Spy for Hire

by Dan Mayland

  She sat down cross-legged on the floor, next to Muhammad, pointed at him, and said his name.

  “Muhammad,” he agreed, as he brought a narde piece to his mouth.

  “No mouth.” Daria gently took his hand away, then pointed to herself and spoke her name. After a few rounds of this, Muhammad figured it out, pointed at Daria and spoke her name, only it came out as Dara instead of Daria.

  “Yes! Daria. My name.”

  Muhammad started scraping the narde board with one of the black pieces.

  Daria typed a question on her phone, then read the translation: “Where are you from, Muhammad?”

  The boy appeared to consider the question for a moment, then stood up. “I go to Anna now.”

  “Anna is where you’re from?”

  “I go to Anna.”

  The boy began to walk around the house, as though searching for something. Not finding what he wanted, he grew increasingly agitated and began to call out, “Anna, Anna, Anna!”

  Daria knelt down in front of him, so that she was at his eye level. “You want Anna?”

  “Yes, Anna!”

  “Why Anna?”

  Muhammad thought for a second. “Anna plays.”

  “Anna plays with Muhammad?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anna is a person?”

  “Anna pretty.”

  “Anna is big like Daria or small like Muhammad?”

  “Big.”

  “Does Anna feed Muhammad?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anna is your mommy?”

  “No.”

  “Where does Anna live?”

  “My house.”

  “Where is your house?”

  “Ba-bay.”

  “I don’t understand ba-bay.”

  “Anna in ba-bay.”

  8

  “Did you at least ask Rosten why he wasn’t using CIA assets here in Bishkek, or anywhere else throughout Central Asia, to place the kid?” asked Mark.

  They’d reached Frunze Street, a wide road that bordered Panfilov Park. A white garbage truck, spewing black diesel smoke, drove by. Behind it was a pickup truck that stank of raw meat, a result of all the beef carcasses that had been stacked high in the open bed. Mark kept walking on the sidewalk.

  “Well, I didn’t ask, but it seemed pretty obvious that Rosten was trying to do right by Muhammad’s parents without making the Agency look like it was running a baby-trafficking op.”

  “And it’s OK for CAIN to run a baby-trafficking op?”

  Mark had always known Holtz was aggressive when it came to his business. He’d known Holtz wasn’t afraid to cut a few corners, maybe make promises he wasn’t sure he could deliver on. But this was breaking new ground.

  “Hey, man. If the CIA could do everything CAIN was willing to do, we’d be out of business. Rosten wanted to keep the CIA’s hands clean with this deal. I thought, fine—I’ll take the risk and their money. And it’s not a fucking baby-trafficking op. I placed the kid in a decent orphanage and paid to grease the adoption wheels.”

  “Does Central Eurasia even know Rosten is running an op in their territory?”

  “I don’t know. You’d have to ask Rosten.”

  “Was Kyrgyzstan station given the heads up?”

  “Again—”

  “Ask Rosten.”

  “Yeah. I didn’t ask about that stuff because I didn’t want to know. It’s not my business to play referee between Near East and Central Eurasia.”

  “Central Eurasia’s going to be pissed if they find out Near East was running a black op in Kyrgyzstan, behind their backs.”

  Holtz threw his hands up. “So they’re pissed. Not my problem.”

  “Ninety percent of our contracts with the CIA are run through Central Eurasia, Bruce. If we piss them off, it’s definitely our problem.”

  Mark thought of all the cash he’d raked in over the past seven months. He’d been trying to pull off a delicate tightrope act—to profit from his association with Holtz without getting dragged down by it.

  He had a sense that he’d just fallen off the rope.

  “Which is why I thought doing a job for Near East would be a good way to grow the business, broaden our reach a bit. Anyway, I agreed to fly down to Jordan and pick up the kid. I brought him back here because I knew Daria’s been involved with that orphanage in Balykchy and I figured it was as good a place as any to keep him while I lined up some reasonably normal parents to adopt him.”

