Byko’s eyes found Charlie’s for an instant and then he grabbed for the Nikon. He turned it on and tried to scroll through the stored photographs. After a moment, he looked up.
“Where is the disc?”
Charlie just stared at him.
“I had you followed at the airport,” Byko conceded. “I know you photographed the tarmac. Now where is the disc?”
Charlie reached into his pocket and held it up. “You’re more than welcome to it,” Charlie said, tossing it at Byko’s feet. “But I’ve already downloaded the photos and sent them to Michael Vance at the American Embassy.”
Byko eyed the disc, but refused to pick it up. For such a large man, Hasan moved like a cat. In an instant, he had the disc between his meaty fingers and began loading it into the camera.
“So . . . ,” Byko said, exhaling, “Michael Vance?”
“That’s right,” Charlie bluffed. “And everything’s completely documented. The route of the container. Every payment, every manifest, every customs form. The entire file is sitting on the ambassador’s desk as we speak.”
Byko remained motionless, eyes hooded.
Charlie held up his hand, finally exposing the phone in his left palm. “Right now, all I have to do is turn on my phone and the Foreign Office will instantly know where I am. How long do you think it’ll take for the NSA to get one of their satellites homed in on this very spot?”
Hasan handed Byko the camera, but he no longer seemed interested in its contents. Charlie had his attention.
“I don’t know what she did to you, Alisher. Maybe she rejected you, maybe she found out something about you that you didn’t want the world to know . . . It doesn’t matter to me. As far as I’m concerned, the whole thing is one big misunderstanding. No harm no foul. You give me Julie, we walk out of here, you never see or hear about us again.”
“And how do I know you won’t just turn on your phone when you get out of here? Or tell them where I am when you get to safety?”
“Mutual deterrence.”
“Mutual deterrence?”
“You were able to get to us in Los Angeles. I know that you could do it again with a snap of your fingers. Even from prison. All I want is to get out of here. All I care about is Julie.”
“And yourself,” Byko said. “That you made perfectly clear when you left here six years ago. You had so much ‘passion’ when it was easy, but as soon as there was something at risk for you, you fled with your tail between your legs. You’re a hypocrite and a coward, just like the country you live in.”
“If that’s what you want to believe,” Charlie said, “I won’t argue with you. Give me Julie and you have my word, I will drive away from here and never look back.”
Byko seemed to seriously consider Charlie’s proposal, but then he looked past Charlie to someone by the door.
“Is it true?” Byko asked. “What he says about Michael Vance and the phone?”
Charlie turned to see Faruz framed in the doorway, the barest glimmer of a smile on his lips. “He only found out Quinn works for you ten minutes ago,” Faruz said coolly. “The Americans know nothing.”
A sluice of nausea rushed through Charlie as he absorbed the betrayal. “You sold me out? You fucking sold me out?”
“What? You think I am suppose be loyal to you? Only reason you ever came here to begin with was so you get your Pulitzer! So you can have stories for cocktail party in L.A.”
Charlie rushed at Faruz, but Hasan shoved Charlie back.
“How much did he pay you?” Charlie shouted. “For Julie’s life? For mine?”
Faruz wagged a finger at him. “I can feed my mother’s whole town for a year with what he paid me today. I have to watch out for my family now.”
Charlie’s head was spinning. He couldn’t fathom when and how this had happened.
“So . . . this whole time? At the tarmac? All of that driving around?”
Faruz shrugged. “Selling the con, Charlie. Just like democracy and free speech and the rights of man.”
“Hasan,” Byko barked, cutting off the conversation. It was one word, but everyone in the room knew it was an order.
The big slab-faced bodyguard drew his pistol. Charlie thought for sure that his life was over. But then the hulking man pointed his gun at Faruz. The betrayer’s face registered shock, realizing what was about to happen.
“Mr. Byko, I—”
The bullet caught him in the side of the face. A cloud of dark liquid exploded in the air and Faruz fell with a thud.
