by Dan Mayland
As he walked back to his Mercedes, the boy began to cry and squirm. Not a good situation, thought Mark. Not a good situation at all. He saw the boy turn and look back toward the Saudis. Screw it, thought Mark. Regardless of what he’d promised Daria, he was going to let the kid decide.
He put the boy down on the ground and stroked the child’s head while keeping the rifle pointed in the direction of the Saudis.
“Hey buddy, I’m not going to hurt you. We’ll sort this all out.” Mark spoke Kyrgyz because he didn’t know how to console the boy in Arabic. “If you want to stay with these men, you can.” Turning to the Saudis, Mark said, “Talk to him. If you guys are his family and I think he wants to go with you, I’ll let him.”
Though Mark was no longer holding the boy, the child made no move to approach the Saudis. Instead, he stood there crying, looking more desperate and scared than ever.
The Saudi with the shot foot called out to the boy in a soothing voice. Mark couldn’t understand what was said, but the boy didn’t appear to be persuaded. If anything, he leaned in closer to Mark. Then the Saudi spoke more rapidly in Arabic. The boy remained unconvinced. When the Saudi’s tone grew harsh, prompting the boy to cry even harder, Mark leaned down, picked the kid back up, and walked to his Mercedes.
Before setting the boy down in the car, Mark opened the trunk. Inside was a first aid kit that Daria had bought him a few months ago. She’d put it in his trunk along with a wool blanket and a spare flashlight. Mark, while appreciating the kindhearted gesture, had thought it a little overkill. The hunting rifle was the only emergency item he’d packed.
Now, however, he was glad for the first aid kit. He dropped it to the ground.
“Stay down until I’m out of sight.” Looking at the Saudi with the shot foot, he said, “When you do get up, you’ll find some bandages in this kit. I’m going to take the child now, but if you really are here on behalf of his family, I suggest you make your case to the orphanage. The people who run it won’t know where I am, but I’ll check in with them. If you’re telling the truth, then I’ll make arrangements for a legal transfer.”
5
“It was Holtz!” said Daria. She called as Mark was pulling away from the Saudis. Bruce Holtz was the owner of Central Asian Information Networks—or CAIN, for short—the spies-for-hire firm that Mark had been working with for the past seven months. “He brought the boy to the orphanage. Yesterday. He just dumped him at the front desk.”
“Why?”
“You tell me.”
“Ah…”
“What’s that noise?”
“I have the boy. He’s crying—”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“I was going to—”
“I told you to call me as soon as you—”
“Two minutes, that’s how long I’ve had him. Two minutes. And you know, I’m trying to be nice to him, but he’s upset and… Daria, I don’t like this. I really don’t like this.”
Mark explained how he’d taken the child away from the Saudis. At gunpoint. He had to speak loudly so that he could be heard over the boy’s crying. “Wasn’t a good scene. And, you know, maybe the reason the kid only speaks Arabic is because he’s a Saudi. Maybe those guys really were here to take him back to his family.”
“Is he OK?”
“He’s not happy, but he doesn’t seem hurt. He’s right next to me. I’m looking at him now.” Mark glanced at the child sitting next to him. He was a bit pudgy, in a baby-fat sort of way, with cheeks that were healthy and full. His baby teeth were straight and white and he had a cute round nose. Though scared and confused at the moment, he appeared well cared for. Mark tried to muster a friendly smile, but the boy was looking down at his clenched fists as he cried. “We’re headed back toward Bishkek.”
“You have him in the front seat?”
“Yeah.”
“Is he wearing a seat belt?”
“Ah, no.”
“He should be in the back seat at least.”
Daria sounded flustered.
“You know, I’m kind of trying to prioritize what I worry about right now.”
“If you get in an accident—”
“I’m not gonna get in an accident. Talk to me about Holtz.”
“When I asked Nazira how the boy—”
“Does he have a name?”
“Muhammad.”
“Great, that should help us identify him.”
Muhammad was the most popular boys’ name in the world.
