“If you could trust anything she gave you,” Nielson pointed out, looking up from his papers. “Could you?”

“Depends on what was in it for her,” Mike said, shrugging. “She really hates Chechens, probably more than she hates the rest of the world. If we use her to develop Humint in the Chechen region it might work.”

“She’ll need to learn Arabic,” Adams said, wiping his plate with a biscuit.

“Berlitz has a course available,” Mike said. “Of course, that means letting her out of the house. Hell, I’ll give her a handful of cash and tell her she can go if she wants. Win/win proposition.”

“What about ‘your’ girls?” Nielson asked.

In addition to the hookers, Mike had more or less inherited a harem. Sexual slavery was rife in the region and most of it was controlled by the Chechens who used it, along with drugs, as funding for their ongoing war with the Russians. Most of the girls were bought from orphanages or their parent,s since the farmers in the region could get nearly a year’s income for otherwise “useless” women. But the Chechens weren’t above snatching a girl off the street.

One such group had snatched one of the Keldara girls from the local town where she had gone to market. When they took off in their van they passed right by Mike’s caravanserai.

He had taken five shots from a Barrett .50 caliber to stop the van, fortunately missing the girls all in the back. Then he and the reaction team of trainers had taken down the two Chechens in the van.

This left Mike with seven girls ranging in age from twelve to seventeen on his hands. Inquiries had indicated that they were no deposit, no return; the various farms that had sold them had no interest in getting them back. After discussing the situation with his local advisers, Mike had accepted that the best course of action was to take them in as concubines. He’d considered various alternatives, but none of them would really work. He’d drawn the line at breaking in the really young ones, but the rest now were his bed warmers.