Out of Range

by Hank Steinberg

  Faruz gave Charlie an infinitesimal shake of his head. “I’m not letting you go in there alone, Charlie.”

  Charlie felt a burst of gratitude. And there was no time to argue. The security guards were almost within earshot and it wouldn’t look right for them to be bickering.

  “Hi, there!” Charlie called out, waving to the guards and forcing a broad smile. “Charlie Davis. I’m here to see my friend Alisher Byko.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Lying back against the warm stone and letting the scorching air envelop him, Byko felt as though his entire body was vibrating to the lowest note in a huge pipe organ. A very lovely and very naked girl crouched beside him on her knees, an opium pipe clutched in one hand, a gold lighter in the other. He nodded and she played the flame underneath the bowl.

  When a few tendrils of smoke rose from the small black pearl of opium, the naked girl held the pipe to his lips. He inhaled deeply, relishing the onslaught of the smoke.

  He could still smell the scent of Julie Davis in his nostrils. And it almost paralyzed him.

  Julie had begged him, had pleaded for her life, had protested her innocence in all of the expected ways, and yet, as much as he ached to believe her, he simply could not.

  She was Julie Wingate-Rees when he’d met her thirteen years ago at Cambridge. Fiery, committed, beautiful—she had represented everything that seemed good about the West. Her family had been rich and powerful members of the British ruling class for generations, Tories all. But she had forsworn that stuffy old British Empire nonsense, believing that a world of justice and freedom was around the corner if everyone was just willing to make it so.

  She probably never realized how important she had been to him. A turning point in his life, really. He had been smitten with her. And she with him, as far as he could tell.

  Their passion had been blinding, relentless.

  But then, just before she left Cambridge, she had called it off. He had begged her to continue the relationship, to figure out a way to make it work. But in the end—she had never really articulated it, but this was his impression—she had rejected his privilege, rejected what she saw as his essential frivolity, rejected his willingness to ignore the pain and suffering that all his privileges rested on. On the evening of her graduation, he had made some sort of half-drunken, half-humorous suggestion that he would always love her—and she had laughed uproariously.

  But she had never understood him, had she? She had failed to recognize that his partying and carousing and cocktail philosophizing was a mask to cover up his essentially romantic and serious nature. He’d dreamed of great things, but had felt trapped in his role as the son of a man who wielded great power in a place of utterly no consequence. He had always felt that if he’d just had more time, he could have shown her his true face. He even thought of going after her—to Africa, where she’d joined an international aid organization—but then his father died and he was forced to return to Uzbekistan.

  Somewhat to his surprise, he found that running a sprawling business empire agreed with him. There was so much to do, and no time to gad around the world chasing after Julie. And so marriage and fatherhood had followed. His wife had been part of the ruling elite of Uzbekistan, the daughter of one of his father’s cronies, and so by all rights it should have been a marriage of convenience, a strategic alliance of mutually interested parties. But it wasn’t. He had great affection for Daniella, had even, in some way, loved her. And she had loved him.

  But Julie’s laugh had continued to haunt him. How many times had he been sitting at his desk, facing a business decision, and thought: “What would Julie think of the choice I’m about to make?”

  When he raised the pay of his miners, when he improved safety procedures, when he built the school in Dartak or the clinic in Pakhtakor—it was her voice in the back of his head that had driven him.

  He hated to admit it, but much of what he had done to support democracy in his country had been a sort of adolescent Gatsbyesque attempt to impress her. It was absurd when you framed it that way. She wasn’t an important scholar or a famous statesman or a great writer. And yet she hovered constantly in his mind, a figure of conscience.

  And then, eight years ago, nearly four years after he’d bade her farewell at Cambridge, she’d arrived in Tashkent as an emissary of an NGO called World Vision. When she’d first phoned him and announced that she’d moved to Uzbekistan, his heart had sunk. Because he was already married, already had a son by that marriage and now here was Julie. Had she come here for him? Was it possible she didn’t know that he was now a husband and father? Had he blown it by not pursuing her more, by not waiting for her to come around? She had insisted that it was a coincidence, that World Vision had offered her the assignment because of her proficiency in Russian. But he’d always wondered.

  Almost immediately, they began working together on microfinance projects as well as the building of schools and hospitals in the Fergana Valley, though they were all too often frustrated at the intransigence of the Karimov regime. For a time, they grew close again, closer in a way than they ever had been at university when all of the embroiled passions of lust and youth cluttered the mind and spirit.

  And then Charlie Davis entered the picture. Byko had heard about the new American journalist who’d been poking around some of the more fragile subject matters in the region, and was already curious about him when Julie walked into the Samarkand bazaar on his arm. The American and Brit had met, Byko was told, at an English pub in Tashkent, a dive that happened to be the favorite watering hole for European freelancers and members of BBC News stationed in the capital. It was clear from the moment that Byko laid eyes on the pair that they were steadfastly in love and, even more disheartening, that they were incredibly well-suited for each other. “Kindred spirits” was how he heard them describe it and, as sick as it made him to admit, it was hard to argue with that assessment.

  That was how he’d lost Julie Wingate-Rees for the second time.

