by Dan Mayland
Delhi, India
Monkeys!
Rad opened his eyes and knew instantly that that was what had woken him up. He looked at the digital clock on the end table next to the bed. It read two thirty p.m. He’d only been asleep for an hour.
He could hear those dirty cocksuckers in the back garden, chattering, screeching, scurrying up walls like demonic rats, racing after each other across electrical wires…
The back door. He had to close it.
Rad sprang out bed and walked quickly to the door. Before closing it, he listened for a moment, surprised by the silence that had suddenly descended. Just as he was wondering where the monkeys had gone, a black figure crashed through the screen door and plowed into him, knocking him to the floor.
At first Rad thought it was a crazed monkey. He began to fight it off with his hands, kicking and punching blindly. However, when he tried to scream, a human hand closed over his mouth. He bit the hand, but then felt a stab of pain that felt as though someone had stuck a needle into his thigh. Twisting as hard as he could, he tried to shake his leg free.
A boot came down on his shinbone, and he heard a loud crack. Seconds later, a woozy feeling washed over him and he passed out.
40
Bahrain
Mark was in a taxi, speeding into Manama on King Faisal Highway when Rosten called.
“I got some intel on the nanny.”
“I’m listening,” said Mark.
“She’s fifty-six years old. We tapped her credit card history. Lots of purchases in Riffa. Then three days ago we have one purchase at an airport coffee shop in Dubai. Two days ago, a purchase at a clothing store in Dubai. After that, nothing.”
“Can you call Dubai station, ask them to track her down?”
“This was a highly compartmentalized op. Dubai station isn’t in the loop.”
“You can’t ask them just to track a name?”
“Not without getting permission from the DNCS, and I doubt he’d give it.” The DNCS was the director of the National Clandestine Service, which was the division of the CIA that did the actual spying.
“What else?”
“Nothing for now. I have a call in to naval intelligence here in Bahrain, though. They’ve been in on this from the beginning—”
“Oh, great.”
As chief of station/Azerbaijan, Mark had sometimes worked with military intelligence officers. To a man, they’d been decent and earnest. But often it was just a case of too many cooks in the kitchen.
“Frankly,” said Rosten, “with all the construction jobs the navy’s been bidding out to the Bahrainis, naval intelligence has got far better contacts with the royals than we do. I’ll let you know when and if I hear anything more. Have you moved your people in place to transfer the kid?”
“I’m working on it.”
“Don’t screw me on this, Sava.”
Mark clicked off his prepaid phone. Can’t even run the name of Kalila Safi by Dubai station. We’ll see about that.
Mark was fast approaching the skyscrapers of downtown Manama. To his right, a road construction project was underway on what used to be the site of a three-hundred-foot monument that paid homage to Bahrain’s ancient pearl-fishing industry—a monument the government tore down after it became a rallying point for Shia protests. To his left lay the Persian Gulf.
As traffic slowed where an onramp joined the highway, a dark blue Chevy tried to cut in front of them. Shaking his fist, the taxi driver muttered some curse in Arabic and wouldn’t give way.
Mark pulled out his iPod and searched his Contacts folder for the name of someone he used to work with at the CIA—Larry Bowlan. Bowlan, he recalled, worked at the consulate in Dubai. He might be able to track down Kalila Safi.
Suddenly a red Ford Taurus cut in front of him. Glancing at the Taurus’s rearview mirror, Mark locked eyes with the driver for a brief moment and realized he had a problem. Because he was ninety percent sure that the guy behind the wheel of the Taurus was the older of the two Saudis who’d tried to kidnap Muhammad back in Kyrgyzstan.
Mark had assumed the Bahrainis had been tracking him ever since his visit to Riffa. But unless he backed out of delivering Muhammad the next day, he’d figured they wouldn’t bother him. He doubted, though, that he’d get the same hands-off treatment from the Saudi in the Taurus.
He looked behind him. The Chevy sedan that had tried to cut him off was now tailgating.
