Avery wasn’t surprised. Many authoritarian regimes were exploiting the war on terror to receive aid from the West and crack down on internal dissent.
“His people make half-ass attempts to compromise our people,” Gerald continued. “Fortunately, he’s not very good. He’s washed up, spends most of his time hitting his wife, and chugging vodka with the Russian station chief.”
“Is he getting in the way?”
“He’s a minor nuisance. He showed up today to get a good look at you and make his presence known, try to intimidate you a bit. He’s given us briefings on local bandits and terrorist threats, but that’s to advance an agenda. President Rahmon views this as an opportunity to make a move against the warlords in Gorno-Badakhshan and solidify his power. Ghazan’s secondary objective is to get close to us, identify our agents, and penetrate our ops here.”
“Oh, I’m sure Ghazan’s very eager to help. He’d love to rescue Cramer from Muslim terrorists, and then thoroughly debrief him.”
“Yeah, and no doubt FSB will be sitting in on the debriefing.”
Although SVR was Russia’s foreign intelligence agency, the Federal Security Bureau— domestic internal security — still operated within the former Soviet republics. In the countries whose governments maintained favorable relations with Moscow, like Tajikistan or Belarus, FSB cooperated with the security services. In Western-aligned countries, like Georgia, Moldova, or Ukraine, FSB acted subversively.
“What sort of help has Ghazan been offering?” Avery asked.
“He has watchers around the embassy twenty-four hours, and all embassy staff is now entitled to a tail, same with any Americans coming in from Dushanbe International, and you can bet that’ll include you. Colonel Ghazan apologizes for the inconvenience and stresses it’s simply a security precaution.”
“Ghazan will know that Cramer’s Agency. That’ll be obvious to anyone. But do the Tajiks know about Wilkes, too?”
“We’ve identified Tom as a lost tourist.”
“Right, an American tourist driving around Gorno-Badakhshan, near the Afghan border, alone, I suppose that’s completely common.”
“Hey, it was the best we could do,” Gerald said. Somewhat defensively, too, Avery observed. But he didn’t hold that against him. Gerald was essentially acting chief of station now, and he had a lot on his plate. “We didn’t know Wilkes was going to Khorugh and we had no cover prepared for his unannounced trip. It took everyone by surprise when his body turned up there.”
Avery arched an eyebrow. “Nobody knew what Wilkes was doing in Khorugh?” He noted the younger man’s reaction and added, “I’m not being critical. I’m not here to find scapegoats for the Seventh Floor. That’s the Office of Security’s job, but I do need to know what’s been going on around here, if I’m going to do my job.”
“The only time I’ve ever seen Khorugh come up is pertaining to CERTITUDE, one of our top Tajik agents.”
“Has anyone been in contact with CERTITUDE?”
“No longer possible,” Gerald said. “Earlier today, I learned through police sources that he was found dead outside Khorugh, just twenty miles away from where Wilkes was killed. My source provided the forensics and pathology reports, which show that they were killed by the same weapon, a Makarov 9mm, and within several hours of each other. We communicated with CERTITUDE through a shared e-mail account. Only Cramer, CERTITUDE, and I have access to it. There weren’t any messages, and nothing about a Sunday meeting.”
“Tell me about CERTITUDE,” Avery said.
“He’s a Pamiri trader, does business in Gorno-Badakhshan and Afghanistan. He has tribal connections with the warlords. Before he was killed, we’d tasked him, at Wilkes’ insistence, with checking out a construction project underway in Gorno-Badakhshan and financed by a Ukrainian firm.”
“What kind of construction project?”
“Ostensibly, it’s a cement factory for humanitarian and development projects in Gorno-Badakhshan for a firm called Tajikistan Cement Investment and Development Company. We first caught wind of it a few months back, while investigating Pakistanis who had links to this company, including associates of Ali Masood Jafari.”
“The Pakistani nuclear scientist,” Avery said.
“Cramer looked into it personally and decided it wasn’t worth further expenditure of resources. But for some reason it really caught Wilkes’ attention. It became a point of contention between Cramer and Wilkes. He resented Wilkes coming in and tying up resources to cover old ground.”
“And you’re thinking IMU is involved?” Avery asked.
“That’s the consensus around here.”
“Why’s that? IMU hasn’t claimed responsibility, no one has.”
“IMU involvement would be consistent with recent events around here,” Gerald said. “Since all this stuff with the nuclear smuggling came up and the IMU-Afghanistan connection, we’ve targeted IMU cells across the region, especially in the Fergana Valley. We called it PINION. It was a joint op with Tashkent station. We placed a penetration agent codenamed CREST, a Northern Alliance Uzbek who worked with our forces in Afghanistan, inside the IMU hierarchy. After two months, CREST dropped off the grid. A week later, Tajik police in Kanibadam discovered his mutilated body. Over the next several days, we lost three more highly placed agents. Our counterterrorism networks in the country are basically blown, and, across the border, Tashkent station is feeling the repercussions, too. It was a serious cluster fuck.”
PINION hadn’t been included in the files Culler had provided Avery.
“We don’t have any names or suspects yet. Well, that’s not entirely true. The Uzbek National Security Service identified an operative code-named Karakurt as the killer of two of our PINION agents. This is the first we’ve ever heard of him. I’ve run it through our allies, and no one else has anything on him either.”
“Karakurt?” asked Avery. He didn’t recall the name from Culler’s briefing packet.
“It’s a venomous spider indigenous to the Astrakhan region of Russia. It’s one of the deadliest spiders in the world.”
“Did you run this through Ghazan?”
“GKNB has nothing. But according to the Germans, there’s a particularly brutal and efficient Krasnaya Mafiya enforcer called Karakurt who comes from the Caucasus and has links to extremist groups in the former Soviet Union. We don’t have a physical description or name and no idea where to begin looking. Hell, he might not even exist.”
Avery filed away this bit of information about Karakurt. His instincts told him it could be important.
There was silence for several seconds as Avery digested this new information. Then he said, “I’m going to need access to Cramer’s office and all of his files.”
FIVE
Avery was aware of their GKNB watchers observing them as they walked from the Forerunner, through Post One, and into the embassy. Even without Gerald’s advance warning, they’d still be easy to spot, two of them sitting in an Opel with official government plates. Avery shook his head. He wasn’t even here an hour, and already the Tajiks managed to make his job more difficult.
At Post One, Avery signed in using his Anderson identity. Then Gerald led him up a staircase to the third floor, through a cipher-lock door into the CIA station, and showed him into Cramer’s office.
The office was exactly what Avery would have expected of Cramer. It was clean and sparse, everything neatly organized, just as he’d compartmentalized as all aspects of his life, with very few personal effects, other than books and a couple framed pictures on the wall. Large political and topographical maps of the region adorned the opposite wall.