Private Wars

“It’s got to be done quietly, and that means she’s here outside of channels. Figure the FCO is rowing the same direction as the crew at State—they’re looking at the realist solution. But my guy, he’s got a green light from the Prime Minister as long as we can pull this off quietly.”

“How quietly?”

“The White House doesn’t find out until after the fact. Their Prime Minister sure as hell isn’t going to want to get into a knife fight with POTUS over Uzbekistan. Not during a time of war.”

Riess shook his head. “I don’t know how much help I’m going to be to her.”

“Neither do I,” Garret said. “But if the NSS and/or Sevara has Ruslan in their sights, they’re sure not going to let him just hop on a jet and fly to London. And this agent, she’s hitting the ground naked. You need to provide her with some clothes, so to speak.”

Riess didn’t speak. One agent, without support, coming to lift Ruslan and his son. He couldn’t begin to imagine how she would pull it off.

But sitting in the office, his Ambassador fixing him with a gaze as heavy and serious as stone, he had to believe it was possible. Certainly Garret believed it.

Riess nodded. “All right. I’ll hit the Meridien first. You want me to come by after I make contact?”

“If it’s pressing. Otherwise, it can wait until the morning. You’ve still got the NSS on you?”

“Yeah, ever since Sunday. They’re not trying to be subtle about it.”

“Then contact only if it’s pressing. They see you rushing out to my place in the middle of the night, they’ll be asking a lot of questions.”

Riess thought about the way the NSS asked questions, and said nothing.

He ran into Aaron Tower, coming out of Lydia Straight’s office.

“Have a good talk with the Ambassador?”

“I suppose, yeah.”

“He told you about Malikov?”

“Asked what I thought the DPM response would be.”

“Feeding frenzy.”

“Feeding frenzy,” Riess agreed.

Tower tucked his hands into his trouser pockets, straightening up to his full height, grinning, as if they were sharing some private joke. It made Riess nervous, and suddenly he found himself wondering if they’d crossed paths by accident, if Tower wasn’t already aware of what the Ambassador was planning.

It was an open secret at the Embassy—and at the NSS, and probably in downtown Tashkent, and possibly as far south as Kabul—that Aaron Tower was the Uzbek COS, Chief of Station, for the CIA, though there was no official confirmation of that fact, nor was there likely ever to be. On paper, Tower was listed as the Mission’s Special Adviser to the Ambassador on Matters of Counterterrorism, a title that defied easy abbreviation or acronymizing, and consequently was never used, except by the handful of personnel who hadn’t actually figured out what Tower really did.

What he really did was run CIA operations in Uzbekistan. Which meant he had what the Company liked to refer to as “assets” inside the military and the NSS and the Oliy Majlis and God only knew where else. Sometimes Riess wondered why they were called “assets,” as opposed to, say, sources, or even contacts. He supposed it was a holdover from the Cold War, when Communism versus Capitalism had defined the ideological battle, rather than Communism versus Democracy.

So Tower had assets, and he also had agents, some undetermined number of officers in play throughout the country. They took their orders from him, brought their findings to him. Who they were, where they were, what they were doing at any given time, Riess didn’t know. He never asked. He wasn’t supposed to.

But it occurred to him then that Tower most certainly had either an asset or an officer in both of the hotels Garret had told him to check for Carlisle, and that however he was going to proceed come nightfall, he’d better do it carefully.

“You’re the Deputy Pol Chief, Chuck,” Tower said. “What’s your guess?”

“I’m sorry, for what?”

“Malikov’s successor.”

“You mean until they hold an election?”

Tower’s grin expanded. “Yeah, before that.”

“Ganiev.”

“You mean Sevara.”

“Right, that’s what I meant.” Riess laughed. “If you’ll excuse me, sir, I’ve got to get back to my desk.”

“Ah, yeah, McColl. Tightass. You make sure he remembers who we’re working for, okay?”

“I’ll make sure he knows the Ambassador’s in charge.”

“Not the Amb, Chuck. The President. We work for the President.” Tower’s grin dropped a fraction. “Don’t ever forget that.”

“I won’t.”

“Good man,” Tower said, and he flashed the grin one last time, then moved out of the way, and Riess continued on, past the Marines and the locked doors, to the relative safety of his desk.

Where he sat and wondered if Aaron Tower didn’t already know about a British agent named Carlisle, and why she was coming to Uzbekistan.

CHAPTER 11

Uzbekistan—Tashkent—Hotel InterContinental

16 February, 1924 Hours (GMT+5:00)

It was a nice room, recently renovated, with new carpet and modern furnishings and a sleigh-backed king-size bed, and it reeked of a scent that Chace was certain came advertised as smelling like “Spring” or “Flowers” or some other nonsense printed on the bottle. She locked the door after her, threw the deadbolt, fixed the security bar in place, then dumped her duffel on the bed and pulled back the curtains, looking out at Tashkent at night. Lights glittered off a body of water in the near distance, some artificial lake in the nearby park, and she watched as headlights drifted along the road to the south—Husniddin Asomov, she remembered—and winked in the windows of the nearby apartments.

She was tired and sore, and it made her feel acutely aware of how long she’d been out of the game. She’d been unable to sleep on the flight, despite her best efforts, and that bothered her, too. In the past, she’d always managed to steal sleep on the way to a job, with the knowledge that once things started rolling on the ground, rest would be hard to come by. This time, as often as she had closed her eyes and repositioned herself in the too-narrow-and-not-enough-legroom seat on the plane, sleep evaded her.

She watched the lights flicker on the lake, and wondered what Tamsin was doing. She wondered just what she was doing.

She closed the drapes, and brought out the guidebook and map she had purchased at the airport after she’d cleared Customs. The guidebook was rife with typos and misspellings, badly translated from Uzbek, and full of useless advice about the sort of things she absolutely must do before leaving Tashkent. Apparently, seeing a ballet at the Alisher Navoi Opera House topped the list, followed closely by enjoying a traditional meal of samsa—a meat-and-onion pie—and plov—a pilau rice dish.

She tossed the book into a corner, then unfolded the map, and was heartened to see that it, at least, looked to be more useful. After studying it for several minutes, orienting herself in the city, Chace refolded it and placed the map aside on the desk. Then she opened her duffel, digging out first a GPS unit she’d bought in London, then the satellite phone she had purchased when she’d bought the pager she’d given to Porter, and finally, its charger.

The GPS unit was nothing out of the ordinary, and Chace switched it on, making certain the battery was still charged and that it still functioned as it should. The LCD lit up, and she moved to the window, canting the device to capture an uninterrupted signal. She took a reading, read the numbers, then cleared the screen and took a second reading, seeing that the figures matched the first set. Satisfied, she switched the GPS off and replaced it in the duffel, then picked up the satellite phone.

At first blush, it looked like nothing more than a slightly out-of-date mobile, and could be easily mistaken for such, until one extended the antenna. Stowed against the back of the unit, it swung out and away from the phone, a thick, black baton. Chace deployed the antenna, switched the power to on, then punched in her access code. For several seconds, there was nothing on the display but the luminous green glow, and she’d just begun to think something had gone wrong with the device when it beeped in her hand, and the word “Iridium” appeared on the screen. The bars marking signal strength expanded, then settled, and Chase released the breath she’d been holding, relieved. If the phone failed, the exfil would go all to hell—she’d have to find a way to procure another, and in Tashkent, she doubted that would be easy.

But the phone was working, and that, at least, meant that she had a way to get home.

Chace switched the phone off, collapsed the antenna, then plugged the charger into the outlet by the desk, grateful that the hotel sockets didn’t require an adapter. She hooked the phone to the charger, waited until she was certain it was drawing power, then turned once more to the bed.

The telephone on the nightstand rang.

Chace started, stared at it as it jangled a second time, its message light shimmering in time with the noise, and she felt her stomach contract with sudden vertigo.

She hadn’t been made at the airport; she was creaky, she knew that, she was maybe off her game, but she was sure of at least that much. There’d been no surveillance in the lobby that she’d seen when she’d checked in, no one casually disinterested in her business, nobody carefully avoiding her gaze.

No one knew she was here. No one was supposed to know.

But her phone was ringing, and unless it was a wrong number, unless it was the front desk calling, it meant that she was wrong, that she had been made. She had the sickening fear that it was someone from the U.K. Embassy on the other end of the line, someone from the Station who wanted to know why Tara Chace was in Tashkent, and what she was planning on doing here.

The phone rang a fourth time, and finally Chace answered.

“Ms. Carlisle?” The voice was male, American.

“Yes? Who is this?”

“I heard from a mutual friend that you were coming to town,” the voice said. “I thought maybe I could show you around?”

“I didn’t catch your name.”

“I’m sorry, it’s Charles. Chuck.”

“Tracy,” Chace said. “A guide would be wonderful, Charles. Is there anything in particular you’d like to show me? I’ve heard the performances at the Alisher Navoi are not to be missed.”

He laughed. “If you’d like to see ballet, sure. There’s a lot to see in town. Would you like to get together, so we can discuss it?”

“I’m a little tired after my trip, I don’t much feel like going out.”

“I can come there, if you like.”

“Would you?”

“Take me about an hour and a half.”

“Call me from the lobby when you arrive,” Chace said, and hung up.

Charles called from the lobby one hour and fifty minutes later, and four minutes after that, knocked on the door of Chace’s room. She loosed the security bar and the deadbolt, turned the knob just enough to free the latch from the wall, and stepped away, putting her back to the wall.

“It’s open,” Chace said.

The door swung in, and a man stood on the threshold, slender, perhaps an inch or two shorter than Chace, brown curly hair, wearing a black wool coat and heavy trousers. He entered in a lean, one hand at his side, the other still on the doorknob, looking around as he said, “Tracy?” and from the posture and the motion, she knew he wasn’t, at least, an immediate threat, and she felt the tension go from her shoulders and back, felt her stomach settle a fraction.

She waited until he was through before she said, “Charles.”

He turned, smiled, and Chace didn’t return it, closing the door and then locking it once again, as she had done before. He was still standing exactly as he had been when she turned back, so this time Chace did smile.

Then she grabbed his crotch with her left hand, and shoved him back against the wall.

“Hey—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Chace said, and tightened her grip, feeling the heat and weight of his testicles in her hand. He was wearing boxers, which made the holding of him easier. He grimaced but didn’t move. As far as immobilization manuevers went, it was entirely inadequate, and Chace knew it; it kept his hands free, and it absolutely allowed for a counterattack, even if she were to bear down with all of her might. As a psychological move, however, it had no equal, and for the moment, it seemed to be doing its job quite well.

Maintaining her grip, Chace began patting him down with her right. She found a wallet in an inside jacket pocket, and a small digital camera in an outer one. She tossed both onto the bed. She ran her free hand through his hair, then along his neck, front, and back, then over the front of his chest, working lower until she had to crouch to check his legs.

“This might be fun if you loosened your grip,” Charles said.

Chace ignored him, working upward again, this time feeling along the backs of his legs, over his buttocks, checking the waistband of his pants, untucking his shirt, sliding her hand up over his back.

Satisfied, she let him go.

“Do I get a turn now?” Charles asked.

She continued to ignore him, moving to the desk, pulling out the chair there. She motioned for him to sit in it, and after a second, he complied. From the bed, she picked up the wallet and searched through it.

“Charles Riess?” Chace asked.

“Yeah. But I would have told you that if you asked.”

Chace tossed the wallet back to him, picked up the camera. “Why this?”

“I thought you might like to see some faces.”

Chace considered, then tossed the camera to him as well. He caught it as he had the first, but with a little more distress.

“Easy!”

“Show me.”

Charles Riess stared at her, then turned his attention to the camera in his hands, switching it on and then turning it, showing Chace the display window, offering it back to her.

“First picture is of Ruslan Malikov,” he said.

Chace took the camera again, peering at the tiny screen. The color and resolution were both good, the image clear, if small. The picture of Ruslan Malikov was a headshot, apparently taken from another document, rather than of the man in his actual life. It gave no sense of scale, no hint of the man’s height, but based on his face alone, Chace knew she would recognize him if she saw him. He was rectangular-faced, brown eyes, black hair cut short but well styled, with a strong jaw and a strong nose. Chace read him as more Russian than Uzbek, with no obvious Asian influence to his features.

“The next one is his son, Stepan,” Charles Riess said.

Chace pressed the button beside the screen, scrolling from one image to the next. Unlike the first one, the shot of the boy was of poor quality. The best Chace could tell from it was that Stepan was a toddler, with dark hair and dark eyes, and he owned a T-shirt with a happy bulldog printed on its front.

“Anything else?” Chace asked.

“Yeah, two others. Sevara and her heavy, Zahidov.”

The third headshot was of a beautiful young woman, her hair immaculately styled, her eyes almond-shaped and so green that Chace suspected contact lenses. In the picture, Sevara had her hands steepled, and her nails were long and lacquered a light tan. She wore jewelry, a necklace of precious stones, and earrings that matched. Unlike with her brother, Chace could see the Uzbek influence in her features.

“Same mother as her brother?”

“So we’ve been led to believe. Ruslan looks more like his father, obviously.”

Chace nodded, and scrolled to the last picture, the man named Zahidov. Like the pictures of Ruslan and Sevara, this one, too, was taken from a file shot, and was another headshot. Perhaps because Riess had described him as Sevara’s “heavy,” Chace had expected someone who appeared bigger and older, and it surprised her that the man she was looking at seemed to be no older than his early thirties, and, at least from his features, quite slight. His hair was brown, brushed back over a high forehead, and he wore glasses, and behind the lenses his eyes were brown as well. His mouth was small, his lips thin.

Chace looked at the picture of Zahidov for several seconds, then scrolled back, slowly, taking her time with each face, before handing the camera back to Riess.

“On the map.” Chace pointed to it on the desk behind Riess, and Riess turned in his chair to see what she meant. “Find Ruslan’s house and mark it. Mark Sevara’s as well, and this Zahidov fellow’s.”

