Private Wars (15 page)

Crocker didn’t respond.

“You have no interest in the position in Washington?” Barclay asked.

Crocker considered his possible answers, then decided to go with brutal honesty. “None at all, sir.”

“Then I suppose the only real thing I can offer you is your job, and my promise that you will keep it if you bring me into your confidence.”

That was unexpected, and Crocker did his best to keep the fact from his face, but it answered, finally, the questions he’d been wrestling with ever since meeting with Seale in Hyde Park. For the first time, he felt confident he knew what this was about, if not in specifics, at least in generalities. Something had happened in the last five days to put Barclay not only on the defensive, but under siege. Something that he could not easily avoid or redress.

Something that threatened his career the same way, five days prior, he had threatened Crocker’s.

It had to be the MANPADs—there just wasn’t any other explanation as far as Crocker could see. And thinking that, it seemed more than plausible, possible even. Barclay on the Joint Intelligence Committee had been in position to authorize the transfer of weapons to the Northern Alliance. He’d had enough clout and seniority to initiate the move, as well as to compel Islamabad Station’s silence in the matter, either through intimidation or, more likely, the promise of later reward. Sitting at the head of the JIC, it had been understood that Barclay’s next step up the career rung would be as the Chief of Service at SIS. To a Station Number One in Islamabad, Frances Barclay would have been a very good friend to have indeed. But it had gone wrong, the missiles had vanished, and Barclay had spent the last four years looking behind him, wondering when they would return.

According to the CIA, they just had, somewhere in the south of Uzbekistan.

“You know about the Starstreaks,” Barclay said finally.

“Yes.”

“Seccombe knows about them, too. He’s known about them ever since they disappeared into Afghanistan.”

Crocker wasn’t surprised, and didn’t doubt the assertion. “Seccombe’s never mentioned them. They’ve never come up in our discussions.”

Barclay frowned slightly, unsure whether or not to believe him.

“They’ve never come up, sir,” Crocker assured him.

“Be that as it may, according to the CIA, these four Starstreaks were sold into Uzbekistan less than a month ago. You know that much from Seale, I’m sure.”

It seemed unnecessary to say that the information had come from Cheng at the NCCT, rather than the CIA, so Crocker merely nodded slightly, waiting for Barclay to continue.

“I’ve been on to the Station in Tashkent, asking them to keep an eye open. I’ve had to be circumspect, obviously, but I think I made myself clear to them. I want those missiles found, Paul. I want them found, and I want them returned to England. Either that, or I want proof of their destruction.”

“They’ve been in service for over seven years, sir. I’m sure the batteries that power them have run down by now.”

“That hardly renders them harmless, Paul. Four Starstreak missiles. If they end up in the hands of our enemies, if they’re used to bring down a military, or, heaven forbid, a commercial aircraft . . .”

Barclay trailed off, looking past Crocker, toward his desk.

“I’d hate to be responsible for that loss of life,” Barclay concluded quietly.

Not to mention the loss of career,
Crocker thought. If the missiles were used, if their use could be traced, then it would be just a matter of time before Barclay would have to claim ownership. There would be no defense for what came next, only the question of how Sir Frances Barclay would conduct his withdrawal from public service.

“The Americans seemed to think it unlikely that the missiles are still in Uzbekistan,” Crocker said. “More likely they’ve been moved farther into Central Asia. They could be in any of a dozen countries by now.”

“I know that.”

“Without more information, they’re impossible to locate.”

“I know that as well.” Barclay looked at him levelly. “But your aid in the search for them would be invaluable, Paul. And as D-Ops, it’s a reasonable directive for you to issue to our Stations. If you took the lead in this search for me, if you worked with Simon, I’d think your chances of success in doing so would be substantial.”

“You’ll forgive me for saying that I think you’re being overly optimistic, sir. We’ve been searching up MANPADs since the start of the war, and with only limited success.”

