The Missing Spy

by J A Heaton

  “America has a partnership with Uzbekistan,” Daniel explained. “You already know about your husband’s unfortunate death, and I am working with the militzya to understand why your husband died.”

  “Where is the militzya?” Zuhro asked.

  “Detective Jahangir Barakatulla is busy in Tashkent at the crime scene,” Daniel explained, “and he has much work to do up there.”

  “But I told him I would come up in a few days, and he agreed to that,” Zuhro said.

  “Would it be possible for us to speak privately?” Daniel asked delicately.

  Zuhro gave a questioning look, but she said a few words to the other woman. Zuhro rose and motioned for Daniel and Rex to follow her. The other women sat in silence as Zuhro led the men outside to stand under an apricot tree.

  “Was my husband murdered?” Zuhro asked when they were alone.

  The question surprised Daniel.

  “Why do you ask?” Daniel said. “Did you have reason to suspect something.”

  “The detective who called seemed too important to be calling me.”

  She sensed Jahongir is secret police, too, Daniel thought to himself. Daniel tried to translate for Rex as the conversation progressed.

  “We believe your husband was murdered,” Daniel said. “And we are also hoping that you can help.”

  “I don’t see how, but—”

  “Can you think of anybody that would have wanted to kill your husband?” Daniel asked. “Did he have enemies in Tashkent?”

  “He didn’t know anybody in Tashkent,” she responded. “And he certainly didn’t have any enemies in Tashkent.”

  “How did you meet?” Daniel asked.

  “I worked as a cleaner at the silk factory,” Zuhro explained. “Dmitri came at the end of 1987. I was unmarried, and I was considered too old to marry, but Dmitri thought differently. After we were married, I quit working at the factory. His pay was plenty.”

  “What did he do at the factory?” Daniel asked.

  “Paperwork. I didn’t work directly with him. I was a cleaner. And he never talked about work.”

  “Did he ever go back to Moscow, especially after the Soviet Union fell?” Daniel asked.

  “He never went back,” she said. “He was happy here, and he had a new life here. He only has two old pictures of his parents who died a long time ago. He never talked about his life in Moscow.”

  “Did he tell you why he went up to Tashkent?” Daniel asked.

  “He didn’t say. He just said he had to go. I could tell he didn’t want to talk about it. He has his quirks, but he is a very patient and kind man. So what if he doesn’t want to talk about one thing once in a great while?”

  “Did he seem happy or upset to go to Tashkent?”

  “No. He seemed… normalny.”

  After Daniel caught up translating for Rex, Rex observed, “She’s not telling us crap.”

  “Were you suspicious back in 1987 about this man from Moscow coming here to work at a factory?” Daniel asked, digging into the past and hoping to get lucky. Daniel knew he was really fishing now. “I’m sure that anything you share can only help. Anything at all. He was murdered, so help us find out who’s responsible. Remember, we’re Americans, and we’re new here, so things that you take for granted, we might have no idea about.”

  “It’s a known secret,” Zuhro explained, lowering her voice, “that the Russians had something nearby. Something that nobody ever talked about.”

  Daniel gave a questioning glance.

  “Nobody was sure, but we couldn’t ask questions. The Soviet Union taught us to mind our own business, and so we all pretended ignorance. But there were certain places you’d never go outside the city. There are large blank areas on maps. And Dmitri was not the first man from Moscow to come. Several others had come. But none of them seemed to like it here. We all figured that most, if not all of them, worked for the KGB or the GRU.”

  GRU, the military’s intelligence service, a rival of the KGB, Daniel thought to himself.

  “But you said Dmitri worked at the silk factory, correct?” Daniel pressed.

  “He went to the silk factory, anyway,” Zuhro said. “But the work that he did, and how much was actually at the factory, I can’t say. He never wanted to talk about work. And I was fine with that.”

  “Did you ever overhear him talking with somebody else from work?” Daniel asked.

  But now Zuhro was beginning to clam up, perhaps afraid she had already said too much.

