August 3, 2011
1245 Local time

Seventy-five.

That was the number of people who were onboard Air Afghanistan Flight 200. All had died in the crash, although the medical authorities would later find out that some had survived the initial explosion and actually lived even after the plane plunged to the ground.

There was something in the scene of caskets laid in neat rows that made Rosie think of religion, or the possible lack thereof. Displaying the dead had been a long tradition in both Costa Luna and the Philippines, something she had learned from her brief time there that she had thought of asking whether the two countries had been related culturally. But she doubted that anyone would understand what she was talking about, because she had said it herself: Costa Luna was a small country that was barely known in the world stage. Even the coup had attracted only a small corner of some of the major news services of the planet.

Even their cover was confusing. They were two PPP agents on loan to the KGB, which meant Russian identities, who were undercover in Afghanistan as journalists.

Enough of that. It was time to get to work.

The nearest officer was below. The pips on his collar indicated that he was a captain, although Rosie couldn't say for sure. The pips looked like the ones on the captain of the Costa Luna military, but what if Afghanistan didn't use the same system?

"Excuse me, sir," she asked tentatively, "but can I ask a few questions?"

"Go ahead." The reply was made in perfect English.

"What can you say about the crash?"

"I believe we can all agree on one point," he said. "It's a big fuck-up. There is no good reason for bringing down a passenger jet. Blame the insurrectionists, but that is not the way they do things. They don't try to send a message this way. You can also blame some ultra-violent faction, but I have a feeling that whoever thought this up was not Afghan."

"How about the investigation? Is it going well?"

"I don't believe we'll learn much of what happened from the wreckage. The biggest pieces we have of the plane were the black boxes. Isn't it amazing how something as big as an airplane can be reduced to dust and ash?" he said more to himself than to Rosie.

"Thank you, Captain…"

"Ashabullah. Khaled Ashabullah."

Rosie nodded. "Okay, and how do you want me to cite you?"

"Call me 'a source in the investigative panel.' Can I tell you something off the record?"

Rosie pocketed her pencil. "Sure, Captain. What is it?"

"Do you see that man over there?" Ashabullah pointed at a man standing beside a coffin on the middle row. "That man is one of the best investigators under my command, and he won't be given a chance to solve this mystery because the captain of Air Afghanistan Flight 200 was his uncle."

"Personal involvement, Captain? I see."

"On a lighter note, we have a possible lead on who may have put the bomb on the plane. This place, eight o'clock, come if you want more information." The address on the slip of paper was somewhere in the northern suburbs of Kabul.

"Why are telling me all this, Captain?" Rosie asked Ashabullah.

"I'm the man who answers the people's questions," he replied. "It has been my job and always will be."

Whatever had happened at the apartment, it looked like that most of the action was already over. There were only two cruisers on the street facing the building, and they were already preparing to leave.

"What are we doing here?" asked Carter. "There's nothing left to see."

"That's the captain that I talked to earlier. Just give me five minutes to talk to him, find out what happened."

"What do you think could have possibly happened here?" But Rosie had already left the van. Carter sighed. No arguing with the princess today, she thought. She pointed at her watch. Rosie held up five fingers. Five minutes.

"Captain Ashabullah!"

"Ah, Ms. Yi." Ashabullah had ordered some of his men to look into the new reporters. "I regret to inform you that the raid had to be done because we heard that he had plans to go to Kazakhstan. We would have become bogged down in bureaucratic bullshit while he went on his way unimpeded."

"Who was he, by the way?"

"A baggage handler named Abubakar Karmal. Some of his coworkers say he was a mujahideen from the Soviet war."

"Okay. Can I go to his room?"

"Go ahead. It's 2010. If you find something there, call us." Like she'll find anything good there, he added to himself.

Rosie found the room quickly. She took her hairpin and inserted it into the keyhole. She was about to open it when Carter kicked it in. "You always have to go the hard way," she said.

"What are we supposed to look for here?"

"I don't know, anything that looks interesting."

"Carter! Take a look at this." Rosie was holding an old, tattered notebook. Lots of notes were peeking out of the pages. There were so many of them that she didn't notice one fall. Carter picked it up and unfolded it.

It was a design for a bomb.

"It doesn't look like much to me."

That was Colonel Pavel Anatoliyevich Kulyuchev's reaction upon seeing the bomb blueprint. "Okay, there's a Stinger missile in the assembly, but I don't see how it plays into the weapon."

"How can you not see it, Colonel?" asked Carter. "It's right in front of you. There's two wires leading from the main circuit to both the warhead and the missile fuel. Blowing up just one of them is deadly enough, how about both?"

"And the mainframe's a very simple but accurate one," added Rosie. "It's from your own Zhdanov-Yuriev Design Bureau. And if I've heard wrong, I believe they're correct to the microsecond."

"Now, based on what the investigative panels have uncovered, and with what we have uncovered, this is what we think happened: just before Air Afghanistan 200 took off, Abubakar Karmal, the baggage handler, loaded the bomb into the plane. Approximately a hundred hours into the flight, the bomb detonates. Both the warhead and the fuel explode. The result is a big gaping hole on the side of the plane. Milliseconds after the explosion, the wing tears off, explaining why it ended up a few miles away from the crash site. One second after explosion, the airframe, exposed to the outside world, can't hold its structural integrity. It's Lockerbie all over again."

"But why?" asked Kulyuchev. It's the question that must be answered: why did Karmal do this? What does he have to gain by blowing up this jet?"

"Nothing," said Carter. "It's obvious, Colonel. The Stinger bomb is too advanced for him to build, let alone design."

"Whether he's a pawn or a lieutenant in a group is unknown yet," Rosie added. "But whoever they are, they certainly have access to the top minds in the world, and possibly some of them are in their fold."

"We'll never know until somebody talks," said Kulyuchev. "And unless these people don't believe in secrecy, that someone will be very hard to find."