“Any ideas?”
“Probably involved a bunch of dead civilians with brown skin. But that’s only a guess. After that, he worked for some contractors to contractors to the Company. He’s one of those plausible deniability type guys that the Company uses as sparely as possible for particularly hairy operations. But after a while, even at that tertiary distance, the Company couldn’t stand the stink coming off him.”
“So who does he work for now?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“Karimov?”
“I wouldn’t speculate. All I can say is that he was still looking for work last year, then he dropped out of sight.”
“But it’s possible?”
“Karimov’s always been enamored with the cool professionalism and effectiveness of American intel, so yes, it’s possible. Now how about telling me what the deal is with that photo?”
Charlie was still unsure if he could trust him. But if there was anyone in the country who might to be able to help him—for a price—it was Garman.
“I’m not here on a job,” Charlie conceded.
“Oh?”
“It’s Julie. She’s been snatched.”
Charlie thought he saw a glint of surprise in the man’s eyes. “Snatched? By whom, Charlie? For what purpose?”
“By Quinn. For what purpose I don’t know.”
“But it’s not for ransom? It’s political.”
“Can you help?”
“I’ll need more information first.”
“Apparently, she came here last week to see Alisher Byko. The day after she flew back to the U.S., Quinn kidnapped her. The image I just showed you was her arriving here in a cargo container.”
“How can you be sure?”
“The guy tortured me in my goddamn basement. I tracked that container from the port in Los Angeles. All of the timing lines up.”
Garman leaned forward. “Tortured you?”
“He was looking for answers,” Charlie explained. “Answers I didn’t have. About Julie.”
“And you said Julie actually met with Byko?”
Charlie nodded. “I believe so.”
Garman studied Charlie for a moment, then stood and looked out the window as though scanning the street to see if Charlie had been followed.
“You haven’t been back here since Andijan, am I right?”
“Right.”
“Well, things change. Byko’s not the guy you knew.”
“How so?”
Garman sat down again, took out a knife and started cleaning his fingernails.
“He’s into all kinds of sinister things now. Drugs, guns, you name it.”
“And he’s still a threat to the regime?”
“Oh, more than ever.”
Charlie knew his history. When the English barons started giving King John grief, he couldn’t just throw the Earl of Leicester in prison. Not without consequences. In Uzbekistan, Byko was like the Earl of Leicester. Not just a rich man, he also represented a region, a clan, an ethnic group, a whole nest of interests in the Fergana Valley. As powerful as Karimov was, he still had to tread very carefully about going after someone like Byko. The fact that he’d let Byko return to his life after the uprising in Andijan was testament to that. But now, it seemed as though Karimov must have lost his patience.
“So it’s come to a tipping point,” Charlie said. “Karimov’s finally had enough.”
“The subtleties of power politics here are enough to confuse a Byzantine emperor. All I can say is that Byko more or less dropped off the map a few months ago. This is a very public man. Poof. Gone.”
“You think he’s planning a coup?”
Garman gave him a corroborative look. “You heard about Byko’s sister?”
“I know that she was arrested last year and tortured at Jaslyk.”
“She came home and hanged herself three days later. And now that I’ve heard what you’re telling me, it wouldn’t surprise me if Quinn was working for Karimov. That business with Byko’s sister sounds like exactly the kind of thing that would be up Quinn’s alley.”
“Of course,” Charlie added, “it’s also possible Quinn’s been subcontracted again by the CIA. That the Company’s working in conjunction with Karimov.”
“As long as American interests ally with the regime, that is always a possibility,” Garman said dryly. “You want to tell me what Julie was doing here, seeing Byko?”
Charlie shifted in his seat. “She was thinking about getting back into some of her work here. They’d been communicating by email. Byko said he might have some opportunities for her.”
Garman’s eyes pierced through Charlie. “And they used to go together. Back in the day.”
“There is that, yes.”
