“There’s another one in there,” Chapel told Nadia.
“I know,” she said. She fired again, but she must not have hit Glasses because she shook her head. “I told you, I am a crap shot.”
Chapel wanted to laugh. He figured the dark-haired gunman would disagree. He grabbed her arm and pulled her into the cover of a pile of rotten tires.
“Any more of them out here?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I saw three. All accounted for.”
“You saw three, or there were three?”
Nadia scowled. “There are no guarantees in this life.”
Chapel checked his weapon. There was still half a clip left in the AK-47. “Where’s Bogdan?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I came out to look for him and that is when I saw these men. Jim — he is almost certainly dead, or captured. The latter case is very bad, because—”
Chapel shook his head. “Not now. I can’t think about the future. There’s still at least one guy in that shed with a pistol, not to mention the sniper who took out Varvara’s driver—”
He jumped when he heard a gun go off inside the shed. There was a bloodcurdling scream and then another gunshot, and then nothing. The second shot had stopped the screaming, presumably for good.
“What the… was that the sniper?” Chapel asked, even though it was clear Nadia couldn’t answer.
Instead, someone else did. “The marksman is dead,” someone called from inside the shed. “Though he did not die easily. He told me many things first, Mr. Chambers.”
Chapel knew that voice, though it took him a second to be sure of it.
“Mirza?” he shouted, when he’d put it together.
“The very same. I am going to come out now. Please hold your fire. We have matters to discuss.”
Chapel pointed his rifle at the doors of the shed. Nadia lifted her pistol.
The SNB man walked out into the light. He wore a thin Windbreaker over his button-down shirt. His mustache was as neatly combed as ever, and his head shone like a cue ball in the sunlight. He was smiling. He also held a boxy machine pistol in his hands, the barrel of it pointed at them.
Chapel could have taken him out then and there, but there was no guarantee Mirza wouldn’t shoot back at the same time. The machine pistol was more than capable of killing both Chapel and Nadia before Mirza died. It looked like a stalemate.
“I have taken care of a problem for you, Mister Chambers,” Mirza said. “The fellow back there with the spectacles will not bother you again.”
“These guys weren’t working for you?” Chapel asked.
“Indeed, no,” Mirza said. “May I approach you, do you think?”
“You’re fine right there.” Chapel wanted to look over at Nadia, see if she could make any sense out of this. He had no idea what his next move should be. “I will say thanks. These assholes were following us for a while.”
“Yes,” Mirza confirmed. “They arrived in Tashkent last night. When I learned they were looking for you, I followed them all the way here. Just one of the many ways I have sought to be useful to you, Mr. Chambers. I think perhaps it is time you reciprocated. Perhaps by putting down your weapon.”
“Sure,” Chapel said. “Just let me make sure of a couple of things first. These guys were Romanian gangsters, looking for my computer geek. You seen him around here anywhere?”
Mirza laughed. “Do you know the most difficult part of my job, Mister Chambers? People give me false information all the time. The difficult part is knowing when people are simply ignorant, or mistaken, or when they are intentionally lying. These men were not Romanian.”
“They weren’t?” Chapel asked.
“Ah, that sounds like a man who has been misinformed. No. They were Russians. And they were not looking for your computer specialist. They were looking for Nadia Asimova.”
“They… what?” Chapel asked.
“Oh, did you think her name was actually Svetlana Shulkina? You see how difficult it becomes when people lie to us? I really think it is time for us to talk man-to-man. So put down your weapons, please.”
“And what happens then?” Chapel asked, though mostly just to stall for time to think. Mirza had blown Nadia’s cover but far worse than that — the gunmen were Russians, and they were chasing Nadia, which meant…
“You and I will return to Tashkent. You will explain to me how you came to be involved with a Russian criminal. Not that I particularly care — however, it will be useful information when I negotiate with your company. I will schedule meetings with the top men in the Interior Ministry. You and I will find a way for your company to work with Uzbekistan.”
“You’re going to blackmail me into making a bad deal, huh?” Apparently Mirza still thought he was Jeff Chambers, energy executive. So part of the cover story remained intact.
“You’ll still make money here, Chambers,” Mirza said. “But perhaps you will not rob my country as mercilessly as you’d hoped.”
Chapel shook his head. “What about my assistant?”
“Asimova? Well.” He shrugged, though not so much that his aim wavered. “I will kill her, of course. She is wanted alive or dead, and she has already shown she is a fighter. She will be much easier to ship home in a crate.”
Chapel didn’t even need to think about the deal. “It’s not going to happen, Mirza. Put down your gun, and we’ll talk about what happens next.”
Mirza didn’t flinch. “That would seem foolish. There would be no reason for Asimova not to shoot me, then.”
Chapel sighed in frustration. “We all need to calm down and think. We need to find a way to make sure nobody gets shot.”
“Are you sleeping with her, Mr. Chambers? Has she seduced you? I think you are not realizing that this is a rescue mission. I am here to protect you from her, first and foremost. I have also protected you from the Russian spies who were sent to retrieve her. I assure you, they had orders to kill you as well. Their plan was to have their sniper pick the two of you off. When that did not happen — thanks to me, alone — they stormed into this place to finish the job. I admire your ability to survive that attack, but you could not have done so without my help. I am your only friend here, Mr. Chambers, whether you believe it or not.”
Chapel frowned in thought. “If she puts down her weapon—”
“This is not a matter for discussion,” Mirza said.
“Goddamnit, it is! This is your only chance of getting out of here alive, Mirza,” Chapel said.
Nadia did not turn away from the SNB man as she spoke. She was too smart to drop her guard even for an instant. “Jeff,” she said, because apparently she’d figured out as well that his cover wasn’t compromised, “this man is a butcher. He works for a government that routinely slaughters its own people, just to maintain political control—”
“I’m not going to kill a man in cold blood,” Chapel told her. “I don’t care if he deserves it or not. Put down your gun.”
She stared at him with questioning eyes. She was trying to decide, he thought, if he was speaking truthfully — or if he only intended to disarm Mirza so that he could be killed safely.
It was the kind of business they were in, where that kind of moral calculus was acceptable. Chapel had no doubt that if Rupert Hollingshead were there just then, the old man would advise him that killing Mirza was the only way forward.
But Hollingshead wasn’t there. And despite what people consistently seemed to believe, Jim Chapel was no murderer. He killed only in self-defense.
Eventually, Nadia dropped her pistol and raised her hands above her head. She was trusting him to do the right thing here.