Spy for Hire

by Dan Mayland

  “Helping the Shias kidnap a two-year-old doesn’t make any sense to me, but I don’t have a problem selling your bullshit story to the Bahrainis if it means the kid gets to go back to his family. So who do I meet, and when?”

  “I have to line it up—I had to know you were on board before I pulled the trigger. Wait for my call, it won’t be long.”

  28

  Delhi, India

  Thank God for places like the Connaught Hotel, thought Rad Saveljic as a waiter brought him a late breakfast of French fries and coffee with cream.

  After having dinner here last week with his boss and a few BP execs, Rad had taken to coming to the Connaught every day for breakfast. And he always got the French fries. He was especially appreciative of them this morning. Ever since last night’s debacle with the spicy vindaloo and the fresh salad, his stomach had been cramping. The fries were just the sort of normal food his digestive system needed to get back on track.

  Rad took a sip of his coffee and winced as his stomach tightened. He wished he could just stay here for the day. Conduct business from the lobby. Instead, in an hour, he was supposed to meet both his boss and the owner of a local construction firm at the future site of a new BP office building.

  It was peaceful here, behind the high walls that surrounded the Connaught. Hidden away in this elegant refuge, he could watch BBC at the bar, enjoy a quiet dinner while reading the International Herald Tribune, or surf the web without being jostled by the sweaty crowds on the street.

  He used his phone to check his Facebook account. Back in the States, he’d never been much of a fan of Facebook, but now he loved even the stupid inspirational photos people posted, because they reminded him of home. He pushed the Like button on a friend who’d posted a picture from a New York Giants’ game where the Giants were up 21-10 against the Eagles, then clicked on a newspaper article in his feed; the mayor of Elizabeth, New Jersey, had been indicted for corruption. No shocker there, thought Rad, laughing to himself as he forced himself to eat a French fry.

  Thinking about New Jersey put Rad in a good mood, and made him temporarily forget about the rumbling in his stomach. Maybe India wasn’t that bad, he thought.

  The day before, they’d driven around the India Gate—which he gathered was Delhi’s version of the Arc de Triomphe. They’d eaten lunch at a place where the lattice windows had been sculpted out of marble. Pretty good stuff.

  Rad was beginning to think that maybe Delhi was like New Jersey, in that, sure, it was crowded and corrupt, but not without its charms if you knew where to look.

  The pollution was unbearable, though. Which, he thought, given that he was comparing it to New Jersey, really said something.

  Rad looked up from his phone and out toward the front of the hotel, expecting to see some evidence of that gross pollution just beyond the hotel’s tall, wrought-iron entrance gates. Instead what he saw was a man looking right at him; a man of modest stature, whose skin was a shade lighter than that of the average Indian; a man Rad was almost certain he’d seen earlier that morning, as he was leaving his apartment.

  His apartment was a half mile away. And Delhi had a population of over sixteen million.

  Strange coincidence, he thought.

  29

  Bahrain

  Rosten called Mark back. Muhammad had been living with extended family in the house of his great-uncle prior to the kidnapping, he said. This great-uncle was eager to meet Mark and arrange for the return of the boy.

  Mark popped the last of his second Cinnabon into his mouth and washed it down with the dregs of his coffee. “OK,” he said, feeling a little sluggish. “Where do I go?”

  Rosten told him everything he needed to know.

  After he got off the phone, Mark wanted to shoot Daria an e-mail, to let her know where he was and what he’d learned about the boy, but he decided against it. Communicating via draft messages through their anonymous e-mail account was a good way to minimize the risk of being tracked or surveilled, but it wasn’t an infallible method; to try to do so now would be to indulge in a personal pleasure at the risk of potentially compromising the op.

  “Riffa,” said Mark to the young, dark-skinned cab driver who’d pulled up in front of the Cinnabon store. “The Sheikh Isa Mosque.”