“When I asked Nazira how Muhammad came to the orphanage, she told me a big American dropped him off yesterday. She said he was wearing a belt buckle in the shape of a football helmet. And that he had a goatee. And—”
“OK, that’s Holtz.”
“One of us has to call him.”
“Maybe I should handle it,” said Mark. Before starting her orphanage project, Daria had worked briefly for Holtz, and it hadn’t gone well. “I’m kind of headed his way anyway.”
CAIN’s headquarters was located at Manas, a major US air base just north of Bishkek.
“I don’t want Holtz anywhere near Muhammad.”
“Then hustle back to Bishkek, and you take Muhammad while I meet with Holtz. Besides, the boy needs someone who can understand him and I’m not doing so well on that front.”
Daria wasn’t fluent in Arabic, but Mark was certain she could do better than he was managing to do. He glanced at Muhammad again, who was now twisting his shirt up into his fists.
Mark didn’t connect with kids the way Daria did. He had no experience with them and had no idea how to put them at ease. But he wanted someone to put Muhammad at ease. No little kid should be scared; no little kid should have to get shuffled from an orphanage to a cynical middle-aged spy with a beat-up car, a two-day beard, and a gun.
“All right,” said Daria. “I’m already halfway there, probably just a little bit behind you. Meet at our place?”
“I’ll be there.”
6
Kyrgyzstan
Muhammad started crying when he was handed off to Daria, but Mark was pretty sure the boy would warm up to her. Either way, he figured Daria was the child’s best option at this point. After making the transfer, he drove to the White House because he’d been told Bruce Holtz would be there.
The White House in downtown Bishkek was similar to the White House in Washington, DC, in that it housed the office of the president, was open to anyone willing to make a large political donation, and was, in fact, white. In the Kyrgyz version, however, it was because the Soviets had glued white-marble tiles all over its clunky concrete frame.
While waiting for Holtz, who evidently had stopped by to make a strategic political donation, Mark sat outside on a low wall stained with pigeon droppings, across from a long line of thick blue spruce trees. The nearby guards who were manning the west-side service entrance were dressed in army-green camouflage and teal berets. They ignored Mark, and he ignored them.
One of the few good things about Bishkek, Mark thought, was that it was a pretty easygoing town. Sure, they had an occasional political riot here and there, but for the most part, the city had an open, leafy Midwestern-college-town feel to it. The cops and soldiers didn’t bother people much unless they wanted bribes.
Holtz walked out of the building ten minutes after Mark got there. He was a tall man, well over six feet, with broad shoulders that had grown even broader over the past year—the result of fine dining rather than time in the gym. But in a custom-made suit and a tightly cinched belt, Holtz looked like a guy to be reckoned with as he strode confidently across the brick pavers in front of the White House. His goatee, which he’d started growing a month earlier, made him look mean. Which he pretty much was.
Holtz shook Mark’s hand enthusiastically as they met outside the gatehouse.
“Sava! You stalking me, dude?”
“I called the office. Jana told me you had a late meeting here. Figured I’d wait.” Jana was the suspiciousl
y attractive secretary Holtz had recently hired. “Listen, we need to talk.”
“We’re talking now.”
“Tell me about the kid.”
Holtz tried to keep the grin that had been on his face fixed in place, but he couldn’t quite manage it. “You don’t have to speak in code, Sava. There’s no one around us that can hear.”
Mark started to walk toward Panfilov Park, a weedy Soviet-era amusement park located behind the White House. “Tell me about the kid, Bruce. The kid you dropped off at the orphanage. The orphanage Daria’s been helping.”
“Oh. That kid.”
“Yeah. That kid. Muhammad.”
“Why do you ask?”
Mark explained what had happened with the Saudis.
Holtz looked stricken.
“That’s how I feel too,” said Mark. “What’s going on?”
Holtz exhaled. His jaw was set in a hard frown. “Fuckin-a. I knew this was gonna come back to bite me in the ass. I knew it. OK, bring him to me, I’ll deal with it.”
