The Leveling

by Dan Mayland

  60

  Washington, DC

  THE PRESIDENT OFTEN ate a light dinner at his desk, but tonight he found the veneer of normalcy—a glass of whole milk, a chicken salad sandwich on whole wheat bread, and a bowl of baby carrots—to be strangely unsettling.

  Get outside, take a walk. You’ll think better.

  He looked out the window to the white blossoms on the crabapple trees in the Rose Garden. The tulips were in full bloom, and there were hundreds of them, brilliant yellows and reds. Spring was his favorite time of year in Washington, he thought.

  The pressure was getting to him. He could feel it in his chest and in the way he felt weak in his joints. Perhaps his critics were right, perhaps he was too old to be president.

  His chief of staff appeared at the door, clipboard in hand.

  “Hello, Patty.”

  “Mr. President.”

  “How you holding up?”

  “I’m holding. I’ve cleared your original schedule as much as possible so that you can chair the NSC planning meetings, but you’re going to need to meet with the president of Ghana at one tomorrow or people are going to get suspicious that something’s up.”

  “Fine.”

  The chief of staff handed the president a revised schedule for the next twenty-four hours. He was relieved to see that four hours had been blocked off for him to sleep.

  “We’ll also need to carve out time to work on your address to the nation. Simmons will have a draft ready by three.”

  “Schedule the meeting with Simmons for eleven tonight and push back the call to Jouanneau,” he said, referring to the president of France. “Have you gotten final clearance for the timing of the address from CENTCOM?”

  “It was my wakeup call this morning. We’re good for three tomorrow afternoon.”

  61

  Tehran, Iran

  DARIA MADE A few quick turns, rocketed down a long hill, made another turn, and then parked right behind yet another Paykan, which she and Mark transferred into.

  “One of the dogs found me,” Mark said, struggling to catch his breath as Daria sped down a narrow alley, brushing within inches of parked cars.

  “I saw.”

  “I had to spray him.”

  The dog was just another victim, thought Mark. It was stupid to feel that kind of sympathy, he knew, but he liked dogs, and he was sick of watching innocent bystanders, be they dogs or people, being hurt by events they didn’t understand and couldn’t control.

  He turned his attention to Decker’s gear bag. It was black and coated with a thin layer of rubber. He placed it on his lap and quickly unzipped it.

  Inside was a Canon SLR camera with an enormous telephoto lens, a tin of Skoal Straight chewing tobacco, a Leatherman pocket tool, a digital voice recorder, a tangle of high-gauge wires, a directional microphone, a couple of LED penlights, spare batteries, spare SD memory cards for the recorder and the camera, an RFID reader that looked like it had been modified to expand its range, and a wedge of cheese that stank.

  The can of chewing tobacco had a price sticker on it—Mt. Dustan General Store, $5.59.

  Mark exhaled and closed his eyes for a half second. That store was located in northern New Hampshire—at a place called Wentworth Location, which wasn’t even really an actual town, just a name on the map. Decker had a brother who would buy twenty tins of dip at a time at Mt. Dustan’s and airmail them to whatever foreign backwater Decker happened to be in.

  Mark remembered when Decker had stayed with him in Baku. Beer bottles, left on the counter half-filled with dip spit, had been an issue.

  As he tossed the tin of dip to the floor, he wondered whether he was looking at the belongings of a dead person.

  “If anyone could survive, it would be John,” said Daria, reading his thoughts.

  That’s what they always said about those super-fit guys who tried to climb Everest, or sail around the world, countered Mark in his head. The rescuers never wanted to give up hope because the people they were searching for were the best of the best. But nine times out of ten, the super-fit guy was still found dead. Everyone had their limits.

  “Keep driving while I assess the rest of this,” he said. “I’ll be quick.”

