The Leveling (14 page)

W
HEN
D
ECKER WOKE
up, his bare back was pressed against the cold safe and he was shivering. He wondered when he’d last had anything to eat.

He thought back to when he was just a kid, eating pancakes in his mother’s kitchen with his dad and older brother and sister. They’d had syrup from the sugar maples in the woods out back, and lots of butter. Sunny Delight orange drink. Bacon. My God, what he would give to be able to go back, maybe take Daria with him to meet—

Stop it.

No more Narnia, no more South Beach, no more Daria, no more pancakes. You’re hungry. So what. Focus.

He slid his legs through his arms, so that his cuffed hands were in front of him. Dirt had accumulated in both the entry and exit gunshot wounds on his leg, so he lowered his head and cleaned the wounds with his mouth like a dog. He spit out the dirt and kept at it until the wounds bled a bit.

Now what?

Now you think about how to get your ass out of here. For starters, where is here?

Decker recalled the exposed ceiling joists, cinder-block walls, and smell of mold in the room above him. He’d been certain it was a basement. But he was below that room now, in a cellar below the basement.

He forced himself to stand. He couldn’t see a thing, but he could feel that the wall he was bracing himself against was
made of brick. He ran his finger across the mortar joints. They felt solid. When he pounded the wall with his elbow, the bricks didn’t move. He ran his hand over every inch of the wall. It was in decent shape all the way down to the rotted bits of floor planks that ringed the perimeter of the hole.

The rotted floor planks, and the dirt beneath them, felt damp on his bare feet. He could try to start tunneling down through the floor. But in what direction? And he was presumably deep underground. He’d be found out long before he made much progress. If that was his only option, he’d try to make a go of it, but he was almost certain the effort would be futile.

The floor is damp. Almost muddy. Water’s getting in from somewhere.

Decker slowly made his way over to another wall, and here, up near where the brick wall met the concrete slab of the basement floor, he felt a damp, flaky substance on the brick and mortar. He put a finger to his mouth and tasted salt.

When Decker had patched up the leaky basement walls of his family home in New Hampshire, he’d tasted that same salt.

It came from disintegrating mortar, or from the soil behind the mortar. He knew it had to have leeched through the porous wall, pushed through by the water, before crystallizing. There was no leaky bathroom right above him. The only place that water could have come from was from rain or snow.

Which meant the salt patch on the wall had to be close to the exterior of whatever building he was in.

Decker felt the mortar joints. Behind the salt crystals, they were damp and soft. He hammered his elbow right into the center of the soft spot, and felt a little movement.

M
ARK STOOD UP
and walked slowly over to the basement window. Outside lay a pile of yellow snow. He could faintly smell the cat piss even though the window was closed. With his back turned to Daria, he said, “Holtz said Deck had a thing for you.”

They’d all known each other back in Baku. Mark hadn’t been surprised by what Holtz had said. Daria, scarred or not, was the kind of woman who attracted a lot of guys. Some were attracted to her broad smile, some to her high cheekbones, some—he counted himself in this group—to her quick wit and natural intelligence.

Mark figured Deck—not exactly the most sophisticated guy—had probably just fancied her ass.

Daria’s chair creaked as she adjusted herself in it. Eventually she said, “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Did you have any contact with Deck—conversations or e-mails or whatever—after you left Turkmenistan?”

“He sent one e-mail right after I left.”

“Saying what?”

“That he wanted to meet me here in Almaty after he got done with the job in Turkmenistan.”

“How’d you respond?”

“I didn’t. I mean, I like John well enough, but…anyway, I didn’t want him around when I was working here.”

“So you two weren’t—”

“No.”

Mark decided Decker was actually a pretty good guy. And a lot more sophisticated than people gave him credit for.

“And nothing since then?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Meaning?”

Daria pulled out a new-looking smartphone from the pocket of her hotel-uniform blazer, tapped the touch pad a few times, stared at the screen for a moment, and then handed the phone to Mark.

“What do you think?” she said.

Meet me in front of Turkmenbashi Ruhy Mosque, Tuesday noon. If not Tuesday, Wednesday, noon. Sincerely, John Decker.

Below that e-mail was another consisting of just three letters.

“What does
W-T-F
mean?” asked Mark, reading the second e-mail. “Is that a code or something?”

Daria gave him a funny look. “That’s how I responded to the e-mail with the photos attached to it.”

“With a code?”

“No not a code.” Her mouth formed a big, broad, pretty smile. “It just means, you know, ‘what’s up with this?’ I was asking whoever sent the photos why they sent them.”

Mark didn’t get it, but he didn’t feel like pressing the point. He studied the e-mail that had allegedly been sent by Decker.

Located on the outskirts of Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan, the Turkmenbashi Ruhy Mosque was, he knew, the largest mosque in Central Asia. But it was also a bit of a joke—few Muslims actually worshipped there because the Soviet bureaucrat-turned-dictator who’d ordered it built had inscribed his personal words of wisdom all over it, right next to verses from the Qur’an. Attendance at prayers was more likely to consist of ten worshippers than the ten thousand the mosque could hold. Mark doubted that Decker had even heard of the place.

