by Victor Milán
"That's subject to negotiation," she said.
He passed that off with a laugh, took his bite, chewed and swallowed it. "It was an action I deemed appropriate," he said, "however long it took me to arrive at it."
She let a corner of her mouth turn down in amusement. Not a bad parry, she thought.
"You named the units after ancient champions of Islam noted for their suicidal valor—the word ghazi is still sometimes translated as 'fanatic' in the West. They're obviously meant to attract militant Shi'ites and fundamentalists. Does this represent a retreat from your original determination that Free Turkestan should not be a specifically Islamic state?"
"Not at all," he said. His eyes fixed hers above the cloth; they neither widened nor sidestepped at the question. "This is a revolution of all Turkestani peoples, including the Muslim radicals. My ghazi units are designed to attract those who have trouble containing their anger or their fervor, to give them a channel that will help our revolution rather than tear it apart."
"You yourself have taken the name of a famous conqueror," she said, "one notable for the extent and ruthlessness of his conquests. Does this choice reflect your long-range intentions?"
"Not at all. For better or worse, Timur-i-leng, the Iron limper, is the best-known Turk in our history. I serve as a rallying point, as a catalyst, and chose therefore to pick the greatest name of Central Asia. In spite of the connotations, rather than because of them."
"You don't want to conquer Russia?"
"Khuda asrasin—God forbid. We want no one else's life or freedom or property. Ours have proven expensive enough. The butchery at Ak Tepe shows us—and the world—what we can expect to pay to keep them."
She made a mouth, pouting almost. It wasn't the answer she had hoped he would give. But perhaps he was being evasive, to avoid alerting his enemies to his true intentions. Diogenes searched for an honest man; Jacqui Gendron searched always for a strong one.
"So would you describe yourself, if not as a conqueror, then as the violent Gandhi of your people?"
Black eyes danced above checked cloth. "I would not perhaps describe myself that way. I certainly have no objection to your doing so."
She finished eating, cleaned her mouth with her napkin and the punctiliousness of a grooming cat, leaned back, and hooked an arm over the back of her chair.
"Today's world is interdependent, an ecosystem," she said. "You can't stand entirely alone. You need friends."
His eyebrows disappeared into the upper portion of his headcloth. "So the seduction begins."
Her first impulse was to laugh in his shrouded face. She stamped it down hard. It was risky to laugh at even the most liberal-minded Asian despot.
Besides, she admitted to herself, it was not at all impossible. He was hardly prepossessing physically: a stocky man, shorter than she, somewhat soft around the middle, and God knew what the facecloth hid. But physical appearance wasn't the key to physical attraction for her.
She felt herself to be highly intuitive and highly psychic, and revered first impressions. Her first impression of Timur was of a man possessed of World Historical presence. A man touched by destiny. That excited her.
But still: Timur had shown himself indeed to lack his namesake's ruthlessness, and would a truly strong man shrink from strong measures? Nor had she ever loved losers—and she had to admit that in the upcoming contest between Timur and Anatoliy Karponin, the smart money rode squarely on her most recent lover.
Timur was watching her, calmly, steadily. She realized that while he was interested in her as a woman, his comment had not been about that at all. She almost blushed, for the first time in memory.
"I have a social conscience," she said. "You have needs. The workers of my country can fill those needs, for arms, munitions, electronics—"
"Your 'country.' Not your United Europe."
She shrugged. Even American commentators and columnists were beginning to perceive the cracks the stucco of EuroCommunity hid. That morning two Swedish advisers had been killed in a brash with French advisers in the Great Namib, with the result that the French national arms industry's stock had gone up in the Bourse, and the Swedish had gone down.
Timur laid down his fork and slid his chair back a few centimeters. "I shall keep your kind offer in mind. Shall we begin the interview?"
Ak Mechet: the "White Fortress." Its fall over a century before had signaled a symbolic and actual turning point in the Russian conquest of Turkestan. The adoption of the name Kzyl Qrda, "Red Capital," had symbolized Turkestan's hopes for the freedom revolution would bring—hopes soon shot in the back of the neck during the purges of native Communists, or starved to the tune of ten million or so by Stalin. The White Fortress had taken its old name back at about the same time St. Petersburg and Volgograd were reclaiming theirs, in what proved a final, and futile, gesture before the League drowned the hopes of independence that had stirred to brief life at the dawn of the nineties.
