The Leveling (5 page)

No one named John Decker was currently a guest, the receptionist told her.

“He’d be registered under CAIN, or Central Asian Information Networks. A group of us had a block of rooms.”

“Everyone from CAIN checked out three days ago.”

As Daria considered that bit of information, she thought to click on Details at the top of the e-mail from Alty8. It turned out that Alty8 had CC’d one other person: [email protected].

She drew in a quick breath.

What the hell is going on, Deck? And what could
Mark
possibly have to do with it?

Mark’s apartment in Baku, eight months earlier…

“I didn’t know you were up,” said Mark.

It was seven in the morning. Daria had heard him making coffee in the kitchen but hadn’t wanted to ask for his help.

She was slumped on the hardwood floor in the spare bedroom—a room that had been his office until two weeks ago—trying to tie a plastic garbage bag around the fiberglass cast on her broken arm. Her teeth marks were all over the ripped black plastic. Mark stood in the doorway, his brow furrowed with concern.

The intelligence war that had decimated the CIA’s Baku station was over. That bloody conflict, fought over a proposed oil pipeline from China to Iran, had left her deeply wounded, physically and emotionally. The only reason she was still alive was because of Mark. But she couldn’t stay in his apartment forever. She had to learn to care for herself.

“I want to take a shower.”

Daria tried to speak calmly, but found it impossible to mask her anger. She was breathing heavily and trembling, partly from frustration, partly from the exertion of having attempted to tie the plastic bag around her arm with only one hand and her teeth. She wanted to rip the bag apart and throw it out the window.

“OK,” said Mark.

“I’m not supposed to get the cast wet. I need help tying the bag around my arm. Please.”

She glanced at her bicep, where the cast ended, and was struck by how waiflike it looked. She knew the bruises and cuts on her face still looked angry and raw. She turned her face away from Mark.

“I didn’t know you were up,” he said again. “I would have helped you.”

Daria was embarrassed by the sweat on her forehead. Mark noticed the smallest details when it came to other people; he was always sizing people up. The sweat would tell him how hard she’d been trying to tie the bag herself, how utterly dependent she was on him for even the smallest things.

“Just get it around my arm, above the cast.”

“Yeah, sure.”

As he approached her, she looked at the crow’s-feet around his deep-set, heavy-lidded eyes. Feeling his fingers on her arm filled her with a sense of well-being, and for a second it didn’t bother her that he could see the sheen of sweat on her forehead. He cinched a knot tight above her bicep. She stood up.

“You want help getting to the shower?” he asked.

“I’ll be OK.”

But she wasn’t OK.

She could feel his eyes on her as she made her way from the bedroom to the bathroom. He was sizing her up, she was sure. He was so damn calculating.

Part of her hated him for what he saw. But part of her wanted him to touch her again. To put his hand lightly on her forehead or her shoulders.

She managed to turn on the water and adjust the heat, but a minute into her shower—as she was trying to shampoo her hair—her legs gave way and she fell.

“Daria?” called Mark from the bathroom door.

The deep bruises in her thigh muscles were spasming. Water from the shower sprayed into her nose. She felt as though she were drowning. She wasn’t sure she could pick herself up without falling again.

The bathroom door opened and a little stream of cool air blew over her face.

“Daria?”

“I slipped.”

Her good arm grasped the lip of the bathtub, poking out a bit from behind the dark blue shower curtain.

“Can you stand?”

“I think so.”

She tried to push herself up, but her legs spasmed again.

Mark reached around the curtain, grabbed her wet arm, and lifted her up. Her hand trembled as she struggled to stay upright.

“I’ll stay here,” said Mark from the other side of the curtain.

You’ve wasted over thirty years of your life. Promise yourself that, if you live through this, you won’t waste any more.

I promise.

“Just hold on when you need to,” Mark added.

“I’ll be OK.” But she continued to grip his arm tightly, afraid she would fall again if she let go.

She wished she could see Mark’s face.

Baku, Azerbaijan

“T
HE
A
ZERIS ARE
trying to give me the boot.”

Mark spoke into his cell phone as two plainclothes agents from the Ministry of National Security—protection, to ensure Mark’s safety, Orkhan had explained diplomatically—escorted him across town in a black Mercedes. Mark was seated in the back.

“I know,” said the new CIA chief of station/Azerbaijan, a woman who’d been transferred from Turkey six months ago. “I’ve been in touch with the Az interior minister. Where are you?”

