by Ross Sidor
“Nick Anderson,” Avery said, using his cover name.
“Gerald Rashid.” He lowered his voice. “Sorry about the Tajiks showing up. State tipped them off. They’re not happy about your being here.”
“Who isn’t? The Tajiks or State?”
“Well, both,” Gerald said. He turned and waved toward a short Tajik with a bushy mustache. “This is Sergei Ghazan, Ministry of Internal Affairs. He’s heading up the Tajik end of the investigation.”
As he approached them, Sergei Ghazan oozed insincere courtesy, and Avery took an immediate disliking to him. “Welcome to the Republic of Tajikistan, Mister Anderson. First, let me assure you that my government’s law enforcement and security branches are doing everything within their power to find those responsible for these crimes committed against your citizens. I have been authorized to provide you any possible assistance, but first there are formalities that we must undergo. Given the emergency and the necessity to save time, your arrival has already been cleared through immigration, but I will need to verify your credentials and have the contents of your cases declared.”
Avery produced his ID, diplomatic credentials, and official documents bearing the State Department seal. Ghazan took these and gave them a cursory examination. Avery said, “As you can see, the contents of these cases are diplomatic materials and are exempt from search. My superiors thank you in advance for your cooperation. I’m sure the secretary of state will express to your government his appreciation.”
Ghazan frowned and shoved the documents back. He also gave Avery a card. “These are the numbers to my office and my personal cell phone. Please, feel free to contact me at any time if there is anything at all I may assist you with. We are fully committed to seeing that these criminals are found and brought to justice.”
“I appreciate that, sir.” Avery struggled to sound cordial and decided it best to be sparse with his words. He hated diplomatic shit where everyone acted polite while knowingly lying to each other’s faces and trying to fuck each other over. “At the moment, I need to confer with my colleagues, but I’ll contact you if there’s anything I need.”
They parted ways, and the Tajiks watched the Americans pile into the Forerunner. Avery and Gerald sat in the back row of seats. An embassy security officer sat up front.
“Is Ghazan really from the interior ministry?” Avery asked as soon as the doors were shut and the driver pulled away. An obvious, unmarked Tajik chase car appeared behind them.
“What do you think?”
“I think he’s Tajik KGB.”
“He’s a full colonel in GKNB’s counterintelligence section,” Gerald confirmed. “He heads a specialized tactical unit that we funded, trained, and equipped. But instead of targeting drug traffickers and terrorists, he goes after the president’s political opponents.”
Avery wasn’t surprised. Many authoritarian regimes were exploiting the war on terror to receive aid from the West and crack down on internal dissent.
“His people make half-ass attempts to compromise our people,” Gerald continued. “Fortunately, he’s not very good. He’s washed up, spends most of his time hitting his wife, and chugging vodka with the Russian station chief.”
“Is he getting in the way?”
“He’s a minor nuisance. He showed up today to get a good look at you and make his presence known, try to intimidate you a bit. He’s given us briefings on local bandits and terrorist threats, but that’s to advance an agenda. President Rahmon views this as an opportunity to make a move against the warlords in Gorno-Badakhshan and solidify his power. Ghazan’s secondary objective is to get close to us, identify our agents, and penetrate our ops here.”
“Oh, I’m sure Ghazan’s very eager to help. He’d love to rescue Cramer from Muslim terrorists, and then thoroughly debrief him.”
“Yeah, and no doubt FSB will be sitting in on the debriefing.”
Although SVR was Russia’s foreign intelligence agency, the Federal Security Bureau— domestic internal security—still operated within the former Soviet republics. In the countries whose governments maintained favorable relations with Moscow, like Tajikistan or Belarus, FSB cooperated with the security services. In Western-aligned countries, like Georgia, Moldova, or Ukraine, FSB acted subversively.
“What sort of help has Ghazan been offering?” Avery asked.
