Enemy of the Good

by Matthew Palmer

  “And you trust him to tell you the truth?” Murzaev asked.

  “No. But I can’t see why he would lie about that.”

  “You can never tell with the CIA. They tell so many lies it can be hard even for them to remember what’s false and what’s true.”

  “What can we do?”

  “They may know my name,” Ruslan said. “But that’s not the same thing as knowing where to find me. I just need to keep moving.”

  “And what about your family? Won’t they go after them?”

  “Eventually. But I’m hoping that in a few days it’ll be a moot point. We’ll all be together on Ala-Too Square and then they’ll have to come and get us.”

  “And what happens when they do?”

  “There’s been some positive news on that front, thanks to you.”

  “Malinin?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened?”

  “He’s fallen from favor,” Murzaev said sardonically. “Fallen hard. Seems there were credible rumors that he was plotting a coup. His own men arrested him. Kayrat uluu has taken over as head of the Special Police, and we believe he’s sympathetic to the cause. You did well, Ms. Hollister.”

  “What did they do to Malinin?” Kate asked, although she was not certain that she wanted to know the answer.

  “They took him to Number One for questioning,” Murzaev replied with no more emotion than he would have displayed reporting on the weather.

  “Thanks to me,” Kate said, her tone hollow and bitter.

  “It had to be, Kate,” Ruslan said, and it was clear that he understood Kate’s ambivalent reaction to the news. “Whatever fate waits for him in prison is only a small sample of the misery he delivered to hundreds. This isn’t on you. It was always his fate. You didn’t do this. He did this to himself. Malinin was part of a brutal system that eats its own. Ultimately, it eats them all.”

  “All except for Eraliev and Chalibashvili.”

  “They’re dancing in the dragon’s jaws and they know it. There is no graceful retirement for men like Malinin. Only a bullet or the end of a rope.”

  Kate’s feelings were confused. She knew, in principle, what she had been doing when she started spreading rumors about Malinin. But to have it made real in this way, and to know that it had happened because of her, no matter Ruslan’s efforts to shield her from responsibility, was extremely discomfiting. She could not help but imagine the now former head of the Special Police strapped to a chair in one of the dank interrogation rooms in the Pit. And Kate knew, like it or not, that she had put him there. Values complexity.

  “You told me that you wanted to accelerate your plans for a Maidan-style occupation of Ala-Too Square. I assume that’s where you’ve been for the last few days, talking to the clans.”

  Ruslan nodded.

  “Clan leadership is a little diffuse, but my grandfather is high up in the councils of the Adygine. He’s ready . . . I think. But we have to move quickly.”

  “When?”

  “Three days.”

  “I’ve been down south talking to the Buguu and the Kara-Kyrgyz and some of the other tribes,” Murzaev added. “Most are cautious. But there are some who are angry enough or greedy enough to take this risk.”

  “Will there be enough? A critical mass? Will the students and trade unions join them?”

  Murzaev shrugged.

  “We’ll see. Val and Hamid have been working those channels.”

  “I’ll be there,” Kate said. “I’m ready to hunt monsters. I’ll even bring my own pitchfork, but I may need to borrow a torch.”

  “I’ve been carrying one for you for more than a decade,” Ruslan said, switching from Kyrgyz to English for the idiom and placing a hand over his heart in mock solemnity.

  Kate stuck out her tongue.

  “Very funny.”

  “Tell me what your friends in the embassy know,” Murzaev said, shifting the conversation back to operational grounds. “What did they say to you? And what do they want from you?”

  Kate gave them a detailed readout on her confrontation with Ball and her subsequent meeting with the ambassador and his entire security team. As she spoke, Murzaev stood up and walked over to the window, looking out into the darkened city intently. It seemed to Kate as though something out there was bothering him.

  “Tell me again about Crespo’s warning to you,” he demanded.

  “At the end of the meeting, we had a private moment together and he whispered to me that ‘they’ were going to kill Ruslan.”

  “But he didn’t tell you who?”

  “No. I assumed it meant the Kyrgyz security services, either GKNB or the Special Police, but there wasn’t time for much of a conversation.”

  “Why would he do this thing? Why would he warn you?”

  “I don’t know,” Kate admitted. “There’s no love lost between the CIA and Defense Intelligence. There may be something going on between Crespo and Ball that I’m not seeing. But he was pretty emphatic.”

  Murzaev looked at her briefly and then again out the window at whatever had caught his attention.

  “Did Crespo give you anything to carry?” he asked. “A pen? Or a watch? Or anything that you might have with you now?”

  “No. I don’t think . . . Oh my god.”

  “Yes?”

  “To create the opportunity for our little moment alone, he knocked my purse onto the ground and then helped me repack it.”

  Murzaev stepped away from the window and without asking took Kate’s purse and dumped its contents onto the coffee table, feeling around inside to make certain that he had emptied all the pockets.

  “Do you recognize all of this?” he asked.

