Private Wars (3 page)

Nothing.

Oh, sweet Jesus, no,
thought Crocker.

Over the speakers came the sound of a rattle, something striking the side of the van. Crocker heard one of the SAS swearing softly, watched as Poole pulled away from the door as three MP-5s came up, and then the side door slid back, and the camera flared as its aperture tried to adjust to the abrupt change in light sources.

“Friendly!”
Crocker heard Poole hissing.
“Jesus, friendly, don’t fucking shoot him!”

The image resolved again, and Crocker watched as Poole yanked Fincher into the van, one hand on his shoulder, more concerned with efficiency in the move than comfort. The camera readjusted as the SAS trooper wearing the rig moved back. The view canted at an angle, and over the speakers came the bang of the door sliding closed again.

Poole leaned in on Fincher.
“What the fuck happened, what are you doing here?”

Fincher shook his head, trying to catch his breath. Poole, still with his hand on Fincher’s shoulder, shook the other man.

“What the fucking hell happened? Dammit, Andrew!”

Fincher coughed, pulling himself away from Poole’s grip.
“They made me. I had to withdraw. We’ve got to abort.”

Crocker cursed, hearing Seale echoing him. He swung toward the Duty Ops Desk. “Ron, MOD, now! Get me a patch to Candlelight, they
cannot
abort!”

“Open line, sir.” Ron handed Crocker the telephone handset.

Crocker put the phone to his ear, could hear the sounds of consternation coming from the Ministry of Defense’s operational command post. “D-Ops, who am I talking to?”

“Lance Corporal Richard Moth, sir.”

“Put Colonel Dawson on the line.”

“Yes, sir.”

From the speakers, Crocker could hear Poole cursing at Fincher.
“You’ve fucking blown us, you fool!”

“They made me, dammit! What was I supposed to do?”

On the screen, Crocker watched as Poole sat back, yanking the headset from his head. The expression he was seeing on Minder Two’s face was much like the one Crocker imagined was now gracing his own.

In his ear, from the telephone, Crocker heard, “Paul? James. What the hell is your man playing at?”

“God only knows. Listen, Colonel, you’ve got to give them the go order.”

“If they’ve been blown—”

“I understand the risk. They’ve got to move now, Colonel, there’s no choice.”

“Hold on.”

Crocker looked back to the video feed, watching. After a second’s pause, a squawk came over the speakers, and he watched as Poole hastily put his headset back into place.

“Nightowl, go.”

From the telephone, Crocker heard Dawson’s voice, distant, relaying the go, repeating the order twice, to make it clear.

On the screen, through the speakers, Poole said,
“Nightowl confirms, we are go, repeat, we are go.”

Crocker was sure he saw Fincher blanch.

There was a rush of movement then, Poole reaching for the MP-5 that had been waiting for him as the camera jerked, heading to the doors of the van. The screen flared again, resolved, and now the view was jumping up and down, and Crocker could see Poole and the other two SAS troopers racing along the street, turning now between buildings, running hard, then slowing. They reached the door, two of the troopers taking entry positions, and the one wearing the camera made the breach, and Poole tossed the first grenade, and the sound of the explosion came back at them in the Ops Room, muffled by the speakers.

Then the shooting started.

CHAPTER 3

Uzbekistan—Tashkent—
Husniddin Asomov Avenue

11 February, 1213 Hours (GMT+5:00)

If he hadn’t been so focused on chasing
the hare, Charles Riess supposed he’d have seen the car coming. But then again, if he’d seen the car coming, Ruslan Mihailovich Malikov might never have made contact with him, so all in all, Riess figured it more than made up for the scraped knee and sprained ankle.

They’d started the run up on the northeast edge of Tashkent, about ten in the morning, just north of the Salor Canal, setting off in pursuit of a particularly sneaky son of a bitch from the Embassy’s Consular Division named Bradley Walker. Turned out his surname was more than a little misleading, and with the fifteen-minute head start that Riess and the twenty-seven other Hash House Harriers had given to Walker, he’d led them on a merry chase. Most times, you could count on the run being completed in about an hour, so everyone could get to the more serious business of drinking.