  The digital camera had over five hundred high-resolution still pictures, chronicling every step of Decker and Alty’s journey as they followed the marked money from downtown Ashgabat to Tehran. Mark speed-clicked through them. There were several of Li Zemin handing a briefcase to Amir Bayat in Mashhad. A series of what Mark believed to be Amir Bayat’s house in Tehran followed, then of Ayatollah Bayat’s gated estate in northern Tehran. Decker had taken close-up shots of street signs and house numbers along the way, pinning down exact locations.

  Some were photos that Alty—a slender, baby-faced kid with a bowl-shaped haircut—and Decker had taken of themselves: there they were in front of the gates of the Imam Reza shrine complex, then in front of the Azadi Tower in downtown Tehran, then in front of the gates of Tehran University, looking like tourists…

  It was as though the pair had been on a low-budget backpacking excursion, yukking it up the whole way.

  “Jesus, Deck.”

  Daria turned onto a highway, slowed down to the speed limit, and picked up the digital recorder. “There’s a decent amount of voice data on this thing,” she said, after giving it a cursory look.

  She played the earliest file. At the start of it, Decker explained that the recording was made in Mashhad, at the Ali Qapu Hotel. Apparently he’d bugged Amir Bayat’s room.

  Deck’s voice was cool and professional.

  There were extended phone conversations, primarily Amir Bayat speaking with his news department back in Tehran and calls to room service…Daria translated the Farsi to English as she drove. Mark kept studying the cache of digital photos.

  The final batch of digital recordings, according to Decker’s voice-over, was from Ayatollah Bayat’s mansion in northern Tehran.

  “That’s what the wires holding Decker’s gear bag in the chimney were for,” said Mark. “They were microphone wires. Decker was bugging the place through the chimneys.”

  The very last recording consisted of a short conversation between a man who Mark and Daria decided must have been Ayatollah Bayat and a woman they guessed was his wife. The two spoke formally about what meal the wife should prepare for dinner the following evening, when guests were expected.

  The breakthrough came after a lull in the conversation, when Ayatollah Bayat’s wife announced, “Amir has arrived.”

  Ayatollah Bayat and his brother greeted each other, and for over a half hour they talked politics, mostly deliberating over how a young ayatollah seeking an appointment to the Guardian Council could be thwarted. Then a door closed. After an extended silence, they finally got down to business.

  Khorasani suspects something.

  Why do you say this?

  The intelligence ministry is investigating Hashemi.

  For what?

  He purchased a new car. A Peugeot 405, and he paid in cash.

  The fool.

  He was told to wait to use the payments.

  This is the problem with involving men like Hashemi.

  But I had no choice. He was my only link to the Damascus katsa.

  Can the payments be traced to you?

  I never communicated with him directly.

  Shirazi can stall the investigation until the Americans act.

  I received word that matériel was moved from Natanz and Fordo yesterday. And I confirmed that Khorasani’s daughter will remain hidden until she completes her religious studies. It will not matter how many spies the Americans and the Israelis send to Kish. They will learn nothing.

  Khorasani will be in your debt.

  Yes, but he must never—

  Ayatollah Bayat’s wife returned, and the conversation between the brothers ended.

  Mark hadn’t understood much of what was said. He didn’t know who Hashemi was, nor Shirazi. He knew the ment
ion of Natanz and Fordo were likely references to the nuclear facilities associated with those towns, but he didn’t know what it meant that matériel had been moved. He knew that a katsa probably referred to an Israeli intelligence officer, but had no idea what kind of link the Bayat brothers were talking about.

  As a station chief, though, he’d rarely been able to see the whole picture—there were usually too many people, too many moving pieces, too many motives—and he’d grown used to operating with fragments of information. Men and governments were always plotting and scheming. Trying to understand it all was pointless.

  To get anything done, he’d had to set aside all that he didn’t understand and focus on the tiny sliver that he did.

  And what he now knew was that Ayatollah Bayat and his brother Amir were taking money from the Guoanbu in Turkmenistan and giving money to some Iranian named Hashemi, and that these actions were part of some larger scheme that was going on behind the back of their supreme leader—Ayatollah Khorasani.

