Liberty

PROLOGUE

The night was sinister. In the vast grassy steppe of central Asia there were no towns, no villages, no isolated farmhouses with electricity to power a light that would break the great darkness. Overhead, twenty thousand feet of clouds blocked the light from moon and stars, absorbed all of it and left the Earth with nothing.

Two vehicles drove along a crumbling asphalt road, an old Ford van without windows and a two-axle truck with an enclosed cargo compartment. Their headlights were the only sign of life in the night. Beside the road was a large fence of woven wire topped with three strands of barbed wire. Occasionally, small rusted metal signs were attached to the wire, their Cyrillic lettering all but illegible.

Several hours after dark the van and truck topped a gentle rise, and their drivers saw a light in the distance. As they approached they could see it was a naked bulb mounted high on a pole beside a gate, a break in the wire. Beside the gate was a guard shack. Four armed men, soldiers, lounged near the gate, two seated, two leaning against the gate itself, a metal pole that blocked the entrance.

The van and truck turned off the highway and came to a stop by the gate. A man got out of the passenger seat of the van and approached the guard shack. He spoke to one of the guards. In a moment an officer came out of the wooden frame building. He shined a flashlight into the front seat of the van, examined the driver’s face, then walked around behind the van and gestured at the rear doors. The man beside him opened the doors, allowed the officer to look inside with the flashlight. Four men holding assault rifles were sitting on the floor. Several dark canvas bags were visible in the crowded vehicle, as well as sacks that might contain food and a variety of water containers.

After the officer had inspected the truck, including its cargo compartment, he walked back to the guard shack and went inside, leaving the passenger standing amid the soldiers.

Through the windows the officer could be seen placing a telephone call. His men stood near the gate, their weapons in their hands, staring at the dark, dirty van and its patchy paint.

When the officer hung up the telephone, he stepped to the door of the building, motioned to the soldiers. They opened the gate and waved at the driver of the van.

The vehicles left the lonely guard shack and its light behind. The road wound up a gentle ridge out of the valley, topped the crest, and continued across the steppe.

Fifteen minutes later they reached a fenced compound festooned with lights. An armed guard waved them through the gate as they approached. They drove past two idling tanks. The men in the turrets watched them, spoke into mouthpieces that hung from their headsets. A soldier directed the vehicles to halt near a well-lit one-story building with small windows. A dozen armed soldiers in battle dress were arrayed in front of this building and across the street.

Four people were seated inside at a long table in the main room, three army officers and a woman dressed in a well-cut dark suit. The woman was smoking. Assault rifles lay on the table in front of the army officers.

“I am Ashruf,” the passenger from the van said in Russian. He glanced at each of the soldiers, measuring them perhaps, yet his eyes lingered on the woman, who was slender, with long black hair, and appeared to be about thirty years of age.

One of the soldiers spoke. “General Petrov.” He glanced at his watch. “You’re late.”

“We didn’t want to cross the border until dark.” Ashruf gestured upward. “Satellites.”

“They can see nothing under all these clouds,” General Petrov muttered. He was wrong about that, but he didn’t know it. Petrov was a fleshy man of medium height, with close-cropped gray hair. He nodded toward an ovoid shape strapped to a wooden pallet in the corner of the room. “There it is: Do you want to inspect it?”

“There were supposed to be four.”

“There are hundreds. After we see the color of your money, you may pick any four you like.”

Ashruf walked over to the shape, bent to examine it. He was a fit man, slightly above medium height, with a short, trimmed beard. He was dressed in slacks, sandals, a loose shirt, and wore a turban.

Even though the room was brightly lit, Ashruf removed a flashlight from his pocket and examined every square inch of the object on the pallet.

General Petrov came over to Ashruf, squatted. “Are you satisfied?”

Ashruf glanced at him, then continued with his inspection. Finally he stood, walked to the door, and went out.

When he returned he carried a shiny aluminum case. He brought it over to the pallet, set it on the wooden floor, and opened it. After flipping some switches, he removed a wand from his pocket and plugged the cord into the box. He waved the wand over the metal shape as he examined the gauges of his instrument. He turned off the power to the instrument, unplugged the wand, closed the cover and hoisted it.

“I am satisfied,” he said.

“Good,” said Petrov. “Now we shall inspect the money. Bring it in and put it on the table.”

Ashruf and three of his men carried in duffel bags. They dumped the contents on the table, United States currency, bundles of hundred-dollar bills, fifty to a bundle. The army officers and the civilians picked up random bundles and began counting.

While this was going on Ashruf and his men stood and watched.

