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If A.J.’s business plan seems flawed, he has an escape plan: Sell his first edition of “Tamerlane” by Edgar Allan Poe and drift off into boozy retirement on the proceeds.

The armies of Alexander the Great and Tamerlane - the last of the great nomadic conquerors of Central Asia - both passed this way.

He walks through the blue-tiled palaces of Samarkand in modern Uzbekistan as he recounts the victories of Tamerlane, and sails the Bosporus to re-create the brutal siege of Constantinople by Ottoman forces in 1453.

Police say he left the facility Thursday evening for his work release shift at Tamerlane Industries, but never returned Friday morning as scheduled.

“On Islam Karimov, not since Tamerlane have we had someone so great.”