  In Iran, scheming behind the back of a man like Khorasani could lead to being shot by a firing squad and having your body dumped in an unmarked grave.

  Or it could leave you vulnerable to blackmail.

  “Turn around,” said Mark.

  “Where are we going?”

  They were going to find out once and for all whether Decker was alive, thought Mark. He doubted it—Decker wouldn’t have abandoned all his equipment if he hadn’t been in a hell of a pinch—but they’d come this far. Mark would see it through to the end.

  “Ayatollah Bayat’s estate is going to be in lockdown mode,” he said. “So let’s go see if his brother Amir is home.”

  Mark easily scaled the wall surrounding the modest two-story house and dropped silently into a back garden that was maybe fifteen feet wide by twenty feet long. He walked down a short gravel path, past a cracked birdbath and a dwarf orange tree.

  In the back of the house was a sliding glass door. As he crow-barred it open, the wood frame snapped with a single loud crack. No alarm sounded.

  “Going in.” He spoke to Daria over the cell phone connection they’d established; he wore an earpiece and had his phone in his pocket.

  Stepping into the living room, he used a penlight to illuminate children’s toys scattered around a Persian carpet. There was a fuzzy rocking horse, a sit-and-spin baby minder, a foam soccer ball, little dolls of Muslim women wearing black headscarves, a plastic scimitar…

  To his left was a modern kitchen, with stainless steel appliances arranged neatly on a white tile countertop. A tile mosaic depicting the martyrdom of Hussein—the prophet Muhammad’s grandson—hung on a far wall.

  He placed Decker’s gear bag on the countertop and pulled out the digital recorder. Then he turned up the volume as high as it would go and pushed Play.

  The voices of the Bayat brothers boomed out.

  Khorasani suspects something.

  Why do you say this?

  The intelligence ministry is investigating Hashemi.

  For what?

  He purchased a new car. A Peugeot 405, and he paid in cash.

  The fool.

  He was told to wait to use the payments.

  This is the problem with involving men like Hashemi.

  But I had no choice. He was my only link to the Damascus—

  Mark heard noises upstairs—a young boy calling out for his mother, and then Amir Bayat, whose voice Mark recognized because it was also playing on the digital recorder.

  Shirazi can stall the investigation until the Americans act.

  I received word that matériel was moved from Natanz and Fordo yesterday. And I confirmed that Khorasani’s daughter—

  “Who is this! Who dares to violate my home!”

  The words were spoken in Farsi, but loud enough for Daria to hear them over the cell phone connection. She translated them for Mark.

  A flurry of footsteps sounded, as though the whole family were gathering at the top of the steps.

  A woman, sounding confused, called down with a question that Mark couldn’t understand and Daria couldn’t hear.

  Mark’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness by then, and he recognized Amir Bayat the second he saw the Iranian bounding down the stairs. He was of average height but considerable girth. In all of Decker’s photos, Amir had had been wearing his black turban. Now his stringy hair flopped down over his forehead in a tangled mess. His ears were swollen and bulbous, marking him as a former wrestler.

  The voices on the tape ended. Mark pushed Play again.

  Amir shouted something in Farsi. Daria, translating, said, “If the Ministry of Intelligence has something they wish to speak to me about, have the courage to do it in the light of day.”

  Mark shined his penlight at Amir Bayat. Speaking slowly in Farsi, he repeated the words Daria had taught him to say. “Do you speak Azeri? Or English?”

  “Who are you?” The words, spoken in passable Azeri, came out as a snarl.

  Replying in Azeri, Mark said, “I’m not here from the Ministry of Intelligence.”

  Amir squinted at the light. “I will not stand for this violation. Turn this noise off, this false recording you have concocted, this—”

  A woman—Amir’s wife, Mark presumed—appeared at the top of the steps in a gown. Her hair was uncovered. She said something in Farsi. The only word Mark understood was police.

  Amir’s response sounded something like no.

