The Leveling (6 page)

M
ARK TOOK ONE
step into his apartment and stopped short.

The bookshelves in the living room had been torn apart, and the hand-knotted Azeri carpets he’d hung on the wall had been ripped down. The kitchen cabinets had been pulled open, and glass jars of red pasta sauce lay shattered on the tile floor. All the furniture cushions had been slit; white stuffing protruded from them like entrails.

In the center of his living room, three twentysomething uniformed officers from the Ministry of National Security sat on his mutilated leather couch, smoking cigarettes and using one of his kitchen plates as an ashtray. One of them stopped mid-laugh when he saw Mark and his escorts.

“What the hell?” said Mark.

The security officers stood as one. The tallest demanded to know who Mark was.

Mark stood there in shock for a moment, taking it all in. His easy chair, where he liked to read in the early evening, when natural light spilled in from the balcony, had been flattened. The tomato plants he’d kept outside had been overturned. The little American flag he’d stuck in one of the planters lay on the floor half-covered with potting soil. “I live here.”

One of his plainclothes minders from the Ministry of National Security nodded in confirmation.

Mark’s apartment building was a gleaming modern construction, completed just two years ago as part of the oil-fueled
gentrification that was sweeping the city, but he’d always loved the literal window into history his balcony had afforded him—the end of the Cold War, the ruins of an empire he’d helped, in a very small way, to bring down…Past the sliding glass doors leading onto his balcony, he could see the top of the old Dom Soviet, a government building that had been built during the Stalin era. Next to the Dom Soviet sat the Absheron, an enormous, bulky Soviet-era hotel that had recently been turned into a high-priced Marriott.

“It was like this when we got here,” said one of the officers. He placed his cigarette on Mark’s plate and stood up. “Now we just wait for instructions. The movers are outside. You can gather the things you wish to take with you.”

“You and your men didn’t do this?”

“Of course not.”

Mark wasn’t sure whether to believe him or not.

He walked slowly through his kitchen, stepping over the remnants of a takeout Chinese dinner from the week before. In a way, he thought, it didn’t matter that his place was trashed. What would he have done with his stuff anyway? All it meant was that Orkhan would have less to store.

One question that had been eating away at him—how an assassin had known to find him at the library—was answered by the wall calendar hanging in his kitchen. On today’s date, he’d written
8:30, Heydar, library reading room
. He’d bought the calendar after taking the job at Western University, to keep track of his classes. Stupid, he told himself. There were some habits he’d developed while working for the Agency—like an obsession with never keeping a set schedule, and certainly never posting his appointments where people could read them—that, evidently, he should have held on to.

In his bedroom, his dresser drawers had been ripped all the way out, his clothes scattered around the floor, and his mattress slashed. More importantly, his laptop was gone.

He looked around, then back at his desk again, then under it, and then in the closet.

The book-length manuscript he’d been working on,
Soviet Intelligence Operations in the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, 1918-1922
, had been saved on that computer. Nearly two years of intense research, two hundred thousand words of text. He was only a few months away from finishing it. It was going to be the book that established his academic credentials, his gateway to landing a university job in the States or Europe.

He’d backed it up, though. In several places, just in case.

He wasn’t an idiot; he’d be OK.

Mark rifled through the jumble of papers and pens and scholarly books that were still on his desk. Where was the damn thumb drive? It was neon yellow, and he’d left it to the right of the computer, next to the coffee mug he’d been using as a penholder.

But it wasn’t there now.

“You motherfuckers,” he muttered.

It’s probably somewhere on the floor, he told himself. Besides, he had a third backup, one that he’d made on a CD a couple of months ago. He’d lose a lot of work, but losing two months was better than losing two years. He’d stored the CD in his bedroom closet, in an old shoebox.

The shoebox was upended on the floor of his closet. Scattered around it were old computer cords, spare rolls of Scotch tape, extra pens, envelopes, and Post-it notes—but no CD.

Beginning to panic now, Mark dropped to the floor and searched through everything in the room. The security guards eventually took pity on him, asked what he was looking for, and joined in the hunt. Together they scoured every inch of the apartment.

Eventually Mark’s minders said it was time to leave for the airport. Then the phone rang.

Washington, DC

T
HE CONFERENCE ROOM
on the ground floor of the West Wing had an unnatural smell to it, the result of the ozone from constantly running air filters.

“This meeting is called to order,” said the president. “We’re here to discuss how to respond to recent intelligence reports coming out of Iran. I’ll cede the floor to Jim.”

A bald former four-star admiral, currently the director of national intelligence, produced a sheaf of papers from his briefcase and began to pass them out. “The president’s daily brief. The president has already reviewed it and approved its distribution to the Security Council. It provides a summary of all that we know to date.”