“Oh, yeah. Daria will agree to that, I’m sure.”
“Daria has him?”
“She does now. And you’re the last person she’d turn a child over to.”
“I know you guys are tight, but she can go stuff it.”
“Believe me, she returns the sentiment. Now, what’s up?”
“I’m sorry you got involved in this. I didn’t think—” Holtz shook his head. “Well, what’s done is done. I can’t go into details, but I promise I’ll figure out a way to make it right.”
“You gotta fill me in on this one, Bruce. We’re partners.”
Holtz made a face. “You’re the figurehead executive vice-president of a company I own. We’re not partners.”
“Close enough.”
“No, not close enough. I bust my ass running the company, you collect a check for sitting on your ass. That’s not partners.”
But they were, in a way, thought Mark.
To be sure, Holtz had been doing pretty well on his own—despite his light résumé—before Mark had come on board. With the war in Afghanistan winding down, the CIA had been cutting down on personnel in Central Asia, and the air base at Manas was seeing a lot less traffic. CAIN had been in the right place at the right time, one of the few reasonably reputable private intelligence firms in the region for governments and energy companies to turn to.
But getting Mark on board had resulted in an avalanche of new business for CAIN: evaluating security procedures at oil installations in Kazakhstan, supplying the CIA with a steady stream of capable bodyguards, helping the NSA set up and maintain listening posts throughout Central Asia, helping to translate phone or electronic communications that the CIA or NSA had intercepted… The work was coming in at a frenzied pace. Mark had served in the Caspian region and Central Asia for the better part of twenty years. Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, the war in Nagorno-Karabakh, the war in Abkhazia, the buildup of Manas Air Base in the run-up to the war in Afghanistan… He had the kind of résumé, and the kind of connections throughout the region, that attracted both good clients and good employees. Holtz, by contrast, had only served as a CIA officer for five years before starting CAIN.
Initially, Mark hadn’t been especially enthusiastic about the prospect of entering into a business relationship with Holtz; he didn’t really like Holtz, and he thought it was at best stupid and at worst corrupt the way the CIA bureaucrats in Langley were willing to pay private contractors—often former and maybe future colleagues—ridiculous amounts of money to execute ops that should have been done in-house for a fraction of the cost. But once the money had started to flow his way, he’d gotten over his qualms. And besides, he’d reasoned, as long as the CIA was the dysfunctional, sclerotic bureaucracy that it was, they needed the private contractors.
He’d also come to realize that he liked keeping his feet wet when it came to the intelligence business.
“Call our relationship what you will, Bruce. Bottom line is that I’m not giving the kid back to you until I learn what’s going on.”
And maybe not even then, Mark thought.
They stared at each other for a long moment. Mark was reminded that the history between them hadn’t always been good.
“It was a CIA contract,” said Holtz.
“Who was your contact?”
“Val Rosten.”
That bit of news gave Mark pause. Val Rosten was the highly-regarded deputy chief of the CIA’s Near East and South Asia Division, better known simply as Near East—the bureaucratic fiefdom that covered hot spots like the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Pakistan; any Agency op in Kyrgyzstan should have been handled by the CIA’s Central Eurasia Division, or maybe the CIA’s counterterrorism center in consultation with Central Eurasia.
“I didn’t know you knew him,” said Mark.
“I didn’t, at least not personally. I mean, I’d heard the name of course. But I’ve worked with people who work for Rosten. That’s how CAIN got the recommendation.” Holtz let his last sentence hang there, as though waiting for Mark to say something. “Ah, yeah… so anyway, Rosten calls, tells me that he’s got a problem. He says he’s got this kid on his hands. Son of a Jordanian couple who died in a car accident while doing work for the Agency. The kid was in the car, but survived. So now, because Langley had promised the parents that if anything like this ever happened, they’d make sure the kid—”
“Muhammad.”
