It was why he was in Termez now.
The problem was—or had been, until that morning—there was no proof at all it was Ruslan behind these attacks.
Then Andrei had woken him before dawn, rousing Zahidov from a lonely, fitful sleep. He’d told Zahidov that the Ministry had received a call from Captain Oleg Arkitov in Termez, that the captain had in his custody a Pathan who swore he’d seen Ruslan Malikov to the south of Mazar-i-Sharif, enjoying the hospitality of General Ahmad Mohammad Kostum, an ex–Northern Alliance commander and one of the more notorious warlords of the region. That the Pathan in question, a man using the name Hazza, had successfully identified Ruslan Malikov from a set of photographs.
Proof, at long last, but Zahidov needed to hear it for himself.
He turned to Arkitov, saying, “I want to speak to Hazza.”
They went by armored personnel carrier from the bridge to the barracks, Zahidov riding with Arkitov and four of his rangers. The soldiers sat on their benches, their automatic rifles in hand, bored. After the extremists had tried to overthrow the country in 2000, the Uzbek Army had been redeployed and remodeled, breaking away somewhat from its Soviet antecedents. Now the soldiers here in the south, the rangers, imitated the Americans, in training, unit composition, and tactics.
Zahidov looked back at the bridge, the only ground route joining Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. Friendship Bridge, the Soviets had called it, although the Americans had tried to rechristen it “Freedom Bridge” once their war against the taleban began. It was the Soviets who had built the bridge, who had established this sole land crossing of the 130-mile-long border between the two countries, formed by the Amu Darya. It was over this bridge the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan in 1979, and it was over this same bridge that they had limped back ten years later, defeated. It was a refugee bridge, had seen thousands of Afghanis cross it, fleeing both the taleban and the Coalition. It was a terrorist’s bridge, one of the ways al-Qaeda foot soldiers used to infiltrate his country.
When the Americans had secured the rights to use Karshi-Khanabad, they’d argued for the bridge to be reopened. The UN kept offices in Termez, both for UNICEF and UNESCO, and the organization continued to use the city as a staging point for distribution of humanitarian aid to Afghanistan. The International Security Assistance Force, ISAF, resided in Termez as well, its efforts more focused on the military than the humanitarian. Staffed by the Germans, Airlift Detachment 3 had supported Operation Enduring Freedom since the war’s start. The Germans had renovated the old Soviet airfield, built their own infrastructure, pouring millions of euros into Uzbekistan in the process.
The APC jostled Zahidov as it made its way back into town. He was sweating already, could feel beads of it trickling down from his hair along his spine, inside his cotton shirt. Nowhere in Uzbekistan got hotter in the summer; the temperature today was liable to hit 49 Celsius, over 120 degrees Fahrenheit, and that was cooler than it had been for a week.
Just another of the thousand reasons that Zahidov hated Termez.
They disembarked at the Border Watch HQ, a cluster of Soviet-era buildings that had served as command post, once upon a time, for the ground soldiers being deployed into Afghanistan. Now it was staffed by Arkitov and his rangers.
The captain led him from the garage into the air-conditioning of the dormitories, entering a common room with television and tables. The television was on, broadcasting the news, but the room itself was unoccupied. They moved into a hallway, and Arkitov led him to a door, knocked once on it, then opened it.
There were three men inside, two of them rangers, and both of them were coming to their feet before the door had fully opened. Both snapped salutes to Arkitov, and he dismissed them, then nodded to Zahidov and stepped out after them, closing the door once more, leaving Zahidov alone with the man who remained.
“Hazza?” Zahidov asked.
The man nodded to him, eyeing him with blatant suspicion and fingering the Kalashnikov resting across his thighs. Zahidov guessed him to be in his late thirties, perhaps older, but with the Pathans, after a certain age, it was hard to tell. They were the ethnic Afghanis, sometimes called the Pashtun or Pushtun, a collection of peoples that together constituted the largest patriarchal tribe in the world, and a fierce enough enemy to have driven the Soviets out of their homeland.
“When do I get paid?” Hazza asked.
Zahidov pulled out his PDA, brought up the picture of Ruslan he’d stored there. “This is the man you saw with General Kostum?”
Hazza squinted, and Zahidov wondered if his eyes were bad, if his ID would be useless. In July, Zahidov had ordered Arkitov to begin circulating rumors of a reward, paid to anyone who could prove he had seen Ruslan Malikov. If it was greed that had brought Hazza here, then his information was, by necessity, suspect.
“Looks like him,” Hazza said, after a second. “But he has a beard now, and covers his head.”
Zahidov considered, tucking the PDA back into his coat. “When did you last see him?”
“Yesterday. He took tea with the General.” Hazza’s suspicion had not eased. “When do I get paid?”
“When I believe you.”
Hazza’s expression clouded with anger, and he gripped the handle of his rifle. “You insult me.”
“Prove to me that you’ve seen the man.”
“My word is not enough? You insult me again.”
“You will get paid after I have proof.”
Hazza scowled, scratched at his beard with a filthy fingernail. “He limps. His left leg, it has a brace. I asked once how he was wounded, and he said it came trying to protect his son from the godless.”
“More.”
“I asked about the battle, and he said Allah smiled on him but also turned away, because he lived, but his son was taken from him. He said his wife and his son both were taken from him by a godless man.”
“He speaks like a good Muslim. Is he a good Muslim?”
“He tries to be.”
Zahidov ran his tongue along the back of his teeth, measuring the words. It sounded possible, it sounded like Ruslan, self-righteous and simpering, taking shelter in religion in the face of his losses.
“And Kostum?” Zahidov asked. “What is his relationship with Kostum?”
“Kostum has Uzbek blood, they are brothers. They talk as friends, and the money Kostum gets makes him like Ruslan all the more. He will not betray your man, he has given him sanctuary. If Kostum betrays him, his life is worth less than a goat’s.”
Zahidov digested that. “Thank you. I’ll see that you are paid.”
“Soon,” Hazza said. “I must return before they can learn where I have been.”
“You’re going back there?”
“Yes, as soon as I can.”
“I will see you are paid immediately then,” Zahidov said, and stepped out of the room, to find Arkitov and the two soldiers waiting in the hall.
“He had what you needed, Minister?” Arkitov asked him.
Zahidov nodded, then indicated over his shoulder at the closed door. “I don’t want him warning Malikov or Kostum. Kill him.”
Arkitov nodded, and signaled to the soldiers, then joined Zahidov walking down the hall. They heard the shots before they were back in the common room, and neither of them looked back.
“He’s building an army, I’m more sure of it than ever, Sevya,” Zahidov said. “He will wait until he has the men and the guns, and then they will come over the border, and they will come here, and they will try to kill you.”