“The very same.” His expression turned bleak as he took a folded sheet from his pocket and passed it over. “Ten kilos of highly enriched uranium. The real thing this time. And headed for here.”
“The borders with Belorussia and Ukraine have turned leaky as a sieve,” she said, reading rapidly. “Not to mention security around the Russian missile placements.”
“Nor is it any better around their laboratories, I take it.”
“Like watching lemmings take to the sea,” she agreed. “We picked up a smuggling group operating across the Caucasus just last week.”
“Boxes?”
She shook her head. “Bodies. Claimed to be the only one in the area working with scientists. But even if they were, which I doubt, others will be only too happy to step into their shoes. It’s become a smugglers’ paradise up there.”
“And all fingers,” Cyril finished for her, “point to Aqaba.”
Judith Armstead leaned across the table. “We need to identify the shipping point and close it down. The Jordanians are absolutely no help whatsoever. They’re so determined to smooth out relations with the West that any new problem is simply ignored.” She stopped, then asked, “We were wondering if you had any people in place.”
It came as no surprise to either that the Americans would request such help. Fiascos on the ground, such as the most recent scandal in France over economic espionage, continued to tie the CIA’s hands. The British operated under no such restrictions. Since they had never possessed the cash required for spy satellites, they continued to focus their attention on live agents, as they had ever since the days of the Great Game.
Regretfully, Cyril shook his head. “I am afraid not. The extremist cells have proven almost impossible to infiltrate.”
“That’s what I told Washington to expect,” Judith said, leaning back, and failing to fully mask her disappointment. Placing an agent into a sensitive field position was extremely difficult. The Americans had spent twenty years trying to place an agent within the Chinese Communist hierarchy, and in the end they still failed. Establishing an agent is normally considered to be a ten-year project. In a region dominated by unstable regimes and fledgling terrorist movements, setting up agents was deadly work. “Then we’re stuck.”
“Not necessarily.” Cyril covered his momentary hesitation by smoothing a nonexistent crease to his trousers. He then raised his eyes, and continued, “I might have an ally to our cause. An American, actually. An old friend.”
A spark of renewed interest brightened Judith’s gaze. “In Aqaba?”
“Operates all over southern Jordan, actually. Runs a clinic for the poorest of the poor. He allowed us to use his infirmary as a base of operations. We set an agent there, one of our local operatives. Awful choice.”
Judith was glad for a reason to smile. “Not Smathers.”
“You’ve met him, I see.” Cyril sighed. “Almost ruined us before we had a chance to start. Ben Shannon, that’s my friend, has reluctantly agreed to speak with me again. Don’t know what I’m going to suggest, to be perfectly frank. Starting from scratch with a new operative and simply searching for clues would be hopeless at this point.”
“Time is beyond critical,” Judith Armstead agreed.
“Mmmm. We must draw them out. Force their hand, as it were.” He rose to his feet. “I must be off.”
“Where to?”
“First to Aqaba, then to London.” He hesitated at the door, turned back, and remarked, “You know, what we really require is someone Ben already trusts. Someone to act as liaison... or a lure.”
1
He stepped onto the runway of the Chechen-Ingush airport and paused to sniff the steamy September air. A swarthy soldier in a decrepit uniform watched him with eyes as dark as his moustache. The new arrival smiled blandly, took in the well-oiled machine gun, and announced to no one in particular, “There’s money in the air and riches in the wind.”
The soldier barked a guttural command and swung his weapon toward the arrivals hall. Robards replied with a full-fledged grin, shouldered his battered satchel, and sauntered off.
In his thirty-seven years, Barton Jameson Robards had won and lost more fortunes than many small countries. In a barroom confession to a buddy too drunk to remember, he had once said, “Finding it isn’t near as much trouble as making it mine. Losing it isn’t any trouble at all.”
