Enemy of the Good Page 17

  Maksim balled his hands into fists but kept them at his sides. Hesitating. Uncertain. Off balance. He seemed to recognize that no matter what happened next, he had already lost.

  Without saying anything, Maksim turned and walked out of the cafeteria. Hamid and the other boys left by a different door. And Kate knew that things at ISB would never be the same. The room began buzzing as students at the other tables began processing what they had just witnessed.

  Ruslan sat back at the table and took a bite of his sandwich, seemingly oblivious to the chatter around him.

  Val nudged Kate in the ribs with her elbow.

  “Well?” she asked.

  Kate got up and walked over to Ruslan’s table, taking the seat across from him and placing her school books on the chair beside her. His eyes were dark. Darker than brown, she thought. When he looked at her, she felt looked at.

  “Hello,” she said. “My name’s Kate.”

  “I know.”

  —

  Ruslan had spent the better part of the last two years playing a dangerous game of hide-and-seek with the GKNB. He had come within a whisker of being picked up maybe half a dozen times. He had been smart, but he had been lucky too. There was no denying that.

  Even so, Ruslan could not remember the last time he had been as anxious as he was now. His normal unflappable demeanor had deserted him. His stomach was knotted up and he paced around the room with a nervous energy that would not dissipate.

  What if she doesn’t show?

  “Get a grip,” he said out loud.

  Ruslan looked again at the watch he had been checking obsessively for almost an hour. It was five minutes after six. She would want to see him, he thought. They had so much to talk about. Could she be angry with him? She’s the one who had left. Or at least that was how he had understood it. Maybe she had a different narrative about the end of their relationship. There was nothing quite so Rashomon-like as love. No two people were ever in the same relationship.

  Ruslan did not know what he wanted or what he expected. He only knew that he needed to see her. From the moment Val had told him that Kate was back in Bishkek, he had been plotting how to make that happen, while also avoiding the prying eyes of both the GKNB and his own well-meaning handlers. Sending Bermet to Germany had been the right thing to do, the smart operational move. She had not wanted to go. The regime, however, would have turned Bishkek inside out hunting for her. The GKNB would find out soon enough that she was out of the country, but the Kyrgyz services did not have the international reach to get to her in Berlin. Murzaev had pushed hard for it. It was also—he acknowledged—personally convenient. This compounded his guilt over having agreed to her exile.

  Ruslan had chosen this place because he hoped Kate would remember it fondly. And because it was private. It was an old stable located in the foothills about a half-hour drive from the city. The Kyrgyz took their horses seriously, and some of the wealthier denizens of Bishkek kept a weekend horse the way rich Russians had dachas. Back in high school, Ruslan and Kate had not had horses of their own, but they knew the couple who ran the stable well enough that they let them ride just about whenever they asked. They would come up here as often as two or three times a week to ride on the mountain trails and gallop madly across the djailoo, flat-bottomed valleys where the shepherds would graze their flocks.

  There was one particular field by a clear stream where Ruslan would lay a blanket and they would make love with a passionate intensity. Ruslan could remember the last time they had done this, knowing that it was the last time and willing it never to end. Kate, he hoped, carried the same memories.

  At fifteen minutes after six, a gray VW Touareg pulled up in front of the wooden house where the caretakers lived. The driver’s-side door opened and a pair of boots got out, followed by legs that Ruslan could still remember wrapped around his waist.

  Kate was older, of course, a woman now rather than a girl. The changes were subtle. She was slim and tall and graceful, as she had been a decade ago. But where she had been light and carefree, there was now a sadness about her that had not been there before.

  She was dressed for riding, in black leather boots, stretch pants, and a thick fleece. Her dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She wore no makeup. She had never used much. Ruslan walked toward her, and as he bent to kiss her cheek he noticed that the pattern of small freckles on her cheekbones was just as he remembered it. It had been too dark at the farmhouse last night for him to make out that small detail.

  “I was afraid that you weren’t going to be able to make it,” he said.

  “Sorry to be late. I had to finish up something I was working on in the office.”

  “About us? About Boldu?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you tell them about me?”

  “No.”

  Ruslan took her hand and squeezed it.

  “Thank you, Kate.”

  “Is that what you wanted to see me about,” Kate asked.

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Why were you so secretive about wanting to see me? Who are we hiding from? The GKNB? Or your own people?”

  “Both, I’m afraid.”

  “They don’t trust me. Murzaev and Nogoev in particular. But Hamid as well. Maybe even Val.”

  “We’ve been underground for a long time. It can make you a little paranoid. All they can see is risk. It’s better that they don’t know we’re here . . . together.”

  “Do you trust me?”

  “With my life.” And my heart, he wanted to add.

  Kate seemed to take pity on him. She changed the subject.

  “How is it that you became a revolutionary, Ruslan? You were never especially political back in school.”

  “No. I was more into girls.”

  “So what happened?”

  “They took my family from me.”

  Kate reached out to him and touched his arm in sympathy. Of all people, he knew, she would understand.

  “What happened?”