Garman raised his eyebrow just enough to irk Charlie, but this was no time to worry about looking like a cuckold. Instead, he dipped
into his money belt and tossed five thousand dollars on the desk.
“I need your help. And if we can locate her, I’ll need men.”
Garman cautiously eyed the stack of cash on the desk.
“I know it’s not much,” Charlie conceded, “but I can get you more later.”
“Look, Charlie,” Garman sighed, his face suddenly relaxing into professorial softness. “I knew Julie, and I thought she . . . she lit up a room, you know? I wouldn’t want any harm coming to her. But here’s the thing. What I do now is mostly petty stuff. Basic security detail for VIPs. The big game? Not my scene anymore. And I’m afraid this sounds an awful lot like the big game.”
Charlie suspected this was total bullshit. But he didn’t know for sure. And one glance at Garman’s empty eyes convinced him that the mercenary was unlikely to change his story.
“Then at least ask around for me. Find out who Quinn works for.”
Garman picked up the stack of money and tossed it into Charlie’s lap. “People get shot for asking around in this country.”
Charlie’s eyes bored into the man. “So that’s it? Good-bye and good luck?”
Garman picked up the book of poems on his desk and glanced at the page he’d been reading. “You know I write a few verses from time to time,” he mused. “Kind of my dirty little secret. Julie said some very kind things about something I wrote once. Not just, Hey, good job, pal. Thoughtful, you know? She actually read the damn poem and thought about it, and maybe felt something.” He slipped his finger between the pages of the book, then looked up again. “You’re going to need that money down the line.”
So Garman would ask around. And he would forsake even the smallest of fees for his services. Charlie searched the man’s eyes. Julie clearly had her charms but was it possible she’d made that much of an impression on him?
“Go do whatever else you have to do,” Garman said. “I’ll be in touch.”
Charlie exited the building, head still swirling as he tried to determine whether or not he could trust Garman. At this point, he figured he had almost no choice. He approached Faruz, who was waiting at the curb, engine idling.
“Good news,” the Uzbek said. “My cousin Nirmal used to know this guy who was a falconer for this rich Tajik guy. The Tajik guy was in a sort of hunting club with this other joker who—”
“I don’t need all the details,” Charlie said as he got into the car. “Did you find Byko?”
Faruz looked at him resentfully. “Why gotta trample all over my story?”
“Because every minute that goes by is a minute closer to some asshole throwing my wife’s dead body in a ditch.”
“Fair enough,” Faruz said. Then he put the BMW in gear and peeled out.
“So you found him?”
Faruz smiled triumphantly. “I found him. And he wants to talk.”
Chapter Twenty-one
The container sat in the middle of a bare field next to a cluster of large stone buildings. The buildings had the stolid, grim look of an old Soviet military encampment—which, in fact, was what they were.
Quinn threw open the door of the container. Attempting to ignore the smell of unwashed bodies, turmeric, and cigarettes, he walked past the guard and the medic and knelt next to the cot where Julie Davis lay motionless, hair splayed out on the pillow, an IV drip connected to her arm. He checked the pulse in her neck. Nice and strong.
“Wake her up,” Quinn said to the medic.
“We do like you say, Mr. Quinn,” the guard said, his voice high and urgent. “Everything perfect. Lady in perfect shape.”
“Wake her up!” Quinn barked. It put him in a bad mood, people explaining instead of doing.
The medic came over and injected a mild stimulant into the IV bag then squeezed it, pushing the fluids. Julie immediately reacted, sitting up and looking around with a confused expression on her face.
“Good work,” Quinn said to the guard and the medic. “Go out and talk to the guy in the blue hat. He’ll take care of your pay.”
“Thank you, sir! Thank you, sir!”
And the two men, apparently relieved that it was all over, scurried out of the container.
Quinn leaned toward Julie to see how cognizant she was. She blinked at him in a half daze. “Where am I?” she asked.