Riess nodded and turned around in the seat. Chace took the complimentary hotel pen from the complimentary hotel notepad on her nightstand and handed both to him, then stepped back, watching. Riess unfolded the map and quickly marked four locations, then, using the pen, pointed each out to her in turn. She was pleased to see that he’d only circled the locations, making no other notation.

“Ruslan lives here, on Uzbekiston Street, number fourteen.” Riess moved the pen. “Sevara’s house is here, on Glinka; it overlooks Babur Park. She shares it with her husband, Denis Ganiev—Ganiev is the DPM in charge of the Interior Ministry. The marriage is for show, she’s rarely there.” He moved the pen again. “Mostly, you can find her here, on Sulaymonova—she’s got the penthouse suite.” He moved the pen a final time. “And Zahidov has an apartment here, on Chimkent, but as I understand it, he’s never there.”

“Why not?”

“He’s screwing Sevara, so mostly you can find him at the suite on Sulaymonova. Either that or at the Interior Ministry, where Zahidov seems to do his best work.”

“He’s NSS?”

Riess set down the pen. “Yeah, inasmuch as he uses his position at the NSS to support Sevara. It’s one of the things that’s made her so powerful. She’s got the secret police on her side.”

Chace nodded, picked up the map from the desk, studying the locations.

“There’s something else you should know,” Riess said.

“Hmm?”

“Malikov’s dying.”

Chace lowered the map. “What?”

“He had what appears to be a stroke before dawn this morning. He’s in the hospital, and the prognosis isn’t looking good.”

“A stroke? Is that likely?”

“I’d have thought a heart attack, but a stroke seems reasonable.”

“What was he doing when he had the stroke, do you know?”

Riess shook his head, raising an eyebrow at her.

“Was he alone?” Chace asked.

“There’s a rumor that he was with one of his mistresses.”

“He’s sixty-seven?”

“Sixty-eight, officially. Maybe as old as seventy-two.”

“There you go.” Chace refolded the map, dropping it back onto the desk. “It was an assassination attempt. Someone upped his Viagra dose, tried to give him another heart attack. Got a stroke instead. Messy.”

“And difficult to prove, if you’re right.”

Chace shrugged, turning back to the bed and sitting on the edge. The fatigue of the trip returned, sliding down her shoulders like oil.

Riess was looking at her, trying his best to not appear curious.

“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.

Both men had been killed in the same ambush in March of 2002. Crocker had been D-Ops at the time, Weldon had been the Deputy Chief, and C had been Sir Wilson Stanton-Davies, Barclay’s immediate predecessor.

“You didn’t authorize it?” Rayburn asked.

Crocker refocused his attention, putting it back in the present and on Rayburn. “Simon.”

“You’ve been known to play fast and loose with the rules in the past, Paul.”

“Not that fast and loose. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t have authorized the transfer of four Starstreak missiles.”

“Someone did. The DC? C?”

“I can’t see Sir Wilson doing it, not without informing either one of us. And Weldon would barely change his tie without clearing it with both C and the FCO first.”

“Someone outside the Firm, then.”

“Would have to be, and someone fairly senior, at that. Derek Moss knew his job. He would never have undertaken an operation without informing me, not an operation like that.”

“Pity you can’t ask him about it.”

Crocker nodded, lapsing into silence and thought once again.

“One more thing for you, tangential, really, but it just came in from the Station in Tashkent.”

Oh, Christ, they’ve made Chace, Crocker thought. “Oh?”

“Craig Gillard is reporting that President Malikov suffered a cerebral vascular accident yesterday. He’s in hospital, and it looks severe. Word is, he’s lost all function along one side, and that he’s nonverbal.”

The relief Crocker felt was short-lived. Chace hadn’t been blown, but if Malikov was about to check out, it meant she had even less time than any of them had imagined to get Ruslan out of the country. He only hoped that Chace knew about Malikov’s condition.

“Media reported it?” Crocker asked.

“Nothing as yet. I suspect they’re trying to keep it hushed up until they get the succession details worked out.”

“Most likely.”

“It’ll be Sevara,” Rayburn said. “She’ll need two or three weeks to get the DPMs aboard, as well as backing from the White House.”

“There’s the brother.”

“Be serious, Paul. The brother has about as much influence as his father does at this point.”

Crocker didn’t say anything. Rayburn set down his coffee again and got to his feet.

“Sorry I couldn’t be of more help about the Starstreaks. If I dig up anything more, I’ll pass it along.”

“Simon?”

“Hmm?”

“Who else knows you’re looking at this?”

Rayburn shrugged. “Nancy. My contact at MOD. Why?”

“I’m not worried about your PA, but your contact at the Ministry of Defense, will he keep his mouth closed?”

“My contact at the MOD is a she, Paul,” Rayburn corrected mildly. “And she understands the necessity of discretion.”

“Good.”

“You don’t want anyone to know you’re looking into this?”

“Not yet.”

Rayburn shrugged a second time, as if the whole cloak-and-dagger aspect of their business was beyond boredom to him. It was Crocker’s suspicion that to Rayburn, that was indeed the case. He was more interested in solving the acrostic than in solving the murder, so to speak.

“Won’t breathe a word of it,” Rayburn said.

Crocker escorted him to the door, letting him out, then closing it once more and returning to his desk. He lit a cigarette, and turned to look out at the river and the rain.

Before he’d become C, Frances Barclay had chaired the Joint Intelligence Committee. It was a position of power, and one that allowed him to liaise with personnel in both the Foreign and Home Offices, as well as the Ministry of Defense. It was an associated SIS position, with constant and regular access to the business of the Firm.

It was exactly the kind of position, in fact, that would allow for the authorization and transfer of four Starstreak MANPADs to Islamabad Station, and with enough clout to require the Station’s silence in the process.

Crocker wondered if he wasn’t manufacturing the theory wholly, rather than tailoring it to fit the known facts. After all, the only thing he truly knew was that Barclay had asked him about a MANPAD alert coming out of Chechnya, an alert of which Crocker himself had been unaware. It was circumstantial in the extreme.

But Barclay did have both means and opportunity to initiate the transfer, and to do so at a time when taking such a risk wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility. Motive remained the question.

Crocker crushed out his cigarette, feeling the beginnings of a new headache.

He didn’t know why Barclay had done it. He doubted he could prove it, even if he did.

But the more he thought about it, the more certain he became.

Somewhere in Central Asia, someone was in possession of four surface-to-air missiles.

And Frances Barclay—C—had been the one to send them there.

CHAPTER 14

Uzbekistan—Dzhizak Province—

3 km SSE Kazakhstan Border

17 February, 1343 Hours (GMT+5:00)

The day was clear and cold and bright, and Chace pulled off her sunglasses to get a better look at the boy at the side of the road.

She put him around thirteen, maybe a little older, too thin, wearing the quirky combination of traditional-meets-West clothing she’d seen so much of before leaving Tashkent that morning. The boy wore tan trousers, his pant legs tucked into the tops of his calf-high boots, coated with dust, scuffed and scratched, with a pair of slippers on over them that could be easily removed upon entering a private home or a mosque. His T-shirt was red, just visible beneath the striped wraparound cloak he wore, belted with a sash at his waist. His black hair was mostly hidden beneath the fleeced tilpak atop his head, its flaps dangling at his cheeks. Unlike what she’d seen in Tashkent, though, this boy’s clothing showed obvious wear, and she could see where both the cloak and the trousers had been repeatedly repaired.

There’d been a mining town some twelve kilometers back, built around an enormous plant constructed to heat-leach gold from the low-grade ore brought up by miners. The plant and, Chace supposed, the mines as well were foreign-operated, most likely by some concern out of the E.U. She’d wondered idly what the kickback to the Uzbek Government had been. She’d imagined it to be substantial, and wondered if the return in gold was worth the cost.

The boy was likely from that community, though what he was doing out here alone she had no idea, and saw no sign of a ready explanation. He had no herd of goats or other livestock requiring attention, and carried nothing but a ratty fabric bag slung over his shoulder. The bag, like his T-shirt, was red, but faded almost pink.

He stood and stared as she slowed the car to a stop, then rolled down her window. The car was a Range Rover, left-hand drive, and at least twenty years old. Chace had purchased it from a middle-aged man she’d met at the Art Center in Tashkent early that morning. She’d paid him five thousand dollars for it, in cash, and he’d been so delighted he’d offered to sell her his brother’s motorcycle as well. Chace had, for a moment, entertained the idea; a second vehicle, stashed in Tashkent, might come in useful. But her plan ultimately required moving not just her, but two others, and a motorcycle would be inadequate to that task.

“Assalom aleikum,” Chace said.

The boy grinned at her accent. “Waleikum assalom.”

“Siz Ingliz tilida gapirasizmi?”

He shook his head. “Yoq, Uzbekcha. Uzbekcha, ha?”

Chace shook her head, bringing up a grin to match the boy’s own.

“Men Ingliz bilmayman,” the boy said. “Russki?”

Chace switched to Russian, answering, “A little.”

“I have a little Russian, too,” the boy said, answering in the same. “You are American?”

“English.”

“You are lost?”

“A little, I think. I’m looking for the market.”

He reappraised her, his look clearly questioning her sanity. “No market.”

“Across the border. For guns.”

“Oh, yes, there is that market.”

“How far?”

“It moves. Not know where now.”

“You help me find it?”

The look that doubted Chace’s sanity returned, more amused. “Why you go there?”

“I need guns,” Chace answered simply.

The boy considered that, then, seeing no flaw in the logic, nodded. “They have guns. More than guns, also. Drugs. Girls.”

“I will pay. You be my guide, I will pay.” She reached into her coat, freeing one of the bills from the bundle in the inner pocket, showing him an American twenty-dollar bill. “For you.”

The boy stuck out his hand, and Chace extended the bill, letting him take it. He examined it with deep suspicion, drawing the paper taut between both hands, holding it up to the sunlight. Chace doubted he could tell a forgery from the real thing, and the whole affectation struck her as vaguely charming. She fought back a smile.

Once the boy was satisfied, he tucked the bill into his trousers, beneath the folds of his cloak, then walked around the Range Rover, coming from behind it. Chace tracked him in the mirrors, and this time she did smile as she watched the boy rise on tiptoe at the rear of the vehicle, to peer into the back. Seeing nothing that alarmed him, he continued around to the right-hand side.

Chace leaned across the seat and unlocked the door, shoving it open, and the boy climbed in, looking around at the interior of the vehicle. Then he closed the door, sighed, stretched, and leaned back in the front passenger seat. Chace fought the urge to laugh.

The boy straightened again, then indicated himself with his right thumb. “Javlon.”

Chace indicated herself. “Tracy.”

“Tracy,” the boy echoed, then pointed out the windscreen, down the narrow dirt road. “Tracy, that way.”

At some point early on they must have crossed the border into Kazakhstan, but there was nothing to mark it, and Chace knew that, at least in this part of the country, such designations were meaningless. Calling the border porous was generous. To the south, of course, the situation was different; the border into Afghanistan was watched, if not by Uzbekistan’s forces, then by the United States.

They stopped three times, in three separate villages, the first shortly after Javlon had climbed aboard, which he explained to her was his home. There were a handful of houses, and a small mosque, serving as the community center as much as the heart of worship. Javlon sprang from the car upon their arrival, without explanation, and for several minutes Chace waited, wondering if he was going to come back. No one emerged from any of the buildings, not even the mosque.

After five minutes, though, Javlon returned, climbing in, and after him came a handful of others, children and women, all silently watching his departure. Chace saw no men in the community.

Javlon pointed her north again, then, shortly thereafter, west, until they hit a second village. He again leaped from the car, all but accosting an older man drawing water from a well that had been dropped in the center of the square. She heard a hasty conversation in what she supposed was Uzbek, but could just have easily been one of the other half-dozen regional dialects. Returning, Javlon gave her new directions, still heading west, and at the third village, he repeated the process once more.

“Close,” he informed her upon returning this time. “Very close. They move always.”

“How close?”

The boy thought, then held up his left hand, splaying his fingers.

“Five kilometers?”

“Five, yes.”

She watched the odometer then, and after three and a half came to a stop. Javlon looked at her in confusion, and then, when she killed the engine, in something approaching alarm.

“I want you to do something,” Chace told him.

He looked at her with open suspicion, his right hand moving with almost comical stillness to the handle of the door.

“Nothing bad,” she assured him, and then, very deliberately, still smiling at him, reached again into her coat and freed two more bills from her roll. She was drawing blind, mostly because she didn’t want to reveal exactly how much cash she was carrying, and was therefore relieved to see that she had pulled another two twenties, and not any of the larger denominations. She handed the bills to Javlon.

He took them, but the suspicion remained on his face.

Chace pointed out the windshield, over the front of the car. “It’s that way?”

“Yes, that way.”

“I want you to go first,” Chace said carefully. “You understand? You go first, with the money. You buy—”

“Buy?”

Chace gestured, miming the exchange of money. “Buy, yes?”

Javlon nodded.

“You buy a gun, please.” Chace raised her right hand, turning it sideways, extending her index finger, making the shape of a pistol, careful to not point at the boy. “A gun. And bullets. You bring them back to me here.”

Javlon’s face scrunched in confusion, and Chace was unsure if he was trying to fathom her directions or the logic behind them.

“Gun for you?” he asked.

“Yes, but you get it for me first, yes?”

“Then you go buy more guns?”

Chace nodded.

He thought about that for several more seconds, then suddenly let loose with a long “Ohh!” and began nodding.

“You have no gun,” he deduced.

“That’s right.”

“Oh!” He touched his forehead, grinning. “Smart.”

Chace gestured out the windshield once more. “You go. I wait here.”

She watched as he walked up the road, over a rise, then down and out of sight. She checked her watch, and wished, passionately, that she had bought cigarettes before leaving Tashkent.

