The Greatest Game
Page 5
“Does she want to be married off?” Daniel asked.
“Why do you ask?” Oybek said. “Is she pleasing to you?”
Daniel knew exactly what Oybek meant, but it was said in a hopeful tone, not a defensive one. Daniel couldn’t deny it, but he knew it would be crass to say too much.
“With a brother like you, of course,” Daniel said with a smile and a slap on Oybek’s back.
With a laugh, Oybek rose and excused himself to go out to the bathroom.
When Daniel was still waiting for his return, Nigora entered silently and placed a warm teapot on the ground in front of Daniel.
“Will you sit and drink tea with us when Oybek returns?” Daniel asked. He hoped he was saying it correctly, but he was nervous.
“I don’t want to be a bother,” she replied. “But if he asks…”
Daniel wasn’t sure if her tone betrayed she was hopeful, or embarrassed.
“I would like it very much,” Daniel said.
They both held each other’s eyes. Nigora had never made eye contact with Daniel before. She had always looked down, as was proper and chaste.
“I would like it too,” she said quietly, and then she left.
That was the most Daniel had ever spoken with her. As fondly as he remembered it, it also hurt to think back on what could have been. Where was she now?
The door to the conference room opened. The sound snapped Daniel out of his daydream. Daniel followed Officer Carter in.
“You’re on,” she said.
“Officer Carter, CIA Anti-Terror Linguistics, and Doctor Daniel Knox, the same,” the doorman announced, as they both walked into a dark conference room with a blinding projector.
Daniel shut his eyes, resisting the urge to state that he was, in fact, not a doctor.
Officer Carter sat on the side, leaving Daniel to stand alone.
“I know your father,” one man around the table said to Daniel. He wore a dark suit, but his tie had been discarded earlier. “I’m sure you must be proud of your father, but we don’t have time for that now. Tell me about this murder victim in Berlin.”
“He was an Uzbek man,” Daniel said, clenching and releasing a fist to hide his nervousness. The screens showed the crime scene photo of the murdered man in Berlin. The serious men in the room who reminded Daniel of his father bored their eyes into him, looking for flaws and weakness. Three wore suits, and three others wore military uniforms. They all wore the weariness of fighting a war against a constantly shifting enemy.
“And based upon his grammar and vocabulary, he was almost definitely from Northern Uzbekistan, probably Tashkent. He was Russified in some way, but there’s no way to know if that came from being in Tashkent, or if it came from being behind the Iron Curtain, either in East Berlin or elsewhere in the former Soviet Satellite States we are unaware of.”
Daniel paused slightly, wondering what they were hoping he would say. He continued.
“It is uncertain how he ended up in East Berlin. Possibly, our knowledge from the military records is incomplete. Perhaps he deserted from elsewhere and ended up in East Berlin.”
“What would be your best estimation?” one man in a suit and tie demanded.
“The available information doesn’t suggest an estimation,” Daniel said. Sensing that wasn’t good enough, he added, “But something tells me this man somehow had ties to Northern Afghanistan.”
“He’s Taliban?” a man in an army uniform demanded.
“No,” Daniel answered.
“What makes you say that?” shot back another man in uniform.
“He left Afghanistan long before the Soviets left and the Taliban entered. Also, the linguistic markers in his poetry don’t ring true with radical tendencies,” was all Daniel could answer. Daniel glanced to Officer Carter to see that she was looking away, possibly from embarrassment.
“His poetry?” the man in suit and tie asked. “You read the tea leaves from his poetry?”
“No sir, but it is data from which I can base an estimation.”
Daniel regretted saying it as soon as the words escaped his mouth.
Now Officer Carter shrunk down in her seat to hide.
“Here’s some information for your estimation,” the man said after adjusting his tie. “We now know that the man was subjected to professional interrogation techniques. It was incredibly painful before he died. Toxicology reports indicate he may have been injected with what we would call truth serum. He was most likely tortured for several days. We only wonder if he died before he said what the torturer wanted.” The man paused and glared at Daniel. He felt the man was using him as his punching bag in front of the others in the room. The man continued.
“Such advanced interrogation techniques led the Berlin police to believe the murderer needed help. He needed a network. And that’s where the NATO and EU anti-terror forces come in to play. We have every reason to believe that the murderer is part of, and was assisted by, an Islamic terrorist cell based in Berlin.” At the mention of terrorism, many of the others in the room sat up straighter. The man in the tie was getting the reaction he wanted.
“The murder victim could have been a snitch. Maybe he didn’t want to follow through with whatever they were planning. We don’t know. But we do know that the murder was not far from the Amerika Haus, which the victim frequented. If you don’t know, the Amerika Haus has long been a little museum highlighting how wonderful America is. It’s also the perfect place for terrorists to gain information to plan a terrorist attack.
“Checking airport footage, the Berlin authorities found the man who may have committed the murder. He traveled on a Turkish passport, probably fake, but he looks Central Asian to me. The man looks like a man by another name the EU security forces suspected of sympathizing with radical Islam. He was questioned a few years ago, but then released.”
The screen switched to an airport security shot alongside a photo taken at passport control.
