Private Wars

by Greg Rucka

  It knows what happens next, Chace thought.

  The world split, and she felt heat sweep over her back, pain following after it, her legs knocked from beneath her. Everything turned around, surrounding her in weightlessness and vertigo, and Chace knew her feet weren’t on the ground anymore. She tightened her grip on the child, flashed for a final instant on his face pressed against her chest, his eyes squeezed closed, black hair shining in the light of the exploding car.

  She saw Tamsin.

  Then she saw nothing.

  CHAPTER 28

  London—Vauxhall Cross,

  Office of the Chief of Service

  21 February, 0016 Hours GMT

  Frances Barclay looked like a man under siege. His shoulders were hunched inward, his hands laid flat on the blotter on his desk, his neck lowered, his chin thrust forward, and his eyes behind his glasses brimming with hatred. And for once, that hatred wasn’t being directed at Crocker himself, but rather at the Deputy Chief standing beside him, though Crocker knew it was only a matter of time before he became its focus again.

  “You knew about this, you knew about all of this, and you failed to inform me?”

  “The operation was undertaken in response to a directive by the FCO,” Alison Gordon-Palmer said evenly.

  “Not an official directive!”

  “The PUS acted with both the Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister’s blessing, sir. If PUS felt it necessary to omit you from the conops, then you’ll have to take it up with him. But D-Ops was acting as ordered, and the paper trail exists to prove it.”

  “Placed after the fact, no doubt.”

  Gordon-Palmer didn’t respond, and Crocker, for his part, continued standing in silence beside her. Another chapter to be written in his manual of desk usage, Crocker thought. In any other instance, the Deputy Chief and the Director of Operations standing at C’s desk while C himself railed at them from his chair would have been the perfect portrait of subordinate reinforcement, more akin to the dressing-down of ill-mannered children than not. Yet this time, with C seated and the two of them standing, it seemed the players were entirely reversed.

  Barclay seemed to sense it, as well, because he chose that moment to get to his feet and lean on the desk.

  “I know what this is,” he told the Deputy Chief. “This is a coup d’état. Don’t think I won’t fight it.”

  “If that’s how you see it, sir,” she replied.

  “There’s another way I should see it?”

  “The disposition of the operation is still in question. Should it be successfully concluded, you’ll certainly be entitled, even expected, to take full credit for it.”

  “Which is your way of saying that, when it fails, I’ll be expected to own it?”

  Crocker was impressed that Gordon-Palmer managed to sound mildly indignant. “Not at all, sir. Should the operation fail, you have the perfect scapegoats.”

  “You.”

  “And D-Ops, yes, sir.”

  It didn’t reassure Barclay in the slightest. If anything, the look on his face hardened further. “So you say. Yet you’ve also said that the White House is adamant that Sevara Malikov and not her brother becomes Uzbekistan’s next President. Even if the operation is successful, it will be a failure.”

  “Not necessarily,” Crocker said. “If Ruslan and his son are lifted, they can be positioned for an eventual return to the country and an attempted ouster of the sister.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Barclay snapped. “The operation is pointless, at least as declared. It does nothing but expose Ruslan and force his sister and her supporters to move against him, perhaps overtly, and the results of an overt move will do nothing but damage U.K. relations with Uzbekistan. In the final analysis, it solidifies her power, not diminishes it.”

  Crocker held his tongue, mostly because he couldn’t argue the point. Until three hours earlier, he would have argued that Ruslan had every chance to become Uzbekistan’s next President, especially with Seccombe’s promised support for the coup. But that was no longer the case. According to Gordon-Palmer, in fact, it never had been.

  So he stayed silent and let Barclay and the Deputy Chief continue their bitter dance, all the while struggling with his own guilt. It was one thing to have failed Chace before, in Saudi Arabia, to have been boxed both politically and professionally, and thus prevented from helping her. In that case, he had done everything in his power to protect her, and had, quite simply, been defeated. He had never, however, lied to her.

