hidden his scuba gear among the rocks. He was bone tired, but buzzing with excess adrenaline. His mind was spinning, trying to fit together what he’d uncovered on the island.
After a quick towel-off and a change of clothes, he found Collins and Marty Smith in the Control Center. “Was it everything you’d hoped?” Smith said with a grin.
“And so much more,” Fisher replied. “Max, I need you to send the immediate extract signal, then clear the area at best speed.”
“Bad news?” Collins asked.
“I think so. I just don’t know what it is yet.”
Collins guided the
Two minutes later, he was sitting at the Osprey’s console staring at Lambert’s face on the monitor. He quickly brought his boss up to speed.
“Kuan-Yin Zhao,” Lambert murmured. “That’s a twist I wasn’t expecting.”
“You and me both. But I know who can make sense of it.”
“Tom Richards. I’ll get him over here. Unless your new friend Heng is lying, the CIA’s been running an op against Zhao. Now: About Ashgabat — give me that name again.”
“Ailar Marjani.”
The monitor went to split screen; Lambert on the right, Grimsdottir left. “Checking,” she said. “Okay, got him. Ailar Marjani is the former head of the KNB — Turkmenistan’s version of the CIA. He’s got a thick file. Bad guy, this one. Human rights abuses, bribery, weapons trafficking, ties to Hezbollah…”
“Another Iranian link,” Fisher said.
Lambert was silent for a few seconds, thinking. “Okay, I’m going to put Richards’s feet to the fire on Zhao.”
“And tell him he needs to get Heng out; the man’s burnt out. He’s going to slip up.”
“I will. So: You feel up to a little jaunt to Ashgabat?”
“I always feel like a little jaunt to Ashgabat. You get me there, I’ll get Marjani.”
In truth, Fisher had never been to Ashgabat, and so he had the same stereotypes in mind that most westerners did about the Central Asian republics — that they were backward, remote, dusty, and harsh. And while this was true for the rural areas, Ashgabat was, Fisher realized as his plane banked over the city, a stunning exception.
Nestled in a bowl between the southern edge of the Garagum Desert, which covers ninety percent of the country, and the Kopetdag Mountain Range, a belt of ten-thousand-foot peaks along the Iranian border, Ashgabat is a modern city of five million souls, with clean cobblestone sidewalks and plazas, fountains and monuments, a mix of traditional Islamic architecture and modern building design, and a network of small irrigation canals that feed the city’s lush gardens and parks.
And memorials. Lots and lots of memorials, most of them dedicated to one man: Turkemenistan’s President for Life Atayevich Niyazov, or Serdar Saparmurat Turkmenbashi — the Great Leader of the Turkmens. A former Soviet bureaucrat, Niyazov ruled his country with absolute authority. His visage was everywhere — in murals, on the sides of buses, on coffee mugs and T-shirts, in classrooms and museums, and on statues: Niyazov riding a stallion; Niyazov holding a baby; Niyazov sternly staring at accused criminals; Niyazov attending museum galas and government balls. He had changed the Turkmen alphabet, renamed the months and days of the year, and written the
Along with all the trappings of what was clearly a dictatorship, Fisher knew Niyazov’s iron hand was backed up by a vast network of secret police and intelligence agencies. The sooner he could get to Ailar Marjani and get out of Ashgabat, the better.
This was the kind of place where a man could disappear and never be heard from again.
Getting here so quickly had taken a lot of time in the air and Lambert’s significant pull.
Ninety minutes after leaving the Zhoushan Archipelago, the Osprey touched down at Kadena Air Force Base, where Fisher was met by a tech sergeant, who drove him to a waiting F-15D Eagle. He was suited up, helped into the rear seat, and given a two-word briefing by the pilot: “Touch nothing.” Five minutes later, the Eagle was airborne and heading southwest.
Exhausted, Fisher was quickly asleep, only waking for the Eagle’s midair refueling with a KC-135 Stratotanker, then again for the landing in Kabul, Afghanistan, where he was met by another sergeant, this one of the Army variety, who drove him to a waiting Gulfstream V that Fisher assumed was part of the small fleet of executive jets the CIA maintained.
The flight from Kabul lasted a bare two hours, and now, eight hours after he swam away from Cezi Maji, the Gulfstream’s tires touched down with a squeal on Ashgabat Airport’s runway.
Fisher didn’t leave the plane, but waited, sprawled in one of the cabin’s reclining seats, as the simulated engine warning light that had put them down here was checked. Night was just falling when the airport’s maintenance supervisor popped his head through the side door and told the pilot no problem had been found. They were cleared to leave.
Once airborne, the pilot radioed the Ashgabat tower and requested permission to circle a few times to ensure the warning light didn’t reappear, then proceeded in a low southeasterly arc away from the airport.
“Eight hundred feet,” the pilot called over the intercom. “Drop in three minutes.”
Fisher was already strapping on his parafoil pack.
A thousand feet above and four miles from Ashgabat, Fisher jumped out the Gulfstream’s side door. He waited for two beats, then pulled the toggle, heard the
Ailar Marjani’s retirement was without financial worry, Grimsdottir had reported. The former Turkmen spymaster had built an arabesque mansion eight miles from Ashgabat in the foothills of the Kopetdag.
Fisher followed the flashing waypoint marker on his OPSAT, and touched down in the rolling, grassy hills that lay between the city and the mountains. Even in the darkness, Fisher was struck by the landscape; had he not known better, he might have mistaken it for the western Dakotas or eastern Montana. The night was warm, hovering around seventy degrees, the sky clear and cloudless. A slight breeze swished the grass around his knees.
He donned his gear, took a bearing on the OPSAT, and started jogging.
After a mile, he topped a hill and stopped. He lay down on his belly and pulled out his binoculars.
Even from a mile away, Marjani’s home was impossible to miss, a sprawling structure of whitewashed rectangles and arches stacked atop one another and nestled at the base of an escarpment. Every window in Marjani’s home blazed with light. Fisher scanned each one but saw no one. Clusters of palms rose from various points on the grounds, each one lit from beneath by an spotlight. Fisher counted two fountains that he could see, each a glistening plume of water.
He kept moving, using the troughs of the hills to make his way to within a quarter mile. He crawled up a hillock and through the grass. At this range, he could see a lone guard standing to the left of the arched driveway entrance. Through the entrance he could see a courtyard of hedges, and at the center, a glowing kidney-shaped pool. The guard wasn’t so much standing as he was vertically reclined against the arch, his AK-47 propped against the wall a few feet away. Fisher wasn’t even sure the man was awake.
He maneuvered to the left, crawling through the grass until he was at an angle, fifty yards from the arch. He pulled the SC-20 from its back holster, zoomed in on the guard, then panned through the arch, looking for more