  In addition to her wallet, the pile included a pair of lipsticks, a compact, her phone with the battery pack removed, the phone Murzaev had given her similarly disassembled, a hairbrush, a dozen business cards, three pens, sunglasses, a pack of Tic Tacs from the embassy commissary, tissues, a small pair of scissors, several nail files, and various other bits of flotsam and jetsam. One item stood out for its unfamiliarity. A box of matches sporting the name and logo of a local restaurant.

  Kate pointed at it.

  “I’ve never eaten there.”

  Murzaev picked it up and opened it. The matches inside were cut down and glued together. The space where the missing part of the matchsticks had been was taken up by a small black plastic box from which a coiled silver wire extruded.

  Kate’s stomach sank. Crespo had set her up.

  Murzaev set it on the table and used the bottom of the vodka bottle to crush it as though he were killing a tick. The plastic shell cracked open with a loud pop, and Murzaev fished around inside until he had extracted the small watch battery that powered it.

  “We need to get out of here.”

  “Too late,” Ruslan said. He had gone over to the window and he gestured toward the street. Murzaev and Kate joined him and looked outside. Two unmarked vans were parked on the far side of Oberon Street. The doors were open and men were getting out. At least four were dressed in paramilitary gear with bulletproof vests and matte black helmets. They carried carbines. They moved in a crouch and seemed to take their instructions from a large man who wore a knee-length leather duster. In the shadows, Kate thought she could see signs of other men moving into position. The Boldu “safe house” was no doubt surrounded.

  “What about the roof?” Kate asked.

  “No,” Murzaev answered. “There’s no time. Help me.”

  He started to move the chairs off the carpet. Kate and Ruslan copied him.

  Under the carpet was a hatch. Under that was a shallow storage space carved out of the concrete foundation with a jackhammer. It was about the size and shape of a coffin. Inside Kate could see a radio, a pair of rifles, four pistols, and a few boxes of ammunitio
n.

  “We’re going to fight?” she asked incredulously.

  “Not unless you want to wind up like one of the gangsters in your American movies. This is for hiding.”

  “There’s only room for one,” Ruslan said. “Even if we take the guns out.”

  “That’s true.”

  “Climb in, Kate. Quickly.”

  “No,” Kate and Murzaev answered at the same time.

  “I’m not going to argue about this.”

  “That’s correct. You will not argue,” the old spy said. “Kate has diplomatic immunity. She is the safest of all of us. And Boldu is nothing without you. If you are captured, it will all be for nothing. Albina. Azattyk. Everything for nothing. Get in the box.”

  Ruslan looked helplessly at Kate. If he was hoping for an ally, he was disappointed.

  “Askar’s right,” she said. “I’ll be fine. I’ve been down this road before. They won’t hurt me. But hurry. There’s not much time.”

  “But—”

  “Ruslan, shut up and get in. This is no time for stupid pride or male bullshit.”

  Reluctantly, he climbed into the narrow box. Working together, Murzaev and Kate spread the carpet over the hatch and returned the furniture to its original position. Kate quickly swept the contents of her purse back into the bag.

  “Are there air holes?” Kate thought to ask. “Will he be able to breathe?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “What’s going to happen to you?”

  Murzaev poured them each a stiff shot of the vodka.

  “They’re going to arrest me and take me away.”

  “To Number One?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what then?”

  “They will squeeze me until I tell them what they want to know.”

  “What will you do?”

  “Tell them. Eventually. Everybody does. I just need to hold out long enough until what I know doesn’t matter. Then I am useless to them.”

  “Can you do that?”

  “Perhaps. I think so. I thought about using one of those pistols on myself, but I would like to live long enough to see how this all works out.”

  He raised his glass and waited expectantly until Kate raised hers.

  “Za zdorovie,” Kate said in Russian.

  “Den soolugubuz üchün!” Murzaev answered in Kyrgyz.

  They drank the eye-watering shots.

  The front door crashed open with explosive force.

  Two men wearing paramilitary gear that made them look like Ninja Turtles scuttled through the doorframe and leveled their weapons at Kate and Murzaev. In the hall, Kate could see a third cop holding the battering ram he had used on the lock.

  Looking utterly unperturbed, Murzaev poured another shot of vodka and held it up in the direction of the police.

  “Drink?” he asked.

  Kate tried to match his calm, but she was torn between an instinct to flee and a sudden desire to claw out the eyes of these men who had sold themselves to the ruling class.

  An odd standoff seemed to have developed, with the heavily armed Special Police on one side and Murzaev—armed only with cool detachment—on the other. Kate already felt like a bystander.

  Then a tall man with broad shoulders and gray hair cut close to the scalp stepped through the door and into the room. The man in the leather duster.

  “Good evening, Askar,” he said in Russian. “Good evening, Ms. Hollister. I apologize for dropping by uninvited.”

  Kate knew who he was even before he spoke and she heard the distinctive accent. She recognized him from the picture in his CIA bio. This was Anton Chalibashvili and his native language was Georgian. Torquemada was making a house call.

  “I’m sorry,” Kate said. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

  “No,” Chalibashvili agreed. “But I know your family. Intimately.”

  Kate threw her glass at his head.

  The Georgian shifted his weight almost imperceptibly, and the glass sailed harmlessly past to shatter against the wall.

