by Greg Rucka
The two men searching her bag had finished, and were now looking from her to the graybeard, clearly uncomfortable. Graybeard indicated one of the two, then Chace, and the man sighed heavily, then approached her, shaking his head slightly as he did so. He gestured for her to raise her arms, and the discomfort on his face was blatant and so acute, Chace almost felt sorry for him.
He took all of six seconds to check her, doing her arms and legs first, before stealing himself to check her torso. He avoided actually touching the front of her body, and barely touched her back, more mime than actual search. He touched her hips, but nothing more, before stepping back and speaking to the graybeard.
Chace and Lankford were each handed their bags, and the gates opened, and they were allowed through into the courtyard.
“Kostum?” the graybeard said to them, directing his words primarily at Lankford. “Speak Kostum?”
“Malikov,” Chace said. “Ruslan Malikov.”
There was a sudden stillness in the yard, and the graybeard stared at her.
“No Ruslan.”
“Stepan,” Chace said. “Tracy.”
“Trahcee?”
Chace pointed to herself. “Tracy.”
From the shadow of the house stepped Ruslan Malikov, dressed in the vest and loose pants worn by so many of the others. Dirtier, wearier perhaps, wearing a white knit prayer cap and armed with a Kalashnikov of his own in his hand. He stared at her, as if trying to remember her face. He’d barely seen her in the light before, Chace thought, and a lot had been going on that night.
“It’s good to see you, sir,” Chace told him in English. “There are some matters we need to discuss.”
CHAPTER 37
Uzbekistan—Tashkent—Residence of the
U.S. Chief of Mission to Uzbekistan
25 August, 2011 Hours (GMT+5:00)
On 31 August 1991, Uzbekistan declared its independence from the disintegrating Soviet Union, following in the wake of the other newly forming independent states that surrounded it on all sides. In the grand scheme of nations and their histories, it hadn’t been that long ago at all, and for that reason, the Uzbek Government still made a deal of the day, and of the event. This year, the thirty-first fell on a Thursday, and for that reason, the Ambassador’s Reception in honor of Independence Day was scheduled at the end of the week prior, a Friday night.
Riess, who had been in the doghouse for so long now he’d almost grown accustomed to it, hadn’t expected that his attendance would be required, or, for that matter, welcome. Ever since Garret had been relieved of post, Riess had existed in a sort of semiexile, under McColl’s spiteful eyes. That Riess, too, hadn’t been shipped back to the States continued to surprise him.
It had been Garret who’d spared him, of course, a last act of gratitude before departing public service. The Ambassador had taken sole responsibility for opposing the White House and supporting Ruslan Malikov, and in the end, even if Garret hadn’t shouldered the load willingly, he’d have been made to bear it anyway. Garret was the Ambassador, and there were more than enough people back at State who had been willing to excuse Riess his indiscretions as a result. It wasn’t an uncommon thing for a poloff to be taken under an Ambassador’s wing, after all, and there had been some question as to how much of what had occurred had been of Riess’ doing, rather than Garret’s. FSOs were hard to come by, anyway. Measured against the difficulties in replacing Riess on post versus leaving him on station, it was easier to let him stay. His service record would reflect his involvement in Garret’s plot, and Riess knew that his next posting would be a junior desk back in D.C.
He would live in the wilderness for a long time to come.
For that reason, Riess had thought he’d spend Friday night working late in the Pol/Econ Office, finishing up the cables back to State, and putting the final report on the latest in the stream of démarches. It had been midmorning before McColl had corrected his assumption.
“It’s black tie,” McColl had said, passing by his desk without stopping.
“Sir?”
“The reception tonight, at the Residence. It’s black tie. I hope your tuxedo is clean.”
“I wasn’t aware you wanted me to attend.”
“I don’t, but the Ambassador does.” McColl sniffed, pulling a handkerchief from his trousers and wiping his nose. “See if you can resist the urge to play spy this time, all right?”
