID the GRU specialists had painstakingly built for him in the American computer network would spring a lethal leak....
Timur turned away. "We Turkestanis appreciate the sacrifices you've all made, the risks you've all taken, to come here and offer your help," he said, pitching his voice for the whole compound. "Yet we must not fight each other. Fighting the Russians will take all the strength we have."
He gave Eddie a final, penetrating look, then began to make his way around the compound.
The interior of the long Liga smelled of horse manure, gun oil, sweat, and strong tobacco. Unpatriotic as it may have been, Francis Marron was devoutly glad the car had really been made by the Japanese. He'd hate to rely on League air-conditioning; in the brain-drilling Tashkent sun, a mixture of industrial-strength pollutants like that could turn the confines of a car lethal in a hurry.
He had barely sat down in the back when the other rear door opened and Timur leaned in. "Mr. Marron," he said, fastidiously holding the tail of his turban before his face, as if afraid he'd catch something. He held out his free hand. "I am sorry I have not had time to speak with you before this. So good of you to accompany me here."
Marron shook the rebel leader's hand. Timur sat down. One of his aides slammed the door and slid into the front passenger's seat. The other two aides who had ridden to the school with Timur, the outsized Pushtun and the small, neat, dark man in the League artillery officer's uniform, got into the Mercedes.
"The honor's mine, sir. I must say, I admire the way you ditched the gentlemen and ladies of the press downtown."
Timur laughed. "I must dissuade them as gently as I can. Otherwise they will eat up all my time."
"Well, sir, I'm grateful for any time you're able to spare me, as crowded as your schedule must be. I confess to being intrigued at the chance to see some of the men who've traveled here to join you."
"It seemed only appropriate," Timur said, as the gold-toothed driver put the car in gear with a slight buck. He fishtailed pulling into the street, then headed for Timur's residence downtown. "These are your countrymen, though we have volunteers coming from all over the world."
"I must say I'm impressed with the way you dealt with them, sir." Marron told the plain truth, a rare enough opportunity on a shadow-diplomacy mission like this. Timur had an excellent command voice, firm without being strident, and an apparent knack for saying just enough without running over the line into what his undoubtedly cynical audience would regard as the Bullshit Zone.
His fellow analysts at No Such Agency—the effort of will it took not to think of them as his former fellows distressed him—had Timur sized up as insane. Certainly it took an excess of self-confidence to take on the League in open rebellion. But NSA tended to psychological dogmatism, echoing the American Psychiatric Association line that defiance of authority in any form was pathological. Inasmuch as he had spent a good deal of his career pre-NSA in fostering just such defiance, Marron had a hard time buying that.
The more so when he got to Timur in action. The man was smooth and solid as a supertanker in calm water. They say Ted Bundy was a Republican party worker at one time, too.
"It is my good luck," Timur said, "that you caught me addressing men who speak a language with which I have some familiarity. It is difficult to make much impression through an interpreter."
"My parents always used to say Hitler made quite an impression on them, listening to him on the radio, and they didn't understand a word of German."
The aide in front gave Marron a hard look. It wa
s a calculated impertinence on Marron's part. He wasn't a cookie pusher from State, after all, Georgetown-trained to accommodate every whim of cannibal dictators. When he was with Central Intelligence, he learned that it was necessary, ever so occasionally, to take a high hand with clients, actual and prospective. He had apologies and fallbacks slotted in place in his mind, ready for launch if he had overstepped.
Timur just flicked him with anthracite eyes. "I have no ambition to resemble Hitler to any great degree. Come, Daoud, can you give me a run-down on our American volunteers? Do any of them show promise?"
His aide turned around in his seat and fussed open a laptop computer. He began to scroll through dossiers. "Here is one named DeVaughan; he has experience with chemical weapons—"
Timur listened for a few minutes as the great white building-block apartments of New Tashkent passed slowly to either side, like matte icebergs. Then he waved his hand. "What about the small one who was fighting with the two others?" What does his resume say?"
