Private Wars (12 page)

“I’m going to need weapons,” Chace told him.

The curiosity vanished into something close to mild panic. “That’s not my thing, I’m sorry—”

“No, not from you,” she interrupted, annoyed. “I’ll get them myself. Just tell me where I can make the buy.”

She watched his eyes widen slightly with understanding. His eyes were green.

“There’s a place west of here, about one hundred and fifty kilometers, north of Lake Aidarkul.” Riess hesitated, whether because he was uncertain or simply trying to recall, Chace couldn’t tell. “You go north from there, there’s a little village just south of the border with Kazakhstan. It’s all frontier, there’s nothing out there. I was out that way about three months ago, before the
chilla
hit. We were getting reports of a market, I flew out with some of the CT guys.”

“The
chilla
?”

Riess grinned, apologetic. “Uzbekistan doesn’t get that much weather, but in the winter, there’s about six weeks of fucking cold, called the
chilla
.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah, sorry. Anyway, this market, it was anything goes. Weapons, drugs, livestock. Other things.”

“Sounds ideal.”

Riess grimaced, showing his teeth. “I don’t know. Western woman heading out there alone, they may try to put you up for sale.”

“They might.” Chace gave him her best smile. “Last question, Charles. Where can I get a car?”

“Rentals are hard to come by. You could go back out to the airport—”

“No. I’ll need to buy it.”

“Yeah? Huh. Best bet, then, I’d find a car you like on the street and ask the owner how much he wants for it. You’ve got cash, I assume?”

“Enough to cover expenses.”

“That’s what I’d do. That way, you’d be sure to get one that runs.”

“Very well.”

Riess opened his mouth to add something, then closed it, then opened it once more. “Is that all?”

“For now.”

“I’m not sure meeting a second time would be that wise.”

“No?”

“The NSS has been watching me.”

Chace stared at him.

“Not tonight, I made a point of losing them tonight,” Riess added quickly.

“You’re certain?”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

“How’d you come here tonight?”

“Metro.”

“How many times did you change trains?”

“Six. Why do you think it took me two hours to get here?”

“You’re State Department?”

Riess hesitated, then nodded.

“You’ve had basic tradecraft, then?”

“I’m not supposed to talk about that.”

Chace looked at him, for a moment unable to believe what she’d just heard. “I’m sorry?”

“We’re not supposed to talk about that kind of thing.”

“You know who I am?”

“Well, I know why you’re here, if that’s what you mean, yes.”

She shook her head, amused, then looked him over a second time, reappraising. He was charming, in a way, and reasonably handsome.

“I don’t know if you’re naïve or cute or both,” Chace said.

“With those choices, I’d rather cute, if you don’t mind.”

Chace stared at him a moment longer, recognizing a desire she hadn’t felt in what seemed like a very long time. She hadn’t had sex since she had been with Tom, and thinking of it, it seemed both ages ago and only yesterday.

She got up from the bed, crossed over to where he was sitting, and took his chin in her hand. She kissed him, and after he recovered from his surprise, he returned it.

She broke it off.

“I’m going down to the gift shop,” Chace said, “where I hope they will sell me a package of condoms. If you like the sound of that, be in the bed when I get back.”

She took her key and headed out of the room, riding the elevator down to the lobby. The gift shop was still open. After she made her purchase, she stepped back into the lobby, then crossed it to the restaurant, a small café called the Brasserie. She ordered a glass of beer, drank it sitting alone at a table, watching the lobby, and by the time she’d emptied the glass, she was as certain as she could be that Charles Riess had not been followed to the Hotel InterContinental.

He
was waiting in the bed when she got back.

CHAPTER 12

Uzbekistan—Tashkent—182 Sulaymonova,
Penthouse of Sevara Malikov-Ganiev

17 February, 0008 Hours (GMT+5:00)

Zahidov collapsed onto Sevara, breathless, spent, and as
happy as he had been in weeks. He kissed her neck and tasted the perspiration there, moved his mouth along her shoulder, drinking her sweetness with his tongue, feeling the warmth and smoothness of her skin, the life of her. She shuddered again around him, ran her nails up his back, and then let out a long sigh of contentment, giving voice to everything he was feeling.

For a while then, he drifted in languid thought, feeling Sevara’s heartbeat slowing, feeling his own matching pace. She kissed his shoulder and his neck and then his mouth, each tenderly, then let her leg slip away from him, freeing him. Zahidov took the cue, reluctantly rolling off her, the bedsheet clinging to him. When he was on his back, she curled against him, resting her head on his chest.

