camera.
Chace pushed herself upright, trying to stand, and the pain of using her feet was too much to bear, and she dropped again, trying to catch the table to arrest the fall, and missing. She hit the floor on her side, rocking back and forth.
More words in Uzbek, the new man speaking to Zahidov, furious. Zahidov responded, his voice rising, and then the man shouted, and whatever the debate was ended then, because there was nothing more said. Chace lifted her head, trying to see what was happening, watched as Zahidov stormed out of the room, the other two men following in his wake.
Leaving the new man, the blond man, to kneel down beside her as he removed his coat. He wrapped it around her shoulders, and Chace’s mind flickered on the thought that this, too, might be a trick, some mind game played by Zahidov. She tried to pull away, but the man took hold of her upper arms, then closed the coat around her front.
“You’re a fucking mess,” the man said. “Do you think you can walk?”
Chace blinked at him, perplexed, then realized he’d actually spoken in English, his accent American.
“I don’t think so,” she said.
The man frowned, drawing creases along his face.
“You’re going to need to try,” he said.
Chace nodded, and the man slipped an arm around her waist, helping her to her feet. The pain was as intense as before, and Chace gasped and faltered, but he caught her, pulling her upright again. It felt like she was walking on a thousand splinters of glass, but somehow she managed to stay on her feet this time, using the man as a crutch. Slowly he began walking her to the door.
“I’ve got a car outside. Just make it to the car, hon, you can do that, can’t you?”
Chace nodded again.
They entered a hallway, now empty, then reached a flight of stairs. The stairs were hard, and it seemed to Chace it took them an eternity to climb them together, coming through a door and into another hallway. Like the one below, this one was empty.
It took another eternity to make it down the hall, turn, and then reach the exit of the building.
The sun was out, shockingly bright to Chace’s eyes, and it was cold, colder than it had been in the basement, and she felt it sinking through her bare legs, striking for bone. The car was a Mercedes-Benz, old and dented along the front panel, and the man guided her to it, then opened the rear door and helped her inside. He shut the door, and Chace lay down on the backseat, shivering. She heard the driver’s door open, then slam shut, and the engine started, and she felt the vibration through her whole body. The car started to move.
Chace forced herself upright, catching a glimpse of herself in the rearview mirror and not recognizing the woman she saw there at all. The right side of her face was scraped and caked with dried blood, and her eye had swollen closed. Her lower lip had split, and a bruise of angry purple and red was glowing on her left cheek. Her hair was stringy, matted with blood and dirt.
She looked out the window, at the Interior Ministry, wondering how she’d gotten out of there alive.
Standing in the entrance, watching her go, she saw Ahtam Zahidov, and it looked to her like he was wondering the same thing.
CHAPTER 30
London—Vauxhall Cross, Office of D-Ops
21 February, 0649 Hours GMT
Crocker was sitting at his desk, watching a cigarette burning down in the ashtray, when the red phone rang. He looked across to where Seale was sitting, waiting with him, then answered the call. He listened to the Duty Ops Officer, asked him to repeat, then thanked him and hung up.
“She’s alive,” Crocker told Seale. “Your man found her at the Interior Ministry, brought her to the British Embassy. A doctor is tending her now, they’ll fly her home as soon as they think she can make the trip.”
Seale nodded, clearly sharing Crocker’s exhaustion, if not his immediate sense of relief. “They were working her over?”
“I believe the term they use is ‘interrogation.’?”
“How bad?”
“Bad enough that she won’t be traveling until tomorrow at the earliest, according to the Station Number One.”
“Could’ve been worse. My guy could have gotten there too late.”
They were each silent for several seconds, then Seale sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Paul.”
“Hmm?”
“We have to figure this thing out, what you and I are doing, how we’re going to trust each other.”
“We don’t have to trust each other, Julian.”
“Look, I know you were tight with Cheng. And I know you don’t trust me. But if you’d come to me at the start of this, told me you had an agent running in Tashkent, it would have saved a shitload of grief.”
Crocker shook his head, then stubbed the half-dead cigarette out and started a new one, this one to actually smoke. The relief he felt regarding Chace was beyond words, and maybe, because of that, he was less inclined to be combative, or even antagonistic.
“It was never about Tashkent,” Crocker said.
“You were jockeying for Ruslan—”
“You think Ruslan was
Seale frowned.
“This didn’t start with us,” Crocker said. “It started with you, in your house.”
“You should have come to me with it anyway.”
“As Barclay has been anxious to point out to me in the past, I don’t work for you.”
“No, but you don’t work against us, either.”
“Not if I can help it. The plan was never to screw you or yours, Julian.” Crocker picked up his internal line, punched a key, waited for a response. “Escort out for Mr. Seale.”
“I’m leaving, am I?”
“For the time being.” Crocker indicated the ceiling with his cigarette. “It was never about Tashkent, Julian. Tashkent was the excuse.”
Seale looked up, toward the sixth floor, then looked back to Crocker, then shook his head. He put his hands on the arms of his chair, pushed himself to his feet.
“I’m glad your girl is okay.”