“The thing I’ve always detested about Faruz,” Byko said, “is that he’s merely an opportunist. No sense of loyalty whatsoever.”
Charlie stared at Hasan’s pistol, certain that he was next. But Hasan holstered the gun and buttoned his coat, expressionless as a man who’d just polished off some routine household chore.
With that, Byko rose and beckoned to Charlie. “Come. There’s something I’d like you to see.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
This way,” Byko urged.
He smiled and motioned to Charlie, heading up a dark flight of stone steps and through a doorway. With Hasan right behind him, and three other bodyguards ten yards down the hall, Charlie had no choice but to follow, joining Byko in what was a much smaller room than Charlie was expecting.
Unlike the rest of the building—which was decorated with ancient tile work—this room was brightly lit and antiseptic, with banks of computers, video monitors and communications equipment, all manned by a young Uzbek dressed in Western geek fashion—baggy jeans, trucker hat, a black T-shirt complete with a picture of Homer Simpson.
“Pull up the first interview,” Byko ordered.
Homer hit a few buttons and cued up Byko’s request. A high-quality video feed appeared on the largest monitor. Charlie could tell the video was taken by a wide-angle surveillance camera. The room in the video had white walls, a white tile floor and was lit with banks of fluorescent lights. Occupying the majority of the screen was a man with his back to the camera. Charlie could immediately tell it was Byko, but the person beyond him, the person Byko was talking to on-screen, was blocked from view.
“This was recorded several hours ago,” Byko informed Charlie, crossing his arms.
On-screen, Byko stepped aside, revealing Julie.
Her hands and feet were manacled, she looked strung out and haggard and desperate, but at least she was alive.
Cuffs, Alisher?” Julie growled, jerking her wrists. “Come on!”
“You must understand,” Byko said. “Things are very delicate for me right now. I can’t afford even the tiniest mistake.”
Julie looked down at her lap, her long dark hair momentarily obscuring her face.
Charlie gave Byko a brief glance. He was staring fixedly, almost greedily, at the screen.
Julie’s shoulders began to quake. She made no sound, but it was obvious she was crying. Byko said nothing. Finally Julie looked up, her face streaked with tears. “Don’t you understand, Alisher?” she said softly. “I love you!”
The words cut through Charlie like a swath of napalm. But it wasn’t just the words. It was the way she said them, filled with such ferocious conviction.
Byko did not speak.
“I’ve always loved you.” Julie strained toward him. “Don’t you know that? Don’t you remember how hard it was for me to escape from you at Cambridge?”
“And why did you?” Byko asked.
“Because I was afraid you were going to swallow me alive! It was too intense, what we had. You know that!”
“Then why did you come back here again?”
“Because I couldn’t fight it. Because I never stopped loving you, even after I married Charlie.”
Charlie felt Byko’s eyes on him and realized what a fool he’d been. Leaving Oliver and Meagan in Los Angeles, flying out here pretending he was James Bond, ready to save his damsel in distress when in fact she was no longer his damsel to save.
“Then why now?” Byko
asked. “After all of these years?”
“Because I realized that I can’t sacrifice my whole life to be with a man I don’t love. He’s a good man, but he’s a shadow of himself and I just couldn’t do it anymore.”
Byko was sitting next to her now, his profile visible, his face betraying the depth of his conflict. “You think I don’t want to believe you? You think I don’t burn to believe these things you say?”
Julie slumped back, her head flopping in resignation. She stared up at the ceiling. Finally she sighed and locked eyes with Byko.
“I love you, Alisher,” she said softly.
“Then why did two hundred handpicked members of the Twenty-seventh Air Assault Brigade decide to join us for tea the other day?”
Julie shook her head wearily. “We’ve been corresponding for a year. Maybe the regime is tapping your phones or your email. Maybe you’ve got a mole in your organization. Maybe one of the waiters at the restaurant recognized you and ratted you out. Maybe the CIA located you with a spy satellite. I still don’t know who you’re hiding from or why. It could have been a million things. For God’s sake, Alisher, you have to believe me!”