  “You didn’t think Daria would find out?”

  “I didn’t care if she found out. Or if you found out. We’re all on the same team, remember?”

  “Daria’s not on your team, Bruce.”

  “Once I brought the kid here, I figured the decision would already have been made and that the solution would be obvious to everyone—to find some decent adoptive parents for him and move on.”

  “I think you might have misjudged the situation.”

  “Well, what the hell else are we going to do?”

  “How much is CAIN getting for the job?” asked Mark.

  “A hundred K. Which covers picking the kid up and watching over him until he gets adopted. I left a donation at the orphanage to make sure they took good care of him. And the orphanage gets another ten K bonus when they line up good parents for the kid. It was a no-worries deal.”

  “You didn’t think that a hundred thousand for a couple days’ work might not come with a few worries attached?”

  “You’re not one to talk, Sava. Everything we do at CAIN comes with a few worries attached. That’s why we get paid. I’m vulnerable to blowback from the jobs you bring in, and you’re vulnerable from the jobs I bring in.”

  “Yeah, but I tell you about the jobs I bring in.”

  Holtz laughed. “Dude, you negotiate deals behind my back with your old CIA contacts, and then pretend that you’re actually considering my input after the deal is already done. You tell me as little as possible about whatever it is you do. Besides, my not telling anyone else at CAIN, or the CIA, was part of the contract. Rosten made me agree to personally handle the placement and adoption of the kid.”

  “He mention anything about the possibility that a couple of pissed-off Saudis might show up?”

  “No, he sure as hell didn’t.”

  “Call Rosten,” said Mark. “Tell him what happened. See how he reacts. Ask him why a couple Saudis would want the kid.”

  “And when he tells me to bring the kid back in and stonewalls me on the Saudis, then what do I tell him then?”

  “You tell him it’s not up to you. It’s up to me.”

  “He’s not going to like that.”

  “He doesn’t have to like it. Tell him I’m being a dick about it.”

  “You kind of are. Hey, where are you going?”

  Mark kept walking away without looking back. “Call Rosten. I’ll be in touch.”

  9

  To prevent the Agency or anyone else from tracking him, Mark powered down his cell phone and removed the battery. Then he hailed a cab and got dropped off at a pharmacy, where he bought three cheap cell phones that came with prepaid SIM cards.

  The pharmacy sat across from Victory Square, in the center of which stood a three-pronged granite arch that was supposed to be suggestive of a yurt and which had been erected to honor the Kyrgyz soldiers who’d died fighting for the Soviets in World War II. Under the arch was an eternal flame, which Mark was surprised to see was burning—he’d heard it had gone out recently because of a dispute over the gas bill. As he’d hoped, there were enough people milling about the square that he didn’t stand out.

  He took a seat on one of the chestnut-red granite steps leading up to the flame, activated one of his new phones, and called Ted Kaufman, the division chief for the CIA’s Central Eurasia Division. Kaufman, a tired bureaucrat who was nearing the end of a forty-year career with the CIA, answered his personal cell phone on the fourth ring.

  “I need you to run a couple names for me,” Mark
said as soon as Kaufman picked up.

  Kaufman didn’t speak for a moment, prompting Mark to consider the eleven-hour time difference between Bishkek and Washington, DC. He did the math in his head, then envisioned Kaufman swinging his spindly legs off the bed, his paunch hanging out over his boxer shorts, shaking off sleep.

  “Sorry if I woke you,” Mark added.

  “I’ve been well, Sava. Thanks for asking. And you?”

  “Listen, I’m going to text you two files. They’re both images of Saudi driver’s licenses. The names are in Arabic, so I couldn’t read them. I need you to figure out who these guys are.”

  “First, I’m not your secretary, Sava. Second, you shouldn’t have called this number—I don’t recall ever giving it out to you.”

  “Ever hear of caller ID? You’ve used it to call me.”

  “Third, apparently you’ve forgotten that Saudi Arabia is part of the Near East Division, so go bug them. Fourth, it’s six thirty in the damn morning. And my alarm is set for seven.”

