Enemy of the Good

by Matthew Palmer

  He gestured to the armored police to move the furniture and the rugs.

  Chalibashvili stood back as they opened the trapdoor.

  “A cornered rat can be dangerous,” he said to Kate. “I’ve seen it.”

  Ruslan got off two shots from a pistol. The first glanced off the riot helmet of one of the cops and shattered a bulb on the chandelier. The second struck the policeman’s armored vest and toppled him backward. His partner used a nightstick to knock the pistol from Ruslan’s hand and then club him senseless.

  “Are you all right?” the cop asked his partner in Russian.

  “Yeah, but I’ll be better if you hit him again.”

  His loyal partner complied.

  The cops hauled Ruslan to his feet and used a pair of handcuffs to secure his arms behind his back. Then they did the same to Murzaev, who offered no resistance.

  They ignored Kate, who was now standing near the wall on the far side of the room. She stepped forward to embrace Ruslan, but a third cop stepped in front of her and pushed her back.

  “I’m sorry, Ruslan,” she said. She could feel the tears hot on her face. “I love you.”

  Ruslan was visibly dazed, his eyes glassy from the beating he had received. He did not respond.

  “Thank you, Ms. Hollister,” Chalibashvili said. “You’ve been most cooperative. And your contributions are appreciated. But I believe that you’ve done everything you can in this country. And now, I believe, it is time for you to take your leave of us. I expect you will be getting those instructions in due time. Good evening.”

  Chalibashvili and the raid team left, taking Ruslan and Murzaev with them. Kate was left behind. Alone in her misery and her guilt.

  She drank the rest of the vodka.

  25

  The wife was working the morning shift at the newsstand. It was early. The sky was still the gray of false dawn, and the scent of fresh bread from scores of small bakeries wafted across the city. It had been eight long hours since Ruslan and Murzaev had been arrested.

  Kate needed allies, and she knew she would not find them at the embassy. All she could expect from her employers was a transfer order or a notice of termination. Chalibashvili had been pretty clear about what he expected would happen, and it seemed reasonable to believe that he had an insider’s knowledge. Kate’s time in the country was limited and she would have to make the most of it.

  The woman offered no sign that she recognized Kate or that they shared a secret, no nod or smile, nothing that indicated there was anything between them beyond a small-scale commercial exchange. Her shapeless gray sweater and no-nonsense haircut were, at least in part, an effective form of camouflage, what a naturalist might have called protective coloration. What she and her husband were doing was inherently dangerous, and she did not want to do anything to draw unnecessary and unwanted attention. She would not be happy about what was about to happen. Kate walked straight up to the counter, making no pretense of buying a newspaper or magazine.

  “I need your help.”

  The look of panic on the woman’s face was unmistakable. Reflexively, she looked up and down the street to see who was watching, who might be listening in. Kate was breaking every rule of good security. She sympathized with her contact’s anxiety, but the stakes were extremely high and this was all she could think to do.

  “You would like a newspaper?” the woman asked. She fumbled under the counter and slapped a copy of the English-language Times of Central Asia onto the polished wood.

  “Not today. I want you to get a message to Valentina Aitmatova. It’s urgent.”

  The woman’s eyes narrowed.

  “Why are you doing this?” she hissed. “You’ll get us both killed.”

  “They have Seitek. They took him last night. I was there. He’ll be in Number One by now. I need Valentina. And I can’t get to her without your help. I know this is dangerous, but if we don’t take a risk now we have nothing.”

  Kate pulled a small envelope out of her purse and set it on the counter next to the newspaper. It was unmarked.

  “Please,” she said.

  The newsstand owner looked at the envelope as though it were a scorpion.

  “Without Seitek,” she whispered, “all is lost.”

  “Yes.”

  “And if I do this thing, you can save him?”

  “Yes,” Kate lied.

  The woman nodded, more to herself than to Kate. The look of anxiety on her face faded and what took its place was less determination than fatalism. Somewhat tentatively, she put one hand on top of the envelope and pushed the copy of the Times of Central Asia toward Kate.

  “On the house,” she said. “Just this once.”

  “Thank you.”

  —

  Once more, Kate could do little but wait. She took the bus to Prison Number One on the eastern edge of the city. The bus offered security through anonymity. Kate dressed local and looked like just another middle-class resident of Bishkek rather than an American diplomat. As a further precaution, she kept her cell phone batteries separate from the phones. It was still safer to carry them with her. The embassy had a spare set of keys to her apartment.

  She had not been back to the prison since the pitched battle between the Special Police and the Women in Black. Prison Number One was a complex of buildings set behind a concrete wall, high and thick and topped with coils of razor wire and bits of broken glass. The main gate was closed. It was made of black steel bars oriented vertically. The gate was built on runners that let the guards open it by sliding it to either side on a steel track embedded in the road. A smaller door built into the frame could be opened separately to admit people rather than vehicles. The aluminum guardhouse was manned by two Special Police wearing ballistic vests and watching a football game on a portable television with a rabbit-ears antenna.

  A small sign printed on sheet metal was tacked to the wall by the side of the gate. It announced the identity of the building as the property of the Bishkek Prison Authority. It was superfluous. The grim complex was unlikely to be mistaken for anything else.

