by Victor Milán
She sat beside the man on the futon she had insisted they buy and vigorously toweled her hair. "I was so worried when I heard," she said. "Almost totally frantic. I caught the first plane available out of Tashkent." Unspoken but loud was her resentment that he had not arranged for transport to be available to her at all times—as a journalist of importance, as the great man's mistress.
He studied her minutely. The night chill of high-desert spring had raised goose bumps on her arms. He was a middle-aged man, of no extraordinary appearance, with precisely no pretense of being a seducer; he was a man who scrupulously avoided the trappings of the Eastern potentate as much as he could without losing all credibility. He was hardly the sort to purchase sex. Since his wife had... gone ... he had resigned himself to doing without. He never expected to see a woman so beautiful so close again.
"It was terrible," he said, slowly.
"What?" Breathless. "The fear of death?"
He shook his head impatiently. "Not that. I've never seen a man die. Not actually... before me."
He turned his gaze to the lamp, began to unwind his headcloth. "It made me think again of the deaths I've caused. So many, the men, the women. It seems so easy, when great issues lie at stake, to make the great plans and give the great orders. But to see what they translate into..."
"One doesn't make an omelette without breaking eggs," she said with a head flip.
His hands froze. "I'm sorry you missed the incident. It was very vivid. You would call it 'good telejournalism.'" He felt tension pass through her like a rope jerking taut. Why do I provoke her? he asked himself. Is it to do away with the suspense of awaiting her attack?
She smiled. A coldness passed through him. She was mercurial, unpredictable, and what that implied was terrifying. He had passed almost six months in her company, and yet he hardly knew her at all. How can I presume to decide for others, when I know so little about what is in their minds, how they will behave?
He set his headcloth aside. Gently she touched his face. It was an average face, a Sart face, with a bit of Mongol flatness in the bones of the cheeks and a bit of Persian roundness in the flesh. Only the eyes were different, obsidian mirrors set within slight epicanthic folds. Like the eyes of a Buddha, she liked to say.
"Do you think that's all I care about?" she purred. Her touch thrilled and burned like brandy. "The story?"
"I know that you are a professional, and good at what you do," he said stiffly. She had him all adrift again, like an old-time traveler on the great Silk Road, who'd let the night's goblin voices lure him into the trackless Takla Makan to die with his camel.
She ran fingers down his chest. Timur the mighty, villain to much of the world and Great Liberator to the rest, was dressed only in a Western-style undershirt and baggy Russian undershorts. His body was soft but carried little excess.
Where the hem of the shirt rode up, he showed the purplish striations of vanished flab. He hadn't exactly wasted down to an ascetic, but something had diminished him.
"I care about you," she said.
She kissed him on the cheek, stood up, turned half away from him, and stretched. "What did they want?" she asked.
He shrugged, hung his fingers before him in a knot between his knees. "Jihad," he said. "They wanted me to call down the djinn of holy war."
"Why not?" she asked. "You can sweep out of your desert like a conqueror of old, a Temujin, a Tamerlane. The old world is decadent; it needs a cleansing, the way a pine forest needs fire."
She dropped to her knees before him. Her hazel eyes glowed in the lamplight. "Do it. The sword is there, it awaits your fingers."
"I'm not Tamerlane, damn it!" he shouted. She refused to flinch, only settled back on her bare haunches with a private smile. He covered his face with his hands.
"I'm fighting for freedom, not domination. Can't people understand—that I am not the Timur of the old times?"
"You chose the name, dear. As for freedom"—She pushed back, stood—"that's the dead wood in worst need of clearing out, so a strong new forest can grow."
"I don't believe it. Only freedom makes life worth living."
He looked up at her, expecting the worst. They had had this discussion before. Jacqui used approval and disapproval like touches of a quirt. His own wife had used soft, mute resignation sometimes; yet mostly they had talked. They were modern that way, as they were in marrying for love. All the same, the sad blank expressions laid over silence had happened more and more frequently, before the end, before...