“Do you think he’s dead yet?”

“No.” The stroke had been unexpected, not the result they’d been after, and it complicated things, though not as much as he had first feared. “The doctors say he’s stabilized.”

Sevara readjusted her position, making herself more comfortable. Zahidov felt her nails traveling lightly over his belly, up his chest.

“You’re disappointed,” she said softly. “Don’t be, Ahtya.”

“I don’t like him lingering.”

“But it doesn’t hurt us. I saw him at the hospital this evening. The whole side of his body is useless, his face is sagging like melted wax. I talked to him for almost half an hour, holding his hand. He couldn’t even move his fingers, he couldn’t even speak. The doctors say it’s unlikely he’ll ever be able to again.”

“Unlikely isn’t the same as certain.”

Sevara rolled, propping herself up on her side, smiling down at him, reassuring. “It doesn’t matter. He won’t be recovered by tomorrow, love. He won’t be recovered in a week, or even a month. It gives us time. He remains President in name, and you and I, we simply move in and take control. We can keep working on the Deputies, making certain they know how things are going to be. And when everything is right and in place, we announce my father’s illness, his subsequent retirement, and that I will be acting in his stead until elections can be held.”

Zahidov stared at the ceiling, the shadows cast by the candles burning on the bureau beyond the foot of the bed.

“Time is to our advantage,” Sevara told him.

“To your brother as well.” He turned to look at her, brushing hair from her cheek with the back of his hand. “It’s to his advantage as well, Sevya, and he will do exactly what you are doing.”

“Ruslan’s got no support from the Americans, you said so yourself. They know he’s not strong enough to hold the country together.”

“He might be able to change their minds.”

Sevara laughed, kissed his hand. “When has Washington
ever
changed its mind, Ahtya, especially with the current American President? No, Ruslan will try, but he’ll need the DPMs, and the DPMs will already belong to us. I’ve spoken to Urdushevich and Tursunova already, and they’ve told me what I’ll hear from all of the rest. Not one of them wishes to lose what they have. And they know that should Ruslan become President, the first thing he’ll do is get rid of them all and claim he’s fighting corruption. None of them will ever lift a finger to support him.”

“It makes me uncomfortable,” Zahidov insisted, and he met her eyes, but didn’t say the rest.

Sevara threw back the covers and swung herself out of the bed, cursing him. The candlelight turned her skin to gold and shadow. He watched as she opened the closet, pulled on her robe. It was silk, green and black, one he had purchased for her on his last trip to Moscow, and he liked the way it clung to her, and he thought it made her even more desirable than when she wore nothing at all.

“I know what you’re thinking, Ahtya,” Sevara said. “The answer is no.”

“Why not? Because he’s your brother?”

“Precisely because he’s my brother. Think of how it will look, if nothing else. First his wife, then Papa, then my brother?”

He sat up in the bed. “It can be done with subtlety.”

“No, it can’t, my love, really, it can’t. Even were he to die of natural causes tomorrow it would not be subtle enough, not so soon on the heels of the others. It becomes overt—worse, it becomes obvious, and that
would
force Washington’s hand, because the media would report upon it, and they would have to respond to that pressure. Right now, they can suspect, they can even know in their hearts we’re responsible for Papa’s illness. But if we kill Ruslan, it takes things too far.”

“It’s not like you to be sentimental about family.”

Sevara returned to the foot of the bed, tying the sash of the robe about her waist with a jerk, and Zahidov knew he’d made her angry, even without seeing the expression on her face.

“He’s my brother,” she said quietly. “He is the father of my nephew. We helped my father along because it was his time to go, because his end was inevitable, and because he blocked our way. Ruslan has no power, Ahtam. He has
nothing
. No support, no funding, no connections, no allies, nothing. We don’t have to be savages.”

Zahidov leaned forward, matching her tone, speaking just as softly. “As long as he is alive, he will oppose you, Sevya. That makes him your enemy, and that makes him dangerous. You and I have enough to worry about already. Why allow for one more factor we cannot control?”

“If that is your concern, then control him. But that does not require killing him, Ahtam, and I will not allow it.” She ran a hand through her hair, pulling the strands in frustration. “Put him under guard, under house arrest, whatever you want to call it.”

“For how long? A week? A month? The rest of his natural life?”

She glared at him. “Until the announcement. Keep him in his home for the next two, three weeks, that will be long enough. By then, it will be too late.”