Mark pocketed his iPod. They were approaching an exit off to the right. When they’d almost passed it, he leaned over and yanked hard on the steering wheel, sending the taxi screeching off the highway onto the exit ramp.
The driver fought for control of the steering wheel, which Mark released as soon as they were on the exit ramp.
Yelling at him in Arabic, the cabbie pulled to a stop.
Mark pointed behind him. “Problem!” he said, speaking English.
The guy in the Chevy sedan behind them hadn’t been able to react fast enough to make the exit ramp, but he was now backing up on the shoulder of the highway.
Mark fished a twenty-dinar note out of his front pocket. “Go,” he said, handing the money over. “Government Avenue.”
The cabbie looked at the money, and then at Mark. Government Avenue was a busy thoroughfare that cut through the old part of Manama.
“Min fadlak,” Mark added. Please.
The cabbie pocketed the money and started driving, though not as fast as Mark would have liked. They passed a big open parking lot and a Papa John’s, then cruised through an intersection, but before merging onto Government Avenue, heavy traffic forced them to stop behind a pink, blue, and white conversion van emblazoned with the words ICE CREAM FRUITY.
Mark jumped out. Fifty feet or so behind him, a man wearing sandals, jeans, and a white shirt burst out of the front passenger door of the Chevy.
Mark ran across Government Avenue, then turned down a narrow street. He was in a pedestrian-only district packed with little shops, an old part of Manama. One of the store owners had wheeled a rack of thawb robes out into the street for display. Without breaking stride, Mark pulled two twenty-dinar bills out of his pocket, handed the money—as though it were a relay baton—to a surprised-looking merchant, and grabbed one of the robes off the rack. Still walking quickly, he slipped it over his head and buttoned it up tight, right up to the priest-like collar.
From behind him came the sound of several men running on pavement. Mark turned left down another alley-like street, speed-purchased a Yasser Arafat–style kaffiyeh headdress from a street merchant who’d spread his wares all over a carpet, and arranged the kaffiyeh on his head as he walked.
In front of him, a man in dark slacks and sandals scanned the crowd. Though it wasn’t the same guy who’d jumped out of the Chevy, or the Saudi Mark had recognized, he didn’t look as though he was there to shop.
Mark spied a no-frills restaurant on his right; old men and young couples were sitting outside on chairs constructed of rough wood planks that had been painted bright blue. Mark slid into an open seat, positioned himself so that he was facing away from the street, and got the attention of a bored-looking teenage waiter. When the kid approached, Mark pointed to a Coca-Cola bottle on an adjacent table and held up one finger.
The kid brought the Coke, which came in a thick recyclable bottle that looked as if it had been in use since the 1950s. Mark took a sip, then a few deep breaths, listening more than looking. He didn’t hear footsteps running in the streets. The conversation behind him sounded normal.
The damn Saudis. What had they been up to? Why try to take him now? Had his visit to the teacher rattled them?
It must have.
A few older men sat smoking nearby, their elbows resting on plastic sheeting that had been stretched tight over the tabletops and stapled to the undersides. They wore thawbs like Mark’s, only theirs were unbuttoned at the neck, revealing T-shirts underneath.
Mark looked at the creases on the men’s faces. He imagined their families. Bahr
ain was their home, not his. They should be dealing with Muhammad.
A big part of him wanted to go back to the Sheraton, e-mail Decker with instructions on how to hand Muhammad over to the Bahrainis, take a long hot shower, and then settle in for the evening at the bar.
He took a sip of his Coke, and thought of Daria. No, he’d see this through to the end. He’d figure out what was up with this damn nanny, then make a decision about the best course of action.
Mark pulled out one of his prepaid phones. It was time to call Larry Bowlan.
41
While Ted Kaufman had been Mark’s last boss at the CIA, Larry Bowlan had been his first.
