“Thank you. But I’d appreciate it if we could skip the overblown formalities.” Eversen squirmed, unable to get his back comfortable against the plush seat.
“Still unwilling to engage with our national culture, Mister Eversen? A pity. You must learn to take your time — life can hardly be enjoyed, otherwise. But, certainly. How much will this cost me?”
“First, I have to ask you something.” Eversen tried to settle back, couldn’t get his back comfortably arranged. Eventually he gave up, and just leaned forward, tail bent to the side.
“Of course.” Malik gestured airily.
“Two somethings, really. You’re sure you and him are the only ones who know I’m here?” He nodded at the cousin, standing outside and watching the elevators. “This would look bad, if anyone knew.”
“I know something of discretion.” Malik leaned forward, steepling his fingers. “We would hardly want our association known, before the election. It would not look good, having your support, but afterward I will, of course, be able to rebuild my nation’s armed forces as I choose.”
“Of course.” Eversen blinked across at him. “I and my brothers were treated well in Tajikistan, we simply didn’t have enough governmental support.”
“The revolution was a terrible thing. But your loyalty to the legitimate government was well noted, even if some chose to view it uncharitably.”
Eversen pricked up his ears. “Yes,” he agreed. He’d been young. He’d been stupid. He’d listened to orders. They all had, in Tajikistan. And it could have gone so much worse if the previous Tajik government had exploited that, instead of been too afraid to lean on their private military contractors.
Malik sat back, and dug a shard of wafery bread into his caviar. “You had a second question?”
“Your involvement with the Aliyev regime’s military. General Abbasov, Colonel Magsudov.” He tilted his head. “They were planning to overthrow Nesimi and reinstall your grandfather, during the Eurasian War? Now they back you?”
Malik’s eyebrows lifted. “And where did you hear that?”
“Magsudov died in Tajikistan,” Eversen replied.
“You knew him?”
Eversen didn’t answer that with anything more than a shrug.
Malik laughed. “How it all comes full circle. Yes. They back me, now.”
Breathing slowly, very carefully and shallowly, Eversen leaned forward. “You intend to start a new regime?”
“I take after my great, great grandfather Heydar, don’t you think?” Malik turned his head slightly, grinning again, as if posing for a photo-op. “Don’t worry, Eversen Bey. There is still plenty of oil under the Caspian, if we start fracking deeply enough. You and your brothers will be well paid.”
The air in his mouth was hot. Uncomfortably hot. Eversen took down a breath, and blew out another. “Were you aware that General Hafiz Abbasov is seeking to develop a stockpile of reclaimed Eurasian-War era biological weapons of mass destruction?”
“Yes, of course. Part of the plan — make sure Russia and Armenia stay well back, keep the barbarians ruining Persia at bay with the threat of a bigger hammer. And it would certainly be good for… support at home? Hm?”
Eversen barely believed what he was hearing. He limited himself to a slow blink. “Use them to pacify your own population?”
“There would be no need. The threat of it will be enough.” Malik smiled tightly.
Eversen had studied a little bit about authoritarian regimes. Social studies class. One of the few interesting things that they’d covered.
“So you understand the precepts of warfare of mass destruction?” Eversen stared at him. “The strategy behind it?”
Malik gestured airily, crunching another dose of Caviar. “Enlighten me.”
“The strategy was developed before nuclear weapons had been put into production,” Eversen said, as if reciting it for history class, back in high school. “It was understood that a weapon of total annihilation held a unique place within military strategy. Strategic theory states that the first nation to develop one should immediately deploy the weapon against any nation attempting to develop another, to prevent them from doing so.”
Malik waved his hand, watching Eversen with interest, while stuffing his face.
“The mere threat of suffering an attack by weapons of mass destruction justified launching an attack on a defenseless nation, purely because of a potential future threat. This was never done, leading the two superpowers of the era into the policy of Mutually Assured Destruction — in which two or more belligerents have, but do not deploy their weapons. The defense is based around a mutual threat, if nation A attacks nation B, nation B attacks nation A. There is no way to attack your enemy without suffering equal, or greater loss.”