“Assuming everything is in place by then.”

“Everything will be.”

“I don’t like it.”

Sevara mounted the bed once more, walking to him on her knees, straddling him over the sheets. She put her hands on his shoulders, and he felt the thrill of her touch again, and again wondered how it was she could make him feel that way every single time her skin touched his own.

“You don’t have to like it,” Sevara told him. “It’s what I want. It’s what is best for us, Ahtya. Just like you, everything I’m doing, I’m doing it for us.”

If the words had come from any other woman, he’d have dismissed them utterly as fiction. But from this woman, he knew it was the truth, and Zahidov put his hands on her hips, feeling the warmth of her skin through the silk, pulling her down on him more firmly.

“I worry,” he said. “Because I love you.”

She smiled, her upper lip curling with mischief, and unfastened her robe.

“Show me,” she said.

CHAPTER 13

London—Hyde Park—Lover’s Walk,
Park Lane Entrance

17 February, 1114 Hours GMT

Julian Seale was waiting for him, the CIA
Station Chief holding a black umbrella large enough to shelter a family of three. Crocker saw him, stepped across a puddle, and offered his hand. Seale shook it firmly once, then released, and Crocker wondered how many more times they’d begin their meetings with a handshake before they were comfortable enough with each other to dispense with the pleasantry.

“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Crocker said.

“No, I like standing around in the rain.” Seale turned toward the west, then hesitated. “Which way?”

“South, then right. It’ll take us into the park.”

They began walking, Seale shifting the umbrella to his other hand to avoid hitting Crocker with the canopy.

“You and Angela did this a lot?”

Crocker finished lighting his cigarette, stowed his lighter, nodding as he exhaled. “She used to say she liked the exercise, but I think it appealed to the traditionalist in her.”

“Oh, the plots that have been hatched in this park.”

“And those are the ones we know about,” Crocker agreed. “You wanted to see me?”

“About two things, actually. One is a favor, the other is more an FYI point.”

“Is the FYI in exchange for the favor?”

Seale chuckled, a low rumble not unlike the sounds of traffic coming from the road behind them. “The FYI is free, actually.”

“Now I’m nervous.”

Seale chuckled again.

“What do you need?” Crocker asked.

“Wondering if you can offer any Special Section support for an operation in Casablanca.”

“Supporting what?”

“We’ve located two members of a GSPC cell we’d like to bring in for further questioning. Problem is, all of our Executive Action staff is tasked elsewhere at the moment. The soonest we’d be able to free up an agent would be tomorrow late, putting him in theater late on Sunday at the earliest.”

“By which time they will have jumped?”

“Or worse, gone and done whatever it is they’re planning to do.”

“Which members?”

“Mohammud Belkadem and Hamed Hamouche.”

Crocker raised an eyebrow. “Confirmed?”

“I wouldn’t be asking for your help if it wasn’t confirmed. We just need someone who knows the drill to help our Station with the snatch.”

“Moroccan authorities are aiding?”

“We’re leaving them out for the moment.” Seale flashed Crocker a grin. “You know how the Moroccans feel about the Algerians. We don’t want them getting overexcited.”

“No, I can see why not.” Crocker pulled on his cigarette again, squinting into the rain, considering. “All right, I’ll bring it to the Deputy Chief. She should approve it before close of play. One Minder should do it.”

“Poole or Lankford, if you don’t mind.”

“You don’t want Fincher?”

“Paul,
you
don’t want Fincher.”

Crocker didn’t bother to argue. “What do we get in trade?”

“Our continued goodwill in the spirit of cooperation during the Global War on Terror.”

“That’s nice, but it won’t sell it to the DC.”

“The goody bag is pretty much open on this one, Paul. Tell the DC to make her list, I’ll see what I can do.”

“You’ve gotten that from Langley?”

Seale nodded. “We really want these guys.”

“I’ll tell the DC.”

“Lankford or Poole, not Fincher.”

“I’ll tell her that, too.”

“I’m serious, Paul, you can’t give this to Fincher. That’s part of our deal.”

They reached a fork in the path, where it branched in three separate directions. Seale stopped, and Crocker pointed them to the northwestern path, and they resumed walking.

“Give me a couple more meetings, I’ll have this down,” Seale said.

“I half expected you’d want me to come to Grosvenor Square. You haven’t seemed very much like a walk-in-the-park fellow.”

“Angela said it was how you preferred to do business. I guess you’re as much of a traditionalist as she is.”

