The Devil's Handshake by Michael Reagan Read Free Book Online

placed her arms around his neck while he carried into the
bedroom.
    In effort to please him, just had she once
done with Oleg all those years ago, she kissed him on his lips.
    “ I am sorry my love,” she
repeated again, earning another. “Shhh,” in return from
Thomas.
    “ I am the one at fault,” he
stated.
    “ I should know better!” he
admonished himself.
    Reaching the bed, Thomas gently placed Nara
on it, stroked her face again and lightly as a feather brushed her
long hair away to the sides while never losing eye contact with
her.
    “ Tell me my darling. What
was it?” Thomas had guessed that his raising of his hand and
slapping her had released something terrible from her past in
Turkmenistan.
    She nodded, wiping her face with her arm
while releasing a little sniffle. Wanting to please him so his
terrible beast would not return Nara looked up him once more then
started to tell him what had happened to her the afternoon Allah
had sent him to save her.
    By the time she finished, with tears in his
eyes, he swore he would never raise his hand again.

3
    Ashgabat 1998
    In 1998 Ashgabat the capital of Turkmenistan,
unlike the semi-modern self-gloried city it is today, then could
only be described as a typical city of the former Soviet Union with
it rows upon rows of low-rise soviet style buildings and a
population of approximately one million souls.
    Led by Saparmurat Niyazov, an old style
communist and his bunch of cronies, the country was a very
necessary, if somewhat corrupt, supplier of natural gas to the
world.
    One such crony of the President was Oleg
Mälikgulyýewiç Rejejow. Hailing from Gipchak, the hometown of the
President, through his mother’s side and the son of a former
Turkman General in the Soviet Union, he came from the privileged
set that had ruled through the Communist Party of Turkmenistan
since the twenties.
    A bright child who graduated as expected from
Moscow University in the mid-1980s in Foreign Affairs, Oleg had
then joined the KGB. Rising to the rank of Major, before returning
home to Turkmenistan in the early 1990s because of the failure of
the KGB led coup in Moscow.
    Ambitious and determined to secure a job in
the new government, he joined the local KGB. Spotted by Niyazov,
who having started his purge of Russians in the State Intelligence
Services wanted Turkmen in the senior officer positions to cement
his power, the President had quickly promoted Oleg to the rank of
Munbashi with a unique responsibility for International
Relations.
    In reality, that title was merely a cover to
allow Oleg to put his talents into the setting up of money
laundering operations in Turkey and Germany for US$3 billion the
President had skimmed from the financial exploitation of the
natural resources of his country, while allowing him at the same
time to set up his drug smuggling and prostitution rings. This was
something he did with great effect by the use of violence amongst
the tribes and through killing and torturing at will those who
didn’t fall into line and his use of the President’s name to expand
his empire. As a direct result, he was considered one of the most
powerful members of the President’s entourage.
    Possessing a stocky build and a rounded face
with closed puffy eyes that made him look as if he were a nasty,
aggressive temple dog guarding its territory—It was a look that
only reinforced his legend.
    Although debt collection was considered an
Onbashi task, Oleg somewhat perversely rather enjoyed it and as
such he took great delight performing this chore himself.
    On the night he had entered Nara’s life, he
was planning to torture her father, but when the bloodied,
desperate man had offered up his daughter as security for his debt
by showing and giving him a blood stained photograph of her, the
brutal enforcer had changed his mind and instead accepted the
beautiful angelic looking child instead.
    From that moment on Nara’s, who was just
thirteen at the time, remaining childhood