Girl of Vengeance (34 page)

Richard had nearly refused. You didn’t ask a US Ambassador and former acting Secretary of Defense to meet at the back door like a criminal or servant. At the same time, a request from the White House wasn’t a request; it was an order.

So at eleven that morning he’d approached the loading dock entrance of the State Department. A young man in a plain suit stood there next to the armed security guards. “Ambassador Thompson? I’m Rick Nabors, with Diplomatic Security. Please follow me.”

Richard followed him. Down the ramp and into the cavernous garage at the back end of the Main State building. In the heat, he smelled the stench of garbage coming from a dumpster. Two delivery trucks were backed up against a filthy loading dock. Richard felt his rage building as he followed the arrogant young man up the stairs to the loading dock. They cleared another guard then he followed down the hall of the basement.

Despite his thirty-year diplomatic career, he’d only once been in the basement of this building. The bowels of the State Department were reserved for functionaries and mechanics, computer administrators and transportation functionaries. The cogs who made sure the organization functioned, but not the leaders, not the men and women who made the decisions.

Consequently, he was livid when Rick Nabors stopped at a bare door halfway down the hall. Richard could still smell the dumpster outside.

Nabors opened the door and said, “Please have a seat. You’ll be joined in a few minutes. I’ll be just outside the door if you need anything.”

Richard stood and eyed the tiny conference room with a jaundiced eye. A
metal
conference table, painted steel grey, sat at the center of the room. Six cheap looking chairs with fabric cushions surrounded the table. Against the wall was a wall of metal shelving stacked with various kinds of equipment Richard had no name for. Circuit boards and boxes and wires. It was dusty in here.

A pitcher of water with ice sat in the center of the table with four glasses.

This was appalling. It was as if the meeting had been engineered solely to tell Richard that he was no longer in good graces. He took out his phone, ready to fire off an angry email to the Chief of Staff at the White House, when he realized he didn’t even have a cell phone signal in here.

Then the door opened. He didn’t need to call the Chief of Staff.

James Perry, the former Massachusetts Senator turned Secretary of State, entered the room first. Behind him was Denis McCullough, the White House Chief of Staff, responsible for the political survival of the President. Stout and grey haired, McCullough looked ridiculous standing next to the lanky James Perry. The third man to enter was Admiral Barry McFarlane, the National Security Advisor.

Richard came to his feet.

McCullough spoke first. His voice was jovial, friendly, despite the fact that they were meeting secretly in the basement of the State Department. “Richard! So nice you could make it.”

The men shook hands and McCullough said, “Why don’t we get started.”

Interesting. Of the three men, McCullough technically had the lowest rank. The fact that he seemed to be leading the meeting made it clear that this was more political in nature than it was related to national security.

“All right,” Richard answered.

McCullough leaned forward. “Ambassador Thompson—”

“Richard. Please.” Richard tossed out the pleasantry automatically.

McCullough’s face soured a little. “Ambassador Thompson—we’ve got a few issues we need to discuss with you. As I’m sure you can imagine, the President never imagined when he tapped you as Secretary of State that we’d be facing corruption investigations, kidnappings and murders.”

Richard leaned forward and said, “Those are hardly my fault—”

McCullough said with a straight face, “Please do not interrupt me again.” He picked an imaginary piece of lint from his coat sleeve.

Don’t interrupt me again.
Richard felt those words rush down his spine like poison. If a low level political functionary like Denis McCullough could speak to him like that, then he was sunk. It was over.

McCullough went on. “As I was saying, the President never imagined this series of events would take place. Fox News is having a field day. Afghanistan has lodged a complaint with the International Criminal Court. And the Chief of the SIS was
shot down
over American territory last night.”

Good riddance,
Richard thought.

“In short, Ambassador Thompson, you’re embarrassing the President and the Administration. We’re losing approval ratings in the polls. We need to find out how to put a stop to that bleeding. Now.”

Perry looked at McCullough as if he’d discovered he was sitting next to a giant bug. His nostrils were flared and his eyes narrowed. He turned away from McCullough and leaned forward. “I have one question for you, Thompson. Were you responsible for procuring the chemical weapons which were used against the civilians in Afghanistan?”

“No. I was not.”

Admiral McFarlane just sat there, not saying a word. It was disturbing.

Perry said, “Do you have any way of corroborating that? Any evidence? You told the Senate committee that you filed an official report. But there’s no evidence of that.”

“Collins probably destroyed it long ago. He’s the deputy director of the CIA. If anyone could do it, he could.”

McCullough interrupted. “We want you to fall on your own sword. The President will guarantee you’ll never see the inside of a courtroom or jail cell. But this needs to end. We want you to take full responsibility, tell the world that you lied and that the President knew nothing.”

Richard leaned forward and said, “And what about justice for those civilians? Does Leslie Collins walk away free?”

Perry shook his head. “You are the most cynical human being I’ve ever encountered, Thompson.”

McCullough said, “Do it. We’ll guarantee your immunity, Thompson.”

Richard shook his head, then spoke, his voice rising in volume as he continued. “Never. Those banks accounts were frauds set up by Leslie Collins, and he’s the one responsible for killing the civilians. I’ve been in government service for thirty years. I’ve been Ambassador to China and Russia and was President Bush’s envoy to Iraq to try to stop the war from happening. I’ve been through a thousand background checks and there’s never been a breath of scandal. How
dare
you?”

McCullough looked at Perry first, then the Admiral. Both shook their heads.

Then he looked back to Richard. “In that case, Ambassador, you can count on the President’s opposition. You’ll be crushed, and still held responsible for your crimes. We’re done here.”