  Kate walked past the gate without slowing down or betraying any sign that she was especially interested in what was behind the walls. But she could not stop thinking about Ruslan, who at this very moment was likely to be in one of the windowless rooms in the basement level. Maybe it was a dark cell with nothing but rats for company. Or maybe they had already moved him to one of the interrogation rooms with bright lights rather than darkness to disorient and terrify.

  She circled the prison. There was a gate on the back side that looked identical to the one in front. Through the bars she could see the prison buildings, blocky and ugly. The doors were all steel and the windows were all covered with bars. If there was a weakness, it was not immediately obvious. As she walked past the back gate, one of the guards stared at her and Kate thought he sensed something suspicious about her behavior. But then he made a few grossly exaggerated kissing sounds in Kate’s direction, adding an obscene hip thrust to make his point unambiguously clear. He was just an asshole then. Nothing special to worry about.

  She thought about reinserting the batteries in her phone and taking a few surreptitious pictures of the prison, but she had to assume that the security services were tracking her phone, and it did not seem worth the risk of revealing her whereabouts. Instead, she worked to commit the small details to memory. Where did the guards stand? How many were there? Where were the cameras?

  Kate did not yet know how she was going to get inside the prison. But she knew one thing, and she knew it with absolute certainty. She was not going to leave Ruslan in there to rot. Or to die. Not alone at least.

  —

  At seven o’clock that evening, Kate walked through the gate into Kara-Su Park and followed the path to the bridge where she had met Valentina a few weeks earlier. It was dusk, and there were not many pe
ople in the park, but it was still light enough to see. Kate did not know how long it might take her message to get to Valentina, or whether Val would be able to come at the appointed time, or whether she would be willing to come at all. Would Val and the others blame Kate for what had happened? Hamid had accused her of killing Albina. What would he say now?

  Kate was alone under the bridge. The shadows were deeper here and she stood against the wall where no one walking past would see her. The stone walls were damp and rough to her touch. She wondered if the walls of Ruslan’s cell were made of the same stone. Maybe they were concrete or cinder block. But she was certain that they were cold. Dusk turned to night quickly and the shadows thickened and merged. Within twenty minutes, it was too dark to read the graffiti on the walls. As the last of the sunlight dissipated, it grew noticeably colder and Kate zipped her thin jacket tight against her throat.

  There was no sign of Val. Kate would try again tomorrow night and the night after that and every evening until she was forced to leave the country. She had to believe her message had gotten through. There was no Plan B.

  As she turned to leave, she heard a voice behind her.

  “Kate?”

  She turned and there were two figures silhouetted against the mouth of the tunnel on the far side of the bridge, the sky behind them just barely lighter than the darkness of the underpass.

  “Val? Who’s with you?”

  Kate walked toward them and needed to get within ten feet before she recognized Daniar Nogoev. A feeling of relief washed through her. Val had come. Kate might not know what to do, but at least she was no longer alone.

  Val hugged her quickly but fiercely. Nogoev’s greeting was distant but not hostile.

  “What happened, Kate?” Val asked.

  She told them, leaving out no detail and not seeking to hide or even downplay her own role in leading Chalibashvili and the Special Police to the Boldu safe house. By the time she had finished, hot tears of shame had wet her cheeks.

  Val took her hand.

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “Of course it’s her fault,” Nogoev said, his tone matter-of-fact. “But that doesn’t really matter. Fault finding is a waste of time, of interest only to housewives and Bolsheviks.”

  “I’m neither of those,” Kate said. “But it matters to me. I’m sorry about your friend.”

  “Murzaev knew the risks. Ruslan was the only one we couldn’t spare.”

  “So what do we do?” Val asked.

  They were quiet as they considered the enormity of that question.

  “We rescue him,” Kate said emphatically when it became evident that neither Val nor Nogoev seemed inclined to offer that answer independently.

  “From Number One?” Val asked, incredulous.

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “The Scythians,” Nogoev answered.

  “We just assault the prison? Maybe we could ride in on horseback with bows and arrows. I’ll ride naked like Lady Godiva.”

  “I’m not certain that would have the intended effect.”

  It was dark in the tunnel, but Kate could see Nogoev’s sly smile in the tone of his voice.

  “So how would you do this in a way that doesn’t end up with your idealistic youngsters shuffling off this mortal coil?” Val asked.

  “When we were considering the options for getting to Bermet, you’ll recall, Seitek asked us if we could get into the prison.”

  “And you said you could get in but not get out.”

  “Not without violence. We weren’t ready for that at the time.”

  “And we are now?”

  “Now we have no choice. Bermet wasn’t worth it, frankly. Ruslan is. Without him, we lose. With him, we are only likely to lose.” There was that smile again.

  “Do you have somebody on the inside? Someone in the prison who can help us. Someone sympathetic to our cause.”

  “I think so. Yes.”

  “A guard or an administrator?”

  “Neither.”

  “Who then?”

  “A prisoner.”

  “Not really the time for jokes, Daniar.”