“He has watchers around the embassy twenty-four hours, and all embassy staff is now entitled to a tail, same with any Americans coming in from Dushanbe International, and you can bet that’ll include you. Colonel Ghazan apologizes for the inconvenience and stresses it’s simply a security precaution.”
“Ghazan will know that Cramer’s Agency. That’ll be obvious to anyone. But do the Tajiks know about Wilkes, too?”
“We’ve identified Tom as a lost tourist.”
“Right, an American tourist driving around Gorno-Badakhshan, near the Afghan border, alone, I suppose that’s completely common.”
“Hey, it was the best we could do,” Gerald said. Somewhat defensively, too, Avery observed. But he didn’t hold that against him. Gerald was essentially acting chief of station now, and he had a lot on his plate. “We didn’t know Wilkes was going to Khorugh and we had no cover prepared for his unannounced trip. It took everyone by surprise when his body turned up there.”
Avery arched an eyebrow. “Nobody knew what Wilkes was doing in Khorugh?” He noted the younger man’s reaction and added, “I’m not being critical. I’m not here to find scapegoats for the Seventh Floor. That’s the Office of Security’s job, but I do need to know what’s been going on around here, if I’m going to do my job.”
“The only time I’ve ever seen Khorugh come up is pertaining to CERTITUDE, one of our top Tajik agents.”
“Has anyone been in contact with CERTITUDE?”
“No longer possible,” Gerald said. “Earlier today, I learned through police sources that he was found dead outside Khorugh, just twenty miles away from where Wilkes was killed. My source provided the forensics and pathology reports, which show that they were killed by the same weapon, a Makarov 9mm, and within several hours of each other. We communicated with CERTITUDE through a shared e-mail account. Only Cramer, CERTITUDE, and I have access to it. There weren’t any messages, and nothing about a Sunday meeting.”
“Tell me about CERTITUDE,” Avery said.
“He’s a Pamiri trader, does business in Gorno-Badakhshan and Afghanistan. He has tribal connections with the warlords. Before he was killed, we’d tasked him, at Wilkes’ insistence, with checking out a construction project underway in Gorno-Badakhshan and financed by a Ukrainian firm.”
“What kind of construction project?”
“Ostensibly, it’s a cement factory for humanitarian and development projects in Gorno-Badakhshan for a firm called Tajikistan Cement Investment and Development Company. We first caught wind of it a few months back, while investigating Pakistanis who had links to this company, including associates of Ali Masood Jafari.”
“The Pakistani nuclear scientist,” Avery said.
“Cramer looked into it personally and decided it wasn’t worth further expenditure of resources. But for some reason it really caught Wilkes’ attention. It became a point of contention between Cramer and Wilkes. He resented Wilkes coming in and tying up resources to cover old ground.”
“And you’re thinking IMU is involved?” Avery asked.
“That’s the consensus around here.”
“Why’s that? IMU hasn’t claimed responsibility, no one has.”
“IMU involvement would be consistent with recent events around here,” Gerald said. “Since all this stuff with the nuclear smuggling came up and the IMU-Afghanistan connection, we’ve targeted IMU cells across the region, especially in the Fergana Valley. We called it PINION. It was a joint op with Tashkent station. We placed a penetration agent codenamed CREST, a Northern Alliance Uzbek who worked with our forces in Afghanistan, inside the IMU hierarchy. After two months, CREST dropped off t
he grid. A week later, Tajik police in Kanibadam discovered his mutilated body. Over the next several days, we lost three more highly placed agents. Our counterterrorism networks in the country are basically blown, and, across the border, Tashkent station is feeling the repercussions, too. It was a serious cluster fuck.”
PINION hadn’t been included in the files Culler had provided Avery.
“We don’t have any names or suspects yet. Well, that’s not entirely true. The Uzbek National Security Service identified an operative code-named Karakurt as the killer of two of our PINION agents. This is the first we’ve ever heard of him. I’ve run it through our allies, and no one else has anything on him either.”
“Karakurt?” asked Avery. He didn’t recall the name from Culler’s briefing packet.