  This time he had, and he had known he was lying when they stood in the Pendle churchyard. A lie of omission rather than deceit, but a lie nonetheless, because Crocker had known—he had known—that Seccombe was using him. But he had permitted it, desperate to keep his job. And in so doing, he’d put himself and his career ahead of Chace’s safety and well-being.

  Espionage was ultimately a game of sacrifice. Truths revealed to protect lies, relationships twisted to steal secrets, lives surrendered in exchange for gains that could range from the incremental to the absurd. But sacrificing Chace had never been in Crocker’s plans, and now, more than anything, he feared he’d done precisely that. He would argue until the day he died that what happened to send Chace to Saudi Arabia was not his fault, that Tom Wallace’s death, as much as it pained him, was not his to own. Her anger, while righteous, he still believed was misplaced.

  But if Tara Chace managed to come back from Tashkent alive, Paul Crocker was sure that she would never forgive him.

  And at this moment, standing in Barclay’s office, listening with half an ear to Gordon-Palmer’s soothing falsehoods and Barclay’s rapidly dwindling patience, Paul Crocker knew that if Tara Chace didn’t come back from Uzbekistan, he would never forgive himself, either.

  “And you,” Barclay was snarling at him. “I offered you a hand in friendship, and you returned it with betrayal.”

  Crocker blinked, looking at his C. “As the Deputy Chief has said, I was acting under orders from the FCO. And as for your hand of friendship, if I may be so blunt, you offered nothing of the sort. You were blackmailing me.”

  The red phone on Barclay’s desk began trilling for attention. “And now the both of you are blackmailing me.”

  Turnabout is fair play, thought Crocker.

  Barclay answered the phone, listened, then thrust it out to Crocker. “For you.”

  Crocker took the phone. “D-Ops.”

  “Duty Ops Officer,” Ronald Hodgson said. “Latest from Tashkent, sir.”

  “Give it to me.”

  “It’s just come in, sir. State media has issued a statement saying that Ruslan Malikov and his son were kidnapped from their home early this morning by members of Hizb-ut-Tahir, possibly the same cell responsible for the kidnap and murder of Dina Malikov earlier this month. The statement goes on to say that the terrorists used a surface-to-air missile to destroy the Malikov home in an attempt to cover their tracks, but that police and state forces were able to recognize the misdirection and engage in an immediate pursuit along the M39, the main road out of Tashkent toward Samarkand.

  “During this pursuit, a second SAM was used to shoot down a state helicopter, killing twelve. State forces surrounded the terrorists and attempted to negotiate. The terrorists then executed Ruslan Malikov, at which point state forces moved in and rescued the son.”

  Crocker felt his throat constricting, closed his eyes. “Confirmations?”

  “None as yet, sir.”

  “I’m coming down.”

  He replaced the phone on Barclay’s desk. Both C and Gordon-Palmer were watching at him, waiting.

  “Ops Room, Tashkent,” Crocker said. “State media reports that Ruslan Malikov is dead.”

  “Paul—” Alison Gordon-Palmer began.

  “Later,” Crocker said. It was petulant, and he believed it was unintentional, but he slammed the door on the way out.

  “Call Grosvenor Square,” Crocker ordered as soon as he hit the floor. “Have them wake Seale an
d get him over here, now.”

  Ronald Hodgson put his headset over his ears, began dialing, saying, “What do I tell him?”

  “Just tell him it’s about Chace.”

  Ron faltered for a second, and all movement in the Ops Room came to a halt as the staffers who knew the name reacted to it, and those who didn’t wondered at the sudden silence. At the MCO Desk, Alexis turned in her seat, the same look of confusion now on her face that the rest of the room seemed to be wearing.

  “You heard me,” Crocker barked at Ron. “Do it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Crocker strode to the MCO Desk, where Alexis was still staring at him. Her astonishment might have been amusing in any other circumstance. Now it just made Crocker all the more anxious. “Anything?”

  She took a second, almost dithering, then nodded and punched at her keyboard. “Yes, possibly related.”

  “Are you going to tell me or do I have to take you out to dinner first?”