Quinn stepped forward and backhanded her across the face. “You’re in Shut-the-fuck-up. Any more questions?”
Julie held her face, staring at him in shock.
Quinn heard a gunshot from outside the container, then a scream of fear. “We do like Mr. Quinn say! Please! Lady in perfect—”
A second gunshot cut off the guard’s plaintive cries.
Quinn walked out of the container, stepping over the bodies of the two dead men. “Get her inside the compound,” he said to Mikael, a monster of a man wearing a red baseball cap with a Nike swoosh on the front.
Mikael was just holstering his SIG. “Right away, sir,” he said.
Quinn began striding away. He was feeling so much better now that the woman was on the ground.
Chapter Twenty-two
Gordon Bryce was well known in the Service for his calm and apparently dispassionate demeanor. But just now, he was clearly angry.
“Do you know, Hopkins, the last time we lost an officer of the Service?”
Hopkins assumed this to be a rhetorical question. But when the time stretched out and Bryce continued to stare silently at Hopkins through his thick glasses, he decided he better answer the question.
“Seven years ago, sir. Benson. In Pakistan.”
“Seven years ago.” There was another interminable silence.
Bryce brushed back a lock of hair from his forehead. In a time where everyone in England seemed to cut their hair like Americans, Bryce continued to wear what his detractors in the Service referred to as Empire Hair—parted on the left side and rising up in a strange bristling tangle to the right. “Empire Hair” because it harkened back to the days of the British Empire when a gentleman spent a thousand pounds on his suit and thirty-five pence on his haircut. Now if you didn’t spend fifty pounds on your coif no one took you seriously.
Unless you were the Chief of MI6.
“Seven years, Hopkins. Meaning that the last time a sworn officer died in the service of the Queen for this institution, my dearly departed predecessor was seated in this chair. Now I recognize that what we do is not without risk. But the reason my people have been safe under my aegis is that I have forsworn cowboying.”
There were those, Hopkins reflected, who argued that under Bryce’s aegis, MI6, out of caution, had forsworn doing its job.
“The days of Lawrence of Arabia are well behind us. ‘Ready, fire, aim’ is no longer accepted modus operandi in this house. Marcus Vaughan is dead because his operation was poorly planned, poorly executed and foolish.”
“Agreed, sir.”
Bryce’s left eyebrow twitched slightly. “You take full responsibility then.”
Hopkins gritted his teeth. “You will find, sir, that the dossiers of this operation are crammed full of uncharacteristically shrill appeals under my signature for more staff, more latitude and more resources in country. I was given instructions—as I was told—‘from the high-most authority in the realm’ that I was to leave no stone unturned. But when I requested a simple eight-man fire team on the ground in Uzbekistan to—”
“We are subject, Hopkins, to political limitations. Incalculable political consequences arising from—”
Hopkins’s hands clenched into fists. He struggled to keep his voice low. “Sir, you asked the question. I should like to reply in full. Perhaps out of the wound to my pride, but I rather think more because our missteps heretofore bear on our ongoing prosecution of this operation.”
Bryce eyed him unblinkingly—giving him enough rope to hang himself, Hopkins supposed. But right now, Hopkins didn’t care.
“Seven days ago we received hard intelligence as to the future location of Alisher Byko. A fixed place and a fixed time. A meeting with a person about whom we had very clear and accurate information. I requested a tactical team to seize Byko. My request was denied on political grounds, my hard-earned intelligence handed to the Uzbek government. The Uzbek government then tasked a small unit from its ‘elite’ Twenty-seventh Air Assault Regiment for the takedown.” Hopkins wrapped his voice in as much sarcasm as he could muster. “The Twenty-seventh, as is well known, is a sinecure for some of the dimmer members of the Uzbek President’s extended family. They are corrupt, inefficient, poorly trained and underfunded.”
Bryce let a slow breath trail noisily out of his long nose, as though he had become bored with the course of this conversation. “I made a terribly forceful case to the Foreign Office for sending in an SAS team. But they simply couldn’t sell it to the Karimov regime.”