  They had been courteous enough to invite Byko to their impromptu wedding in the dazzling Aral desert, but Byko had contrived an excuse. He simply couldn’t stand to watch it happen.

  Over the next few months, as he watched Julie’s protruding belly blossom, Byko tried in earnest to let go of his jealousy and to be a friend to them both. In fact, he came to respect Charlie Davis more than he ever could have imagined. The man was committed to the cause of exposing Karimov’s tyranny and he had the resources, the savvy and the mettle to do just that. It was Charlie’s article about the torture of a young man at the infamous Jaslyk Prison that helped launch the protest movement.

  Unfortunately for all of them, their hopes and dreams had been smashed that day in Andijan. In the aftermath of the tragedy, Charlie and Julie had shuttled off quickly to London and then to Los Angeles and Byko had counted on never seeing either of them again.

  Since then, Byko had walled off his feelings, kept them at bay with opium, coke, single malt scotch, whores, scheming and responsibilities.

  But when Julie emailed him last year after his sister’s death, the wall came down. It was a simple, emotional, yet elegantly worded note of sympathy for his grief—a breath of fresh air in the stifling desert of his life. The emails they’d exchanged since then had led Byko to believe that she was his for the taking again—so long as he bided his time and allowed it to happen naturally and without pressure.

  By slow degrees it had all led to their first meeting in six years.

  Sitting there at Padishah in the heart of Samarkand’s café district, she had seemed so glad to see him, fixing her warm brown eyes on him as though he were the answer to some great question in her own life. She had been radiant as ever but with a maturity and gravity that shone even brighter than the youthful intensity he had loved about her before. Just seeing her had nearly buckled his knees, and for a moment, he’d even considered putting a hold on his plans for r
evenge, as if a union with Julie might heal everything.

  But it had all gone wrong. Forty-five minutes into their leisurely meal, he’d gotten the call saying that elements from Karimov’s Twenty-seventh Air Assault Brigade were converging on his location. He’d left her there without explanation and had barely escaped with his life.

  Of course, Quinn, who saw threats behind every bush, was convinced that Julie had been sent, that she was a honey trap controlled by a Western intelligence agency. Byko had resisted at first, but Quinn had made a convincing case. Her inconvenient stopover in London the night before she flew to Tashkent, her quick return to Los Angeles after their rendezvous, her lies about visiting other countries in the region and, most crushing of all, the all-too-reasonable argument that Julie’s original condolence email was in fact the insidious beginning of the trap. And so he’d allowed Quinn to snatch her—on the condition that he brought her here so that Byko could talk to her himself.

  And now that he’d spent a few hours with her, Byko was certain that she was hiding something. She hadn’t cracked, hadn’t budged an inch on her story. And yet, somehow, her reactions seemed too pitch perfect, too smooth, too clean—as though she had anticipated this moment and prepared for it.

  And so, with some misgivings, he had handed her over to Quinn.

  The initial tidal wave of the opium began to ebb away and Byko could feel his hands start to tremble. Once again his darkest suspicions began firming into a sense of outraged certitude. Because in his heart he knew what Quinn would find.

  The lying bitch. All these years he had idealized her. And now she had turned out to be nothing but a willing tool for the same hypocritical monsters who ran the world as their private plantation.

  He felt his teeth grinding, the rage threatening to explode, and opened his eyes. The lovely girl, no more than sixteen or seventeen, her skin flawless, her breasts soft and buoyant, sat expectantly on the stone shelf next to him, opium pipe still clutched in her hand. Waiting to serve him. He leaned back against the warm, moist wood and wordlessly closed his eyes. She knew her job well enough and she began to fumble with his belt.

  A soft tap at the door interrupted them. He looked up see to his bodyguard Hasan enter, his eyes conspicuously ignoring Byko’s condition.

  “Davis is here,” Hasan said.

  “Make him wait,” Byko replied sourly. “I’ll be out in ten minutes.”

  As Hasan exited, the girl took Byko’s flaccidness into her mouth but now the mood was ruined.

  He felt a flash of anger accompanied by a brief urge to do something terrible to the girl, to bite her or rip her hair out or pound her with his fists until he heard bones shatter. But instead he simply slapped her in the face.

  “Out,” he said.

  She sat up, stared emptily at him, then padded out the door, seemingly unconscious of the blood running out of her nose. Byko closed his eyes, trying to find that meditative calm, that center where he was at one with himself. A few slow deep breaths and he was there. It was a matter of will, he told himself.

  Close your eyes. Just close your eyes and let it come.

  And finally it did, a consoling vision he’d turned to in his darkest moments since he’d learned the truth about his sister. In his mind an image formed, an image of a fire spreading across a nearly infinite expanse of city. At first it was just a thin line of red on the horizon. But soon the flames strengthened. And as they grew, they moved faster, racing toward him, growing higher with each approaching meter. Accompanying them was a roaring, rushing sound. The wall of fire grew closer and closer and closer, warming his entire body with a feverish heat. He could feel a smile on his face. It was coming.

  By this time tomorrow, the destruction would be unleashed and for the first time in years the feeling of impotence that had invaded his every moment since Andijan would fade away. The heat grew and grew and grew, blotting out everything, enveloping him, transforming him.

