Private Wars

by Greg Rucka

  “I think that it is. We’ve had to clean up plenty of their messes.”

  “Don’t be petulant. You’re my Director of Operations, not some pubescent teen. You’ve spoken to Simon?”

  “I brought it to the Deputy Chief first, yes.”

  “And?”

  “And his assessment agrees with yours.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “In the hope that you would disagree with him. It’s a betrayal.”

  “A betrayal it may be, but it’s now also a directive,” C said. “Consider it a Special Op, and task a Minder for it, two if you think it’s necessary. I’ll contact the FCO, speak to Seccombe about authorization, but for the moment, you may safely assume the mission has Downing Street’s blessing.”

  “The Prime Minister will authorize an assassination?”

  “The mission objective is not to assassinate, but to dissuade by all means necessary. Conops will be very clear on that.”

  “It’s a dodge.”

  She raised an eyebrow at him, the kettle returning the look from the pot.

  “Well,” Alison Gordon-Palmer said, “I suppose you’d know.”

  CHAPTER 34

  London—Vauxhall Cross, Operations Room

  22 August, 1519 Hours GMT

  Crocker was waiting for them when Chace led Poole and Lankford into the Ops Room, and she thought he looked more than his usual unhappy. He was standing—actually, Chace thought it was closer to slouching—with his hands thrust deep in his pockets and his cigarette burning between his lips, glowering at the plasma wall. Behind him, at Duty Ops, Bill Teagle was in the throes of mission planning with Danny Beale. She nodded to them both and they acknowledged her, then continued poring over the map unfolded between them.

  Chace glanced to the wall, feeling more than seeing Lankford and Poole doing the same behind her. There was a highlight around Afghanistan, which immediately struck her as a bad thing, and Mike Putnam at MCO was busy typing up the information that would go onto the screen.

  “Who has the control?” Putnam asked.

  “I’ll take it,” said Beale.

  “The operation is designated Sundown.”

  “Boss?” Chace asked.

  Crocker ignored her, still looking at the plasma wall, and then he turned sharply to face Beale, saying, “Minders One and Three allocated.”

  “Yes, sir,” Beale said.

  “They’ll need to connect through a military flight,” Crocker said. “Put them on the ground as close to target as possible. What do we have in the area?”

  “NATO activity is primarily focused on the hinterlands, sir, but there’s a forward support base at Mazar-i-Sharif staffed by our troops.”

  “Get onto the RAF, see what they have headed that way and when, and if that doesn’t give us anything for the next twenty-four hours, work your way through the rest of the Article Five powers.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “They’re to draw weapons. If travel is via RAF, they can draw them before departure; otherwise we’ll have to arrange for a delivery by the Station in Kandahar when they hit the ground.”

  “Kandahar’s been having communications difficulties,” Putnam said from the MCO Desk. “We may not be able to get the cable to them in time.”

  “Islamabad, then. But they’re not wandering around the countryside unarmed. Clear?”

  “Absolutely, sir.”

  Crocker finally looked to Chace. “You and Chris are going to Afghanistan.”

  “So I’d gathered,” Chace said.

  “Not me, too?” Poole asked.

  “You get to stay here and look after the store, Nicky.” Crocker motioned them toward the map table. On the plasma wall, the word “Sundown” had appeared in a callout over Mazar-i-Sharif.

  Chace couldn’t help but notice how close the city was to the Uzbekistan border.

  “Ruslan Malikov has been found in Afghanistan,” Crocker told them, stabbing out his cigarette in the tray on the table. He focused on Chace, and she saw in his expression the acknowledgment that she had been correct, that Ruslan was still alive, and that Crocker also didn’t need her going on about it here and now.

  Chace couldn’t argue with that. It didn’t seem the time for an I-told-you-so.

  “Ruslan’s cozied up to one of the local warlords,” Crocker continued. “There’s a fear that Malikov is gathering troops and matériel for an attempted coup in Uzbekistan. I’m sending you two to deal with it.”

  “Deal with it how?” Chace asked.

