“Lex? The line still open to Tashkent?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Put me on.”
She nodded, quickly plugging in a second headset to her coms station, handing it over to Crocker as soon as he reached her. He settled the earpieces, adjusted the boom.
“Craig? D-Ops.”
“Good morning, sir,” Craig Gillard said in his ears. There was a hiss on the line, and beneath Gillard’s voice a low, regular beeping, indicating the communication was being scrambled.
“Not very,” Crocker said.
“No, sir. I’m a little unclear as to what to make of things here.”
“I can imagine. You’ll receive a proper directive from me later this morning, but for now I need you to proceed as if you’ve already received the appropriate authorizations, do you understand?”
Gillard hesitated before answering, and Crocker didn’t blame him. He was thirty-six, and Tashkent was his first posting as a Number One, after twelve years within SIS. He’d been in-country for eleven months, with another year scheduled on his tour. It was a well-earned posting—Crocker wouldn’t have endorsed the placement if he’d felt Gillard couldn’t do the job—and one of priority, for all the same reasons the Americans made Uzbekistan a priority. Gillard was looking at coming back home to a senior desk position under Rayburn’s eye, and then possibly further promotion within SIS. All of that incumbent, of course, on his doing his job not just well, but discreetly.
And Crocker had yet to meet a Station Number One who ever was well pleased when things started exploding on his or her watch.
“Yes, sir, I understand,” Gillard said. “What seems to be the trouble?”
“I’ve heard the Hizb-ut-Tahir nonsense. Do you know what really happened?”
“Hayden’s been beating the bushes,” Gillard answered, referring to the Station Number Two. “Got himself a contact in the NSS he’s been working on for the last few months, since November, name of Jamshid Nalufar. Nalufar says that it wasn’t the extremists, but Ruslan’s people trying to get him out of the country, he thinks in the wake of President Malikov’s death. Problem with that, sir, is that Ruslan doesn’t have much in the way of people, and those he does have are all in the south, mostly centered in Qashqa Darya Province, cities like Karshi, Shakhrisabz, and Samarkand. It’s not making a lot of sense.”
Crocker exhaled smoke, then said, “No, it’s not Ruslan’s people, it’s ours. The operation is called Crystalgate. You’ll get the brief on it in the morning, as I said.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Still with me?”
“Jesus Christ,” Gillard repeated. “You’re running a bust-out in Tashkent, you didn’t bother to notify me?”
“Believe me when I tell you it was not by choice,” Crocker said. “No one was looking to burn you, Craig. The agent has had no contact with either you or your Number Two. The orders were to steer clear of the Station.”
“For all the good that’s going to do. The operation’s a bust, it’s completely blown. Hayden says the NSS shut it all down, they’ve got the kid, Ruslan’s reported dead—”
“I don’t care,” Crocker interrupted. “There are two things I need from you, and I need them immediately.”
“Go ahead.”
“The explosions, the SAM that took down the helicopter and the one that blew up the house, I believe those were both caused the same way, with a Starstreak. I need you to confirm that, and then get that confirmation to me, that’s one.”
“We’re arming the Uzbekis with MANPADs now?”
“That’s one, Craig. Second, I need to find out what happened to the agent. I need to know if she’s dead, if she’s been captured, or if she’s still running.”
“She?”
“Tara Chace. She’s running under the name Tracy Elizabeth Carlisle. It’s vital I know what’s happened to her.”
“Yes, sir, I understand.” Gillard paused, then added, “All right, Hayden and I will get on it right away. I’ll have him hit his contact again, though God knows he’ll resist communicating with him twice in the same night.”
“Soon as possible, Craig.”
“Yes, sir, that’s understood as well. I’ll contact you as soon as we learn anything.”
“London out.” Crocker pulled the headset off, dropped it back on the MCO Desk, then dropped his cigarette to the floor and ground it out with his toe, frowning. He had to get back upstairs, to inform Barclay and Gordon-Palmer what had happened, and he needed Seale to arrive, and soon. But that was it for the moment, that was all he could do. If Chace was dead, the Station would confirm it soon enough.
“I’ll be with C,” he told Ron. “When Seale arrives, ring me. Have him escorted to my office, I’ll meet him there.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And find me the number of Valerie Wallace, Barnoldswick, Lancashire.” Crocker hesitated, then added, “I may need it later.”
He headed back upstairs to rejoin the battle in C’s office.
CHAPTER 29
Uzbekistan—Tashkent—Yunus Rajabiy,
Ministry of the Interior
21 February, 0955 Hours (GMT+5:00)
Something stabbed Chace in the nose, rising sharp and hard into her sinuses, and it tugged at her mind, trying to pull her awake. She moved her head, trying to escape, and the pain stopped, and she felt her hair being pulled and then it returned, stronger, and she gagged, coming fully conscious with a start. She tried to raise an arm and bat the offense away, but her arm barely moved, and a fresh ache tore along her shoulder.
Chace blinked, tasting blood and dust. A man in a suit was stepping back from her, looking at her, tossing aside the ammonia ampoule he’d held beneath her nostrils. Her vision was blurred, and one of her eyes, she couldn’t tell which, was seeing nothing but a milky white haze. The right side of her face felt tight, as if encased in dried wax, and when she moved her mouth to lick her lower lip, she felt it crack, and guessed the dried wax was blood, and probably her own. A pain ran in a circle from temple to temple, as if someone had wrapped her skull in wire and then decided to pull, just for the fun of it.
She wondered how badly she’d been hurt when the Audi exploded, if anything had broken.
It was cold in the room, very cold, and Chace saw her breath, and she shivered, and heard chains rattle as she did so. They had taken most of her clothes, her boots and socks and pants and jacket and sweater and shirt, everything but the underwear. They’d left those for later, she knew, the threat implicit.
She was sitting in a chair in what she thought at first might be a basement storage space or perhaps a boiler room. She tried moving her arms again, more carefully, and felt metal around her wrists and heard the clink of the handcuffs on the chair. They’d used two sets, one for each wrist, twisting her hands up to the middle of her spine before securing the other end of the cuffs to the back of the chair. The chair was metal, too, and conducted the cold from the concrete floor. Her feet felt like they’d already been soaked in ice water, and she realized they hadn’t bothered to restrain them, and she wondered if that’s where they would start, first.