After ten minutes, she opened her door and got out of the vehicle. This part of the country—countries, Chace corrected herself—was desert, hard dusty earth and a paucity of greenery. Chilly during the day, it would become freezing at night. But if she was still out here after sunset, the weather would be the least of her problems. She had no desire to walk into an open-air gun show in the middle of nowhere at sundown; it seemed like a very good way to make sure she wouldn’t walk out again, even if she was armed when she did it.

It was why she’d sent Javlon ahead, after all. A Western woman with a lot of cash on a shopping trip was going to be seen as an easy mark, and she knew it. Before any actual business could take place, she’d have to prove to the vendors that she wasn’t a valid target.

A wind came up, swirling dust off the ground, providing the only noise. She resisted the urge to check her watch again, then surrendered.

Twenty-one minutes.

Then thirty.

And then, coming back over the rise, Javlon, grinning from ear to ear, holding a pistol in one hand and a box of ammunition in the other. When he saw her, he began jogging toward her.

“Tracy! Look!”

Alarmingly, he pointed the pistol at her, and for an awful second, Chace wondered if she would have to kill him, if he didn’t kill her first. But the triumphant grin remained on his thin face as he closed the distance, the pride of a job well done, and when he reached her, she took the pistol from his grip quickly, and without any resistance.

“Good, yes?” he asked her, breathless. “Good gun?”

Chace examined the pistol, releasing the magazine, checking to see that it was, in fact, unloaded, before sliding back the breech and holding up the weapon, to cast sunlight into the chamber. She checked the barrel, saw nothing obstructing it, then turned the pistol and examined the firing pin. She’d expected the boy to bring her a Russian gun—given the proximity to Russia and the former Soviet involvement in the region—but instead he’d brought her a Turkish clone of a Czech pistol, the Sarsilmaz M2000.

It wasn’t the pistol she’d have chosen for herself, but Javlon could have done worse, and satisfied that the gun would function, she set it down on the hood of the Range Rover. The box of ammunition was unlabeled, the cardboard cracked and peeling. When she opened it, she found it held only sixteen rounds. She checked each bullet one by one, discovering that only half were the required 9 mm. Of those eight, she trusted five of them enough to load them into the magazine. The rest she left in the box.

“Good, yes?” Javlon asked.

“Good,” Chace agreed, slapping the magazine into place. She racked the slide, cocking the pistol, then checked the safety. Then she untucked her shirt and slid the gun into her pants, at the front. Javlon watched, his eyes growing wider.

“Okay,” Chace told him after she had smoothed her shirt back into place. “All done now.”

“All done?”

“You can go.”

Javlon shook his head. “I come with.”

Chace shook her head. “No.”

“But I come.”

“No. Dangerous.”

The boy shrugged.

Chace pointed at the ground. “Wait here.”

“I come.”

“No, you wait here,” Chace said, growing frustrated. She pointed at the ground beneath her feet again, more insistently. “Wait here. I come back.”

Javlon folded his arms across his chest, giving her a look that seemed to say she was both stupid and unreasonable.

“Wait here,” Chace said a last time, and climbed back into the Rover.

She left him at the side of the road.

It was closer to three kilometers than one and a half, and she ended up off the road entirely, finally parking at the edge of a gulley. She could see smoke from cooking fires rising from below, and as soon as she stopped the engine, she heard the din of livestock and voices and music. She got out of the car, locked it, pocketing the keys, then removing her sunglasses. She counted six other vehicles, all of them dusty, rusted, and at least as old as her own, parked around the edges of the market. The scent of roasting meat, fuel, and manure mixed in the dry, cold air.

She approached the edge of the gulley, hopped down into the dry creek bed, and made her way toward the noise. The livestock came first, goats tethered in groups of three or four to stakes driven into the ground, chickens in too-small metal cages lined up around them, dropping feathers every time they tried to flap their wings. A couple of dogs were similarly tied.

Past the livestock, the market, such as it was, began in earnest, where the gulley grew wider and more shallow. Chace experienced a painful déjà vu, because she had been here before, not here, but almost here, in Saudi Arabia, a place called the Wadi-as-Sirhan. It had been night then, and Tom had died there, and for a moment the memory assailed her, and she had to stop to fight it off.

A large tent anchored the center of the bazaar, Soviet Army surplus, and framing the approach to its entrance, along both sides, stood pitted and bent metal folding tables, with companion benches. Three separate cooking fires burned nearby, meat sizzling over the flames, fat spitting on the grills. A ragged mutt prowled between the tables, looking for scraps. Music from three separate boom boxes competed with each other, crackling from burst speakers, country-and-western and Europop.

Spreading out, filling the rest of the gulley around the tent, were the vendors, most of them with their wares displayed on dirty blankets or rugs, a few having gone so far as to raise canopies of one sort or another on sticks, to provide shelter and an illusion of privacy. Chace saw bootleg cassettes and CDs, old magazines, bits and pieces of machinery salvaged from who knew what, and piles upon piles of army surplus equipment. There were flashlights and entrenching tools and MREs and radios that she suspected would never be made to transmit or receive again. Most of the surplus was Soviet-era, but among them she spied bits and pieces of more modern equipment, matériel either bought or stolen from Coalition forces, even what appeared to be a set of NVGs. Three separate vendors were selling drugs, pot and hash and opium and their big brother, heroin.

And there were weapons, so many weapons. Not counting the ones being carried by the vendors and the shoppers, stacked precariously in makeshift displays, arrayed on their blankets, piled one upon the other. The collections spanned the ages, it seemed, weapons that had migrated throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia over the last sixty-plus years. From the Second World War through Korea and Vietnam, the tools of war that had survived and been passed on from one set of hands to another, with varying degrees of care. There were pistols from Vietnam and rifles from the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, revolvers from Korea and knives from the Second World War. There were swords and spears and axes of indeterminate origin and provenance, and a wide selection of knives that at first glance seemed to be of local manufacture, and fairly high quality. Ammunition boxes formed makeshift barriers between stalls, labeled in Cyrillic and Mandarin and Uzbek and English. She saw grenades, she saw flak jackets, she saw collapsible batons, she saw submachine guns.

She stopped again, this time to orient herself, aware that she was drawing eyes. It didn’t alarm her; it was expected. There were perhaps some thirty to forty people around, either selling or buying. Almost all of them looked to be ethnic Uzbeks, though there were no doubt Kazakhs and Kyrgyzs among them.

And all were men, to the last of them, with the exception of the only other woman Chace could discern, standing at the closed flap of the tent. The men ranged in age from late teens to perhaps mid-fifties, most dressed in the traditional mix of cloaks and boots, a few in the post-Soviet work fashion, the majority with their heads covered. The woman—or girl—looked to be fifteen at the oldest, wearing a filthy robe. Her legs were bare, and Chace suspected that, beneath the robe, she wore nothing else. If she was cold, she did a good job of hiding it.

While Chace watched, the tent flap parted, and a squat man emerged, bearded, pulling up his trousers. Past him, inside, Chace could see two other girls, each naked, moving to cover themselves. The squat man exchanged words with another, seated at the table near the entrance, then stopped, looking her way. Another man, seated at one of the tables, rose and headed into the tent.

Chace heard movement behind her, ignored it for the moment. They still didn’t know what to make of her. No one would try anything, not yet.

She tried to put a cap on what she was feeling, forced herself to look away from the tent and back to the vendors, began walking around the circle, looking at the items on each blanket as she passed. She stopped briefly at a display of knives, seeing a bone-handled blade that caught her fancy, thinking that she would need one of her own. In her periphery, she counted three men following her as a group, staying perhaps fifteen feet back. Two of them carried Kalashnikovs on straps at the shoulders. The third, the eldest of the three, wore a pistol in a holster around his waist.

Chace continued working her way around the market, finally completing her counterclockwise circuit at the largest collection of weapons for sale, to the left of the tent entrance. A grumpy-looking Uzbek in overalls and a work shirt watched over the wares, eyeing her with an expression that seemed caught between suspicion and amusement, yet undecided. Chace passed his wares, which seemed to be grouped without rhyme or reason, then stopped and doubled back, her eye snagging on a pistol half buried in a stack near the back of the makeshift stall. It was a semiauto, what looked to be a Smith & Wesson Mk 39, but at this distance, she couldn’t be sure. The men following her stopped when she did.

Chace pointed. “Can I see that?” she asked in Russian.

“You’re not Russian,” the vendor said. It wasn’t quite accusatory, but it came close.

“That one,” Chace said, indicating the pistol again. “The Smith and Wesson.”

“You have money?”

She smiled.

“You come here alone?”

She let her smile grow a fraction.

The man smiled in return, revealing the fact that he was missing his upper two front teeth. “You should not come alone.”

“That one,” Chace repeated.

The man hesitated, and Chace saw his eyes flick past her, to her left, to the three men who had been following, and she knew what was coming, and she knew what the cue would be.

The vendor nodded, shrugged, and started to turn away from her, toward the indicated stack of weapons. As he did, she heard the movement, caught the motion in her periphery, the Kalashnikovs coming off of the shoulders of both men. There was no haste in their movement, and it gave her all the time she needed. Chace swept her right hand up, over her belly, and brought out the pistol Javlon had bought for her. She struck down the safety with her thumb as she freed the weapon, had her finger settled well on the trigger by the time she put her sights on the vendor’s back.

Everyone stopped, the men with the rifles and the ones shuffling at their blankets and the ones eating their meals.

“Alone,” Chace said. “Not stupid.”

The vendor turned around to face her slowly, and when he saw the pistol pointed at him, raised his hands, showing her his palms.

“They lower the guns,” Chace told him. “Or I shoot.”

The vendor nodded and spoke in Uzbek. Chace risked turning her head enough to see the three, and to confirm that they had complied.

“Have to try,” the vendor said by way of explanation, still showing her his hands, and working in a shrug for added effect.

She looked back at him. “I understand.”

“If you want, we can do business now.” He smiled hopefully, again revealing his missing teeth.

“Yes, please,” Chace agreed, and with her free hand, she pointed to the stack once more, and added, “It’s the one sticking out at the bottom.”

The vendor nodded, turning to retrieve the gun in question, and as he did, Chace threw the safety back into place on the pistol, and slid it once more into the front of her trousers. She felt as much as heard the tension lift from the market then, and by the time the vendor was showing her the Smith & Wesson, conversations were resuming.

It took the better part of two hours to buy everything she thought she would need, or at least, to buy everything that they had that she thought she would need. When she was finished, the three men who had stalked her helped to carry her purchases back to the Range Rover, where she loaded them into the back. She’d bought three blankets off one of the vendors, and used them to cover the weapons, ammunition, and other equipment. Once everything was squared away, Chace walked back to the vendor with the missing teeth, and paid, in cash. No one bothered her, no one followed her as she returned to the car, poorer, but certainly better armed.

When she returned to the spot where she’d left Javlon, he was gone, and the sun was dipping below the horizon.

Chace waited by the side of the road until darkness came.

The boy never came back.

CHAPTER 15

London—Hertfordshire—

Crocker Family Residence

18 February, 0910 Hours GMT

“Dad!”

“No,” Crocker said flatly, in much the same tone and with much the same malevolence he employed on personnel in the Ops Room. In the Ops Room, it was quite effective, and had the desired result of instantly and entirely closing down any further debate.

Here at home was another story and if anything, seemed to have the opposite effect, as his elder daughter, Sabrina, was about to demonstrate. It didn’t help matters that he was at the kitchen stove, still in his dressing gown, a skillet in his hand, and more concerned with not breaking the yolks on the eggs he was frying up for the family breakfast than in exerting his authority. It was a position that, he concluded, lacked the appropriate authority.

“I’ve had the tickets for weeks!”

“I’m sure you can find a friend who wants them.”

“That’s not the point, Dad! Everyone’s going! Everyone!”

“You’re not everyone.”

Sabrina slammed her hand on the kitchen counter in frustration, then played her trump card. “Mom!”

From the kitchen table, Jennie didn’t look up from her newspaper. “Paul, it’s Saturday. She’s had the tickets for weeks.”

“She also performed abysmally on her mock exams,” Crocker countered. “She has lessons, she has that tutor coming, and she’s looking at her A-levels come summer. She needs to study.”

“I have been studying!” Sabrina complained. “Just because you’re never here to see it doesn’t mean it isn’t happening, Dad!”

I am going to lose this argument, Crocker realized.

“Please don’t raise your voice at me,” he said.

Sabrina sulked, glowering at him. “I apologize.”

“Has she been studying?” Crocker asked his wife.

At the table, his younger daughter, Ariel, in imitation of her mother, didn’t look up from her book. “When she’s not online chatting with her mates.”

“Die,” Sabrina instructed her sister.

“She has been studying, Paul,” Jennie confirmed. “I already told her she could go. She’ll do fine on her exams. Making her miserable every weekend between now and when she takes them won’t improve that performance.”

“I thought we wanted better than fine.”

Jennie glanced up, warning him with her eyes. “I told her she can go.”

“Who is she going with?” Crocker tried. “Who are you going with?”

“Friends from school,” his daughter answered.

“I’d like names, if you don’t mind.”

“Are you going to check them?”

Crocker shot her a look. In the Ops Room, it would have sent its target running for cover, or at its best, dropped them in their tracks. Here, it reinforced Sabrina’s defiance, and she raised her chin slightly, her mouth tight, daring him to admit that, yes, he kept his family under surveillance. She might not have understood exactly what her father did for a living, but she knew enough to know it was for the Government. He never discussed his work in front of the children, and very rarely with Jennie, but Sabrina was old enough and smart enough to understand what that omission meant. If she thought of her father as James Bond, though, she remained unimpressed. He doubted she actually believed that he would go so far as to keep his wife and children under watch.

Crocker moved the skillet off the burner, began sliding portions of breakfast onto the waiting plates beside the stove. “Is that boy going to be there? Lancelot or whatever his name is?”