Moving deliberately, as STAVKA, obedient to the council, demanded, General Colonel Karponin's Desert Wind advanced along the Syr Dar'ya River. It entered Ak Mechet without a shot being fired.
'"Procrastination is like death,'" Anatoliy Karponin told the giant face on the screen on his office wall, "if I may take the liberty of quoting the immortal Suvorov. When am I going to be permitted to move?"
For a general colonel to quote to a full marshal an aphorism that even a praporshchik, "warrant officer," was cxpected to have by heart was an almost unthinkable effrontery even in today's army. That the marshal was chief of the League General Staff sent it almost into the realm of the fantastic, along with faster-than-light travel and artificial consciousness.
But Katponin's effrontery had nothing to do with the redness of Marshal Burdeinyi's face, or the sweat scattered across it like crystal pebbles; he always looked like that, and Al Capone always talked to him like that.
"Come now, Tolya," Burdeinyi said, trying for bluffness and mainly sounding exasperated, "be reasonable. You are advancing into a virtual information vacuum. Who can know what lies before you, hey? We must also keep the political realities before our eyes—and speaking of eyes, the eyes of the world are upon us there in Central Asia, never forget. And besides, this isn't the Great Patriotic War; these black-asses can't seriously threaten us. Go gently."
"To answer your objections more or less in order, Marshal," Karponin said tartly, "I cannot be held responsible for the failures of our civilian associates to gather adequate information—as I cannot for their failure to nip this rebellion in the bud. The political reality is that the world has already turned its back on the rebellion; the Westerners may censure us for forcefulness, but in a matter of days, weeks at the most, some sensation will distract them, and all will be forgotten. And are we weak, that we should care what the world says?"
The marshal said nothing. He sweated some more. Karponin of course looked perfectly cool and dry, though the air-conditioning in the ancient barracks outside Ak Mechet he had tapped as his headquarters had as a matter of course crapped out.
How huge the pores of his nose are, Karponin thought. One could put one's finger into them. By the pattern of veins visible on Burdeinyi's bulbous nose, it was clear he was not obeying army regulations on the moderate consumption of alcohol as strictly as befit the chief of STAVKA. Another datum Karponin would make use of, when the time arose....
"What is called for here is a short, sharp shock," Karponin said in his best lecture-hall tones. He was a full Doctor of Military Science. On this particular stifling late summer morning, there were only five hundred twenty-eight others in the whole League who could make that claim. Marshal Burdeinyi was not one of them. "Permitting this treason to go unpunished strengthens the rebels; the longer they defy us, the deeper sedition will send its roots. But if we pluck it out"— he made a snatching gesture right into the video pickup; Burdeinyi jumped —"we can make an abrupt end to all this nonsense. The longer the process is prolonged, the harder will be the upro
oting, and the more chance the West will have to cavil. All this argues for Suvorov, and speed."
Burdeinyi sighed and visibly fought down an urge to mop his forehead. "But the rebels haven't exactly made you pay for every step in blood, have they, Anatoliy Grigorevich?" He shook his heavy, balding head. "You will see. You are young and impetuous, and you will see. The nationalities tried to break away before, and all failed, in spite of the traitors and weaklings who ruled the Motherland. In the face of our calm determination, this—this seedling of rebellion will quickly wither and die." He smiled, pleased at having luially figured a way to heterodyne with Karponin's metaphor. Karponin respected him better when his false teeth were honest Russian gold, not French ceramic.
"Patience, Comrade General Colonel," the now jovial lace said. "Patience and perseverance. This is what STAVKA requires of you."
The screen went blank. Karponin balled his hands into lists and slammed the knuckles down on the warped pine top of the desk.
Flies buzzed around his head, huge and black and gross. The windows stood open. Not even Anatoliy Karponin dared shut them on this heat. It was tin-smith heat, bent on hammering you out into sheets. The once-great Syr Dar'ya had been strangled down to a mere unnavigable trickle by the rape of the Tien Shan watershed in the name of Tsar Cotton, but the valley air was still humid enough to lend lead to the blows of that heat.