Jacqui rose and walked away like a bored lioness. He set himself single-mindedly to watching the play of her scrupulously maintained buttocks. He had never before appreciated what escape there could be in the carnal, in pretty flesh. Another trap he might set himself, another thing to beware.
She sat down in front of a travel mirror she had unfolded on a trunk, next to the Ripstop shoulder bag she had not yet unpacked. She began to work her fingers through her hair, which she had permitted to grow to almost shoulder length, untangling snags.
"I understand you appointed a new chief of security. The man who saved you, the rogue American. He sounds like quite a colorful little bastard. What a chance to tweak their dicks in Washington and Moscow, no?"
He shook his head. "No. No publicity. He was quite insistent."
"Insistent? Insistent" She turned to stare at him, face congealed in contempt and something like shock. "You let a mere adventurer, an American, tell you what you may do?"
"I chose to honor his wishes." He raised his head. "As I chose to make him an orlok, a field marshal. What I give him is what I think he deserves, and the choice is mine."
"What?" she demanded. "Are you going imperious on me?"
He held her eye and didn't flinch.
She laughed, rose, and came to him. "It's about time," she said. "You are a great man, my love. But you still must learn to act like one."
And she was a warm, moist, pressing presence, and her nipple was hot and insistent on his bare arm, and he was happy, for a time, to put thought in abeyance.
The face of the Secretary-designate appeared on the screen. "Dr. Mohn." The sleek head nodded. "Good to hear from you. But I'm afraid I don't have much time to chat."
You precocious little snot, Sondra Mohn thought. Do those bags under your eyes come from the long hours or the coke? / hear you're not being backward about savoring the rewards of having greatness thrust upon you.
"I'm so sorry about Operation Clean Sweep," she said sweetly. "It started out so promising."
Justin Serafm's mouth twitched. "We've had a few setbacks, is all."
And hitting the iceberg was a minor inconvenience on the Titanic's maiden voyage. Gun battles, riots, the nation's already overloaded detention system swamped, plus massive obstruction from local, state, and even federal officials—not to mention employees—outraged to discover that they weren't immune to Clean Sweep's broom.
"It's so tragic what happened to poor Larry," she said. "Have you made any headway tracing the murder weapon? We all know how easy it's become to lay one's hand on major firepower since private ownership of firearms was banned, but a Barrett Light .50 is serious ordnance even by the standards of the streets."
Serafin watched her a moment, full lips contracting to a line. "The weapon used in the assassination is not common knowledge, Dr. Mohn."
"Yes, the media are quite obedient about telling the public only what you want them to know, aren't they, Justin? Give an old lady some credit; when you've been around politics as long as I have, you acquire sources in the most unexpected places. You'd be quite surprised what I know."
"If you have pertinent information on the case, it's your duty as a citizen to step forward and share it with us. To hold back would be anti-communitarian." He smiled thinly. "Not even our highest officials can hold themselves above the law."
"I'm sure I know nothing Enforcement Affairs is unaware of at the highest levels," she said, poison-sweet. "Certainly nothing I'd be afraid to
testify to in open court, were I called upon to do so. And should some mishap befall me, I've made arrangements with certain of the foreign media to make public the details—just so you could make sure they tally with your own information."
Serafin sighed. He slumped farther down in his chair, adjusted himself. "Are we finished with the threat behavior now? I really am busy."
Mohn permitted herself a flicker of smile. "I need someone you've got."
"One of my agents?"
"No."
"Then who?" He was starting to sound testy again.
"Francis Marron."
It was his turn to smile. ' 'We just went to a lot of trouble to put him behind bars."
"It should take less to get him out again. For you."
"What do you want him for? He's washed up."
"A situation has arisen. He is uniquely qualified to deal with it." She paused. "Uniquely qualified."
"The Russia thing?"
"The Russia thing."
"Quietly, of course."
"Of course."
"And whatever happens, we can tack a little something onto the CIA's image deficit? Just another nail in the coffin, before it goes in the ground?"