Not forceful enough, Hopkins felt like saying. But instead he stuck to the facts. “Sir, as you’re well aware, the Twenty-seventh blew the raid. Did someone tip off Byko’s people? Was it pure incompetence? I really don’t know. Perhaps a combination of the two. But what I can tell you is that it was entirely predictable.”
“I’ve read your report,” Bryce snapped.
“Marcus Vaughan contacted me two days later saying he had information and all he needed was tactical support. If not a full team of trained intelligence operators, then at least a handful of SAS lads. And I had to tell him, ‘It’s come down from the highest levels that we need desperately to find Byko, but as regards support . . . sorry, old man, you’re on your own, Whitehall have ordained there shall be no hard operations in Uzbekistan except by officers acting under credentialed diplomatic cover—of which, dear Marcus, I may remind you, there is only one. To wit, you.’ ”
“You should have bloody called me.”
“With all due respect, sir, would you have bucked Whitehall on this? If you wouldn’t do it to catch Byko himself, would you have done it to protect a single agent?”
The black eyes continued to watch him unblinkingly. “I should watch your tone, were I you.”
Frank Hopkins considered himself to be a man of great self-control. But the simmering heat of his anger was threatening to burst out of him in a career-ending explosion. He forced himself to take a deep breath. “I recruited Marcus. I brought him along. He had a few personal problems that led him to his rather undistinguished assignment in Uzbekistan. But he was a fine field man and a decent human being. I sweated through several jungles, a handful of deserts and more than a few inhospitable cities in his company, and he dragged my arse out of more than a few rather tight spots. He was a friend.”
“Look, Hopkins, we’re all damned sorry about Marcus Vaughan. Damned sorry.” Bryce paused for a moment, hands prayerfully clasped in front of the knot of his tie. Then, having made his show of compassion, he recomposed his face in its usual grave lines. “That said, if you wish to have a future in this organization, I suggest we put an end to this sort of finger-pointing and set our sights on finding Byko.”
Hopkins gazed at the man incredulously.
“I know I don’t need to re
mind you that the clock is ticking, Hopkins.”
“No, sir. You certainly don’t.”
And with that, Hopkins turned and headed out of the room, all too aware that one hand was still tied behind his back.
Chapter Twenty-three
Charlie and Faruz were bombing down the highway outside Tashkent in Faruz’s beat-up BMW. Faruz had assured Charlie that while the Beemer might look tired, the engine had been reconstituted and was more than ready for prime time. Thus far, Faruz had been a man of his word. The car was humming along at ninety-two miles per hour with only the gentlest of purrs.
“So where exactly are we heading?” Charlie asked.
“The way this works, my cousin gonna call me, various steps along way. Byko very particular about who he talk to these days. People gonna be watching us for tails. Right now we heading to a checkpoint east of Samarkand.” He pointed at the mountains. “We get up there, my cousin gonna call, give us directions to next checkpoint. Eventually we gonna reach Byko.”
“So you have no idea.”
Faruz shrugged. He was normally hard to shut up, but it was clear he was nervous and they drove mostly in silence, Faruz pushing the speed, passing trucks and slower cars with his horn blaring, chain-smoking Marlboros.
The low, drab outskirts of Tashkent gradually gave way to the arid countryside and then to a low, purple range of mountains, the first upwellings of the great spine of rock that ran eastward across Asia all the way to the Himalayas. In the foothills of the mountains near the Kirghiz border, they came upon a cell tower extending up from the hard, bare earth like some alien artifact in the midst of a moonscape of barren rock.
“This is it,” Faruz said, climbing out of the car and whipping out his cell. “It’s me,” he said into the phone. “Where to next?”
While Faruz was hashing out the details for their next checkpoint, Charlie noticed a car parked across the highway. Two young men sat in the vehicle staring at him through mirrored sunglasses.
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