  “I hope you find the murderer, but I must mourn Dmitri’s death,” Zuhro said.

  Daniel and Rex left, unsatisfied they were any closer to finding the murderer.

  “Seems tenuous, but maybe there is a KGB or GRU connection to Dmitri’s death,” Rex observed as their Land Cruiser exited the city to take them back to Tashkent. “Maybe that’s why Jahongir is so shifty.”

  Less than an hour later, Daniel and Rex were winding their way up the road past mountainside tea houses towards Samarkand and then Tashkent.

  “And, we know the Soviets launched their space program out of Kazakhstan,” Rex continued, “so maybe they had something top-secret in or near Shock-town.”

  “Perhaps,” Daniel speculated. “And it’s not far from Afghanistan, so maybe they needed something to support the Soviet-Afghan War.”

  “Maybe we should’ve gone poking around in some of those blank areas on the map,” Rex said.

  “Maybe we will someday,” Daniel said. “But I’ll bet it’s mostly mountains and wild goats. Maybe we should have tracked down her twin sister.”

  Rex gave Daniel a questioning look. “Her what?”

  “In Uzbek culture,” Daniel explained, “twins are always given the same names. For girls, it’s Fatima and Zuhro.”

  Just then, their satellite phone rang, and Daniel answered it.

  Daniel listened intently for a few moments and then hung up.

  He said to Rex, “That was Edwards at the US Embassy in Tashkent. He said Ambassador Fitzpatrick didn’t want him to tell us yet, but it turns out that our Russian friend, Dmitri, visited the US Embassy the same morning he was murdered.”

  The two men sat opposite each other, each eager to display his drinking prowess.

  Although both held considerable power, the bald man was not only physically stronger, but he also held the trump card. He carried instructions from his master, whom everybody feared above all.

  “Why this unusual meeting?” the dark-haired man asked the bald one.

  “Are you not happy to drink vodka with me?” Pavel replied.

  “I would never pass up the opportunity. But this is… irregular.”

  The two men were speaking in Russian at a diskoteka in Tashkent after lunch. It had closed at about two in the morning, and employees had recently arrived to clean and prepare for the next night’s debauchery. Both men had business interests in the nightclub, but they were discussing something else entirely.

  They paused as a waitress placed six shot glasses of vodka on their small, circular table. Three for each of them. Both watched the waitress walk away.

  “It is irregular,” Pavel conceded, finally turning his eyes back to the other. “But for a good reason. You know of the upcoming international security conference here? Misha is convinced the Americans will attempt something. This is merely a courtesy call to remind you to be ready. Your immediate service may be required on short notice.”

  “Of course,” the man replied. “It’s always that way.”

  Each man grabbed a shot glass and downed it.

  “Also, this American must be kept safe at all costs. Even if we must kill others, this one is to remain. He is vital for Misha’s purposes.”

  Pavel slid a small photograph across the table to the man. He looked at it and nodded. Pavel knew he didn’t have to explain his master’s reasoning. Pavel put the photo back into his pocket.

  They each took their second shot of vodka.

  “What about the SNB?” the
dark-haired man asked, referring to the Uzbek secret police. “They don’t seem as cooperative. If we have to take extreme measures—”

  “You don’t need to worry about them,” Pavel said with a wink. “Lastly,” Pavel continued, “not a word of this to that filthy wife of yours.”

  “Never,” the man replied. “I assure you that we agree on that.”

  They each took their third shot of vodka.

  Pavel rose, said goodbye, and left, guessing the other man was going after the waitress. Pavel hoped he would have his own opportunity with a woman that night.

  Even more, Pavel yearned for violence and bloodshed. He reassured himself that it would come soon enough.

  7

  “I was ruined,” Patrick Riley confided to Daniel and Rex that night at dinner in Tashkent. The Intercontinental Hotel restaurant was a favorite for Westerners, and Daniel figured it must have been on the cleared list for security. Edwards had arranged the dinner for Patrick, Daniel, and Rex. Edwards and another man would be joining them later. “After Bishop went missing, I didn’t know what to do. Agent Bishop was the highest KGB asset we had.”

