Meanwhile, both governments had allowed Steve Sarkesian to think he’d gotten his hands on inside information about what we (and the Russians) had planned for the Caspian region—i.e., the documents in his briefcase. But now that I thought about it, he’d obviously been carefully fed a diet of black data. Disinformation. That’s the normal operating procedure in cases like this. And then, once the folks in Washington and Moscow were able to backtrack, and discover who Steve-o’s sources were, and what his methods were, Christians In Action and Oleg’s people would stage a series of coordinated ops, roll up his nets, shut down his agents, put Steve and his pals away, and take the Iranians out of the picture in this part of the world for the foreseeable future.
The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. While we and the Russkies weren’t exactly buddy-buddy these days, both my government and Oleg’s government had a vested interest in keeping Tehran out of the picture here in Azerbaijan, not to mention the Stans.
Except, my stealth mission had been compromised. Then I’d killed Sarkesian’s POG, which alerted the sumbitch that I was coming after him. That was when he contrived the reception at the Foundation so he could lay eyes on me, see who I really was, and who I was working with. I guess the only thing he hadn’t counted on was my ability to break into his office and steal his papers.
But that’s exactly what I’d done. I’d stuck my big Slovak snout right into the mix. I’d burgled Steve’s office—and taken his DIQs, assuming that they were the real thing. And whom did I leave the Sirzhik Foundation with? I left with the Ben Gals. So Steve Sarkesian put two and two together. He’d assumed I was working with the Israelis against him. Which was, of course partially correct.
Which was why he’d unleashed Ali Sherafi to kill Avi Ben Gal—and murdered Mikki in the attempt.
Now let me tell you that this sudden epiphany didn’t do much to improve my mood. First of all, I was pissed at the Chairman for not telling me WTF was going on. If I’d known, I wouldn’t have done the sneak & peek number on Steve’s office. And Mikki Ben Gal would still be alive. It’s one thing to bust your ass and lose lives for something important. It’s another altogether to waste the life of a friend on something that doesn’t matter. And that is exactly what had happened.
Okay, it was time for Oleg to give me some information I could put to good use. I looked at the big Ivan. “Where’s Sherafi?”
I asked a simple question, I got a simple answer: “Back in Iran. He slipped across the border yesterday.”
Shit. Well, sooner or later I’d find a way to get at him—and I’d take my revenge for Mikki Ben Gal’s murder. But that would be then. This was now, and it was time to get back to my original question, which was, what the fuck was he getting at? I sat back down on the bench. So did Oleg Lapinov. “Okay, Oleg, spill. What’s happened in the last thirty-six hours?”
Lapinov turned his face toward me and dropped the level of his voice, as if we could be overheard. “The Israelis sent a team to kill Sarkesian.”
Hey, like I said, I wasn’t in the mood for coy right now. “And?”
“My people in Moscow got advance warning and told the Azeris what was about to happen.” He spat a mouthful of blood on the pavement. “I don’t think the Azeris would have minded if the Israelis had come in and done it. But since we gave them official notice, there was very little they could do. So Araz Kurbanov put an end to it. The Israelis tried to slip in on a flight from Turkey. But they were stopped right at the airport by Araz’s people. He escorted them back on the plane, and they returned to Tel Aviv by way of Ankara, no questions asked.”
Y’know, friends, the Mossad just isn’t the same organization it used to be. They fucked up the assassination of Haled Mesha’al, that Hamas official, in Amman, Jordan, a couple of years back. They got caught trying to bug a PLO apartment in Switzerland and got their operatives declared PNG. And now this.
Lapinov went on. “But Sarkesian has people at the airport, too. He learned he was about to be hit. And then . . .”
“And then? Let’s get to the fuckin’ point, Oleg.”
“And then Sarkesian must have panicked.”
“Must have panicked?”
“Must have. Because he ran. To his friends from the Armenian Mafiya—in Autonomous Karabakh. He asked to borrow your ambassador’s helicopter for a site survey trip for his proposed pipeline, which runs through Armenia.” The Russian spat more blood onto the hot pavement and digressed. “It will never happen, that pipeline. Not through Autonomous Karabakh.”