At the table, Ariel giggled, then stifled the sound and studiously turned the page in her book. She was reading Brian Jacques’ latest, Crocker noted, yet another in a long sequence of novels about noble medieval mice.

“Tristan,” Sabrina corrected tightly. “No, I’m not seeing him anymore.”

“Who are you seeing?”

“Paul,” Jennie warned.

“I’m going with Trinnie, Dad. I’ll be spending the night at her place after the concert.”

“Trinnie’s the one with the spots?”

“It’s a mole, and she had it removed.”

“When will you be back?”

Sabrina smiled in quiet triumph, sensing the moment of capitulation. “Tomorrow morning.”

Crocker finished fixing the plates, moving them to the table. He had to clear his throat twice, loudly, before Ariel and Jennie would lower their respective reading materials to make room for the breakfasts. He set their food in front of them, and watched as each woman set about eating, without so much as the slightest acknowledgment of his culinary efforts.

“I have no authority in this house,” Crocker declared.

As if to confirm the statement, he got no response from any of them.

“Right,” he told his eldest. “Go. But you’re back by noon tomorrow.”

Sabrina kissed his cheek lightly, happy once more, and then was out of the room, a “thank you” drifting back toward him in her wake. He heard her feet thumping up the stairs, rushing back to her room. Apparently she had a wardrobe to plan.

Crocker poured himself a fresh cup of tea, then took his seat at the table. Jennie lowered her copy of the Guardian, smiling at him. Sometimes he thought his wife read the liberal paper just to annoy him.

From behind her book, Ariel asked, “So I’m supposed to have a broken leg, am I?”

Both Jennie and Crocker looked at her.

Ariel took her bookmark from where it rested beside her plate, set it between the pages, closed the book, and then looked at her parents. Her glasses, Crocker noticed, were smudged. Unlike Sabrina, Ariel went to great lengths not to care how she looked.

“Heard that, did you?” Jennie asked.

Ariel nodded. “I crashed my bicycle?”

“Tuesday,” Jennie said. “Yes, you narrowly avoided being hit by a car.”

“On Valentine’s Day?”

“You were distracted, obviously.”

Ariel made a face, disgusted by the thought of the kind of people who cared about things like boys and Valentine’s Day.

Crocker looked at Jennie. “Barclay called?”

“One of his assistants,” Jennie confirmed. “Last evening, before you got home.” She cast a glance to Ariel, then back to Crocker. “Little jugs have big ears.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this last night?”

“You did get home rather late, Paul. It slipped my mind.”

“Did he say why he was calling?”

“The assistant? He wanted to know if Ariel was all right. Said that Sir Frances was quite concerned.”

Ariel asked, “Who’s Sir Frances?”

“Daddy’s boss,” Jennie said.

“You lied to your boss? You told him I’d broken my leg?” Ariel asked Crocker.

“Yes.”

“Do I get a set of crutches, at least?”

Crocker didn’t respond, thinking. Jennie was looking at him, now mildly concerned.

Barclay’s checking the story, Crocker thought. Three days late, but he’s checking the story. Why now?

Crocker rose from the table, finishing his tea, leaving his breakfast half eaten. “I’m going to have to go into the office.”

Jennie nodded, which was bearable, but Ariel’s look of disappointment was bitter, and not.

“I’m sorry,” he told his younger daughter.

“You promised we’d go to the show at the Old Town Hall,” Ariel said softly. Like her mother, when Ariel was upset, she wouldn’t raise her voice. Rather, she lowered it until it was almost impossible to hear. “You promised we’d see the puppets, the ones from Japan.”

“I know. I am sorry, Ariel.”

“I’ll take you,” Jennie said. “We’ll have fun.”

“It’s not the same,” Ariel said, and then Crocker was out of the room, out of earshot.

The guilt dogged him all the way to London.

Ronald Hodgson was at Duty Ops when Crocker entered the Operations Room, supervising a skeletal staff, as appropriate for a weekend without a major operation in the offing. Crocker thought he did an admirable job of concealing his surprise.

“D-Ops on the floor,” Ron declared when he’d recovered, then added, to Crocker, “Didn’t expect you to be coming in today, sir.”

“No,” Crocker agreed, taking a position beside the Duty Ops Desk so he could survey the plasma wall. Lankford’s job in Morocco was posted on the map, with a callout designating the operation as “Bowfiddle,” and a notation reading, “Running—Joint.” Otherwise, there was nothing of immediate interest. Two other minor operations, one in Argentina, surveillance for the MOD, the other in Gibraltar.

Crocker stuck a cigarette in his mouth, lit it, called out to Alexis Ferguson at the MCO Desk. “Have we seen an exchange of signals with Tashkent Station in the last twenty-four hours? Anything at all?”

Alexis tapped her keyboard, quickly bringing up the log, scanning the entries. She was tall and quite thin, with a crown of short black hair, and she had to bend to peer at her monitor. “One exchange, sir, initiated nineteen-twenty-seven hours last night, London to Tashkent, with a reply logged as of oh-thirty-three, local.”

“Whose office initiated the communication?”

“The Deputy Chief, sir. Response by Station Number One, Craig Gillard.”

Crocker scowled, shook his head. Alison Gordon-Palmer had left the building before him the previous night. Unless she’d turned around and come back—which was entirely possible—the inquiry hadn’t been from her office. More to the point, if she was as deep into Sir Walter Seccombe’s pocket as Crocker was now beginning to suspect, she wouldn’t have risked tipping Chace’s run. Which meant that, while the communication appeared to have been initiated by the DC, it most likely hadn’t been.

Which left only two others who could make it look like the communication had come from the DC. Either D-Int, or C.

And Crocker couldn’t imagine why Simon Rayburn would want to hide any communication with a Station, let alone a communication to Tashkent, something he had both the authority and right to do whenever it suited him.

Which left C.

“We have a copy?” Crocker asked.

Alexis began tapping at her console again, then paused. After a moment, she resumed typing, faster, then paused again.

“I’m sorry, sir,” she said, slowly. “I can’t find a copy.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not here. It may have been purged to the server already.”

I doubt that, Crocker thought. “Who had MCO before you came on shift, Lex?”

“William Teagle, sir. He’s forty-eight hours off, due back Monday morning.”

Crocker turned back to Ron. “Is C in the building?”

One of the phones in the bank at the Duty Ops Desk began ringing, and Ron moved to answer it, saying, “I believe so, sir, yes.”

Crocker grunted, tapping the edge of his cigarette into the ashtray at Ron’s desk, waiting for him to finish with the call. Ron listened, murmured an assent, then hung up.

“C most definitely is in the building, sir,” Ron told him. “He’d like you to join him in his office, in fact.”

“Bloody hell,” was the only thing Crocker could think to say.

In almost every instance prior, Crocker had entered Barclay’s territory to find the other man firmly entrenched, either reigning from behind his desk or in the sitting area, where he would occupy the largest of the leather upholstered chairs arrayed around the coffee table. Barclay, like Crocker, like Seccombe, like Gordon-Palmer, like a thousand others throughout Whitehall, understood the power of the Desk, and the etiquette surrounding its use. Meet an underling while sitting behind it, you demonstrated your superiority in the chain of command; decline to stand upon receiving a guest, you indicated displeasure, or possibly even contempt; rise and move around it to greet, perhaps going so far as to offer a hand for the shaking, you declared anything from camaraderie to gratitude to friendship.

The etiquette of the desk, the ways it could be used, even abused, were legion. Crocker had sometimes thought, in his lighter moments, that the FCO and the Home Office could collaborate on a joint publication to be delivered to all senior civil servants. Your Desk and You: Strategies in Management, or something along those lines.

In the imagined publication, Crocker always imagined Barclay writing the foreword.

Entering the office on this Saturday morning, though, Crocker wondered if a new chapter mightn’t be in order. Sir Frances Barclay wasn’t behind the desk. He was waiting in front of it.

“You wanted to see me, sir?” Crocker said.

Barclay nodded, then gestured vaguely in the direction of the sitting area. Instead of preceding Crocker, he followed. He even went so far as to remain standing until after Crocker had taken a seat on the couch.

“None of my PAs are in, I’m afraid,” Barclay said. “Else I’d offer you something.”

“I’m fine, sir.”

“I suppose we could have a drink from the bar, though it seems early yet.”

“A touch, yes.”

“Well, then,” Barclay said, and stood for a moment longer before almost reluctantly taking his customary seat. He positioned himself sitting on the edge, leaning forward. He adjusted his eyeglasses, then exhaled, resolving himself. “I assume you know that Daniel called your home, and spoke to your wife.”

“You didn’t believe my daughter had broken her leg.”

“It isn’t beyond you to employ your family in a deception.”

“Why would I deceive you?”

Barclay made a single noise, the start of an abortive laugh. “Paul, I don’t think that really deserves a response.”

“Perhaps I should rephrase, then, sir. What would I be deceiving you about this time?”

“I don’t know,” Barclay replied, suddenly frank. “But I do know you’ve been to see the PUS at the FCO twice in the past week. And I know that when I make inquiries into the purpose of those visits, the answers I receive are, at best, evasive.”

“It’s as I told you before, sir. Sir Walter has been soliciting my input regarding the fiasco in KL.”

“I don’t believe you.” Barclay finally leaned back in his chair, lacing his fingers together, setting his hands in his lap. He looked at Crocker. “And unfortunately, I seem to have no way to compel the truth from you, considering that you’ve little over a week left in this job.”

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.

CHAPTER 18

London—Vauxhall Cross—Office of D-Ops

20 February, 1356 Hours GMT

“Julian Seale for you,” Kate said over the intercom.

Crocker set aside the notepad he’d been working on, flipping it over to keep his writings from prying eyes, taking up the handset on the telephone. He poked the blinking light with an index finger, then answered.

“Crocker.”

“Paul, can you come out to play?”

“In the park, you mean?”

“Preferably.”

“Regarding?”

“Better in person, I think.”

“Ominous.”

“Hoping you can answer a couple of questions for me, that’s all.”

“Thirty minutes,” Crocker told him. “Statue of Achilles.”

“And I hope there’s nothing significant in that,” the American said, and hung up.

Crocker replaced the phone, then stowed his papers in his desk, rose, and pulled his coat from the stand by the door. He stepped into the outer office, pulling it on. Kate looked up from her work.

“I’m going out. Should be back within the hour.”

“If anyone asks?” Kate prompted.

“I’m meeting Seale.”

She affected surprise. “And are you meeting Mr. Seale?”

“Does it matter?” Crocker snarled, heading out the door and into the hall. “If anyone asks, that’s what you’re to tell them.”

The door closed behind him before he could hear Kate’s reply.

Crocker made his way down the hall, frowning. Seale asking for a meet in short order wasn’t necessarily alarming; he could have requested it to address any number of things. It could simply be an after-action debrief between the two of them regarding the Morocco job; Lankford had returned from Casablanca, none the worse for wear, late the previous night, and Crocker had already read and approved his report of the action. It had contained nothing remarkable. The operation had been precisely as Seale had claimed.

But making his way to the lift, Crocker already knew it wasn’t Morocco that Seale wanted to talk about.

He hit the button for the lift, waited, and entered the car to find Alison Gordon-Palmer, a single folder tucked beneath her right arm, the only other occupant. The DC flashed him a smile in greeting.

“Down or up?”

“Down,” Crocker said.

“As am I. Simon and I are about to have words with the China Desk.” She indicated the folder beneath her arm.

“Seale,” Crocker said, by way of offering his own destination.

“Probably wants to know why Chace is in Tashkent, I imagine.”

“That’s my fear as well.”

“It was bound to happen. The Americans are more than a little touchy about Uzbekistan. If they think she’s tromping through their garden on official business, and if they think we’re actively keeping that fact from them, they’re going to want to know the reason.”

Crocker nodded, canted his head slightly, measuring his tone. “I didn’t know you knew it was Chace I’d sent to Uzstan.”

“I can count, Paul. And as of this morning, you still had three Minders in the Pit, one of them affixed to his desk by a chain about his ankle. No one else you could send, really.”

“But I didn’t tell you.”

She shook her head, her manner still mild.

“Seccombe did,” Crocker said, answering his own question.

“He’s very interested in the progress of the operation.” Alison Gordon-Palmer smiled slightly, and the elevator came to a stop. As she stepped out of the car, she said, “You’ll inform me if Chace stumbles across any MANPADs, won’t you, Paul? I know the PUS would be grateful for any such news.”

Then the doors were sliding closed, and Crocker was descending again, wondering how much lower he was likely to go.

Seale was waiting at the foot of the statue of Achilles, hands thrust in the pockets of his overcoat, squinting up at the enormous figure. Erected in 1822 and weighing in the neighborhood of thirty-three tons, it had caused something of a stir when it was unveiled as London’s first public nude. The statue has been cast from French cannon captured at Vitoria, Salamanca, Toulouse, and Waterloo, and was dedicated to Wellington and the men who had served under his command. At eighteen feet tall, it was one of the more impressive pieces of public sculpture to be found in any of London’s parks, at least by Crocker’s estimation.

“Don’t you love how the only armor he’s wearing is on his feet and shins?” the American asked. “Aside from the shield and whatever that is he’s got over his cock, I mean.”

“He was practically invincible,” Crocker said. “He could afford to stroll the battlefield naked.”

“Thing is, the greaves, they’re only on the front of his shins,” Seale mused, staring at the massive bronze. “No protection around the back. You’d think he’d have had something to cover his tendons.”

“Pride.”

“Before the downfall.” Seale turned away from the statue, his hands still deep in his pockets, and motioned with his right elbow to the branching path beyond him. “Shall we walk?”

Crocker almost smiled. When Cheng had said the same thing, his response had invariably been “I’d rather be carried.” Somehow, he didn’t think his relationship with Seale allowed for that kind of levity just yet, so he nodded, falling into step with Seale as the other man set the pace.