  “And that’s the man who was stabbed to death and then bombed in Tashkent just the other day?” Daniel asked.

  Patrick Riley gave a nod. Now in his late forties, Patrick Riley had grown a beer gut, and his slightly red hair had taken on some more gray, but he still had the same convictions about the evils of communism that he had when he worked in Moscow. The only difference now was that everybody was convinced that since the Berlin Wall fell, communism was no longer a problem. Patrick felt otherwise.

  “I’m positive that the man in the morgue is Agent Bishop,” Patrick said. “I don’t think you realize how big of a deal Agent Bishop was. When he sent the urgent meeting message about fifteen years ago, I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know what the message meant, but I was nervous as hell when I went to the meetup.

  “When he was a no-show for that, and then there was nothing at the backup dead drop, I didn’t know what to do with myself. Forcing myself to keep my cover as a journalist was nearly impossible. I felt I had lost Agent Bishop. It was like losing a loved one. The worst was that I didn’t really know what happened. The urgency of the meeting called for was such that I feared Soviet tanks were gonna roll across East Berlin into West Berlin and then WWIII was going to begin. Or, perhaps the prime minister of England was going to be assassinated by a KGB hitman. It seems crazy now, but back then, if Agent Bishop had a message of that urgency, that’s the type of thing I was looking at.”

  Daniel could see Patrick’s mind wander into the past as he looked about and took a long drink of his beer before continuing.

  “Of course, none of those things happened. I figured maybe the emergency was diverted. But deep down, I feared that the urgent message was that he needed to get out. But there was a different signal for that. But maybe he panicked. I couldn’t stand the thought of him being tortured and killed by the KGB. I stuck it out as a journalist for a bit, but then I was posted all over the former Soviet Union, mostly Eastern Europe. I did very little work for the CIA then. I truly was a journalist. I listened in on some Russian conversations in the field, but I was never given another agent to handle. I think somebody higher up was ticked off that I confronted the KGB guy I encountered when I was trying to meet with Agent Bishop. I just arrived in Tashkent to support the war in Afghanistan, not as a journalist, but finally as a real embassy worker with the foreign service.”

  “You’re not just here for the security conference?” Daniel asked.

  “I’ll be there,” Patrick said. “Along with Billy. Edwards is coming in just for the conference. Of course, Ambassador Fitzpatrick, the jerk, will make an appearance.”

  Daniel wondered if those were Edwards’ top suspects for the mole. Rex jumped into the conversation before Daniel’s question raised any suspicion from Patrick.

  “That must’ve been gut-wrenching, not knowing what happened to Agent Bishop,” Rex observed. “Where were you when the bomb went off?”

  Patrick Riley took a sip of his beer and continued his tale. “I was at my new place here in Tashkent. I didn’t even have anything unpacked when the bomb went off. I was phoned and informed to stay in my house until the all-clear was given. After just a few hours, I was given the clear signal to come to the embassy for work, which I was anxious to do because I wanted to get out of my packed-up house.”

  “And when you got into the embassy, that was when you found out that Dmitri, or Agent Bishop, had paid you a visit?” Daniel asked.

  “I got a message that a man who called himself Dmitri and said he was an old friend had come and wanted to talk with me and play chess,” Patrick answered.

  “Did you tell anybody about this?” Daniel asked.

  “Yes, I told Billy, my boss,” Patrick answered. “I could hardly contain myself. I knew Billy back from Moscow. Billy was a good guy back then, and he still is. It’s the CIA guys above him that were horrible, especially his boss, Fitzpatrick. He was a real douche. Still is, as ambassador here. He never said as much, but I got the feeling from Fitzpatrick that he thought he was running the hottest spy network in all of Moscow. Damn. That arrogant prick couldn’t run the treadmill.” Patrick finished his beer and raised his hand for another.

  “Billy doesn’t seem like somebody who would want Dmitri dead,” Daniel observed.

  “No, I wouldn’t think so,” Patrick agreed. “I’m sure Billy passed news of Dmitri’s visit up the chain, so he’s not the only one who knows.”