“But in this instance, you’d have hard intelligence to begin with. A place to start, a direction to head. It would scarcely be fumbling about in the dark.”

“Perhaps not, but close to it.”

“I’m asking for your help, Paul. Help that I would be grateful to receive. Help that I would reward.”

“You’d spare me my job.”

“I would see you became my next Deputy Chief.”

That stopped Crocker. “The DC is leaving?”

“She could be made to, to ensure your promotion,” Barclay rejoined levelly. “And I would, of course, follow your recommendation on the appointment of a new D-Ops. Even Poole, were you to champion him.”

Barclay waited, watching him, knowing full well the weight of the offer he had just made. Crocker had been passed over twice already for promotion to Deputy Chief, stalled at the level of Director of Operations. It was the next logical promotion in his career, one he had deeply coveted. As much as he respected, even liked, Alison Gordon-Palmer, Crocker absolutely wanted her job.

Poole wouldn’t do as D-Ops, not yet, but if he had to, Crocker could see him as Head of Section. Which would free up Chace, allow him to promote her to fill Crocker’s office. Just as he wanted the promotion to DC, he knew that Chace had wanted, eventually, to succeed him as D-Ops.

And with that hierarchy in place, with Crocker positioned between Barclay and Chace, he could do a lot of good, he was certain of it. He could move the Firm fully back into the game, begin correcting the errors of the last twenty years, the compromises, the capitulations.

It was an extraordinarily tempting offer, and looking at Barclay, he knew it was sincere.

“The offer is contingent on the recovery or destruction of the Starstreaks?” Crocker asked.

“Obviously.”

He thought again, once more considering it all, everything Barclay had told him. He thought about Alison Gordon-Palmer, and Sir Walter Seccombe. He thought about Chace, still running secretly in Uzbekistan. He thought, for a moment, about Ruslan Mihailovich Malikov and his sister, Sevara Malikov-Ganiev.

Unbidden, he thought about his wife and his daughters, and remembered the bitterness in Ariel’s voice, the hurt at yet another of her father’s broken promises.

He wondered which of many enemies he’d rather have, and thought it was a luxury to be able to choose even that.

“I’ll see what I can do,” Crocker told Barclay.

CHAPTER 16

Uzbekistan—Tashkent—U.S. Chancery,
Office of the Political Counselor

20 February, 0703 Hours (GMT+5:00)

Riess came in early on Monday morning, hoping
to use the peace and quiet of McColl’s absence to mow through the majority of the paperwork on his desk. He had yet another in the endless streams of démarches to prepare, this one regarding conditional subsidies proposed to support the Aral Sea Project, truly an utter waste of his time.

The Aral Sea was dying, if it wasn’t dead already. The two mighty rivers that had once fed it—the Syr Darya in the north, the Amu Darya in the south—no longer actually reached the sea, diverted and run dry by irrigation projects devoted to cotton production long before the waterways could reach their onetime destination. The sea level itself was dropping at a rate of one meter per year, and what it uncovered as it went could only be described as chemical crust, a foul mix of pesticides and defoliants that had run off the cotton fields. So far, over thirty-four thousand square kilometers of seafloor had been exposed, costing over ten million hectares of pastureland. All twenty-four documented species of fish that once swam in its waters were now gone.

It wasn’t simply an environmental disaster, it was a humanitarian one. Tuberculosis was endemic to the region, with over two thousand deaths attributed to the disease each year. Anemia was common. Children suffered from a host of liver, kidney, and respiratory ailments, in addition to cancer and birth defects.

It was a problem that had no solution, and as Riess read the reports yet again, trying to compose the paper that McColl would ask him to rewrite at least twice, he felt his frustration build more. What was the point? The political will to fix the situation didn’t exist, not here in Uzbekistan, nor in neighboring Kazakhstan, sharing the northern shores of the Aral. It didn’t exist in Turkmenistan or Kyrgyzstan or Tajikistan, all of whom drew from one or the other river to support their own agribusiness.