  “My father had started a bank in Bishkek. It was doing well. Well enough that some people with ties to the government wanted it for themselves. He wouldn’t give it to them. A day later, the tax authorities were there with the Special Police. They arrested my father and charged him with every financial crime you could imagine. He was sent to Prison Number One and he never came out. They told us that he committed suicide, but they wouldn’t let us see the body. I brought my mother to live in Germany. She’s still there, but she’s not the same.”

  “I’m so sorry. I know you and your dad were close.”

  “And I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you had to bury your parents. I was already off in Germany and I didn’t hear about what happened until it was too late. I should have written you, but . . .” He trailed off, the reasons he hadn’t reached out to Kate too complex to put easily into words.

  “It’s all right. I’m just as responsible for leaving things the way we did. Unfinished.”

  “We have a lot to catch up on.”

  “There’s time,” Kate said reassuringly. “Tell me how you got started in all this.”

  “It started with fund-raising with the diaspora and took off from there,” Ruslan explained. “I guess I had something of a talent for it. Boldu was already in place, but it was only able to function abroad. I wanted to bring it back home to Kyrgyzstan, and the only way to do that was underground. Askar was part of the movement and he helped me with that. It wouldn’t have been possible without him.”

  “There’s so much I want to know,” Kate said.

  “And so much I want to tell you, but there’s not much daylight left and I promised you a ride.”

  “Are Myrzakan and Adilet still in charge of this place?” Kate asked. “I should say hello to them first.”

  “They are getting on in years, but they’re st
ill running the stables. And will be, I suspect, for as long as Myrzakan has the strength to muck out the stalls. But they’re not here today. It’s just you and me.”

  Had she leaned in toward him as he said that? Or was it his imagination? Ruslan wanted to reach out to Kate, take her in his arms. But he was afraid to do anything that might shatter the moment. Kate too seemed reluctant to cross the last few centimeters of distance between them.

  “Let’s go for a ride.”

  Ruslan grinned.

  “You’re going to like what I have for you.”

  He took her hand and led Kate to the stable. Inside, the horses were already saddled. A dapple gray stallion with a broad chest and dark eyes and a chestnut-colored mare so sleek and lean that even standing still she looked fast.

  “Pick one,” Ruslan said.

  “I’ll take the big boy.”

  Kate let go of Ruslan’s hand and unhooked the reins from the iron ring bolted to the stable wall.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Aravan.”

  “That’s a beautiful name.”

  “Have you kept in practice?” Ruslan asked. “He’s handsome enough but a little headstrong.”

  “I knew a guy like that once. I think I can handle him.”

  Ruslan laughed.

  “He’s all yours.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  They walked the horses outside and mounted up. The sky was already starting to turn purple and orange. It would not be a long ride. Ruslan led Kate up the hill on a path that wound gently through a forest of pine trees and holly. Shrikes and swallows flitted through the trees calling to each other, looking for mates. Somewhere in the forest, an owl hooted as he stretched his wings in preparation for a long night hunting mice in the forest and fields.

  On the far side of the hill, the landscape opened up into a djailoo, rich and green and flat as a racecourse. Kate turned to Ruslan with a mischievous look on her face. She pulled a riding crop out of a holster on the saddle and held it up to him.

  “Fancy a race?” she asked.

  Ruslan understood what she meant. The crop was not for the horse. Kyz Kuumai was a traditional Kyrgyz game, sometimes translated as kiss-the-girl. A boy and a girl race each other on horseback. The girl gets a running start, and if the boy can catch her before the finish line, he gets a kiss. But if the girl wins, she beats him with a horsewhip.

  Ruslan was perhaps a better rider than Kate, but if so by only a fraction, and Kate was mounted on the stronger horse.

  “I don’t know,” he said coyly. “It’s been a while since you’ve ridden. It might not be fair.”

  “Catch me if you can.” Kate turned the stallion’s head and took off at a gallop. Ruslan was right behind her, and he heard Kate whoop with joy as she bent over Aravan’s neck and pushed him hard.

  Ruslan’s mare was smaller, but she was young and had a big heart and loved to run. They pulled up on the right flank of Aravan, and Ruslan stroked the neck of his mount and whispered to her in Kyrgyz that she was both strong and brave. Still the mare could not quite find the extra gear she needed to overtake the stallion, until with no more than fifty meters of open grassland left in front of them, Aravan stumbled briefly and the mare shot forward, edging just barely ahead before the riders had to pull up out of the gallop. The horses and riders were equally breathless and their hearts were beating hard and fast.

  Ruslan eased his horse alongside the stallion’s flanks. Kate turned to him, her lips parted slightly. He could not remember ever wanting anything as much as he wanted to kiss her at that moment. Her lips were soft and warm and her hair smelled of lavender. When Ruslan finally pulled back from the kiss, he ran his hand across the side of Kate’s face, tracing a line with his finger lightly across her freckled cheekbone.

  He smiled.

  “You lost on purpose, didn’t you?”

  Kate shrugged.

  “Hard to say. But I’m glad it worked out that way.”

  Their second kiss was even better than the first.

