by Dan Mayland
“He sure did.”
“Evidently you didn’t feel it necessary to communicate the same to your companion, Daria Buckingham, though.”
“Oh?”
“Buckingham promised to lead two local ops officers to the boy. Instead she drew them away from Bishkek and left them standing with their dicks in their hands. I just got the report from Serena Bamford.”
“Hmm.”
“You knew she was going to do it. Didn’t you?”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”
“Don’t be coy with me, Sava. Do you know where the child is?”
As Rosten spoke, he tapped his foot. He struck Mark as one of those guys who had more energy—physical and intellectual—than he knew what to do with.
“Why’d you involve Holtz in this?” asked Mark.
“One of my younger colleagues used to work with him. He knew about CAIN, and better yet, he knew Holtz.”
“Knew Holtz probably would take the job without asking a ton of questions. Even if the job involved kidnapping a two-year-old child.”
Rosten pointed a finger at Mark. “I asked Holtz to help us find the son of two dead Jordanian agents, a decent family…”
The story Rosten began to tell was the same one Mark had heard from Holtz.
Interrupting, Mark said, “Yeah, only problem is, what you’re telling me is a load of crap. The kid’s from Bahrain.”
Rosten’s eyes narrowed just a bit. Mark thought he looked as though someone had just insulted his mother and he’d decided that, instead of getting angry, he was going to play it cool and get even. “And what might have led you to that conclusion?”
“Ah, you may have noticed that Muhammad is a person? The kid told us.”
“He’s a two-year-old. A confused two-year-old. Who speaks Arabic. Maybe you misunderstood.”
“Or not.”
They stared at each other for a while.
Mark said, “What the hell is a kid from Bahrain doing in Kyrgyzstan?”
Bahrain was the smallest Arab country in the world, just a tiny speck of an island that had been teetering on the brink of revolution for years. But it was also home to the United States’ Fifth Fleet, a massive armada that had helped launch the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.
“That isn’t any of your business, Sava.”
“Listen, if you didn’t want it to be my business, you shouldn’t have stuck the kid in an orphanage run by my girlfriend.”
“I didn’t. That was Holtz.”
“Daria just wants to know we’re doing right by the kid. So that’s all I want to know. It’s not an unreasonable request.”
“Let me break it down for you, Sava. This is a legit Agency operation, approved with a presidential finding.”
A presidential finding was a decree, issued in secret by the president, that authorized the CIA to proceed with a covert operation.
“Let me guess, though. The part about the two-year-old wasn’t mentioned in the finding.”
Presidential findings, Mark knew, were often written in an intentionally vague way that allowed the president to approve a general policy, but preserve some level of plausible deniability when it came to the details.
“I have no intention of telling you about this operation, because that information is classified. I can assure you, however, that you’re going to find yourself in the middle of a shitstorm you won’t believe if you don’t hand over that kid. There’s a lot going down right now, as we speak, that you could screw up.”
“Let me break it down for you, Val. Daria doesn’t care whether your operation goes to hell. She cares about the kid. And she’s not going to let the kid go until she’s certain that turning him over to you is the right thing to do. And you know what, I won’t either. So why don’t you and the rest of your buddies at Near East go suck on that.”
Ignoring the insult, Rosten said, “It is the right thing to do for Muhammad. You have my word. The kid’s parents got hit and now we’re trying to help him.”
“He keeps talking about a person named Anna. Apparently she’s someone who helped take care of him. He misses her. What’s up with that? Is this Anna dead? Is she in Bahrain?”
Rosten took a second to look Mark over before answering.
“If you don’t turn over that kid, this is what’s going to happen. First, I’m ordering all your assets, domestic and foreign, frozen. Then I’m going to put the word out to DoD and State and every station around the world that you’re actively working against the interests of the United States and not someone to do business with. I’ll put the word out to foreign intelligence services too. Your mercenary work will come to an abrupt end.”
