Spy for Hire

by Dan Mayland

  Mark hadn’t gone into the complex intending to kill anyone—he’d done far too much of that already over his long career—and, in retrospect, he shouldn’t have, even considering the circumstances. He’d already disabled the bodyguard with the punch to the throat. The shot to the head had been gratuitous, a product of anger, or rather disgust, at a moment when he should have been focusing on the larger problem.

  He also knew he shouldn’t have crossed the Russian mafia. They had long memories, and a well-deserved reputation for exacting revenge. If the killing had helped even one of those women escape from that life—he thought of the young Ivana—he wouldn’t have had any regrets. But he was certain it hadn’t.

  He hoped that he’d get lucky on this one and that he hadn’t compromised the larger mission. Hoping to get lucky was a lousy way to pursue intelligence, though. He was too old to be making mistakes like that, too old to be acting out of anger.

  File it in a dark corner of your mind and forget about it, he told himself. Compartmentalize it. It’s done.

  He pulled out a prepaid cell phone as he ducked down a side road off Exhibitions Avenue. It was a little after nine, just over three hours since he’d last spoken with Saeed. He was past due to check in with Kaufman.

  “You were right. There was a breech,” said Kaufman.

  “No kidding. It was Rosten, wasn’t it?”

  “Nope. Guy named Gregory Larkin. He’s been with us for nine years. I’ve worked with him, I thought he was solid.”

  “Is he one of Rosten’s men?”

  “No. He’s Africa Division. But he had the clearances he needed to pull your file.”

  “Africa Division?”

  “You ever hear of a guy named Rear Admiral Jeffrey Garver?”

  “No.”

  “He’s the director of naval intelligence in Bahrain. Turns out Gregory Larkin used to work in naval intelligence, got his start working under Garver. Anyway, I just got done talking to Larkin—he claims Garver called him yesterday all in a panic. Something about an imminent attack in Bahrain about to go down, bombs going off within the hour. Larkin claims that Garver said it was imperative that he be able to see your file, that you had intel that could stop the attack but there wasn’t enough time to make the request through normal channels.”

  “That’s a load of BS. There’s something big going down here, but if I had intel that could stop some imminent attack, you or Rosten could have just asked me.”

  “Larkin seems to think he was just doing what any patriot would, bending the rules in a time of crisis because he had to. He trusted Garver, they were friends.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I told you, I just got off the phone with Larkin. He admitted it to me as soon as I confronted him. Honestly, I think he was shitting bricks about what he’d done. He said he never heard back from Garver after he transferred the file.”

  “Garver handed parts or all of my file to the Saudis, and the Saudis are now using it as leverage against me. That guy Larkin better be shitting bricks.”

  “But why?” asked Kaufman. “What would Garver stand to gain? Or, if he’s doing this on behalf of the navy, what would the navy stand to gain?”

  “Who else knows about this?”

  “No one yet. I figured I’d talk to you first. But I can’t let this breech stand. Larkin will be fired and Garver will likely be court-martialed.”

  “Give me a day before you sound the alarms.”

  “Why?” When Mark didn’t answer, Kaufman said, “Oh, I get it. You’re going to lean on Garver.”

  “Hard to bargain with someone who’s being dragged off to the brig. I don’t suppose you could dredge up Garver’s contact info for me?”

  51

  Mark caught a cab to a shopping mall in downtown Manama where he bought a small suitcase and supplies he might need for the evening. Then he took a cab to the Golden Tulip.

  The hotel sat just across from the Sheraton, offering easy access to the newer diplomatic area of Manama. A large hotel that catered to business travelers, its interior was marked by the same white-marble sterility of the Royal Golf Club. A woman with long dark hair only partially covered by a black headscarf trimmed in gold stood behind the reception desk. A small ceiling-mounted security camera was pointed at them.

  As he pulled out his wallet, Mark told her he wanted one of the executive suites. He was informed that the whole fifth floor was a first-class section of sorts and that all the executive suites were located there.

  “I need one with a king bed. Which rooms are available?”