The woman, whose name was Anna Modin, chose a random bundle and tore it apart. She spread the currency on the table, then picked up a leather bag from the floor beside her chair and set it on the table. Opening it, she removed a black light and a magnifying glass mounted on a small light table. She used these tools to examine the bills, one by one.

When she finished she gathered up the bills, counted them, snapped a rubber band around them, then dived deep in the pile for another bundle. After tearing it apart, she began inspecting random bills.

“It’s all real,” Ashruf remarked to Petrov, who paid no attention. He continued to count bills within the bundles.

When Modin put away her equipment, the soldiers carefully arranged the bundles in stacks, then counted them. General Petrov announced, “Two million dollars. Does everyone agree?”

They all did. A gesture from Petrov caused the officers to begin placing the stacks of currency in the duffel bags.

“So,” Petrov said, addressing Ashruf, “do you want this one, or do you want to choose all four at random?”

Ashruf took his time, apparently making up his mind. “We will take this one and three more.”

“Each of them weighs about a hundred kilos. Six men can handle one.”

Ashruf nodded again, once.

“Use your people,” Petrov said.

The armed Russians watched as Ashruf and his colleagues, which was everyone from the van and truck, arranged themselves around the pallet. At Ashruf’s command, they hoisted it off the ground, then worked it through the door and out to the truck. With much huffing and puffing, they lifted the pallet and its shape high enough to slide it into the bed of the cargo compartment. Then they climbed into the truck and shoved mightily until they got the pallet into one corner, where they secured it with ropes.

With Ashruf and his men in their truck following along behind, Petrov climbed into a truck loaded with armed soldiers and led the way into the darkness. They drove for several miles, passed through several more high fences, and entered an area containing long rows of earthen mounds. Finally the lead truck stopped and the soldiers piled out of the back. They directed the driver of the following truck to park in front of the steel double doors. One of the soldiers used a key to open the lock, then two men opened the doors and turned on lights inside the mound.

Several dozen pallets were stored within. An ovoid shape was strapped to each with metal straps. Beside each one a steel rod protruded from the ground, one with a wire that led to the metal fittings on the rear of each shape.

“Take your pick,” Petrov said.

The shapes were painted white, yet on some of them a fungus had begun to grow. Ashruf scraped at the fungus with a fingernail, removing the flora and the white paint underneath. His flashlight beam revealed rust spots on the steel skins.

He used the device in the aluminum case. After checking eight or nine of the objects, he selected three that seemed to have the least amount of surface corrosion. As Ashruf and his men disconnected the grounding wires, General Petrov remarked, “If I were you, I’d be careful with those warheads while they are ungrounded. The detonators are in the high explosive. If you let electromagnetic energy build up on one of those things, it’s conceivable you raghead sons of bitches and a whole lot of your friends are going to find yourself instantly in hell with Mohammed.”

Ashruf ignored the general. Speaking Arabic, he arranged his men around the first pallet, hoisted it carefully, and carried it to the truck. When they had that warhead secured, they returned to the magazine for another.

The entire operation took about half an hour.

Anna Modin was standing outside the one-story building in the compound area when the party returned from the magazines. Ashruf stayed in the cab beside the truck driver while his colleagues climbed down from the back of the truck, locked the cargo door, and entered the van. With General Petrov and Modin watching, the van followed the truck out of the compound past the tanks and headed for the main gate.

“A profitable evening, General,” Anna Modin said. “Two million American dollars. Congratulations.”

“You have earned your ten thousand,” Petrov said as he watched the taillights of the van and Ashruf’s truck cross the low ridge beyond the compound gate. When the lights disappeared from view, he suggested, “Let’s drink to our good fortune.”

“Did you recognize him?” Petrov asked, meaning Ashruf.

“Oh, yes,” Anna Modin said. “The name he uses most often is Frouq al-Zuair. He’s Egyptian, I think. He may be Palestinian or Saudi. He is wanted by the Israelis and the Egyptians. Bombs are his specialty, yet as I recall, the Egyptians want him for hacking some tourists to death with a machete. Infidels, you know.”

“He has friends with money,” Petrov said. He was a practical man.

“You would have done the world a favor,” Anna mused, “if you had just shot them and kept their money.”

“And the evening would have been just as profitable,” Petrov said, grinning. “Alas, Anna Mikhailova, you don’t understand the intricacies of capitalism and international trade. Killing customers is bad for business. Zuair and his friends may return someday with more millions.”

“Someday,” Anna Modin said hopefully, and followed General Petrov toward his office.