Enemy of the Good

by Matthew Palmer

  “I’m afraid I don’t know. It’s possible. I only know that I was asked to share the notes and I’m under a little time pressure. Could you help me?”

  The damsel-in-distress routine was not a role Kate had much experience with. But the secretary did not seem to be much of a theater critic either.

  “Let me have them, please,” he said.

  Kate handed over her notebook.

  “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

  The secretary disappeared down the hall and Kate was alone in the president’s outer office. Eraliev himself was just on the other side of the door. Kate did not know how long she had. It should take at least a few minutes for the secretary to make copies of the ten pages or so of notes on her steno pad. But Svetlana could return to the office at any moment. And it was equally possible that Eraliev could open the door to his office with no notice and catch Kate with her hand in the proverbial cookie jar. There was no time to waste.

  Kate searched the desk methodically, going through each of the drawers, her frustration mounting as each one came up empty. Where the hell was it?

  A part of her listened for the click-clack of Svetlana’s high heels on the thin carpet in the halls or the softer sounds of the secretary’s loafers.

  It took no more than a few minutes, but it felt like an hour. The seal was wedged into the back of the right middle drawer. Kate’s fingers closed eagerly around the cold metal handle. She pulled the form out of her jacket pocket. It was already filled in and the president’s distinctive signature had been expertly forged. She slipped the paper under the seal and pushed the handle down, leaving a raised mark over half the signature. Now it was an official state document and the instructions on it would be obeyed by the regime’s functionaries without question.

  She put the seal back where she had found it and closed the drawer. No sooner had Kate stepped across the threshold into the formal meeting room than the secretary returned with Xerox copies of her notes.

  “Thank you,” Kate said. “Please give them to the president with the ambassador’s compliments.”

  “Of course.”

  Kate’s legs felt rubbery and she almost tripped walking down the stairs. Svetlana was at the front door, doubtless waiting for the next set of guests.

  “I’m glad you found it,” she said, gesturing at Kate’s bag.

  “So am I,” Kate said.

  Now all she needed to do was deliver the broomstick to the Great and Powerful Oz.

  13

  Ruslan had always believed that the mountains were the soul of his country. The plains were the source of wealth and the cities were the centers of power, but the Kyrgyz were a mountain people and it was only in the hill country or on the back of a horse that their hearts were truly at rest.

  It was a nice thought, but at the moment, even up here in the mountains, there was nothing restful about Ruslan’s heart. A potent cocktail of anxiety and responsibility had it beating with an urgency he could feel in the tips of his fingers. His grip on the wood stock of the rifle he carried was tight enough to whiten his knuckles. Nogoev, the old soldier, noticed his unease.

  “The waiting is the most difficult part,” he said reassuringly. “The foot soldiers deal with it as they will. But you are a leader. Talk to your people. They expect that of you. They deserve that from you.”

  Nogoev was right, Ruslan realized with some chagrin. He should not be thinking of himself or even Bermet at this moment but of them. He briefly surveyed his army. There were sixteen of them, including Nogoev and himself. Ismailov the wrestler was the only other council member. The rest were Nogoev’s Scythians. Ten men and three women, although they were considerably closer to boys and girls. They were brave enough and they were all good riders, but in purely military terms they were—at best—half trained. They would need their leaders to keep them alive.

  Ruslan slung the rifle over his shoulder and joined a small circle of Scythians who stood deep in conversation.

  “Are your horses rested and ready?” he asked.

  A small, dark woman named Nazgul was holding the reins of a horse with similar characteristics. She stroked the nose of the tough-looking mountain pony.

  “He’s ready, Seitek,” she said. “We all are.”