Yet another situation, another crisis in the long line of crises that Riess had seen in his years at the State Department, that had no solution.

It turned his thoughts dark and made the work harder, and he was so focused on it all that he didn’t look up when the door opened from the hall, into the Pol/Econ office. He assumed it was McColl, or the staff secretary, and it wasn’t until he heard Aaron Tower’s voice that he actually raised his eyes from his computer screen, to see the Tashkent COS standing before him.

“Morning, Chuck.”

“Good morning, sir. If you’re looking for the Counselor, I’m afraid he isn’t in yet.”

Tower shook his head, hooking one of the nearby chairs with his foot, drawing it to him. He shoved it with a knee, positioning it to face Riess’ desk, then sat down. He had a travel mug in his hand, brushed stainless steel and uncovered, and Riess could see the paper tag of an herbal tea bag dangling over the edge. It surprised him; he’d always imagined Tower to be a coffee drinker.

“Had to give up caffeine,” Tower informed him. “Blood pressure.”

“Ah.”

“Hey, listen,” Tower said. “This is one of those things that’s a little clumsy to talk about, so I’m just going to come out and say it, all right? And I hope you won’t be offended.”

“All right.”

“You were at the InterContinental on Thursday night.”

Riess felt his stomach perform what honestly felt like a backflip. “I’m sorry?”

“Yeah, it’s awkward, see? You were at the InterContinental, and no, I can’t tell you how I know it, but I know it, so let’s not play the no-I-wasn’t/yes-you-were game. You spent the night there. Well, a portion of the night there. In room 615, with a Brit named Tracy Carlisle.”

“I’m not sure this is any of your business, sir,” Riess countered, trying to channel the embarrassment, rather than the fear. It wasn’t very hard to do. He was certain he was blushing, and for a moment was immensely grateful that Tower had chosen to have this conversation while the office was empty, instead of in another hour, when McColl would have been certain to overhear it.

“Maybe, maybe not, but I kind of think that’s for me to decide,” Tower said. “I need you to tell me who this woman is, Charles, and how you know her.”

“I’ve known her for about twelve years,” Riess lied. “She spent a semester at Virginia Tech my junior year.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. We had a thing. She works for some agricultural firm in England. They do irrigation, I think.”

“So she’s here on business.”

“Much as I’d like to say she came all this way for me, she’s here on business.”

“This company she works for, you know its name?”

Riess shook his head. “We didn’t talk about it. Kind of puts me in a bad position if she starts asking questions about the economy of the region.”

“I can see that.”

Riess paused, then asked, “Can I ask why this matters?”

“It may not matter at all.”

“Yeah, but you’re asking me about it.”

Tower nodded, took hold of the paper tab on the end of its string, and pulled his tea bag from the cup. He flicked it overhand, sending it sailing, bag end first, into the wastepaper basket at the side of the secretary’s desk. It landed with a loud, wet smack. Tower admired the shot for a second, then turned his attention back to Riess.

“Is there a problem?” Riess asked.

Tower didn’t answer, still looking at him.

No, not looking,
Riess thought.
Watching
.

“I haven’t seen her since then,” Riess added.

“I know,” Tower said, and lapsed into silence again, continuing to watch him.

The silence turned uncomfortable. The fan on Riess’ desktop computer switched on, unnecessarily loud. Outside and down the hall, he heard a telephone begin ringing, then stop, as abruptly as it had started.

“Is there anything else, sir?” Riess asked. “I’ve got to finish this démarche before the Counselor comes in.”

“You’ve known this woman since you were a sophomore at Virginia Tech.”

“A junior.”

“Right.” Tower stared at him, then rose. “Okay, then. Thanks for your time.”

“No trouble, sir.”

Tower stopped, a hand on the door. “Chuck—word of advice, okay? Next time you’re going to meet an old friend for a quick fuck, bring her to your place, all right? A hotel, that’s just tacky.”

“It came up unexpectedly.”

