In the end, Eric Stone’s odd knowledge of regional Central Asian airports proved ineffectual. Cabrillo wasn’t headed to the reasonably stable nation of Kazakhstan but rather to its more rough-and-tumble neighbor to the south. Uzbekistan had an abysmal human rights record, no freedom of the press, and when the nation’s large cotton harvest — its principal cash crop — was ready to be brought in from the fields, forced labor was often employed. While it was not as corrupt as other former Soviet states in this part of the world, given a choice, Cabrillo would have been happy to avoid coming here.

According to Eric Stone’s research, Karl Petrovski had been forty-two when he died in a hit-and-run accident and was a respected hydrologist with degrees from both Moscow University and the Berlin Institute of Technology. His most recent employment had been with the government of Uzbekistan, copying the success Kazakhstan was starting to show in reversing the devastation wrought by the Soviets and their ill-conceived irrigation projects of the 1940s and ’50s.

Prior to the Soviet intervention, the Aral Sea had been one of the world’s largest, with an area greater than lakes Huron and Ontario combined. The Aral supported a vibrant fishing and tourist industry and was the lifeblood of the region. In an effort to boost cotton production in the surrounding deserts, the Soviet engineers diverted water from the two rivers that fed the Aral, the Amu and Syr, into massive canal networks, most of which leaked more than half the water forced through them. By the 1960s the lake level began to drop dramatically.

The Soviets knew that this would be the result of their engineering, but a centrally planned government gave short shrift to the environmental impacts of their scheme. A half century later, the Aral Sea, which meant “the Sea of Islands,” had so shriveled it was now several separate bodies of brackish water that could scarcely support life. In fact, its current salinity was three times that of the world’s oceans. The once great fishing fleets now stood rusted and abandoned upon a barren desert. The shrinking of the Aral Sea changed local weather patterns, heating the air and diminishing seasonal rainfalls. Dust, salt, and pesticide runoff from the cotton fields further poisoned the land until all that remained was a vista as desolate as the moon.

The one bright spot in the sad history of the area was that the Kazakh government was working to redirect water back into the North Aral Sea in an attempt to revitalize the lake. Already, the lakeshore was creeping back toward the main port city of Aralsk from a maximum distance of some sixty miles. Commercial fishing was beginning to return, and microclimate changes were occurring that saw an increase in rain.

In a belated attempt to emulate their northern neighbors, the Uzbeks were now looking at the feasibility of a similar scheme. Karl Petrovski had been a member of the team that first saw success in Kazakhstan and had been working for the past year to duplicate that success once again.

Cabrillo doubted Petrovski’s work in this field was what had gotten him killed. It was something either connected to Nikola Tesla, which seemed unlikely, or to the mysterious eerie boat, which no amount of research had unearthed even a hint of.

That brought the Chairman to this loveless, windswept outpost that had to be considered the hind end of the globe. Stepping out from the glass-fronted airport after a flight south from Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport, Cabrillo hit a wall of seared air and salty dust. He quickly slipped on a pair of sunglasses and hiked his shoulder bag a little higher on his back. The passport he’d used for this trip identified him as a Canadian photojournalist, and the papers he carried stated he was working on a piece he hoped to sell to National Geographic magazine.

While transiting through Russia, he’d worn a sports coat, an open-necked white shirt, and scuffed dress shoes, but he’d discarded that look in favor of the de rigueur of photographers the world over: khakis, boots, and a vest festooned with countless equipment pouches. He carried a second bag that contained a Nikon SLR, a few lenses, and enough other paraphernalia to complete the cover.

There were pluses and minuses for such a disguise. In a nation like Uzbekistan where the media was heavily repressed, snapping pictures to one’s heart’s content invariably drew the attention of the authorities. Since Juan had no intention of removing the camera from its bag near any government buildings or military bases, it shouldn’t be a problem.

On the plus side, thieves usually understood that photographers rarely had anything on them worth stealing other than their cameras, and they always reported such thefts to the police, who in turn usually knew who was responsible and, not wanting to give their homeland a bad name, made quick arrests.

Safe from the government, safe from would-be muggers. He ignored the shouted plaints of taxi drivers promising good rates to the nearby city and focused on a battered UAZ-469. The utilitarian Russian jeep had probably rolled off the assembly line about the same time Cabrillo was being pottie trained. The bodywork was a blend of bare metal patches, matte dun paint, and dust, and was so dented and wrinkled it looked like the skin of a shar-pei.

The young man standing next to it holding a cigarette in one hand and a handwritten placard with the name Smith on it in the other watched the crowds exiting the terminal with the predatory patience of a hunting falcon. When he saw Cabrillo break from the pack of travelers negotiating cab fares and stride toward him, he ditched the smoke and plastered on a tobacco-stained smile.

“Mr. Smith, yes?”

“I’m Smith,” Cabrillo said, and accepted an outstretched hand for an enthusiastic shake.

“I am Osman,” the young man said with an almost impenetrable accent. “Welcome to Uzbekistan. You are indeed most welcome. I am told to meet you here with my most fine desert truck, and, as you can see, she is a beautiful.”

Russian was the universal tongue among the various tribes and subtribes in the region, and Cabrillo could have saved the rental representative from speaking tortured English, but there were few Canadian photojournalists fluent in it, so he stuck to English.

“She is beautiful,” Juan replied, casting a sidelong glance at the small trickle of oil that oozed from under the chassis.

“I am not told that you will need driver, yes?”

That was the guy’s angle, Juan realized. Hiring out a 4×4 was one thing, a nonnegotiable fee listed on the company’s archaic website. Osman wanted the lucrative contract to be Cabrillo’s driver and personal tour guide for the four days Cabrillo had contracted for the UAZ.

“You were not told that because I do not need a driver.”

Then Cabrillo threw him a bone. “I would be happy to pay you if you can get me extra cans of gasoline.”

“So you go deep into desert?”

“Not so deep that I cannot return.”

The Uzbek thought this was a grand joke and laughed until he coughed. He lit another smoke.

Juan enjoyed an occasional cigar so didn’t begrudge anyone a hit of nicotine, but he couldn’t imagine smoking cigarettes in a dust bowl, choking with so much grit that his teeth felt like sandpaper and his lungs like two half-empty bags of cement.

“Okay,” Osman replied decisively, then asked, a bit shier, “Maybe after you drop me at my office in town?”

It was something Cabrillo had always enjoyed about the Middle East and Central Asia, everyone was always fishing for something more out of a deal. Didn’t matter how insignificant so long as the other guy gave up just a fraction more than you. To most Westerners, it was seen as deceitful and greedy, but, in truth, such negotiations were a test of each other’s character. Accept too quick and you were dismissed as a rube; push too hard and you were a snob. The balance defined what kind of person you were.