“Then why were such weapons deployed in the Eurasian war?” Malik asked, eyebrow lifted. “There were nuclear bombs in China…”
Eversen shrugged. “The Eurasian War wasn’t about nuclear weapons. It was about biological weapons. The MACP sold biowarfare agents so they could be deployed before the states of South-Eastern Asia could develop comparable bioengineering techniques themselves or begin to vaccinate their populations. It’s a tricky subject, but you understand what I’m saying about what happens before Mutually Assured Destruction?”
“Yes.” The future dictator of Azerbaijan nodded emphatically, grasping at his Vodka. “Stamp out the enemy before they can even become your enemy. Yes.”
“Good.” Eversen nodded. “Then I guess it’s okay, if you understand.”
“Hm?”
Eversen leaned forward, and pulled the fucking captured Azeri EMWAR kit’s panel antenna from where it just wouldn’t sit right against his lower back.
“What is that?”
Eversen didn’t answer, palming open the limousine’s gull-wing door. Then Malik stared in horror as Eversen pulled a silenced side-arm from the holster that’d been under the antenna and shot Malik’s cousin, with a thump no louder than a hammer hitting stone.
Malik sprawled, thumbing at a panic-button on his wrist-watch, legs scrabbling uselessly to get away — as if that’d do any good while sitting down.
“You see, Mister Najafov. In the near future you could potentially become this country’s next authoritarian dictator. Presently, I occupy that role and you are defenseless.”
The panic button blazed red. No matter how often Najafov hit it, it couldn’t get a signal past the EMWAR Kit’s false all-clear being sent to his bodyguards upstairs.
“You can close your eyes, if you want, Mister Najafov.”
Malik screamed instead, begging for help, begging for mercy, crying, offering money, drugs, women… anything to cling to life.
It was the first time Eversen ever felt bad, killing someone.
*
Trying to run a murder investigation in what was still effectively a warzone was… difficult. Granted, when the investigation had shown up on the tactical network, rather than leaving it for the European contractors Eversen grabbed it himself. So he could only blame himself for taking on a difficult job.
He spent plenty of time, weeks, even, following the guidelines and specified procedures, taking statements, grabbing surveillance footage from the area… but he didn’t turn anything useful up. That dog who’d been walking around the area could have been almost anybody, especially given that a military grade EMWAR kit had spoofed and jammed surveillance camera and security signals in the area during the time surrounding the murder. The dog wasn’t even a suspect, plenty of dogs had been walking around that day. Just because Eversen knew exactly who was guilty of the murder , that didn’t necessarily mean he could find supporting evidence to prove it.
Heck, with all surveillance coverage blocked, it was plausible that nobody at all had gone down into the garage. You’d need some kind of expert to tell any different, and Eversen simply didn’t have the skills. The police, and their forensic departments, had been dissolved.
Even if Malik Najafov’s murder had been the
news of the day, the fact of his death was far more interesting than the little details like who’d done it, or why. Popular theories for the killer’s identity or backers included some of the pre-war Aliyev regime’s supporters playing out an internal power struggle, the Armenians — Azerbaijan’s historic enemy, members of opposing political parties, loyalists to the Nesimi regime, the Armenians, and even foreigners intervening in Azeri affairs. (Probably the Armenians.)
It was funny, in a sick way, but Eversen couldn’t come to terms with it, even after removing the investigation from the tactical network and marking it as unsolved.
Malik hadn’t been a threat. Not the kind Eversen understood. In all probability Malik’s fists would crack like eggs if he’d tried hitting anything, and he’d probably never even held a gun.
