“Me? You found it, it’s yours. Besides, you’ve got your set crawling all over Mazar-i-Sharif.”
“And we’ve worked long and hard to earn the trust and cooperation of the people there, so we’re not looking to foul it up. Besides, we didn’t turn Ruslan loose, that was you.”
“Foul it up how?”
“Telling him to knock it off is the nice way to put it, Paul. Ruslan’s got to be firmly dissuaded, if not permanently.”
Crocker stopped his can halfway to his lips, staring at Seale. “You want him removed?”
“Me, I don’t know the guy. But, as has been said twice already, he’s got to knock it off. He charges at his sister, he’s going to be kicking the door into Uzbekistan wide open for every extremist in the region to follow. And despite Tashkent’s eagerness to blame everything that goes wrong in their country on terrorists, there is a legitimate threat there.”
Crocker thought, then took the drink he’d paused on, set the can down, shaking his head. “I’m not going to get authorization to hit Ruslan.”
“You don’t have to hit him, you just have to get him to—”
“—knock it off, yes, I understand. But you’ve just told me it’s going to have to stick. Which means we’re not talking about possibly removing him, we’re talking about definitely removing him.”
Seale tucked the last bite of his sandwich into his mouth with an index finger, chewed, swallowed. “Dammit, these are good. I love this country—you get salmon and butter sandwiches as fast food.”
“Julian.”
Seale wiped his mouth again with the napkin, crumpled it into his fist, making it vanish. “I know you don’t like it, Paul, but I’m getting stick from Langley. The sentiment there is that this is your mess, you guys need to clean it up.”
“How legitimate a threat is he?”
“Legitimate enough that it has to be addressed.” Seale checked his watch, then rose. “I’ve got to get back to the office. Call me when you’ve got good news.”
Crocker watched him go, threading out of the little restaurant through the lunch hour crowd. He thought about finishing his lunch, but discovered he’d lost his taste for it.
“No, he’s right,” Alison Gordon-Palmer told him. “It is our mess, and we do have to clean it up.”
“We’re talking about putting an agent into Afghanistan to kill a man under the protection of Ahmad Kostum. A man whose life, six months ago, we were trying to save.”
C nodded. “And if Chace had been successful, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”
If she had been successful, Crocker thought, you wouldn’t be sitting in that chair right now, either.
“We can hardly blame Chace for this,” he said.
C rose, capping the pen in her hand as she did so and dropping it on the blotter. “I’m not blaming Chace, Paul, nor am I blaming you. But the fact remains, the situation with Ruslan Malikov would not be what it is if we hadn’t become involved. The Americans expecting us to clean it up isn’t an unreasonable request.”
“I think that it is. We’ve had to clean up plenty of their messes.”
“Don’t be petulant. You’re my Director of Operations, not some pubescent teen. You’ve spoken to Simon?”
“I brought it to the Deputy Chief first, yes.”
“And?”
“And his assessment agrees with yours.”
“Then why are you here?”
“In the hope that you would disagree with him. It’s a betrayal.”
“A betrayal it may be, but it’s now also a directive,” C said. “Consider it a Special Op, and task a Minder for it, two if you think it’s necessary. I’ll contact the FCO, speak to Seccombe about authorization, but for the moment, you may safely assume the mission has Downing Street’s blessing.”
“The Prime Minister will authorize an assassination?”
“The mission objective is not to assassinate, but to dissuade by all means necessary. Conops will be very clear on that.”
“It’s a dodge.”
She raised an eyebrow at him, the kettle returning the look from the pot.
“Well,” Alison Gordon-Palmer said, “I suppose you’d know.”
CHAPTER 34
London—Vauxhall Cross, Operations Room
22 August, 1519 Hours GMT
Crocker was waiting for them when Chace led Poole and Lankford into the Ops Room, and she thought he looked more than his usual unhappy. He was standing—actually, Chace thought it was closer to slouching—with his hands thrust deep in his pockets and his cigarette burning between his lips, glowering at the plasma wall. Behind him, at Duty Ops, Bill Teagle was in the throes of mission planning with Danny Beale. She nodded to them both and they acknowledged her, then continued poring over the map unfolded between them.
Chace glanced to the wall, feeling more than seeing Lankford and Poole doing the same behind her. There was a highlight around Afghanistan, which immediately struck her as a bad thing, and Mike Putnam at MCO was busy typing up the information that would go onto the screen.
“Who has the control?” Putnam asked.
“I’ll take it,” said Beale.
“The operation is designated Sundown.”
“Boss?” Chace asked.
Crocker ignored her, still looking at the plasma wall, and then he turned sharply to face Beale, saying, “Minders One and Three allocated.”
“Yes, sir,” Beale said.
“They’ll need to connect through a military flight,” Crocker said. “Put them on the ground as close to target as possible. What do we have in the area?”
“NATO activity is primarily focused on the hinterlands, sir, but there’s a forward support base at Mazar-i-Sharif staffed by our troops.”
“Get onto the RAF, see what they have headed that way and when, and if that doesn’t give us anything for the next twenty-four hours, work your way through the rest of the Article Five powers.”
“Yes, sir.”
“They’re to draw weapons. If travel is via RAF, they can draw them before departure; otherwise we’ll have to arrange for a delivery by the Station in Kandahar when they hit the ground.”
“Kandahar’s been having communications difficulties,” Putnam said from the MCO Desk. “We may not be able to get the cable to them in time.”
“Islamabad, then. But they’re not wandering around the countryside unarmed. Clear?”
“Absolutely, sir.”
Crocker finally looked to Chace. “You and Chris are going to Afghanistan.”
“So I’d gathered,” Chace said.
“Not me, too?” Poole asked.
“You get to stay here and look after the store, Nicky.” Crocker motioned them toward the map table. On the plasma wall, the word “Sundown” had appeared in a callout over Mazar-i-Sharif.
Chace couldn’t help but notice how close the city was to the Uzbekistan border.
“Ruslan Malikov has been found in Afghanistan,” Crocker told them, stabbing out his cigarette in the tray on the table. He focused on Chace, and she saw in his expression the acknowledgment that she had been correct, that Ruslan was still alive, and that Crocker also didn’t need her going on about it here and now.
Chace couldn’t argue with that. It didn’t seem the time for an I-told-you-so.
“Ruslan’s cozied up to one of the local warlords,” Crocker continued. “There’s a fear that Malikov is gathering troops and matériel for an attempted coup in Uzbekistan. I’m sending you two to deal with it.”