They walked without speaking for almost a hundred yards or so, each giving the other time to check the immediate surroundings for unwelcome eyes or ears, finding nothing. It was overcast, with drops of rain spattering down at irregular intervals, adding to the growing chill and the coming darkness. Not for the first time, Crocker wondered how much longer he’d be permitted to entertain this particular idiosyncrasy before someone from Internal Security or, worse, from Box came to have a chat with him about the dangers of discussing official business in one of Her Majesty’s parks.

“Why’s Tara Chace in Tashkent?” the American asked him.

And another point for the Deputy Chief, Crocker thought. “I’m sorry?”

“That’s her name, right? She’s the one Fincher replaced?”

“No, I know who she is. She’s in Tashkent?”

Seale glanced at him, annoyed, then went back to watching their surroundings. “Woman named Tracy Elizabeth Carlisle checked into the InterContinental in Tashkent on the sixteenth. Was met that night by an FSO from our embassy, in her room. He was there for several hours.”

Oh, for Christ’s sake, Chace, Crocker thought. You didn’t.

“It’s a common name.”

“I know, and it wouldn’t be a thing, but COS Tashkent got wind of it, got a description of Miss Carlisle, ran it back through Langley. And Tracy Elizabeth Carlisle, it turns out, was once-upon-a-time the work-name of Chace, Tara Felicity, formerly your Head of the Special Section. He got a description as well, and it matches. COS Tashkent wired COS London with the inquiry.”

Seale stopped, turned to face Crocker.

“So now COS London is inquiring. The CIA wants to know, Paul. Why didn’t you tell us you’ve got an operation running in Tashkent?”

“Why’s your COS Tashkent watching one of your FSOs?”

Seale shook his head. “You first.”

Crocker freed his pack of cigarettes from inside his coat, taking his time to pick one, then to light it. Taking the time to think. In all honesty, he was surprised Chace had made it this far before being made; he’d half expected to hear similar news via Tashkent Station, asking the very same thing and more than a little irate at the thought of an ex-Minder in their midst with no forewarning. That it had come from the CIA instead, and through these channels specifically, gave him something else to worry about.

It meant that COS Tashkent, whoever that was—Crocker couldn’t remember the name—truly had been watching the FSO in question for one reason or another. His knowledge of American embassy workings was limited, but he was reasonably certain that it wasn’t the CIA who was responsible for maintaining the security of the mission staff. So the FSO, whoever the hell he was, had earned the attention somehow.

That couldn’t be good news for Chace, not unless Crocker could somehow shut down Seale’s inquiry. Which meant giving the Americans something plausible, and that, in turn, meant burning either Seccombe or Barclay. One of the truths would have to come out now. Which one was the only question.

“Paul?” Seale asked. “If you’re fucking us in Uzstan, things are about to get ugly.”

Crocker hoped to hell that he was reading the tea leaves right.

“It’s about the Starstreaks, Julian.” Crocker took another drag on his cigarette, meeting Seale’s eyes. “The ones you told me about. Barclay lost them four years ago. He’s understandably anxious to get them back.”

“I told you about the Starstreaks on the seventeenth, Paul. Chace was apparently riding our FSO to the heights of passion on the night of the sixteenth. Which means she left England some twenty hours prior to that, which means you briefed her before that, which puts me back to around Valentine’s Day. So either you’re lying to me—”

“Or I already knew about the Starstreaks when we met on the seventeenth,” Crocker said.

“Which is it?”

“You can take your pick, but think about it. Barclay’s the one who is ultimately responsible for those MANPADs being lost. Which means if they surface in any fashion that includes civilian or Coalition casualties, he’s dead. He asked me to get them back for him.”

“He’s firing you.”

“This is how I keep my job,” Crocker said, bitterly. “He doesn’t want anyone to know it was he who lost the fucking missiles. That’s why I’m using Chace, not one of the Minders. That’s why she’s running free, without Station contact. No one is supposed to know she’s there. I save C’s career, he saves mine.”

A wind rattled the leaves, followed by another spattering of rain, icier than before. Crocker resumed walking, waiting for Seale to fall abreast.

“And that’s why she’s using a blown cover.”

“I was expressly forbidden to use any SIS assets for the mission,” Crocker confirmed. “Barclay’s paranoiac, Julian. He’s afraid someone will find out, use the information against him.”

“A nice, altruistic motive.”

“Those are still around?”

“I hear rumors.” Seale fell silent for several more long strides, apparently thinking about what Crocker had just told him. “So Barclay offered to let you keep your job. . . .”

“He actually offered me Gordon-Palmer’s job, if you want to know the truth. He seems to think that he’ll be getting rid of her soon.”

Seale digested that, then said, “Fine, you get made DC. What does Chace get? She’s got a kid now, doesn’t she? How’d you get her to agree to this lunacy?”

“Chace wants to come back. I told her if she does the job, I’ll make her Minder One again.”

“And will you?”

“If she does the job? In a heartbeat.”

“Then here’s hoping she does the job.”

“Amen.”

“Doesn’t explain why she met with the FSO, though.”

“I think you have your explanation already,” Crocker said, and then, in answer to Seale’s look, amended, “Libido.”

“You expect me—no, better—you expect the Tashkent COS to believe it was coincidence?”

“No. She probably made your guy as a member of the U.S. Mission, tried to use him for information. Where she picked him up, I can’t begin to guess. She’s under orders not to make contact with me until she’s located the missiles. I would guess—and it’s only a guess—that she made your FSO, then got everything she could off him, and indulged herself a bit in the process. That’s if she did actually sleep with him; she could have had him drawing her maps of Tashkent, for all we know.”

“Regular Mata Hari, this Chace.”

“A spiritual daughter, yes.”

Seale slowed, then stopped, and Crocker had to stop as well, turning back to face him. He couldn’t read anything in the American’s expression, no sign if he was buying the story or if he was merely allowing Crocker to dig himself in deeper.

“You have no contact with Chace at all?”

“None.”

“Then you don’t know where she is?”

“Tashkent, I presume.” Crocker frowned. “Why? Do you?”

Seale shook his head. “She checked out of the InterContinental the morning of the seventeenth, hasn’t been seen since. COS Tashkent hadn’t bothered to put her under hard surveillance—he was more concerned with the FSO.”

“It’s possible the trail has taken her out of the city, or even out of the country.”

“Chechnya, you mean?”

“It’s a possibility.”

“How’d you guys get on to the Starstreaks, anyway? Angela was sure she was giving you a gift, not confirming something you already know.”

“I don’t know,” Crocker said. “Barclay approached me, remember? I’m assuming he picked up word of the sale from D-Int, or another source entirely.”

“That’s possible.”

“You’d be doing me one hell of a favor if you get a line on where these things are, Julian. I don’t know how I can get word to Chace, but if CIA locates these Starstreaks and she can recover them . . .”

“Yeah, I get it.” Seale massaged his earlobe with a thumb and forefinger. “You know Malikov’s circling the drain?”

“Yes.”

“Looks like the daughter is going to take over,” Seale said. “She’s already had communication with State and the White House.”

“And State and the White House approve?”

“We want someone who’ll continue the relationship begun with her father, someone who’s on the same page about the war. We have to step carefully in Uzbekistan. Malikov’s a tried-and-true fucker, no doubt about it, and his daughter isn’t much better.”

“Then why support her?”

“You know why. We lose Uzstan, we’re down to Pakistan and southern Afghanistan as our primary staging areas in the region, and neither is what I’d call secure. We need good relations with Uzstan, at least for the foreseeable future. And if we put too much pressure on the country, either by pushing too hard on the human rights angle or by cutting off aid or whatnot, there’s a risk of alienating the leadership there. China’s awfully close to Uzbekistan, and the last thing Washington wants to see is the PRC replacing us in Uzbek affections.”

“There’s a son,” Crocker said. “Better bet than the daughter, if I recollect.”

“No, he’s a no-go,” Seale said. “Not enough support in-country. If the son tries to take over, it’ll get bloody. And since we’ve now got NATO troops on the ground in Uzstan, nobody wants to see that, either.”

Crocker considered, then nodded slightly, apparently agreeing. His cigarette had burned down to its filter, and he dropped it on the path, stepping on it with the toe of his shoe. What Seale was saying was true enough, but it raised a whole new set of questions. If the White House was backing Sevara enough that Seale knew about it, then the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister knew it, too. Which meant that either the Prime Minister was willing to oppose the White House covertly—hence his tasking Seccombe with the job of placing Ruslan in power—or Seccombe was playing him.

Correction: of course Seccombe was playing him. It meant that Seccombe was playing him in a very different way than Crocker had imagined.

He checked his watch, saw that it was already eight minutes past five. “I should get back.”

“I should, too. I’ll contact Tashkent, let them know why Chace was there, what she was doing. Maybe the COS can point her in the right direction.”

“If he can find her.”

“Oh, he can find her, Paul. Trust me. He can find her.”

Seale turned, heading away from him, back down the path, and it wasn’t until then that Crocker realized they hadn’t shaken hands upon meeting each other.

He wasn’t sure what to make of that.

CHAPTER 19

Uzbekistan—Tashkent—438–2 Raktaboshi,

Residence of Charles Riess

20 February, 2329 Hours (GMT+5:00)

Riess lived alone, in a semidetached house with a private courtyard. The house had been provided by the Chancery, but not without difficulty. When Riess had arrived in Tashkent, he’d found that the Mission was in the clutches of a housing shortage. As a single FSO, his rank notwithstanding, he found himself on the bottom of the placement list. He’d spent seven weeks in residence at the Sheraton while his belongings had languished in storage somewhere in Belgium, living out of the hotel before everything got sorted out.

When it finally had been taken care of, though, Riess had been pleasantly surprised with his home. It was far more spacious than he’d imagined, a two-bedroom, one with a supplied queen, one with two twins, with a modest dining room, kitchen, and ample living room. Like all Mission housing, it was government-furnished with the standard Drexel pieces, all of them functional and all of them lacking personality. Carpeting was gratis, a vacuum cleaner helpfully supplied to keep things tidy.

It had taken another month for his belongings to arrive, at which point Riess had been desperate to personalize the space. He’d set up his desktop, placed his books on his shelves, erected what he self-mockingly referred to as the Shrine, the three pictures of Rebecca he’d had ever since she’d passed away. He’d put a few photographs and posters up on the walls, and in the end felt he had accomplished the job of making the house more than just a dormitory. Not that he would spend much time there, but it was a matter of principle; he was looking at a three-year tour in Uzbekistan, he damn well wanted to like where he was resting his head at night.

Monday night he returned home a little before eleven from a dinner with three Representatives of the Oliy Majlis. The dinner had run long, and Riess had been forced to stay through the entire proceeding, not because the Reps in question were particularly important to the United States’ interests in Uzbekistan, but rather because leaving early would have told them very clearly that they weren’t. McColl, of course, had been dining with the DCM, entertaining a more senior group of the same.

The meal had been held at the home of one of the Reps, near the Earthquake Memorial off Abdulla Kodiry. Riess liked the memorial far more than he liked the dinner. A series of granite reliefs depicted the rebuilding of Tashkent, surrounding a central statue straddling a ragged tear in the earth. The statue was substantial, a heroic Uzbek male standing in front of an equally heroic Uzbek female, her hair flying, together shielding a not-so-heroic Uzbek child. A smaller block of granite, this one black, had the face of a clock carved on one side, the hands pointing to 5:22, the hour the earthquake had struck on April 26, 1966. It had been one hell of a quake, 7.5 on the Richter scale, and had devastated the city, leaving some three hundred thousand homeless. The Soviets had rallied, rebuilding the city, giving birth to modern Tashkent.

Riess had taken a walk through the memorial after dinner, stretching his legs and trying to clear his head. Ostensibly, the purpose of the meal had been part social, part an opportunity to discuss changes in the irrigation system around the Aral. But like Riess, the Reps knew a lost cause when they saw one, and so most of the talk had centered on other things: concerns about Islamic extremists infiltrating the country, deteriorating relations with Turkmenistan, and finally, the rumors surrounding President Malikov’s illness. Consensus at the table had been that Sevara would succeed her father.

“Not Ruslan?” Riess had asked.

“Not unless you know something we don’t,” one of the Reps had responded, laughing.

So he’d walked the memorial, thinking about his last conversation with the Ambassador, thinking about Tracy Carlisle. Wondering why it was that she hadn’t lifted Ruslan and his son as yet. He didn’t know what to make of her, and he still didn’t know what to make of his night with her, and the visit from Tower that had come in its wake had only served to cloud the matter further.

The fact was, Riess felt out of his depth.

McColl had come into the office grumpier than usual that morning, about twenty minutes after Tower’s departure, and peeved at something the Ambassador had apparently said to S. Whatever it was, it had made its way back to McColl, and McColl, having no recourse, took it out on Riess in the form of busywork. That kept Riess chained to his desk, and it was almost noon before he could manufacture a reason to speak to the Ambassador.

“I can give you three minutes,” Garret told him when Riess entered the office.

“Then I’ll make it fast. Tower knows something is going on. He knows I was at the InterContinental, that I met with Carlisle.”

Riess expected surprise, or at least concern, but Garret exhibited neither. “I figured he might. What’d you tell him?”

“That she was an old friend.” Riess hesitated, then added, “I was with her for about four hours.”

“In her room?”

Riess nodded.

“Chuck,” Garret said. “You dog.”

Riess actually thought he might blush, tried to think of something to say, and realized that everything he was coming up with would sound like a double entendre. Finally, he managed, “It wasn’t planned.”

“No, it wouldn’t have been.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“About Tower? Not much you can do. There was always a risk of this, Charles. He’ll check your story, and when he finds the holes in it—and he will find the holes in it—he’ll want to talk to you again.”

“What do I tell him?”