Not with Central Eurasia, thought Mark. And he wasn’t too worried about the money either. He’d lose a few thousand or so, but ninety-nine percent of his cash—over half a million dollars, the result of six months of splitting profits with Holtz—he’d stashed in secret accounts not tied to his name. “I’m not asking for much, Val. Just a little reassurance—beyond your word—that we’re doing right by the kid. And I’ll remind you, as I reminded Kaufman—I’m an approved Agency contractor with a top-secret clearance. If that’s not good enough, if this is a compartmentalized op, I’m sure you can ram through the necessary approvals that will let you bring me on board.”
As if Mark hadn’t spoken, Rosten said, “Then I’m going to go after your fuck-buddy Daria.”
Mark smiled at Rosten. It wasn’t a nice smile.
“That fund she’s been building for her orphanage project. She can kiss that good-bye.”
Rosten smiled back. Mark noticed his teeth were kind of yellowed.
“A real stickler for the law, aren’t you, Val?”
Mark wasn’t all that worried about Rosten going after Daria’s funds either. Given her shaky history with the US, Chinese, Azeri, and Iranian intelligence services, she’d taken care to arrange her accounts in such a way that the funds were protected from people nursing a grudge.
“I get things done. Finally, I’ll make sure to get you PNGed from Kyrgyzstan and any other country you try to set foot in. You’ll wind up either having to come home to the States or hole up in Somalia or North Korea.”
PNG stood for persona non grata. Once a country PNGed a person, it meant they had to leave. That was why Mark and Daria had been forced to leave Azerbaijan.
“I’m not that fond of the idea of Somalia.”
“Think about it, Sava. I’m not playing around here. I’m sorry you had to get involved with this and I don’t fault you for your actions to date. They’ve been perfectly reasonable. My bad for relying on that meathead Holtz. Even though I wasn’t going through you, I honestly thought that with you involved with CAIN, this whole thing would have been handled more competently. But none of that matters now. This is it. It’s time to give up the kid.”
Mark sighed. He tapped his index finger on the table top for a bit, then asked, “If I were to give you Muhammad, what would you do with him?”
“I’d get him to another orphanage and placed with a good family as soon as possible. The Agency’s willing to pay to see that he gets to the front of the line with any adoption outfit.”
“It might get a little tricky. I wasn’t bluffing about Daria. She doesn’t care about whatever op you’re running. Her only concern is the kid.”
“I’m sure you’ll be able to figure something out.”
“I’d have to retrieve him myself.”
“I’m up for a drive. After what happened with Buckingham, we’re going to trust but verify from here on out.”
21
Decker lived in a dumpy part of north Bishkek, mainly because he was too cheap to pay to live in a better part of town. He figured he was traveling for work half the time, and when he wasn’t working, he was usually climbing or traveling for pleasure, so why spend a fortune on a place he was only going to use a couple times a month?
Jessica parked the Explorer in front of his one-bedroom house. Down
the street, lights were on in the other tightly packed homes. Decker hopped out of the car, still carrying Muhammad, and opened the steel door with his key. The door led to a little walled-in courtyard in front of his home.
“And here we are!” he said cheerfully to Muhammad.
Decker liked his courtyard—he liked the wild pumpkin vines growing all over the courtyard’s cinderblock walls; he liked the little patch of overgrown grass where he’d set up a hibachi; he liked the plastic beer coolers that doubled as benches. He and Jess had sat on those coolers just three nights before, drinking beer around a little wood fire that he’d started in the hibachi.
He recalled that just two weeks earlier, on an unseasonably warm day in October, he’d set up a card table and had played narde outside with Mark. Decker smiled as he remembered how sour Mark had been after losing the first game.
He turned back to Jessica as he stepped through the doorway. “Maybe I’ll fire up the grill tonight, make some s’mores, have a little cookout.”
“I’m pretty sure a fire near the ground and a two-year-old kid isn’t a good combination. Let’s just get settled.”