Byko leaned forward and hit the keyboard, pausing the image on the screen. “Well?” he drawled, his face deadpan. “Do you think she’s telling the truth?”
Charlie couldn’t speak.
“Answer me, Charlie. Do you think she’s telling the truth?”
Charlie looked at the floor. “I do.”
Byko studied his face for several seconds, then smiled without warmth. “Unfortunately, I didn’t. So I let your friend Quinn take a crack at her. I was only just informed of the results.” He looked down at the young man in the Homer Simpson shirt. “Cue up what Quinn wants me to see.”
The tech hit the fast-forward button. The screen went blue and empty, nothing left but a digital clock in the upper-right-hand corner. Several hours scrolled by before Julie appeared again. When she did, Charlie could barely recognize her. Hollow-eyed and gaunt, her entire body shaking, she was a broken woman. And Charlie knew all too well what had done that to her. It was the red.
However angry Charlie had been toward her only moments earlier, however betrayed he’d felt, it all washed away, replaced by a tenderness he couldn’t have imagined possible. She was still the mother of his children and the love of his life—and to see her this way, reduced to this, was nearly unbearable.
Quinn walked slowly to a small table by the door, set down his syringe, then returned and squatted down in front of Julie, like a kind teacher about to console a child who’d skinned her knee.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” Quinn said softly. He reached forward and brushed the hair back from her face, tucking it behind her ear. “Just tell me the truth and we’re home free. Then all of this goes away.”
Julie looked up at Quinn, her eyes hopeless and empty.
“I’m with MI6,” she said.
“MI6?” Quinn nodded. “You’re a spy for the British.”
Julie shrugged with defeat. “I wasn’t a trained agent. Somehow they found out about my correspondence with Alisher. They said that Alisher had gone into hiding and that they needed to locate him. Just to have a talk. In person. They wanted me to help them with that one thing.”
“Just to have a talk,” Quinn said dubiously.
“They said it was important. Very, very important. And I believed them.”
Quinn continued to grill her, but Charlie could no longer hear it. Because he was putting it all together now. Why she’d lied to him, why she’d been acting so strangely the last few weeks, why she’d run so quickly when Quinn tried to grab her at the gas station, why there were no charges on her credit cards for her flights—it all made sense. She’d been recruited by MI6 and they must have convinced her to hide everything from him.
Quinn leaned in close to Julie. “And they never told you why they needed to speak to Alisher?”
“They said that he’d gotten involved with some dangerous people. That they thought they could help him.”
Byko switched off the video.
“What do you say about that, Charlie?”
Charlie took one look at Byko’s unforgiving eyes and understood the shift that had occurred just a few minutes ago, when Hasan had interrupted their meeting and whispered that Quinn had finally broken her. He knew that with this admission Julie had signed her own death warrant—unless Charlie could turn things around.
“She’s making it up!” Charlie said. “For godsake, that son of a bitch doped me up with that red shit, too. After about five minutes, you’d sell him your mother just to make him stop.”
Byko dismissed Homer with a flick of his wrist, took out his phone and hit two buttons. Charlie heard a semidistorted ring, then a voice on the speaker—“Yeah?”
Byko spoke into the phone. “I’m standing here right now with Charlie Davis.”
“Wow Charlie,” said the tinny voice. “I never figured you’d find your way out to our neck of the woods.”
It was Quinn.
“You lay another hand on her,” Charlie warned, “I swear to God I’ll rip your heart out.”
There was a brief delay then a burst of laughter from the phone. “He certainly has the American bravado,” Byko said to the speaker, one eye on Charlie. “Now how do we know his wife wasn’t just making up all that business about MI6?”
“Too many details,” Quinn replied. “Who recruited her, when and how. Information about her debriefings before and after Tashkent. She’s given most of it up, as far as I can tell. Though I can’t say I’m convinced she was drawing you out just so you could ‘talk’ to them. She’s even gone so far as trying to convince me that she was doing it for your own good, to protect you.”
