Enemy of the Good

by Matthew Palmer

  The Special Police fired wildly down the corridor. Bullets from their machine pistols ricocheted off the walls. Right behind her, Kate heard a grunt and turned in time to see one of the Scythians fall, clutching his leg where he had been shot. Automatically, she took a few steps back in the direction of their pursuers to help the wounded Scythian. She had a clear view down the corridor, but without a weapon she could only watch as one of the Special Police hit the red LOCK DOWN button on the wall.

  The button’s function was instantly and horrifyingly clear. A metal grate dropped from the ceiling and closed off the corridor, with Kate and the injured Scythian on one side and her friends on the other. Ruslan shouted in anger and frustration and threw himself at the grate, struggling to lift it so that Kate might escape. It was locked in place. A burst of bullets forced him to let go.

  “She has immunity,” Kate heard Nogoev say. “But you do not. And there’s no time. We have to leave.”

  Kate ran to the grate and for a moment her fingers touched Ruslan’s.

  “Go,” she said.

  “I love you.”

  “Then go. Now.”

  Sparks flew from the steel grate as another wild round of bullets slammed into it.

  The uninjured Scythian grabbed Ruslan by the shoulders and dragged him toward the exit.

  Kate raised her hands in surrender.

  27

  It was pitch dark in the Pit and Kate had lost all sense of time. It might have been hours since the guards had stripped off her stolen Special Police uniform and closed the door to her cell. It might have been days. Probably not days, Kate told herself. She had no food and no water and while she was both hungry and thirsty, she was not desperately so.

  She was, however, cold. Underneath her uniform, Kate had been wearing only a thin cotton T-shirt and underwear. The cell was damp and the stone walls and floor seemed to suck the heat out of her body. She had felt around in the dark looking for a mattress or a blanket, but there was nothing. As near as she could tell, the room was entirely empty.

  At one point, something insect-like had skittered across her bare leg and Kate jumped up in alarm, cracking the back of her head against the stone wall. There was a lump there now the size of a robin’s egg. It ached dully. When she had to pee, she picked a corner and urinated on the floor, adding a vaguely ammonia smell to the odors of mildew and wet stone.

  “At least I can’t get sick,” Kate said out loud to the dark. “I have immunity.” She laughed at her own weak joke.

  There was no one to rescue her, she knew. The Scythians had shot their one bolt freeing Ruslan, and the embassy would have no way of knowing she was in the dungeon cells of Prison Number One unless the regime decided to tell them. That seemed unlikely.

  Her diplomatic status was only worth something if her government knew what was happening. Without that, she was just another prisoner who had fallen into the black hole. Would they torture her? For what? What would they want from her?

  Maybe they would do it for sport, out of sheer bloody-mindedness. A further act of revenge and retribution against her family.

  Her best hope, she reasoned, was that she was trade bait. The Eraliev government might give her to the Americans in exchange for some concessions in the base negotiations. How valuable was she? Was she worth the contract for cafeteria services? Maybe Ball and Crandle would prefer that she never see the light of day again. What would her uncle think? What side would he be on? That she was even asking the question was painful.

  To pass the time, she played piano in her head, moving her stiff fingers across an imaginary keyboard as best she could. She could hear the music clearly in the silence of her cell. This must have been what it was like for Beethoven, she thought. He had composed his masterpiece, the Ninth Symphony, after going completely deaf and he had never heard a single note of it with his own ears. The mental game both helped her pass the time and keep track of it.

  Two concertos, three études, a fugue, and a rumba later, the bolt to her cell door slid open with a crack that sounded like a rifle shot. Kate was sitting on the floor with her back up against the wall, and she unconsciously brought her knees up to her chest in anticipation of some form of assault.

  A guard stood silhouetted in the doorway. Without entering the cell, he threw something across the room that landed at Kate’s feet.

  “Get dressed,” he said in Uzbek-accented Kyrgyz.

  Kate reached for the bundle. It was a blue prison uniform, with separate shirt and pants rather than a jumpsuit. There was also a pair of rubber slippers about two sizes too big for Kate’s feet. She dressed under the watchful eye of the Uzbek guard.

  Her T-shirt and underwear were uncomfortably sticky and damp, but it was still a sensuous pleasure to be clothed. The guard was tall and broad, with a boxer’s broken nose and tattooed flames on the back of his neck that licked at the collar of his uniform. He led Kate down the hall and up what she believed were the same stairs she and Nogoev had used in their descent to the sub-basement. They went up one flight to the floor on which she had been captured.

  The room he brought her to would not have been out of place in a metropolitan police station in the United States. It was entirely functional, with a metal table bracketed to the concrete floor and two metal folding chairs. A steel ring welded to the top of the table was presumably for shackles. The walls were tiled and there was a mirror that did not even try to disguise its identity as an observation window.

  The guard said nothing. But he pushed Kate into the room and closed the door behind her. It clicked shut and Kate did not have to try it to know that it was locked. In any event, there was nothing to try. There was no handle on the inside.

  Kate went to the mirror, imagining strangers in the room behind it watching her straighten her hair and rub the dirt off her cheeks with her shirtsleeve. Screw them.

