profound. Not one of the things he and Garret had set out to do had come to pass, after all. While Sevara had done an exceedingly good job of keeping her nose clean and of working with the U.S. in the past six months, Ahtam Zahidov was now DPM at the Interior Ministry. She kept him on a short leash, but the country’s human rights record was still a far cry from anything that would earn kudos from Amnesty International or HRW.
Sometimes, Riess wondered if it had been an ill-conceived venture from the start, if Garret hadn’t been totally unrealistic in his dreams of what they could do, what they might accomplish. Nations rarely changed overnight, and even when they did, there was always a price to pay in blood and pain. He had come to doubt that Ruslan would have made a better President of Uzbekistan than his sister. In all likelihood, for all of Ruslan’s best intentions—if indeed his intentions had even been true—very little would have changed.
Things were improving in Uzbekistan under Sevara, little by little. There were still drugs coming up from the south, out of Afghanistan, but less and less seemed to be getting through these days. The new President had eased off the dictatorial enforcement of the government’s version of Islam, permitting slightly more freedom of religion. The election that had seen her confirmed into office had been fixed, of course, but not so blatantly or arrogantly as her father’s had been in the past. For the first time, the Oliy Majlis now seated an opposition party as well as Sevara’s own. It was small to the point of being entirely ineffective, but it was more than her father had allowed. There was even an opposition newspaper available on the streets of Tashkent and Samarkand—overseen by government censors, but again, more than before.
So maybe it was the best Riess could have hoped for. This was the way diplomacy was supposed to work, incrementally and out in the open. Not behind the scenes.
He had grudgingly come to accept that, and in so doing had found a measure of peace that allowed him to sleep better at nights.
At least until those few times he saw Stepan, either in a photograph or in video footage, and he remembered the boy’s mother, and what Zahidov had done to her. What Zahidov had done at Sevara’s order, he was certain of it.
Maybe it was because Riess had known Dina Malikov, but he couldn’t forgive that.
He couldn’t let that go.
He arrived at the Residence forty-five minutes after the reception had started, showed his ID to the Marines who were pulling double duty as guards for the event. Since Michael “Mitch” Norton had taken over as CM for Garret almost five months back, Riess had had no reason to visit the Residence. In fact, the last time he’d been here was back in mid-February, in the wake of Dina Malikov’s murder. Most of the lights had been out then, Riess remembered.
This time, though, the house was ablaze, as if it had caught what remained of the sunset for use indoors. Music reached him as he went through the doors and entered the enormous two-story entry hall. A string quartet from the Bakhor Symphony had set up about twenty feet from the door, playing an Uzbek piece Riess didn’t recognize. The sound was amplified in the space, mixed with the voices speaking in Russian, Uzbek, and English. There were almost three dozen people in the hall alone, and Riess wondered just how many had been invited. The Residence, if he remembered right, could entertain somewhere in the neighborhood of one hundred and fifty before the RSO went into fits about lack of security.
Riess saw several faces from the Mission, moved through the hall exchanging brief but polite greetings. He made his way through to the salon, weaving through the crowd. The doors into the back garden were open, and he could see tables set up outside, more people seated there, dining on appetizers. He saw a couple of the DPMs, too, the Head of Consumer Goods and Trade standing with the DPM for Foreign Economic Relations, and McColl was among them, his wife chatting with their wives. Riess tried to move through unseen, edged his way out into the garden.
It was cooler outside, and quieter, though the noise from inside the Residence was still audible. Riess got himself a drink from the banquet table, a plastic bottle of mineral water, twisted off the cap, and drank half of it down. There were things he could be doing inside, things he should be doing. At a function like this, his place was to mingle and chat with the junior officials in attendance, to keep his eyes and his ears open for news that might be useful to the Ambassador and Political Counselor later.
He didn’t want to. He didn’t really want to be there at all. It had been at a party like this that he’d first met Ruslan and Dina, and it brought back memories, and again, he felt like a failure.
He sighed, steeling himself. What he wanted to do was irrelevant; what he needed to do, right now, was his job. He turned around to head back inside, then stopped, seeing Aaron Tower coming toward him.
“Chuck,” Tower said. “Standing outside all alone?”
“I was about to head back in, sir.”
The CIA man continued approaching, reaching out to the banquet table and snagging a bottle of water for himself. His smile was easy. Like almost all the men attending, Tower was in a tuxedo, though somehow he’d already managed to rumple it.
“How you doing?” Tower asked.
Riess pondered the question for longer than he intended. They’d spoken in passing a handful of times in the last few months, confined it to greetings and social pleasantries. If Tower had harbored ill will for what had happened, there’d never been any true sign of it. He’d been angry about the Ambassador’s two-step behind his back, of course, but none of it had come back to hit Riess, at least not that Riess knew.
“I was thinking about Dina Malikov,” Riess said.
Tower sipped from his bottle, nodded slightly. “You heard anything from Garret?”
“No, sir. Not since he went back home. I understand he’s in the private sector now.”
“Got himself a job as president of some college on the West Coast,” Tower confirmed. “You look tired.”
“McColl’s keeping me busy.”
Tower grinned. “I’ll bet. Well, you’re doing a hell of a job for him, Chuck. He might make DCM yet. Not here, of course, but on his next posting.”
“Good for him,” Riess said.
They drank their water in silence, looking back toward the Residence, through the open doors. More people were making their way outside from the den, drinks in hand.
“Coming out for the fireworks,” Tower said. “Soon as it gets dark.”
“Right.”
A cluster of people emerged, surrounding the Ambassador and his wife as they escorted Sevara Malikov- Ganiev and her husband, Denis, the former DPM of the Interior, outside. Sevara looked stunning, Riess had to admit, the gown she’d chosen for the event just managing to straddle the line between alluring and reserved, but her beauty lay far more in the way she carried herself. She was supremely self-confident, and when she laughed at something the Ambassador’s wife said, it carried over the grass to him. Riess wondered if Sevara had left her nephew at home for the evening.
“She didn’t bring the kid,” Tower said, reading his mind.
“Yeah, I was just wondering.”
“She takes good care of him.” Tower took another pull from his bottle, watching the Ambassador’s party advance. “It’s called guilt, Chuck.”
“I don’t think she feels guilty about anything, sir.”
Tower turned slightly, looking him in the eye. “Never forget that they’re patriots the way we’re patriots, Chuck. They believe in their country the way we believe in ours.”
“Not all of them.”
“Most of them, then. Sevara Malikov-Ganiev is the first CIS leader who didn’t cut her teeth under the Soviets, Chuck. Think about that. All the others, the old men, either they’re former Communists or they came up under the Communists. But that woman’s the new breed.”
“It’s not where she is now that bothers me,” Riess answered. “It’s what she did to get there.”
“Don’t think it doesn’t bother me, too.” Tower’s eyes were on the Ambassador’s group, now being seated at the largest table.
Riess didn’t say anything.
“You know Ruslan’s alive,” Tower said, softer. “In Afghanistan.”