Most times.

Walker had been given the go, running with a bag of flour to lay trail—or more precisely, to lay false trail—and Riess and the others had stood in the freezing morning, stamping their feet and blowing on their hands. In another two weeks the winter would be over, and Uzbekistan’s traditionally temperate climate would return, but for now it was cold enough that Riess seriously considered forfeiting his participation altogether, just so he could return to his home on Raktaboshi Avenue and crawl back into bed. Another of the Harriers, joining them from the German Embassy, had seemed to read his mind, making a joke about calling the run on account of the weather. Riess had looked north, into Kazakhstan, and seen snow on the mountains.

The chase began, the pack setting off in pursuit of the hare, heading first toward the Botanical Gardens. Riess had run long distance in college but quit upon entering the State Department, only to pick it up again after he’d met Rebecca. They’d met early in his first posting, Tanzania, and it had been part of their courtship, what Riess had supposed was some Darwinian hardwired leftover proof-of-virility ritual. He’d gotten as far as picking out a ring and preparing a speech, had scouted locations in Dar es Salaam, just to find the right place to propose.

Then the Embassy had been bombed and eighty people had been wounded, and eleven had died, and Rebecca had been one of those eleven.

Now when he ran, Riess sometimes imagined Rebecca was running alongside him, and that was how he remembered her, and it made the going easy, despite the cold. Today, he soon found himself leading the pack. He stood five ten when his shoes were off, and one-seventy-eight on the bathroom scale after a shower, wearing nothing but his towel, with long legs Rebecca had described as spindly. If his German/English heritage had given Riess anything, it was a runner’s body.

He ran, eyes open for the trail, and just before the zoo, he saw what he was certain, at the time, was a smudged arrow of flour, pointing him toward the northwest. He pressed on, crossing the Jahon Obidova, heading northwest now, down along the Bozsu Canal. Splotches of flour appeared every hundred meters or so, keeping him on track, and behind him, he could hear the singing and laughter of the pack. Riess felt the warmth of his own breath as he ran through the clouds of condensation he was making.

It was when he saw trail indicating that Walker had crossed the canal that it occurred to Riess that this chase wasn’t going to be as easy as he’d thought it was.

It was an hour later, circling the TV tower along northern Amir Temur, that he realized that Walker had been planning this run for days, if not weeks, and had been laying false trails for it as well. He doubled back, heading south down Amir Temur, in the direction of the square, and it was as he crossed Husniddin Asomov that the BMW shot through the intersection, its horn blaring, and like an idiot, Riess looked to find the source of the sound rather than getting out of the way.

And it sure as hell looked like the car was going to hit him, so Riess did what people normally do in such circumstances: he dove, trying to reverse his direction, off the street. He was certain he could feel the front fender of the car brushing his sneaker as he tumbled, and then he was on the ground, trying to roll back to his feet, and that was when he twisted his ankle, and went down again, this time harder, and losing a few layers of skin off his knee as a bonus.

Riess rolled onto his back, sitting up, pulling his right knee to his chest with both hands, hearing himself curse. He was dimly pleased to realize that he was swearing in Uzbek. He’d have to drop a line later to the folks at Arlington who’d spent forty-four weeks beating the tongue into his head.

The BMW had come to a stop, and Riess saw it was an older model, maybe ten years old, and the driver’s door opened, and a man came out from behind the wheel, looking concerned, asking if he was all right. Riess’ first thought was that it was funny that he’d been hit by a man who looked just like President Malikov’s son.

“Are you all right, can you stand?” the man asked him, reaching down to take hold of Riess by the upper arms. “Can you stand?”

“It’s all right,” Riess said. “I’m all right.”

“I didn’t see you running like that, I’m very sorry. Are you sure you’re okay?”