Daniel had to agree. The man looked Central Asian, possibly even Uzbek.
“That man was flying to Istanbul, and then he was supposed to fly to Iran.”
The other men in uniform now began to jump in, rapidly offering suggestions and speaking over each other.
“If there’s a terrorist cell in Berlin, and we know they’re planning something in America, then we must increase security for flights arriving from Europe.”
“Anti-terror units will have to go door to door in Muslim communities in Berlin to hunt this cell down.”
“If the murder victim was anti-Soviet Mujahideen, and later anti-American, then that terrorist cell is decades old in Berlin,” another wondered out loud.
Daniel stood silently as the men argued about tracking down the suspected murderer and also digging out the Berlin terrorist cell.
But it struck Daniel as all wrong.
Daniel took up the documentation and flipped through it as he sat down. The men continued arguing.
Reading the poetry again, Daniel recognized why it seemed so familiar. He had translated it awkwardly. It could go another way.
Daniel stood up in disbelief as he read it again, embarrassed he hadn’t seen it earlier.
“Gentlemen,” Daniel called out. “What we have on our hands isn’t a terrorist cell in Berlin plotting against America. It’s worse.”
The men were not accustomed to interruptions by somebody they considered a kid analyst.
“Explain yourself, Doctor Knox,” the man at the end of the table said. He was the man in a suit who had lost his tie, and apparently knew Daniel’s father. Daniel wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. Daniel correctly guessed he was the one Officer Carter had called Peters.
“To put it bluntly, I would be happy if there was merely a terrorist cell in Berlin,” Daniel said. “But we have to consider another possibility.”
“You’ve got about thirty seconds to explain,” Peters said curtly.
“Look at it this way. The Uzbek victim, probably part of th
e Soviet military back in the early days of the Soviet-Afghan War, possibly learned something he wasn’t supposed to. He fled for his life and tried to get that secret to the West, but we wouldn’t listen to him. He tried to defect to us, but he couldn’t. When the Wall came down, we ignored him as a nut. But the murderer was willing to torture and extract that forbidden information out of him before silencing him.”
Daniel looked at the man wearing a suit and tie. “Today’s Islamic terrorists didn’t risk their lives for the West by trying to defect during the Cold War like this man did. This victim was something different.” Before the man, now pink in the face, could respond, Daniel continued.
“The victim’s poetry, translated one way, talks a lot about the ‘Land beyond the river,’ or what we call Afghanistan. A bit odd for a man from so far north and then later in Berlin. There are many allusions to the Soviet Union, which is expected, but there is a recurring theme that I did not expect. His poetry has the repeated refrain of, what could be translated as: ‘Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.’”
“From the Bhagavad Gita,” the man in the army uniform muttered. “Jesus Christ. Quoted by Oppenheimer when the first atomic bomb went off.”
“Put those together,” Daniel said, “and I think it’s possible that the Soviets secretly put nuclear weapons in Afghanistan, and our murder victim knew where. Maybe one went missing or has since been lost to history, and the murderer learned the nuke’s location from him, probably for the Taliban. We need to find it first. Otherwise, the Taliban will have a nuke very soon, if they don’t already. If they do—”
“Then 9/11 will look like a picnic,” the man in the army uniform concluded.
For a few seconds, there was only murmured cursing among the men. Daniel looked to Officer Carter, and her eyes were wide open as if to say, “Wow. I hope you’re not making crap up.”
“That is one hell of a theory,” the man wearing the tie said as he stroked his chin. “We can’t simply tell the Russians, ‘Hey, we think you lost something. You might try keeping track of your nukes.’”
“And any speculation that the Taliban might get such a weapon would send the civilized world into an unnecessary panic,” a uniformed man said.
“But damn, we can’t ignore it,” Peters observed. Before anybody else could add their opinion, he said, “Dismissed. Except for Officer Carter. I want to speak with her alone.”
This problem better not get swept under the rug, Daniel thought to himself.
Daniel knew it was more than a theory. He felt certain it was right. The Uzbek victim’s timeline and attempted defections fit perfectly, along with the poetry. Could Rustam have been nuts? Sure. But why would a suspected radical Islamist take so much care to torture him for so long before killing him? The longer the murderer held Rustam captive and tortured him, the more likely he would get caught.
As Daniel shuffled out of the room, avoiding the angry look from the man in the suit and tie, he looked back to Officer Carter. She was readying herself for a private talk with Peters. Daniel hoped he hadn’t run his mouth so much that Carter was going to take heat for him. He wondered how seriously a man like Peters would take the ideas of a linguistic analyst.
6
Northern Afghanistan.
October 15, 1983.
It had been hard work, but Rustam had enjoyed it until now. Rustam was recruited out of the army of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic by a KGB man from Moscow. Knowing this was an excellent opportunity, he joined a small band of men picked from other parts of the Uzbek military.
After weeks of toil in the mountains of Northern Afghanistan, the work was almost completed. More importantly, the KGB officer had promised the men that he would tell them the purpose of their mission. Blasting and digging a tunnel had been tough, and dangerous work. One man had already died in an accident. The KGB officer did not seem concerned. Rustam correctly guessed he had seen a lot of men die in service of the Soviet Union. The KGB officer ordered the men to only call him Misha, certainly not a name for a respected officer, but nobody dared question it.
