―Are you all right?‖ she said, looking up at Chalthoum.
He nodded in his usual dour way.
―I‘ve asked him who hired him,‖ she said, ―but he‘s not talking.‖ ―Take Yusef and see about the other two.‖ Chalthoum was staring intently at the fallen leader.
Soraya knew that look of determination. ―Amun…‖
―Just give me five minutes.‖
They needed the information, there was no question about that. Soraya nodded reluctantly and, with Yusef, walked back to where the other two men lay near the mouth of the hallway. There wasn‘t much to see. Both had taken multiple shots to the abdomen and chest. Neither was alive. As they gathered up the rifles, they heard a muffled cry that, in its inhumanity, sent shivers down their spines.
Yusef turned to her. ―This Egyptian friend of yours, he can be trusted?‖
Soraya nodded, already sick at what Amun was doing with her consent.
There was silence then, except for the desperate voice of the wind, keening through the abandoned rooms. After a time, Chalthoum returned to them. He was limping badly, and Yusef handed him a rifle to lean on.
―My enemies had nothing to do with this,‖ he said in a voice that had not been changed one iota by what he‘d just done. ―These men were hired by the Americans, specifically a man known ridiculously as Triton. Mean anything to you?‖
Soraya shook her head.
―But these might.‖ She saw four small rectangular metal objects swinging from a length of cord. ―I found these around the leader‘s neck.‖
She examined them when he handed them over. ―They look like dog tags.‖
Amun nodded. ―He said they came from the four Americans who were executed back there. These bastards murdered them.‖
But she had to admit the tags weren‘t like any she had ever seen. Instead of carrying name, rank, and serial number, they were laser-engraved with what looked like—
―They‘re enciphered,‖ she said, her heart beating fast. ―These might be the key to proving who launched the Kowsar 3, and why.‖
Book Four
31
LEONID DANILOVICH ARKADIN roamed the passenger area of the Air Afrika flight that had been sent for him and his cadre in Nagorno-Karabakh. He knew their destination was Iran. Noah Perlis was certain that Arkadin didn‘t know the specific site, but Noah was wrong. Like many Americans in his position, Noah believed himself smarter than those who weren‘t American and able to manipulate them. Where Americans got that idea was something of a mystery, but having spent time in DC, Arkadin had some ideas. America‘s smug sense of isolation might have been shaken by the events in 2001, but not its sense of privilege and entitlement. When he‘d been there, he‘d sat in district restaurants, eavesdropping on conversations as part of his Treadstone training. But at the same time he‘d listen to the neocons—men of power, substance, and influence who were convinced that they had the keys to how the world worked. For them, everything was childishly simple, as if there were only two immutable variables in life: action and reaction, both of which they understood completely, and for which they planned. And when the reactions were not what their brain trust had anticipated—when their plans blew up in their faces—instead of admitting their error, in a tide of amnesia they redoubled their efforts. To him, it was madness that turned these people deaf and blind to real events as they unfolded.
Perhaps, he thought now, as he checked and rechecked the readiness of his men and their equipment, Noah was one of the last of his kind, a dinosaur unaware that his age was ending, that the glacier that had been forming on the horizon was about to plow him under.
Just like Dimitri Ilyinovich Maslov.
She has to go back,‖ Dimitri Ilyinovich Maslov said, ―she and the three girls. Otherwise there will be no peace with Lev Antonin.‖
―Since when does a shit-kicker like Antonin dictate to you,‖ Arkadin said, ―the head of the Kazanskaya grupperovka?‖
Arkadin had the sensation that Tarkanian, who stood by his side, had winced. The three men were surrounded by sound, amplified to an earsplitting level. In the Pasha Room of Propaganda, an elitnyclub in downtown Moscow, there were only two other men—both Maslov‘s muscle. All the other attendees—
of which there were more than a dozen—were young, long-legged, blond, busty, gorgeous, and sexually desirable, which pretty much defined them: tyolkasall. They were clothed—or, more accurately, semi-clothed—in provocative outfits, whether miniskirts, bikinis, see-through tops, plunging necklines, or completely backless dresses. They wore high heels, even the ones in bathing suits, and plenty of makeup. Some reluctantly returned to their high school classes each day.
Maslov stared hard at Arkadin, assuming that like everyone else he confronted, he could intimidate him just by a look. Maslov was wrong, and he didn‘t like being wrong. Ever.
He took one step toward Arkadin, which was an aggressive step, though not a threatening one, and his nose wrinkled. ―What‘s that fire smoke I smell on you, Arkadin, are you a fucking woodsman on top of everything else?‖
Five miles from the Orthodox cathedral, Arkadin had taken Joškar into the dense pine forest. She was cradling Yasha in her arms and he was holding an ax he‘d drawn out of the trunk of her car. Her three daughters, sobbing hysterically, trailed along behind the adults in single file.
When they‘d left the parked car, Tarkanian had yelled after them, ―Half an hour, after that I‘m getting the fuck out of here!‖
―Will he really leave us here?‖ she asked.
―Do you care?‖
―Not as long as you‘re with me.‖
At least, that‘s what he thought she‘d said. She‘d spoken so softly that the wind had taken her words almost as soon as they were out of her mouth.
Wings fluttered by overhead as they tramped beneath the swaying pine branches. Once they crunched through the thin crust, the snow was soft as down. Overhead, the sky was as woolly as Joškar‘s coat.
In a small clearing she set her son down on a bed of snowy pine needles.
―He always loved the forest,‖ she said. ―He used to beg me to take him to play in the mountains.‖
As he set about finding felled trees, deadwood, and chopping it up into foot-long logs, Arkadin remembered his own all-too-infrequent trips to the mountains around Nizhny Tagil, the only place where he could take a deep breath without the oppressive weight of his parents and his birthplace withering his heart and sickening his spirit.
Within twenty minutes he had a bonfire going. The girls had stopped their sobbing, their tears freezing like tiny diamonds on their ruddy cheeks. As they stared, fascinated, into the building flames, the frozen tears melted, dripping from their rounded chins.