  There were many wealthy enclaves in Bahrain. Well-tended English gardens could be found in many villages on the west coast, and the Americans had all but taken over the eastern Manama district of Juffair—but Riffa, located ten miles south of Manama, near the center of the island, was home to the wealthiest of the wealthy because that was where the royal family lived.

  The cab driver gave Mark a long funny look. Mark wished he’d shaved on the plane; he figured he probably smelled too. The dress shirt he was wearing still had food stains on it from the day before, when he’d helped with Daria’s stew.

  Mark pulled open the rear door to the cab and slid inside. When the cabbie didn’t start driving, Mark said in English, “Sorry, my Arabic stinks. Riffa? Mosque?”

  “I’m Pakistani. I don’t speak Arabic.”

  “Good.”

  “Many police are around Riffa.”

  “OK.”

  “The police are at checkpoints.”

  “Is that going to be a problem?”

  The cabbie looked Mark over again. His expression made it clear that he didn’t like what he saw. “Why do you want to go to this mosque?”

  Mark pulled a wad of Bahraini dinars out of his front pocket—he’d exchanged five thousand dollars at the airport—and offered forty dinars, about a hundred dollars, to the cabbie.

  “Perhaps we can say we are just driving through,” the cabbie allowed.

  Once they were out of downtown Manama and speeding south toward Riffa, the hatred many Shias harbored for the royal family was plain to see. Newly built apartment buildings and run-down shops were scarred with graffiti at ground level. Most of the graffiti was in Arabic, but some of it was in English: DOWN WITH THE KING, TERRORISM IS A BRITISH INDUSTRY, US GET OUT! Bahraini security forces had tried to cross out the slogans with spray paint of their own, resulting in a nightmarish mess that conveyed little but mutual anger.

  That anger was also evident in all the brick-paver sidewalks that had been ripped up—to be thrown at the police, the cabbie explained. Streets were charred with black marks where fires had been burning, further evidence of nightly conflicts, and blackened tires had been pushed to the sides of the road. Men in thawbs, the white robes that were common to the region, stood on rooftops, surrounded by rusted satellite dishes as they stared down with hostile expressions at the passing traffic. The remains of battered effigies, presumably representing the king, hung from a few lamp posts.

  Mark began to feel the desert in a way he hadn’t in Manama. The sun was intense and the land flat. Many of the cinderblock and stucco buildings were the color of sand. On the side roads leading off the main highway, he could see patches of barren desert.

  Just past a tall clock tower on the outskirts of Riffa, red signs appeared that said REDUCE SPEED NOW and CHECKPOINT, STOP FOR INSPECTION in both Arabic and English. Beyond the signs, thick concrete barriers painted yellow with black arrows directed traffic into a single lane.

  A Bahraini soldier greeted them. The cabbie produced his license and said he was just using the highway to take Mark to the oilfields south of Riffa.

  The soldier looked Mark over for a moment, inspected his British passport, then waved them through.

  On the other side of the checkpoint, a different world greeted them.

  Blocky art-deco street lamps lined the right-hand side of the road, many of which were adorned with an image of the king near their base. Palm trees abounded, and unlike those Mark had seen outside Riffa—where many appeared to be struggling for lack of water—these were all healthy and green, as were the clusters of purple-flowered hedge bushes beneath them. The vibrant green of the neatly mowed grass between the hedges stood in striking contrast to the dusty sidewalks and s
andy rubble-strewn lots he’d seen outside of Riffa.

  High walls rose beyond the palm trees, on the other side of which the tops of stately villas were visible.

  No way was this going to last forever, was all Mark could think. The royals might be able to hold off the hordes for a few more years, or maybe even a few more centuries, but eventually the barricades would fall. At which point, new wealthy and poor classes would emerge. And they’d be similar to the old classes, but at least they wouldn’t be defined by religious affiliation.

  The ivory-colored Sheikh Isa Mosque soon appeared on the left. Minarets topped by Islamic crescents rose high into the sky. It was big enough to accommodate thousands, but Mark had a feeling it rarely did. It was too uncluttered, too clean. His cabbie pulled into the parking lot.

