Private Wars (8 page)

Chace folded her arms across her chest. “So he should take the boy with him.”

“Your job is to get them out of the country,” Crocker said. “Both of them. Get them out, and bring them safely back to England.”

She stared at him.

“We’ve been told that Ruslan is pro-West, that he’s a reformer in the making. If you can confirm that as well, so much the better. We get him here, we can discuss the viability of a coup, either against his father or against his sister, whomever, depending on the situation. Since you’ll already have a working relationship with Ruslan, you’ll be expected to help facilitate and implement that also.”

Chace continued to stare at him.

Crocker drew a last time from his cigarette, then dropped the butt, watching as the cinder died in the wet grass. From inside his overcoat he withdrew a large gray envelope, creased lengthwise from where he’d carried it, folded, in an inside pocket. He held the envelope out to Chace, who made no move to take it.

“There’s one hundred and fifty thousand pounds in an account at HSBC,” Crocker said. “It should cover expenses for the operation, anything that might arise. I’ve included contact protocols as well; you’re to report directly to me on this, and not through official channels. The documents enclosed, and the account, are in the name of Carlisle, Tracy Elizabeth, the same identity you used during Dandelion, you remember.”

“You’re recycling a cover?” She looked at him, now even more suspicious.

“There’s no reason to believe it was compromised. It’s still current, all the paper, right up to the passport.”

“It was used. That’s what compromises it.”

“Would you take the damn envelope, please?”

“I don’t want the envelope, Paul. I don’t want what’s inside it. I don’t want the job.”

Crocker lowered his hand, the wind catching the envelope in his grip, bending it skyward, as if trying to make it into a kite. Chace saw his eyes flick along the fence that bordered the lane, as paranoid as she was that they might be observed. Somewhere, from farther below on the hillside, they heard a child’s laughter.

“There’s nobody else,” he said. “It has to be you.”

“There should be three others else,” Chace responded. “Unless you’ve managed to kill all of them, too, and as I saw Nicky only Sunday last, you’d have been working damn quick at it.”

“I can’t use the Minders.”

“Go to Cheng.”

“Cheng’s in Washington, and that’s beside the point. I’ve been asked to keep the involved parties to a minimum.”

“How minimum?”

“Barclay and the CIA are not included on the distribution list, shall we say.”

A gust caught her hair, sent strands across her eyes, and Chace pushed them clear with her finger, tucking the strays back behind her ear. “So it’s unsanctioned. You’re trying to sell me an unsanctioned lift from a hostile theater, and you want me to do it without alerting either our people or the Americans.”

“Ideally. Though I’m told there’s the possibility of limited American support once you’re on the ground in Tashkent. What form that support will take, I can’t say.”

“You’re out of your mind.”

“It’s not unsanctioned, it’s unofficial. I have permission for the operation, just not through the traditional channels.”

“How high?”

“I can’t say.”

“Intelligence and Security Committee? FCO? Cabinet level? Ministerial?”

“I can’t say, Tara.”

“But you’re telling me that you’ve secured approval at either C’s level or higher, is that it?”

“Yes.”

“You understand why I ask, don’t you? Because I’d hate to take a job only to discover that I’m going to be sold out again upon completion. Once was enough for me, you understand.”

She saw Crocker’s mouth twist slightly, his approximation of a smile.

“I didn’t say I’d do it, Paul,” she warned. “Don’t get excited.”

“You want to do it.”

“So I can become Whitehall’s bitch again? No, thank you.”

“I’ll protect you.”

“You did it so well last time.”

“I’ll protect you,” Crocker repeated, more insistent. “You do the job, I’ll bring you home, Tara. You’ll be Minder One again, you’ll be Head of Section again, back where you belong. Where you should be right now.”

“I should be back in Barlick right now, with Tamsin.”

“I hope you’re convincing yourself with that line, because you’re sure as hell not convincing me.”

“Don’t tell me—”

“This isn’t about love,” Crocker interrupted. “Of course you love her, you’re her mother. But you’re dying by inches out here. You hate it, and you hate yourself for wishing you were back in London, and back on the job. But you
need
to be back on the job, and we both know it, so perhaps it’s time you stopped pretending.”