  Alexis stiffened. “There are reports that President Malikov is dead, and that both chambers of the Oliy Majlis are being called into session for later this morning. That’s unofficial—the Number Two picked it up from a contact in the NSS, who apparently heard it from a man named Ahtam Zahidov.”

  Crocker swore, moved his glare from Alexis to the plasma wall. “Name the operation, put it up on the wall, and tag it as pending, bring in a control.”

  He heard the clattering of her keyboard, scowled as the central quadrant of the plasma screen redrew its picture of Central Asia, a red highlight outlining Uzbekistan, with a red dot now pulsing brightly on Tashkent. On the map, to the south, a yellow dot appeared over Khanabad, marking the Karshi-Khanabad air base, Air Base Camp Stronghold Freedom, where the Americans launched their missions from the country into Afghanistan. The callout came up next, and he watched as the text Alexis was typing at her keyboard translated to the screen, filling the information box.

  Operation: Crystalgate.

  Status: Pending.

  “Allocate Chace.”

  Alexis stared at him blankly.

  “Allocate Chace, she’s the agent of record. It’s a Special Op.”

  “But—how? As what? What designation?”

  “Don’t be a fucking fool, Alex,” Crocker snarled. “She’s Minder One.”

  At Duty Ops, Ron called out, “Sir!” and Crocker turned away from the MCO station to see that he was holding out a telephone. He grabbed the phone, pinning it between his ear and shoulder, leaving his hands free to find his cigarettes.

  “Crocker.”

  “Seale. What the fuck is this about?”

  “You damn well know what it’s about. Get on to your people in Tashkent and find out what the hell’s happened there, and find out where my agent is. I’ve got nothing, I’m getting bits and pieces, and they’re no use at all.”

  There was a silence for a moment as the American digested what he’d said, and Crocker took the opportunity to feed a cigarette into his mouth. Ron held out a light, and Crocker leaned into it, accepting the flame.

  “We’re on the same page about this now?” Seale asked.

  “If you mean the page where I’ve got an agent caught in the cold and quite possibly dead, then yes, we’re on the same fucking page, Julian.”

  “I’ll be there in half an hour,” Seale said, and hung up.

  Crocker handed the phone back to Ron, pivoted, looking back to the plasma wall. Nothing had changed. Nothing would change, not for a while yet. He could stare at it for another hour, and it would tell him nothing he didn’t already know. The anxiety that had propelled him into the Ops Room began to wane, and the seething in his veins began to settle into the familiar queasiness of uncertainty. He tried to think of what else he could do, what else he should do.

  “Lex? The line still open to Tashkent?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Put me on.”

  She nodded, quickly plugging in a second headset to her coms station, handing it over to Crocker as soon as he reached her. He settled the earpieces, adjusted the boom.

  “Craig? D-Ops.”

  “Good morning, sir,” Craig Gillard said in his ears. There was a hiss on the line, and beneath Gillard’s voice a low, regular beeping, indicating the communication was being scrambled.

  “Not very,” Crocker said.

  “No, sir. I’m a little unclear as to what to make of things here.”

  “I can imagine. You’ll receive a proper directive from me later this morning, but for now I need you to proceed as if you’ve already received the appropriate authorizations, do you understand?”

  Gillard hesitated before answering, and Crocker didn’t blame him. He was thirty-six, and Tashkent was his first posting as a Number One, after twelve years within SIS. He’d been in-country for eleven months, with another year scheduled on his tour. It was a well-earned posting—Crocker wouldn’t have endorsed the placement if he’d felt Gillard couldn’t do the job—and one of priority, for all the same reasons the Americans made Uzbekistan a priority. Gillard was looking at coming back home to a senior desk position under Rayburn’s eye, and then possibly further promotion within SIS. All of that incumbent, of course, on his doing his job not just well, but discreetly.

  And Crocker had yet to meet a Station Number One who ever was well pleased when things started exploding on his or her watch.

  “Yes, sir, I understand,” Gillard said. “What seems to be the trouble?”

  “I’ve heard the Hizb-ut-Tahir nonsense. Do you know what really happened?”