  She sat at the table and tried not to think about how much she would like a drink. A glass of water first. And then something much stronger.

  Keeping her here alone was no doubt part of the elaborate mind games the torturers had learned to play. Kate’s defense was the discipline of a classical musician. She waited with her hands in her lap, looking straight at the door.

  After half an hour, the door opened and Torquemada himself entered the room. He was wearing a dark suit that looked expensive, with Italian loafers and a black Omega watch. His hair was cut bristly short and was the same steel gray color as his eyes. The body under the suit looked strong and healthy. Torture must agree with him.

  He sat across from Kate, his hands resting on the tabletop. His nails, she noticed, were carefully manicured.

  “Good morning, Ms. Hollister. I hope you had a good night’s sleep.” He spoke in Russian with that distinctive Georgian accent.

  “The bed was a little firm for my taste. But I won’t be staying long. I would like to be released immediately to my embassy. I am an accredited diplomat and inviolate under the Vienna Convention.”

  “How interesting. A diplomat, you say? Is dressing up in a stolen police uniform, murdering foreign government officials, and releasing dangerous enemies of the state from lawful confinement part of your country’s normal diplomatic practice?”

  “All your questions will be answered in time. You must release me first, and address your questions to my government in writing through a diplomatic note. We will respond appropriately in time.”

  “Time. Yes, time. That’s really the key factor here, isn’t it? None of us have as much of it as we would like. I typically like to leave our guests alone with their thoughts for a few days before we begin our discussions, but you see I’m rather pressed for time, so we are beginning a bit on the early side. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Beginning what?”

  “Questions and answers, of course. I ask the questions and you answer them.”

  “I don’t feel li
ke playing.”

  “It’s not a game, Ms. Hollister. And I assure you, we are not playing.”

  Chalibashvili’s expression hardened and Kate thought he might hit her. She refused to flinch. But the blow did not come. Not yet. All he was doing was giving her a quick look at the tempered steel beneath the velvet glove.

  “Let us begin. Tell me everything you know about Ruslan Usenov.”

  “Who?”

  This time he hit her.

  Not hard. More a slap. A warning. But her cheek stung.

  “No games, Ms. Hollister. Maybe you are uncomfortable with open-ended questions. So allow me to be more specific. What is the name of the Boldu spy in the Presidential Palace?”

  This time Kate’s quizzical look was genuine.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Someone forged the transfer orders for a Boldu prisoner named Bermet Samsaliev. This could only have been done with the assistance of someone in the president’s office. I have . . . spoken . . . about this at some length with Ms. Svetlana, the protocol assistant whom I believe you know, and the president’s personal secretary. Both deny their involvement, and I believe that they would have told me what they knew. Under the circumstances.”

  Kate could imagine what the circumstances were, and it made her sick.

  “I believe, Ms. Hollister, that you were the conduit for this document, passing it from someone in the president’s circle to Boldu. I want to know who it was.”

  “Then I suggest you submit that request under cover of a diplomatic note to the American embassy. I will personally make certain that it gets the attention it deserves.”

  He hit her again. Harder this time.

  “What is Boldu planning? We know they intend to strike a blow against the government. What is it? Who is involved? What is the timetable?”

  The questions came hard and fast. Chalibashvili did not even give Kate time to answer them. She sensed that she was not expected to. This was part of the softening up. He asked about Boldu, its membership, and its plans. He wanted to know where the leadership met. Who was in the inner circle. How they communicated with one another. It was a long list, and it was increasingly clear to Kate how valuable the information she had was to the government. It was not a pleasant feeling to be in possession of something that Eraliev wanted.

  After an hour or more of questioning, Chalibashvili stood and indicated that Kate should do the same.

  “Come with me. There’s something that I think you should see.”

  She followed him out into the hall. They walked down the corridor together, almost as though they were colleagues rather than jailer and prisoner. Halfway down the hall they walked past an open door. Inside, Kate could see a steel table with leather restraints built into it. The table was angled backward and there was a plastic jug of water set on the floor next to it. There were shackles on the wall to chain prisoners upright. And Kate caught a quick glimpse of some of the tools of Torquemada’s trade hanging neatly on hooks. Electric cables and leather whips. Pliers and sharp metal probes.

  The casually open door was not, Kate knew, a coincidence. It was a threat. Chalibashvili was showing her a stick in the way one might taunt a recalcitrant donkey.

  Kate counted the turns. Second right. First left. Third left. They stopped in front of a steel door painted institutional green. The number 374 was stenciled on it in white.

  “Do you know whose cell this is?” Chalibashvili asked.

  She turned to him and the sharp, sarcastic retort she had intended died on her lips. And Kate realized that she did know. Of course she did. Nothing else made sense. The self-satisfied look on the Georgian’s face confirmed her instinctive understanding. Chalibashvili was enjoying himself. But it was the twisted, icy pleasure of a sadist.

  “Yes,” Kate answered. Her mouth was dry.