"He is Randolph, Edwin," Daoud said, squinting at the russet plasma screen. "Former master sergeant, United States Army Special Forces. He speaks Russian, Persian, and some Arabic."
The aide looked back at his boss. "The American Special Forces emphasize cadre work, as you know, Timur. As great as our need for training is, he could be a most valuable addition. If what he claims is true, as I fear half the claims these volunteers make are not."
"I have contacts within our Department of Enforcement Affairs," Marron said. "Friends-—the old boy network. I'd be glad to use what influence I have to see if I could get background checks run on any or all of these men."
"I appreciate the offer, Mr. Marron. Nonetheless, it strikes me that if I begin checking every American who wishes to join us with your Federal Police, we might soon find ourselves running short of volunteers."
"Oh, I don't really think there's much danger of that, Mr. Timur. That situation is exaggerated by malcontents and professional sensation-mongers abroad. The Federal Police Agency's approval rating with the American public is very high."
"Indeed. Perhaps you could give me some idea of what brings you to Turkestan yourself, Mr. Marron?"
"As you know, I'm an investment counselor. I represent a group of American investors who have come together for the purpose of making use of what they perceive as a window of opportunity here in Central Asia. After an extraordinarily promising start, economic reform in the League has proceeded painfully slowly. ..."
But Timur was laughing at him. Marron seated his glasses more firmly on the bridge of his nose, striving for an expression that suggested both willingness to join in a joke and readiness to show steel if American dignity needed to be stood upon. "Sir?"
"Forgive me. It is a violation of our rather rigid code of hospitality to laugh at a guest. As it is to lead him on—as I have been doing to you. But surely, Mr. Marion, is it not rather insulting of your Central Intelligence Agency to send one of their better-known operatives to me without even bothering to give him a false name?"
Marron swallowed. Think fast, he told himself. Blanket denial was clearly out of the question, so—
"Sir, I'm afraid you're working under a misapprehension. I was in fact an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency at one time, it's no cosmic secret. But it has been several years—-"
"Working for the so-secret National Security Agency. Come, Mr. Marron, give me a bit of credit. I have my sources too. The United States of America wishes for its own reasons that its approaches be secret, and I am willing to accept that. But I wonder at what I think your jargon calls the subtext."
He settled back against the door and looked at Marron. "Is your government trying to suggest that, should I not be a good little boy, you will terminate me as you did Acevedo in Costa Rica?"
Chapter FOURTEEN
"Where are you from, soldier?"
The boy had fat cheeks and biceps that bulged like Polish hams. He seemed on the verge of sneering; then his eyes flicked aside to where, Anatoliy Karponin knew, the regimental starshina was regarding him with a look of undoubted hatred. A newly promoted general colonel commanding a Front composed of League troops as well as contingents from all the republics was a being so remote from any reality this miserable muscle-bound conscript understood that he had no idea how to react.
Features writhed beneath pallid skin that shone with greasy-looking sweat, arranged themselves in a set no-look, eyes fixed on the scatter of clouds rolling like dustballs above the distant horizon. He knew enough to fear his noncoms. Good.
"The General Colonel asked a question!" the Russian republican sergeant major snapped. He didn't say shitbag, but everybody heard it.
"Moscow, sir," the boy stammered.
"Ah. What district?"
The boy stared into space a moment before he felt the fury radiating off the sergeant major behind Karponin's left shoulder. "L-lyubertsy. Sir."
"A good working-class address." Karponin nodded. "So. You are a Lyuber. I suppose you belonged to one of those so-famous gangs, who wander the Moscow streets assaulting those who don't conform to our traditional Russian values."
The boy was quivering now, it having penetrated one of his brains—either the one in his dumpling-shaped skull or the one at the base of the tail Karponin was certain he'd find if he looked for it—that he could be in serious trouble. He started to nod, then said, "Yes, sir!" He looked hopeful again.
Karponin smiled. "And you are very strong? You can bench press two hundred kilos?"
"Yes. Yes, General, sir." The youth bobbed his head, practically beaming with pride.