  “OK?”

  “OK,” said Mark. He slipped the guy another five dinars and stepped out of the cab.

  30

  Kyrgyzstan

  The last time Decker had been to the Lake Issyk Kul resort town of Cholpon-Ata was in August.

  His mind flashed to the lake scene back then: women in string bikinis, guys in board shorts, fat elderly Russian men lounging around in Speedos, jet skis, beer on the beach, concerts at night, ice cream vendors, and a big catamaran that he’d paid to take him and the woman he’d been with at the time out for an hour-long ride on the lake…

  All that was over now; what remained was a long stretch of beach littered with bits of half-buried garbage.

  The morning sand was cold and gravelly beneath his bare feet. Last night, via a brief e-mail communication with Mark, he’d learned Muhammad’s name. Then they’d all stayed up too late—a result of the child’s long afternoon nap—and slept in. Now Muhammad was running around on the beach.

  “Hey, careful there, bud.” Decker jogged over to an orange-and-yellow paddleboat that had been pulled up onto the sand; Muhammad was climbing on as if it were a jungle gym, jumping up and down on the seat and occasionally pulling at the wheel and pretending to drive as he sucked on his pacifier.

  Although Decker was afraid the kid was going hurt himself, Muhammad looked like he was having fun and Decker didn’t want to be a buzzkill.

  The hotel had sold them a bag of beach toys—a little plastic bucket and shovel and a few sand molds in the shape of trucks—but Muhammad had rejected them.

  “Hey, you want to dig a hole?” Decker picked up the plastic shovel and started digging in the sand. “Hey, Muhammad, check it out. Let’s dig a huge hole.”

  Muhammad kept bouncing on the seat until he fell off, banged his head, and started to cry.

  “See, buddy, that’s what I’m talking about.”

  Decker picked Muhammad up and started bouncing him on his hip. The pacifier had fallen into the sand, so Decker scooped it up and did the suck-it-clean thing again. Once he had his pacifier back, Muhammad started squirming to be let down.

  Decker put him on the sand next to the plastic shovel, but Muhammad headed for the paddleboat and started climbing on it again.

  “You’re a persistent little bugger, Muhammad, you know that?”

  As Muhammad climbed on the paddleboat, Decker wondered how much longer all this was going to last. All Mark had said in their e-mail exchange last night was that he was working 24-7 trying to figure out what to do with the boy, and to hang tough.

  Decker was worried about his dad, but didn’t want to call home again until he could say he was on his way back to New Hampshire.

  He sighed. Turning away from Muhammad for a moment, he looked back toward the hotel, wondering where Jessica was.

  And that’s when he saw Holtz.

  31

  Bahrain

  Minutes after Mark arrived at the Sheikh Isa Mosque, a long white Cadillac Escalade pulled into the parking lot and came to a gentle stop a few feet in front of him. The driver got out and opened the back door. Mark climbed in.

  The well-manicured greenery lining the side streets he was driven down suggested a peaceful, almost idyllic existence for the residents of Riffa. Mark remembered hearing that many considered Bahrain to be the original site of the garden of Eden; looking at the well-watered plants all around him—an oasis in the middle of a desert island—he could almost believe it.

  They eventually turned into a wide driveway and pulled to a stop in front of a solid metal gate; the gate had been painted white and was the only break in a white wall that appeared to encircle an estate.

  The driver of the Cadillac spoke into his cell phone and the gate swung open. Two soldiers, dressed in camouflage uniforms and carrying M16 assault rifles, waved the car through.

  The two-story house in the center of the estate was large—maybe ten thousand square feet or so, Mark guessed—but not overly ostentatious. It was coral colored and stuccoed like most of the rest of the residential buildings in Bahrain. A wind tower rose up on the left-hand side, though Mark guessed it was more for ornament than function. The original wind towers, found throughout the Middle East, had been constructed to capture the wind that blew above the trees and channel it down into the living quarters below. But that had been in the days before air-conditioning.

