“Hour of the wolf,” Riess agreed.
“How?” Ambassador Garret asked.
“They boiled her to death,” Riess answered. He tried to make the declaration merely factual. He failed.
“Jesus Christ.” Garret passed a broad hand over his face, wiping the sleep away from his eyes. “Jesus Christ, she’s his daughter-in-law, she’s married to Ruslan, and Malikov let the NSS lobster-pot her?”
“The Ministry of the Interior is claiming it was Hizb-ut-Tahir.”
“I know what they’re claiming. Jesus Christ.”
“Yes, sir.”
The Ambassador closed his eyes, then opened them again. “She gave you up. If they tortured her, she gave you up.”
“I think it’s a safe assumption, yes, sir.”
“When was the last time you met with her?”
“On the second, so that’s nine days ago now. That’s where I got the videotape.”
Garret frowned, remembering the recording. “Why’d they kill her?”
“It might have gotten out of control. They’re not terribly gentle about these things.”
“But they can be, Chuck, they can be. They could have fixed it so they got what they wanted and then sent her back home.”
“She would have told her husband.”
Garret looked at him, his brow creasing, thinking. “Maybe.”
“You think there’s something else to it?”
“I think that Dina Malikov was alive on Thursday, dead by Friday, and today, Saturday, her husband arranged a meeting with you to say that he wants to play ball. The timing makes me nervous.”
“I got the impression from his note that he’d been looking for an opportunity for a while, sir,” Riess said. “Dina’s death may have been the impetus he needed to make the move.”
“Which may be why they killed her in the first place. If it was the old man who did it.”
Riess heard the doubt in his voice. “You think it was Sevara?”
“I think Sevara wants the crown, Chuck. And if Malikov really is coming up on his last legs, she may be trying to clear the way for a run at the throne.”
Riess considered, watching as Garret looked away from him to the grandfather clock ticking solidly in the corner study’s corner. The Ambassador’s mouth tightened to a line, and then he used his broad hands on the broader armrests of his easy chair to push himself to his feet.
“Four in the fucking morning,” he said. “Let’s go to the kitchen. I need some coffee.”
The house was silent and dark. The trip from Riess’ house downtown to the Residence on the outskirts of Tashkent normally took half an hour, but at three in the morning, Riess had been able to make it in half that time. The roads had been almost entirely vacant, and he’d driven quickly, in an attempt to flush any possible tails. He hadn’t seen any, but that didn’t give him much confidence that he’d gone undetected. It didn’t really matter; he was known in the Embassy as the Ambassador’s legman, much to the annoyance of his immediate superior, Political Counselor T. Lindsay McColl. If Riess was called out to the Residence at half past three in the morning, then it was unusual, but not unheard of.
Riess followed the Ambassador through the house, Garret alternately switching on lights to illuminate their way, turning off others as they no longer needed them. Riess wondered if it was a security measure or a habit. Maybe he did it to keep from disturbing his wife. Whatever it was, Riess was certain there was a purpose to it. In his experience, there was very little that Kenneth Garret, the United States Ambassador to Uzbekistan, did without a very good reason.
Riess’ immediate superior in the Mission, McColl, as uptight and self-righteous a Europeanist as Riess had ever met in the Foreign Service, consistently referred to Garret as “the Grizzly,” though never while in earshot of the Ambassador. McColl did a poor job of hiding his resentment of Garret, a resentment born, Riess supposed, more of envy than of anything else. Both men shared the same political rank at State, and McColl not only had seniority, but a pedigree, and felt that Garret had robbed him of his rightful ambassadorship. The nickname was meant, therefore, as an insult of the highest order.
But limping after Garret through the Residence, Riess thought it was anything but. Six foot three and easily two hundred and forty pounds, everything on Garret had that ursine sense of scale and restrained power, from the breadth of his chest and the strength in his shoulders down to the thickness of each of his fingers. In all the time Riess had known him, first serving as a junior political officer at the embassy in St. Petersburg where Garret had been posted as Deputy Chief of Mission, and now, six years later, serving as his legman in Tashkent, he’d never once seen Garret exhibit anything but an absolute, controlled calm. No matter what he did, if he laughed, if he despaired, it was all with the same gravitas.
People underestimated the Ambassador to their peril, and while Riess himself had never heard Garret talk about it, it was well known among the Mission staffers just how tall the man could stand. No new arrival to the Chancery in Uzbekistan could make it more than a week before hearing the infamous “Fuck Off, Senator” story.
It went something like this:
Seems that Kenneth Garret had spent a year at CENTCOM as a political adviser after one of his DCM stints. His job had been primarily to offer political insight and counsel to General Anthony Zinni. After CENTCOM, Garret had rotated back to State, and then, the following year, had been nominated as Ambassador to Kuwait by the Clinton White House. It was a done deal as far as the White House was concerned, and even the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had looked to be smooth sailing, a rubber-stamp proceeding.
Except that the Committee in question was chaired by Senator Jesse Helms, and Helms’ history with Zinni was, as one of Riess’ colleagues had described it, “defined by white-hot hatred,” as a result of a particularly harsh facing Zinni had delivered to the Senator following the Gulf War. After the war, Helms had gotten the not-very-bright idea of turning the Iraqi army-in-exile around on Saddam with CIA backing, in an attempt to overthrow the dictator. It was a plan that suffered from a legion of problems, small and large, so many in fact that General Zinni, in a public hearing, had referred to the idea as a “Bay of Goats.”
The Senator was not well pleased.
Garret, so the story went, was approached by one of Helms’ staffers prior to confirmation. The staffer informed the Ambassador-in-waiting that his confirmation would positively sail on through, but that, during the closed hearing, the Chairman would ask Mr. Garret some pointed questions about General Zinni. And if Mr. Garret then took it upon himself to perhaps criticize the General’s judgment and leadership, well, it would be appreciated. Certainly such comments in a closed hearing would be a small price to pay for Mr. Garret to finally achieve a posting of importance and prestige, one he’d been pursuing throughout his professional career.
According to the story, Garret embarked on one of his infamous pauses, lasting—depending on who was recounting the tale—anywhere from fifteen seconds to an ungodly two and a half minutes, before offering his answer.
“Fuck off.”
When the staffer regained his ability to speak, he informed Garret that any confirmation hearing would not occur until the Chairman moved for the nomination to be considered by the Committee, something that Mr. Garret, by his answer, had just guaranteed would never happen. Not just this job lost, no sir. No position requiring a Senate confirmation. Ever.
Nice knowing you, Mr. Garret.