Chace shook her head again.

“I know, Tara.” He lowered his voice, speaking more slowly, picking the words more carefully. “I understand, I really do. I was Minder One with a wife and two children; trust me, I know. You’re not abandoning her, you’re not betraying her.”

Chace swallowed, turned away. To the northeast, clouds were sweeping in over the summit of the hill, dragging a curtain of rain along with them.

“She’s not even a year old.”

“She’ll be all right.”

Chace heard the rustle of Crocker’s coat, knew that he was offering her the envelope again, could imagine the contents. The papers and the passport, the file photos of Ruslam—correction, Ruslan—Mihailovich Malikov and his two-year-old son. Maybe a map, certainly a two- or three-page briefing paper, culled from the Intelligence Directorate, of what to expect from Uzbekistan, from Tashkent. Options and suggestions and Tracy Elizabeth Carlisle, a nice single girl from Oxfordshire who was quite possibly already known to the world as a tissue of lies.

“She’ll be fine, Tara,” Crocker said. “And so will you.”

“I was right,” Chace said. “You are a bastard.”

She took the envelope.

Preoperational Background
Zahidov, Ahtam Semyonovich

So the Old Man was finally dying, and
the irony was, of course, that now was not the time. Had his body chosen to begin failing him even six months earlier, things would have been different, before Ruslan’s self-righteous cunt of a wife had started playing at spy. But no, as much as President Mihail Malikov walked and talked and spoke and dressed as a post-Soviet statesman, he had the heart and soul of an old Communist bastard, the kind who would go on living out of sheer will, out of sheer spite, refusing death with pure outrage born of the unthinkable. Death, in the final estimation, was the ultimate relinquishment of all the power Mihail Malikov had spent a lifetime greedily accumulating.

But death didn’t really give a damn, and the President’s third heart attack in as many years made that abundantly clear. Death was coming for Mihail Malikov, and when it claimed him, then all hell would break loose.

Unless Zahidov could get the pieces in place. Unless he and Sevara could make not only the President but the DPMs and the Americans see the benefits to an orderly succession. And if Sevara could convince her father to state, publicly, that she must assume control in the event of his passing, the battle would be all but won before it started.

The appropriate gestures would have to be made, of course, but nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that hadn’t been done before in one fashion or another. Sevara’s assumption of power would have to be accompanied by the requisite statements of regret and humility, and the immediate declaration that she would call for a general election at the end of her term, the term that she completed now only at her father’s specific behest. They most likely would have an election, too, to appease the Americans and the British, but that was no matter. Like the two elections President Malikov had won already, this, too, would be a formality.

This time, Zahidov mused, perhaps they would give Sevara a little less of the vote. The last time President Malikov had run, he’d “won” office with over ninety-six percent of the vote in his favor, and that after having outlawed the opposition parties.

Sometimes, Zahidov wondered why the President hadn’t just claimed ninety-nine percent of the vote. If he was going to be that obvious, what was another three percent? Or even four?

If Sevara won with, say, sixty-five percent, that would be more than enough. And if they arranged it right, it might even look moderately legitimate, too.

So that was the first part, getting the President aboard, and Ahtam Zahidov had to admit that his handling of Dina Malikov had gone a good distance toward bringing that to pass. It had been tricky to negotiate, and Sevara had warned him as much.

“One thing to remove an extremist,” she’d told him, watching Zahidov as he dressed at the foot of her bed. “Another thing entirely to kill the mother of his only grandchild.”

“You should have children,” Zahidov had responded. “Show him that his dynasty can spring from you as easily as from your brother.”

“That would require Deniska’s cock. Which, unfortunately, would also require the rest of him.”

“Put a bag over his head.”

Sevara had laughed at the thought, then pulled back the bedsheet and come toward him on her hands and knees. Zahidov had stopped dressing, watching her approach, drinking in the sight of her. Sevara Malikov-Ganiev would have been beautiful even if she didn’t work at it, even if she didn’t use spas and personal trainers and stylists. Under the warm light of the chandelier her skin seemed lustrous, her hair as rich a red as the petals on a rose, her eyes shining. They’d made love twice already, and watching her coming toward him, the smile playing at her mouth, her tongue touching her lower lip, he wanted her again.

