It was a strangely happy — almost ecstatic — time in his life. But it hadn’t lasted. The promise of communism gleamed bright and then quickly burned out. Just as his father had promised.
Not long after he escaped, the entire malignancy called the Soviet Union had collapsed. But in many ways, that collapse had made the world even more dangerous. Humanity’s evil now churned quietly beneath the surface, growing at a geometric rate, but never coalescing into something tangible enough to fight.
The technology and social mobility that had once held the same promise as communism were again being twisted by a species that would simply not allow itself to live in peace and prosperity. Bizarre ideologies were replacing religion as the opiate of the masses and were being used by politicians to keep the common man off balance. Concentrations in wealth were returning to the corrosive levels of the distant past. Weapons of mass destruction were falling into the hands of fanatics. The world’s financial systems had become a boom-and-bust engine that enriched its participants while starving everyone else.
And the trend seemed to be an inescapable downward spiral. The growing choices in media allowed people to retreat from anything that didn’t reinforce their own prejudices — creating an increasingly xenophobic population consumed with passion and unencumbered by facts. Wars were being fought over resources that weren’t yet scarce, and democracy was deteriorating into nothing more than the tyranny of an ill-informed and superstitious majority.
He’d believed he could change it all. Like so many before him, he’d thought he could perfect humanity. Create a Utopia.
Dresner looked down at the snowflakes melting on the spotted, damaged skin of his hands. With another fifty years he would have succeeded. He would have triumphed where Plato, Marx, and even God himself had failed.
But that dream was dead — a victim of time and the encroaching frailty that he so carefully hid. Now the best he could do was take a place in history among the monsters he despised. It was the only way to give humanity the time it needed to save itself.
13
Randi Russell eased left on the steep slope and leaned against a boulder, making the outline of her body unrecognizable as it melded with the stone. A three-quarter moon was nearly overhead and the hazy streak of the Milky Way cut across the black sky, casting a dull glow over the landscape.
The three men tracking the same fleeing Afghan she was were below, completely invisible in the inky bottom of the canyon. She’d made it to within a hundred meters of them a couple hours ago and spent a few minutes watching and listening. Languages were one of her greatest gifts but she hadn’t understood anything she’d heard beyond identifying it as Ukrainian.
Since the Ukrainians weren’t part of the coalition forces in Afghanistan, it suggested that these particular gentlemen were mercenaries. And not just any mercenaries. Based on their speed, silence, and equipment, they were highly trained operatives that even she felt compelled to give a wide berth.
So she’d taken the high road, creeping along the steep slope above them, concentrating on not knocking down any rocks that would alert them to her presence. It wasn’t the only reason for taking the most precarious possible route, though. In fact, she knew something they didn’t. About six months ago, she’d chased an al-Qaeda operative though this same corridor and had made the exact same mistakes the Ukrainians were making now.
The canyon walls steepened consistently as they rose, finally topping out in loose, slightly overhanging cliffs at least fifteen meters high. As a far better-than-average rock climber, she’d concluded that there was no chance of her target escaping that way and focused on keeping her pace quick enough to catch him before the terrain opened up. What she hadn’t known at the time — and didn’t learn until the terrorist was long gone — was that there was a narrow arch near the top of the canyon’s northern wall that went all the way through.
She looked up at the dark cliff band and took advantage of a powerful gust to push on, confident that any rocks she kicked loose would be written off as having been dislodged by the wind.
Randi slowed when things went still again, feeling the cold starting to freeze the sweat trapped between her back and the light pack she was wearing. Her eye picked out a movement twenty meters above and she started for it, worrying less about speed than staying completely silent.
She considered her options as she closed in but, as usual, none was good. Her best bet was the same as it always was — to turn around and get the hell out of there. Discounting that, it was a choice between trying to make contact while she still had room to maneuver, but also a terrific opportunity to fall to her death, and catching the Afghan in the arch where the confined space would neutralize what little advantage she still had.
Option one seemed marginally better. In fact, if she was clever, it might even work.
“Wait,” she said in Pashto, muffling the word slightly with her hand.
While she could communicate perfectly well in the language, she hadn’t been successful at fully eradicating her accent. Better to communicate in one-word sentences if possible.
The movement visible in front of her stopped abruptly. “Who is that?”
“Adeela,” Randi said, picking a woman’s name common in the region.
There was a long pause before the man spoke again. “Adeela? How did you escape? Come. Hurry.”
Randi slid the sniper rifle down in its sling on her pack. The butt hit her in the back of the legs as she climbed, but the long barrel wouldn’t be silhouetted over her head.
Ahead, the man slipped behind a low pile of rocks that had been created to obscure the entrance to the arch and provide a defensive position if it became necessary.
She approached slowly, eyes widening as she tried to penetrate the gloom and pick out the man she was pursuing. There was no way, though. The area behind the wall was so dark, it looked like a gateway to a dead universe.
Heart pounding uncomfortably in her chest, she let her assault rifle hang from its strap and pulled a silenced pistol from the holster on her hip. Stepping behind the wall was like going blind and she tried futilely to pick up a hint of the man she knew was only a meter or so away.
“Adeela,” he said quietly. “Are you—”
His eyes were obviously better adjusted and he lunged, but the motion was what Randi needed to pinpoint him. Before he could get hold of her, she had a silencer pressed up under his chin.
“Be calm,” she said in Pashto. “I’m not with those men and I had nothing to do with what happened to your village.”
“Then who are you?”
“Randi Russell.”
She felt him nod through the motion of the gun barrel. “The woman from the CIA.”
“That’s right. Farhad Wahidi’s friend,” she said, naming the elder she’d had occasional dealings with.
He let out a bitter laugh that sounded alarmingly loud in the silence. “He did not call you a friend.”
“Okay,” she said, searching for the correct words to get her thought across. “Occasional convenient acquaintances. Who are you?”
“Zahid. What do you want?”
“I want to know what happened in Sarabat.”
“Why should I tell you?”
It was a good question. Her eyes had adapted enough to see his rough outline and she took a step back, lowering the pistol as an act of good faith. “Why shouldn’t you?”
He stood there for what seemed like a long time before speaking again. “The men below were with the ones who attacked my village. They killed not only the men but the women and children.”