The three men stood, and Perry led the way out. Richard sat in his seat, stunned at the sudden reversal. Unless he could get the Republican leadership to back him, then he had no hope. Right now, that didn’t seem likely at all
.

The door opened again, and the young Diplomatic Security Agent stuck his head in the room. “Ambassador? I’m to lead you out the back door.”

In the ten years of Anthony’s career as a reporter, he’d been through a lot of rundown and messy airports.

But Kabul International Airport took the crown. It was stifling hot inside the airport, where the air conditioning had apparently failed. Crowds of Afghani men competed for space with soldiers from half a dozen nations, most of them armed with automatic weapons, which they displayed with surprising casualness.

He cleared Customs surprisingly easily. He’d only brought one change of clothing, an audio recorder, his phone and laptop. He would wear the same clothes for the entire trip, which would, with any luck, see him departing again in less than twenty-four hours.

That’s if he didn’t get delayed in the war zone, held up by Customs or local officials. And assuming Karatygin would even meet with him. And if Karatygin did, assuming he let Anthony leave alive.

A lot of assumptions.

As he left the secured area and walked toward the baggage claim, he saw a man holding up a sign with his name. Soldier. Former soldier, rather, now with a private military contractor. His uniform was indistinguishable from the US Army Combat Uniform, although it bore no insignia. A pistol was holstered at his right hip and a rifle slung over his shoulder. The Kevlar vest he wore looked heavy.

“Anthony Walker? I’m Iggy Mann. You got any bags?” His voice was the thick molasses of northern Alabama.

Anthony lifted the bag on his shoulder, saying, “Nice to meet you. This is all I’ve got.”

“All right. Let’s get going. We want to get to Charikar fairly quickly if you want to see Karatygin. Word has it his people are pulling out tonight.”

Anthony cursed under his breath. He waved Iggy onward then followed him.

A small convoy of vehicles sat in the sun outside the building. Black sports utility vehicles with wide wheelbases and shaded windows.

“We’re in the middle vehicle. You get in the back.”

Anthony followed.
The
Washington Post
was paying a fortune for this escort. It was unusual, but then again, Afghanistan was a very dangerous country. He opened the back door of the SUV and tossed his bag in, then took one last look at the airport.

Several signs were above the doorways, the largest one reading WELCOME TO KABUL in English. Armored vehicles with large mounted machine guns were at each end of the terminal, and two tanks flanked the road.

“Get in,” Iggy said from the front passenger seat. His tone was irritated. “I don’t need you getting shot before we even get there.”

Anthony nodded, sliding over the seat and pulling the door closed behind him. Immediately, all three vehicles in the small convoy started moving. The first one stayed fifty meters ahead of them, and as it left the airport, he saw a man pop up through the sunroof, assault rifle in hand.

“All right,” Iggy said. “I don’t know how much they briefed you before you left the States.”

“Nothing. I don’t know anything.” Anthony’s tone was nervous.

Iggy shook his head. “Great. Whatever. Here’s the deal. If everything goes right, it’s an hour drive. If it goes wrong, it might be tomorrow. Soon as we get out of the airport we go down Russia Road through the city. That’s the most dangerous part, because parts of the drive, we don’t have any distance view or open fields of fire. We’ll be going balls to the walls, moving through traffic as fast as we can to clear the city. All right?”

“Yeah.”

“Wear your seatbelt,” Iggy said, a smirk on his face. “Once we clear the city, it’s a straight shot up A76 until we get there.”

“And Karatygin is still there?”

Iggy shrugged. “Last night he was. I hear they’re getting restless. The Russians still got a price on Karatygin’s head, and the US wouldn’t mind seeing him die too. On the highway we’ve got to worry about the Taliban hitting us, but once we’re in Karatygin’s camp, it’s US drones. Either way you end up dead. So every step of the way, you listen to me. Clear?”

Anthony nodded.

Iggy turned back to the front. “This must be a pretty big story for you to risk this much.”

It was
, Anthony thought. It was the biggest story.

The moment they pulled out of the airport, traffic was dense. Buildings crowded both sides of the street, both the streets and the sidewalks crowded with people. The overriding impression color wise wasn’t that different from Baghdad—dun colored buildings surroundings dun colored streets and people with dun colored clothing. Colorful signs decorated many of the buildings, but the general impression was one of disrepair. Trash littered the street, in some places piled up deeply in corners of buildings. Clearly the city had little in the way of sanitation workers.

A white pickup truck pulled in between the front and middle vehicles of the column. Four men wearing turbans and sporting Kalashnikov rifles lounged in the back of the truck, which had no license plate.

“Mother fucker,” Iggy said. He gripped his rifle and gave directions into the radio. “Casey, let the white truck mosey on by.”

Moments later, the SUV ahead of them moved to the left side of the road—blocking oncoming traffic—and let the white pickup go by. Once it was gone, they sped up, racing through traffic.

At one point in the ride, they were caught in a square full of pedestrians. The truck in front inched forward, honking its horn, with the two behind pushing their way. Iggy squirmed around in his seat, trying to look in every direction at once. He spoke into the radio again. “Casey, you need to move it a little faster. We’re sitting ducks right here.”

Anthony didn’t hear the response. But the brake lights were still showing on the vehicle in front of them. Until the man in the sunroof raised his rifle high in the air. He fired a short burst, the staccato sound echoing across the square. Immediately the crowd scattered, everyone running as quickly as they could away from the vehicles.

The tiny convoy sped up, the road ahead of them completely clear. Less and less buildings to the right, and then they were headed out of Kabul into the open countryside of Afghanistan.

“How dangerous is this road?”