“If that was the case,” Byko said, “she would have told me that when I first talked to her.”
“Agreed,” Quinn said.
“Okay, keep working on her.”
And just like that, Byko hung up.
“You know,” he said to Charlie, “for all we know, her NGO work was a cover. Maybe she’s been a professional spy all along. Even back in the day, was she using you to plant those stories about the regime?”
“You’re out of your mind,” Charlie snapped.
“You do realize that MI6 recruits over half of their agents from Oxford and Cambridge. I’m beginning to think that’s why she left me when university came to an end. Because she was heading off for her training. Of course, she ended up in Uzbekistan anyway when it was time to spy on me.”
“So she was spying on you and using me at the same time? That’s your theory?”
“She was sent here to investigate the potential for an uprising and possibly to help foment one. I suspect the Brits were just trying to put pressure on Karimov for more strategic concessions by stirring up the people. Then when it went too far, when we were ten thousand strong that day in Andijan and it looked like we might really create some instability, even topple the regime, they panicked and tipped off Karimov.”
Charlie looked at Byko incredulously.
“Haven’t you ever wondered how Karimov managed to mobilize his southern regiments to the square that day? I happen to know that it was MI6 who alerted the regime. Just as I know that it was the CIA who kidnapped and tortured my sister for eight days at Jaslyk. Not only is Julie a user and a liar, but she’s working for the wrong side. Has been all along. She helped kill my wife and son,” Byko said. “And she might as well have been the one who shot you in the back.”
“You’re wrong,” Charlie said, refusing to accept this. “If she was ever working for MI6, she was merely an asset like she said—recruited in the last few weeks because she knew you. They played her, Alisher. Isn’t that the more plausible scenario? That they told her she would be helping you and she bought it?”
“Come on, Charlie,” Byko said. “Does that sound like her? If she is who she led us to believe she was, would she ever have been so naive as to accept something like that? Com
ing from MI6?”
Byko shrugged and pulled out a .45. “Well, my friend, it should hardly matter now to you. Seeing as I have to kill you.”
“Alisher . . .”
“I spared you in Los Angeles. But now that you’ve come here, I really have no choice in the matter.”
Charlie held up his hands. “Alisher, listen to me.” Charlie was stalling, tap dancing, grasping at straws. “I know you’re a man of conviction. Of inherent decency. And you know that I have no love for the Western intelligence agencies. If you’re working against them, chances are that you’re doing something good. If it’s toppling this regime, you know you’d have no stronger advocate for that than me. I respect your . . .” Charlie didn’t want to overdo it. But instinctively he felt sure that there was no underestimating the man’s vanity. “I respect your purity, Alisher. Your rigor. I’m even a little in awe, I guess. It must take enormous will to do whatever it is you’re doing.” He paused, forcing himself to maintain a sincere expression as he delivered this absurd flattery. “But if you still feel a scrap of friendship for me—or any feeling for Julie for that matter—give me a chance to say good-bye to her. Give us a chance to speak whatever needs to be spoken. Let us go to our graves knowing that there’s nothing left unsaid between us.”
“You need to know who she really is,” Byko added.
“I do,” Charlie agreed. “Give me that before I die.”
Chapter Twenty-nine
Charlie was sitting in the back of a Cadillac Escalade, hands secured tightly behind him with plastic flex cuffs. Two of Byko’s paramilitary goons accompanied him, one driving, the other seated in the back, a tricked-out AK-47 pointed at Charlie’s chest.
The SUV was tearing down a road leading toward a small range of hills to the north. Presumably it was all part of the same former Soviet military complex where the bathhouse was located. Infested with massive potholes and gaps in the tarmac, there was no indication that the paving had been improved in at least twenty-five years. But this didn’t stop the driver from keeping up a steady pace of close to 90 miles per hour.
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