  “Hayden’s been beating the bushes,” Gillard answered, referring to the Station Number Two. “Got himself a contact in the NSS he’s been working on for the last few months, since November, name of Jamshid Nalufar. Nalufar says that it wasn’t the extremists, but Ruslan’s people trying to get him out of the country, he thinks in the wake of President Malikov’s death. Problem with that, sir, is that Ruslan doesn’t have much in the way of people, and those he does have are all in the south, mostly centered in Qashqa Darya Province, cities like Karshi, Shakhrisabz, and Samarkand. It’s not making a lot of sense.”

  Crocker exhaled smoke, then said, “No, it’s not Ruslan’s people, it’s ours. The operation is called Crystalgate. You’ll get the brief on it in the morning, as I said.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “Still with me?”

  “Jesus Christ,” Gillard repeated. “You’re running a bust-out in Tashkent, you didn’t bother to notify me?”

  “Believe me when I tell you it was not by choice,” Crocker said. “No one was looking to burn you, Craig. The agent has had no contact with either you or your Number Two. The orders were to steer clear of the Station.”

  “For all the good that’s going to do. The operation’s a bust, it’s completely blown. Hayden says the NSS shut it all down, they’ve got the kid, Ruslan’s reported dead—”

  “I don’t care,” Crocker interrupted. “There are two things I need from you, and I need them immediately.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “The explosions, the SAM that took down the helicopter and the one that blew up the house, I believe those were both caused the same way, with a Starstreak. I need you to confirm that, and then get that confirmation to me, that’s one.”

  “We’re arming the Uzbekis with MANPADs now?”

  “That’s one, Craig. Second, I need to find out what happened to the agent. I need to know if she’s dead, if she’s been captured, or if she’s still running.”

  “She?”

  “Tara Chace. She’s running under the name Tracy Elizabeth Carlisle. It’s vital I know what’s happened to her.”

  “Yes, sir, I understand.” Gillard paused, then added, “All right, Hayden and I will get on it right away. I’ll have him hit his contact again, though God knows he’ll resist communicating with him twice in the same night.”

  “Soon as possible, Craig.”

  “Yes, sir, that’s understood as well. I’ll contact
you as soon as we learn anything.”

  “London out.” Crocker pulled the headset off, dropped it back on the MCO Desk, then dropped his cigarette to the floor and ground it out with his toe, frowning. He had to get back upstairs, to inform Barclay and Gordon-Palmer what had happened, and he needed Seale to arrive, and soon. But that was it for the moment, that was all he could do. If Chace was dead, the Station would confirm it soon enough.

  “I’ll be with C,” he told Ron. “When Seale arrives, ring me. Have him escorted to my office, I’ll meet him there.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And find me the number of Valerie Wallace, Barnoldswick, Lancashire.” Crocker hesitated, then added, “I may need it later.”

  He headed back upstairs to rejoin the battle in C’s office.

  CHAPTER 29

  Uzbekistan—Tashkent—Yunus Rajabiy,

  Ministry of the Interior

  21 February, 0955 Hours (GMT+5:00)

  Something stabbed Chace in the nose, rising sharp and hard into her sinuses, and it tugged at her mind, trying to pull her awake. She moved her head, trying to escape, and the pain stopped, and she felt her hair being pulled and then it returned, stronger, and she gagged, coming fully conscious with a start. She tried to raise an arm and bat the offense away, but her arm barely moved, and a fresh ache tore along her shoulder.

  Chace blinked, tasting blood and dust. A man in a suit was stepping back from her, looking at her, tossing aside the ammonia ampoule he’d held beneath her nostrils. Her vision was blurred, and one of her eyes, she couldn’t tell which, was seeing nothing but a milky white haze. The right side of her face felt tight, as if encased in dried wax, and when she moved her mouth to lick her lower lip, she felt it crack, and guessed the dried wax was blood, and probably her own. A pain ran in a circle from temple to temple, as if someone had wrapped her skull in wire and then decided to pull, just for the fun of it.