The Leveling (3 page)

“Don’t be too hard on him,” said Mark. “He’s still young.”

“It is not his age, of course. Did you act this way at his age?”

“I don’t know.”

As if Mark hadn’t spoken, Orkhan said, “Did I act this way at his age? Of course not. It is the person, not the age.”

“He’ll learn from it. He’s a good kid.”

Orkhan waved his hand dismissively, paused, then said, “There was no identification on the body of the assassin.”

“Tattoos? Any items we can trace?”

“Possibly. But…” Orkhan shifted in his seat. “But we must first speak of other matters.”

Mark waited for Orkhan to elaborate, but instead Orkhan just sat there looking as if he’d detected an embarrassing smell. “What other matters?” asked Mark.

“Heydar’s bodyguard has informed me that the assassin was aiming at you, not Heydar.”

Mark took a moment to let that bit of information sink in.

“Of course you realized this,” said Orkhan.

Mark hadn’t.

“And you were wise not to try to run,” said Orkhan. “Heydar’s bodyguard had a clear shot, and you did nothing to interfere with that. Allowing professionals to do their job is often the best course of action in cases such as this. Few can resist the temptation to panic, however. You have my respect.”

It was interesting, Mark thought, how a person could live off their résumé long after whatever skills they might have once
possessed had atrophied. “The shooter probably thought I was the one guarding Heydar. And wanted to take me out first.”

“You do not look like a bodyguard.”

Mark couldn’t argue with that. His height was average, as was his build. Good qualities for a spy, not for a bodyguard.

Orkhan added, “I must also tell you that the only thing the assassin was carrying, besides his gun, was a photo of you. You will not take offense, I hope, when I tell you that I was relieved. Evidently Heydar was not the target. You were.”

Kazakhstan, a Slum Outside Almaty

F
ORMER
CIA
OPERATIONS
officer Daria Buckingham strode quickly past a ramshackle street stand packed with cheap liter bottles of soda and rotgut vodka, past a stinking heap of trash—old coffee grounds and dirty diapers and apple cores and greasy auto parts—and past a cluster of small children playing in the dirt road. But she didn’t notice any of it; all she could think of was money.

How much would she need? The number kept growing. Whatever it was, she’d find a way to get it. She’d made a lot of mistakes in her life, but she wasn’t going to screw this up.

She turned down an alley framed by mud-brick walls and stepped over a wet trench that reeked of sewage. Though she was only a few kilometers from the modern, tree-lined center of Almaty, she was deep in the slums, in another world entirely.

At a metal door, where kids’ plastic riding toys had been piled up in two unruly heaps on either side, she knocked.

An old man wearing a blue flannel shirt and traditional brown
tubeteika
skullcap answered.

“I’m here to see the director,” she said in Kazakh, a language she could get by in because of her fluency with Azeri, which, like Kazakh, was a Turkic language.

Daria saw the old man fixate for a moment on her face. She wondered whether he could see the scars.

“He’s expecting me,” she added.

The old man stepped back, gesturing that she should follow. He led her to a small foyer. The concrete floor was pitted and stained. An open door led to a much larger room, which looked equally dreary. In the distance Daria heard a child crying and a woman’s voice rising in anger. The blue plaster walls were cracked and soiled from the waist down with grime from the hands of young children. She thought of all the little hands, and then forced herself not to. Sympathy wouldn’t help them, or her.

“Wait here.” The old man gestured to a rickety wood school chair. “I will bring tea.”

Forget the tea, just bring me to the director, Daria wanted to say, but she held her tongue and took a seat.

Patience was needed in these situations, she knew. The director would be suspicious of her intentions. It would take time. She would need to sit and listen for hours for even a modicum of trust to be established.

Her cell phone vibrated, interrupting her thoughts. A new e-mail had just come in. She glanced at the time stamp; the message had actually been sent eleven hours earlier, but with the lousy cell reception it had only just come through.

She didn’t recognize the sender’s address, so she clicked off her phone. Whatever it was, it could wait.

Baku, Azerbaijan

S
INCE QUITTING THE
CIA and taking a teaching position at Western University, he’d done a pretty good job of shutting out the chaos and confusion of the world around him—the bitter political fights, the brutal all-consuming intelligence wars, the rank corruption…he’d put all that behind him. He’d beaten that cancer.

But now it was back.

After a while, he asked, “May I see the photo?”

“No,” said Orkhan. “It is with our forensic department.”

“Was it a recent one?”

“No. You are younger. Not so much gray.”

“File photo or—”

“You are walking on the street, I think. Not looking at the camera. I would guess the photo was taken by an opposition intelligence agency.”

“The paper?”

“Printed off a computer printer, low quality. It tells us nothing.”

“How would an assassin have even known that I was going to be at the library this morning? I didn’t tell anyone I was going to be there.”

“I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter. Nor will it matter if we find out who tried to kill you and why—whether it was the Iranians or the Chinese or the Russians or some person you fought with years ago, the result is the same.”

