minimum.”
“How minimum?”
“Barclay and the CIA are not included on the distribution list, shall we say.”
A gust caught her hair, sent strands across her eyes, and Chace pushed them clear with her finger, tucking the strays back behind her ear. “So it’s unsanctioned. You’re trying to sell me an unsanctioned lift from a hostile theater, and you want me to do it without alerting either our people or the Americans.”
“Ideally. Though I’m told there’s the possibility of limited American support once you’re on the ground in Tashkent. What form that support will take, I can’t say.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
“It’s not unsanctioned, it’s unofficial. I have permission for the operation, just not through the traditional channels.”
“How high?”
“I can’t say.”
“Intelligence and Security Committee? FCO? Cabinet level? Ministerial?”
“I can’t say, Tara.”
“But you’re telling me that you’ve secured approval at either C’s level or higher, is that it?”
“Yes.”
“You understand why I ask, don’t you? Because I’d hate to take a job only to discover that I’m going to be sold out again upon completion. Once was enough for me, you understand.”
She saw Crocker’s mouth twist slightly, his approximation of a smile.
“I didn’t say I’d do it, Paul,” she warned. “Don’t get excited.”
“You want to do it.”
“So I can become Whitehall’s bitch again? No, thank you.”
“I’ll protect you.”
“You did it so well last time.”
“I’ll protect you,” Crocker repeated, more insistent. “You do the job, I’ll bring you home, Tara. You’ll be Minder One again, you’ll be Head of Section again, back where you belong. Where you should be right now.”
“I should be back in Barlick right now, with Tamsin.”
“I hope you’re convincing yourself with that line, because you’re sure as hell not convincing me.”
“Don’t tell me—”
“This isn’t about love,” Crocker interrupted. “Of course you love her, you’re her mother. But you’re dying by inches out here. You hate it, and you hate yourself for wishing you were back in London, and back on the job. But you
Chace shook her head again.
“I know, Tara.” He lowered his voice, speaking more slowly, picking the words more carefully. “I understand, I really do. I was Minder One with a wife and two children; trust me, I know. You’re not abandoning her, you’re not betraying her.”
Chace swallowed, turned away. To the northeast, clouds were sweeping in over the summit of the hill, dragging a curtain of rain along with them.
“She’s not even a year old.”
“She’ll be all right.”
Chace heard the rustle of Crocker’s coat, knew that he was offering her the envelope again, could imagine the contents. The papers and the passport, the file photos of Ruslam—correction, Ruslan—Mihailovich Malikov and his two-year-old son. Maybe a map, certainly a two- or three-page briefing paper, culled from the Intelligence Directorate, of what to expect from Uzbekistan, from Tashkent. Options and suggestions and Tracy Elizabeth Carlisle, a nice single girl from Oxfordshire who was quite possibly already known to the world as a tissue of lies.
“She’ll be fine, Tara,” Crocker said. “And so will you.”
“I was right,” Chace said. “You are a bastard.”
She took the envelope.
Preoperational Background
Zahidov, Ahtam Semyonovich
So the Old Man was finally dying, and the irony was, of course, that now was not the time. Had his body chosen to begin failing him even six months earlier, things would have been different, before Ruslan’s self-righteous cunt of a wife had started playing at spy. But no, as much as President Mihail Malikov walked and talked and spoke and dressed as a post-Soviet statesman, he had the heart and soul of an old Communist bastard, the kind who would go on living out of sheer will, out of sheer spite, refusing death with pure outrage born of the unthinkable. Death, in the final estimation, was the ultimate relinquishment of all the power Mihail Malikov had spent a lifetime greedily accumulating.
But death didn’t really give a damn, and the President’s third heart attack in as many years made that abundantly clear. Death was coming for Mihail Malikov, and when it claimed him, then all hell would break loose.
Unless Zahidov could get the pieces in place. Unless he and Sevara could make not only the President but the DPMs and the Americans see the benefits to an orderly succession. And if Sevara could convince her father to state, publicly, that she must assume control in the event of his passing, the battle would be all but won before it started.
The appropriate gestures would have to be made, of course, but nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that hadn’t been done before in one fashion or another. Sevara’s assumption of power would have to be accompanied by the requisite statements of regret and humility, and the immediate declaration that she would call for a general