Riess nodded, trying to figure out what to say next. He wasn’t a spook, he wasn’t one of Tower’s cadre of case officers, he was the Deputy Chief Political Officer for the U.S. Mission to Uzbekistan, most often referred to as a poloff. He’d had some basic training in tradecraft, mostly security, ways to keep himself safe, ways to determine if he was being targeted. But when it came time for cloaks and daggers to be handed out, Riess’ job was to stay at the embassy and well out of the way. Even working with Dina Malikov had been a stretch, a job he’d only undertaken at the request of his ambassador.

He wasn’t a spook, but he knew what this was, and he was quick enough to know that if Ruslan Malikov was trying to make contact with him covertly the day after his wife’s body had been found outside of Chirchik, the odds were that they were both being watched.

Riess let Malikov help him to his feet, wincing as he tried to place some of his weight on his ankle. The pain ran around the top of his foot like barbed wire, and he hissed. Malikov put one arm at the small of his back to support him.

“Do you need a hospital? I can take you to the hospital.”

“No, I think I’ll be okay.” Riess tried it again, stepping gingerly and gritting his teeth, and found that if he turned his foot inward slightly, the pain wasn’t quite so intense. Malikov’s hands came off him, and Riess hobbled experimentally.

“You’re certain?”

“It’s okay,” Riess said. “Really, it’ll be fine. Just needs some ice. I’ll handle it when I get home.”

Malikov studied him, as if trying to discern the truth of the statement, then nodded and moved around the BMW, back to the driver’s side. Without another word, he climbed behind the wheel, slammed the door, and pulled away, back into the thin traffic on the avenue.

Riess grimaced, swore again, louder, mostly for the benefit of anyone who might have been listening. He had to assume he was being watched now, even if he couldn’t see the watchers, even if he was, just perhaps, being paranoid rather than prudent. It took him a few seconds to realize that what he needed to do next was exactly what he’d been doing before, and he hobbled back toward the street, and spent the next three minutes trying to hail a cab to take him to the Meridien Hotel, near Amir Temur Square.

Once in the taxi and in traffic, Riess leaned back in his seat and reached around, behind his back, to where Malikov had slipped the note into the waistband of his sweats. It was a small square of paper, folded over several times, and easy to conceal in his palm, and so Riess did as he bent forward to check his sore ankle. He slipped the paper into his sock.

The cab dropped him at the hotel, and he hobbled up the steps and into the lobby to find that the others were already there, in the bar, with the hare, who was now drunk almost beyond all comprehension. Lydia Straight, the press attaché at the Embassy, saw him and thus initiated the first round of heckling.

“Chuck! You made it!”

Jeers followed.

Riess showed Lydia his middle finger and took the offered beer from Walker’s somewhat unfocused grip. He drank it while leading a rendition of “The Real Story of Gilligan’s Island,” then started a second while joining in on the traditional version of Elton John’s “Rocket Man,” before excusing himself to the restroom. He used the sink first, running water to wipe the sweat from his face and the grime from his hands, then wet a paper towel to use in cleaning his skinned knee. When he finished, the only other patron in the men’s room had departed, and Riess moved to the toilet stall, where he dropped his sweats, sat on the toilet, and only then retrieved the note.

It was written in English, which surprised him, all in careful block capitals, painstakingly laid onto the paper.

CHARLES
—

I KNOW WHAT MY DINA WAS DOING FOR YOU AND YOUR AMBASSADOR, AND FOR THIS MY SISTER HAVE HER MURDER.

MY FATHER IS SICK AND NOT FOR LAST LONG. IT WILL BE BETWEEN MY SISTER AND MYSELF THAT IS TO RULE. I AM YOUR MAN NOW. I WANT FOR MY COUNTRY MORE TO BE LIKE YOURS. I WILL DO WHAT EVER IT WILL TAKES.

MY SISTER KNOWS THIS AND WILL TRY TO HAVE ME MURDER SOON.

I WILL DO WHAT EVER IT TAKES.

The note was unsigned, and Riess figured that was because a signature didn’t much matter. He read it again, slower, just to be sure he understood what was being said, then got to his feet, pulling up his sweats. He flushed the toilet, and used the rush of water to hide the noise of the tearing paper. He waited until the toilet refilled, dropped the fragments into the bowl, and flushed a second time. When the bowl refilled again with nothing but dirty water, he left the stall, relieved to see that he was still alone in the bathroom.

