by Dan Mayland
Someone removed his blindfold.
He appeared to be in a shack of sorts. The floor was sandy and the air smelled of diesel fuel. It was hot. A few bags of dry concrete lay in a corner. He was seated on the floor, still wearing only his underpants and undershirt. From somewhere outside the shack, he could hear a rhythmic creaking, as though a baby were being rocked in a cradle. He wondered whether he was still in India.
Ten feet in front of him, a single guard, dressed in civilian clothes and armed with a large pistol, sat on a wooden packing crate. He didn’t look Indian.
Rad’s hands were cuffed behind his back with plastic ties that cut into his wrists. His stomach was still a hard knot, but at least he no longer felt like vomiting; the pain in his leg had cured that. He asked the guard what was going on, and where he was, and for something to drink.
The guard ignored him.
Rad heard voices outside, then what sounded like men walking across gravel. He fixated on the nimbus of weak sunlight leaking in from around the perimeter of a metal door. Strange, he thought, that it was still daytime; it should have been past dark in Delhi by now. Maybe he’d lost track of the time, and hadn’t been traveling for as long as he’d thought. He heard footsteps outside. As the door handle rotated, and then the door opened, his stomach did a little flip.
Light spilled in. Squinting, the guard stood up and aimed his pistol at Rad’s head.
“Don’t!” Rad put his hands up to shield his head. “Please, don’t do it!”
Before Rad turned his eyes from the bright low sun, he caught a glimpse of a bleak desert landscape and a line of telephone poles that seemed to extend out into infinity.
The guard lowered his pistol, aimed it at Rad’s chest, and squeezed the trigger. The shot was so loud Rad felt as if he’d gone deaf. At least he didn’t really shoot me, Rad thought, confusing—for a brief moment—the pain in his shoulder, and the fact that he’d been thrown back against the wall, with a bad dream. This whole thing was a bad dream.
Damn, his shoulder hurt. The ringing in his ears subsided a bit, and he blinked his eyes. He could see now.
He had been shot. He was bleeding, and his chest was wet. Oh God, he thought. Oh God.
Rad couldn’t move his left hand, so he put his right hand up to his chest, thinking he’d try to stop the bleeding. It wasn’t his chest though, it was his shoulder. He squeezed where he thought he’d been shot and then screamed as the pain rocketed up into his brain.
A man of average height with unkempt hair appeared in the doorway to the shed. Rad couldn’t see the man’s face all that well because it was backlit by the sun.
“Who is this?” Rad heard the man say in English, in a voice that was hard and mean, but somehow strangely familiar. And then, “Why did you shoot him?”
Someone shoved the man into the shed. Then the door slammed closed.
Rad tried to see through the darkness but by now his eyes had partially adjusted to the bright light outside so he still couldn’t see the man’s features.
“I’ve been shot,” said Rad.
“Yeah, I’m aware of that.”
“Who are you?”
The man didn’t answer. Instead, he quickly knelt down. His hand darted out, snakelike, toward Rad’s shoulder.
Rad screamed in pain again, and tried to pull back, thinking that maybe this guy had been sent into the shed to torture him.
“Listen,” said the man, “I’m going to try to help you, but I need you to calm the fuck down.”
45
Mark grabbed the man’s good hand. “If you don’t want me touching your shoulder, then you’ll have to do it yourself. Stick your hand up there and apply some pressure, for Christ’s sake.”
He didn’t know who had just been shot, or why, but working on the assumption that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, he figured he’d try to patch the guy up before he bled out.
Mark leaned in and used his teeth to start a rip in the guy’s wife-beater undershirt.
“What are you doing?”
The voice was panicked.
“Trying to help you, like I said.” Mark ripped the undershirt into strips to use as bandages, then turned his two front pockets inside out and ripped them out of his pants. “Stay still.” He slid a strip of the undershirt beneath the man’s armpit, quarter-folded his ripped pockets, placed one over the entry wound and the other over the exit wound, and began to wrap the shoulder. “I said stay still!”