It was a tiny place; one room on the ground floor served as a bedroom, living room, and small kitchen. In the minuscule bathroom, the hot-water heater—which looked like a giant cooking pot with a couple of suspicious-looking electrical wires stuck into it—sat on a rickety wooden shelf above the toilet.
On the upside, Decker had bought a sixty-inch flat-panel television, a home theater system, and a desktop computer that he never turned off because he hated waiting for the thing to boot up.
When he set Muhammad down on the floor, the child scrunched up his face, as though getting ready to cry. So Decker leaned over, grabbed all four pillows from his bed, and threw them down on the floor.
“One of those was mine,” said Jessica.
Decker held Muhammad and bounced him up and down on the mountain of pillows until Muhammad got the idea and started jumping on them himself.
“We’ll have movie night,” said Jessica. “Until he falls asleep.”
“Movie night,” said Decker, liking the idea. “Sounds good. We’ll make the best of it.”
He sat on the bed, ran his hand through his hair, and thought about his dad. And his brother. And his mom. Damn. Jessica sat down next to him and put her arm around his shoulder—as much of her arm as she could, that is. Deck was too big for her to really embrace.
“I’m going to take a shower,” she said. “You can handle things until I’m out?”
If he hadn’t had to look after Muhammad, Decker would have jumped in with Jessica. “Yeah, I’ll go after you.”
Then Decker’s desktop computer beeped five times. Loudly.
Muhammad stopped climbing the mountain of pillows and looked at the computer.
“What was that?” asked Jessica.
Decker walked to his computer and tapped the mouse. The screen came to life. In the upper left-hand corner of it, three black-and-white video feeds were displayed, each in a separate window.
One of the screens showed the figure of a man.
“Turn on the shower,” Decker whispered urgently.
When he’d first moved in, back in the spring, Decker had rigged up a rudimentary surveillance system. Three commercially available exterior video cameras communicated wirelessly with his desktop computer. In addition, the metal door that led to the courtyard had been wired to send a signal to the computer whenever it was opened. Originally, Decker had also set motion detectors on the tops of the courtyard walls, but the red squirrels, who had come to eat his pumpkins, had set off so many false alarms that he’d shut that system down.
“Why? What’s that beeping?”
“Intruder. Go now.”
Jessica half-walked, half-ran to the bathroom. Decker clicked on the video feed in which the figure was visible.
Bruce Holtz was pocketing a long silver electronic lock pick and walking across the small courtyard.
“A guy’s about to knock,” whispered Decker. He rushed up to his front door and silently engaged the dead bolt. “Tell him you’re taking a shower, you’ll get the door in a minute.”
“Tell who?”
Decker pointed to the door. A second later, a fist rapped loudly on it.
“Hey, Deck! It’s Bruce! Open up!”
The house had four windows—one on each side. Two of the windows looked out onto Decker’s small courtyard. The remaining two looked out onto intersecting garbage-strewn alleys, which doubled as a breeding ground for stray dogs. All the windows had heavy curtains pulled over them; the alley-facing ones were protected by metal bars. The same day he’d moved in, however, Decker had bought a welding torch at a local hardware store and cut an access hatch of sorts through one of the barred windows—so that in a pinch, he’d have more than one avenue of escape.
“Deck, open up! I know you’re in there!”
As he grabbed a key from his desk, Decker made eye contact with Jessica and gestured to the door.
“Hold on!” called Jessica. “I’m in the shower, I can’t get the door.”
“Is Decker in there?”
“Give me a minute, I’m in the shower.”
Decker heard the whir of the electronic lock pick engaging. Holtz, you son of a bitch, he thought. Trying to bust in on my girlfriend while she’s in the shower. I’ll remember that.
Decker opened one of the alley windows and used the key to unlock the access hatch he’d cut through the metal bars. He picked up Muhammad, looked at Jessica, and mouthed the words follow me.