  The others nodded their agreement. This was their first test and they were eager to prove themselves. Their desire was never in doubt. Nazgul had lost both a father and brother to the Eraliev regime’s never-ending war against its opponents, real and imagined. Most of the Scythians had suffered a personal loss at the hands of the state. They were ready to risk everything. But Ruslan had no idea how they would respond at the moment of truth. Or how he himself would respond, for that matter. Of all of them, Nogoev was the only one who had ever fired a weapon in anger. Ruslan understood, however, that it was important to pretend to a confidence and a certainty he did not possess. This was not merely the price of leadership; it was a form of leadership.

  “You all know what’s at stake today,” Ruslan said, trying to speak with gravity but without sounding pompous. It was a surprisingly difficult balance to strike. “This is tantamount to a declaration of war, and generations from now a free Kyrgyz people will look back on this day and remember that this was when we struck the first blow for their liberty.”

  Ruslan paused to gather his thoughts for a suitable peroration, but before he could launch into it, the sound of a single motorcycle engine reached their ears. The Scythians rode horses, mostly one at a time, but Nogoev had mounted a few scouts on 125-horsepower motorbikes. They had been posted as pickets looking out for the convoy that would be carrying Bermet to the labor camp near Kosh-Dobo. That sound meant that the scouts had made contact.

  The radio on Ruslan’s belt squawked as the scout reached the crest of the hill that had been blocking the signal.

  “This is Rice Rocket Two, do you read me?”

  Ruslan pulled the radio from its holster.

  “Go ahead, Rice Rocket Two,” he said. “This is Control.”

  “The convoy is ten minutes out, Control. I will continue tracking.”

  “Okay, Rice Rocket. But keep your distance. Don’t let them see you.”

  “Roger, Control.”

  “Ten minutes,” Ruslan shouted at the Scythians stretched in a loose line in the shadow of a ridge that would shield them from view as the convoy approached on the road that ran along the floor of the valley. The Scythians would have to make certain that the convoy had taken the bait before closing the trap shut.

  The young warriors mounted their horses and tried to pretend that they did not care about what would happen next. Ruslan loved them for it. And he knew that he would gladly die for them.

  “It’s a terrible feeling, isn’t it?”

  He turned to see Nogoev standing behind him holding the reins of two horses. He handed one set to Ruslan.

  “Battle?” Ruslan asked.

  “Command,” Nogoev answered. “It’s easy to surrender your own life. It’ll be much harder to see these children lose theirs. There will be casualties in this war, Seitek. There always are. Good boys and girls will die. You must be ready for that.”

  Ruslan grunted his understanding and mounted his horse, a beautiful black mare he called Akkula, after Manas’s own horse.

  He again pulled the radio from his belt. The Scythians had chosen this position carefully and they had a plan.

  “Bo Peep, this is Control.”

  “I read you, Control.”

  “Execute.”

  “Roger.”

  Ruslan wrapped a long gray scarf around his head and face until only his eyes were visible. Nogoev and the Scythians did the same. They looked like a Berber raiding party in the North African desert.

  “This would be easier,” Nogoev said, “if we did it my way.”

  “There’ll be no unnecessary killing,” Rus
lan admonished him. “These are our countrymen, even the servants of Eraliev. And they have sisters and cousins and children and friends who would have cause to hate us if we simply slaughtered our enemies like so many sheep. We will use the force we must, and no more.”

  Nogoev snorted his disagreement, but he did not press the point. For Ruslan, his aversion to excessive violence was, in part, a matter of principle. But it was more than that. It was a strategic choice. It would do no good to win the battle and lose the war. As experienced as the Red Army veteran was, Nogoev was also limited, like a man with a hammer who saw every problem as a nail.

  But as averse as Ruslan was to killing his enemies, he was even more reluctant to see his own people die. The paramilitaries escorting Bermet to the labor camp could not be given the opportunity to bring their heavy weapons into play against the Scythian cavalry. The riders would be murdered before they got within fifty meters of the truck carrying Bermet.