“It hurts!”
“I don’t care.”
Labored breathing, then, “Am I going to die?”
“I don’t know. Probably yes, if you don’t shut up and let me work.” Mark quickly applied a serviceable field dressing, making it as tight as he could. But the wound was still bleeding a bit. “I’ve gotta put my hands on your shoulder. I’m going to have to hold them there for a while. It’s going to hurt—a lot—but it will help stop the bleeding. You ready?”
A long pause. “OK.”
Mark placed one palm on either side of the man’s shoulder and pressed them together hard. As he held them there, the wounded man sat with his back to the wall, eyes closed, teeth clenched.
Mark didn’t think the wound was life threatening, provided it was treated at a decent hospital soon, before any infection had a chance to set in. The lack of spurting blood told him the bullet hadn’t hit an artery. So the real question was, why shoot the guy in the first place? Had they meant to kill him? And if not, why?
After maybe five minutes, Mark released his hands. “Let’s see how that goes.” He walked to the door and tried the handle. It was locked. Before turning around, he considered that something about the wounded man’s voice was bugging him—he had a sense that he’d heard it before.
“What’s your name?” Mark asked.
For a few moments, there was just the squeaking of the nodding-donkey oil pumps going up and down, and the man’s heavy, labored breathing.
Then, “Rad.”
Mark stiffened. In his head, he replayed the voice he’d just heard. “Rad, what?”
“Rad… Saveljic.”
Mark slumped back into the dirt.
He was stunned, though he told himself that he shouldn’t be. Not after the Marko business with Saeed. But Mark hadn’t anticipated that the Saudis would be able to get to an actual family member so quickly. The United States was a long way away.
“Radovan Saveljic?”
Mark spoke the name as a question, but now that he looked at Rad, there was no question about it. His brother was older, and much heavier, and he had a thick cheesy mustache. But the low forehead, the high cheekbones, the big ears… the way his brother cocked his head and said his name, the Jersey accent—it was definitely Rad.
“Yeah. How do you know?” The question came out as an accusation.
Mark’s eyes were still adjusting to the light. The last time he’d seen his brother had been fifteen years ago, in New York City. Mark had been Stateside for a month, working to help train intelligence analysts at Langley. He’d come up to New York for the day to have lunch with his three siblings. Rad, then an eighteen-year-old freshman at Union County College and full of big ideas, had arranged it all—it had been an earnest, if ill-fated, attempt on Rad’s part to try to bring the four Saveljic siblings closer together. They’d eaten at a bar and grill in the Village. His older sister, who was mildly autistic and had already left home by the time of the suicide, had driven over from central Jersey where she’d been working as a lab technician for a big pharmaceutical company. The conversation had been awkward. They’d talked a lot about his sister’s cats. Rad had chimed in with the latest news about the Giants. Mark couldn’t remember his younger brother, then sixteen and still living at home, saying anything at all. The last time he’d seen either of his brothers prior to that lunch had been seven years earlier; he hadn’t seen his sister for twelve.
“Because we know each other,” said Mark.
“How do we know each other?”
<
br /> Mark considered that Saeed’s men were almost certainly listening. He’d have to be careful not to tell Rad anything the Saudis didn’t already know. “It’s me, Rad. Marko. Your brother.”
Rad’s head jerked back. He sucked in a quick breath, then opened his eyes wide, as though struggling to see through the darkness. “Marko?”
“Yeah.” Mark hadn’t gone by that name in over twenty years.
Rad’s breathing grew more labored, and Mark worried his brother was going into shock. At least it was warm in the shed. That would help.
Mark added, “I know. It’s been a while.”