  “I’m one hundred percent serious.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Number One is really two prisons. There’s a building reserved for Tier I political prisoners that has very tight security. But the majority of the prisoners are simple criminals and there aren’t enough guards to control them. The obshchak are really the ones in charge.”

  “Obshchak?” Kate asked.

  “Prison gangs,” Nogoev explained. “Inside, the gangs run the show, and the gang bosses—they’re called thieves-in-law—are lords of their little castles. Even in prison, they can get drugs or cash or girls. They have an understanding with the guards that comes awfully close to a power-sharing arrangement.”

  “These thieves-in-law don’t sound like typical Boldu supporters,” Kate observed.

  “No,” Nogoev agreed. “This is more a personal connection.”

  “You are friends with one of these thieves-in-law?”

  “We are more than friends. We are brothers. Vladimir is younger than I am by almost ten years. I promised our mother I would look after him, but I went off to the army and he fell in with the wrong crowd. He’s been in and out of prison his whole life.”

  Kate did not know what to say to that. And evidently neither did Val. Instead, she fished a pack of cigarettes and a lighter out of her coat pocket and passed them around. While they had been talking, it had grown darker in the tunnel and the glow from the cigarettes offered at least a little light.

  “So what’s the plan?” Val asked, taking a deep drag and tilting her head back to blow a cloud of smoke up toward the ceiling.

  “Plan is a pretty big word,” Nogoev offered. “What I have is more like a concept.”

  “What is it?”

  Nogoev explained to them what he had in mind.

  “You’re insane,” Val said.

  “Quite possibly.”

  “And your brother, Vladimir, he’ll do this for us just because you ask?”

  “No. With the obshchak there is always an exchange.”

  “So what’s in it for him?”

  “A pardon. I’ll promise him that once we come to power Boldu will pardon him and every member of his obshchak.”

  “If he helps us get Ruslan out, Vladimir can have the job as warden of Number One as far as I’m concerned.”

  They smoked in companionable silence, each of them lighting a second cigarette off the butt of the first. Kate assessed that she had become a cabalistic smoker, only indulging when hiding in the dark and plotting against the state. That, she hoped, was unlikely to be habit forming.

  “It’s not enough,” she said after lighting her second cigarette.

  “What’s not?” Val asked.

  “Breaking Ruslan out of jail. It’s necessary but not sufficient.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that Ruslan and Murzaev started things in motion for the clans to take over Ala-Too Square. They told me about it last night. That’s supposed to happen on Wednesday, three days from now. Without Ruslan, they’ll be leaderless. Either they won’t come, they won’t stay, or they’ll be cut up by the Special Police. We can’t let that happen. They need leadership.”

  “Can we get Ruslan out before then?” Val asked.

  Nogoev flicked the ash from his cigarette.

  “We’ll see. There’re a lot of pieces to this. It’ll take time if we’re going to do it right. And we have to do it right.”

  “And what happens to Ruslan in the meantime?” Kate asked.

  “My brother told me that they throw the prisoners in solitary for the first three or four days. It’s supposed to break their spirit, make them obedient.
”

  “Do they do the same to political prisoners?”

  In the dim orange glow of the cigarettes, Kate could see Nogoev shrug his ignorance.

  “So what do we do about it?” Val asked.

  “Someone has to step up and lead the clans. The Adygine and the Buguu and the Kara-Kyrgyz and all the rest. There won’t be many young men with them. There wasn’t enough time to get them back from overseas. It’ll be mostly women and children and graybeards. But the clans need to be told what to do. And assuming that they show up in Ala-Too as promised, someone needs to be there to lead.”

  “Are you volunteering?” Nogoev asked.

  “Not me, Daniar. Val.”

  Val snorted her disagreement.

  “I’m a good writer and bad poet. I help Boldu frame its message. But I’m a consiglieri type. I’m not that inspiring. I don’t belong out in front. That’s for people like Ruslan. And you.”

  “You’ll have to do it, Val. There’s no one else.”

  “Why not you? You may be an American, but you’re as Kyrgyz as any of us.”

  “I can’t do it. I have other plans.”

  “Really? There’s something more pressing on your calendar?”

  “Yeah. I’m going with Daniar and the Scythians and I’m breaking Ruslan out of prison.”

  26

  The Scythians bantered and laughed as they climbed into the back of the truck. Twenty-four hours earlier, it had been a bread truck with the company logo—an incongruous singing chicken—painted on both sides. The fresh coat of black paint was still tacky to the touch. Bold block capitals in white spelled out Police in both Russian and Kyrgyz. Metal screens had been welded to the windows in the rear and an ugly metal grille fixed to the front bumper.

  It looked like a police van, the type that was sometimes called a Black Maria, or a mother’s heart, because there was always room for one more. Underneath the odor of paint, the back of the truck still smelled of fresh bread.

  Like the truck, the Scythians were dressed in black. And like the truck, they were intent on passing themselves off as police property. They wore riot gear and black helmets with opaque faceplates. Their gear and weapons had been “liberated” from a Special Police warehouse out by the airport where the guard on the four a.m. to noon shift was a Boldu sympathizer, and now a moderately wealthy one.