Muhammad wasn’t happy about being taken away from the pillows, and when Decker hoisted him through the window and set him down on the ground in the alley, he spit out his pacifier and started to cry.
Decker crawled through the window, picked up the pacifier from the dirt with one hand and the boy with the other, and sprinted to the front of the house. He saw Holtz’s black Jaguar parked next to his Explorer. Without slowing down, he yanked open the driver’s side door to the Explorer and slid Muhammad—who was by now having a full-blown tantrum—into the passenger seat. Pulling a knife out from under the driver’s seat, he pivoted so that he was facing the Jag, and then punctured the sidewall of Holtz’s front right tire.
That done, he started up the car and pulled out into the road just as Jessica ran up.
She hopped into the passenger seat and lifted Muhammad—kicking and screaming—onto her lap.
Decker took off in a swirl of dust. Just before cutting a hard right down a side street, he glanced in the rearview mirror—Holtz had run out of the courtyard and was looking right at them.
“Ha! Smoked his ass, didn’t we!” said Decker.
Jessica was too busy with Muhammad to respond; the kid’s tantrum showed no signs of abating.
Keeping one eye on the road, Decker reached down to the floor of the car and retrieved Muhammad’s pacifier. It was covered in gray dust.
He tried to blow the dust off the pacifier, but that didn’t do any good. So he wiped it on his pants. It still looked dirty, so he popped it in his mouth and sucked it clean.
“Dude, here.” He handed the pacifier to Muhammad, who grabbed it eagerly, stuck it in his mouth, and started sucking as if his life depended on it.
22
As Val Rosten escorted him out of the US embassy in Bishkek, Mark announced that he needed to use the bathroom.
“It can’t wait?” asked Rosten.
“No.” Mark pointed to a bathroom just down the hall.
Rosten nodded.
Mark entered the bathroom, but Rosten followed him in. It was a small space—just two urinals and two stalls, one of which was large enough to accommodate a wheelchair. No windows.
Rosten glanced around, as though looking for possible escape routes. He gestured to the urinals. “Be quick. I got a car waiting.”
Mark gestured to the stalls. “It’s not going to be quick.”
Rosten shot Mark a look that fell s
omewhere between confusion and revulsion. “I’ll be right outside the bathroom door. Don’t try my patience.”
Rosten left.
Mark entered the handicapped stall, shut the door, fished his cell phone out of his front pocket, and sat down on the toilet seat without pulling down his pants.
He dialed a number. When Belek, the old Kyrgyz he played narde with every day, picked up, Mark said, “I’m going to need a favor.”
After the bathroom break, Rosten led Mark out of the embassy, and into the parking lot, where a black Mercedes was idling with its front headlights on. Unlike Mark’s Mercedes, which was parked nearby, this was the real deal—a long new S550. Mark recognized it as one of the cars the embassy used for official diplomatic functions.
Two men were already inside. A blond-haired tank of a man in a marine security guard uniform, armed with a waist-holstered pistol, sat in the front passenger seat; a younger guy in khaki slacks and a pinstriped oxford drove. Rosten and Mark got in the back.
“All right, Sava. Where to?”
Mark gave the driver the address for his condo.
It was quiet and warm inside the car, and the leather seats were comfortable. But Mark could tell it was windy outside by the way the people on the dark streets were walking with their heads down and their hands tucked into their coat pockets.
“Turn here,” he said, when the black silhouette of the hospital opposite his condo loomed before them. A few patients bundled in heavy overcoats were wandering around the dimly lit park behind the black hospital gates. “Stop at the building up on the left, next to the green door.”
“So you had the kid at your place this whole time?”
“No, he’s not here.”
“Where is he?”
“At a safe house in Bishkek. But I won’t be able to get him until I retrieve my iPod from my place.”
“What do you need your iPod for?”
“The people I hired to guard Muhammad won’t recognize me. But they’ve been told to release the child to anyone who provides the proper codes.”
“Codes that are stored on this iPod?”