Garret looked out the window of his office into the garden, not speaking for a very long time, so long that Riess began to wonder if the Ambassador had heard him or not.

“That’s your choice, Charles,” Garret said at length, softly. “This thing with Ruslan—if it doesn’t work, my career is shot. I knew that going into it. I’ve got thirty years in, and there are worse ways to leave than being forced into a quiet retirement.”

“I’m not going to betray you, sir. I won’t do that.”

Garret turned from the window, then pulled out the paternal smile. “If Tower already knows, it’s not a betrayal, Charles. And if he already knows, you’ll have to decide what’s best for yourself. I’m not going to hold that decision against you.”

Riess shook his head, confused. “Has something happened?”

“Not yet.”

“Then you’ll forgive me for saying that I think this discussion is premature, sir. Carlisle hasn’t even had a chance to lift them yet.”

“Lifting them is only half the battle. Getting Ruslan back into play, with support, that’s the other half.”

“You said there was British support.”

Garret nodded. “But that doesn’t mean there is British support.”

“Why else would Carlisle be here?”

“Hell if I know.” The Ambassador stared at him a moment longer, then moved to his chair, settling himself behind his desk. “Go back to McColl before he finds more ways to make your life miserable.”

The confusion he was feeling became more acute, and for a second Riess didn’t move. Then, almost resigned, he left the office, making his way back through the Embassy to his desk, wondering what was best for himself, and just how long it would take Aaron Tower to find all of the holes in his story about his night with Tracy Carlisle.

As it turned out, it didn’t take Tower long at all.

Riess had been home for twenty minutes, long enough to change out of his suit and into jeans and a Virginia Tech sweatshirt, and to brew up a cup of coffee from the beans a friend at home had sent in his last care package. He made the coffee a cup at a time, rationing the beans, and he’d just poured when there was a knock at the door.

He wasn’t surprised to find Aaron Tower waiting outside when he opened it.

“Mind if I come in?” Tower asked.

Riess shrugged, turned away, heading back into the kitchen. “You want a cup of coffee? It’s good stuff. A friend in California sends the beans to me every so often. Better than the local brew or that nightmare we get at the Embassy.”

He heard the door close. “Can’t,” Tower said. “Blood pressure, remember?”

“Right, sorry.” Riess stuck his head back out of the kitchen, saw that Tower was standing in the open living room, taking in the space. “Tea, then? I think I’ve got a peppermint.”

“Sure.”

Riess turned to the stove, set up the kettle. He was pulling a mug down when Tower entered and propped himself just inside the doorway, leaning against the side of the refrigerator, watching as Riess went about preparing the cup.

“I’ve got some cookies,” Riess said.

Tower shook his head.

Riess shrugged a second time, set the mug beside the stovetop. “So what can I do for you, sir?”

Tower didn’t speak and didn’t move, fixing him with a vaguely expectant stare. Riess understood the reason for it, and that, more than anything, made the purpose of Tower’s visit crystal clear. He turned away, putting his attention back on the kettle, waiting for it to boil.

The water took a very long time to come to a boil.

Tower didn’t say a word.

Riess took the kettle off the heat, filled the mug, watching as the steam rippled off the water, rising toward him, and thinking about the Ambassador, what he had said. He understood now more than he had then, and the feeling of betrayal, of guilt that now settled in his breast was achingly heavy. He hadn’t said anything, and he knew that by staying silent, he’d already said far too much. Standing in the kitchen, six and a half thousand miles from home, he felt very much alone.

He handed the mug to Tower, who took it, then said, “She didn’t go to Virginia Tech.”

Riess picked up his coffee, tasted it. It had gone tepid.

“She’s not a friend from college. She’s not here working for some agro firm interested in cotton production. She’s not a tourist. And her name isn’t Tracy Carlisle.” Tower toyed with the tea bag, feigning interest in its buoyancy. “You remember who you work for, don’t you, Chuck?”

“Of course I remember who I fucking work for.” Riess dumped the remainder of his coffee into the sink, suddenly angry. The liquid splashed against the side, slopped out onto the counter. He put his cup down hard, hard enough that he was afraid it might shatter. It didn’t.

“I don’t think you do,” Tower said, quietly. “I think that you think you work for the Ambassador. And you don’t. You work for the Secretary of State, who works for the President, who works for the American People. So you work for the American People, and those people have elected a leader they believe will make the right decisions for them. And that leader has selected a Secretary of State who will pursue his agenda. And your job is to support that agenda, regardless of whether or not you agree with it.”

“Sevara is as bad as her father. If not worse.”

“Grow the fuck up. Of course she’s worse. I can think of half a dozen ways that she’s worse. That’s not the fucking point. You think anyone back in Washington likes the way she—or her father—goes about running a country? You think anyone’s happy that we’re in bed with a kleptocrat despot who thinks the words ‘secret police’ and ‘freedom’ aren’t mutually exclusive? But we need Uzbekistan, and right now, we have to take what we can get.”

“I’m so fucking sick and tired of the Kissinger Doctrine!” Riess kicked the cabinet beneath the sink, splintering the door. “I’m fucking sick and tired of expediency instead of doing the right thing! Fucking Dar es Salaam was expedient, and people died, dammit!”

“But you, you know what the right thing is, is that it? You and the Ambassador?”

“Maybe not, but it sure as hell isn’t a monster like Sevara.”

Tower set his mug down on the counter, the tea untasted. “So you and the Ambassador plan a coup to put Ruslan in power instead?”

Riess didn’t answer.

“You even think about that? How the fuck is that going to come off, Chuck? We’ve got troops in this country, they’re stationed here. Ruslan gets himself some guns, tries to seize the Presidential Palace, you think that’s going to solve your fucking problem? It’s not going to solve the problem. It’s going to destabilize the whole fucking country!”

“Not if we support him!”

“We’re not going to support him, dammit! Don’t you get it? Sevara is anointed, she’s got the blessing, she’s kissed the ring! It’s hers for the taking. As soon as Malikov kicks it, she gets the crown. It’s a done fucking deal.”

Riess stopped himself from kicking the cabinet again, his hands in fists so tight he could feel his fingernails biting into his palms. He wanted to spit, to scream about right and wrong, to say it wasn’t fair and it wasn’t right.

He didn’t want to grow the fuck up.

“Somewhere in Tashkent, right now, there’s an SIS Officer on an unsanctioned mission,” Tower said, evenly. “The girl you banged, she’s here on a job, and you know what it is, you know the why and the where and maybe the how.”

“I didn’t—”

“No.” Tower cut him off. “We’re past that now, Chuck. You’ve got only a couple moves left here, and you need to choose them real carefully. Telling me what you know will go a long way to making sure the skin is still on your career when the dust settles.”

Riess closed his eyes, thinking of Dina Malikov and the way her body had been desecrated, then destroyed. The words, when they came, were the betrayal, and the defeat was bitter. “We just wanted to make things better.”

If he had hoped for sympathy, Tower’s tone dashed it. “This wasn’t the way to do it. And I’m still waiting for my answers.”

And Charles Riess, standing in the kitchen in his semidetached home in Tashkent, sighed heavily, then gave Tower all the answers he could.

CHAPTER 20

Uzbekistan—Tashkent—

182 Sulaymonova

21 February 0001 (GMT+5.00)

She was already bloody twitched. It had started before she’d even left the hotel.

Chace had woken from her sleep in the dark, disoriented by the lack of light and the strange noises from the street and the hall, had come awake alarmed, the hush puppy in her hand feeling alien and awkward. She’d showered, dressed in the darkest clothes she had—all black, from turtleneck to trousers, down to the knickers—all the while trying to shake the sluggish feeling that seemed to have invaded every muscle.

Chace had wondered if she wasn’t coming down with something on top of everything else.

She’d left the room and made it as far as the lobby, thinking that food would be in order, and that was when it happened, the first real blossom of fear opening in her chest. What was the rule again? No food before an action—the Rikki-Tikki-Tavi rule was what the CQC instructor at the School had called it.And Rikki-tikki was just going to eat him up from the tail, after the custom of his family at dinner, when he remembered that a full meal makes a slow mongoose, and if he wanted all his strength and quickness ready, he must keep himself thin.

Basic, so basic, and she’d almost forgotten, and against her will Chace found herself trying to imagine the pain of her own intestines spilling their contents into her body. Wondering how quickly she’d lose blood from a gut wound. Realizing that, even if she had a catheter, even if she had bothered to precanulate, it wouldn’t do a damn bit of good because she’d never be able to replace the fluid loss anyway. She imagined herself in a Tashkent hospital, writhing on a gurney in agony as doctors tried to get a line of what passed for Ringer’s solution in this part of the world into her, and how long it would take her to die.

Once those thoughts started, it was hard to stop them again.

It took her fifty-three minutes to walk from where she’d parked the Range Rover off Forobiy, near the Chagatai Cemetery and some seven miles from Ruslan’s home, to the apartment building housing Sevara Malikov-Ganiev’s penthouse.

The buildings on this part of Sulaymonova were largely residential, older Soviet-style apartments sharing space with more modern condominium complexes, and at midnight on a Monday, the streets were deserted. Everywhere Chace had gone in Tashkent, she’d seen the same signs, architectural proof of Uzbekistan’s struggle to claw itself out of its Communist-dominated past into an as-yet-uncertain future. The condominiums at 182 Sulaymonova were the nicest she’d seen in the city, and Chace wasn’t at all surprised that Sevara made her home here.

There was an underground parking garage, blocked from the street by a metal gate at the bottom of the ramp, the ramp itself wide enough for two-way traffic. Sodium lights glowed on either side of the slope, serving as deterrent and security in lieu of more practical means such as cameras or guards. Chace took a moment from across the street to check around her once more, then craned her head, and spied lights on in the penthouse. Her angle was bad, however, and she couldn’t tell how many, nor how bright, only that there was illumination.

So presumably Sevara was in, and, hopefully, entertaining. Whether or not it was Zahidov being entertained, that was something else entirely. And the Audi’s absence in the garage wouldn’t be proof that he wasn’t, either; Chace had no way of knowing how many vehicles Zahidov owned, nor which he favored when going to fuck the daughter of the President of Uzbekistan. For all Chace knew, he might choose to visit her on roller skates.

It was a gamble, then, like everything else. The car might be there, but it might not. And if it wasn’t, Chace wasn’t entirely certain how she’d proceed. She’d wasted enough time already getting things into position just this far. If she lost more time on foot, she was looking at not being able to hit the house until almost four A.M., and that was dangerously close to the morning shift change. She’d have to abort for the night.

Which meant another day of exposure in Tashkent, another day that could see Ruslan and son dead before sunset.

Presuming that Zahidov and his NSS crew hadn’t already done the deed while Chace was catching up on her sleep.

Too many variables, too many unknowns.

She knew she was wasting time, stalling, and she also knew why she was doing it. That part of the mind—consciousness, or ego, call it what you will—trying to talk her out of going through with it, knowing what she was about to do was dangerous. Knowing what she was about to do could cost her her life.

Time and fear were allies, after all. And the more time she had, the more time to become afraid.

Too late for that, Chace told herself, and with a last look up and down the street, ventured across to the top of the ramp, then continued down without pause, directly to the gate. The bars of the gate were too narrow to squeeze through, and there was no clearance at either the top or the bottom. She peered into the dimness of the garage, barely able to make out the Audi parked between what looked to be a vintage MGB convertible—she didn’t even want to know how that had come to be there—and a BMW sedan.

So Zahidov was with Sevara. Or someone in one of the other condominiums also owned a black Audi. Or—

Knock it off, Tara, she told herself, and took a closer look at the gate. It ran on a track, splitting in the center, presumably parting to the left and right to allow access. Squinting into the darkened garage, she could see the chain running from the gate to the pulley wheels, then to the motor, mounted on the concrete wall roughly fifteen feet to the right.

She pushed the gate, to see if she could get it to part, even slightly. The metal rattled when she touched it, but didn’t budge.

Chace stepped back, glancing around her once more. The gate was a problem, but the ramp was a benefit, as it hid her from the street. If anyone came along, they’d be nearly on top of her before they saw she was even there. She checked her watch.

Three minutes past midnight.

She reached into the outer pocket of her coat. The suppressor made the gun too long to wear inside her trousers with any degree of comfort, and Chace had balanced the ease of accessing the hush puppy quickly with the necessity of being able to move in the same way. If her luck went so bad as to require the use of the weapon quickly, then the use of the weapon alone wouldn’t be enough to solve the problem.

The hush puppy in her hand, Chace turned against the gate, raised the pistol, and fired at the chain. The weapon kicked, its recoil made stronger with the slide lock engaged, but the actual shot barely made a sound. The Mk 22 Mod 0 had been modified for use by SEAL Teams during Vietnam, to quietly and quickly remove sentries during covert operations. In particular, it had been used to silence guard dogs, hence the nickname.

The first shot missed in the gloom, and Chace manually disengaged the lock, pocketing the spent cartridge, then racked a second round and tried again. This time, the chain sparked, then clanked loose from the pulley, tumbling to the garage floor with an appalling racket, and Chace fought the immediate instinct to run and hide. Instead, gun in hand, she leaned into the gate once more, and this time it slid back on its wheels, just enough to let her through. She twisted through the gap, turning again and sliding the gate closed once more. Each time the door ran on its wheels, it chattered and squeaked, and she winced at the noise, but kept going.

Dropping back into the shadows of the garage, Chace ducked down between the Audi and the Mustang, and again cleared the spent cartridge from the hush puppy. She listened, not moving, until all she was hearing was her own breathing, and then the sound of a car passing by on the road beyond the ramp. Nothing more.

Her eyes finally adjusted to the gloom, and Chace turned on her haunches, checking the Audi’s tags to be certain it was the same A4, then peering through the passenger window at the interior. The car was a manual, to her relief; an automatic would have posed a whole new host of problems. Zahidov had parked the car nose in to the wall, and a small red light blinked regularly on the dashboard, indicating that the alarm was set.

