Crocker got to his feet. “And what are you going to tell him?”
She shook her head, rising with him. “No, Paul, not me, you. You’re going to tell him exactly what you just told me.”
“Am I?”
“Yes. And you can tell him that Chace may well have found one of his missing Starstreaks.” She opened the door to the outer office, holding it for Crocker. “I think he’ll be particularly happy with that bit of news, don’t you?”
“I doubt it,” Crocker said.
CHAPTER 24
Uzbekistan—Syr Darya Province—
Samarkand Road, 63 km Southwest Tashkent
21 February, 0424 Hours (GMT+5:00)
One headlight was enough, it seemed, the xenon beam harsh on the two-lane highway that ran south from Tashkent to Dzhizak and then on to Samarkand, a memory of the Silk Road long past. At the edges of the light, the landscape siding the road glowed like the surface of the moon, the dirt and dust turning a blue-white. The wind that had come up on them in Tashkent was stronger south of the city, howling along the valley, and fingers of dust twirled along the surface of the road.
Chace drove fast, taking the Audi up to a hundred and forty kilometers an hour and then holding it there wherever the road would allow. The sound of the air rushing past the car clogged her left ear, but the vehicle’s aerodynamics were strong, and most of the wind stayed outside the car instead of climbing inside with them. Occasionally, a gust would break through, snapping Chace’s hair so hard she could feel it stinging her neck.
Ruslan sat in the front passenger’s seat, his eyes fixed on the road ahead of them whenever he wasn’t twisting himself about to check on his son, asleep in the back, the blanket Chace had taken from the Range Rover wrapped tightly around him. Chace marveled at it, that the boy could sleep through the racket of the wind and the car, with all that had happened so far. She envied Stepan. Right now, she wanted sleep, too.
The adrenaline crash was wicked, revealing a soreness throughout her body and a dull ache in her limbs. Her left bicep twinged regularly when she moved the arm, reminding her of the exertion required in holding a man’s throat exposed while stabbing him to death. The blood on her hands and arms had dried, and every so often a flake would come loose, caught in the wind, sending it spiraling in one random direction or another, a red snowflake that flipped through the car.
Chace checked her mirrors again, barely aware she was doing it, and saw Ruslan shift in his seat, either nervous, uncomfortable, or both. He’d ridden in silence ever since they’d switched to the Audi, and he hadn’t really been talkative prior to that, for the obvious reasons. What little he’d said had been directed at his son, and in Uzbek. But since they’d made the Audi and hit the road, there’d been nothing more from him. Surely he had questions—dozens of them, more than likely—but thus far, he was keeping them to himself.
“My orders are to take you both to England, sir,” Chace said, after another reflexive check of the mirrors, thinking that an explanation of one sort or another was in order. “We’re on our way to a landing zone where we’ll be met by a helicopter to fly us out.”
She hadn’t expected him to answer, and he surprised her when he did, asking, “Not America?”
“No.”
“My wife was working with the Americans.” He raised his left hand, rubbed his eyes, wiping sleep from their corners. “Before Zahidov raped and murdered her, she was working for the Americans. You are working with the Americans as well?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“I don’t understand.”
Chace shook her head, barely. “I wouldn’t worry about it, sir.”
“But I must worry about it, I have no choice. My son and I are fleeing for our lives with a woman covered in blood in Ahtam Zahidov’s automobile. There is nothing more for me to do now than worry about it.”
“My orders are—”
“Yes, you said that,” Ruslan snapped, then added something softer in Uzbek, the shape of the words lost beneath the wind rushing past the shattered window. From the corner of her eye, Chace saw him shift in his seat once more, checking again on Stepan, then resume looking out the windshield. “My name is Ruslan, not ‘sir.’ ”
Chace nodded. “Tracy.”
“Tracy?”
“Tracy.”
Ruslan nodded, and neither of them spoke again for another half-dozen kilometers, and oddly, Chace found herself growing uncomfortable with the silence. She supposed it was because Ruslan’s doubts were her doubts, that he was asking questions that she had asked herself. Riess had said Sevara had White House support, and much as she was loath to admit it, she was having a hard time believing that her government would want to oppose the Americans, at least with regard to the future of Uzbekistan.
“How old is he?” She tilted her head to indicate Stepan in the backseat.
“My son is two and two months now.”
Chace hesitated. “I have a daughter. Almost ten months old.”
Ruslan reappraised her, mildly surprised, before saying, “Ten months was good for Stepan. He was walking at ten months.”
“Mine’s not walking yet,” she said. She considered his reaction to their newly discovered common ground, thought that it might help to put him more at ease if she continued. Tamsin had ignored crawling altogether until only the week before Chace had left Barnoldswick, at which point she’d begun pulling up and the first attempts at cruising. She was adept at it, could make her way around the living room, wobbling wildly, using her hands to find support wherever she could.
Ruslan looked away from the road to study her again. He said, “You are missing her.”
“Yes.”
“You should be home, maybe, with your husband and your baby.”
“I’m not married.”
Ruslan considered that, then said, “But the father, he is with your daughter?”
She heard it in his inflection, a wistfulness, and Chace knew Ruslan was thinking of Dina.
“No,” Chace said. “No, he died.”
Again he murmured something in Uzbek before saying in English, “You have my . . . is it condolence, that is the word?”
“Condolences, yes.”
“My condolences, then. I know that pain. Too well, I think that I know that pain. So your daughter, she is without her mother, and there is no father now.”
“She’s with her grandmother.” Chace bit back the urge to become defensive. “She’s fine.”
“This is not a good job for a mother.” Ruslan said it with conviction. “Killing and spying and stealing the cars of rapists and murderers. You should be with your daughter.”
“It may not be a good job for a mother, sir, but it’s the job I have. And it’s a job you want me to complete, I’d think.”
Ruslan grunted. “To what end? I will not lead Uzbekistan. Sevara has the Americans, and the British will not oppose the American plan. At the best, Stepan and I are merely being relocated.”
“It’ll keep you safe.”
“No doubt, for a time. But it doesn’t help my country.”
From where it rested on the armrest, its antenna deployed, the satellite phone chimed, its LCD lighting up.
“It helps you,” Chace said, sharper than she’d meant to. Keeping her left on the wheel, she picked up the phone, saw that a message had arrived. She thumbed the menu, bringing up the text.
15 MIN.
“Is there a problem?” Ruslan asked.