  “But the timing is a bit fast,” Daniel said. “If a man unexpectedly came to visit you, the information was passed on to Billy, and then he passed it on to somebody—”

  “What are the odds,” Rex said, jumping in, “that somebody up the chain could’ve gotten the information fast enough to both stab Dmitri and then also bomb him?”

  “Unlikely, I agree,” Patrick said.

  “I think old KGB ghosts finally came back to haunt Agent Bishop,” Rex observed.

  “Did you learn anything about my poor Agent Bishop in Shahrisabz?” Patrick asked. “He feels like a lost uncle me, and I’ve always wondered what happened to him.”

  Daniel and Rex shared what they had learned in Shahrisabz from Zuhro about Dmitri’s past in Uzbekistan.

  “So, he started a new life, found a new girl, and started a new job?” Patrick wondered out loud. “I guess there’s no way he could’ve contacted us. I wonder if he was still gathering information, even if he didn’t have a way to pass it on. Or, maybe he was completely out of the game. I would almost envy that possibility myself.”

  “What kind of information could he have gathered at a silk factory?” Daniel asked.

  “Why would the KGB send men to work at a silk factory in the middle of nowhere?” Patrick countered. “Sure, the KGB liked to keep their eye on everything, but for a skilled KGB man from Moscow, going to Shahrisabz would’ve been about the worst thing imaginable.”

  Patrick’s next beer arrived. He hesitated to lift it for a sip.

  “Did you remember something about Agent Bishop?” Daniel asked. “Something triggered by what we told you?”

  “There were always rumors, and we always wondered if the Soviets had secret facilities spread out all over their empire.”

  “They launched the rockets for the space program from the middle of nowhere, Kazakhstan,” Daniel said.

  “And Shahrisabz has their geological science location, plus the industrial silk factory. It would make the perfect cover for weapons research, or even production,” Patrick said. “And if there is an accident that contaminates or kills a lot of people, then it’s a lot easier to cover up than if it happened in Moscow.”

  “It looks like our next item for investigation is finding more about what’s really happening in Shahrisabz,” Rex said.

  Daniel and Rex exchanged a knowing glance, having already discussed the possibility.

  “I’d like to meet Agent Bi
shop’s widow when she comes up here tomorrow,” Patrick said.

  “I’m sure that can be arranged,” Daniel said. “How much will you tell her about her husband’s past?”

  Patrick shrugged helplessly and began to reach for his new beer. He looked up to welcome the final two members to their dinner party.

  Daniel turned and recognized Edwards with his slicked-back hair. The other man reached across the table for Patrick’s beer and said, “Thanks for getting me one.”

  “Billy,” Patrick chided as he shook his head from side to side.

  Edwards and Billy sat down with Daniel, Rex, and Patrick.

  The waiter came by and said, “The entertainment will begin soon.”

  “Bring me and my friend a beer,” Edwards said to the waiter. “Baltika Three, please.” After the waiter left, Edwards continued, “I’m sure you have already told the others, but Billy said you had an interesting visitor today. Who was it?”

  “My visitor was Agent Bishop,” Patrick answered. Daniel saw surprise register on Edwards’ face. “Remember? I handled Agent Bishop in Moscow. You and Fitzpatrick can try to take all the credit for everything that happened in Moscow in the 80s, but I was the one who got all the gold from Agent Bishop.”

  “Don’t use a codename in a public place like this,” Edwards warned Patrick with a lowered voice. “It’s because of such sloppiness that he disappeared.”

  A new party was arriving at the restaurant, demanding a pause in the conversation. Even in the dim light, they saw a hulking man enter wearing a perfectly tailored suit. Daniel guessed he possessed a chiseled physique in his prime, but he had gained some girth along with his age. His collar hardly contained what passed as his neck, which was as thick as his bald head. Daniel wondered what tattoos hid under his collar and cuff-linked sleeves. A few younger men followed him and sat with him. All the American men noticed the brunette who also sat with them.