  “Adding assault to the list of charges for which your government will be required to exercise your immunity? How irresponsible.”

  Kate wrestled her anger back under control. Dealing with this man, she understood, was like handling a poisonous serpent. It was best done carefully.

  “We are doing nothing illegal here. I am sharing a bottle and some conversation with a friend.”

  “Nothing illegal? Really? Are you familiar with the concept of conspiracy? I believe that your government relies on it quite liberally in the application of what it refers to—quaintly it must be admitted—as justice.”

  Murzaev snorted contemptuously.

  “I’m surprised that you know that word, Anton.”

  Chalibashvili ignored him.

  “Now here’s the thing,” he said. “I do not, frankly, believe that the two of you were here alone. There is another I am looking for. His name is Ruslan Usenov. And I believe that you know where he is right at this moment. Tell me where he is and you two go home, right now, absolutely free.”

  “Fuck you,” Murzaev replied.

  The Inquisitor looked at Kate.

  “What he said.”

  Chalibashvili motioned to the men in the hall and pointed a finger around the apartment. The message was unmistakable. Search the place.

  Two men started a thorough sweep beginning with the bedrooms.

  “Askar, you disappoint me. You were one of us in the old KGB. Your thinking was clear and logical. To find you consorting with such marginal figures is really quite puzzling.”

  As he spoke, Chalibashvili walked through the room, stepping at one point onto the carpet covering Ruslan’s hiding place. It was as though he were walking on his grave. Kate listened for a telltale creak that would reveal the hollow under the rug. And she tried not to stare at his boots.

  “As I am disappointed to find you, Anton, who did such unspeakable things in the service of his country, now peddling his medieval skills to the highest bidder. I am no naïf. The things you do so well can be necessary at times, in pursuit of a higher purpose. But absent that purpose, it is simple cruelty. And you are nothing more than a gangland enforcer or a cheap torturer for hire. I have scraped things from the bottom of my shoe that have more to offer the world than you.”

  For a brief moment, Chalibashvili seemed to betray real human emotion. Anger. Doubt. But he quickly recovered his composure and pulled the icy mask back over his features.

  “And you switched sides simply to avenge your boyhood friend. It’s cheap sentimentality, Askar. Like a child crying over a lost puppy. The world is a dark and dangerous place. The brave do what is needed to maintain order. No one knows this better than men like us.”

  “I am nothing like you.”

  “No. I suppose you are not. Not anymore. And after your time with us in my . . . office . . . you will not even be a man. Not in any meaningful way.”

  Murzaev blanched. He knew too well what fate awaited him in the Pit, and Kate thought that he might be regretting his earlier decision not to kill himself.

  Having re-established his dominance in the conversation, Chalibashvili seemed to decide that it was time to end it.

  He took one of the assault rifles from the Special Police standing guard over the room, carrying it with a casual nonchalance. This was a man, Kate sensed, accustomed to handling instruments of pain and death.

  “Let me ask you again about the whereabouts of Ruslan Usenov. Tell me where to find him.”

  “Fuck off.”

  Chalibashvili pointed the rifle at Murzaev’s head.

  “Really?” Murzaev said incredulously. “You threaten a man with torture and then with summary execution. That’s kind of a step down, don’t you think? You want to shoot me, then shoot me. Bu
t until then, fuck off.”

  The Inquisitor swung the muzzle of the rifle until it was sited on Kate, zeroing in on a point in the middle of her forehead.

  “Ms. Hollister? Anything you’d care to add to the conversation?”

  Kate swallowed hard, reminding herself that this was not the first time she had looked into the barrel of a gun.

  “I think Askar pretty much covered it.”

  Chalibashvili’s smile was sly and superior. The muzzle of the rifle dropped to point at the floor next to Kate’s chair. He pulled the trigger, sending a five-round burst into the parquet. A few small pieces of wood landed in Kate’s lap. Chalibashvili pointed the gun at another part of the floor closer to Murzaev and fired a similar burst. Then he stepped onto the carpet and pointed the muzzle of the rifle almost directly at where Ruslan’s head would be.

  He looked over at Kate expectantly and there was little doubt that the Georgian knew full well what was under his feet.

  “What do you think?” he asked. “Should I do it?”

  Kate was silent. She could feel the muscles in her neck and shoulders strain as she fought to keep her expression calm.

  She looked over at Murzaev, who offered her only the slightest of nods, as though passing responsibility for the decision back to her.

  Chalibashvili’s finger tightened on the trigger. But Kate’s eyes were drawn to the gracefully curved magazine, where she knew the jacketed slugs were crammed in like bees in a hive. And like bees they would die after a single sting.

  Chalibashvili did not look where he aimed. Instead, he looked right at Kate with the intensity of a lunatic, and Kate recognized that there was a part of him that hoped she would refuse him the answer he wanted, that he would have a reason to fire the weapon. To kill. That he took pleasure in it.

  “Stop!” she said. And her shoulders relaxed as Chalibashvili straightened and allowed the rifle to drift away from its aiming point.

  “Yes.”

  “He’s there, goddamn it. And you know it.”

  “So I did. But I wanted to hear it from you. I wanted you to be the one to tell me.”