There were no screens on the windows. There were no stocks of window screening in Ak Mechet, even if you commanded a Front. Screen was on the government's ration list, which was to say, not to be had. If I'm here for any time, I'll send men to tear some off some fat merchant's villa, he thought. These Asiatics are all capitalist exploiters at heart. They know how to look out for themselves.
A brisk tap on the door. "Come in, Captain," Karponin called.
His aide entered with a firm stride. A bright young man from a good military family, Captain Rybalko was a veteran of the undeclared war with the Chinese animals—a tanker, or course. He was not afraid to speak his mind.
Al Capone was not a man who encouraged subordinates to differ with him. He liked them to do their jobs and keep their mouths shut. But he prided himself on his objectivity, and he always made it a point to keep one independent thinker at his elbow. It helped maintain perspective.
Rybalko's recruiting-poster face creased when he saw his commander's expression. "General Colonel, what is the matter?"
Karponin waved a hand at the boy. "The old women at STAVKA. They've got zasadskiy sklad uma, the ambush mentality—our post-Afghanistan Syndrome, as the Americans suffered their post-Vietnam indecisiveness. They fear to act."
He shook his head. "I don't know what's wrong with Timur. I slapped him in the face at Ak Tepe. He must slap back, or he's going to lose all face. And face is everything in the East."
"Perhaps he doesn't know that, General," Rybalko said. "Turn on the television."
Karponin picked up the hand control, switched the wall unit from videophone to TV.
Jacqui Gendron's sharp handsome face was looking out at him, her russet hair blowing in the breeze down Fergana Valley from the blue Tien Shans behind her. Karponin's lips vanished in an angry line. That whore. How could she dare expect me to—
"Timur," she was saying, "who is becoming known to the world as the violent Gandhi of his people, has a startling message for the people of Ak Mechet: do not fight Al Capone."
The screen switched to the rebel's shrouded face. "Do not take up arms against the invader," he was saying. "Resist without force; disobey any orders he may give, obstruct when you can. But do not give him the opportunity to massacre you as he did the children of Ak Tepe."
His eyes blazed from green facecloth folds. "I am not the Iron Limper, though I bear his name. But I quote him now, to Anatoliy Karponin and to his masters: 'You may be able to get the bone down your throat. But if it reaches your stomach it will tear your navel.'"
Karponin tipped his head back. The laugh came from deep within, propelled by the hard muscles of his belly. Rybalko looked at him as if he'd gone crazy.
"I'm going to ram this Front up your broad black ass, l imur Khan," Karponin said. "The League can't hold me back forever, even if you're too cowardly to provide me provocation. They will release me to act. And then we'll see what tears through whose navel."
Chapter TWENTY-ONE
Ambush country, Fast Eddie thought, feeling the footfalls of his khaki-colored mare with the black Mohawk mane jar through his tailbone. The scrub-dotted land looked countertop flat between red mesas. It was a lie. There was dead ground in profusion, between slow dun swells that you never noticed until they rose beneath your feet, in sandy-bottom wadis, cut sharp-sided by the fierce infrequent rains and deep enough to hide a horse and rider.
Of course, that was why the long-suffering League taxpayer got to pay for all those airplanes. Not much overhead cover in the desert. That in turn was why every third man of the two sections of Jagun 23 on exercises forty klicks southwest of Turkestan carried a Third World knockoff of the old American Stinger shoulder-fired antiaircraft missile. Eddie wondered where they got all the damned things, and wondered if Al Capone was taking them into consideration.
Probably not. To Karponin, air assets were something you burned up to clear the way fof the glorious black-tabbed tankers.
They had spent the past three days drilling. The men, all mounted, scattered like grouse to a hawk, to re-form at a map reference ten klicks away. Eddie was painfully certain he would once again be the last to trickle in, along with Maqsut, who stuck faithfully by his side. It was the horse's fault. Her name was Sertikan, which meant "Full of Thorns." It fit.
