month. In CIA parlance, she was an agent, meaning a local recruited by a CIA officer. There would be at least one Agency officer stationed at the embassy, Dean knew, but he would be unwilling to get embroiled in an NSA op gone sour. Except for the offer of a place to stay for the night, Dean, Akulinin, and their unexpected tagalong would be on their own.
“Mrs. Konovalova doesn’t have access to another vehicle,” Dean said. He was sitting alone now, in one of three tiny bedrooms carved out of an attic. Beneath a steeply sloping ceiling, a small bed on rope springs was squeezed in between a wooden box that served as dresser, night table, and lamp stand and the stacks of dusty boxes and piles of paper common to any other attic in the world. It was just past nine. “We’re going to have to take the Hunter, and the MVD will have a description and a plate number.”
“The Firm has new plates for your car,” Jeff Rockman told him. “They’ll send them over by special messenger in a few hours. We’re also looking at how we can compromise the local LE net.”
The Firm — another insider’s term for the CIA. Maybe the three of them weren’t as alone as he’d thought. “LE net” meant the local law enforcement radio frequencies. The NSA possessed technologies that would allow them to infiltrate the Dushanbe police and MVD radio nets, not only to eavesdrop but also to plant misleading messages or information.
“Any data yet on Maria Alekseyevna?”
“There’s not a lot available, but from what we’ve been able to learn, her story checks out. There was an Alekseyevna family living in Brighton Beach until 2002. Moved to Moscow, where the mother died a year later. No information on the father or the daughter since.”
“How about a Dr. Shmatko?”
“A pathologist trained in Moscow. He received a posting to Dushanbe two years ago. It’s possible he was a family friend.”
“What are we going to do with her?” Dean asked. “We can’t throw her to the wolves.”
“If you can get her to the Afghanistan border, we’ll fly her out when we extract you. What happens to her after that …” Dean could almost hear Rockman’s shrug over the channel. “Mr. Rubens will have to be brought in. Special provisions might be arranged, but the boss will have to take that up with State.”
“She’s a good person,” Dean said. “She helped Ilya, didn’t turn him in when doing so might have earned her some brownie points.”
“We’ll just have to see how it plays out. First step is to get you the hell out of Tajikistan. I recommend you get some sleep now. You’ll be up early.”
“We’re all over that. Any word on getting quality satellite time?”
“Not yet. We’re on the NRO’s queue. The boss said he’s going to be talking to people later this morning.”
“It’s taking too long. By now, those suitcase nukes could be anywhere.”
“I hear you. Oh … but you’ll want to hear this. The photos Ilya got of those three stiffs in the morgue. We have positive IDs on all of them.”
“One of them is Zhernov.”
“He was styling himself Zhern at last report, as any good patriotic and anti-Russian Tajik would do. The guy with the mustache was Amirzai Shams, a Pashtun with connections to extremist Muslim factions in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Both of them have long records with the Russian
“And the Asian?”
“He’s the real puzzle in this mess. Major Kwok Chung On. PLA military intelligence. He was with a Chinese trade delegation in Dushanbe until four days ago, when he disappeared.”
“So what is he doing in Central Asia?”
“We’ve done some checking through our banking connections. Two weeks ago, the State Bank of Beijing transferred one point three billion dollars to a private account in Dushanbe. The size of the transaction raised flags at the Financial Desk.”
“I would imagine so.” The Financial Desk was the department within the NSA specifically tasked with tracking the flow of large amounts of money throughout the corporate world and across the international community. Identifying accounts used by various terrorist organizations, and freezing their assets, was quite possibly
To that end, the code monkeys working at the NSA had developed a number of CIPs, covert intrusion programs, software designed to infiltrate international banking networks, record transactions, and trace large-scale movements of currency and other assets.
“Who owned the Dushanbe account?” Dean asked.
“We don’t know, but the account was emptied four days ago.”
“When Major Kwok disappeared.”
“Exactly.”
“So,” Dean said, piecing it together, “Zhern and Shams, either one working with the Russian
“Bearer bonds.”
“Okay. Kwok takes out over a billion in bearer bonds and uses them to pay Zhern and Shams, and probably another party as well, who takes over the nukes for the next leg in the journey. Kwok stays with Zhern and Shams —”
“We suspect they were driving him toward the Chinese border.”
“And Vympel, in the form of Lieutenant Colonel Vasilyev, intercepts them.”
“In the mountains about seventy miles east of Dushanbe.”
“So … who has the nukes now? And where?”
“We don’t know the who. Our best guess about where … they left Ayni Airfield yesterday, maybe the day before, and are at or beyond the border with Afghanistan by now.”
“Why Ayni? They could have flown them out from Dushanbe Airport instead.”
“Probably because Dushanbe Airport is solidly under Russian control, with the 201st’s headquarters right next door. Political control out at Ayni is divvied up between Tajikistan, Russia, and India. They might actually have felt they had a better chance of smuggling the shipment in and out again at a smaller airfield with divided jurisdiction.”
“So … what now?” Dean asked. “We still need to find out what happened to the shipment, how they got it out of Ayni.”
“Our first requirement is to get you and Ilya out of Tajikistan,” Rockman told him. “We were looking at sending in a helicopter, picking you up at Ayni, or maybe someplace in the countryside, but things are too unsettled right now. The Indians have closed down Ayni — rumors of Pakistani terrorist-saboteurs in the area.”
“Hm. I wonder how
“Once you have new plates and registration documents for your car, you can drive out. We’ll pick you up at Shir Khan, as originally planned. In the meantime, you need to catch up on your sleep.”
“Yes, Mother,” Dean said, in the tone of a sulky ten-year-old. Rockman was right, though. He was exhausted — and they would have to hit the road as soon as the plates and other gear arrived from the embassy.
He pulled off the rest of his Indian Air Force uniform and collapsed into the bed.
Akulinin was nearly asleep when the chirp of a floorboard brought him to full awareness. His hand found the pistol beneath his ancient mattress, and he sat up, peering into the darkness. Someone on the stairs?
The safe house’s attic was divided into three side-by-side bedrooms. Akulinin was in the middle room, the one with the stairs going down to the building’s second floor. If someone was coming up …