Mark waited for Orkhan to explain, but Orkhan just stared at him, so Mark asked, “What result?”

With some discomfort, Orkhan said, “Clearly you have become a source of disturbance.”

“I was shot at. I would say whoever shot at me was the source of the disturbance.”

Mark recalled that the would-be assassin had been a man of about thirty, with short-cropped black hair, dark skin, and a mix of Caucasian and Asian features. The pistol the bodyguard had kicked out of the assassin’s lifeless hand was a Russian-made Makarov, but that told Mark nothing—Makarovs were a dime a dozen in the region.

Who would want him dead? He was out of the intelligence game.

“The incident at the library will be widely reported on. It makes it seem as if Azerbaijan is out of control.”

“So do what you always do—pull the report from the news.”

“Yes, of course we will do this.”

“So?”

“So we will do this, but Aliyev will still be unhappy.”

“I’ll try not to let it happen again.”

Ignoring Mark’s sarcasm, Orkhan said, “My friend…”

Mark always got worried when Orkhan started addressing him as
my friend
. After all the years he’d collaborated with Orkhan—on oil deals, on ways to curtail Russian and Iranian influence in the region, on creative ways for the Americans to arm the Azeris—he’d come to realize that
my friend
usually meant something unpleasant was coming.

“My friend,” repeated Orkhan, “I’m saying you need to leave.”

“Leave where? Baku?”

“No. Azerbaijan.”

“For how long?” Mark figured he could lay low and do some book research in Russia for a few months. Western University wouldn’t like him taking off on such short notice—he had
classes to teach, one tomorrow in fact—but there was a dearth of English-speaking professors in Baku, and he knew they’d take him back whenever they could get him.

Orkhan got up and began to pace. Without making eye contact with Mark, he said, “Permanently.”

“I have a valid work permit. It’s good for another six months. And the Agency likes having me here as backup. You can’t just toss me out.”

“Your work permit has been revoked.”

“By whom?”

“The minister of labor.”

Mark leaned back in his chair and stared briefly at the ceiling. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

For eleven years Baku had been his home.
Eleven years.
As a young man, he’d bounced around the Caucasus and Central Asia as a part of the CIA’s Special Activities Division. But then he’d been posted to Baku, and the place had quickly grown on him. The Agency had let him stay.

His whole life—everything he had—was in Baku.

Besides, this wasn’t exactly the first time he’d been associated with violence in Azerbaijan. And he hadn’t gotten kicked out of the country in those previous cases. Instead, he’d worked with the Azeris to resolve the problem.

He pointed that out to Orkhan.

“Yes, but back then you were working for your government. There would have been diplomatic consequences if we had expelled you.”

“There may be consequences now as well.”

“I don’t think so.”

“I still have ties to the Agency.”

“They will not be enough.”

“What kind of time frame are we talking about here?”

“Immediately.”

“As in I’m notified immediately, but have a reasonable period of time to get my things together?”

“In a few minutes you will be escorted back to your apartment to gather what you can carry, and then you will be escorted to the airport. Once the paperwork goes through, probably by later today, you will officially be a persona non grata.”

“Jesus, Orkhan. You couldn’t give me a couple days? To fucking pack?”

“I could not. Your furniture and other belongings will be packed for you.”

“That’s over the top and you know it.”

“This was my decision, but if I hadn’t made it, it would have been made for me. You understand?”

Mark was an intensely private person. He didn’t like the thought of Orkhan’s goons rummaging through his things.

“I’ll need to know where you want me to send your belongings. As a courtesy from my country to yours, we will pay to have them shipped wherever you like.”

“I can’t believe this.”

“Perhaps you have a relative, back in the United States?” asked Orkhan.

Mark’s mother was dead, and his father wasn’t an option because the guy was a prick. His one living grandmother had been battling senility for years in a cheerless nursing home in Elizabeth, New Jersey.

He thought briefly of his older sister and two younger brothers. Any one of them would probably be too polite to decline a request, but the conversation would be awkward. The last time he’d talked with any of his siblings was fifteen years ago.

Baku was his home, his family.

“Or a friend?” pressed Orkhan.

Mark had plenty of colleagues from Western University with whom he was friendly. But they weren’t friends, in the true sense of the word. He was kind of on friendly terms with this young guy named John Decker, a private security contractor, and an old guy named Larry Bowlan, his first boss at the CIA, but not on
such friendly terms that he felt like asking either of them to store his stuff. He briefly considered Daria Buckingham, a former lover. As far as he knew, she was still back in the States.

“Or I could store your things here for now,” said Orkhan. “And when you are settled in your new home, you can call me and I can send them to you.”

No, he
couldn’t
call Daria.

It occurred to Mark that it was a poor reflection on his social skills for it to have come to the point where the only person he could turn to in a time of desperate need was the corrupt minister of national security from an oil-rich kleptocracy—the same person, in fact, who was throwing him out on his ass.

“I would appreciate that.”