  Mark was pretty sure that the people who lived here had all the air-conditioning they needed.

  32

  Kyrgyzstan

  Decker figured he could have tried to run when he saw Holtz—he’d spotted his boss from a couple hundred feet away, across the beach—but what was the point? If Holtz had been able to find him here, he’d be able to find him again no matter where he ran.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Deck?” Holtz was staring right at Muhammad.

  “What do you mean, buddy?”

  “Don’t ‘buddy’ me.” Holtz walked right up to Decker. They were both big men, roughly the same height and weight, though much of the weight that Holtz—a former linebacker—carried was around his waist. “You know what I’m talking about. I came to see you in Bishkek and you ran out on me. And slashed my tire. What the hell was that all about?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “I haven’t been back to my house since before I went climbing.”

  “Bullshit.” Holtz poked his finger into Decker’s chest.

  Decker just looked at his chest, and then at Holtz.

  “I’m taking the kid,” said Holtz.

  “No can do, Bruce.”

  “This is way over your pay grade, Deck. I know Mark must have asked you to do him a favor, and I can appreciate that you guys are friends and that you owe him for what went down in Iran, but you have to back off on this one. And slashing my tire, man. That was bush league.”

  Decker deliberated for a moment and concluded there was no point in continuing to lie.

  “How’d you find me? I ditched the car and my phone.”

  Holtz smiled. “You kept the key to the Explorer, though.”

  Decker’s hand went to his front right pants pocket.

  “I had a GPS transmitter wired to it,” said Holtz. “Runs off the same battery that unlocks the car.”

  Decker smiled. “Bastard.”

  “Hey, I was doing it for your own protection. Now move. You’ve abducted a child that isn’t yours and I’m taking him back.”

  “He’s an orphan. He came from Daria’s orphanage. Mark asked me to take care of him.”

  “I’ve been hired by our government—our government, Deck, the United States of America—to do a job. And I intend to do that job.”

  Holtz took a step toward Muhammad, who was oblivious to the discussion that had been going on. Decker put up his arm, blocking Holtz.

  “No,” said Decker. “I promised Mark.”

  “Take your hand off me now, Deck, or you’re out of a job. Plus I’ll blacklist you with DoD and the Agency.”

  Decker kept his hand in place. “You didn’t bring any backup, did you?”

  He and Holtz had gotten along pretty well over the ti
me they’d known each other. They’d talked a lot of football, had played poker over beers… It occurred to Decker that this superficial familiarity had led Holtz to misjudge the situation.

  “You don’t scare me, Deck.”

  “It was a mistake not to have brought backup.”

  “I said, take your hand off me.”

  “Or?”

  “Or nothing. But I’m still taking the kid.”

  Holtz pushed forward, prompting Decker to throw a fake punch with his left hand to Holtz’s head. When Holtz ducked and blocked the blow with his right forearm, Decker threw all his weight and strength into a massive uppercut to Holtz’s solar plexus. His fist connected with a thud and Holtz was thrown back a few feet, dazed but still standing.

  Decker followed up with a chokehold that lifted Holtz off the ground and a leg sweep that sent him tumbling into the sand. He straddled Holtz on the ground, threw a handful of sand into his face, and then fired off two lightning punches to the gut, knocking the wind out of Holtz for a second time.

  Muhammad noticed what was going on and started crying.

  “Sorry, guy,” Decker said to the boy as he flipped Holtz onto his belly.

  Using the rough, frayed rope attached to the end of the paddleboat, Decker hog-tied Holtz as fast as he could. That done, he stood, pulled out the key to his Explorer, threw it down in the sand next to Holtz, and said, “I parked in Tokmok, at the gas station that’s right off Route 365. You can catch a cab there for fifty bucks. In the meantime, I’ll be taking your Jag.”

  So much for ever working for CAIN again, he thought.

  Decker stuck his hands into Holtz’s pocket and pulled out a set of keys. There was probably a tracking device on the Jag too, but he’d use the car to put some distance between him and Holtz in the next hour and then figure something else out.