Private Wars

He was waiting in the bed when she got back.

CHAPTER 12

Uzbekistan—Tashkent—182 Sulaymonova,

Penthouse of Sevara Malikov-Ganiev

17 February, 0008 Hours (GMT+5:00)

Zahidov collapsed onto Sevara, breathless, spent, and as happy as he had been in weeks. He kissed her neck and tasted the perspiration there, moved his mouth along her shoulder, drinking her sweetness with his tongue, feeling the warmth and smoothness of her skin, the life of her. She shuddered again around him, ran her nails up his back, and then let out a long sigh of contentment, giving voice to everything he was feeling.

For a while then, he drifted in languid thought, feeling Sevara’s heartbeat slowing, feeling his own matching pace. She kissed his shoulder and his neck and then his mouth, each tenderly, then let her leg slip away from him, freeing him. Zahidov took the cue, reluctantly rolling off her, the bedsheet clinging to him. When he was on his back, she curled against him, resting her head on his chest.

“Do you think he’s dead yet?”

“No.” The stroke had been unexpected, not the result they’d been after, and it complicated things, though not as much as he had first feared. “The doctors say he’s stabilized.”

Sevara readjusted her position, making herself more comfortable. Zahidov felt her nails traveling lightly over his belly, up his chest.

“You’re disappointed,” she said softly. “Don’t be, Ahtya.”

“I don’t like him lingering.”

“But it doesn’t hurt us. I saw him at the hospital this evening. The whole side of his body is useless, his face is sagging like melted wax. I talked to him for almost half an hour, holding his hand. He couldn’t even move his fingers, he couldn’t even speak. The doctors say it’s unlikely he’ll ever be able to again.”

“Unlikely isn’t the same as certain.”

Sevara rolled, propping herself up on her side, smiling down at him, reassuring. “It doesn’t matter. He won’t be recovered by tomorrow, love. He won’t be recovered in a week, or even a month. It gives us time. He remains President in name, and you and I, we simply move in and take control. We can keep working on the Deputies, making certain they know how things are going to be. And when everything is right and in place, we announce my father’s illness, his subsequent retirement, and that I will be acting in his stead until elections can be held.”

Zahidov stared at the ceiling, the shadows cast by the candles burning on the bureau beyond the foot of the bed.

“Time is to our advantage,” Sevara told him.

“To your brother as well.” He turned to look at her, brushing hair from her cheek with the back of his hand. “It’s to his advantage as well, Sevya, and he will do exactly what you are doing.”

“Ruslan’s got no support from the Americans, you said so yourself. They know he’s not strong enough to hold the country together.”

“He might be able to change their minds.”

Sevara laughed, kissed his hand. “When has Washington ever changed its mind, Ahtya, especially with the current American President? No, Ruslan will try, but he’ll need the DPMs, and the DPMs will already belong to us. I’ve spoken to Urdushevich and Tursunova already, and they’ve told me what I’ll hear from all of the rest. Not one of them wishes to lose what they have. And they know that should Ruslan become President, the first thing he’ll do is get rid of them all and claim he’s fighting corruption. None of them will ever lift a finger to support him.”

“It makes me uncomfortable,” Zahidov insisted, and he met her eyes, but didn’t say the rest.

Sevara threw back the covers and swung herself out of the bed, cursing him. The candlelight turned her skin to gold and shadow. He watched as she opened the closet, pulled on her robe. It was silk, green and black, one he had purchased for her on his last trip to Moscow, and he liked the way it clung to her, and he thought it made her even more desirable than when she wore nothing at all.

“I know what you’re thinking, Ahtya,” Sevara said. “The answer is no.”

“Why not? Because he’s your brother?”

“Precisely because he’s my brother. Think of how it will look, if nothing else. First his wife, then Papa, then my brother?”

He sat up in the bed. “It can be done with subtlety.”

“No, it can’t, my love, really, it can’t. Even were he to die of natural causes tomorrow it would not be subtle enough, not so soon on the heels of the others. It becomes overt—worse, it becomes obvious, and that would force Washington’s hand, because the media would report upon it, and they would have to respond to that pressure. Right now, they can suspect, they can even know in their hearts we’re responsible for Papa’s illness. But if we kill Ruslan, it takes things too far.”

“It’s not like you to be sentimental about family.”

Sevara returned to the foot of the bed, tying the sash of the robe about her waist with a jerk, and Zahidov knew he’d made her angry, even without seeing the expression on her face.

“He’s my brother,” she said quietly. “He is the father of my nephew. We helped my father along because it was his time to go, because his end was inevitable, and because he blocked our way. Ruslan has no power, Ahtam. He has nothing. No support, no funding, no connections, no allies, nothing. We don’t have to be savages.”

Zahidov leaned forward, matching her tone, speaking just as softly. “As long as he is alive, he will oppose you, Sevya. That makes him your enemy, and that makes him dangerous. You and I have enough to worry about already. Why allow for one more factor we cannot control?”

“If that is your concern, then control him. But that does not require killing him, Ahtam, and I will not allow it.” She ran a hand through her hair, pulling the strands in frustration. “Put him under guard, under house arrest, whatever you want to call it.”

“For how long? A week? A month? The rest of his natural life?”

She glared at him. “Until the announcement. Keep him in his home for the next two, three weeks, that will be long enough. By then, it will be too late.”

“Assuming everything is in place by then.”

“Everything will be.”

“I don’t like it.”

Sevara mounted the bed once more, walking to him on her knees, straddling him over the sheets. She put her