“He had never known a time when orders from Moscow shaped every aspect of his life, had never lived under the yoke of atheists far to the north who wished for nothing more than to trample his religion and his ethnic heritage. He had joined the Uzbek armed forces when he was a teenager and then the SNB when he finished his tour of duty and had spent most of his life studying police reports in Tashkent, under the tutelage of the legendary Jamshid Mirza. He had never traveled farther than Bukhara i...n his life, had never been outside his national borders. Still, there was inside him an abiding hatred for all ethnic Russians. It was simply part of his DNA. So when a pale-faced man in a black suit appeared in the dawn light at the entrance to the abandoned poultry shed in the outskirts of Vobkent, Zokirov’s hackles went up right away. Here was some mindless functionary from the frozen north come putting his nose in where it did not belong. Zokirov removed his latex gloves—he had been examining one of the dead bodies that lay rotting in the cool darkness of the shed—and strode over to tell the Russian he was not welcome, that this was a crime scene and an internal Uzbek matter and he should just go home.MoreLessRead More Read Less
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