That didn’t bother her. The alarm was designed to prevent break-ins to the vehicle, arming automatically when the doors were locked. Unlocking the car with the key would disarm the antitheft system. By the same token, starting the car would do the same.

The trick was in starting the car, and thus disarming the alarm, without actually ever entering the passenger compartment.

Hush puppy in hand, Chace made her way to the front of Zahidov’s Audi, then crouched down once more. She set the gun down by her right foot, then drew the knife from its sheath at the back of her belt. Like the pistol, she’d purchased the knife at the bazaar. Unlike the pistol, the knife was of local manufacture. She’d found it among the Soviet Army bayonets and cheap knockoffs of combat knives that only seemed to ever be used in the movies. This one had a six-inch single-edge blade that ended in an elegantly curved point, with a bone handle, sturdy in the hand, well balanced, and ultimately far more silent than the hush puppy.

Positioning herself at the driver’s-side headlight, Chace slid the flat of the blade along the top of the socket, working the knife in until she felt she had enough purchase to try exerting some leverage. She bore down on the blade, met resistance, pushed harder, and the headlight broke loose of its housing with a resounding crack that seemed to fill the garage and reverberate off the concrete all around.

Chace caught the light in her left hand before it could fall, then sliced the wires running to the lamp. She set the light and the knife on the floor, beside the pistol, then took hold of the wires, touching them to her tongue. A ripple of electricity ran through her mouth.

Thank God for that, she thought, dropping the wires and letting them dangle from the now-empty headlight socket. The current meant that the Audi kept a reserve charge even after the key was removed from the ignition. It meant she was still in business.

Resting one hand against the hood of the car for support, Chace reached into the socket, to the small hole that now gaped, Lear-like, opening into the engine compartment. She pressed her fingers together, tucking her thumb beneath, into her palm, and pushed. Metal scraped her fingers, then her hand, and she felt a sharp pain around her wrist as she shoved farther, finally through the hole. She grit her teeth, twisting, working by feel past the front of the engine block to the rough surface of the firewall. The position was putting a strain on her lower back, and the crouch was starting to make her legs ache.

She almost missed it, working blind as she was, her fingers brushing over the wire once, then twice, before she knew it for what it was, secure in its bracket, grounded in the firewall. Using her index finger, she pried it loose enough to actually manage a grip on it, then yanked. Metal tore at her forearm, and Chace hissed in pain as her hand came free. In the weak light from the ramp, she could see wetness glistening, where she’d stripped skin from her forearm.

But she had the wire she wanted, and she thought that was a fair trade.

Using the knife, she stripped roughly two inches of casing off the wire, then did the same with the leads that had once gone to the headlight. She sheathed the knife, then took the two pieces of wire and twisted them together.

Immediately, the engine came to life.

Chace spared a moment for relief, then picked up the hush puppy and moved around to the driver’s side. Like the Range Rover, this was another left-hand drive. Through the side window, she could see the dashboard now dimly illuminated. Better, the alarm light had gone off.

She shrugged out of her coat and wrapped it around her left arm, then, with her right, fired one round from the hush puppy into the driver’s window, angling the shot so the bullet would bury itself in the passenger seat. The window spider-webbed, and Chace punched with her left, and then it vanished, falling into minute chunks of safety glass. She tossed the hush puppy through the now-open window, onto the passenger’s seat, reached inside, and unlocked the door, then opened it. Using her covered left arm, she swept the glass fragments from the seat until she was certain she wouldn’t lacerate herself further, then tossed the coat onto the passenger seat as well, covering the pistol.

To the sound of the engine rumbling through the garage, she sprinted to the gate at the bottom of the ramp, and once more took hold of the bars. Again, she leaned in, pushing, and this time, the clatter of the wheels in their tracks seemed quieter, lost below the sound of the Audi. She shoved the doors apart enough to allow the car through, then ran back to the vehicle. She climbed behind the wheel, put the car in reverse, and pulled out carefully. As soon as she put the car in gear, the remaining headlamp came on, splashing xenon light that turned the garage bright as day.

Chace put the Audi into gear and gave it gas, turning hard at the gate, and narrowly avoiding clipping it with the side mirrors. She floored it on the ramp, turned again, and shot off, down Sulaymonova.

According to the digital clock on the dashboard, it was seven minutes past midnight.

Four minutes, Chace mused. Not bad.

She slowed to the legal limit after a mile, taking random turns and checking to see if she’d collected any admirers. Once assured that she hadn’t, she turned in the direction of Forobiy, to where she’d parked the Range Rover. The air coming through the window was sharp, cutting through her clothes, and it cut through the adrenaline as well, but it didn’t diminish her pleasure.

With the Audi, she could drive right up to the house without raising suspicion. Behind its tinted windshield, the guards would never know it wasn’t Zahidov at the wheel until it was too late, provided they didn’t see her through the missing driver’s window.

That was the plan, at least as it stood now, and as Chace drove to where she’d parked the Range Rover, she played it out again in her mind. She pictured her moves, the sequence of events, envisioning what she had to do, envisioning what to do if things went wrong.

The fear was still with her, but not as strong, familiar and manageable once more. It gave her comfort.

The Range Rover was where she’d left it, unmolested off the side of the road, parked by the walls of the Chagatai Cemetery. “Chagatai,” best as Chace could understand, meant “Jewish,” and she imagined that the cemetery had suffered under the Soviet regime, though it seemed to have been recently repaired and restored. At half past twelve at night, Chace was confident it was one of the quieter places in all of Tashkent.

She swung the Audi off the road, killing the one working headlamp, then backing up so that the trunk of the car faced the back of the Range Rover. She left the car in neutral, set the brake, then took the satellite phone from an inside pocket and switched it on, unfolding the antenna. She punched in her PIN, waited for six seconds that felt more like six minutes before the phone beeped reassuringly, indicating that it was working, and had a signal.

Chace brought up the text message she’d prepared earlier, STAND TO—CONFIRM? and sent it to Porter’s pager. She set the phone on the dashboard to await a reply, then began searching the interior of the Audi. In the glove box she found the manuals for the car, as well as a Glock 26, and a white plastic pill bottle. She checked the pistol, found it loaded, and dropped it on her coat, still covering the hush puppy. The bottle was labeled “Magna Rx” in English, and it took a second for her to realize what it was, squinting in the darkness, trying to read the label. Then she saw the words “yohimbe” and “male potency,” and was trying to keep from laughing aloud when the satellite phone chimed.

READY.

Chace brought up the second message she’d prepared, with the GPS coordinates she’d picked out for the rendezvous, almost eighty kilometers to the southwest of Tashkent. She checked her watch, added the words PICKUP 0500 to her previously prepared text, and sent the message.

Finished, she folded down the antenna and tucked the phone back into her pocket, this time leaving it on. She switched the dome light on and checked the manuals, not caring for the illumination, but not having any other choice. She had to be able to read. She found the fuse diagram, opened the door, and then, half inside the car, half out, removed the panel to the fuse box. Checking the manual again, she pulled the fuse for the ignition, and the engine promptly died.

She pocketed the fuse in her trousers, put on her coat, stowed the hush puppy and Glock in each of her side pockets, then hit the trunk release. She moved to the Range Rover, lifted the rear hatch, and uncovered the weapons she’d purchased at the bazaar—a box of Chinese hand grenades, a Kalashnikov, the Sarsilmaz pistol, four clips, and two additional boxes of ammunition, one in 9 mm for the pistols, the other in 7.62 X 39, for the AK. She picked up the Kalashnikov, turned back to the Audi, and lifted the trunk, then stopped short as she was about to lay the automatic rifle inside, because she’d then seen what Ahtam Zahidov carried in his trunk, and it stopped her cold.

“Fuck me,” Chace said aloud, and then bent, to give it a closer look.

It was a rectangular box, perhaps half a meter wide and thick, and long enough that it had been laid in the trunk at an angle. The markings on the box had been scuffed, as if deliberately obliterated, the paint scarred enough in places to reveal the metal shining beneath.

Chace set the Kalashnikov gently against the rear bumper, and then, with both hands, tried lifting the box. It was heavy, perhaps thirty, maybe thirty-five kilos, and it took some muscling to get the edge of it past the lip of the trunk, propped up enough for her to remove the top.

It was a missile.

If her memory of such things was to be trusted, it was a British missile, made by Thales Air Defense under contract to the MOD. A man-portable air-defense system, called Starstreak.

“Fuck me running,” Chace murmured, and then she stepped back until she could sit on the open tailgate of the Rover.

She stared up at the clear sky, and the stars above, and for almost a minute didn’t move.

Time to change the plan, Chace thought.

And then she smiled in a way she hadn’t in over two years, and if anyone had been watching, they would have become very afraid indeed.

CHAPTER 21

Uzbekistan—Tashkent—182 Sulaymonova,

Penthouse of Sevara Malikov-Ganiev

21 February, 0327 Hours (GMT+ 5:00)

They liked to sleep touching, and when the telephone jarred them both from their dreams, it was Sevara pulling away that truly woke him, and not the sound at all. She rolled toward the nightstand, and Zahidov sat up in the bed, groping for his glasses, and by the time he had them on she was answering, her voice husky with sleep.

Then Sevara tensed, responding to whatever she was hearing, and Zahidov felt the change. He switched on the light, turning back to look at her, growing concerned. The phone ringing at three in the morning could not possibly bring good fortune to either of them, he was sure. His first fear was that it was news about Ruslan was quickly dismissed; even if every one of his men knew where he spent his nights, none of them valued his job so poorly that he would call Sevara directly, rather than try to reach Zahidov on his mobile.

Something else, then. Her husband, that potato-shaped coward that Sevara’s father had forced her to marry. Or maybe a problem with one of the recalcitrant DPMs, probably Urdushevich.

Sevara concluded the call and hung up the telephone. Her back was to him, and Zahidov couldn’t see her expression, and realized that he couldn’t read her posture, either. His concern turned to worry.

“What’s happened?” he asked.

She took a deep breath, as if steadying herself, before turning to face him. Her eyes were bright, and as he watched, her lips, those lips he never tired of tasting, parted, curling into a smile of purest satisfaction.

“He’s dead,” she said. “As of two-fifty-seven this morning, my father is dead. The doctor tells me his heart finally gave out.”

It wasn’t what Zahidov had expected to hear, and it took a second for him to process the news, to move from worry to relief, and then Sevara was in his arms again. She kissed him fiercely, joyously, slipped free from his grip and out of the bed, heading for the bathroom. She left the door open, and Zahidov watched as she slid the door to the marble shower stall back, reaching in to switch on the faucet.

“I have to go to the hospital,” Sevara called back to him, over the running water. “Call Abdukhallim, tell him to convene the Oliy Majlis for an emergency session this morning, tell him to introduce the resolution to name me interim President, and to schedule the vote for early this afternoon.”

“He knows the terms?”

“He likes being Chairman, Ahtya. He wants to stay being Chairman, he’ll do what we want.”

Zahidov got out of the bed himself, began pulling on his clothes. “What about your husband and Ruslan?”

“I’ll call Denis from the hospital, ask him to join me there, so we can put on a good face for the media. He’ll need to be with me for the vote this afternoon, but after it goes through I’ll ask for his resignation and then name you to take over the Interior Ministry as his replacement.”

He had his shirt on now, tucking it into his trousers. He grabbed his necktie, draping it around his neck, then moved into the bathroom, buttoning his shirt. Sevara was beneath the water, visible behind the glass doors, wrapped in steam.

“And Ruslan?” Zahidov asked again.

“Keep your babysitters on him, Ahtya, nothing more. After the vote it’ll be too late for him to do anything.”

“I’m worried about what happens before the vote.” He managed to look away from her long enough to check that his tie was properly knotted, and when he looked back, she was shutting off the water. He took one of the white towels from the heated stand, wrapped her in it as she stepped out of the shower.

“What’s he going to do?” Sevara asked him, taking hold of the towel and passing him, heading back into the bedroom. “You’re fretting about nothing.”

The cockiness in her voice made Zahidov frown. “I don’t know what he’s going to do. But I don’t want to find out after he’s done it.”

Sevara moved to the closet, began pulling down clothes from the hangers, a long black skirt, a black blouse, mourning colors. “You have him under surveillance. There’s not much more you can do.”

“I can bring him in, hold him at the Ministry.”

“I don’t want to antagonize the Americans,” Sevara said. She dropped her clothes on the bed, moved to the bureau, began picking out her lingerie. “I’ll have to meet with Ambassador Garret after the vote, and I don’t want the first topic of discussion to be how unhappy the White House is with the way we’ve handled things. I don’t want to start that relationship on the wrong foot, you understand?”

Zahidov didn’t answer, pulling on his coat, then taking his holster from where it lay on the nightstand at his side of the bed and clipping it onto his belt at his right hip.

“Ahtam,” Sevara said, her tone sharpening.

“I think you worry too much about the Americans,” he said. “They need us more than we need them.”

“You’re wrong.” It was declarative, and her expression now matched her tone. “It is a mutually beneficial relationship, that’s what it’s called. I won’t antagonize them, not yet. I want this to go smoothly.”

“It will go smoothly.”

“It must go smoothly.”

He nodded, trying not to appear reluctant, then turned to the telephone and dialed the number of the Chairman of the Oliy Majlis, watching Sevara continue dressing from the corner of his eye. When Abdukhallim answered, Zahidov spoke quickly, relaying Sevara’s instructions. The Chairman didn’t hesitate before swearing he would do what was asked.

Zahidov hung up. Sevara was at the makeup table now, and he watched as she quickly traced her mouth with lipstick, then studied herself in the mirror. Her expression fell into one of convincing sorrow, then lifted, and when she turned to face him once more, she was smiling again, satisfied that her mask of grief would be convincing.

“You want me to come with you?” Zahidov asked.