A brain aneurism. That was what Mark’s father had told every one had been the cause of death. Back then, suicide wasn’t talked about, and the cops and funeral director could be counted on to maintain the fiction. Mark had declined to tell his brothers and sister the truth. It would have accomplished nothing except to make a bad situation worse for them. Better that his siblings think that they had an enigmatic asshole brother than that they learn that their mother had been driven to suicide by their father’s infidelity.
“What the hell is going on? Why am I here?”
Rad sounded as though he was wavering somewhere between desperation and anger.
“Some people who are upset with me are trying to get to me through you.”
“What people?”
He’d told Rad that he worked for the State Department, and Mark assumed that’s what Rad still believed.
“Mostly Saudis.”
“Saudis? What in God’s name are you involved in, Marko?”
“Where were you when you were taken?”
“India. Delhi. They broke my leg.”
Mark glanced down. Near his shin, Rad’s right leg was swollen tight and had an unnatural bump a few inches below the knee; it did look broken.
“What were you doing in India? And calm down, you’re breathing too fast. Don’t panic.”
Rad said nothing for a minute, then answered, “I’m a project manager. For BP. The oil company. I was on a job.”
“That explains it.”
“No, that explains shit, Marko!” Rad’s voice quivered. “That explains shit!”
“What I mean is that you were a target of opportunity. India’s just a three-, four-hour flight from here. And it’s a hell of a lot easier to smuggle someone out of India than it is out of the US.”
Now Mark understood why he’d been kept waiting in the desert; his captors had been waiting for Rad to arrive.
“What happens now?” Rad groaned and clutched at his shoulder, then asked, “What are we gonna do?”
Mark was still taken aback at seeing his little brother like this. The Rad he really remembered was still a little boy, running around the house, getting in trouble for writing on the walls or throwing rocks at the neighbor’s car. He’d been a funny kid, a friendly kid, and they’d gotten along well enough before the suicide; with a twelve-year age difference between them, they hadn’t had anything to fight about.
Mark didn’t think most people changed that much over the course of their lives—at least not as much as they liked to think they did—but realistically, that little boy was long gone. The fact was that Mark hardly knew the grown man who was lying in the dirt in front of him.
But he’s your brother.
Mark said, “I’m gonna find a way to get you out of here.”
Three deep breaths, then, “How?”
“The point was for me to see them hurt you.”
“Freakin’ insane.”
“I know.”
“You were lying. About working for the State Department.” A grimace. “Weren’t you?”
Mark considered that the Saudis already knew he worked for the CIA. “Yes.”
“I fuckin’ knew it. Where are we?”
“Bahrain.”
“Where the hell is Bahrain?”
“The Persian Gulf. It’s an island north of Saudi Arabia. Some people I’m pissing off here thought they could get to me by getting to you.”
“But we hardly know each other.”
“Guess they didn’t know that. Or if they did, they didn’t care.”
“Who are you, Marko?”
Mark turned to look at Rad. “I’m an intelligence operative.” Taking in Rad’s blank look, Mark added, “Sometimes in this business, you have to divide your life up, throw some of your real life away, make other parts up. Compartmentalize your life… you know what I’m saying?”
“Yeah. You bullshit people. Like you’re bullshitting me now.”
“After college, I got involved with a whole other world. The kind of world where, once you’re in it, you tend to stay in it. And it’s important to keep that world separate from your family. Even your brother. For their own good.”
“You’re a spy.”
“I prefer intelligence operative.”
“For the United States?”
“It’s complicated. It’s one of those ‘the more you know, the more you’re at risk’ deals.”
Rad was quiet for a while. Mark listened to the voices outside. There were still at least three men.
“What’s going to happen to me, Marko? Are they going to let me die?”
“I’m not going to let you die.” Mark wasn’t sure that was true, but he’d try his best to make it true. “I’m sorry about this.”
“I’m supposed to be getting married.”
“Congratulations.”
“I can’t die, Marko. I’ve got too much going on.”
“I said I’d handle it.”
Mark sat cross-legged in the dirt for a while, thinking about what to do next.