  He ignored her. “Warlord’s name is General Ahmad Mohammad Kostum, he’s an ethnic Uzbek from the region, fought against the Soviets and then against the taleban with the Northern Alliance. He’s got a stronghold somewhere south of Mazar-i-Sharif, in the Samangan region. Intelligence is that Malikov is staying with him there.”

  “Warlord’s stronghold, there’s going to be a lot of guns about,” Lankford observed.

  “It’s Afghanistan,” Poole said. “The babies have AK-47s—I think they get them for their first birthday.”

  Lankford snorted, and Chace shot Poole a look, silencing further comment from the peanut gallery, before turning her attention back to Crocker and repeating, “Deal with it how?”

  “How do you think?” he snapped. “Find him, make contact, do what you need to do to ensure he won’t stir things up north of the Afghan border.”

  “Wait a second—”

  “I’ll be in my office,” Crocker cut in. “Minder One to see me on completion of briefing.”

  He headed out of the room, leaving her to stare after him. And she knew already how she was supposed to “deal” with Ruslan Malikov.

  Kate buzzed Crocker the moment Chace entered the office, and Chace heard the answering buzz immediately, and Kate said, “You can go on in.”

  She pushed into the inner office, let the door slide shut behind her, and then said, “You can’t really expect me to go and kill him.”

  “That’s why I’m sending two of you,” Crocker said, eyes on the papers on his desk.

  “Boss . . .”

  He looked up, angry. “If you can’t do the job, Tara, you shouldn’t have come back.”

  That stung, and she let him know it. “It has nothing to do with my ability to do it, it’s my willingness. It’s a bad op.”

  “If you’re twitched—”

  “It’s not mission twitch! Jesus Christ, Paul, it’s my bloody fault Ruslan’s there to begin with!”

  “I’m not certain I agree.”

  “If I’d gotten him and his son out of the country as planned—”

  “You did everything you could.”

  “I didn’t have a fallback!”

  “A fallback wouldn’t have helped, and you know it.”

  “Why send me? Why aren’t you sending Nicky with Chris?”

  “You’ve met Ruslan, you’ll be able to get close to him.”

  “I’ve met him, he’ll see me coming, and he’ll know exactly why I’m there! Chris and I’ll end up shot before I get a word in edgewise. Aside from the fact that Western women don’t just wander around the Afghan countryside.”

  “Find a burka.”

  “I don’t find that remotely amusing.”

  “I don’t find any of this remotely amusing, Tara,” Crocker snarled, slamming a hand down on his desk. “As the CIA has so eagerly pointed out, and as our dear new C has cheerfully confirmed, the Powers That Be consider Ruslan Malikov our problem, and they want it swept under the carpet, and they want it swept there now.”

  “He won’t be convinced, sir. I won’t be able to talk him out of anything.”

  “You’re authorized to use any means necessary to dissuade him.”

  “I heard the conops—I was present for the briefing.” Chace paused, caught her breath, realizing that her heart was pounding. She didn’t mind being worked up over this, but she was vaguely embarrassed to find that she wasn’t even bothering to try to hide the fact.

  “Yo
u realize that if he’s under this warlord’s protection then he’s more than likely protected by Pashtunwali?” she asked. “You know what that means?”

  “Yes, I seem to recall that particular issue of National Geographic, Tara. December ’03, was it?”

  “The mocking is good, I like that a lot. Ruslan’s been granted sanctuary. It’s why bin Laden got away in the first fucking instance, boss, it’s the same bloody thing.”

  “Bin Laden was trying to stay hidden. It’s quite obvious Ruslan isn’t. Besides, Kostum is ethnic Uzbek, not Pashtun.”

  “Which doesn’t mean he isn’t beholden to Pashtunwali! If he was fighting the Soviets, he’s an Afghani, not an Uzbek, he’s going to be part of the culture. And if Kostum has given Ruslan Malikov sanctuary, then Kostum and all of his men are now duty-bound to protect him. That means that if I so much as try to harm a hair on Ruslan’s head, they’ll kill me.”

  “Then let’s hope it won’t come to that.”

  “I’m not seeing any other option!”

  Crocker shot out of his chair as if on a wire, sending the seat banging back into the wall, beneath the window. “Then you’d damn well better find one!”

