moved into a hallway, and Arkitov led him to a door, knocked once on it, then opened it.
There were three men inside, two of them rangers, and both of them were coming to their feet before the door had fully opened. Both snapped salutes to Arkitov, and he dismissed them, then nodded to Zahidov and stepped out after them, closing the door once more, leaving Zahidov alone with the man who remained.
“Hazza?” Zahidov asked.
The man nodded to him, eyeing him with blatant suspicion and fingering the Kalashnikov resting across his thighs. Zahidov guessed him to be in his late thirties, perhaps older, but with the Pathans, after a certain age, it was hard to tell. They were the ethnic Afghanis, sometimes called the Pashtun or Pushtun, a collection of peoples that together constituted the largest patriarchal tribe in the world, and a fierce enough enemy to have driven the Soviets out of their homeland.
“When do I get paid?” Hazza asked.
Zahidov pulled out his PDA, brought up the picture of Ruslan he’d stored there. “This is the man you saw with General Kostum?”
Hazza squinted, and Zahidov wondered if his eyes were bad, if his ID would be useless. In July, Zahidov had ordered Arkitov to begin circulating rumors of a reward, paid to anyone who could prove he had seen Ruslan Malikov. If it was greed that had brought Hazza here, then his information was, by necessity, suspect.
“Looks like him,” Hazza said, after a second. “But he has a beard now, and covers his head.”
Zahidov considered, tucking the PDA back into his coat. “When did you last see him?”
“Yesterday. He took tea with the General.” Hazza’s suspicion had not eased. “When do I get paid?”
“When I believe you.”
Hazza’s expression clouded with anger, and he gripped the handle of his rifle. “You insult me.”
“Prove to me that you’ve seen the man.”
“My word is not enough? You insult me again.”
“You will get paid after I have proof.”
Hazza scowled, scratched at his beard with a filthy fingernail. “He limps. His left leg, it has a brace. I asked once how he was wounded, and he said it came trying to protect his son from the godless.”
“More.”
“I asked about the battle, and he said Allah smiled on him but also turned away, because he lived, but his son was taken from him. He said his wife and his son both were taken from him by a godless man.”
“He speaks like a good Muslim. Is he a good Muslim?”
“He tries to be.”
Zahidov ran his tongue along the back of his teeth, measuring the words. It sounded possible, it sounded like Ruslan, self-righteous and simpering, taking shelter in religion in the face of his losses.
“And Kostum?” Zahidov asked. “What is his relationship with Kostum?”
“Kostum has Uzbek blood, they are brothers. They talk as friends, and the money Kostum gets makes him like Ruslan all the more. He will not betray your man, he has given him sanctuary. If Kostum betrays him, his life is worth less than a goat’s.”
Zahidov digested that. “Thank you. I’ll see that you are paid.”
“Soon,” Hazza said. “I must return before they can learn where I have been.”
“You’re going back there?”
“Yes, as soon as I can.”
“I will see you are paid immediately then,” Zahidov said, and stepped out of the room, to find Arkitov and the two soldiers waiting in the hall.
“He had what you needed, Minister?” Arkitov asked him.
Zahidov nodded, then indicated over his shoulder at the closed door. “I don’t want him warning Malikov or Kostum. Kill him.”
Arkitov nodded, and signaled to the soldiers, then joined Zahidov walking down the hall. They heard the shots before they were back in the common room, and neither of them looked back.
“He’s building an army, I’m more sure of it than ever, Sevya,” Zahidov said. “He will wait until he has the men and the guns, and then they will come over the border, and they will come here, and they will try to kill you.”
“You believed this man?”
“Yes, I did.”
Sevara frowned, shook her head slightly, then waved past him at the secretary standing in the doorway of the office, dismissing the man. Zahidov watched him go. The secretary was in his mid-twenties, and far too attentive to the President for Zahidov’s comfort.
“Could there be another reason?” she asked him when they were alone.
“Why else take the heroin, Sevya? He’s selling it and keeping the money, using it to fund his eventual offensive. There is no other explanation.”
She shook her head again, this time with more certainty. “No. It would be too foolish.”
“Why?” He struggled, managing to keep the frustration from his voice.
“In 2000, there was no ISAF, no Coalition. In 2000, it was possible to come from the south and meet little to no resistance. Now if you come from the south, you meet the Germans in Termez and the Americans in Karshi. No —it makes no sense.”
“It makes perfect sense,” Zahidov countered. “For just those reasons. Think how such a move would humiliate you, think how it would look to the rest of the world. It would make us—you—look insecure, even incompetent. And if Americans or Germans died as he came north?”
“Then the Americans and the Germans and all the rest, they would join us in destroying him.”
“And every extremist from Pakistan to Chechnya would come and join him. There is no way this is good, Sevya, there is no way we can continue to ignore this! We must act.”
“How? How do you suggest we do that, Ahtam? You let him get away once, and now he’s in Afghanistan. Are you going to send one of your men after him? You think that man would stand even the slightest chance of success, assuming he could find Ruslan, assuming he still is somewhere around Mazar-i-Sharif? If you know all these things about his plans, then surely Ruslan must have considered that. No. As long as he remains in Afghanistan, we cannot touch him.”
Zahidov stepped closer to where she stood by the windows of her office, looking out at the courtyard of the Presidential Residence in the Tashkent suburb of Dormon. It was late afternoon, the sunlight slanting through the glass and making her hair burn like copper.
“If we wait for him to leave Afghanistan, it will be too late,” Zahidov said. “You could use Stepan.”
Sevara shot him a look of warning. “No.”
“Just take him out in public with you, have pictures taken of the two of you together. The President and her beloved nephew. Ruslan will get the message.”
“I won’t use the boy that way,” she said. “Bad enough that he was photographed at the concert last week.”
“It does him no harm—”
“He wakes crying every night, Ahtam! He has nightmares, he still calls for Dina, he calls for my brother! I won’t hurt him any more, I can’t do it. He’s my nephew, he’s the only family I have left.”
It struck at Zahidov, and he spoke before he meant to, saying, “So divorce Deniska instead of promising me that you will. Let me give you the child you want, let us make the family we talk about having! It’s been three months since you were elected, you can do it now, no one would dare say anything!”
“Soon, not yet.”
“When?”
“Soon,” she repeated sharply. “And we will not discuss using Stepan again, Ahtam. Is that clear?”
“Then we have nothing to hold over Ruslan.”
Sevara moved away from the window, nearer to him. “There must be a way to remove him.”
“If you had let me, I would have removed him long ago,” Zahidov reminded her. “You would never be threatened like this. I could remove Denis, too.”