Crocker flicked his cigarette into the grass, watched the smoke vanish in the rain. “Have you heard from her?”

“Talked to her today. She’s still at the NCTC, playing counterterror expert.”

“Let’s hope she’s doing more than just playing.” The National Center for Counterterrorism was one of the by-products of the recent restructuring of the American intelligence apparatus. In theory, the office oversaw all civilian and military counterterrorist operations, and served as both a clearinghouse and a main communications center for intelligence gathered on the same. The Center was directed by the National Intelligence Director, a new post created at the time of the restructuring, and the highest intelligence office in the U.S. Government, outranking even the Director at the CIA. Angela Cheng’s appointment to the Center had been a promotion, in every sense of the word.

“Amen,” Seale agreed. “She’s actually the source on the FYI. She asked me to bring it to you personally.”

Crocker glanced to Seale, mildly surprised, and beginning to suspect that he wasn’t much going to like what he was about to hear next.

“We’ve got some information on some of your missing MANPADs,” Seale explained.

“Some?”

“Four of them, actually. Starstreaks.”

“Jesus Christ,” Crocker muttered. Four Starstreaks were a lot of Starstreaks, especially considering it would take but one of them to bring down an airliner during landing, or, worse still, takeoff. If all four of the MANPADs were in the same hands, it was a substantial potential threat.

Seale reached into his overcoat pocket, then opened his hand to Crocker, revealing a folded piece of white notepaper, almost surreally bright against the darker skin of his palm. “Serial numbers.”

Crocker took the paper, tucked it into his own pocket. There was no point in looking at it now. When he got back to the office, he’d run the numbers past D-Int, to see what they turned up. But he did have a question.

“Tell me,” Crocker said. “These Starstreaks didn’t turn up in Chechnya, by any chance?”

Seale shook his head and came to a stop, looking at him quizzically. “You’re in the right region. We think they’re in Uzstan.”

That’s one hell of a coincidence,
he thought,
which means it’s not a bloody coincidence at all.

“You think?”

“Our man in Tashkent isn’t a slouch, Paul, not with the strategic importance that Uzbekistan holds in the war. He’s got an asset who claims that he witnessed the sale of four Starstreaks by some Afghan warlord to an Uzbek national in Surkhan Darya province last month. Said the whole deal went down for sixty grand, American.”

“Who bought them?”

“We don’t know.”

“But they’re in Uzbekistan?”

“Hell, they could be anywhere by now. But as of a month ago, they came over the border from Afghanistan into Uzstan, yes.”

Crocker scowled, fishing out a second cigarette.

“Is there something you want to tell me?” Seale asked.

The flame from Crocker’s lighter quavered in the breeze and the rain. We shook his head and lit his smoke. “No. Not yet, at least.”

“You have something going on in Chechnya?”

“Not at the moment.”

Seale stared at him, frankly curious. Crocker shook his head a second time, then offered Seale his hand.

“Thank you,” he said. “And thank Angela when you speak to her next. I appreciate the courtesy.”

They shook hands.

“We’ll be interested to know what you find,” Seale said.

“You’re not the only one,” Crocker told him.

Back
in his office, Crocker had Kate ring the Deputy Chief to see if she had five minutes to discuss a favor to the Americans. She did, and before Crocker headed up to see her, he handed Kate the piece of notepaper he’d received from Seale.

“Run this over to Simon, tell him it’s the numbers of four Starstreaks, he’ll know what that means.”

“I know what that means,” Kate replied mildly. “I do more than just make the coffee.”

“But nothing quite as well. Tell him CIA thinks the missiles were sold in Uzbekistan within the last month. The question I have for him is how those missiles got there in the first place.”

“I hear and I obey,” Kate said.

“The first part is true enough,” Crocker snapped, and headed upstairs to see Alison Gordon-Palmer.

“Will
one Minder be enough?” the Deputy Chief wanted to know.

“To help with the snatch? Seale seemed to think one would suffice.”

“You’ll send Poole?”

“I was thinking Lankford, actually. He did a grab last March in Frankfurt, pulled it off quite well. And he hasn’t been to Casablanca. Poole has.”

“Fincher hasn’t been there, either.”

“Fincher is locked at his desk for the moment, as you well know.”

Alison Gordon-Palmer paused, thinking, then said, “Andrew Fincher isn’t a bad officer, Paul. Confining him to his desk is a waste of manpower.”

“He may be a fine officer, but he’s a bad Minder. And if you’re proposing that I send him instead of Lankford, the Americans made it clear that’s not an option. This was given to us on condition that we
didn’t
use Fincher, in fact.”

