Gordon-Palmer, and Sir Walter Seccombe. He thought about Chace, still running secretly in Uzbekistan. He thought, for a moment, about Ruslan Mihailovich Malikov and his sister, Sevara Malikov-Ganiev.
Unbidden, he thought about his wife and his daughters, and remembered the bitterness in Ariel’s voice, the hurt at yet another of her father’s broken promises.
He wondered which of many enemies he’d rather have, and thought it was a luxury to be able to choose even that.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Crocker told Barclay.
CHAPTER 16
Uzbekistan—Tashkent—U.S. Chancery,
Office of the Political Counselor
20 February, 0703 Hours (GMT+5:00)
Riess came in early on Monday morning, hoping to use the peace and quiet of McColl’s absence to mow through the majority of the paperwork on his desk. He had yet another in the endless streams of demarches to prepare, this one regarding conditional subsidies proposed to support the Aral Sea Project, truly an utter waste of his time.
The Aral Sea was dying, if it wasn’t dead already. The two mighty rivers that had once fed it—the Syr Darya in the north, the Amu Darya in the south—no longer actually reached the sea, diverted and run dry by irrigation projects devoted to cotton production long before the waterways could reach their onetime destination. The sea level itself was dropping at a rate of one meter per year, and what it uncovered as it went could only be described as chemical crust, a foul mix of pesticides and defoliants that had run off the cotton fields. So far, over thirty-four thousand square kilometers of seafloor had been exposed, costing over ten million hectares of pastureland. All twenty-four documented species of fish that once swam in its waters were now gone.
It wasn’t simply an environmental disaster, it was a humanitarian one. Tuberculosis was endemic to the region, with over two thousand deaths attributed to the disease each year. Anemia was common. Children suffered from a host of liver, kidney, and respiratory ailments, in addition to cancer and birth defects.
It was a problem that had no solution, and as Riess read the reports yet again, trying to compose the paper that McColl would ask him to rewrite at least twice, he felt his frustration build more. What was the point? The political will to fix the situation didn’t exist, not here in Uzbekistan, nor in neighboring Kazakhstan, sharing the northern shores of the Aral. It didn’t exist in Turkmenistan or Kyrgyzstan or Tajikistan, all of whom drew from one or the other river to support their own agribusiness.
Yet another situation, another crisis in the long line of crises that Riess had seen in his years at the State Department, that had no solution.
It turned his thoughts dark and made the work harder, and he was so focused on it all that he didn’t look up when the door opened from the hall, into the Pol/Econ office. He assumed it was McColl, or the staff secretary, and it wasn’t until he heard Aaron Tower’s voice that he actually raised his eyes from his computer screen, to see the Tashkent COS standing before him.
“Morning, Chuck.”
“Good morning, sir. If you’re looking for the Counselor, I’m afraid he isn’t in yet.”
Tower shook his head, hooking one of the nearby chairs with his foot, drawing it to him. He shoved it with a knee, positioning it to face Riess’ desk, then sat down. He had a travel mug in his hand, brushed stainless steel and uncovered, and Riess could see the paper tag of an herbal tea bag dangling over the edge. It surprised him; he’d always imagined Tower to be a coffee drinker.
“Had to give up caffeine,” Tower informed him. “Blood pressure.”
“Ah.”
“Hey, listen,” Tower said. “This is one of those things that’s a little clumsy to talk about, so I’m just going to come out and say it, all right? And I hope you won’t be offended.”
“All right.”
“You were at the InterContinental on Thursday night.”
Riess felt his stomach perform what honestly felt like a backflip. “I’m sorry?”
“Yeah, it’s awkward, see? You were at the InterContinental, and no, I can’t tell you how I know it, but I know it, so let’s not play the no-I-wasn’t/yes-you-were game. You spent the night there. Well, a portion of the night there. In room 615, with a Brit named Tracy Carlisle.”
“I’m not sure this is any of your business, sir,” Riess countered, trying to channel the embarrassment, rather than the fear. It wasn’t very hard to do. He was certain he was blushing, and for a moment was immensely grateful that Tower had chosen to have this conversation while the office was empty, instead of in another hour, when McColl would have been certain to overhear it.
“Maybe, maybe not, but I kind of think that’s for me to decide,” Tower said. “I need you to tell me who this woman is, Charles, and how you know her.”
“I’ve known her for about twelve years,” Riess lied. “She spent a semester at Virginia Tech my junior year.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. We had a thing. She works for some agricultural firm in England. They do irrigation, I think.”
“So she’s here on business.”
“Much as I’d like to say she came all this way for me, she’s here on business.”
“This company she works for, you know its name?”
Riess shook his head. “We didn’t talk about it. Kind of puts me in a bad position if she starts asking questions about the economy of the region.”
“I can see that.”
Riess paused, then asked, “Can I ask why this matters?”
“It may not matter at all.”
“Yeah, but you’re asking me about it.”
Tower nodded, took hold of the paper tab on the end of its string, and pulled his tea bag from the cup. He flicked it overhand, sending it sailing, bag end first, into the wastepaper basket at the side of the secretary’s desk. It landed with a loud, wet smack. Tower admired the shot for a second, then turned his attention back to Riess.
“Is there a problem?” Riess asked.
Tower didn’t answer, still looking at him.
“I haven’t seen her since then,” Riess added.
“I know,” Tower said, and lapsed into silence again, continuing to watch him.
The silence turned uncomfortable. The fan on Riess’ desktop computer switched on, unnecessarily loud.