  Ruslan and Nogoev rode to near the top of the ridge and dismounted. Ruslan handed the reins to the Scythian commander and walked the last few meters to the peak. He lay down in the tall grass. From here he had a clear view of the valley road and the convoy of prison vehicles that was throwing up dust. A pair of compact but powerful binoculars brought the scene into sharp focus. The lead vehicle was a blue-and-white police car with its lights flashing. Behind that was a gunmetal-gray prison transport truck, heavy and armored with a steel grille welded to the front and a big winch that could reel the truck from the mudflats that formed on the back roads after heavy rains. The third car was a black Toyota Land Cruiser. This was the most dangerous vehicle. There would be Special Police inside with long guns, machine pistols, and ballistic vests.

  “All this for one girl?” Ruslan had asked Murzaev incredulously when the intelligence chief had explained what they were likely to encounter.

  “She’s not a girl,” Murzaev had replied. “She’s a Tier I political prisoner. This is a standard package.”

  The valley was narrow and the dirt road paralleled a small stream with steep banks. Ruslan watched through the binoculars as the prison convoy rounded the last turn and was forced to a stop by a sizable flock of sheep meandering in the middle of the road. The incompetent shepherd was wearing traditional Kyrgyz clothes, including a wool cloak that concealed a squat Russian Bizon-2 submachine gun.

  The next few minutes would mark the difference between success and failure. Victory and death.

  Ruslan wanted desperately to mount Akkula and charge down the slope firing his rifle into the sky. But he had to make certain the Special Police in the Land Cruiser would not mow down the Scythians as they rode across the open ground.

  The police car in the front honked at the sheep, who bleated but gave no indication that they acknowledged the authority and supremacy of the state and its designated representatives. The cop in the passenger seat leaned out the window and seemed to be shouting something at the shepherd. Ruslan could not hear him, but it did not look like an exchange of pleasantries.

  With all the attention focused at the front of the convoy, only Ruslan saw the two figures emerge from their hiding place in the waist-high grass behind the convoy. One was carrying a long metal pipe. They moved swiftly to the Land Cruiser at the tail end of the column. The larger of the two, Ismailov, swung the pipe into the SUV’s rear window, shattering it. The other figure, one of the women on the team, tossed two small objects into the SUV through the jagged hole in the glass.

  Even before the explosion, Ruslan was on his feet signaling to the Scythians and running for Akkula. The Scythian cavalry leapt forward over the crest of the hill as the flash-bang grenade exploded. Inside the confined space of the Land Cruiser cabin, the effects would be magnified. The Special Police would have their eardrums blown out. Blood would be leaking from their noses and their ears. They would be blind and disoriented. To add to the confusion, the second grenade filled the SUV with a thick, acrid smoke that would—inshallah—shield the Scythians from view.

  Ruslan charged down the slope, letting Akkula pick her own line. He saw the shepherd spray the hood of the marked blue-and-white police car with his submachine gun and then point it at the cops in the front seat, his message unmistakable.

  The Scythians had their assignments. One team of six circled the Land Cruiser. They dismounted quickly and pulled the stunned Special Police out of the car, stripping them of their weapons and radios and forcing them to lie flat on the road. Three of the horsemen joined the shepherd in dissuading the two regular policemen in the lead vehicle from martyring themselves in an unjust cause.

  The rest, together with Ruslan, assaulted the hulking prisoner transfer truck. Ruslan approached the driver’s-side door, his rifle now slung over his shoulder. The door was locked and the window was made of reinforced glass that was bullet resistant if not necessarily bulletproof. The driver was young and fit looking with the chest and shoulders of a serious weight lifter. And an attitude. He looked at Ruslan and shook his head. Then he held up his fist in what was known locally as the “fig sign,” with his thumb tucked between the index and middle fingers. It was a gesture of refusal and defiance. And it was not especially polite.

  Reaching into his saddle bag, Ruslan pulled out a greasy orange block of Semtex plastic explosive and slapped it firmly onto the glass right by the driver’s head. The detonator was already lodged in the center of the lump of putty. Ruslan held up the trigger and looked at the driver, tilting his head and shrugging his shoulders as though to say “your call.”

