Matthew Palmer - Enemy of the Good

Ruslan opened the door, wearing jeans and a black zippered fleece. He looked tired and worn out, but he was most definitely alive.

Kate reached for him and he took her in his arms, one hand pressed into the small of her back and the other stroking her hair. She pressed her face against his chest, not certain if she wanted to laugh or cry. Then Ruslan took her face in his hands and kissed her, and time stopped.

Kate pulled back from the kiss.

“I’m sorry about Albina,” she said.

“Me too.”

“Where’s Yana?”

“Hamid is looking after her.”

“Close the damn door.” Kate recognized Murzaev’s voice.

Ruslan ushered her into the apartment and locked the door behind them. Like the other Boldu safe house she had seen, this one was sparsely furnished. But there were chairs in the living room and a low table with a silver tray holding a bottle of vodka and three glasses. The table and chairs sat on top of a large Turkoman-style carpet dyed a deep red.

Murzaev was sitting in one of the threadbare chairs wearing a black suit that looked like it had been slept in. The spymaster himself looked older, almost frail. Kate walked over to him and leaned down to kiss his cheek.

“Thank you,” she said.

Murzaev smiled wanly and gestured at one of the chairs. Kate and Ruslan sat opposite each other and Murzaev poured the vodka.

“I don’t think I was followed here,” Kate said.

“I know you weren’t,” Murzaev replied.

“How do you know?”

“Because my boys followed you to make certain you were not. They saw nothing. And if there was something to see, they would have. My boys are good.”

“I certainly didn’t see them following me.”

“No,” Murzaev agreed.

Kate turned to the man she loved.

“Ruslan, they know about you. The security team in my embassy didn’t believe the story about Grigoriy. They went to the school with the photographs and Mrs. Larson identified you. I should have thought of that and asked for her help. I have reason to believe that what the embassy knows, Eraliev knows. The CIA station chief warned me that the government was going to kill you. He whispered it to me, like it was a secret he wasn’t supposed to share.”

“And you trust him to tell you the truth?” Murzaev asked.

“No. But I can’t see why he would lie about that.”

“You can never tell with the CIA. They tell so many lies it can be hard even for them to remember what’s false and what’s true.”

“What can we do?”

“They may know my name,” Ruslan said. “But that’s not the same thing as knowing where to find me. I just need to keep moving.”

“And what about your family? Won’t they go after them?”

“Eventually. But I’m hoping that in a few days it’ll be a moot point. We’ll all be together on Ala-Too Square and then they’ll have to come and get us.”

“And what happens when they do?”

“There’s been some positive news on that front, thanks to you.”

“Malinin?”

“Yes.”

“What happened?”

“He’s fallen from favor,” Murzaev said sardonically. “Fallen hard. Seems there were credible rumors that he was plotting a coup. His own men arrested him. Kayrat uluu has taken over as head of the Special Police, and we believe he’s sympathetic to the cause. You did well, Ms. Hollister.”

“What did they do to Malinin?” Kate asked, although she was not certain that she wanted to know the answer.

“They took him to Number One for questioning,” Murzaev replied with no more emotion than he would have displayed reporting on the weather.

“Thanks to me,” Kate said, her tone hollow and bitter.

“It had to be, Kate,” Ruslan said, and it was clear that he understood Kate’s ambivalent reaction to the news. “Whatever fate waits for him in prison is only a small sample of the misery he delivered to hundreds. This isn’t on you. It was always his fate. You didn’t do this. He did this to himself. Malinin was part of a brutal system that eats its own. Ultimately, it eats them all.”

“All except for Eraliev and Chalibashvili.”

“They’re dancing in the dragon’s jaws and they know it. There is no graceful retirement for men like Malinin. Only a bullet or the end of a rope.”

Kate’s feelings were confused. She knew, in principle, what she had been doing when she started spreading rumors about Malinin. But to have it made real in this way, and to know that it had happened because of her, no matter Ruslan’s efforts to shield her from responsibility, was extremely discomfiting. She could not help but imagine the now former head of the Special Police strapped to a chair in one of the dank interrogation rooms in the Pit. And Kate knew, like it or not, that she had put him there. Values complexity.

“You told me that you wanted to accelerate your plans for a Maidan-style occupation of Ala-Too Square. I assume that’s where you’ve been for the last few days, talking to the clans.”

Ruslan nodded.

“Clan leadership is a little diffuse, but my grandfather is high up in the councils of the Adygine. He’s ready… I think. But we have to move quickly.”

“When?”

“Three days.”

“I’ve been down south talking to the Buguu and the Kara-Kyrgyz and some of the other tribes,” Murzaev added. “Most are cautious. But there are some who are angry enough or greedy enough to take this risk.”

“Will there be enough? A critical mass? Will the students and trade unions join them?”

Murzaev shrugged.

“We’ll see. Val and Hamid have been working those channels.”

“I’ll be there,” Kate said. “I’m ready to hunt monsters. I’ll even bring my own pitchfork, but I may need to borrow a torch.”

“I’ve been carrying one for you for more than a decade,” Ruslan said, switching from Kyrgyz to English for the idiom and placing a hand over his heart in mock solemnity.

Kate stuck out her tongue.

“Very funny.”

“Tell me what your friends in the embassy know,” Murzaev said, shifting the conversation back to operational grounds. “What did they say to you? And what do they want from you?”

Kate gave them a detailed readout on her confrontation with Ball and her subsequent meeting with the ambassador and his entire security team. As she spoke, Murzaev stood up and walked over to the window, looking out into the darkened city intently. It seemed to Kate as though something out there was bothering him.

“Tell me again about Crespo’s warning to you,” he demanded.

“At the end of the meeting, we had a private moment together and he whispered to me that ‘they’ were going to kill Ruslan.”

“But he didn’t tell you who?”

“No. I assumed it meant the Kyrgyz security services, either GKNB or the Special Police, but there wasn’t time for much of a conversation.”

“Why would he do this thing? Why would he warn you?”

“I don’t know,” Kate admitted. “There’s no love lost between the CIA and Defense Intelligence. There may be something going on between Crespo and Ball that I’m not seeing. But he was pretty emphatic.”

Murzaev looked at her briefly and then again out the window at whatever had caught his attention.

“Did Crespo give you anything to carry?” he asked. “A pen? Or a watch? Or anything that you might have with you now?”

“No. I don’t think… Oh my god.”

“Yes?”

“To create the opportunity for our little moment alone, he knocked my purse onto the ground and then helped me repack it.”

Murzaev stepped away from the window and without asking took Kate’s purse and dumped its contents onto the coffee table, feeling around inside to make certain that he had emptied all the pockets.