“Almost at my apartment.” The tree-lined promenade between Neftchilar Avenue and the Caspian Sea was crowded with pedestrians, and a knot of people had gathered at the base of a nearby carnival ride. In the distance, rusted shipping cranes and oil derricks poked out of the shallow waters of the sea. After the violence at the library, Mark found the normalcy of the city—even the stink of diesel exhaust and petroleum—to be comforting. There had to be a way for him to resolve this in a way that allowed him to remain in Baku, he thought. There was always a workaround, always an angle. “Listen, I want to stay on.”

The CIA hadn’t been thrilled about his staying in Baku after he’d quit the Agency. Such an unorthodox move had only confirmed his superiors’ fears that he’d been abroad too long and had gone a little too native. But in exchange for being given the green light to stay on in Baku, he’d agreed to provide the Agency with a monthly report on the state of Azeri politics. And then
eight months ago, he’d bailed the Agency out when a bloody intelligence war over an oil pipeline had erupted.

So they owed him. Just how much he was about to find out.

“Not a chance.”

“Get me six months to wrap things up on my own terms. I’ll make it worth the Agency’s while.”

“It’s not my decision.”

One of Mark’s minders from the Ministry of National Security glanced back at him from the front seat.

“Besides,” added the new station chief, “Kaufman wants you back for a full debriefing.”

Ted Kaufman was the division chief for the CIA’s Central Eurasia Division. Mark had reported to him for years.

“Kaufman can screw himself. He owes me.”

“I wouldn’t get on the bad side of the seventh floor if I were you,” she said, referring to the upper management of the CIA. “They’re your reference for the twenty-five years of work you put in.”

“Twenty-three years.”

Mark had been twenty-one years old when the Agency recruited him.

“Whatever.”

“No, not whatever. I helped build this station. And I bailed Kaufman’s ass out eight months ago. I’m calling in my chits.”

“Listen, even if Washington was inclined to let you stay on, which they’re not, I don’t think we’d get far with the Azeris anyway. You’ve got too much history with them, not all of it good.”

“Not all of it bad, either. Orkhan and I are tight.”

“The interior minister was adamant, and he was speaking for Aliyev.”

Aliyev was the guy who ran the country.

“Great.”

“Go back to the States, get debriefed, let the dust settle. Meanwhile the station will start digging. After what happened at the library, we’re all on alert, I can guarantee you that. You’re still one of our own.”

Almaty, Kazakhstan

D
ARIA CONSIDERED THE
three photos again. Even after she’d studied them for the better part of a half hour, the first two meant nothing to her. Nor did the e-mail address of the sender—[email protected]. She couldn’t remember having met anyone named Alty when she’d been in Turkmenistan.

The only thing she was reasonably sure of was that the third photo showed Decker’s arm.

Which meant what?

Had someone captured him, and the photo of the arm was there to prove it? Would demands for cash follow?

Or had Decker himself sent the e-mails to her?

Was he in trouble?

One person who might be able to answer those questions was Bruce Holtz, Decker’s boss. Holtz owned Central Asian Information Networks—CAIN for short—a spies-for-hire firm. Although Daria had worked for Holtz too, she and Holtz hadn’t left on good terms. On top of that, she was now competing against him in the intelligence business. No, Holtz wouldn’t tell her anything.

But he might talk to Mark.

Mark.
Her stomach turned over.

She checked her watch. She should start getting ready for work soon. If she was going to call him, she should do it now. But was she overreacting? Just looking for an excuse to call? Or was she looking for an excuse
not
to call him, when it was obvious she should?

She thought about the first of the three photos. Two men had been exchanging a briefcase. A briefcase full of what?

Daria had a bad feeling about that briefcase.

Call him.

She checked her phone, confirmed that Mark’s contact info was still in it, and hit Dial. His cell number was no longer good—which didn’t surprise her. When he’d been her boss at the CIA, he’d been religious about regularly swapping the SIM card out in his phone; he’d rarely kept the same number for more than a few days. Old habits die hard, she thought. She tried his home phone. The answering machine picked up.

“Mark, this is Daria. Call me back, please, as soon as you get this message. I need you to call Bruce Holtz for me. I’m hoping he knows where I can find John Decker. Something weird’s come up. I wouldn’t bother you if I didn’t think it might be important.” Then she left her number.

She’d sounded professional, she thought. Nothing more.

Baku, Azerbaijan