  The prison driver raised both his hands in surrender. Ruslan gestured at the door and the driver opened it. Without getting off his horse, Ruslan grabbed the man by the shoulder of his uniform and dragged him to the ground.

  “Keys,” Ruslan said. The driver looked Slavic, so Ruslan spoke to him in Russian.

  The bodybuilder turned prison driver pulled a set of keys off his belt and held them up awkwardly.

  Ruslan took them.

  “Which one opens the back?”

  “The big silver one.”

  “Tie him up,” Ruslan instructed one of the Scythians. “And watch him closely.”

  The locking mechanism turned easily enough and Ruslan tugged the rear door open eagerly. Inside, four people in drab prison uniforms sat facing one another wearing handcuffs and shackles. All of them were men. Bermet wasn’t there.

  Nothing is easy.

  —

  “Where is she?” Ruslan demanded of the driver.

  “Who?”

  “Bermet. The woman you were supposed to be transporting to Kosh-Dobo.”

  “Believe me that you wouldn’t want a woman back there with those boys. They must have put her on the helicopter.”

  “Helicopter?”

  “The commander at Kosh-Dobo is rotating back to Bishkek. Guys that senior get to fly. I heard that they were going to use the helicopter for one of the Tier I’s. That must be your girl. Now can I sit up, please?”

  The driver started to pull himself up off the dusty ground into a sitting position. Ruslan put a boot between his shoulder blades and pushed him back onto his belly.

  “Not until we’re finished here,” he explained. “What’s your name?”

  “Bogdan.”

  “Okay, Bogdan. Can you contact the helicopter?”

  “Yes. In an emergency.”

  Ruslan pulled a pistol from his belt and kneeled in front of the driver, pointing it at his forehead.”

  “Do you think this might qualify?”

  “Y-y-yes.”

  “Good. You may sit up.”

  Bogdan did so.

  Ruslan gestured at the Scythian to cut the plastic flex cuffs holding his hands behind his back.

  “Now show me how to reach the helo.”

  It was not difficult. Ruslan listened with a part of his brain while Bogdan explained how to u
se the radio. The bulk of his gray matter, however, was busy sorting through options, trying to formulate a plan. What he came up with seemed entirely crazy. It would have to do.

  Ruslan gathered a small circle of Scythians that included Nogoev and Ismailov and explained his plan. Nogoev laughed.

  “You would have been right at home in Afghanistan, Seitek. All the best officers were slightly mad.”

  Ismailov gave the Scythians their assignments, while Ruslan tried to raise the helicopter on the radio in the truck cab. Bogdan was sitting next to him in the passenger seat.

  “Do you know the pilot?” Ruslan asked.

  “Yes. But not well.”

  “What’s his name?”

  The driver was silent.

  “You do not want to be a hero today. If you won’t be honest with me, Bogdan, I’m afraid we’re going to have to ride off and leave those boys in the back of the truck in charge. They don’t look like especially nice people, do they?”

  Bogdan shook his head

  “What’s the pilot’s name?”

  “Umid.” It was an Uzbek name.

  “You’re quite sure about that?”

  Bogdan nodded miserably.

  “Excellent. I think we’re going to be friends, you and I. What’s the radio call sign for the helicopter?”

  “Eagle Flight.”

  “And yours?”

  “Stallion.”

  Ruslan had to bite back a laugh.

  “If you’re lying to me, Bogdan, you’ll need to change that to Gelding. Do you understand?”

  “You’re the one they call Seitek, aren’t you? From Boldu.”

  “I have the privilege.”

  “You can’t beat them. They will kill you in the end.”

  “They’ll have to find me first.”

  As Bogdan had instructed, Ruslan set the radio to channel three.

  “Eagle Flight, this is Stallion. Do you read me?” Ruslan dropped his voice to match Bogdan’s deeper tones, but he was relying on the tinny sounds of radio communications and the ambient noise of the helicopter to mask the difference.