Karponin had his mouth near the young man's ear. "And will your fine muscles protect you when a Mussulman's bullet has turned your guts to red jelly?" he asked. His voice was low, but it cut like a whip, and every man for twenty meters heard him clearly.
The boy crumpled as if he'd been hit in the solar plexus. Karponin turned away and, to no surprise, found a youth with long lank blond hair smirking at the working-class tough from several places down.
"And what do you find humorous, soldier?"
The blond boy snapped upright. He could manage a good attention when he had to. "Nothing, sir!" he snapped, all Young League business.
Karponin raised his heavy dramatic eyebrows. "Indeed? Those who grin at nothing are mentally disturbed. Perhaps I should notify your Morale & Development Officer." He tipped his head back, pretending to consider.
Sweat crept from beneath the tan service cap, matting the blond hair further. "Let me guess, my lad. You weren't really smirking at nothing. You were smirking to see a proletarian lout put in his place."
Blondie's lips quivered with the desire, the need to deny, but he knew better than to speak. There might be hope for him too.
"So your father is a New State Capitalist, then? Or an administrator for the republic Environmental Bureau? No, you need not answer. You are sick, my boy. Contempt for the working classes which are the backbone of our League is a symptom of mental disease. But we need not trouble your M&D officer. Here in Central Asian Front, we are very conscious of medical progress, and understand that exercise is a specific for many illnesses of mind and body."
He turned. "Therefore, you will don full kit and run down to the right-of-way for the Central Asian Railway. It's only ten kilometers round trip, but that should suffice to help you with your problem. Sergeant Major, send a yefreytor along in a jeep to monitor the progress of his therapy."
"Yes, sir."
The New Class kid was sent staggering off beneath pack and helmet and the horrible southern-steppe sun. Anatoliy Karponin stepped back to address the formation as a whole. His face was very tan, so that his white trademark scar gave him a dashing, almost piratical look.
"You are not soldiers. You are khuligany and spoiled sons of privilege who have slouched and shirked through those years of civil-defense training which were meant to ready you to fulfill your military obligation to your Motherland. A seasoned veteran might q
uail before the task of turning you into soldiers." Which is why I selected you.
"But I am the man they call Al Capone. I am a mean bastard. Central Asian Front is the finest fighting formation in the League, and you will do your parts.
"At the beginning of this decade Rodina Mat' was disgraced by the fat, sloppy, long-haired weaklings turned out to quell the savages and traitors. Those imitation soldiers gave the politicians the excuse they needed to give the Union away.
"Your noncommissioned officers are all picked men— picked by me. They are combat veterans, hard men, men who know how to take a life. If you do not now fear them more than you fear Timur, then wait. But they and they alone can teach you what you must know to face the desert, and the fanatical hordes who wait beyond.
"If you are attentive, and work hard, and then harder, you may survive. But understand your survival is not necessary; it is a matter of least importance. The Motherland is all. You shall not fail her."
All his life he had transacted business from behind a desk. To do it instead from the midst of a splendid Bukhara carpet from the days before chemical dyes—to do without his accustomed defenses was an oddly exhilarating, riding-the-edge sort of experience. It reminded him, briefly, of the inevitable, indeed the necessary end to this adventure. Yet that knowledge did nothing to diminish the pleasure. If anything, the opposite.
"Ah, Khaalis," he said. "You are well?"
The republic official was a podgy Uzbek with Mongol eyes gotten from his Kirghiz mother, and dark bags under them gotten from overwork, worry, or debauchery, depending on your estimate of his character. Khaalis was not the head of his department; that honor had belonged to a European Russian. Of course, being boss made you a prime target of the periodic drives against corruption. Nailing rivals for corruption was a traditional road to power for the ambitious young Party man, and was especially popular now that the Party's successors had to worry both about world opinion and voters.
The European Russian department head—last seen weeping with gratitude as Sons of the Sky-Blue Wolf escorted him aboard the first jetliner out of Tashkent after the revolt—got the title and the heat. It was Khaalis—and his family connections—who got things done, Khaalis and his family connections who held the actual power. That was political reality in Central Asia. As it always had been, even before the Nikolays.