“It’s a venomous spider indigenous to the Astrakhan region of Russia. It’s one of the deadliest spiders in the world.”
“Did you run this through Ghazan?”
“GKNB has nothing. But according to the Germans, there’s a particularly brutal and efficient Krasnaya Mafiya enforcer called Karakurt who comes from the Caucasus and has links to extremist groups in the former Soviet Union. We don’t have a physical description or name and no idea where to begin looking. Hell, he might not even exist.”
Avery filed away this bit of information about Karakurt. His instincts told him it could be important.
There was silence for several seconds as Avery digested this new information. Then he said, “I’m going to need access to Cramer’s office and all of his files.”
FIVE
Dushanbe
Avery was aware of their GKNB watchers observing them as they walked from the Forerunner, through Post One, and into the embassy. Even without Gerald’s advance warning, they’d still be easy to spot, two of them sitting in an Opel with official government plates. Avery shook his head. He wasn’t even here an hour, and already the Tajiks managed to make his job more difficult.
At Post One, Avery signed in using his Anderson identity. Then Gerald led him up a staircase to the third floor, through a cipher-lock door into the CIA station, and showed him into Cramer’s office.
The office was exactly what Avery would have expected of Cramer. It was clean and sparse, everything neatly organized, just as he’d compartmentalized as all aspects of his life, with very few personal effects, other than books and a couple framed pictures on the wall. Large political and topographical maps of the region adorned the opposite wall.
The pictures weren’t the typical ones with the CIA director or secretary of state or some other VIP that adorned the walls of so many Agency careerists. These pictures showed Cramer rugging it in the mountains of Afghanistan, with Northern Alliance tribesmen and bearded American Special Forces soldiers on horseback. Another showed a much younger Cramer standing in front of the wreckage of a Soviet Mi-24 gunship, beside an Afghan mujahedeen carrying a Stinger launch tube.
The two five-shelf bookcases were packed with volumes on Islam, post-Soviet Russian politics, philosophy, biographies, and the geography, history, economics, and politics of the region. Most visitors were amused to find John le Carrè and Frederick Forsyth hardcovers thrown in, too, but Avery didn’t care for fiction.
“When Bob left the embassy, he was on his way to meet an agent,” Avery said. “Who was this agent?”
“CK/SCINIPH is an FSB captain assigned to the Russian military contingent based at Ayni. He’s one of our most valuable Russian agents in the country.”
“Did Cramer ever make that meet?”
“We’re not sure. We haven’t been in contact with SCINIPH yet.”
“Why the hell not? He may be the last person to have seen Cramer alive.”
“SCINIPH is spooked, understandably so, and wants to hang low. Plus he’s going to be reluctant to start working with a new handler, someone he doesn’t know. He always dealt with Cramer, and no one else. Darren was going to see him tonight, if SCINIPH doesn’t call it off again. Maybe we’ll know more then.”
Gerald’s cell phone vibrated in his pocket. Grateful for the interruption and not having to explain himself further, he answered it. He listened for half a minute, acknowledged what he was told, and ended the call.
“This is it,” he told Avery urgently. He walked behind Cramer’s desk and dropped into the chair and turned on the computer.
Avery came over and stood behind him, looking over the younger man’s shoulder.
Gerald opened the web browser and logged into Intelink, the secure Internet network used by American intelligence agencies. He downloaded a file, and Windows Media Player popped open on the screen.
“This showed up three hours ago on a jihadist propaganda website. Analysts have just confirmed its authenticity.”
The video was of poor, grainy quality and looked like countless others to have appeared on the Internet over the years, first made popular by Iraqi insurgents.
Cramer sat in a chair. Two men wearing black ski masks stood on either side of him, towering over him. They were dressed in mismatched, ill-fitting camouflaged combat fatigues. One man carried an AK-47. The other held the long, curved blade of an Arab Jambiya dagger against Cramer’s throat. The IMU flag, bearing an open Koran against a blue globe within concentric yellow and black rings, covered the wall behind them.