  Chalibashvili opened the slide and stepped to one side. Kate looked through the opening. It was narrow and the view was partly obscured by wire mesh, but she could see a woman sitting on a wooden bench in the cell. She was wearing a standard prison-issue uniform. The woman was thin and her white hair looked to have been cut by herself with dull scissors and without the benefit of a mirror. The skin on her face was flaccid and lifeless.

  “Aunt Zamira?” Kate called softly.

  The woman did not react. She continued to stare at a spot on the wall in front of her.

  “I’m afraid that we keep her drugged,” Chalibashvili explained. “For her own good, really. She’s tried to escape a number of times, you see. I’ve personally watched her blind a man with a fork. I must say I admire your family. Strong women.”

  If she had a fork handy, Kate would have gladly driven it through his eye and into his brain.

  She studied the woman in the cell. Her aunt’s hair had been black, but it had been more than ten years. She had not been quite so thin, but prison changed people on the outside as well as the inside. This could be her aunt. She had no reason to disbelieve. She looked for something in the cell that would convince her the Georgian was telling the truth.

  And she found it.

  A small photograph was taped to the wall by the metal cot. It was a picture of Kate and her mother taken almost fifteen years ago. They were standing on top of a mountain with an incredible panorama behind them. The picture was too far away to make out the details, but Kate did not need to see it up close. It was one of her favorite photographs. She had the same one in a small photo album in her apartment.

  “Zamira? It’s Kate. I found you.”

  For a brief moment, Kate thought her aunt was about to turn and look at her. But the moment passed and Zamira’s gaze remained fixed straight ahead.

  “I assure you that she’s of sound mind,” Chalibashvili said. “The drugs we give her are powerful, but there are no lasting effects. Once she stops taking the cocktail she’ll be as good as new in just a couple of days.”

  Kate looked at him. She knew what was coming next.

  “You can see to that, Kate. All you need to do is cooperate. Tell us what you know. And you and your aunt will be free to go. It’s as simple as that.”

  And there it was. The carrot to go along with the stick. Diplomacy was the same. It was based on incentives and disincentives. Evidently it was not dissimilar from torture in this respect.

  “Boldu will be crushed in any event,” Chalibashvili continued. “You’d just be helping us do it with a minimum of collateral damage. We’d like to avoid the use of excessive force if that’s at all possible. But surgical intervention requires a greater degree of knowledge than we have at the moment. I believe that you can help us with this, Kate.”

  She was “Kate” now. Not Ms. Hollister. It was like some bizarre game of “good inquisitor/bad inquisitor” with Chalibashvili playing both parts.

  “Is that it?” Kate asked.

  “What do mean?”

  “Aren’t you going to offer me more? Money? Power? Position?”

  “Name your price.” Chalibashvili smiled slyly in accepting her implied offer to negotiate.

  But there was nothing to negotiate. Selling out Boldu would not only betray both Kate’s principles and her friends, it would vitiate her aunt’s twelve years of sacrifice in Torquemada’s Pit. Everything she worked for. Everything Kate’s mother had worked for. There was only one possible response.

  “Go fuck yourself, Anton.”

  28

  It’s been more than twenty-four hours, Askar. And no word from Kate. I don’t like that at all. What have you been able to find out?”

  Despite Daniar’s assurances that Chalibashvili would be forced to respect her diplomatic immunity, Ruslan could not shake the mental image of Kate shivering in the chill dark of a dungeon cell, waiting for a rescue that would never come. A full squad of heavily armed Special Police was now patrolling Prison Number One as
a supplement to the regular guard force. Absent the element of surprise, there was no way that the Scythians could repeat their successful raid. Moreover, the obshchak’s contacts with the outside, which prison authorities had known about and tolerated, had been cut off. Nogoev had no word about the fate of his brother.

  The core members of the Boldu council were meeting at the last of Murzaev’s safe houses, the only one that had not yet—they hoped—been compromised. It was a small, dingy two-room apartment in a mostly industrial part of the city. People who lived in this neighborhood worked with their hands, drank as much as they could afford, and kept to themselves. Even so, every meeting was dangerous. The GKNB and the Special Police were combing Bishkek and the surrounding towns looking for Ruslan and Murzaev. One way or another, it looked like everything was going to come to a head in the next few days.

  “There’s been nothing moving through the newsstand network,” Murzaev said, speaking carefully because of the swelling in his jaw and the dental putty a Boldu doctor had used to patch his broken teeth. “I sent one of the boys around to her apartment building. He didn’t ring the buzzer, but there were no lights. It’s possible that she was released to the embassy, and if she’s there we wouldn’t know about it.”

  “Do you know anyone at the embassy?”

  “I could find someone if I had to. But it’s dangerous. The Americans are playing all sides of the street right now. If we talk to them, it’s impossible to know who’s going to hear about it. We can’t trust them.”

  “I need to know, Askar. I need to know what’s happened to Kate.”

  “I understand. I want her out as well. She knows more than she should, even if the most important secret she had has been exposed. Let me see what more I can learn through our own people before we go to the Americans. There’s too much at stake.”

  “If Torquemada is holding Kate,” Val interjected, “there’s really only one way to get her out of there. We need to take down Eraliev, and the faster we can do that, the better our chances for getting to her before . . .”