  It was coming soon. The fire.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Four armed men escorted Charlie and Faruz into the large building through a heavy wooden door that looked like something out of a medieval castle. Inside, the walls were blue tile and the vaulted ceiling was held up by thick stone columns. The air was unusually warm, musty and humid—almost to the point of being steamy—and their footsteps echoed eerily in the silence of the strange building.

  “What is this place?” Charlie asked.

  “Ancient bathhouse,” Faruz said. “My guess, it go back to at least sixteenth century. I hear Byko brings his buddies here to—”

  “Shut your mouth,” one of the men said, goosing Faruz in the back with the muzzle of his carbine.

  They were marched down a hallway. An open archway to one side revealed another vaulted space, this one so full of steam that Charlie almost couldn’t make out the intricate tile work on the far side of the room. In the center of the room was a small stone pool in which several unclothed women—very beautiful and very young—were lounging. The young women stared at them blankly, their eyes dull and resentful.

  To the right was another steam room, this one containing several bearded men, one of them in the throes of a massage by a half-naked girl who couldn’t have been more than thirteen.

  Disgust rippled through Charlie’s insides. But there was something else there, too. The sinking feeling that he had absolutely no idea what he was walking into. Byko had been a playboy in his heyday but what was going on here was something close to pedophilia. What had Alisher Byko become?

  Back in the car, the first thought that ran through Charlie’s mind was that Byko must be a deranged lunatic. A drug-addled, lonely, love-struck guy who’d thought he had a chance at seducing Julie. That he’d lured her to Uzbekistan under false pretenses and then when it hadn’t gone the way he’d planned, he’d sent John Quinn to America to kidnap her and bring her back to his lair. If he couldn’t woo her, Charlie figured, he’d take her by force. The old-fashioned, medieval way. And these girls here were certainly proof that Byko had forsaken any modern, Westernized view of women.

  But Charlie quickly remembered Quinn and those questions in his basement: Who was Julie working for? Who had she seen in London? Clearly, this wasn’t just some lovesick bully demanding to have the woman he desired. Quinn, and by proxy Byko, wrongly believed that Julie was somehow out to get Byko, that she had set him up in some fashion. This was why they’d taken her and now it was Charlie’s job to convince them they were crazy. But there is no way to prove a negative. If someone is paranoid enough, any denial that you give will only reinforce their suspicions. There had to be another way out of this.

  And then the idea hit him. The one way he might be able to outmaneuver Byko. To use Byko’s greatest fear against him. He’d gone underground, after all. If Charlie could convince Byko that he could expose his location . . .

  He took out his cell phone and turned it off, but he kept it in the palm of his left hand. If it came down to it, it would be a bluff of the highest order. But it just might work.

  The guards led Charlie and Faruz through two more sets of doors. The next room was much cooler, and—after the mugginess of the steam rooms—the air felt bone dry. It had the look of a library in an English gentlemen’s club—except for the books, whose spines all bore Russian script.

  There were half a dozen people in the room, large silent men in dark suits who were not going to a great deal of trouble to hide the pistols under their coats.

  A man rose from a leather chair in the corner, a broad smile on his face.

  It was Alisher Byko.

  He was a little thinner than he had once been, with some gray in his mane of fashionably cropped black hair, but there was nothing to indicate that anything fundamental had changed about him as his arms spread wide, calling out in his flawless Etonian diction, “Charlie, my friend, how long has it been?”

  Byko ki
ssed him on each cheek then pushed Charlie away, holding him by the shoulders and staring at him with intent black eyes.

  “You Americans, always with the weights and the gym. Rude good health personified!” He gestured at one of the heavy leather upholstered chairs next to him. “Sit! Sit! I must know what brings you here. Our old friend Faruz told my people it was very important.”

  This was not what Charlie had expected. He’d assumed that Byko would either play the heavy right out of the gate or the concerned friend devastated by Julie’s disappearance. Instead, he was feigning ignorance. The chess match was under way and Charlie had only one move.

  “You didn’t get my email?” he asked.

  “I’m afraid not,” Byko replied with the utmost interest. “What did it say?”

  “It said that Julie was kidnapped. And that she’d been brought to Uzbekistan.”

  Byko cupped a hand over his mouth. “But why?”

  “I thought maybe you could help me with that.”

  “Me?”

  “I know that you and she have been corresponding, Alisher. I know that she opened up a second email account to keep it from me. I read all of the emails. I know that you begged her to come here and last week she finally did. You met, I take it, in either Tashkent or Samarkand. What happened there, I have no idea. But she came home two days ago and the next night she was kidnapped. Presumably by your enemies. Because they believe she has valuable information about you.”

  Byko’s face grew deadly serious. “And how do you know that she’s in Uzbekistan?”

  “Because the same nice folks who took Julie broke into my house and tortured me for six hours to find out if I knew anything. Which I don’t.”

  “Knew anything about what?”

  This was starting to go as Charlie had hoped. Him confiding in his old friend, asking for help, protesting innocence and ignorance. And it was all sounding eminently believable.