  “What you are hearing are copies of the originals,” said Mark. “If something happens to me, these digital recordings will be e-mailed to the Ministry of Intelligence.”

  One of Bayat’s children began to cry. Amir’s wife said something about the police again.

  To Mark, Amir said, “Who are you?”

  “The man you tried to have killed in Baku.”

  “Sava.”

  “Yes.”

  “Khorasani would approve of what we are doing if he knew.”

  “But he doesn’t know, and he hasn’t approved it.”

  Amir Bayat had no answer to that.

  Mark said, “I have a demand.”

  “You have violated my home. You have looked upon my wife. You have brought my children to tears. You will pay for this.”

  Indeed, all of Amir’s children now seemed to be crying. It occurred to Mark that he was a monster to them.

  “If you meet my demand, I will instruct my colleagues to destroy the evidence I have against you.”

  Bayat yelled something to his wife. Moments later, it sounded to Mark as though the kids were being herded into a room upstairs.

  Mark pulled out Decker’s camera and began to show Bayat the photos on the LCD screen. When he got to the ones that showed Bayat receiving a briefcase from a Chinese man on the streets of Mashhad, he zoomed in on the faces. “You were followed from the moment you took the money. Your hotel rooms and phones were bugged. Everything you said was recorded.”

  Amir’s face was creased with worry.

  “The good news for you,” said Mark, “is that my only demand is that you release the American you captured three days ago. He’s my colleague.”

  “I know not of whom you speak.”

  “I think you do. He’s almost two meters tall. Short hair, originally blond, dyed brown. Muscular.”

  “I do not.”

  “Then I will need to speak with your brother.”

  “I have several brothers.”

  Mark clicked through the photos on the digital camera until he came to the one that Decker had taken of Ayatollah Bayat entering the mansion in north Tehran. “This brother. The brother you are speaking to on the tape. The brother who wound up with the money from the Chinese. The brother who lives in the house where you found my colleague. The brother who is scheming behind the back of your supreme leader. That fucking brother.”

  A long silence passed.

  “I can’t guarantee he will see you,” said Amir.

  “Oh, I think he will.”

  Over hi
s cell phone earpiece, Mark heard Daria say, “The house is being watched. Get out.”

  “Who is it?”

  “I don’t know. A car parked opposite the house just started up and drove away. Someone must have been inside it for the whole time I’ve been here. Thirty seconds later another car pulled into the open spot. No one’s gotten out of that car yet.”

  “Have they seen you?”

  “I don’t think so. I’m behind them by about a hundred yards.”

  “Did they see me hop the wall?”

  “Maybe.”

  “They look like they’re planning a takedown?”

  “No, but—”

  “I got you. We’re outta here.”

  62

  Tehran, Iran

  MARK AND AMIR Bayat sped through the gates of Ayatollah Bayat’s estate in north Tehran, waved through with barely a glance from the guards out front. Amir parked his green Peugeot at the base of the wide marble steps that led to the entrance. By now it was almost dawn.

  They’d been followed on the way over. Daria had picked out the car right away and stayed behind it. Mark guessed it was the Iranian intelligence ministry closing in.

  There were more guards on duty at the ayatollah’s mansion than there had been the night before. Yellow police tape was strung up on the section of fence that Daria had rammed into.

  Amir let himself into the front foyer, removed his worn leather loafers, and slipped into a pair of cheap plastic house sandals. Mark didn’t like the thought of leaving himself vulnerable, and he didn’t care if he insulted anyone, so he left his shoes on.

  He was led to a room not far from the front door. It was a shabby place, with cracked plaster walls. Sticks of incense were kept burning in one corner next to photos of a few young soldiers, boys really, who—according the words at the base of the photos—had died in the Iran-Iraq War. After a while, a tiny woman who took baby steps under her black chador set down a bowl of apples and oranges on a nearby coffee table.

  Mark sat cross-legged on the floor, across from Amir Bayat.

  “He will come.”

  “When?” said Mark.