  Kaufman had been Mark’s boss at the CIA for seven years before Mark had finally quit. For better or worse, they knew each other pretty well.

  “This is important, Ted.”

  “OK. But why call me, Mark?” Kaufman spoke with a tone of unenthusiastic resignation; Mark imagined that Kaufman’s wife heard that tone a lot.

  “I just told you. I need you to run some names for me.”

  “Is this for one of your CAIN projects?”

  “In a way, yeah.”

  “A project Central Eurasia currently has open with CAIN?”

  Mark looked around Victory Square. Dusk was approaching. All the flowerbeds, which in summer had been a riot of color, were now empty save for the broken vodka bottles. The Kyrgyz really knew how to do flowers right, Mark thought. Seeing the place so barren now made him think of the fast-approaching winter again. He knew it wouldn’t be long before the cold from the mountains descended into the city. As he scanned the crowd, he felt a fleeting pang of claustrophobia.

  “I don’t know. You tell me.” Mark didn’t want to stab Holtz in the back, but if Holtz had tried to run a Near East op in Central Eurasia on the sly, then Holtz had stabbed himself in the back.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means it’s related to a Near East op.”

  “Super. Then you know who to call.”

  Kaufman was a by-the-books bureaucrat. He stuck to his turf and expected others to do the same.

  “A Near East op that’s being run in your area of operations. An op they hired CAIN to execute.”

  Silence. Then, “Are you pulling my leg?”

  “Wish I was.”

  “What op?”

  “Well, here’s the thing. When CAIN takes on these jobs, we sign confidentiality agreements.”

  “Don’t give me that crap, Sava. What is Near East up to?”

  “Like I said, I need you to run the names of a couple Saudis for me. I’d remind you that my top-secret security clearance was renewed when I joined CAIN. I’m an approved Agency contractor. You help me out, I might be in the mood to share with you what Near East was up to in your backyard.”

  Kaufman let a few seconds pass. “Deal.”

  Mark briefly powered up his old cell phone, texted Kaufman the images of the driver’s licenses, then shut his phone back down and removed the battery again. As he was walking away from Victory Square, he called Daria on one of his prepaid phones.

  “Get your iPod,” he said. “I’m going to call it.”

  Though an iPod Touch was typically just used as a small digital tablet device—it was pretty much an iPhone, minus the phone part—Daria had rigged hers in such a way that it could be used to make calls over the Internet. The downside was that it had to be connected to a wireless network for the phone function to work. The upside was that when it did work, the call was untraceable.

  Mark rang Daria’s iPod, filled her in on the details of his conversation with Holtz, then asked about Muhammad.

  “He likes ice cream,” said Daria. “And banging pots.”

  “Is he talking about his parents dying, or Jordan?”

  “No, but I asked him where he’s from. He says he lives in ba-bay. I haven’t been able to figure out what that means yet. And I think he misses someone he calls Anna. He says she’s an adult, pretty, plays with him, feeds him, and isn’t his mother. I’m guessing it was someone who helped raise him, like a nanny. He’s been calling out for her, walking around the house looking for her.”

  “All right. See what else you can find out. I’m working a few angles on my end.”

  “When do you think you’ll be home?”

  Mark hesitated. He could make calls from their condo, but his gut was telling him that it would be better to keep his distance. The last thing he needed was for Holtz or Kaufman to hear Muhammad crying in the background.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “As soon as I can.”

  As he was walking through a narrow alley that ran between two massive khrushchevka apartment buildings—old housing units built during the Khruschev era—Mark called Holtz. His prepaid cell phone crackled.

  “Listen, I talked to Rosten,” said Holtz. “He’s pissed to hell and insists you release the kid to me. Like now.”

  “Well, that’s not going to happen.”

  “I’m telling you, Mark—he’s livid. He’s flying into Bishkek ASAP. He wants you to meet him at the embassy.”

  “He’s pissed that I saved the kid? From being abducted by two Saudis?”