Cramer appeared pale, bruised, battered, and bloodied. One eye was puffy and swollen shut, the other black and blue. His hair was disheveled. His white shirt was wrinkled and torn, with tiny dark stains on it from where the blood had dripped down from his face. His shoulders were hunched forward, like it was too painful for him to sit up straight. He stared into the camera with a vacant, downtrodden expression. It was a look Avery had never seen on Cramer before. He appeared completely defeated, worn out, and succumbed to despair, like a man who had already suffered greatly and knew that painful death was imminent and inescapable but also a welcome relief.
Avery felt uncomfortable seeing Cramer wounded and vulnerable. He remembered Cramer in the Afghan mountains, drawing up a battle plan with the tribal leaders of the Northern Alliance, confronting the enemy head-on. He’d always been confident and self-assured, a natural leader.
One of the masked men spoke in Uzbek. The English translation appeared in captions transposed over the bottom of the screen. Then there was silence. The masked man nudged Cramer’s throat with the blade, prodding him. Cramer barely moved, but on cue he finally spoke. His voice sounded coarse and weak as he stated his name and identified himself as a senior officer of the Central Intelligence Agency assigned to the Republic of Tajikistan. He stated that he was being held prisoner by the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan and that he was an enemy of the people of Islam. The masked man with the dagger then said that Cramer was to be tried for war crimes committed against the Muslim people. The IMU spokesman vowed that there would be no negotiating for Cramer’s release and that only God’s judgment would spare him.
The video ended.
Gerald replayed it once more.
Then he sat back in silence, staring at the screen with Avery, letting it sink in.
“I also have the video analysis,” Gerald said. He opened this file and skimmed through the contents. “But it doesn’t appear to offer any relevant insight. They did voice analysis and facial recognition to confirm that it’s really Bob. The voiceprint of the IMU spokesman doesn’t match anything NSA has on file, but their analysts confirm he’s a native Uzbek speaker. From the environment on screen and ambient, background noise, they’re unable to determine a location where this was recorded.”
Gerald continued clicking and kept reading quietly. After a minute, he raised his eyebrows and exclaimed, “Oh, shit!”
“What is it?” Avery asked.
“The Russians positively identified the IMU speaker as Otabek Babayev.”
Avery leaned in to look over Gerald’s shoulder at the file he’d just opened. At the top was a picture of a man with a long, scarred face, scraggly salt and pepper beard, and an
gry, hateful eyes.
“So what’s his story?”
“Babayev is a nasty, hardcore Jihadist piece of work,” Gerald explained. “He was a part of Namangani’s inner circle in the IMU. He graduated from an Iranian training camp in the Fergana Valley and fought in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Azerbaijan, but he didn’t appear on our radar until last year when he assassinated the Indian ambassador to Kyrgyzstan, blew up a school bus full of kids in Kabul, and beheaded an American aid worker in Kandahar. We’re also pretty sure he personally tortured and executed at least two of our PINION agents. He’ll work for any jihadist group that can afford him. He’s sold his services to the Taliban and Laskhar-e Taiba. If this guy is holding Cramer, then that’s some seriously fucked up bad news.”
Avery thought Langley would now turn to Moscow for assistance. The Russian special services, which actively pursued terrorists in Central Asia and the Caucasus, might have a lead. Plus Otabek Babayev was at the top of their hit list. CIA would also press Uzbekistan’s National Security Service to go after IMU targets within that country in the hopes of producing some new intel on Cramer’s location and captors. Inside Tajikistan, Dushanbe station would be working closely with the GKNB now.
Unfortunately, Avery had been involved with too many hostage recovery operations in Iraq and Afghanistan to believe that this would produce a desirable outcome.
“Well,” Gerald said, “at least we know what we’re dealing with and where to focus our resources. There’s no more speculation about what happened to Bob.”
But Avery still wasn’t convinced. “Maybe.”
Gerald frowned. “What do you mean ‘maybe’? There’s no maybe about it.”