Robards stood a hair over six foot six and sported a jaw like the front fender of a Mack truck. His hair was black, his eyes steel-gray, his way with women indifferent or demanding, depending on his mood of the moment. His friends, and they were almost as numerous as his enemies, called him Rogue, after the bull elephant who preferred his own company unless the heat was on him, and who reigned supreme over whatever turf he decided to claim as his own.
Rogue Robards didn’t consider himself a particularly greedy man. All he wanted was his own yacht, his own tropical island, his own Rolls, his own Swiss bank account sporting some number followed by at least nine zeros, and a string of nubile secretaries to smile adoringly as he dictated his autobiography. He had long since decided on the title—Laws Are for Little People.
The arrivals building, a converted airplane hangar of World War II vintage, was as cheerful as an empty morgue. Voices splashed like a heavy rain off distant metal walls and roofs and concrete floors.
Robards clumped his leather satchel down on the steel customs table and opened it without being asked. Experience had taught him that anybody as big as he was, dressed in flight jacket and laced-up boots and pressed cords while everybody else wore either the local garb or grimy business suits, was going to get searched. Opening his luggage unasked usually saved a few minutes and disarmed the worst of the questions.
“Anything to declare?” the officer asked, his accent mangling the English words into insensibility.
“Merely sixteen smidgens of ground worm food and a can of green guppies,” Robards replied, certain the man had memorized the question and knew no other English at all. He shook his head and lifted out his shaving kit; holding the bag toward the soldier, he said in a casual drawl, “I left my pet catfish on board with the baby alligator. I hope they get along.”
The customs guard released him with a curt wave and turned to the next passenger. A bald-headed businessman raised his multilayered chin to give Robards a thoroughly confused look. Robards replied with a buccaneer’s grin, hefted his satchel, and sauntered toward the exit.
There was a good deal of the pirate in Rogue Robards. Once a solid deal had taken him to New York—a solid deal being one that allowed him to walk away with his money and his life. His lady of the hour had used a costume ball to dress him up in pirate garb: fold-down boots, baggy black trousers, drawstring shirt, sword, and ostrich-plume hat. Standing on a chair to tie his eye patch into place, she had examined his reflection in the full-length mirror and declared, “You were born four hundred years too late.”
“I’ve always had a soft spot for hidden treasure,” Robards had agreed.
“Now the question is whether I’m going to risk letting you loose in a roomful of New York women,” the lady had added, getting as much of his shoulders and neck as she could manage in a full nelson. “After a steady diet of Wall Street yuppies, they might just eat you alive.”
Rogue Robards described himself as a product of the Florida property boom. His daddy had been a swamp creature lured from the Everglades by Gulf Coast developers, who feared rolling out their blueprints on a log that suddenly grew fangs and a tail and showed a marked desire to eat them, Ray-Ban specs and all. His momma had been a washed-out woman decked in shades of gray, whose days had been filled with the drudgery of hard work and the happy sounds of a drunk husband beating the living daylights out of their only boy. Thankfully, the boy had grown up fast enough to keep his pappy from inflicting permanent damage, and left home at the ripe old age of fourteen, after landing a punch that drove his father through the front wall of their two-ply home.
Next had come three y
ears of roaming the drier reaches of Texas and marking time in a variety of oil fields and other places too remote to feel the nosy influence of social workers and child-labor investigators. Then Rogue Robards had come into town one evening with a paycheck burning a hole in his Levi’s, and the next morning he had sought refuge from a monumental hangover in a Marine recruiting office. The spit-and-polish NCOs had taken one look at his strapping physique, ignored his somewhat off-center list and the way he shaded his eyes from the glare of their fluorescent overheads, and practically begged him to sign on the dotted line.
Vietnam had swallowed up Robards, chewed him up, and spat him out. He was left scarred down deep, pitted with wounds that stubbornly refused to heal. He had then taken the only step he saw as both open and sensible, given the circumstances.
Rogue Robards had become a mercenary.