“Give me your wrist.” Mark felt for a pulse. It was high, around 140. “Listen,” he said. “You’re going into shock, which is normal after what you’ve been through. I’d say lie down, but right now we want to keep your shoulder high. So just sit back, get as comfortable as you can, and try to relax. Focus on your breathing. Keep it slow and steady. Don’t panic. Try to meditate or something.”
“You gotta be kidding me.”
“Then pray, think of your favorite movie, whatever. The point is—get to a calm place in your head. And don’t lose hope. You’re not going to bleed out now. We can set your leg later. You’re hurt, but believe me, you can survive for a long, long time like this.”
No one spoke for a minute. Then Rad said, “You got any water?”
“No.” Eating or drinking a lot when you were going into shock wasn’t a good idea, Mark knew, but a little water wouldn’t hurt.
He stood up and tried the door, but it wouldn’t open, so he banged on it for a while.
“A little water in here!” he yelled.
He banged on the door some more. When no one came to open it, he sat back in the dirt next to Rad.
Moments later, the door opened. A Saudi used his pistol to gesture to Mark. “You. Get out.”
“Give him some water first.”
“No.”
“I’m not leaving, which means I’m not handing over the kid until he gets some water. All he needs is a little. Too much will make him sick.”
The Saudi muttered a few words in Arabic and two more men appeared. They grabbed Mark, hauled him out of the shed, then threw him into the back of the blue Chevy.
46
Mark was driven to the little town of Awali, which lay on the southern edge of the desert, not far from the golf course. They stopped near the center of town, in front of an apartment complex spray-painted with depictions of Shias who had been killed by the government. Before they shoved him out of the car, the driver handed Mark a phone. It was on. Mark raised it to his ear.
“Bring the boy immediately to the Hyatt Regency hotel in Bishkek. A plane will leave Manama shortly. It should touch down in Bishkek in five hours.”
Mark gripped the phone hard in his hand. He pictured Saeed slicing into a steak at the golf course, watching the sun slowly set. Or driving around in a fancy car with leather seats, the ai
r-conditioning humming as he crossed the causeway that connected Bahrain to Saudi Arabia. Then he pictured Rad bleeding in the dirt.
“I wasn’t lying about needing time to get the boy to Bishkek. He’s in a remote region in Kyrgyzstan. The roads are awful. I’ll get him there as soon as I can,” Mark said.
“The sooner you get the boy to the hotel, the sooner your brother will be released.”
“Five in the morning, Bishkek time. That’s two in the morning Bahrain time, a little more than eight hours from now.”
“My men will be there.”
“Treat my brother well.”
“We’re not animals here. He will be treated as a guest. But if the transfer of the boy doesn’t take place as planned, you can bring a body bag when you come to pick up your brother. Consider yourself warned.”
“If I need to reach you before the transfer, how do I contact you?”
“You don’t. You just deliver the child. I sense you’re a man who likes to bargain, Marko. But there will be no more bargaining because I won’t be there for you to bargain with. In a moment, you will be released to make whatever arrangements you need to make, and I will disappear. The only thing that will save your brother is if you deliver the child. If you do so, I will have him transferred to the Royal Bahrain Hospital in Manama. If you don’t… well, I think we have an understanding now, no?”
“Oh, yes,” said Mark. “We definitely have an understanding.”
What Mark understood was that he’d have to be an idiot to trust Saeed to hand over his brother once Muhammad had been delivered. What incentive would Saeed have to do so? What could he possibly stand to gain?
Rad now knew his captors were Saudis. He’d be able to recognize many of them. If the Saudis were to release Rad, he might make a stink with the US embassy in Manama. He might go to the press. His employer, BP, might get involved. The only reason to release Rad would be to placate Mark.
And Mark wasn’t convinced that was enough of an incentive. He thought it just as likely that the Saudis—once they had Muhammad—would try to kill both Saveljic brothers and be done with the whole mess.