“No, go to the Ministry, start making your arrangements.” She stepped closer, fixed his tie, then appraised him. “Deputy Prime Minister Zahidov.”

“Madam President.”

Her smile was radiant, and he bent to kiss her. She turned her head, sparing her makeup, offering her cheek instead.

The first thing he saw was that someone had stolen his fucking car.

The second thing he saw was that someone had broken the gate to do it.

“What in the hell happened?” Sevara asked.

“Go to the hospital.” He turned, taking her arm, guiding her to the BMW. “Go to the hospital, do what you planned, everything as you planned.”

Sevara twisted, puzzled, staring at him. “Someone stole your car?”

“Yes, my car.”

She didn’t grasp the significance, he could see it on her face, and he didn’t think there was time to explain.

“Go,” he repeated. “Just as you planned, please, love.”

Sevara hesitated a moment longer, the question in her eyes, then nodded, slipping behind the wheel. “You’ll take care of it?”

“Whatever it is, yes.”

“Smooth, love. It must be smooth.”

“With everything in my power,” he promised her, then moved to the gate. He stepped back, onto the ramp, watching as the BMW passed, and Sevara didn’t turn to look at him as she drove.

As soon as the car was out of sight on the street, Zahidov went back into the garage, to the chain piled on the ground. He crouched, examining it, finding flecks of cinder block scattered nearby. He rose, peering closer at the motor and the pulleys, running a hand along the wall, until he felt the texture beneath his finger turn from rough to smooth, the scoring left by the bullet.

He stepped back, thinking quickly. Whoever had taken his car, they’d come for it specifically, he was certain, and perhaps for what it carried as well. He didn’t know why, he couldn’t even guess yet at who, but it was more than just alarming. Malikov finally dead, and someone had stolen the Audi, and worse, the missile.

He pulled his mobile phone from his pocket, hit the fourth number on his speed dial, calling Ruslan’s home, waiting for one of the guards to answer. The call refused to connect, and Zahidov thought that maybe the garage was causing the interference, moved up farther along the ramp, swearing as he redialed. Again, there was no connection, nothing, just a radio silence.

Zahidov heard a car coming along the silent street, raised his head to see a Mercedes slowing as it approached. He switched the phone to his left hand, moved his right to his hip, ready to draw his pistol. The car came to a stop, its window hissing down, and Zahidov let his fingers close around the butt of his gun, then released his grip as he recognized the driver.

“Get in,” Aaron Tower said, speaking in Uzbek.

Zahidov covered his surprise with suspicion. “What are you doing here?”

“Ensuring an orderly transfer of power. Now get in the fucking car, Ahtam.”

“Why?”

“Because Ruslan’s being lifted,” Tower told him. “And if you don’t move fast, you’ll have a fucking coup on your hands.”

CHAPTER 22

Uzbekistan—Tashkent—14 Uzbekiston,

Malikov Family Residence

21 February, 0241 Hours (GMT+ 5:00)

Chace had the Range Rover in position by twenty of three, parked three-quarters of a kilometer from the house, with line of sight to the front doors. She’d shattered the rear lights on the car, to keep the brake and reverse lamps from giving her away, and kept the headlights off while she worked. When she was satisfied with her parking job, she twisted around in her seat until she could climb into the back, to where she’d stored the Starstreak—now unpacked—beneath the blanket. The Kalashnikov rested beside it, along with two more banana clips, all loaded.

It took her three seconds to attach the aiming unit to the tube that housed the actual missile, and then, crouched in the back of the vehicle, Chace hoisted the Starstreak onto her shoulder. She sighted the front of the house through the monocular, lining up the aiming mark. Everything on the Starstreak seemed to be functioning as it should, and again it looked like her line of sight was true.

Chace set the missile down again, re-covering it and the rifle with the blanket, then got out, checking her watch. Almost ten to three. She removed her coat, checking it a final time to make certain nothing remained in any of its pockets, and swapped it for the flak jacket. She checked the flak jacket as well, making certain everything was where she had put it. Hush puppy outside right, two spare magazines left breast pocket, two grenades left outside pocket, satellite phone right breast pocket. The Glock she wore tucked into the front of her pants, and the knife, again, rested in its sheath at the small of her back.

Assured everything was where she wanted it, where she needed it, she turned and made her way past the front of the car, heading away from the house. The night was silent and deeply cold, still enough that sound would carry. She hooked a right at the corner, leaving the block, following the route she’d mapped out during her surveillance, one that would bring her around the long way to the back of the house. She tried not to hurry, telling herself that, for the moment at least, time was on her side.

She’d picked the hour carefully. The guards both outside and inside the house rotated shifts, she’d learned that much from the surveillance. Which meant that those working these dead hours of night didn’t always work these dead hours of night, but found themselves on day shifts as well. That shot their circadian rhythms all to hell. While the rest of the world was deep in stage four sleep, beyond even REM, those poor six guards on post outside the house had to remain awake, when everything in their biology demanded otherwise. The same would be the case for however many guards were awake inside the house.

It would make the guards weak, put them off their game. They would be fighting off yawns, stretching, pacing, stamping their feet. They would break protocol, meet up for five minutes to share a cigarette and conversation, anything to keep awake.

They would be sloppy.

By her watch, it was eight minutes past three when she came in sight of the house. The wall surrounding the backyard was roughly two meters tall, concrete blocks joined with cement, and certainly scalable if one were so inclined, more effective for preserving privacy than security. There were no streetlights on this side, and the ones along the front were weak, and widely spaced. After almost half an hour of working in the darkness, Chace’s night vision was nearly at full.

Parked at roughly the midpoint of the wall was one of the watch cars, a newer-model Volga that seemed an almost luminescent light blue in the darkness. Chace ducked down, moving to her right along the line of shadows growing into the lane. Low, she made her way carefully forward, to the near corner of the wall. The cover was excellent, and put her perhaps eight meters from the back of the car. Exhaust trickled from the Volga’s tailpipe, gathering on the ground like some lazy wraith that lacked motivation or energy for actual haunting. The sound of the engine resonated softly off the concrete.

Chace didn’t move, watching and waiting. From inside the Volga, she thought she saw movement, and then the flare of a lighter, flame illuminating the driver’s face as he started a cigarette. He was sitting alone, and Chace found herself gnawing on her lower lip, needing to find the second guard, the one walking post. She’d hoped he’d be taking a rest in the car as well, but clearly that wasn’t the case. He was on his rounds, then, or taking a break elsewhere, perhaps inside the house. When she’d had the house under surveillance, she’d seen all of the exterior guards go inside at one point or another, presumably to use the bathroom. If the graveyard shift used coffee to stay awake, they were probably using the bathroom a lot.

Chace stole another glance at her watch, the barely luminous hands of her Rolex now reading eleven minutes past three, then eased the hush puppy out of her pocket, taking the safety off with her thumb and disengaging the slide lock. Though it would make the gun that much more silent, it allowed her only one shot at a time, and with two men waiting, that just wouldn’t do. The timing on this had to be right. As soon as she moved, as soon as she started taking the guards down, there’d be no stopping, no time or opportunity for a real pause until they were out of the city and on the way to the rendezvous with Porter. And even that was suspect, because Chace couldn’t guarantee that there wouldn’t be a pursuit once they left the city.

The run would start with her first shot.

When and where it would end, she didn’t know.

From up the lane came the sound of a man’s cough, barely bouncing off the wall and the street, and then she saw him, the walking guard, no more than twenty meters away at the most, emerging from the far corner. He’d been around the front, most likely inside, and Chace took reassurance from that. She was reading the terrain right.

The guard continued in her direction, stopping at the Volga for a moment to lean down and speak to the driver. He was tall enough that bending to the side window of the Volga took his upper body almost parallel to the ground. The pistol in her hand felt solid and even good, and Chace took a deep breath, filling herself with oxygen, then came around the corner, holding the gun flat against her right thigh, her right side to the wall. She started forward, unsteady, bumped into the wall with her shoulder, kept moving forward, almost staggering.

The guard speaking into the car turned his head to her, but didn’t straighten, saying something in Uzbek to the driver. She continued forward, and the guard began straightening, turning toward her and now speaking, and Chace bounced herself off the wall again, now almost even with the rear of the Volga. This time, she brought her right arm up as she staggered back, and pulled the trigger twice in quick succession.

The bullets hit the guard in the chest and face, and he toppled in time with the ejected brass pinging onto the ground. Chace straightened instantly, lunging forward and twisting, bringing the gun around to point through the open passenger window. The driver was staring at her in openmouthed incomprehension, not yet having processed what he’d just seen, and Chace fired the hush puppy once more. The driver made a noise between a gurgle and a gag, then slumped back against his door and didn’t move.

Chace dropped to a knee beside the first body, running her free hand over his clothes, into his jacket, around his waist, and was unable to find a radio on him. So she’d been right about that, at least; the radios were confined to the cars alone, and not to the walking patrols. So much the better.

Pistol in her hand, Chace came around the front of the car and opened the driver’s door, letting the body topple out onto the ground, stepping over it and settling into the seat. The driver had been short, and she had to slide the seat back. The interior smelled of cigarettes and, now, fresh blood. She checked the gauges, saw that there was just over half a tank of fuel still available, and that the engine was still running. Hooked beneath the dashboard on the passenger’s side was a radio set, the indicator light glowing a contented green, the frequency visible on a luminescent LCD screen. Chace checked the volume on the set, turning it up, and heard no traffic.

No alarm, at least not yet.

The Volga was a standard, and she shoved the stick into first, easing out the clutch. She kept the headlamps off, accelerating to second, making her way up the lane. She slowed at the top of the road, turning right, then edged forward until the Volga nosed out onto the street enough for her to look down toward the front of 14 Uzbekiston, almost one hundred meters away. There were street lamps on this side, though poorly placed, and they failed to offer enough illumination to reveal her at the corner, at least from this distance.

Some forty meters down, in the glow of one of the lamps, she could see the second watch car, another Volga, its driver’s door open and the driver standing outside the vehicle. Another of the walking guards was just now passing the car, heading away, toward the stronger illumination at the front of the house. Beyond that, darkness swelled again, concealing the last car, and, presumably, the last walker.

Chace felt her heart beat so strong it seemed to be thumping in her ears. Her lips were dry, and when she ran her tongue over them, she tasted the tang of her adrenaline. Barely coming off the clutch, she turned her car to the top of the lane. The slope downhill was slight, but enough, and she put the car into neutral, letting the vehicle coast toward the nearest Volga. She stayed off the brakes until she was perhaps twenty feet from the car, then let her foot come down gently, hoping they wouldn’t squeak.

They squeaked.

The driver of the second car turned, startled by the noise. Then he recognized the vehicle, or he seemed to, because instead of reacting with alarm, he stepped farther away from his car, raising an arm in greeting. His arm was still raised when Chace came down full on the brakes, stopping beside him. Through the open passenger window, she could see the man’s midsection, watched as his arm came down and he began to lean forward, and she pointed the pistol at him and fired twice. He staggered, bumping against the frame of his car, then falling backward into his seat.

Chace dropped the hush puppy on the passenger’s seat, came down on the clutch, starting the engine again, and then popped the Volga into first gear, accelerating. Ahead, just beyond the wash of the closest streetlight, she watched as the walker turned, confused and tracking the source of the noise. Chace scooped up the gun, came down on the clutch and the brake together, and this time emptied the gun, firing the remaining three shots as she came alongside. Her first shot caught him high in the chest, below the shoulder, the second in the throat, the third missing altogether. She waited until he hit the ground before dropping the gun once more, then rammed the stick into reverse, and backed up the lane as fast as the Volga could bear it. The whine of the engine was tremendous, and she had no doubt that it would carry down the street, to the remaining car, and the remaining guards.

At the top of the lane she braked, went back into first, and turned, accelerating hard as she came around the next corner, then flooring it. She raced the Volga back down the narrow lane, past the corpses she’d made there. Taking her hand from the stick, she ejected the magazine from the hush puppy, then, using her knees to hold the wheel, retrieved one of her spares and slipped it into place, chambering the first round.

She slowed at the turn, fighting the urge to simply race around the final corner. The radio beside the pistol was still silent, and Chace was beginning to wonder if it really was on. She’d half expected the alarm to be raised by now.

Expected, but not hoped. What she had hoped for was that the sound of the Volga reversing up Uzbekiston would have pulled the remaining walker up the street. He’d find the last body Chace had dropped soon enough, and yes, that would raise the alarm. But he’d do one of three things then. Either he’d run to the next car, to see if it had been hit as well, and perhaps decide to use the radio there; he’d run to the house, and raise the alarm; or he’d run back to his staging vehicle, where his partner was behind the wheel.

Chace was hoping for option three, but one and two seemed just as likely.

She edged her car around the corner, once again going as slowly as she could bear, and saw the last car parked in the shadows up the street. It was too dark to see any sign of the driver.

Inspiration hit her then, and she turned on the Volga’s headlights, then started up the street. The lights splashed the remaining car, and she saw the driver of the vehicle opening his door, emerging and raising a hand to shield himself from the glare as he looked her way. She tried to read his expression as she closed the distance, thought she saw there his recognition of the vehicle, but she was closing too fast to take the time needed to process it. Hopefully, this driver was experiencing the same thing.

She kept the headlights on as she came to a stop, and the driver dropped his arm and started toward her, moving outside the spread of the beams. Chace put the car in neutral and set the brake, and it was a reassuring sound to him, she could see it, a sound he expected. Now that she was close enough, she could read his manner as well as his face, and it was clear to her, then, that he suspected nothing.

Why would he? All he had heard was a car reversing up Uzbekiston, nothing else, nothing more.

Chace waited until he was perhaps ten feet from her, then opened the door, and came out firing. She used two bullets this time, because she could use both hands to shoot, and each went where she wished it, and the man fell, his expression of bewilderment clouding into pain, then freezing there.