When she reached him, he took her in his arms, fastened his mouth to hers, kissing her with all the passion, all the love he had, feeling each returned. She touched his cheek when their lips parted, stroked a lacquered nail over his mouth.

“Our children,” she’d promised. “Our dynasty. In time.”

“In time,” he’d echoed. After she was President, when Malikov was gone, and beyond caring about things like marriage and divorce and paternity.

She was his biggest weakness, and each of them knew it. It gave Zahidov shallow comfort to know that he was hers, too.

Sex was so easy to come by at the worst of times, and in Uzbekistan even the lowest official could slake that thirst. But whores did nothing for Zahidov, no matter how beautiful, how willing, how young, how expensive. Even the rape of Ruslan’s wife had done nothing for him; it was just another method of interrogation, a way to break the bitch’s will, to demonstrate his absolute power over her. In truth, he wouldn’t have even bothered, instead leaving it to two or three of his men to have their way with her.

But Dina had threatened Sevara, and that had angered Zahidov. More, Dina had feared him, and so Zahidov had felt it was important that he take her, just to set the proper direction to the interrogation.

When he’d brought the video of the interrogation to Sevara, she asked him to stay and watch it with her. It had aroused her, and that had in turn aroused him. She’d taken him then and there, in her husband’s office at the Interior Ministry, bending over the desk, looking back at him over her shoulder.

“Like Dina,” Sevara had commanded.

It
wasn’t as if the Americans didn’t know how business was done in Uzbekistan, the same way it hadn’t bothered anyone—at least, not anyone who mattered—when Ambassador McInnes had gone weeping and wailing to the press. Certainly, President Malikov had felt the displeasure from each country, had felt the pressure to loosen his grip, but in the end, everyone involved understood the stakes. There was a war on, after all, a Global War on Terror, a conflict that now raged around the world, and one that required new rules. The Coalition might not approve of how the NSS acquired its intelligence, but disapproval didn’t stop the FBI or the CIA or the SIS from using it all the same.

But McInnes, and Dina, and now that new American Ambassador, Garret—they could make things difficult for President Malikov. Every time a tape was released, every time a new report of so-called human rights abuses was filed, the pressure built and kept building until someone, either U.S. or U.K., decided something had to be done. If not to actually redress the perceived problem, to at least appear to be doing so.

This redress took the form of sanctions, more often than not, and that, in turn, meant the withholding of promised aid. In the last four years alone, the U.S. had held back over fifty million dollars in promised funds, all in the name of encouraging President Malikov to improve his record on human rights. The hypocrisy of it made Zahidov want to spit. As if the Americans weren’t just the same, as if the British weren’t just the same. Abu Ghraib and Camp X-Ray and countless other facilities, Zahidov was certain they were all the same. But when someone pointed a finger at America or at Britain, who sanctioned them?

Just like the rape of Dina Malikov, it was an exercise in power, nothing more.

In the end, the money would come again. Uzbekistan was just too important to the war.

And everyone knew it.

But that didn’t keep President Malikov’s ego from being bruised each time he was pilloried in the eyes of the world. When the Old Man saw the proof that it was Dina Malikov who had been responsible for the latest round of editorials, angry letters, and sanctions, when he heard her talking about just how much she had given the Americans, it made the loss of his grandson’s mother that much easier to bear.

It was a small thing, then, to suggest that perhaps his son had known all along what his wife was doing. That he had perhaps if not encouraged it, certainly permitted it. And if Ruslan had encouraged it, well, the reasons behind such treachery were easy enough to see.

Sevara, the dutiful daughter, devoted to her father, found it hard to say the words.

“He wishes to replace you, Father.”

If
only it were that simple, and that easy. But Zahidov knew from experience that Mihail Malikov wasn’t a fool. The Old Man wouldn’t have survived for this long if he were. He knew the ulterior motives in bringing this incident to his attention. He knew that Sevara coveted his power just as greedily as Ruslan did.