Yeah? Maybe, maybe not. Anyway, right now, who the fuck cared where the goddam pipeline would be laid. “Oleg—”
He rubbed his big bald head and focused again on the matter at hand. “Yes, yes, yes,” he went on. “And your ambassador, she is—” He pointed an index finger at the side of his bald head and wiggled it. “Not a lot of smart about people like Sarkesian. And so he convinced her at the last minute to go along to see where his pipeline would run. They filed a flight plan to fly from Ali Bajramly to Satlky,” he said, as if I knew where he was talking about. He paused. “They made a cursory examination of the pipeline route, and then they flew to Naryndzlar for the weekend.”
Naryndzlar? What the fuck was Naryndzlar? Naryndzlar? I couldn’t even fucking pronounce it.
“Naryndzlar is an ancient Armenian fortress town, high in the Caucasus Mountains, at the very northern tip of Autonomous Karabakh,” Lapinov explained, as didactically as if he were reading the words from a guidebook. He spat another mouthful of blood onto the pavement. “It sits at an altitude of twenty-four hundred meters.”
I did the math in my head and came up with almost eight thousand feet. Higher than Denver. Higher than Geneva. “That’s where he took her.”
“There is an old hotel at the top of the mountain,” Lapinov said, wagging his head affirmatively, “made out from a fourteenth-century monastery. I have been there. It is isolated. It is impossible to get in and get out without people knowing. Besides, there, in that place, he has the protection of the local lovrushniki.”67
“You’re telling me that Steve Sarkesian kidnapped the American ambassador, and nothing’s been done about it.”
“There were intercepts between Sarkesian and Tehran that have not been shared with your government.”
“I thought we were working in concert.”
Lapinov looked at me through hooded eyes. “Some things we prefer not to share—until absolutely necessary.” The big Ivan pulled an envelope out of his pocket and handed it to me. I took it, opened the flap, and examined the contents. There were three sheets of official-looking paper, written in Cyrillic, with what I took to be TOP SECRET stamps on each sheet.
I shook the pages under the Russian’s nose. “This shit does me no good at all, and you know it, Oleg.”
Lapinov shrugged. “Your Major Evans reads Russian,” he said. “Ask her.”
I stood up and headed toward the hotel lobby. Five minutes later I was back. Ashley and I had huddled outside the hotel and she translated the Russkie to me. I had to admit that if the intercepts were genuine, Ambassador Marybeth Madison was in big trouble.
• The first intercept was a call from Steve Sarkesian to the hotel at Naryndzlar, requesting his usual suite, three rooms for his bodyguards, and two for the ambassador’s pilots.
• The second intercept was a phone call between Ali Sherafi and Steve Sarkesian in which Sarkesian told Sherafi that the Great Satan’s representative in Baku would be dealt with according to prearranged plan.
• And the third intercept was a cell phone call from Ali Sherafi to the headquarters of the IRGC,68 reporting that “the plan to deal with the American whore” was under way.
I returned to the bench and sat down, confused. Lapinov’s expression was neutral. He said nothing. He was letting me figure it all out for myself. But it made no frigging sense, which is exactly what I told Oleg. You don’t fucking kidnap an American ambassador. Not unless you want the whole goddam U.S. go
vernment beating you upside your head.
Lapinov nodded. “You are correct,” he said. “But I do not think she believes she has been kidnapped, and therefore, there have been no alarms.”
Let me describe the mental process that followed.
Whoa. Full stop.
Lightbulb.
Like, duh. Hel-lo. Wasn’t I the one, only a few pages ago, who told you that Ambassador Madison and Steve Sarkesian were clandestinely doing the down-and-dirty? Didn’t we see how she controlled Steve at the Sirzhik reception, leaving him sputtering as she made her exit? And finally, didn’t we all see the Post-it note on Steve Sarkesian’s draft message, which nicely but firmly told him to shove it—she wasn’t gonna back him up on the Foundation thing, even though she really liked him?
