Garret moved behind his desk, pressed a blinking light on his phone, killing a waiting call, then looked up at Riess.
“Malikov’s been hospitalized,” he said. “They’re saying he had a stroke in the small hours this morning, but we don’t have confirmation yet.”
Riess stopped himself from swearing. “Can he speak?”
“We don’t know, but I’d be damn surprised if he could.”
“Ruslan can’t take it. If Malikov goes, Ruslan doesn’t have the backing.”
“I know.”
“If he tries for it, it’ll get ugly. That’s if Sevara doesn’t try to remove him preemptively.”
Garret looked at him patiently, waiting for Riess to stop stating the obvious.
“Is it natural?” Riess asked. “I mean, the stroke?”
“It’s possible, but it’s just as possible the old man was helped along.” Garret hesitated, then added, “That’s not why I wanted to see you.”
That was even more of a surprise. “Sir?”
“There’s a woman arriving sometime today, name of Carlisle. She’s here to lift Ruslan. Starting tonight, you need to hit the hotels. The Meridien, the InterContinental. Make contact with Carlisle, find out what she needs, if we can help. And it goes without saying that we don’t want the NSS knowing what you’re up to. For that matter, we don’t want Tower or McColl finding it out, either.”
Riess shook his head, trying, and failing, to hide his confusion. “This woman . . . who is she?”
“She’s a Brit, she’s here to get Ruslan and his kid out, that’s all you need to worry about.”
“She’s SIS?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Garret stopped, reading Riess’ expression, then sighed. “I’m sorry, I can’t even remember who I’m lying to anymore. Sit down.”
Riess sat, looking at the Ambassador, bewildered. Garret sighed a second time, now regarding him more kindly, then came around the big desk and took the seat beside him, turning his chair so they could sit face to face. He kept his voice low when he spoke.
“After we talked about Ruslan, I floated a query back to State about Malikov’s replacement. And the situation is exactly what we knew it would be—it’s the Kissinger realists, and they think they can work with Sevara. We’re getting no backing there, nothing, and you can bet your ass that Tower’s already informed Langley that Malikov is circling the drain, and Langley’ll pass that on to POTUS first thing in the morning, and we’re going to be right back where we started.
“So I reached out to a friend at the FCO. Upshot is, the British are willing to aid in the transition: they’ll back Ruslan. Hence the presence of this operative.”
Riess thought, and all he had immediately were questions, so he began voicing them. “Then why isn’t she going through their Station? Why involve me?”
“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.”