Matthew Palmer - Enemy of the Good

“When did she die?” Kate asked.

“Three days after they arrested her. There was a secret trial and the verdict was carried out immediately. This is where they brought the bodies. Almost everyone here was part of the Azattyk movement.”

“And the intel reports that my uncle told me about? The ones that indicated she was alive?”

“Your CIA doesn’t share its reporting with me,” Murzaev said with a small chuckle. “But I’d hazard to guess that it was a crossed wire. Reading too much into ambiguous information. It happens all the time.”

Kate stepped off the road and onto the field, moving slowly, conscious that she was walking on hallowed ground. Murzaev walked alongside her.

“So what do we do now?” Kate asked.

“Whatever you say. You give the word and I will get a team up here to exhume the bodies. We will do our best to identify individual remains using DNA testing and dental records. Then we relocate them to the central cemetery. If that’s what you want.”

Kate looked around at the stunning natural beauty. The Ala-Too mountains loomed above them as though keeping watch on the fallen.

“I think Zamira would be happier here among her comrades,” she said.

Murzaev nodded.

“I think they all would want that,” he agreed.

“Maybe we could set up a stone of some sort. A monument to Azattyk.”

“That would be nice.”

Kate looked up at the sky, hoping for another glimpse of the hawk, but it was gone.

“Can I have a minute?”

“Of course.” Murzaev touched her arm affectionately and walked back to the car.

She knelt and put her right hand on the ground, feeling the rich, moist earth under her palm.

“We did it, Zamira,” she whispered. “You would have been proud. Mom would have been proud.”

Kate walked back to the car.

“Are you ready?” Murzaev asked.

“Yes,” she said. “Let’s go home.”

Matthew Palmer is a twenty-five-year veteran of the U.S. Foreign Service currently serving as the director for South Central Europe in the State Department’s Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs. A life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Palmer has worked as a diplomat all around the world.

The Wolf of Sarajevo

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Copyright © 2017 by Matthew Palmer

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Palmer, Matthew, 1966– author.

Title: Enemy of the good / Matthew Palmer.

Description: New York : G.P. Putnam’s Sons, [2017]

Identifiers: LCCN 2016041738 (print) | LCCN 2016051716 (ebook) | ISBN 9780399175022 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780698196018 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Undercover operations—Fiction. | International relations—Fiction. | Political fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Thrillers. | FICTION / Espionage. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction.

Classification: LCC PS3616.A3435 E54 2017 (print) | LCC PS3616.A3435 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016041738

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The views expressed here are those of the characters and do not necessarily represent those of the author, the Department of State, or the United States government.

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