Sunlight hit him like metal striking an anvil as Robards emerged from the hangar and sauntered toward the rank of taxis. Rank was definitely the right word here—the newest car in the lineup was a DeSoto of late fifties vintage with more rust than paint. But Robards liked the look of that vehicle and its driver, who had parked his car beneath the lot’s single sheltering palm. The man leaned silently against his car and watched while his compatriots started a raunchy chorus of pleas for Robards’ business. The man’s only reaction to Robards’ approach was a slight stiffening of his spine.
Robards dropped his satchel at the man’s feet. “Hot day.”
“I await a fare,” the man replied in oddly formal English.
“Your fare’s just arrived,” Robards said.
The man inspected him frankly. “You are representing the Siemens Company?”
“If that’s what it takes to get a ride.”
“Why me? You can see, twenty other cars are here, and they are all eager to take you anywhere you want to go.”
Robards stayed put. “Where did you learn your English?”
The driver inspected him for a long moment, then replied, “I worked for an American base on the Turkish side of the border. A sergeant at the post, he had a multitude of books. I read them all.”
“Impressive. Might have been that we knew the same man.”
The driver was clearly skeptical. “And yours—he had a love affair with his bunk?”
“And a crew cut gone gray, and eyes filled with unlived passions. He lived for his books and cultivated a belly more like a cauldron than a pot.” Robards wiped at sweat. “Shakespeare and Tolstoy in battered paperbacks. Wooden packing crates filled with everything from Dickens to Harold Robbins.”
“It might have been the same man,” the driver conceded.
“Or maybe just a kindred spirit. The Marines breed a lot of strange characters in the seasons between wars.”
The driver smirked. “So you were one of those few good men.”
“At least until I enlisted. Afterward they called me something else.” Robards reached down and tossed his satchel into the car’s backseat. “What is your name?”
“Anatoly. And you?”
“Barton Robards. My friends call me Rogue.”
“You can afford to pay a driver?”
“Pay him well now and promise more later.”
“Later does not often arrive in this country, in this time.”
“If it doesn’t for me, you’ll hear about it soon enough,” Robards assured him. “My generosity increases in pace with my wealth. It is my greatest failing.”
“Not to me.” Anatoly gave Robards’ face a closer examination. “A hotel, you need?”
“With more charm than glitz,” Robards agreed. “I have no need of newness, and too much air conditioning gives me the hives.”
“A taste of the old world, perhaps.”
“Clean would be a plus. And fresh sheets.”
“Food without gristle,” Anatoly said, walking around the car and climbing in. “I comprehend.”
“Also a minimum of flies and other winged creatures,” Robards said, joining him in the front seat. “I’ve grown attached to my own blood.”
The ancient auto groaned and creaked but ambled forward in a rocking good humor. The slender driver handled the vast steering wheel and its chrome-plated horn with ease. “What brings you to our formerly fair land?”
“I heard rumors of several small wars.”
“No war is small for the ones involved.”
“True. But so long as foreign powers are not involved, it cannot be called large.”
“Also true. You seek small wars? It sounds like a risky life.”
“No. It’s not the war I seek but the opportunity. And yes, it’s a risky life.”
“And you call such wars an opportunity. Interesting.”
“A war often makes holes. Or windows. Or cracks in the woodwork, whatever you like to call them. Places for an agile man to slip through.”
“I prefer to join with surer things these days. Life alone has more risks than I care to take.”
“The war hasn’t been kind to you?”
“War and kindness are words that mingle like oil and water.” Anatoly drove with as much pressure on the horn as the gas pedal. He swerved deftly around an overloaded ox cart.
“I’ve heard that these wars have left certain people in great need of certain items.”
“That too I have heard.”
“Put out the word,” Robards insisted. “Speak of a man you have known for ages—”
“Minutes, even,” Anatoly corrected.
“—long enough to trust,” Robards continued smoothly, “who has interest in helping resolve the problem.”
“Which one?”