Riess returned to the bar in time for another drink and the second chorus of “Put Your Thighs on My Shoulders,” then sang the raunchiest version of “Rawhide” he knew as a duet with Lydia. They were on the third verse when the management asked them, politely, to leave.

He took a cab home, showered, changed, and then called the Residence using the house phone. The line had been checked by the Embassy’s security staff only three weeks ago as part of their standard evaluation, and Riess was as certain as he could be that it wasn’t bugged. Even so, when the Ambassador came on the line, he kept things vague, asking when would be a good time to come see him.

“This what I think it is?” Ambassador Garret asked him.

“Yes, sir.”

“DCM is hosting a dinner tonight at his residence for a couple of the DPMs, including that bastard from the Ministry of the Interior, Ganiev. Come late, Chuck. Come very late. Hour of the wolf.”

“Hour of the wolf,” Riess agreed.

“How?”
Ambassador Garret asked.

“They boiled her to death,” Riess answered. He tried to make the declaration merely factual. He failed.

“Jesus Christ.” Garret passed a broad hand over his face, wiping the sleep away from his eyes. “Jesus Christ, she’s his daughter-in-law, she’s married to Ruslan, and Malikov let the NSS lobster-pot her?”

“The Ministry of the Interior is claiming it was Hizb-ut-Tahir.”

“I know what they’re claiming. Jesus Christ.”

“Yes, sir.”

The Ambassador closed his eyes, then opened them again. “She gave you up. If they tortured her, she gave you up.”

“I think it’s a safe assumption, yes, sir.”

“When was the last time you met with her?”

“On the second, so that’s nine days ago now. That’s where I got the videotape.”

Garret frowned, remembering the recording. “Why’d they kill her?”

“It might have gotten out of control. They’re not terribly gentle about these things.”

“But they can be, Chuck, they can be. They could have fixed it so they got what they wanted and then sent her back home.”

“She would have told her husband.”

Garret looked at him, his brow creasing, thinking. “Maybe.”

“You think there’s something else to it?”

“I think that Dina Malikov was alive on Thursday, dead by Friday, and today, Saturday, her husband arranged a meeting with you to say that he wants to play ball. The timing makes me nervous.”

“I got the impression from his note that he’d been looking for an opportunity for a while, sir,” Riess said. “Dina’s death may have been the impetus he needed to make the move.”

“Which may be why they killed her in the first place. If it was the old man who did it.”

Riess heard the doubt in his voice. “You think it was Sevara?”

“I think Sevara wants the crown, Chuck. And if Malikov really is coming up on his last legs, she may be trying to clear the way for a run at the throne.”

Riess considered, watching as Garret looked away from him to the grandfather clock ticking solidly in the corner study’s corner. The Ambassador’s mouth tightened to a line, and then he used his broad hands on the broader armrests of his easy chair to push himself to his feet.

“Four in the fucking morning,” he said. “Let’s go to the kitchen. I need some coffee.”

The
house was silent and dark. The trip from Riess’ house downtown to the Residence on the outskirts of Tashkent normally took half an hour, but at three in the morning, Riess had been able to make it in half that time. The roads had been almost entirely vacant, and he’d driven quickly, in an attempt to flush any possible tails. He hadn’t seen any, but that didn’t give him much confidence that he’d gone undetected. It didn’t really matter; he was known in the Embassy as the Ambassador’s legman, much to the annoyance of his immediate superior, Political Counselor T. Lindsay McColl. If Riess was called out to the Residence at half past three in the morning, then it was unusual, but not unheard of.

Riess followed the Ambassador through the house, Garret alternately switching on lights to illuminate their way, turning off others as they no longer needed them. Riess wondered if it was a security measure or a habit. Maybe he did it to keep from disturbing his wife. Whatever it was, Riess was certain there was a purpose to it. In his experience, there was very little that Kenneth Garret, the United States Ambassador to Uzbekistan, did without a very good reason.