As a kid, on the range, they’d had firing drills in which they were instructed to shoot only the armed targets projected in front of them, not the unarmed ones. In other drills, there had been drills to kill both armed and unarmed targets — some firing drills only included unarmed targets. Sensitizing him into killing civilians, probably. But there was a world of difference between a static image in AugR or projected across a targeting board, and a man begging for his life.
Eversen should’ve cuffed Malik and hauled him in front of a court. Unfortunately it wasn’t illegal to be a scumbag with plans. Wasn’t illegal, so far as Eversen knew, to have rich people trying to put you into power.
Maybe if he’d dug more, maybe if he’d gotten Andercom’s hired intelligence services to find more data, maybe if he’d recorded the conversation with Malik before shooting him, maybe this, maybe that… Maybe he wouldn’t have had to shoot a man so terrified of dying he couldn’t even try and fight back.
Eversen sipped his beer.
The beer theoretically belonged to one of the North American contractors, but the six-pack was part of the general foreign groceries delivery for Operations Post Delta. Nobody’s name was on it, so the beer was his now.
Eversen’d tried running for office. Or looked into it, anyway. He couldn’t — not an Azeri citizen. But he got to talking with some of the protest activists — the ones who’d bubbled up, pushed for the crowdfunding, then got shot by Nesimi for it. They liked what he had to say about the Transitionary Authority’s system of organization through crowdfunding and collaborative networks.
One of them, a charismatic type, a guy named Subhi, had really bought into the idea. Pushed his friend Nahida to stand as a candidate, but she turned him down — said a woman would never get the vote. She talked him into doing it instead.
Eversen gave over all the operations procedure documentation he could, explaining the inner workings of the Transitionary Authority’s decision-making processes, the way crowdfunded messages from the citizenry had directly influenced policy, the internal bidding procedures, the stop gaps and internal auditing procedures to avoid profiteering. Subhi and his friends had boiled it all down into a manifesto and gotten the required five hundred signatures.
Unfortunately, sitting in the dark, watching the news, doing his best to get drunk on too-little alcohol the way he and Ereli had, once or twice in the past, Eversen didn’t think Subhi and his friends would even get five hundred votes.
The newsfeed was an ad-hoc indie media collective, patterned after some European group. Lots of young men and women liveblogging on the streets, while more of them stayed home and clipped it all together into five or ten minute sequences to watch over coffee, or two minute headline compilations you could watch or listen to while stuck in an elevator. Neat, bite sized, everywhere.
They were running live coverage at the election’s voting stations. They opened at midnight. Malik’s face loomed large from a graffitied billboard, the letters were unfamiliar but according to the subtitles the graffiti read, roughly, ‘We will never forget your sacrifice — five Manat.’
Turned out, going through Malik’s personal banking records, that he’d thrown five Manat into the crowdfund for the liberation two hours after Nesimi was captured. Then, during all his campaign rallies, he’d spent a lot of time showing off his digital crowdfunder’s token off on his phone.
The people were not, in retrospect, impressed by that.
Probably not legal to dump those kinds of files to the net in a public media folder, Eversen thought. After all, as an investigator he was supposed to have privileged access and responsibility for Malik’s data, or some shit.
He didn’t care, just then. Instead he watched the first rush of people surging into the voting stations to the sound of cheering he could hear, faintly, through his window as midnight hit.
Numbers popped up on the feed, racking higher and higher as the exit polls came in. It was a little like that first night, sitting on Stolnik’s couch back home, in San Iadras. Ereli just to his side while they munched on Chinese food, staring at the crowdfunding total climbing up, and up… and up.
Subhi had nine votes, on the exit polls. Pretty good, out of the first five hundred responses. Got a few more… the CDP’s replacement candidate, who hadn’t had the political standing to just smile and wave away the journalists like Malik could when they asked about where his campaign money came from, got his fair share. So did the lady campaigning on an environmental platform, the refugee guy from India who was a naturalized citizen, the ex-army guy who’d done most of his campaigning from a hospital bed while getting fitted for prosthetics…
The little bar chart wasn’t flat, exactly, but after all the little tiny parties, like Subhi’s, got filtered out, it left a near even split between a dozen contenders for the presidency.