So, it’s not like, she was being kidnapped. It was like, she was going to go off for a day or two of ‘site surveys’ with Steve-o—at least that’s what she thought. Steve obviously had other ideas. Maybe he was tired of being pussy-whipped. Maybe he had a new squeeze somewhere, and just wanted to end things with the ambassador. Maybe he’d only strung her along to get her to back his protection racket, and since she wasn’t going to do that, he was going to dump her. Yeah: right out of the chopper. Whatever the case, he was obviously gonna take her for a one-way ride.
And by the time she realized what her situation really was—or maybe she wouldn’t—well, anything could happen. Like, her chopper could go down in the mountains, with all hands lost. And who would be the wiser? This was an unstable region. A secretary of commerce had been lost over the Balkans. The president of the Georgian Republic barely survived three assassination attempts in the past year alone. If an American ambassador’s chopper went down in the Caucasus Mountains, it would be a six-day story—two weeks at most. Why? Because Baku was not the center of the universe. It was expensive to keep news crews here, and besides, there’d be other crises to cover. And so, the story would simply evaporate. It would go away. And there would be unflattering news leaks—maybe even inflated ones—about her ambassadorial assignations. The dead, you see, can’t sue for libel. And then, in due course, the U.S. government would replace Marybeth Madison—who may have been naive about where she got her nookie but did understand the awl bidness—with some striped pants apparatchik from Foggy Bottom who wouldn’t know diddly-squat about either nookie or the awl bidness, and Steve Sarkesian and the people he was fronting for would ultimately prevail in this region.
Prevail how, you ask. Good question. One of the most basic truths about geopolitics is that things are never black and white. Absolutists and moralists make lousy secretaries of state and foreign ministers, because statecraft is sometimes amoral. Not immoral, let me remind you, but amoral. There’s a difference. And in making statecraft, shading is important. Things are seldom black and white, but gray.
So, Steve Sarkesian would prevail because even though both the United States and Russia knew he was dirty, they’d still deal with him, because he’d retain a considerable degree of control over this region by the use of his huge financial and human resources to nudge things in the direction he wanted them nudged. Remember how he told me that the Sirzhik Foundation was, in its own way, a diplomatic entity just like the United States?
Well, he may have been delusional. But there’s no doubt he was serious. So what came next? I’d told him the truth: that without military power to back up his economic clout, Sirzhik was an empty shell. So, did he start assembling military power by going after some of the pocket nukes I knew were floating around this part of the world and using them as diplomatic collateral? Did he recruit some broke Russkie scientist to build him a bomb and declare the Sirzhik Foundation a nuclear power? Did he take over the subsidizing of transnational terrorism where Khaled Bin Abdullah had left off after I’d waxed his royal ass?
Frankly, friends, I didn’t know—and I didn’t care. As I have said before, I make a lousy diplomat. I am an absolutist, and I am a moralist. What I knew I could sum up in a series of simple declarative sentences.
• Steve Sarkesian killed my friend’s wife.
• Steve Sarkesian was my enemy.
• Steve Sarkesian was dead meat.
The fact that I could now kill him and do it at government expense was icing on the cake.
I looked over at Oleg. His expression told me he knew what had to be done, and that we had to act quickly. “I know the region,” he said. “You have the men.”
I had the men? But I didn’t have the men—at least not enough men to take down a fucking fortified town. My people were all chewed up from the Iran hit. And Araz and his troops hadn’t had but just over a week of training, and besides, this wasn’t their fight—nor should it be.
Taking Azeri troops into what Oleg called Autonomous Karabakh would be as misguided as trying to take Israeli troops into Syria—it would complicate things, not solve any problems. Besides, there were twenty-five thousand Russian troops scattered through Armenia and Autonomous Karabakh.
According to my pre-JCET intel, a good percentage of them were special operations shooters. I suggested that, since we were all being so buddy-buddy these days, maybe we should stage a joint op with some of Oleg’s Spetsnaz boys to show the folks back in Moscow and Washington how well we could all work together.
“It is impossible. We cannot use my assets,” Lapinov said, when I suggested the Russkie option.
I do not recognize the word impossible, and that’s what I told Oleg.
The big Ivan pursed his lips and kept silent.