  Chace caught herself, turned away, as embarrassed by his outburst as by her own. She heard Crocker moving, the chair being righted and replaced at the desk. She looked out the window at the late-summer afternoon, the traffic on distant Lambeth Bridge.

  “This stinks,” she said. “And it’s wrong.”

  “No,” Crocker said. “What was wrong was sending you into Tashkent in the first place so Seccombe could spring his MANPAD surprise on Sir Frances Barclay. That was wrong. What this is now is the endgame, it’s the resolution of something that started in February—hell, of something that started five years ago. So, yes, maybe it’s wrong, but it’s not a different wrong, Tara, it’s the same wrong it always was. And it’s come home to roost, and I’m sending you to deal with it because I can’t send Chris alone and because you know Ruslan.”

  “We exchanged perhaps five hundred words,” Chace said.

  “That’s five hundred more than Nicky and Chris combined.”

  “Shit,” Chace said emphatically.

  “I concur.” He held out his pack of cigarettes.

  After a second, Chace grabbed one, then his lighter. She dropped the lighter back on his desk, then began pacing around the room.

  “You have time to get Tamsin squared away?” Crocker asked.

  “There’s a Tristar scheduled out of Brize Norton at oh-four-twenty tomorrow morning, troops and supplies,” Chace said. “Two stops before landing in Mazar-i-Sharif to resupply the support base there. Mission Planning is checking with MOD, and you’ll have to get onto the Vice Chief of the Air Staff most likely, but unless someone suddenly comes to their senses, it looks like Chris and I will be on the flight. I’ve already called Val, Missi will stay with Tam until Val can come down to stay with her.”

  Crocker didn’t speak for several seconds, then said, “I was thinking. If you ever need a sitter in a hurry, Jennie could watch her.”

  Chace stopped her pacing, staring at him in disbelief. “Did you just offer your wife as a babysitter for my daughter?”

  “She taught nursery school for twenty years,” Crocker said, lamely. “And there’s Sabrina and Ariel, they’d be glad to help.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “Is this your way of apologizing for handing me a bag of shit?”

  Crocker considered, then said, “I suppose.”

  “You realize that it’s still a bag of shit?”

  “Yes,” Crocker agreed. “Yes, it most certainly is.”

  CHAPTER 35

  Uzbekistan—Tashkent—Yunus Rajabiy,

  Ministry of the Interior

  23 August, 1055 Hours (GMT+5:00)

  It had taken him a while to decide what he should do, how it was he could regain her favor, but when Zahidov hit upon it, the idea seemed so simple and so correct and so right that he was certain Sevara would have approved. He understood what she had tried to tell him in her office, that things had changed, and that he would have to change, too. She had accused him of being a thug, but if he could find a way to take care of her problem with Ruslan, and to do it right, to do it clear, without anything that could be laid at her feet, she would be able to forgive that. It wasn’t simply a question of how he picked his targets, as she had said, but of where.

  The fact was, Sevara needed him to be a thug. But she was also correct in that he could have been more discreet in the past. Before her father had died, discretion had been unnecessary, even counterproductive. It diminished fear, and Zahidov had always felt fear was his most powerful tool. Now, however, Sevara Malikov-Ganiev was President of the Republic of Uzbekistan, and discretion was more than required, it was mandated. Whatever he did to remove Ruslan would have to remain far away from her, and far from the prying eyes of the Americans and their allies.

  In Tashkent, Zahidov couldn’t be a thug. In Termez, perhaps. But in Afghanistan, where thugs were called soldiers or warriors and were as common as rocks, that was a different story.

  So that was the solution, and it was all so very simple. He would take care of Ruslan for her once and for all, the way he should have done back in February, when he’d removed Dina. With the information he’d learned from Hazza, it wouldn’t be that hard to find Kostum’s stronghold, or that difficult to wait until Ruslan exposed himself enough to be killed. It could be done quite easily, he was sure of it.

  What was harder to reconcile was his own participation in the matter. His preference was, of course, to go and do it himself. As a general rule, he preferred to handle these kinds of things personally. He told himself this was not because he enjoyed it, but rather because he was a perfectionist and wanted these sorts of things done right. It was why he participated in the most important interrogations, such as with Dina and, after that, the British spy.