“Just as long as you didn’t.” Tower grinned at him.

Riess blinked, then forced himself to laugh.

Tower left the office.

Riess stopped laughing.

He found it very difficult to concentrate on the Aral Sea after that.

CHAPTER 17

Uzbekistan—Tashkent—
Uzbekiston Street

20 February, 1326 Hours (GMT+5:00)

According to her math, she hadn’t slept in
thirty-seven hours, and Tara Chace was beginning to feel it.

The problem, of course, was that she was alone. If she’d been able to rely upon some backup, if she’d had Poole or Lankford with her or, hell, even the Station Number Two, they could have split the surveillance. She’d have been able to set them in their positions to watch Ruslan Mihailovich Malikov’s home, to tell them what to look for and how to do it, to break the larger job into smaller ones and, thus, been free to return to the little room she’d taken at the Hotel Sayokhat and get some goddamn sleep.

But she had no one but herself, and worse, she was running out of time. Porter would wait until the twenty-fifth, she was certain of that; he wasn’t the problem. At this point, she was reasonably certain Porter was actually the only thing she
could
count on, and she’d already picked a location for their eventual rendezvous, seventy-seven kilometers southwest of the city, at the northern edge of Dzhizak Province. She’d picked the location on her way back from her shopping trip, off the main highway, along the banks of the Syr Darya, where it cut through Uzbekistan, joining Kazakhstan in the northwest and Tajikistan in southeast. Parked by the side of the river, she’d pulled the GPS unit she’d brought with her from London, taken three different readings, all confirming the same set of coordinates, and then spent another minute and a half committing them to memory.

Porter was not going to be the problem.

The problem was back in London, and the problem was here in Tashkent. Crocker had made it clear he wanted—needed—the job done quickly. For that reason alone, time was of the essence. Compounding that was the situation with President Malikov. Since meeting with Riess, she’d had no news of the old man’s condition. Local media had resolutely failed to report even a whisper of his illness. She didn’t know if the President was lingering, recovering, or already in the ground, but if it was the last, then she felt safe in assuming that the clock was running for Ruslan and his son as well.

So the surveillance fell to her, and it fell to her with an urgency she did not like. Haste made for mistakes, and as things stood, there was already too much room for error, too many things she didn’t like.

First, Ruslan and his son were, for all intents and purposes, under house arrest. By her count, there were at least three static surveillance posts devoted to watching the home, each manned by a team of two, each team replaced every eight hours, at five hundred, thirteen hundred, and twenty-one hundred hours. The watchers made no attempts to hide themselves, using automobiles as their staging point, with one person remaining behind the wheel, the second alternately walking up and down the block or lounging against the side of the car. Every other hour of the shift, the two would swap, the walker assuming the seat in the car, the driver assuming the walking post. The occupants of the cars used radios for communication, but from what Chace could see, the walkers did not. She was certain that the drivers not only communicated with one another, but with a central dispatcher as well.

That was just on the outside.

What was going on inside the house was harder to determine, but Chace had been able to confirm a few facts there as well. She knew that Ruslan and his son, Stepan, were inside, because she’d seen them on multiple occasions. Most frequently, she’d caught glimpses of them through the windows of the front room, barely for more than one second at a time. On Sunday afternoon, though, father and son had emerged to play in the backyard, engaging in a game of chase-me-catch-me-tickle-me-do-it-again. Stepan’s delight had been loud enough to echo off the walls surrounding the yard, shrieks of toddler joy that had Chace thinking of Tamsin, and what of her daughter’s life she was now missing.

When Ruslan and his son had come outside, they’d been accompanied by two more men, and neither of the guards had bothered to conceal the weapons they were carrying. The fact that they were so overt about their weaponry hadn’t alarmed Chace; what they’d been carrying, however, had. Each was armed with a Heckler & Koch MP-5K, carried in hand. As far as submachine guns went, they could hardly have chosen better. The weapons, and others like them, were sometimes called room-brooms for their ability to quickly and efficiently clear small spaces of opposition. At close range, the guns would lay down a stream of fire that could only be described as lethal.