“He would never sign off on an e-mail with
sincerely
,” Mark also noted.

“With me he always signed off as
D
or
Deck
.”

“And he wouldn’t use any capital letters,” said Mark. “Worth a trip to Ashgabat, though.”

“Yeah, if we show up at the mosque tomorrow and act polite—”

“You know the kind of operation I’m talking about.”

“It’s Monday night. How are you going to get a visa for Turkmenistan by tomorrow? It takes them a week just to open a piece of mail, much less process a visa.”

Mark knew Daria was right. The Turkmen government was vigilant about keeping foreigners out of their country. Even his black diplomatic passport wouldn’t let him cut any corners. But someone would be at the Turkmen embassy at this hour, and bribes to rush through visas weren’t exactly unheard of. He eyed the sack of counterfeit money.

“That’s evidence,” said Daria.

“One or two bills would be enough to prove your point about Chinese meddling. You can take a picture of the rest.”

“I’m not giving you twenty thousand dollars.”

“It’s not twenty thousand dollars. It’s a bag full of paper made to look like twenty thousand dollars’ worth of Turkmen manats. Besides, this is my life we’re talking about.”

“Your life?”

“Yeah. My job, my book, my home. My life. All that got trashed. I want to know why, and what I can do to fix it.”

“The only reason you
had
a life to get trashed was because of Decker. You’d be dead if it weren’t for him.”

“Are you talking about what happened in Baku?”

“What else?”

“I was paying him a boatload to provide protection then, Daria. He was doing his job. I don’t owe him anything.” Although, as Mark spoke, he realized that wasn’t quite true. The first time
Decker had saved his life, Decker had been under contract with the US embassy in Baku. It was only later, because of that incident, that Mark had hired him. “Besides, we don’t even know that he’s in trouble.”

Daria stood up, shouldered the bag of money, flipped a lock of hair out of her face, and began walking toward the door. Then she turned to face Mark.

“Did you ever consider that whoever came after you might also be after me? I might not have been stupid enough to use an e-mail address that sent them straight to my door, like you did, but encryption software isn’t perfect. There’s a digital trail that they can use to track me down if whoever came after you has enough money and expertise. I’m not safe here any more than you were safe in Baku. Did you ever think about that?”

“I didn’t even know you were involved until now. Where are you going?”

“First the Turkmen embassy on Abay Street to get myself a five-day transit visa, then the President Hotel in Ashgabat, which is where Decker and I and everyone else involved in the negotiations stayed while we were over there. I’ll see if I can pick up any leads at the hotel. Then I’ll go to the meeting at the mosque.”

Mark doubted that the few hundred dollars in US cash he had on hand would be enough for the bribes that would be needed to secure a visa. Prior experience suggested it would cost several thousand. Maybe more, given that it was after-hours.

“You know I can help, Daria.”

“Yeah, but help at what? I’m going over there to help Decker. That’s my main objective. I have to know you’re OK with that. If you can get your life back in the process and I can get some peace of mind, that’s great too, but…”

“If I can help Deck, I will. You have my word.”

Daria let out a genuine, spontaneous laugh.

“That wasn’t meant to be a joke,” said Mark.

“Are you forgetting I know you?”

“Come on, Daria. I bullshit people when I need to bullshit them, but I’m not bullshitting you now.”

After a long time she gave a slight nod.

“Thank you,” said Mark.

D
ECKER ALMOST PASSED
out from the pain when he first sank his swollen hands into the dirt behind the two-layer-thick portion of the brick wall he’d removed. But after a couple of minutes, his injured fingers numbed up and he began to use them like little spades. Each shovelful of dirt he placed quietly on the ground.

He focused on his training. Even when things seem hopeless, keep pushing, keep probing any way you can. Make every effort to escape.

Knock this out.

Above him, he heard voices arguing, but he couldn’t tell what about.

When light appeared in the cracks around the trapdoor, he spread out the bricks and pile of dirt on the ground and tamped it down, slipped his legs back through his arms so that his hands were behind him, limped to a spot beneath the trapdoor, and carefully positioned his body so that it hid his handiwork. He couldn’t let anyone come down to get him.

“I’m hungry!” Decker called out, his voice barely a whisper. The trapdoor creaked and the guard lifting it groaned. “Please.”

The man with the black turban appeared from above.

“Don’t shut the door,” said Decker. “I can’t stand it down here.”

“If you agree to help us, you may eat as much as you like.”

“I’ll help you,” said Decker.

“You may breathe fresh air. Why should you live like an animal?”

“I’ll tell you where my partner is, and why I was sent here.”

“Then climb up.”

Decker struggled to ascend the rickety wooden ladder they lowered down. When he’d almost reached the top, two guards hooked their hands under his armpits and pulled him out the rest of the way.

“Now what was it you wanted to tell me?” asked the man in the black turban.

Decker didn’t say anything. When the question was repeated, he turned his head and waited for the blow.