By the time Eversen had emptied out the six-pack and flung the cans into a corner of his private room, losing the thread of everything and just staring at flashing lights on the screen, they were down to eight candidates.
With Malik dead, nobody had the upper hand anymore.
The politicians were out in the night, shaking hands, talking to people in the voting queues, trying to explain their views. Even Subhi had a spot, grinning madly for the camera as he explained that democracy by the dollar had already proven it could depose immoral rulers.
Well. Maybe it couldn’t. After all, Malik had been wealthy, and so was the Citizen’s Democracy Party. But they didn’t have all the votes, just fifteen percent of the vote compared to the Indian refugee guy’s fourteen point eight. Then the both of them took a tumble around dawn, when the ex-army guy tottered out of the hospital on a mechanical prosthetic leg to greet cheering nationalists.
Eversen got himself a cup of water and a pair of knock-out pills for forcing soldiers asleep after they’d been running on amphetamines and other stimulant drugs for too long, and used them to toast the morning’s light. Between the pills and the beer, the rapidly starting debate on how a coalition government might be formed was just a little too complicated for him.
It was reassuring, though. After all. If six people had to share the presidential throne after Eversen was done with it, hopefully they’d keep each other in check.
He wished them the best of luck, and bedded down into dreamless sleep.
I: Leaving.
::/ San Iadras, Middle American Corporate Preserve.
::/ January, 2104.
::/ Edane Estian.
His plane wasn’t there yet, but Edane didn’t have anywhere else to go.
The passenger waiting area in the airport was all white tiles and glass and potted plants with small white squares of smartpaper hanging from them, explaining what brand they were and how they helped filter the air and detect contaminants. The air conditioning was on too hard, a blast of cold air being sucked through the Balcony Café’s open doors and out into the pre-dawn heat, even though the Balcony Café wouldn’t be open for another four hours.
The planes huddled under the terminal’s crosswalks. Some big, some small, all of them dark and unlit. No life around them except for a couple of workers watching as trolley-trains loaded the planes up with commercial ca
rgo. Edane tracked the motions with his nose, while on a skywalk service crews and flight engineers boarded a plane with a black and gold tail logo, so if anyone on the flight wanted a drink or the plane’s software had to be updated or something there’d be a person to do it.
It’d be sunrise, soon.
Grandpa Jeff was dead.
Grandpa Jeff had left Edane money, but no instructions, and Edane was trying at college, he’d really tried, but it was all so depressing. It was high-school all over again, people trying to teach him how to be anything but who he was, trying to teach him that meaningless things had meaning. That owning one kind of car instead of a different kind of car made a real difference over using the public transit trams and busses or getting a discount long-term use account with a cab company. As if every other person in college was born with the desire for a family, a job, an expensive pair of sunglasses.
He didn’t understand, and he didn’t want to understand. The PMC K-level certification had been a one week course, and it all meant something. What laws to follow, what a combatant was defined as, what kinds of orders were legal and what kinds weren’t, what was good and what was bad. It wasn’t just a movie he had to live beside, watching every day, full of people, human people who didn’t look like him, being fulfilled by things he could never understand but things he’d be judged for all the same. Pretending that good was white fluffy clouds and bad was black spiky plastic. The licensing course was real and it had diagrams and standard operating procedures and coded citation references.
Even Grandpa Jeff would’ve understood that the PMC K-level certification was important. More important than college.
He would’ve listened. He would’ve been sore about it, but he would’ve listened, at least.
Cathy and Beth hadn’t listened. They’d told Edane he was throwing his life away, that he was giving in to preconceived notions about what he was, that he was limiting all his options.
That he was making them unhappy.
Edane didn’t want to make his mothers unhappy, but he didn’t want to be unhappy either.
Dog Country Page 28