  “No, he’s pissed that you won’t tell me where the kid is now.”

  “Well, he can stay pissed. What did he have to say about the Saudis?”

  “That the op has been compartmentalized and that we’re not cleared to know about the Saudi compartment.”

  “Yeah, we’ll see about that.”

  Mark called Kaufman back.

  “They’re both GIP intelligence officers. Both were in our database.” As Kaufman recited the real names of the Saudi kidnappers, Mark committed them to memory. The GIP, he knew, stood for General Intelligence Presidency, which is what the Saudi equivalent of the CIA called itself. “The older of the two has been with Saudi intelligence for twenty years. The younger guy, just three.”

  “Are they working with the Agency?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know or won’t say?”

  “Don’t know. Which, in my book, is a serious problem. What’s Near East up to in my division, Sava?”

  When Mark had told Kaufman everything he knew, Kaufman broke in, “That peckerhead Rosten’s really flying into Bishkek? And I don’t know about it?”

  “You do now,” Mark pointed out.

  “Rosten had better have been acting on orders from on high on this one. Because if he made the call to run a Near East op in my territory without telling me, I’ll skewer the bastard. As for Holtz, did he really think he could get away with this?”

  “I don’t think the slight was intentional. So you’re going to confront Rosten on this?”

  “Damn right I am.”

  “When?”

  “Now.”

  “I’ll call you back.”

  Mark hung up, reasonably satisfied with the way things were going. And content, he realized, to be back in the field—even if it was only a temporary thing.

  He’d never regretted leaving the CIA—he hadn’t been cut out to be a station chief. He realized that now. All the cables from Langley; the obligation to suck up to a parade of desk-jockey bureaucrats full of ideas completely divorced from reality; the need to kowtow endlessly to the ambassador and by extension the State Department; trying to motivate risk-averse ops officers who liked to spend more time in the embassy than in the field; constantly worrying about covering his ass and the asses of people who worked for him because he could never be certain that the bureaucrats in Langley had his back…

  No, he didn’t miss any of that. But he did miss be
ing in the field. He missed the satisfaction of running actual operations.

  10

  Twenty-five miles south of Bishkek, former Navy SEAL John Decker was enjoying the view of Ala Archa National Park almost as much as he was enjoying the view of the buxom Australian woman who was pinned, missionary-style, beneath him.

  She was twenty-three years old, almost six feet tall, strong, rubber-band flexible, and had this beads-woven-into-her-hair thing going on that Decker thought was just fantastic. Her fingers were calloused from rock climbing and felt good on his chest, which she was rubbing to the rhythm of their lovemaking.

  A little over seven months earlier, Decker’s six-foot-four frame had taken a serious beating—the result of an ill-fated excursion into Iran. The German physical therapist who’d treated him at a high-end medical center in Almaty, Kazakhstan, had been into yoga and rock climbing. After beginning a one-month fling with her, Decker had decided he was into yoga and rock climbing too. And that was how he’d healed.

  Even after that relationship had ended, he’d kept stretching—that was what he preferred to call his yoga—and climbing. And climbing had led him to Jessica.

  They’d met two weeks earlier at an expat bar in Bishkek and had been together ever since. Last night, they’d camped out at an old Soviet hut frequented by climbers; today they were climbing a mixed ice-and-rock route up the north face of Free Korea Peak, a nearly three-thousand-foot wall. They weren’t in any rush, though, and had stopped early to set up camp and have a little fun.

  Decker tried to reposition Jessica, causing the portaledge—a platform that ice and rock climbers slept in when ascending huge rock or ice walls—to rock back and forth.

  “Careful!” she said.

  Decker wasn’t worried. He’d personally attached the portaledge to a bomber anchor—a big rock nose, over which he’d draped a long sling—ten feet above them. And then he’d backed that up with another anchor. And if those anchors failed, it still wouldn’t matter because he and Jessica were both wearing climbing harnesses that were affixed to well-placed cam anchors above them.