“Whichever has been left undone. Whichever pays. Delivering the odd container. Finding the lost. Rescuing the captured. Healing the rift. Righting the wrong, or if not, wreaking havoc upon the wrongdoers.”
Anatoly was silent for a long moment, then mused aloud, “There is something.”
“There usually is.”
“It is, of course, quite dangerous.”
“Of course.”
“And not entirely legal,” Anatoly continued. Robards merely shrugged.
Anatoly slowed at an intersection manned by troops stationed by an armored personnel carrier. Once safely through, he asked, “Would you consider working for a church?”
Robards tried to mask his shock. “It would make for a certain change.”
Anatoly pulled up in front of a decidedly third-rate hotel, honked his horn, and said to Robards, “Then see to your bath and meal and rest while I return for my sweating passenger. I shall then speak with the church people and see if perhaps they are ready to meet with the likes of you.”
Rogue Robards lay drifting in and out of sleep in standard jet-lag dozes. Through his window drifted the cacophony of a third-world city—revving motors and blaring horns and shouting voices and strange music played through speakers shattered by the constant load. To Robards the din played itself out like a familiar lullaby.
The tentative knock came as a welcome relief. He rolled from the bed, crossed the room, and opened his door. The young man who faced him looked so much like a fish out of water that Rogue could not help but grin.
“Mr. Robards?”
“The one and only. What can I do for you?”
The young man seemed uncomfortable with his own skin. “Your taxi driver? Anatoly? He said you might be able to help us with a problem we have?”
Robards crossed bulky arms across his chest. “Do you make a habit of turning every sentence into a question?”
“Only when I’m nervous.” The young man scratched his cheek, caught his hand, and brought it back down under control.
“Which must be most of the time around here.”
“It’s not much different here than any other place,” the young man replied.
“Watch it, now,” Robards said. “Keep that up and I might decide underneath that mild-mannered exterior lurks what’d pass for a sense of humor.”
Brown e
yes drifted up long enough to inspect Robards’ face for derision. Finding none, they settled back on the floor. “My name is Wade Waters.”
A grin stretched the leathery skin of his face. “Yeah, I’d say you had a pretty good reason for skipping town. You from the States?”
“Illinois. But now I work at the clinic of a local mission.”
“Mission as in religious?”
“Is there a problem with that?”
“Not from my end,” Robards said evenly. “But not many of you people want to have much to do with the likes of me.”
Wade Waters started to say something, then stopped and asked, “Would you mind coming and having a talk with our director?”
Robards reached to the bedside table for shades, keys, money clip, and knife and pocketed it all in practiced motions. “Lead on, Sanchez.”
“Who?”
Robards showed genuine surprise. “Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of Don Quixote.”
“Oh. Sure.” The young man rattled down two flights of rickety stairs, crossed the scuffed lobby floor, and entered the bright afternoon sunlight. “I might even prefer it to Wade.”
“Watch it there,” Robards said, slipping on mirror shades. “You gotta learn to trap that humor, keep it outta sight.”
In the lowlands around Grozny, the capital of Russia’s Chechen-Ingush region, autumn held on long and surrendered only after a hard and dusty struggle. The Caucasus foothills were a world unto themselves; even nature seemed to accept that no normal rules applied here. When winter finally did arrive, it landed with a ferocity so sudden that every year a few people were caught unawares and left frozen to an iron-hard ground. But this year autumn had fought a more valiant battle than usual, with temperatures remaining in the eighties for long after the first snow normally would have fallen. The locals responded with customary pessimism and predicted that the snows when they came would be heavy enough to bury houses.
The town’s Russian sector was busy, but no busier than usual for that time of day. Buses from all the nearby villages made their disgruntled way across desolate roads soon to be lost beneath the ice, and deposited their hot and stinking and tired passengers at the market gates. Robards stepped lightly alongside Wade. He moved easily through the tightly packed throngs, granted room by his obvious foreignness and his imposing size.
Riders of the Pale Horse Page 2