"Justin, dear, it was never my intention that you go away with nothing for your pains."
"We run the operation? Top to bottom?"
"I'm interested in results, not details."
"A pleasure doing business with you, Doctor."
"And you, Mr. Secretary."
Sitting out under the stars beside his own modest tent in the midst of his bivouacked minghan, Fast Eddie Randolph hit the SAVE AND CLOSE FILE key of his notebook computer. The screen display returned to menu, as innocuous as a laundry list. He punched in a brief memorized sequence.
He could smell the green shoots stirring in the hard-spirited soil, awakened by the melting kiss of the last snow oil" the Tien Shans, reaching upward in anticipation of the brief rains to come. Around him the encampment slept, silent except for the muted percussion of the wind on tents, lie liked to keep his men busy enough that they had little energy for getting into trouble on their downtime.
His own Jagun 23 was mostly gone to the camp-follower tent city subsidiary to Timur's floating HQ, bleeding off the tensions of their last hunt. Seeking in women and recreational chemistry the same release that he had been hunting on his random, driven walk among the tents that afternoon.
Hope they have better luck than I did.
He sighed, leaned back, and raised his head as if to watch the little software robot he'd released spring upward from the polymer-shell half-moon of the satlink antenna, to begin its trace-foiling careen through the great illicit Net, out there between him and the stars. He always linked-in out in the open, with nothing overhead to interfere with transmission. Superstition, he supposed.
For six months he had been sending those robot messengers, dutifully and regularly. For six months the reply had been silence. The silver cord had been cut, and he was all adrift.
But he had done his duty, now. Accomplished all that could be asked of him by his Motherland—and more than her self-appointed guardians had ever anticipated, he suspected to the point of certainty. Against all odds, he had catapulted himself into the rebel king's innermost circle. He was poised to strike. This was triumph, the greatest of his young life.
So why the fuck does it feel like betrayal?
Chapter THIRTY-THREE
"Hey. Hey, there!"
Dr. Shih Tai-Yu kept walking, arms folded over the notebook computer she held against her chest, a few stray strands of blue-black hair blown in her face by the crisp breeze.
She heard running footsteps, tensed, felt a thrill of rolling-eye panic. I won't let them see me afraid! shrilled in her brain, while her rational mind tried to reassure her the nearest Chinese security forces were across the Tien Shans, pictureque and very forbidding, to the west.
The thought hit: The assassins! A hand seized her biceps.
She turned into the hold, snapping up her forearm to break the grip.
The man let go of her, jumped back with hands held up and out, as if surrendering. "Whoa, lady," he said in English. "Sorry. Didn't mean to set you oif."
She glared at him. He wore athletic shoes, baggy camouflage pants, a leather jacket, and a blue baseball cap with the letters NY worked together in what looked to her like a bad parody of a Chinese character. He was short for an American, not much taller than she.
"I just wanted to see how you were doing," he said.
Still flustered and angry at him for it, she nodded curtly and started walking. Head up, not tipped demurely toward the ground like a proper Asian woman.
He trotted after. "You know, when somebody saves your life, some kind of acknowledgment is, you know, customary. Doesn't have to be anything formal. A simple thank you usually does it, though your more concrete rewards like money, sex, or writing your rescuer into your will are all acceptable."
She turned to face him, cheeks sunburn-hot. "You rescue me? I rescue myself, thank you!"
She walked. He skipped along sideways beside her. "You have, like, the cutest accent in the world, you know?"
"Pig!"
Fast Eddie stopped, looked after her. "'Pig,'" he related, half under his breath.
He sprinted, planted himself in front of her. Her eyes blasted him like chain guns, and in the sudden tensing of her posture he read the intention to plant either a knee or the lip of one of those cute little kung fu slippers in his nuts.
His thighs flinched toward each other and he danced back a step. "Wait! I'm sorry! I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
She glared at him a moment, then let a little pressure bleed out her nostrils. "All right. You are sorry. I already know that."
