CHAPTER 41
Uzbekistan—Tashkent—438–2 Raktaboshi,
Residence of Charles Riess
27 August, 0917 Hours (GMT+5:00)
Riess answered the door in his T-shirt and boxer shorts, the day’s first cup of coffee in his hand. He’d have been better dressed if he’d been expecting a caller, but it was Sunday morning, there was no need for him at the Embassy, and he’d been up late the night before, watching the better part of a television series he’d ordered off of Netflix, concerning cowboys with extraordinarily foul mouths. He’d dreamed of saloons and the Wild West, and perhaps because it was still so fresh in his mind, the first words out of his mouth when he saw Tracy Carlisle at his door were “Cock-sucking motherfucker.”
“Delighted to see you, too,” she replied, and then Tracy Carlisle, whose name wasn’t really Tracy Carlisle, smiled at him like they were old friends. She smiled like she was happy to see him. “May I come in?”
Riess thought about that for a moment, wondering what in hell he’d tell Tower when he was no doubt asked about this, then sighed. He moved back and waved her in, then looked out over his tiny yard to the street, seeing nothing that alarmed him. He almost laughed.
As if I’d know what I’m looking for, he thought.
“Coffee’s fresh,” he told her as he moved past, heading back to the kitchen. “I get it from a friend in San Francisco. The beans, I mean, not the coffee.”
“Coffee would be delightful,” Tracy Carlisle said, following him.
“You take cream? Sugar?” Riess opened the cabinet, pulled out a mug.
“Black, like my heart.”
“Uh-huh.”
He set the mug down, filled it from the pot, handing it over. She was looking at him with what he interpreted as vague amusement, and as he stood there, she ran her eyes the length of him, down, then up, then smiled again.
“I just woke up,” Riess explained.
“So I see.”
Riess returned the look, and had to admit he liked what he was looking at. She wore jeans and a black T-shirt, a loose linen jacket, tan. He could smell the hint of soap, saw that her hair appeared to still be damp. Fresh from the shower, he assumed, and straight to his doorstep, but God only knew why. Then he saw what looked like dried blood on the toes of her boots, and had to wonder if the shower had been about more than just hygiene.
“You probably shouldn’t be here,” he told her.
“I need a favor.”
“I don’t do those kinds of favors anymore.”
“This one won’t cost you anything. You might even like it.”
Riess laughed tersely. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t believe you.”
“It’s a favor for Ruslan, Charles.”
“Ruslan’s in Afghanistan.”
“At the moment, yes. He wants his son back. I’m here to fetch him.”
“Oh, God,” Riess said, his mind filling with visions of the Dormon Residence, where the President lived, erupting in flames, collapsing from a missile strike. “The way you fetched them the first time?”
Carlisle laughed. “You really think I’m a monster, don’t you?”
“I don’t know what to think of you,” Riess answered honestly. “You show up on my doorstep with bloodstains on your boots, telling me that you need a favor but it’s okay because it’s semiofficial, and it’s about Ruslan, and it’s about Stepan, and the last time I saw you, you were headed for the shower and I was headed out the door. So, no, Tracy, I don’t know what to think of you.”
“My name’s Tara,” Tracy Carlisle said.
“What’s this favor?”
Tara-not-Tracy tasted the coffee he’d poured for her, and he saw her expression brighten in pleasant surprise. She took a second gulp before saying, “Late yesterday afternoon, the U.K. Ambassador met with President Sevara Malikov to discuss the possibility of returning Stepan Malikov to his father’s care. The Ambassador carried a message from Stepan’s father, the details of which are largely unimportant, but the gist was this: Ruslan gets Stepan back, Sevara never has to worry about her brother again. Ruslan will stay far away from her and Uzbekistan, and that will be that.
“President Malikov, after some deliberation, agreed. The exchange is set for the day after tomorrow, early Tuesday morning, to take place at the border crossing in Termez. Sevara will make the visit ostensibly to examine the security at the border and to meet with the United Nations staff for the relief effort. Ruslan will await on the Afghan side of the bridge, and Sevara will deliver Stepan on the Uzbek side. A third party will escort the boy across the bridge to his father.”
“Sevara’s agreed to this?”
“So I’ve been told. You seem surprised.”
Riess shrugged. Nothing about Uzbekistan surprised him anymore. “So far I’m not hearing anything about a favor.”
“I’m coming to that.” Tara-not-Tracy finished her coffee, then placed the mug on the counter. She reached into an outside pocket of her coat, removing two wallets, both leather, one black, the other tan. She set them beside her empty mug. Riess noted that the tan one was spattered with dried blood, too.
“I took these off two men in Afghanistan,” she told him. “They were reluctant to part with them.”
Riess hesitated, then picked up the black wallet, flipping it open. An ID card stared back at him, printed in Uzbek, and declaring the bearer an officer of the NSS. The officer in question’s name was Tozim Stepanov. He glanced up from the wallet to her, and she inclined her head, indicating that he should examine the second one as well. He did so, reading the ID of a second NSS officer named Andrei Hamrayev.
“You got these off two men in Afghanistan?”
“About eighty klicks south of Mazar-i-Sharif, in fact.”
“What were two NSS officers doing eighty klicks south of Mazar-i-Sharif?”
“I believe they were leading a hit squad in an attempt to kill Ruslan Malikov. The hit squad consisted of four Uzbek Army soldiers in addition to these two.”
“You have proof of this?”
From the another pocket, Tara-not-Tracy removed a zip-top plastic bag. She jiggled the bag before handing it over, causing the metal contents inside to ring lightly. Riess took the bag.
Four sets of dog tags.
“The question is, of course, whether or not President Malikov authorized this hit squad or not,” she told him. “Given that this was an armed incursion by one sovereign nation upon another, I find that doubtful, especially considering Uzbekistan’s cozy relationship with your government, not to mention your government’s relationship with Afghanistan. I find it very doubtful indeed.”
“She didn’t,” Riess said. “Not in a million years, not just to kill her brother.”
“Then someone else must have initiated the action. And considering the nature of the IDs in those wallets, I think we both know who that someone would be.”
“I should bring this to the attention of my Ambassador.”
“I’m certainly not about to tell you how to do your job,” she said cheerfully. “But if you were to ask me, I’d say that was a fine and proper course of action.”
Riess considered her again, her smile, her manner. “You’re setting up Zahidov?”
“Am I?”
“At the least, President Malikov demands Zahidov’s resignation. At the most, he disappears and the body is never found.”
Something flickered behind her eyes, almost like a shadow moving from one darkness to another.
“That would be a pity,” Tara-not-Tracy said. “That would be a great pity indeed.”
Ambassador Norton was reluctant to meet with Riess on such short notice, but the mention of an Uzbek incursion into Afghanistan dispelled that reluctance quickly. They met in the Ambassador’s office at the Embassy, and while it certainly wasn’t the first time that Riess had been inside it since Norton took over for Garret, he was again surprised by how little things had seemed to change. Only the photographs on the glory wall and the desk, and even those were remarkably similar to the ones that Garret had hung.