The hardest part of the job had been installing the massive doors that seemed to weigh a ton. Dragging them into the mountains taxed even the Kamaz trucks used for transport. Hauling them into the tunnels with donkeys was even more difficult. What ended up being a walk-in vault was finally completed. Misha patted the crate that would later fill the vault, but first he wanted the men to feel proud of their accomplishment.
After a lunch break, Misha led them into the tunnel. Each had a light on his helmet. Once at the vault, he demonstrated the thickness of the doors, the camouflage that would soon obscure the vault, and he explained how secure the locking mechanism was.
“One. Nine. One. Seven,” Misha said. “The year of the Revolution, and the combination which someday may score yet another victory for communism.” He shut the vault and locked it before their eyes, turning the dials that served as the combination lock.
“Now, you try to open it without the combination,” he said with a smile to the laborers.
A few men obliged him and tugged on the metal rod with all their strength, but they all gave up with a smile. It was a fun way for them to celebrate the completion of a job well done.
“I have extra good news for all of you, comrades,” Misha announced. The men, much more accustomed to having their hopes dashed, exchanged glances. “Our work here is finished. We don’t need to dig any more tunnels.” The natural tunnels extended far back into the mountainside, but they had thought they would be blasting and digging further into the heart of the mountain.
The men all sighed in relief, thankful their backs could heal for a season from their hard labors.
“And best yet,” Misha said, “once we load the crate in the vault, we can drink all the vodka in the other crate!”
At this, the men gave a raucous cheer. They could tolerate being away from their women for a time but going without vodka for so long had been brutal.
The afternoon passed quickly as they worked together to haul the crate into the vault. All watched Misha lock it, and then they rushed to open the other crate.
Rustam was a spectator as the men he had worked with for weeks consumed the vodka at an alarming rate. Everybody else drank too eagerly to notice that Rustam wasn’t drinking. Rustam observed that Misha only had one small drink, and then Misha watched with a smile on his face. Not wanting the KGB officer’s gaze to fall upon him and ask why he wasn’t drinking, Rustam entered the tunnel.
Rustam welcomed the quiet. Discomforted by the presence of alcohol, he was glad to have escaped the debauchery. Although most Uzbeks in Tashkent had become so Russified as to drink vodka, despite their Muslim heritage, Rustam knew his father wouldn’t approve. If Rustam returned home having served the Soviet Union well and without touching a drop of alcohol, his father would be proud.
He finally reached the vault, deep in the tunnel. Equipment still laid everywhere, eagerly abandoned once the men believed their work was complete. Out of curiosity, Rustam threw a rock further down the tunnel. It clunked along the ground for several skips before stopping. The tunnel went far, and he was glad he was done working in it. Rustam made himself as comfortable as he could on the tunnel floor by the vault. He considered pulling out a scrap of paper and pencil to write some verse, but the light was too dim. Instead, for a moment, Rustam wondered why Misha hadn’t told them what was in the crate, but then his thoughts turned to more pleasant things. He dozed off to sleep and dreamed of returning home. His family would soon arrange his marriage, and he imagined whom they might pick for him. He had somebody in mind.
But before Rustam could indulge in his fantasy for long, a gunshot shocked him awake. Several more gunshots followed. It was the rattle of the Kalashnikov rifle Rustam knew so well.
But only the KGB officer is armed, Rustam thought to himself.
After several drunken screams and shouts, there was silence, and Rustam realized what had happened.
Rustam breathed heavily, not knowing what to do as he hid in the cave. The gunshots had ended. The rest of the work party was undoubtedly dead.
The sound of corpses being dragged along the ground echoed down the tunnel towards Rustam. The KGB officer was hiding the bodies. Rustam decided he couldn’t hide. The KGB officer would count the bodies and come looking in the cave.
Rustam struggled to find a weapon among the tunneling materials, but there was nothing that would pose a threat to a trained man with a gun. The remaining dynamite was a blunt weapon to kill one man, and he would risk killing himself.
A beam of light entered the tunnel, and the click of the rifle cocking echoed into its depths.
Rustam correctly guessed that the KGB officer had finished his count and was looking for the missing man.
“Come out,” Misha demanded, his voice eerily calm in the darkness of the tunnel.
Grabbing leftover dynamite and a helmet with a headlamp, Rustam ran deeper into the tunnel. Tripping in the darkness, he realized he couldn’t run forever. He crawled to go farther as the ceiling closed in on him. But perhaps the tunnel would eventually lead to another exit.
Rustam felt about on the ceiling. The tunnel was narrowing, though he knew it could continue for some distance and then widen again. This was going to be his one chance. Finding a hole in the rock above him, he placed the dynamite. His trembling fingers inserted the blasting caps and wires.
“Come out,” Misha repeated himself. “For the good of the Soviet Union, nobody can know nuclear weapons lie hidden here.”
The crate held nuclear weapons? Rustam marveled to himself.