The room fell silent, except for the sound of papers rustling, as the vice president, the secretary of defense, the secretary of state, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and the national security advisor all read the two-page document.

After a minute, the secretary of state smacked her palm on the table. “Good God. Do we have any independent confirmation that this really happened to Khorasani’s daughter?”

“The CIA station in Dubai runs a couple agents on Kish Island,” said the DNI. “They’re telling us local police responded to an incident around the time that we believe the attack occurred. No charges were filed and the police incident log makes reference to a robbery, but evidently that wouldn’t be unusual for a case like this, especially given that she is, in fact, the youngest daughter of
the supreme leader of Iran. CIA and DIA think she was targeted by Sunni extremists hoping to inflame the whole situation in the Middle East and goad Khorasani into doing something crazy. Hence the Star of David marks carved on her body.”

“Jesus,” said the secretary of defense. He shook his head, evidently dumbfounded by the report. “When is this transfer supposed to take place?”

“Three days.”

“Has anyone tried to reach out to Khorasani directly?”

“Our back channel through the Turks got shut down two months ago.”

“Is the Mossad report all we have to go on? The Israelis aren’t exactly objective observers here.”

“Persia House,” said the DNI, referring to the CIA group that had split from the Near East Division to focus exclusively on Iran, “reports that two hours ago the Iranian resistance group the MEK confirmed with their CIA liaison key elements of what you just read. The question now is, what do we do about it?”

“Or rather, what are the Israelis going to do about it?” said the president, tapping an arthritic finger on the table. “Because I can tell you all with certainty that the Israelis are going to act soon to stop Khorasani, regardless of what we do. I know they’ve thrown out threats to Iran before and haven’t acted on them. But this is the real deal. There’s no way in hell they’re going to let the Iranians throw a punch like that.”

“How soon is soon?” asked the secretary of state.

“Forty-eight hours tops. The only question is whether we get ahead of the shit storm by joining them, or whether we sit on our asses and take our lumps as they come.”

Baku, Azerbaijan

T
HE CALLER
ID that popped up on Mark’s landline phone just said
International
. Probably Langley, he thought, wanting to make sure he was clearing out. He was tempted to just let it ring.

He picked up.

“Sava here.”

“Is this Mark Sava?” It was a man, and he sounded slightly out of breath.

“Ah, yeah, that’s what I said.”

“Did you get my messages?”

Mark glanced down to the rapidly blinking light on his answering machine. “No.”

“I tried calling yesterday, and earlier today.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name.”

Mark’s minders looked at him impatiently.

“John. I’m John Junior’s dad.”

“I think you have the wrong number.”

“You said you were Mark Sava. John gave me this number. He said he sometimes stayed here, that you were his friend.”

A lightbulb clicked on in Mark’s head.

“Are you talking about John Decker?”

Eight months ago, when the CIA was under siege in Baku, Mark had worked with Decker. They’d gotten along well enough professionally, and Decker had proved his worth many times over. Then three months ago, Decker had shown up uninvited
at Mark’s apartment and asked whether he could crash there for a week or so, seeing as he was between contractor jobs. Mark hadn’t been thrilled with the arrangement, but he’d said OK.

“I’m trying to reach him.”

“He’s not here,” said Mark. “Honestly, this isn’t a good time.”

“I haven’t heard from him in two weeks, no phone calls, no e-mails, nothing. I’ve left a million messages for him, he just doesn’t answer.”

Mark heard a couple of dogs barking. Speaking in a thick New England accent, a woman said, “Tell him about my birthday.”

Mark recalled that Decker had grown up in the north woods of New Hampshire. Born into a military family. That female voice in the background reminded Mark of Decker.

“I don’t know what to tell you,” said Mark. “I haven’t heard from him in months, so if you were in touch with him two weeks ago, then your contact information would be a lot more up-to-date than mine.”

“We’re just a little bit worried here. It was his mother’s birthday yesterday. He always remembers to call.”

“You know, Mr. Decker…I can tell you’re worried, but really there’s nothing I can do.”

“If you hear from him, will you tell him to call home?”

“Absolutely. Now, I’m sorry, but you’ve caught me at a rough time. I have to go.”

Mark tried to call Orkhan on the way to the airport.

Orkhan’s secretary claimed not to know where her boss was or when he’d be back, so Mark explained the situation with his computer and backup disks and said he expected the Azeri government to help recover his stolen belongings.

Orkhan needs to look into it personally
, he said.
Personally!

The receptionist said she’d relay the message.

Mark figured Orkhan was probably listening in on the conversation, blowing him off.