They’d met in Tbilisi, Georgia, just before the fall of the Soviet Union. Mark had been studying abroad on a Fulbright scholarship, having a blast living with his Russian girlfriend. Bowlan had been a middle-aged, Yale-educated CIA operations officer looking to expose a mole that had infiltrated an anti-Soviet student group. Mark’s decision to help Bowlan had led to his being kidnapped, interrogated, and tortured by the KGB. It had been a brutal introduction to the intelligence game.
Mark considered that history for a moment, then called the main number for the US consulate in Dubai and asked for the visa processing department.
His call was transferred and a woman picked up. Mark told her who he was trying to reach, adding, “He’s old. And cranky. White hair.”
“Yeah, I know him. And who are you?”
“Just tell him it’s an old friend from Tbilisi. He’ll know who it is.”
An exasperated sigh, then, “Hold on.”
A minute later, Mark heard whispers:
Who is it?
He wouldn’t say.
Jesus, I don’t have time for this crap.
Quiet, he’s on the line.
Someone grabbed the phone. A couple of buttons beeped, as if someone had pushed them by mistake.
“Who is this?”
The voice on the phone was gravelly and rough, the result of too many cigarettes over too many years. Mark could picture his former boss—the big Adam’s apple, the wrinkled cheeks, the thin red booze lines clustered around his nose…
“Hey, Larry.”
A pause, then, “Oh, Christ.”
“I need a favor.”
“Of course you do, why else would you call?”
“I’m close by, in Bahrain.”
“On a job?”
“Of sorts.”
Bowlan sighed. It sounded to Mark like a sigh of envy.
His old boss had retired at the age of sixty-five—Mark had sent him a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue as a send-off—then rejoined the Agency at the age of sixty-six, having failed miserably at being a retiree. And when he’d been hired back, it hadn’t been at his high-ranking GS-14 civil service pay level—Larry liked his drink too much for that—but instead as a GS-9 who took orders from a CIA pencil-pusher half his age.
Mark said, “I’m looking for a fifty-six-year-old woman who flew into Dubai three days ago. Can you search the visa records?”
Last Mark had heard, one of Bowlan’s jobs at the consulate was to help the CIA help the United Arab Emirates vet suspicious visa applications.
“Is she a Bahraini?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, if she’s Bahraini or from one of the other Gulf states, she wouldn’t need a visa so there won’t be visa records.”
“Would you have access to general entry records?”
“Yes, but the searches are tracked. If I do an unauthorized search and it’s questioned—which it will be—I’ll lose my job. You ever hear of privacy regulations, Sava?”
“This is important. And we have history.”
“Yeah, I know. That’s what you said last time you called. And I delivered for you because of that history. I figure now we’re even.”
“Larry.”
“I could lose my job, Mark. Granted, it’s a crap job, but it’s the only one I’ve got.”
Behind him, Mark heard the sound of a pot clanging as it hit the floor. A second later, a bearded twentysomething guy with a cell phone pushed past a waiter who’d been heading toward the kitchen to investigate the sound.
The bearded guy eyed Mark, then spoke into his cell phone.
“Damn, Larry, I gotta blow. I’ll call you right back. Stay at this number.”
Mark hung up on Bowlan and stood up, prepared to run, but the bearded guy pocketed his cell phone with one hand and pulled out a gun with the other.
“Stop!”
The bearded guy pulled a badge out of his back pocket and held it up not only for Mark to see, but for the surrounding spectators as well. The badge identified him as a member of the Bahraini National Security Agency. Mark knew them as the mukhabarat, or secret police. “You’re coming with us.”
Us? thought Mark. He glanced behind him. Two more guys had just run up.
The Saudi who’d tried to abduct Muhammad in Kyrgyzstan had a pistol drawn. Mark stared at him.
As if reading Mark’s mind, the Saudi said in Turkish, “Down here, we Bahrainis and Saudis all work together.”
Mark raised his hands in the air. “All right then. Let’s get this done.”
42
Mark was marched out through the Bab al-Bahrain, an old arched gateway that led from the shopping district to Government Avenue. Five armed men encircled him, one of whom held his elbow.
The blue Chevy was parked in a nearby roundabout behind a line of taxis. Mark was stuffed into the back seat, next to another armed man.