“His reputation is that bad?”

“Seale doesn’t trust him, certainly. Whether the command is from Langley, I can’t speculate.”

“And Seale’s promising the whole line of sweets, is he?”

“He assures me that we’ll get just about anything we could ask for.”

“Is there anything we should be asking for, Paul?”

The question surprised Crocker, mostly because it was exactly the kind of question that Donald Weldon, the DC’s predecessor,
never
would have asked.

“Not at the moment. I’m sure something will come up.”

“I have no doubt. All right, then, I’ll sell it to C. You task Lankford, run him over to Grosvenor Square for the briefing. If we’re quick about it, we could have him in Morocco before dark.”

“We’ll have to be very quick about it,” Crocker said.

Gordon-Palmer smiled at him, as if she knew every last one of his secrets.

“Then why are you still here talking to me, Paul?”

He’d
finished briefing Lankford and had called Seale to tell him the loan had been approved when Kate buzzed him from her desk to say that Director Intelligence was outside.

“Send him in,” Crocker told the intercom, and got to his feet as Simon Rayburn pushed through the door. Crocker smiled, pleased to see him, and Rayburn returned it. There were few people in the building that Crocker genuinely got on with, but his opposite number was one of those few, and Rayburn, for his part, both knew and appreciated that fact. There had been times in the history of the Firm when the Director of Intelligence and the Director of Operations had scarcely tolerated the sight of each other, to the obvious detriment of SIS. Both Crocker and Rayburn knew how fortunate they were that they did not live and work in those times.

“Interesting set of numbers, Paul,” Rayburn commented.

“Thought you might say something like that.” Crocker gestured to one of the chairs away from the desk, then went to his door, opening it again, and asking Kate to bring coffee. When he’d turned back, Rayburn was seated. He was a smaller man than Crocker, and even more slender of build, and in all manner quieter as well. He smiled as Crocker pulled up a chair opposite him, staying out from behind his desk, so they could speak as equals.

Kate entered with two cups of coffee, black for Crocker, light and sweetened for Rayburn, then stepped out again without a word, shutting the door behind her.

“Those four missiles have a history,” Rayburn said.

“They’ve certainly traveled.”

“More than you know. I did some digging, then checked at the MOD with a source there. With help, I was able to retrace their journey, or at least a portion of it.”

“Enlighten me.”

Rayburn sipped his coffee, made a face. He set his cup back in its saucer, and set the saucer down on the edge of the small coffee table in front of them.

“The four missiles entered service in July of 1998, and were stored at Her Majesty’s Naval Base Devonport. On 11 January 2002, the four missiles in question were transferred, with other material, to RAF Brize Norton. Brize Norton was flying supplies and equipment to the operation in Afghanistan.”

“I’m aware how it works, Simon.”

“I know you are, Paul, but there’s a point to this. The Americans worked long and hard to arrange overflight and the use of two bases in Pakistan. The transport from Brize Norton ends up there, offloading. At which point Islamabad Station takes possession of the missiles.”

Crocker almost choked on his coffee. “What?”

Rayburn nodded in sympathy. “You didn’t know.”

“You’re telling me I could have just rung Islamabad Station, they would have told me
they
had these missiles?”

“If you had done so in February of 2002, perhaps. As it is, the Station only held them for a few weeks, at the most. It seems the four Starstreaks made their way rather quickly over the border into Afghanistan, to be delivered to the Northern Alliance.”

Crocker suppressed a growl. “They weren’t?”

“I couldn’t find any report nor any record of their successful delivery. Nor could I find any report nor any record of their use. If the CIA intelligence is correct, they were held and somehow acquired by one of the warlords in the north, and then sold. They very well could have been sold two or three or four times in the interim before ending up across the border again and in Uzbekistan.”

Rayburn went silent, giving Crocker a second look of pained sympathy. He risked a second sip of the coffee, and made the same face he had the first time.

“Oh, that is just awful,” he murmured.

Crocker ignored him, thinking. In 2002, the Station Number One in Islamabad had been a man named Derek Moss. Moss had been intimately involved in operations in Afghanistan at the time, by necessity—SIS had no working stations in the country, nor any reliable intelligence on the ground at the time of the Coalition action. In the wake of 9/11, Moss and his Number Two, Richard Barton, had spent more and more time crossing the border, a dangerous pursuit even during a time of peace. In a time of war, it had proved fatal.