And once inside the house, Chace would be at very close range indeed.

In the time she’d been watching, she’d seen the shift change inside the house three times, but had yet to see any of watchers who had entered leave again. Like outside, the interior seemed to be guarded by teams of two, but she was uncertain just how many teams were actually being employed. Her best guess put the number at either three or four, which meant another six to eight armed men inside the house. She found herself praying it was the lower number. Six would be extraordinarily difficult to manage silently, without a fair amount of luck added to what Chace feared were her rusty skills; eight would be impossible, because it led directly to the second complication.

She had no doubt that the guards’ orders were very clear: Ruslan and his son were not allowed to leave the building.

Should they try to do so, they would be killed.

Which meant that if the guards thought they were going to lose their prisoners, they were liable to shoot father and son themselves, and be done with it once and for all.

Third complication, then. She had to get inside quietly.

Fourth complication. She had to neutralize the guards just as quietly. Six to eight guards, and they would have to be taken out before they could raise an alarm, before they could react.

Fifth complication. She had to get herself, Ruslan, and Stepan out again. And Stepan, being all of two years old, would have to be carried, because he sure as hell wouldn’t be able to keep up if they ran for it. Ruslan would have to carry him, to keep Chace’s hands free for the wet work.

Sixth complication. Not only did they need to get out of the house, they had to get out of the
city,
and far enough away that Porter could bring in the helo undetected for the lift, but close enough that it could be managed in a timely fashion.

Seventh complication. She had to do all of these things alone.

Eighth complication. She had to do all of these things soon.

Because the eighth complication was the man named Ahtam Zahidov. His arrival at the house on Monday morning had come as a surprise, as much as to the guards on watch as to Chace, who recognized him from the photograph Riess had shown her, and it had caused an immediate flurry of activity. The arrival had provided an answer to another of her questions, however—Zahidov’s presence confirmed for Chace that Ruslan was being held by his sister Sevara’s forces, and not by the official NSS.

Zahidov had arrived in a late-model Audi A4, driving it alone, and pulling up to the front of the house. The car was a glossy black, well cared for, and Chace’s first thought upon seeing it was that she’d very much like to steal it; the A4 was a good car if one had to get someplace in a hurry, and it would be a much better escape vehicle than the Range Rover, the engine of which was beginning to give her serious doubts.

Then Zahidov had emerged, and two of the guards—one from the house, one of them walking his beat farther up the block—had rushed to greet him, and that was when Chace had given him a second look through her binoculars. Through eyes strained with fatigue and overuse, it had taken several seconds before the recognition had come, and Zahidov had all but entered the house before she’d truly realized who he was.

She was watching, at that point, from a rooftop a block and a half away. It was her seventh or eighth observation post—she couldn’t remember how many she’d used any longer, yet another sign of her fatigue—and when Zahidov vanished into the house, she had a moment of panic.

Fucking hell,
she thought.
I’ve waited too long. I’ve waited too long and now the Big Bad Heavy has come to fix things for his lady friend once and for all.

And if that was the case, it was over, the whole damn operation was a bust. She wouldn’t be able to get there in time. Forget the fact that she wasn’t ready, that all she had on her was the Smith & Wesson she’d purchased at the bazaar, forget that the rest of the weapons and explosives were still hidden in the back of the Range Rover. Forget the fact that it was broad fucking daylight, forget all of it. Even
if
she ran and somehow managed to survive a frontal assault on the house, she was certain she’d arrive just in time to find the bodies of Ruslan and Stepan cooling in puddles of their own spilled blood.

It was the broad-fucking-daylight factor that made her reconsider, that calmed her, that allowed her to recognize she was becoming irrational. Zahidov wouldn’t execute Ruslan and his son in their home, not in the middle of the day. He had complete control over them, he had armed guards on them. If he was going to murder them, he wouldn’t do it there.