Riess had nodded, hiding his anger and his frustration. The wound was still open, the sense of failure profound. Not one of the things he and Garret had set out to do had come to pass, after all. While Sevara had done an exceedingly good job of keeping her nose clean and of working with the U.S. in the past six months, Ahtam Zahidov was now DPM at the Interior Ministry. She kept him on a short leash, but the country’s human rights record was still a far cry from anything that would earn kudos from Amnesty International or HRW.
Sometimes, Riess wondered if it had been an ill-conceived venture from the start, if Garret hadn’t been totally unrealistic in his dreams of what they could do, what they might accomplish. Nations rarely changed overnight, and even when they did, there was always a price to pay in blood and pain. He had come to doubt that Ruslan would have made a better President of Uzbekistan than his sister. In all likelihood, for all of Ruslan’s best intentions—if indeed his intentions had even been true—very little would have changed.
Things were improving in Uzbekistan under Sevara, little by little. There were still drugs coming up from the south, out of Afghanistan, but less and less seemed to be getting through these days. The new President had eased off the dictatorial enforcement of the government’s version of Islam, permitting slightly more freedom of religion. The election that had seen her confirmed into office had been fixed, of course, but not so blatantly or arrogantly as her father’s had been in the past. For the first time, the Oliy Majlis now seated an opposition party as well as Sevara’s own. It was small to the point of being entirely ineffective, but it was more than her father had allowed. There was even an opposition newspaper available on the streets of Tashkent and Samarkand—overseen by government censors, but again, more than before.
So maybe it was the best Riess could have hoped for. This was the way diplomacy was supposed to work, incrementally and out in the open. Not behind the scenes.
He had grudgingly come to accept that, and in so doing had found a measure of peace that allowed him to sleep better at nights.
At least until those few times he saw Stepan, either in a photograph or in video footage, and he remembered the boy’s mother, and what Zahidov had done to her. What Zahidov had done at Sevara’s order, he was certain of it.
Maybe it was because Riess had known Dina Malikov, but he couldn’t forgive that.
He couldn’t let that go.
He arrived at the Residence forty-five minutes after the reception had started, showed his ID to the Marines who were pulling double duty as guards for the event. Since Michael “Mitch” Norton had taken over as CM for Garret almost five months back, Riess had had no reason to visit the Residence. In fact, the last time he’d been here was back in mid-February, in the wake of Dina Malikov’s murder. Most of the lights had been out then, Riess remembered.
This time, though, the house was ablaze, as if it had caught what remained of the sunset for use indoors. Music reached him as he went through the doors and entered the enormous two-story entry hall. A string quartet from the Bakhor Symphony had set up about twenty feet from the door, playing an Uzbek piece Riess didn’t recognize. The sound was amplified in the space, mixed with the voices speaking in Russian, Uzbek, and English. There were almost three dozen people in the hall alone, and Riess wondered just how many had been invited. The Residence, if he remembered right, could entertain somewhere in the neighborhood of one hundred and fifty before the RSO went into fits about lack of security.
Riess saw several faces from the Mission, moved through the hall exchanging brief but polite greetings. He made his way th
rough to the salon, weaving through the crowd. The doors into the back garden were open, and he could see tables set up outside, more people seated there, dining on appetizers. He saw a couple of the DPMs, too, the Head of Consumer Goods and Trade standing with the DPM for Foreign Economic Relations, and McColl was among them, his wife chatting with their wives. Riess tried to move through unseen, edged his way out into the garden.
It was cooler outside, and quieter, though the noise from inside the Residence was still audible. Riess got himself a drink from the banquet table, a plastic bottle of mineral water, twisted off the cap, and drank half of it down. There were things he could be doing inside, things he should be doing. At a function like this, his place was to mingle and chat with the junior officials in attendance, to keep his eyes and his ears open for news that might be useful to the Ambassador and Political Counselor later.