I wasn’t about to lose the opportunity to give him a shiv in the ribs. “What’s the problem, Oleg? Your Russkies a little rusty in hostage rescue these days?”
Lapinov looked at me with murder in his eyes. Then he sighed a big Russkie sigh, and said, “You will recall, Captain, that we and the Azeris no longer have a mutual security agreement. This means all our forces have been pulled back across the border of the Russian Federation.”
He was right. I had forgotten. “But you could arrange to infiltrate a Spetsnaz battalion—because that’s what we’d need. To do the job.”
“Not possible,” the Russian growled, a nasty look creeping across his round face.
I don’t like the N-word. A Roguish edge crept into my voice. “Why not possible, Oleg?”
He swallowed hard, his face growing more flushed with each passing second, then spoke. “Because if we did what you suggest, word would immediately escape to the wrong people, and your ambassador would be killed out of hand.”
Geezus. He was telling me that the Russkies had no Op-Sec. He was saying that his forces had been completely infiltrated by the Russian and Caucasian Mafiyas.
I looked at Oleg’s expression. The rueful demeanor betrayed the fact that he wasn’t happy about what he’d just confessed to me.
Now, I understood exactly where he was coming from. It would cause me great pain to have to admit that I didn’t trust my own troops.
“There is no alternative in this,” Oleg Lapinov said, a pathetic tone to his voice. “We must use your people to do the job.” He paused, and gave me a piercing look. “It is your ambassador who is in danger, after all. But I will support you any way I can.”
Oh, fuck—he was right. The birds were crapping, and all the merde was falling on my shoulders. Which meant that, yet again, it was about to be Doom on Dickie time.
I massaged my knee. It hurt like hell. My shoulder wasn’t in good shape, either, and a pinched nerve in my neck throbbed, sending electric jolts of pain into my brain.
I guess all the signs meant God loved me, and I was mission-ready. I stood up and stretched. “I have to talk to my people,” I said. “Because we have a shit-load of planning to do if we’re going to actually move as fast as I think we have to move.”
17
OF COURSE, I CHECKED OUT OLEG’S STORY. LIKE I SAID, I trust Russkies about as far as I can toss the Empire State Building. But Ashley vouched for much of what he’d told me concerning the c
hronology of the past couple of days. And she handed me a sealed envelope containing a backchannel fax from General Crocker that both reamed me a new asshole, and confirmed the bare outlines of what Oleg had said regarding the fact that we and the Ivans were cooperating on the Sarkesian problem.
“The Russians came to us about this particular problem,” the Chairman wrote obliquely. “And it was decided at the highest level—repeat: the highest level—to work jointly with them in this area, and this area alone, as they had an officer on-scene, and we did not. There is no wriggle room here, Dick. You will cooperate.”
The Chairman’s words left no doubt in my mind that his orders came directly from the White House. And if that was true, then this had left the military sphere and entered the world of politics. And I didn’t even want to begin thinking about the significance of it all. I mean, in this White House, where political contributions pave the way for national policy, anything could happen.
And that wasn’t even the most depressing thought. The most relevant passage of the Chairman’s note was the part that told me we had no assets in the region. I mean, we are the world’s only remaining superpower, and yet the Russkies put Oleg Lapinov in play in Baku, the Israelis send Avi Ben Gal, and we—we had no resources.
But there was no time to mourn the loss of American gumption. I turned to Ashley. “Okay, what about Ambassador Madison?”
“What about what about Ambassador Madison?” Ashley asked rhetorically.
I didn’t need smart-ass right then, and I let her know it. I needed information. Who at the embassy knew what? Who in Washington knew what? This entire op was going to have to be off the books, unless we wanted Delta Force, the FBI HRT, and the fucking State Department SWAT team all on-scene, followed by ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and the rest of the media circus.
Ashley looked at me, a rueful expression on her face. “Gotcha,” she said. “Sorry.” And then she gave me the sit-rep I needed. The good news was that we had some time on our side. There was nothing unusual about Ambassador Madison going off with Steve Sarkesian. She’d done it before—taken her helicopter, too.
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