  But it was Wednesday morning before Zahidov resolved that, this time, he would have to delegate the task in its entirety. It would demonstrate to Sevara that he was not a thug, that he could keep his hands clean while still doing what needed to be done. Perhaps more important, it would allow him to remain in Tashkent, and close to her.

  He remembered all too clearly the male secretary who had attended Sevara in her office, and he remembered, too, the way the man had looked at her.

  So Zahidov would stay in Tashkent, close to Sevara, just in case she needed him. He would send Tozim and Andrei and some of Captain Arkitov’s men to go south of Mazar-i-Sharif, to murder her brother.

  He briefed them in his office at the Ministry of the Interior late Wednesday morning.

  “Get yourselves to Termez by tomorrow morning,” Zahidov said. “I’ll let Arkitov know you are coming. Take four of his men, whatever weapons and ammunition you will need, and then head south tomorrow night.”

  Andrei pinched his nose, cleaning his nostrils, thinking. Unlike Tozim, he was a deliberate man, more of a thinker, and it was one of the reasons Zahidov liked him. Smart, but not so smart as to be a problem, and with an easy handle for Zahidov to grab and control him. Andrei had money problems, most of it lost to online gambling, the rest to women.

  “The crossing won’t be easy,” Andrei said. “They watch the border closely.”

  “Leave it to Arkitov to arrange,” Zahidov answered, dismissing the concern. “He’ll be able to bribe your way across.”

  “Where are we going?” Tozim asked.

  “Someplace south of Mazar-i-Sharif. There’s a warlord there, Kostum. He’s harboring her brother.”

  Andrei and Tozim swapped glances, then looked back to him, nodding in understanding.

  “This is the General? The one with Uzbek blood?” Andrei asked.

  “That’s him.”

  “If the brother’s with him, he’ll be well protected.”

  “That’s why you’ll take some of Arkitov’s rangers with you.”

  “How much time do we have?”<
br />
  “Not enough,” Zahidov said. “So do whatever you need to.”

  Tozim sighed. “I wish we had one of those missiles. That would help.”

  “There were only the three, and all of them have been used,” Zahidov said. “Arkitov will be able to give you explosives, antitank weapons, even, if you think they will help. As I said, use whatever you need, but make damn sure he’s dead. I don’t want a repeat of the river.”

  “We’ll bring you his head,” Tozim vowed.

  Ahtam Zahidov thought he might like that, then shook his head.

  “No, Tozim,” he said. “We are not thugs.”

  CHAPTER 36

  Afghanistan—Mazar-i-Sharif

  24 August, 1707 Hours (GMT+4:30)

  It meant “Tomb of the Chosen One,” the city named after the Great Blue Mosque that had been built both as a house of prayer and as a tomb to Hazrat Ali, the Fourth Caliph of Islam, son-in-law and cousin of the Prophet Mohammed. Sometime in the thirteenth century, as Genghis Khan had ravaged his way through Central Asia, the mosque had been buried in dirt in an attempt to preserve it—no small undertaking—and apparently those who’d buried it had been slaughtered and Mazar-i-Sharif razed, because the mosque remained hidden for over two hundred years. In the late fifteenth century, reconstruction of the city began, the ancient mosque was rediscovered, excavated, and restored.

  It was, to Chace’s knowledge, the first great slaughter in the city’s history, but by no means the last. Much as Mazar-i-Sharif was known for its Afghan rugs and its fine horses, it was known mostly for death.

  In the years leading up to Operation Enduring Freedom, when the taleban had been opposed solely by the Northern Alliance, Mazar-i-Sharif was a Northern Alliance stronghold. Or at least it was until 8 August 1998, when the taleban finally succeeded in sacking the city. By many accounts they came into town shooting anything that moved, including women and children, before deciding on a more systematic approach. They targeted the male members of the various ethnic groups that had lived in the city, specifically pursuing the ethnic Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazara. The Hazara saw the worst of this persecution—they were a Persian-speaking Shi’a sect, and thus anathema to the taleban regime. When all was said and done, at least 2,000 people had been murdered.