He made a shot-through-the heart gesture, hands over chest. She started walking.
"Look," he said, pacing her again, "I'm sorry if I came off like a male chauvinist jerk. I'm not really a chauvinist. I'm just a jerk."
She sighed.
"I'm still letting off emotional overpressure from that, in the big guy's tent," he said. "It kind of makes me forget my manners."
She looked at him, for the first time as if he might be human and not an ape escaped from some nearby zoo. "You feel... pressure ... from killing those men? Even after several days? It seemed to come so easily."
"It does and it doesn't. When you do it—kill somebody— it's like the most natural thing in the world. In a situation like that it's all you can do, and there's no talk, no posturing, no thinking, really." He shivered. From her expression he knew she thought he was showing her an act. He wished he was. "It's afterward that it all comes down on you."
They walked side by side through the city of tents. The day was hot. Hard to believe Eddie and his men had been fighting in ankle-deep snow the week before.
"You're right about saving yourself, babe. That was a good move you put on the Iranian. Good timing too."
"I had no wish to be a hostage, and I certainly did not wish to die."
"You knew what he was saying? Your English is great. You understand Persian too?"
"The language of a gun in your ear is universal, I believe."
He laughed. "You saved my life too. Thanks for not letting that homeboy in the blue beanie pull the trigger on me."
She smiled. "I experienced quite an intense struggle with my conscience."
"So who won? Wait—don't answer that."
She nodded solemnly.
"You're a pretty cool customer, babe. The round-eye woman from the big man's office had to be carried onto the plane for Karachi strapped to a stretcher."
"Perhaps Westerners are less mature than we Chinese are."
"Um. Yeah. By the way, I'm Eddie. Fast Eddie Randolph."
"I am pleased to meet you. I am Dr. Shih Tai-Yu."
"Doctor." He pushed out his lips. "So what brings you to Uncle Timur's Permanent Floating Carnival and Sideshow? The nightlife? The great tanning beaches? You got the whole R
ed Sands between here and the Aral; room to catch a lot of rays."
"I am professor of Altaic languages and culture at Beijing University."
"So you specialize in Turkic dialects, like Uzbek and Kirghiz and Kazakh? Hey, why are you looking me like that? You figure I'm just another couch-potato American, don't know anything about anything but Happy Days reruns and who won the Super Bowl?" He hoped she wouldn't ask him who did win the Super Bowl. In old movies they were always tripping up spy bad guys by asking them American sports trivia like that. Eddie didn't know who won the Super Bowl even when he lived in New York. He hated football.
She dropped her eyes, a minor victory he enjoyed. "Actually, my specialty is more the Mongol group of tongues. And I admit, I did not expect you to know what 'Altaic' meant. I offer sincere apology."
"I sure don't get those very often. It's okay. People are always underestimating us Americans. It's not hard to do." lie cocked his head, half closed one eye. "Is that what I meant to say? It didn't seem to come out right."
Shih giggled. Eddie raised his eyebrows at her. "Whoa. The jade Buddha cracks. The professor has a sense of humor. That kind of thing could be very dangerous, you know."
Instantly she sobered. "I am sorry. I will be more careful."
"Hey, wait a minute. Did your leg come off in my hand? I was kidding."
"It is just that, when people say that it is dangerous to talk a certain way, where I come from it is wise to listen to them." She looked at him curiously. "You also, I would think."
Whoops. The cover slipped a little there. Are things that bad back in the States? He shrugged. "I never listen to what people say. It's part of my charm."
"I do not believe that. I think you listen to everything people say. Perhaps you take it too much to heart."
"So you're a counselor now. A lady of many talents. Say, can I walk you somewhere?"
"You already have." She stopped, bowed slightly. "Thank you very much, Mr. Randolph. It was most instructive." She turned away and vanished.
Into Timur's big office-and-living-quarters tent. He stood blinking after her like a high school junior left stranded on the stoop without a first-date kiss.