answers.”
“Just check out the urban legends better, Tom,” Lia told him. “Anyway — did anyone listening in get the idea that Feng was putting on a major show for my benefit?”
“What do you mean, Lia?”
“The guy is smart. Speaks perfect English. Educated in Oxford, according to his bio data. The thing about the okay gesture was clearly a test. So were the questions about deadweight tonnage and all. And … I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t have a reason to know about Kennedy and the doughnuts. But his slip about Pakistanis being Arabs was kind of … obvious, don’t you think? The guy is a high-ranking officer in one of the largest shipping corporations in the world,
“I think he was surprised Lia knew so much,” CJ put in. “Okay, I have two security types sitting at other tables. They just got up and followed Feng. No one’s following Lia.”
“Good,” Rubens said, “but don’t relax. There may be others in the area.”
“The job offer seems genuine,” Rubens said, “although given what we’ve uncovered about Feng already, we suspect he primarily wants Lia for eye candy.”
Lia snorted. “A pretty girl on his arm to impress his customers?”
“Exactly.”
“The job offer is for eighty K a year. That’s expensive candy.”
“He can afford it. COSCO can afford it. Why, Lia? Are you worried?”
“As a matter of fact I am.”
“You can still change your mind about this, Lia,” Rubens told her. “This op was always volunteers only.”
“No,” she said, walking past several maroon-jacketed bellhops and through the tall doors of the Adlon Hotel, entering into the magnificently appointed lobby. “Hell, this is exactly the sort of break we were looking for. The guy has me flying to Spain tomorrow, to meet someone he says is from Pakistan. Depending on who this business associate is, it might be our link between COSCO and al-Qaeda.”
“Yes, and it also might be a bit
“CJ’s right,” Rubens said. “Feng’s contact in Spain could be perfectly legitimate.”
“Well, we’ll know tomorrow,” Lia said brightly. “Won’t we?”
Nevertheless, she wondered just exactly what it was that she was getting herself into.
Dushanbe was a teeming, sprawling, bustling place.
The name of the city, Charlie Dean had been told, meant Monday — literally “two-Saturday,” meaning the second day after Saturday. Originally, the place had been a Monday market village, and there were still extensive bazaars and countless street vendors and stalls that continued the commercial spirit of the place.
Despite the bustle, Dushanbe was a surprisingly
The hospital was a dour, concrete structure painted dull red and surrounded by trees, a relic of the Stalinist era. The Russian 201st Motorized Rifle Division was permanently based at Dushanbe. The unit, totaling some five thousand men, had been stationed in the country since before the fall of the Soviet Union, but the main base itself had only been opened in 2004, close by the newly renovated Dushanbe Airport to the southeast. The building near Rudaki Park was actually a much older military base, a satellite medical facility still serving the region until the much newer hospital facilities on the base itself were completed.
Dean and Akulinin had no trouble following the small convoy from the Ayni Airfield, keeping well back in order to remain inconspicuous. They drove the vehicle they’d checked out from the motor pool the day before, a relatively new Ulyanov Hunter jeep, and dropped onto the convoy’s tail on the main drag past the airfield, heading toward the city. Seven miles later, they turned right onto the M41, a modern highway called King Ismail Somoli Boulevard, crossed the bridge over the wide but shallow Varzob River, and entered the city proper just north of the grounds of the National Palace. By that time, they knew they were heading toward the old Soviet hospital and not the newer base on the far side of the city; they found a place to park on Tolstoy Street and navigated the rest of the way on foot. Their military IDs got them past the security desk in the echoing tile-floored lobby. A bored Russian corporal at the information desk pointed out the stairs leading to the basement — and the morgue.
“The place is going to be busy,” Akulinin pointed out. “We’re right behind them. Maybe we should wait and come back later.”
“I’m counting on a crowd,” Dean told him. “More confusion, fewer questions.”
“… are break … up,” Rockman’s voice told them, the words blasted by static in Dean’s ear. “Do … copy?”
Then the connection was lost. Desk Three’s personal communications links operated well outdoors, but the basement of a concrete building was something else.
They could hear echoing conversation up ahead. The truck with the body bags had pulled up at the rear of the hospital.
“Vasilyev will be the OIC,” Dean told Akulinin. “He’ll wonder about me, this uniform, so I’ll be the decoy.”
“In this part of the world, they shoot spies,” Akulinin replied dourly. He was joking, but not by much.
“Won’t happen,” Dean quipped. “I’m in uniform.”
“The wrong one.”
Through a set of double doors in a cold and narrow passageway with concrete-block walls, they reached the morgue desk where the duty-watch stander, a junior sergeant, looked up from an ancient, dog-eared
“
“We’re with
“
Pocketing their IDs, Dean and Akulinin walked up to the pair of swinging doors, marked KEEP OUT in Russian, and pushed through—
— and were immediately stopped by a Russian senior sergeant with Vympel patches on his uniform and an AK-74 assault rifle. “
4
Halt!”
“Is Podpolkolnik Pyotr Vasilyev here?” Dean asked, putting a singsong Indian accent into the Russian words. The Vympel soldier blinked and lowered his AK a fraction.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