He didn’t want to. He didn’t really want to be there at all. It had been at a party like this that he’d first met Ruslan and Dina, and it brought back memories, and again, he felt like a failure.
He sighed, steeling himself. What he wanted to do was irrelevant; what he needed to do, right now, was his job. He turned around to head back inside, then stopped, seeing Aaron Tower coming toward him.
“Chuck,” Tower said. “Standing outside all alone?”
“I was about to head back in, sir.”
The CIA man continued approaching, reaching out to the banquet table and snagging a bottle of water for himself. His smile was easy. Like almost all the men attending, Tower was in a tuxedo, though somehow he’d already managed to rumple it.
“How you doing?” Tower asked.
Riess pondered the question for longer than he intended. They’d spoken in passing a handful of times in the last few months, confined it to greetings and social pleasantries. If Tower had harbored ill will for what had happened, there’d never been any true sign of it. He’d been angry about the Ambassador’s two-step behind his back, of course, but none of it had come back to hit Riess, at least not that Riess knew.
“I was thinking about Dina Malikov,” Riess said.
Tower sipped from his bottle, nodded slightly. “You heard anything from Garret?”
“No, sir. Not since he went back home. I understand he’s in the private sector now.”
“Got himself a job as president of some college on the West Coast,” Tower confirmed. “You look tired.”
“McColl’s keeping me busy.”
Tower grinned. “I’ll bet. Well, you’re doing a hell of a job for him, Chuck. He might make DCM yet. Not here, of course, but on his next posting.”
“Good for him,” Riess said.
They drank their water in silence, looking back toward the Residence, through the open doors. More people were making their way outside from the den, drinks in hand.
“Coming out for the fireworks,” Tower said. “Soon as it gets dark.”
“Right.”
A cluster of people emerged, surrounding the Ambassador and his wife as they escorted Sevara Malikov-Ganiev and her husband, Denis, the former DPM of the Interior, outside. Sevara looked stunning, Riess had to admit, the gown she’d chosen for the event just managing to straddle the line between alluring and reserved, but her beauty lay far more in the way she carried herself. She was supremely self-confident, and when she laughed at something the Ambassador’s wife said, it carried over the grass to him. Riess wondered if Sevara had left her nephew at home for the evening.
“She didn’t bring the kid,” Tower said, reading his mind.
“Yeah, I was just wondering.”
“She takes good care of him.” Tower took another pull from his bottle, watching the Ambassador’s party advance. “It’s called guilt, Chuck.”
“I don’t think she feels guilty about anything, sir.”
Tower turned slightly, looking him in the eye. “Never forget that they’re patriots the way we’re patriots, Chuck. They believe in their country the way we believe in ours.”
“Not all of them.”
“Most of them, then. Sevara Malikov-Ganiev is the first CIS leader who didn’t cut her teeth under the Soviets, Chuck. Think about that. All the others, the old men, either they’re former Communists or they came up under the Communists. But that woman’s the new breed.”
“It’s not where she is now that bothers me,” Riess answered. “It’s what she did to get there.”
“Don’t think it doesn’t bother me, too.” Tower’s eyes were on the Ambassador’s group, now being seated at the largest table.
Riess didn’t say anything.
“You know Ruslan’s alive,” Tower said, softer. “In Afghanistan.”
Why are you telling me this? Riess thought. “No, I didn’t.”
“Somewhere in the Samangan. Or maybe the Bámiyán region.”
Riess stared at Tower, who continued to watch the Ambassador speaking with Sevara. “Nice place to hide.”
“If that’s all he’s planning, yeah,” Tower said. “Let’s hope that’s all he’s planning.”