They drove west out of the city along King Faisal Highway, then south through a chaos of broken roads and graffiti-scarred buildings, then through Riffa. Mark thought maybe he was going to be taken back to the house of the old man who’d claimed to be Muhammad’s great uncle, but when the turnoff came they kept driving.
Riffa was on a bit of a plateau—fifty feet or so above sea level—which was high ground for Bahrain. So when they exited the city, Mark could see the bleak southern desert sprawled out below them in the hazy distance.
He could also see, right on the edge of the desert, what looked like a golf club.
The Royal Golf Club wasn’t actually limited to royalty.
Mark discovered that upon entering the place and observing all the well-dressed pasty-white Westerners milling around. Nor, however, was it open to the public—that much was also clear. There was too much marble and reflective glass, too many leather couches, pleasant vistas, and objets d’art for that. A private country club, he concluded—with membership fees set high enough to keep the undesirables at bay.
He was led by one of his abductors into a nearly empty dining area that looked out over the golf course. The contrast between the edge of the southern desert—where little grew other than occasional patches of sad scrub brush—and the brilliant green fairways was striking. All the more so because a breeze was blowing, lifting up sand from the desert and swirling it around in a haze that reminded Mark of 1930s dust-bowl photos.
Seated at a table near a window was a man Mark guessed to be in his early sixties. He wore a dark gray suit with a forest-green tie, though he’d removed his suit jacket. His skin was olive toned and his dark hair was flecked with gray, as was his goatee. He had a cup of coffee and an unopened menu in front of him.
He gestured to the chair opposite his own with an open palm. “Please.”
Mark took a seat.
The man took a sip of his coffee, used the napkin on his lap to wipe his mouth, then said, “You may call me Saeed.”
Mark didn’t respond.
Saeed continued, “And you, I believe, are Mark Sava.” He spoke English, but with a heavy Arab accent. His voice was deep, his tone serious.
“What do you want?”
“I’m with Saudi intelligence.” Saeed spoke flatly. “What I want is for you to do what you have already promised to do. To hand over the child.”
At first, because Saeed was seated, Mark hadn’t noticed what a big man
he was. But he did now. Saeed’s arms were remarkably long, his shoulders unusually wide. Not in a muscular way, or Mark would have noticed right away; it was simply as though a normal deskbound person had been enlarged by fifty percent.
Saeed added, “We’re working with the Bahrainis on this.”
“I’ve already arranged to hand over the child tomorrow. First thing in the morning. My men are retrieving him and bringing him to Bishkek as we speak.”
“So I’ve heard. And I have also heard that you have promised as much to your friends at the CIA. But I’m not convinced you intend to meet your obligation.”
“Now why would you think that?”
“Because I have observed that you have been going to places you shouldn’t be going, and asking questions you shouldn’t be asking, rather than making plans for this transfer in Bishkek.”
They stared at each other for a long moment. Mark turned his gaze to the row of windows that looked out over a nearby fairway. A man in Bermuda shorts was swinging a driver as his golf partner and a caddie waited behind him. It made Mark think of the band that kept playing while the Titanic was sinking.
This place, he thought.
Saeed said, “I brought you here to give you an opportunity.”
“An opportunity.”
“To expedite the return of the child.” Saeed gestured to a menu that lay on the table. “You make whatever calls you need to make, we eat a civilized meal while waiting for the transfer to occur between our respective associates. After it does, you leave to live your life as you wish.”
Choosing his words carefully, Mark said, “While I thank you for that opportunity, as I said, I have already given the authorization for the child to be brought to Bishkek. At this point, the process cannot be expedited.”
Saeed folded his hands carefully in his lap and leaned forward in his chair. He did so in a way that said, I’m going to pretend to be pleasant to you now, little man, but we both know I could crush you like a bug and I will do so if I need to.
“Let me explain something about the Middle East to you, Mr. Sava. It’s not like in the United States. Here, allegiance is not to country. It is to family and tribe.”