Matthew Palmer - Enemy of the Good

“Boldu will be crushed in any event,” Chalibashvili continued. “You’d just be helping us do it with a minimum of collateral damage. We’d like to avoid the use of excessive force if that’s at all possible. But surgical intervention requires a greater degree of knowledge than we have at the moment. I believe that you can help us with this, Kate.”

She was “Kate” now. Not Ms. Hollister. It was like some bizarre game of “good inquisitor/bad inquisitor” with Chalibashvili playing both parts.

“Is that it?” Kate asked.

“What do mean?”

“Aren’t you going to offer me more? Money? Power? Position?”

“Name your price.” Chalibashvili smiled slyly in accepting her implied offer to negotiate.

But there was nothing to negotiate. Selling out Boldu would not only betray both Kate’s principles and her friends, it would vitiate her aunt’s twelve years of sacrifice in Torquemada’s Pit. Everything she worked for. Everything Kate’s mother had worked for. There was only one possible response.

“Go fuck yourself, Anton.”

It’s been more than twenty-four hours, Askar. And no word from Kate. I don’t like that at all. What have you been able to find out?”

Despite Daniar’s assurances that Chalibashvili would be forced to respect her diplomatic immunity, Ruslan could not shake the mental image of Kate shivering in the chill dark of a dungeon cell, waiting for a rescue that would never come. A full squad of heavily armed Special Police was now patrolling Prison Number One as a supplement to the regular guard force. Absent the element of surprise, there was no way that the Scythians could repeat their successful raid. Moreover, the obshchak ’s contacts with the outside, which prison authorities had known about and tolerated, had been cut off. Nogoev had no word about the fate of his brother.

The core members of the Boldu council were meeting at the last of Murzaev’s safe houses, the only one that had not yet—they hoped—been compromised. It was a small, dingy two-room apartment in a mostly industrial part of the city. People who lived in this neighborhood worked with their hands, drank as much as they could afford, and kept to themselves. Even so, every meeting was dangerous. The GKNB and the Special Police were combing Bishkek and the surrounding towns looking for Ruslan and Murzaev. One way or another, it looked like everything was going to come to a head in the next few days.

“There’s been nothing moving through the newsstand network,” Murzaev said, speaking carefully because of the swelling in his jaw and the dental putty a Boldu doctor had used to patch his broken teeth. “I sent one of the boys around to her apartment building. He didn’t ring the buzzer, but there were no lights. It’s possible that she was released to the embassy, and if she’s there we wouldn’t know about it.”

“Do you know anyone at the embassy?”

“I could find someone if I had to. But it’s dangerous. The Americans are playing all sides of the street right now. If we talk to them, it’s impossible to know who’s going to hear about it. We can’t trust them.”

“I need to know, Askar. I need to know what’s happened to Kate.”

“I understand. I want her out as well. She knows more than she should, even if the most important secret she had has been exposed. Let me see what more I can learn through our own people before we go to the Americans. There’s too much at stake.”

“If Torquemada is holding Kate,” Val interjected, “there’s really only one way to get her out of there. We need to take down Eraliev, and the faster we can do that, the better our chances for getting to her before…”

Valentina could not finish the sentence. She did not have to. They all knew what happened in the interrogation rooms of Prison Number One.

Ruslan nodded his understanding. He wanted to grab a gun and storm the gates of the prison like Ernest Defarge at the Bastille. But he had responsibilities to Boldu and to Kyrgyzstan and to the revolution that he had launched and hoped to lead. What he wanted to do was subordinate to what he had to do. This, he understood, was the price of leadership. He could only pray that Kate would understand it as well.

“Is everything ready for this evening?” Nogoev asked in a transparent attempt to shift the discussion away from something he considered a mere distraction. The Scythian commander was pragmatic to the point of callous. And he had seen so much death in his long career that its prospect—for himself or others—was of little consequence.

“As ready as it can be,” Hamid said. “Val and I have given clear instructions to the clan leaders, but the clans are fractious. They certainly aren’t used to working together. The plan isn’t especially complicated, but it has a lot of moving parts. Things could go wrong.”

“They will go wrong,” Ruslan said. “That’s unavoidable. We just have to be ready for it and adapt to the circumstances. I can promise you one thing. Tashtanbek Essenkul uluu will not panic. Not even if Eraliev calls out the tanks.”

“That’s good,” Hamid replied. “But he’s going to have to work with the Ichkilik and the southern clan leaders. Can he do that?”

“For a while. Let’s review the plan one more time.”

Nogoev spread a large map of Ala-Too Square out on the coffee table. His briefing was thorough and authoritative. It would not have been out of place at a high-level strategy session in the Kremlin.

Even so, Ruslan was struck by what a wild gamble they were taking, with hundreds of lives and the future of the country on the line. Boldu was his creation and his responsibility. And he was about to bet everything on a single throw of the dice.

It was three a.m. The dead time. The night owls had finally returned to their nests and the early birds had yet to stir. The police presence at Ala-Too Square was at its minimum. There would be only a handful of officers on duty guarding the Presidential Palace. It would take time to organize a response by the Special Police. Time that Ruslan intended to put to good use.

He and Nogoev and a small group of Scythians arrived at the square in the back of a Tata Super Ace, an Indian-made one-ton pickup truck. The Scythians unloaded plywood boards from the bed and laid them across the short set of stairs that led up from the street to the plaza. Ruslan drove the truck up the ramp and onto the square, parking it near the statue of Manas, where two raised planters created a path just about the size of the Super Ace. Six Scythians used levers and muscle power to turn the truck over on its side, blocking the path and making the first barrier.

This, Ruslan thought, was a gauntlet being thrown at Eraliev’s feet. Only one of them could survive the duel that must ensue.

Two policemen dressed like traffic cops rather than in paramilitary tactical gear came to investigate the noise. They shined flashlights at the truck and called out contradictory commands in a mix of Kyrgyz and Russian. Ruslan stepped forward. He looked like a Kyrgyz warlord of old in an embroidered jacket with loose trousers tucked into riding boots and a massive kalpak on his head. It was uncomfortable. Ruslan was a city boy now, and he rarely dressed like this. But it was part of the plan.

“Greetings, brothers,” he said. “Welcome to the dawn of a new Kyrgyzstan.”

The police pointed their machine pistols at Ruslan.

“Get on your knees,” one of them shouted.

“Never again,” Ruslan replied.

Something tapped one of the policemen on the shoulder. He turned to find that he was staring into the barrel of an AK-47. They were surrounded by heavily armed Scythians. Deciding in short order that they did not like the odds, the police held up their hands in surrender. The Scythians stripped them of their weapons and tied them up sitting back-to-back at the base of the statue. Now they had bargaining chips.