  17

  Kate had never needed an alarm clock. She was an early riser and her body always seemed to know when it was time to get up. The price to be paid for this talent was that there was no sleeping in on weekends. Her body had never learned the difference between Sunday and Monday.

  Kate rolled over in bed, glanced at her phone to check the time—twenty minutes after six—and thought about checking her e-mail. Logging on to her State Department account would require inputting three separate passwords. Screw it. She would do it after her run.

  It was supposed to be a cool morning, so she chose a hooded sweatshirt with the Georgetown Hoyas bulldog logo and black track pants. Kate boiled water and used a French press to brew a single cup of coffee. She ground the Kona beans fresh. Life was too short to drink bad coffee.

  She drank the Hawaiian coffee black and ate half a banana imported from South Africa while skimming the headlines in both Vecherniy Bishkek and the Washington Post on her iPad. The brassy Cuban timba group Los Van Van played in the background over Pandora. After her run, she planned to do the New York Times crossword puzzle. The world grew a little smaller every year. Her father’s Foreign Service career had been in an entirely different era, when living behind the iron curtain, even in the sheltered bubble of diplomatic life, had meant giving up many of the daily luxuries Americans took for granted. Globalization had changed all that, and the combination of online shopping and the diplomatic pouch meant that it was possible to live an American middle-class lifestyle in the most far-flung corners of the planet.

  It was comfortable, but it did remove an element of adventure from the career. Kate’s generation of diplomats was not required to be nearly so intrepid as their predecessors. She could not help but think that something important had been lost in the transition. On the other hand, women and minorities had not been especially welcome in the Foreign Service when her father had joined. So maybe it was just as well that things had changed. Isolation and spotty communications capabilities had only reinforced the Ivy League old-boys club of the earlier era.

  Kate laced on her running shoes and headed out the door of her apartment. She tried to run every morning, no matter the weather, and she had mapped out a four-mile loop that took maximum advantage of the available green space. This early on a Sunday, the streets were largely deserted. The air was brisk and Kate set a comfortable pace that she thought would put her at about a seven-minute mile.

  As she ran, Kate thought about Ruslan. It had been two days since they had raced each other across the djailoo and shared a kiss as emotionally powerful and confusing as any she could remember since . . . well . . . the last time she and Ruslan had kissed.

  This was not going to be easy, she realized. Learning that Seitek was Ruslan had been a shock. Learning that Ruslan still cared about her and beginning to plumb the depths of her own feelings for him had compounded the sense of a world upended. Kate’s world was already so unstable that the idea of further complicating it by rekindling a romance with Ruslan filled her simultaneously with fear and desire. It was a heady mixture.

  Kate had tried to parse her own emotions with as much honesty as she could muster. Her feelings for Ruslan were like the coals in a fire that had been carefully banked. The ashes were cool enough to the touch, but it would take little more than a breath of air to spark a rich orange glow and a heat that Kate feared might consume her.

  Could she afford the risk? Could she afford not to take the risk? She had been lonely for too long. Looking for something that she could not quite define. Was this it? She wished that she could talk to her mother about it. Or her aunt. Both had been wise in the ways of the heart. The flash of anger that she felt on thinking again about what the Eraliev government had taken from her was a welcome distraction from the more complicated emotions that Ruslan had stirred up. Anger was the simples
t of emotions. It was neat and clean with bright lines and sharp edges. It helped focus the mind. Thinking of Ruslan made her feel unfocused, uncertain, and—she admitted uneasily—hopeful.

  Kate’s breathing was still smooth and easy at the two-mile mark when she turned into Oak Park. Her route wound through a small urban forest of stately oak and black pine. The sun was up higher now, warming the air and offering a promise of a beautiful spring day.

  Kate heard a car engine behind and she drifted over to the side of the road to leave it plenty of room. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw a white van driving a little too fast. She stepped off the asphalt onto the packed earth. Drivers in Bishkek did not have a great deal of experience sharing the road with joggers.

  The van pulled up alongside her and the side door opened suddenly. The van screeched to a halt and two men in black balaclavas jumped out, grabbing Kate by the arms and tossing her into the vehicle before she had a chance to either scream or run. She landed hard on the metal floor. A third man waiting on the inside clamped one hand over her mouth and pressed the other to the back of her head. He was so strong that Kate gave no thought to the idea of fighting back.

  God, she had been a fool.

  Diplomatic security had drilled into her from her first day in the service the dangers of being predictable. An older agent named Ray, a large man—muscle gone to fat—who liked to boast that he had once had a tryout with the Cleveland Browns, had taught the Security Overseas seminar.

  “Terrorists are after you,” he had warned the junior diplomats. “ISIS would like nothing more than to put a picture of your severed head on Instagram. Don’t give them the opportunity. Vary your routes and times. Be unpredictable. Let them cut the head off the third secretary from the Russian embassy instead. The bad guys will go after the easy mark. Don’t let it be you.”

  Sorry, Ray.

  Kate had let her familiar surroundings lull her into a false sense of security. She ran the same route each morning at about the same time, in violation of the first rule of personal security. And now she would pay for it.