Behind them, they heard a series of cracks, then a hiss, and both of them looked up to see the first of the fireworks streaking into the sky. The explosives shrieked as they climbed, then went silent before bursting into a cascade of green, white, and blue, the colors of the Uzbek flag. Green to represent Islam, but officially said to represent nature and fertility, the life of the young country. White to represent purity in thought and deed. And blue for the waters that fed the cotton and the land, and to recall the fourteenth-century flag of the ruler Timur, who had claimed an empire from Samarkand, controlling the heart of the Silk Road.
The crowd broke into polite applause, and a second volley of fireworks started, chasing the first into the air.
“Come on, Chuck,” Tower told him. “Let’s enjoy the show.”
It was when Riess was leaving, shaking hands with the last of the junior Reps, that he saw Zahidov. The Deputy Prime Minister of the Interior stood alone at the edge of the den, looking out into the garden. He had a drink in his hand, but it was untouched, and Riess followed his gaze to see that Zahidov was watching Sevara, still seated outside, now talking animatedly with the DCM.
Riess headed outside, wondering about Zahidov, thinking about the other color in the Uzbekistan flag, the one color that hadn’t been represented in the fireworks display. On the flag, between the strips of blue and white and green, ran thin red lines. Red for blood.
He was sure that Zahidov had noticed it was missing, too.
CHAPTER 38
Afghanistan—Hindu Kush Mountains—
Samangan Region
25 August, 2105 Hours (GMT+4:30)
They were allowed to freshen up, which gave Chace the opportunity to move the Walther into a less uncomfortable position at her back, and then were given refreshment, food and drink. Ruslan and Kostum watched them while Chace and Lankford ate, the two men speaking quietly to each other in Uzbek. Both she and Lankford were hungry and very thirsty, and they took the meal eagerly, thanking their host.
Kostum seemed to approve of their manners and their gratitude. He was a short man, broad-faced, and like everyone else in Samangan, had his own Kalashnikov ever close at hand. He asked Ruslan what sounded like some very pointed questions at one point while watching her and Lankford, and Chace had no doubt the questions were about them, why they had come, what they wanted.
When the meal had been cleared, Ruslan said something to Kostum that started a brief argument. Lankford cast a quizzical glance her way, and Chace shook her head. Nothing in either Ruslan or Kostum’s body language indicated imminent violence. Beyond that, she had no way of knowing what was being said.
“Your friend,” Ruslan said in English. “He will go with Kostum.”
“I’d rather stay,” Lankford said.
Kostum spoke up, also in English. “No, tour, please. I give for you a tour.”
“It’s all right, Chris,” Chace said.
“How you f
igure?”
“We’re under protection, isn’t that right, General?”
Kostum grunted. “Protect you, yes. But.” He raised his right hand, index finger pointing down. “But my brother Ruslan protected also.”
“We understand,” Chace said. “Go with him, Chris.”
“Right.” Lankford unfolded his legs, getting to his feet. “Holler if you need me.”
“Will do.”
She and Ruslan watched as Lankford left, escorted by Kostum. They could hear his broken English as they went, explaining how he had come by the home, how it had been used by the Soviets first. Then Kostum’s voice faded to nothing, leaving Chace and Ruslan looking at each other in silence.
Ruslan sat down opposite her at the table, refilled her glass of tea halfway, using the silver pot on the table, then poured a half glass for himself.
“Have you come to kill me?” he asked her casually.
In answer, Chace pulled the Walther from behind her back, then set it on the table between them. Ruslan reacted at the draw, then relaxed fractionally as her hand left the gun.
“It’s an option,” Chace told him.
Ruslan moved his eyes from the gun back to Chace. “You saved my life and my son’s life, and now they send you to undo that. Why?”
“There are people, sir, who think you are planning to make trouble for your sister. That your intention is to gather men and arms and launch an attack, to try to force Sevara from power.”
“And you, Tracy? You think this, too?”
“Kostum looks to have a lot of men, sir, and a lot of equipment. Whether or not he could move those men and that equipment north without being stopped by either the Afghan Army or the NATO forces between here and Termez, that’s another question.”
“You are not answering my question.”