Despite her best efforts, he was spending less time as an airborne stranger now. He couldn't say he was getting the hang of riding, but he was better at staying aboard.
A pair of riders popped into view to the left, disconcertingly near. The newcomers were dressed in dusty ragged robes and round skullcaps of goat-hair felt that had probably once been brightly dyed but were now the color of grease stains. They reminded Eddie of the Sand People from Star Wars. They were Sand People from the Qizil Qum, kumli he had just received as guides and replacements.
They had probably been smoking and joking somewhere, knowing they could loaf to the rendezvous and still beat their ferenghi boss. One of them had an ancient drum-magazine Shpagin machine pistol, its shiny finish muffled in rags like its owner, slung around his neck. Maqsut greeted them and was acknowledged in guttural desert dialect. No kumli Eddie had met except the astonishing one-eyed redheaded Kagarovich admitted speaking Russian.
He'd gotten six new Sand People after Shoreh and most of Charlie had opted out of the unit to enlist in Timur's dipshit new ghazi, along with a couple of Shi'ite Kirghiz. He also received a dozen better-socialized—Hanafi—Tadzhiks. That left him understrength, with a bloc of troopies who wouldn't speak any language he understood.
He figured he'd come out smelling like a rose. He was still maybe not Mr. Popularity, but at least nobody left in the unit was eying his Adam's apple and murmuring to his buddies that jihad begins at home.
Scuttlebutt said the Shi'ites and hairier radical-revivalist Muslims—what the Western media still called fundamentalists, even though they were anything but—were volunteering for the ghazi in shoals. In his E-mail reports to Arbatov, Eddie wondered whether Timur had backed off from religious tolerance, or if he figured he could keep the nuts in line if they were all clumped together—wishful thinking in Eddie's book. The chief director told him not to waste effort on mailers over his head. The fat bastard.
The early afternoon sun came through his aviator shades like military lasers bent on burning out his eyes. The riders topped a rise and the land fell away. At the base of the slope the rest of the unit waited, most of them dismounted so they could flake out in the shade of an arroyo that ran through a grove of what looked like dead trees.
"Why?" Eddie asked. His throat felt rusty with dust, heat, and disuse. Maqsut raised
his eyebrows, which gave him a comical look. "I mean, I know why the trees are dead, but what are they doing here at all?"
"They aren't dead. They're saxual. The dead appearance conserves moisture. When it rains, they sprout leaves."
"How often is that? Once a century? They're not really dead, they're just as good as dead, is that it?"
"It rains here. Sometimes. Less than in our parents' time. The desert grows, thanks to the Nikolays using up all the water to grow their cotton."
Fast Eddie chewed the inside of his left cheek. League agricultural policy wasn't his problem, which was fine with him. He had problems enough. Such as Al Capone's cheap-jack Desert Storm ripoff, gathering not three hundred klicks from the jagun's base in Turkestan town.
Starting down the slope, Eddie noticed a man sitting in the dubious shade of a meter-high clump of camel hair grass just down from the crestline with a Brazilian Stinger across his knees. He nodded, grinned encouragement. Half of him meant it. Half didn't. Where do I stand when it all hits the fan?
He noticed Maqsut looking at him funny, realized he'd let a Hash of his uncertainty show. Playing spy wasn't supposed to he this hard, he thought. I've done it half my life.
"Jesus, Jesus, come and squeeze us," he said in English, a couplet picked up from the tough Irish Catholic schoolboys he'd alternately run and rumbled with as a kid in the Bronx. And then in Russian, "It's hot out here."
One of the kumli, who had fallen in a few meters behind, laughed out loud. His companion said something in his native dialect.
"What's that all about?" Eddie asked.
Maqsut smiled shyly. "They say, wait until you feel the bite of Qizil Qum. Compared to that, this is the Perfumed Garden."
"Senior Lieutenant."
Eddie glanced up to see Shamsiyev, the kid Kirghiz, standing just outside the feeble glow of the fire he'd let his men build against the night's surprising chill. He nodded for the youth to hunker down beside him. "What's on your mind?" His voice caught briefly in his throat. Kiziak.
