Fatal Conceit by Robert K. Tanenbaum

you speak that I’ve not heard before.”
    Umarov had just stared at her for a moment, during which time Lucy noticed how Zakayev turned her head ever so slightly to study his face. She doesn’t trust, or like, him either , Lucy thought.
    â€œPerhaps, I can explain that,” the man said. “I was raised in an orphanage with children who mostly spoke Russian. Maybe I picked something up from them, though no one has ever remarked on it before.”
    â€œYes, that could explain it,” Lucy said. “It is very slight. I doubt anyone else would notice, but languages are sort of my thing.”
    Saying that he needed to get back to his talks with Huff, Umarov had quickly excused himself and then avoided Lucy for the rest of the evening and the next day. However, several times she’d caught him looking at her, though he’d quickly averted his eyes.
    On the other hand, Lucy had enjoyed having some quiet time to talk to Zakayev, a beautiful young woman whose facial features were a fine mix of the many different ethnicities that at one time or another called Chechnya home. Russians. Mongols. Turks. Cossacks. She had a slight Asian tilt to her sea-green eyes, widely spaced in a round, bronzed Slavic face, and long silky black hair that most of the time she covered with a scarf. When they’d been traveling from place to place there hadn’t been much of an opportunity to get to know her, but the two young women hit it off now that there was time to relax.
    Zakayev described herself as a Chechen patriot and vehemently contended that the Russians were the terrorists, not the separatists, “Though we have been guilty of allowing extremists into the movement that cost us world opinion with their acts. That is why Lom is so adamant about cleansing our ranks of those who fight for their own ends, not our country.” She described seeing Russian tanks roll through, and sometimes right over the top of villages, and watching as Chechen men “and sometimes women” were lined up and shot “as a warning” to others.
    â€œOur women are raped, and our men are executed or rounded up and sent away never to be heard from again. Meanwhile, the Russian government is in league with crime syndicates to rob us of our wealth,” she said angrily. “Yet the West does nothing except go along with the Russians, who call us the terrorists when we try to carry the fight to their cities and their populations as they have done to us. But we are not so different from you Americans when you fought for independence against a larger, more powerful army that tried to put down your desire for freedom with brutality. Back then it was the British who broke down your doors without justification,arrested your men, abused your women, burned your crops, razed your towns, and hung your patriots in an attempt to terrorize you into submission.”
    Zakayev burned with the zeal of a partisan. But she was also a young woman, only a few years older than Lucy, and she had many questions about what life was like for an Amercian woman. “Someday I would like to see America,” she told Lucy after dinner Saturday night. “But Chechnya is my home and we will build a democracy here that will show you Americans a thing or two about freedom when you have to fight for it.”
    They all waited up Saturday night for Daudov, but he didn’t appear. Zakayev had apologized profusely. “I was assured he would be here,” she said. “I never would have sworn such a thing to Allah if I had not believed it. To be honest, I am worried. I am going to the town to see if I can get word.”
    Lucy heard the concern and fear in the young woman’s voice and wondered if it was a product of hero worship or something more . . . womanly. “We can’t wait any longer,” she told the young woman. “Perhaps he had other, more pressing matters. If you’re not back by morning,