No, he’d take them someplace else, use his NSS muscle to bring them to a cell someplace, perhaps, or drive them outside of the city, in the hinterlands, and kill them there.

Chace forced herself to calm down, checking her watch and noting the time. She rubbed her eyes, feeling them sting, then resumed peering through the binos. They weren’t the best set of optics she’d used, not even close, but they served. She’d found them at a camera store on Abdukhamid Kayumov Saturday morning, and bought them solely because they were the most powerful set on sale.

Thirty-six minutes later, Zahidov emerged from the house, and this time, Chace was ready, and settled the optics on him immediately, tracking him for the duration of his walk from the front door, down the path to the street, to the car. He stopped before getting into the vehicle, exchanging words with the two watchers who’d exited with him.

Chace put him at five ten, maybe five eleven, perhaps one hundred and eighty pounds, perhaps lighter. His manner was calm, even self-confident, and whatever he was saying, he felt no urge to say it quickly, or with any apparent volume. He was, Chace thought, surprisingly handsome, a fact that Riess’ photo hadn’t managed to capture.

Then Zahidov finished speaking, climbing behind the wheel of the Audi again, pulling away down Uzbekiston. The two watchers exchanged another few words, then each returned to their posts.

Chace yawned. She’d been sitting in the cold on the tarpaper rooftop for three hours. Her legs ached, and her lower back. When she flexed her fingers, they were stiff.

Tonight,
Chace decided.
It’ll have to be tonight.

She
broke down her gear, such as it was, stowing the binoculars and its tripod in the duffel bag she’d brought, then making her way to the edge of the rooftop. She checked the drop, confirming that the way below was clear, and then, seeing no one watching her, began her descent to the alleyway, using a drainpipe as a makeshift pole.

It was a twenty-minute walk back to where she’d parked the Range Rover, and she found the vehicle where she’d left it, unmolested. She threw her bag in the passenger seat, and had to try three times before the engine caught and the car started. She made her way back to the Sayokhat.

In her room, she removed her coat and sweater and boots, and then gave up on the rest, collapsing on the bed, the Smith & Wesson close at hand, partially for the security it provided, and partially because of its importance to the coming events. The pistol had been one hell of a find, because it hadn’t quite been what she’d thought it was at first blush. Not simply the S&W Mk 39, but rather a modified version of the same, the Mk 22 Mod 0, also called the “hush puppy.” It was Vietnam-era, not the most reliable gun in the world, but wonderfully silent, not only equipped with a silencer to eliminate the sound of gunfire, but also with a slide lock, to keep the actual mechanical operation of the gun quiet as well. She’d test-fired the gun at the market before purchasing, and been stunned that it still worked. The Uzbek vendor had offered to sell it to her cheap.

“It’s too quiet,” he’d explained. “No one wants it.”

Chace shut her eyes, half smiling at the memory.

She
really
wanted Zahidov’s Audi. The car would be reliable, unlike the Range Rover; she didn’t imagine Sevara Malikov-Ganiev’s Lover and Head Thug to be a man who drove an ill-maintained car. It would be fast, which was never a bad thing, and would handle well. Best of all, it was familiar to the guards at the house. In Zahidov’s Audi, she could drive right up to the front door before anyone became suspicious.

She tried to focus on ways to acquire the car, to think of a plan of attack, but being prone was having an immediate effect, and her thoughts were already splitting into pre-slumber dysfunction. Behind her closed eyes, she saw the hotel room, and then Val, as if she were standing there, at the foot of the bed. Tamsin was in her arms, twisting at the sight of her mother, straining to reach out for Chace.

Chace fell asleep, her last thought not of Ruslan or Stepan or Zahidov’s Audi, nor of her daughter, hopefully safe and warm in Barnoldswick, hopefully still able to remember and recognize her mother.

Chace fell asleep thinking of the sheer number of men she would have to kill when she woke up.