“Muhammad,” agreed Holtz. “They’d make sure that Muhammad was cared for.”
They’d come to a roller coaster. The electric-green metal track was rusted, and there were big patches of dirt in between stands of unmowed grass—the Kyrgyz, originally a nomadic people, rarely bothered to waste time on an endeavor as stupid as cutting grass; that’s what cows were for.
All the rides in the park had been shut down for the winter.
“Muhammad didn’t have any other family members in Jordan?”
“Guess not.”
“Huh.”
“That’s why Rosten figured finding someone to adopt him was the best option.”
A string of lights, haphazardly joined together with wire and black electric tape, hung across the brick-paver path. Holtz ducked his head to avoid hitting them.
“Two thousand miles away in Kyrgyzstan?” said Mark.
“Rosten said he wanted the kid out of the region altogether, so that Muhammad could start a completely new life. He didn’t want to take the chance that someone would recognize him and ten, twenty years from now, tell him what happened to his parents.”
“The kid speaks Arabic. He couldn’t have at least been brought to an Arabic-speaking country?”
Mark thought of Muhammad and wondered whether the boy would like this amusement park. Probably. Having walked through the park during the summer months, Mark recalled that most kids seemed to. They appeared to like all the cheerful rip-offs of Disney characters, the bouncy music, the candy… Adults might compare it to the real Disneyland and find the place terribly wanting, but young kids didn’t care.
“I don’t know. Rosten didn’t say anything about that.”
“And you didn’t ask.”
“My asking a lot of questions wasn’t part of the contract.”
7
After eating two bowls of vanilla ice cream and then getting his pull-up diaper changed—Daria had stocked up on food and toddler supplies at a local supermarket—Muhammad appeared to be feeling much better.
Better enough, at least, that he was comfortable roaming around Daria and Mark’s condo, sucking on his new pacifier, playing peek-a-boo with a felt sheep’s-wool carpet that hung on the wall, playing drums with a kitchen spoon and an assortment of pots, and sitting on Daria’s lap as she paged through a Kyrgyz version of The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
Neither Mark nor Daria had invested much effort into furnishing their place—Mark because he viewed their time there as temporary, and Daria because she had been too busy with her orphanage
s—so most of what was there was fair game for Muhammad to climb on or play with. After pulling the cushions off an uncomfortable Russian-made couch in the living room, smearing mucus on the bottom half of the television, and bouncing on the queen-sized bed in the bedroom, he toddled into the office Daria and Mark shared and wreaked havoc by pulling many of their books to the floor.
She did prevent him from chewing on a stack of papers that Mark had been reading and marking up—a former colleague of his had taken a sabbatical year to get his master’s at the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and had asked Mark to review the thesis he’d written on the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Muhammad wasn’t happy about having the thesis taken from him, so as a consolation prize, Daria let him grab a brass Iranian vase off the coffee table, and when he discovered the narde set Mark had brought with him from Azerbaijan, she let him pull it down from a shelf in the living room.
She reasoned that the least she could do for Muhammad—a child who had already borne more than any two-year-old should have to bear—was to make him feel comfortable and loved while he was in her home.
“Careful,” she said in Arabic. “No mouth, OK? Please?”
Daria’s Arabic was limited. But she had three things going for her: the first was that she’d taken an entry-level language course in Arabic when she’d first joined the CIA; the second was that she spoke fluent Farsi, which helped because even though Farsi and Arabic had different roots, Farsi used the Arabic alphabet and had adopted many Arabic words; and the third was that she’d loaded a translation program onto her smartphone.
“No mouth,” Muhammad agreed, in Arabic.
Daria felt a little guilty when Muhammad started banging the circular narde pieces on the board, whacking them down as hard as he could. The narde set was one of the few things Mark had salvaged from Azerbaijan. She felt even more guilty when he threw a couple of pieces across the room, but she figured keeping the boy happy was all that mattered for now. Besides, Mark always smacked the pieces down hard on the board when he played. How much more damage could a two-year-old do?