  “Ah…” The woman consulted the laptop computer on the desk. “Well, everything except 508, 516, and 517.”

  Mark had suspected that, with the protests on the island heating up, the hotel would have a lot of vacancies.

  “One of the corner suites.”

  “Well, I can offer you 502, 511, or 523. Five seventeen is a corner suite, but as I said, that’s taken.”

  “Five twenty-three will be fine.”

  “I take it you’ve stayed with us before?”

  Mark ignored her question. Instead, he slid his British passport and accompanying credit card across the reception table. “One night, please.”

  Room 523 looked out over Bahrain Bay, which wasn’t a bay at all but a massive patch of reclaimed land that used to be a bay and which, if the country didn’t fall to pieces, the bellhop said, would soon be the site of a Four Seasons Hotel and a big investment bank.

  After explaining about the bay, the bellhop tried to show Mark around, pointing out as he did so that a dedicated executive-floor attendant was available, and an exclusive executive-floor lounge, and—

  Mark cut the guy off with a thank-you and a tip, then strolled down to room 517—the only other occupied corner suite on the executive floor—wheeling the small suitcase he’d bought behind him. He looked for security cameras in the hall but saw none.

  The gun he’d taken from the pimp’s bodyguard was wedged between his gut and his belt. There were seven rounds left in the magazine.

  He stood outside the door for a minute. Hearing nothing, he knocked.

  Come on, he thought, feeling the butt of the Makarov pistol through his shirt. He’d run through several different scenarios in his head. A direct confrontation was the riskiest, but also the fastest.

  He knocked again. No one answered, so he walked back to his room, lay down on the big king bed, propped a few pillows under his head, and pulled out his iPod. After connecting to the hotel’s Wi-Fi, he checked the schedule of commercial flights from Dubai to Bahrain. There were typically fifteen or so; the first left before dawn, the last, well after midnight. It was just an hour-and-fifteen-minute flight, so Bowlan could get here quickly if need be.

  Mark closed his eyes for a moment. He was so tired he felt he could fall asleep if he wasn’t careful. Visions of Rad, and Muhammad, and the fallen bodyguard kept looping through his mind.

  He placed a call to the front desk. The bathroom in his room was dirty, he explained.

  “Dirty, sir?”

  “The bathroom. I’m afraid it hasn’t been cleaned.”

  “The entire room was cleaned this afternoon, I don’t—”

  “Well, the bathroom wasn’t. I’m going out for an hour or so. If the issue could be resolved by the time I return, that would be wonderful.”

  After hanging up, Mark walked to the bathroom, lifted the toilet seat up, and then sprinkled some water around the bowl and the floor. He unwrapped the hand soap by the sink, and then did the same with the little bottles of shampoo and conditioner. He dribbled some shampoo into the sink, smeared it around before replacing the cap, then wadded up a few pieces of toilet paper and tossed them into the waste bin.

  Mark watched, his eye at the peephole in the door, as a young man with a cleaning cart approached.

  The cleaner knocked twice, loudly, on the door. When no one answered, he reached into his right front pants pocket and pulled out an electronic ke
y.

  Mark stepped back from the door, lay down on his bed, and put one of his cell phones to his ear.

  He heard the sound of a key card being inserted into and then removed from the electronic lock, then heard the click as the lock disengaged. The door opened. The cleaner slipped the electronic key in his hand into his left front pants pocket and wheeled his cart into the room.

  The cleaner’s key, Mark noted, looked exactly the same as the room-specific keys issued to guests.

  “Listen, I’ll call you back later tonight.” Mark said into his phone, as though there were someone else on the other end of the line. Turning to the cleaner, he said, “It’s the bathroom.”

  “So sorry to disturb you, sir. I was told you were out. Is now a bad time?”

  Mark noted the cleaner was slender, and his black pants were baggy, as though a size too big.

  “No, now’s fine.”

  “I’ll just be a moment.”

  As the cleaner tended to the bathroom, Mark rehearsed in his mind exactly what he planned to do. He thought of the gypsy children in Baku who had such nimble hands. He looked at his own hands. They weren’t large, but they weren’t exactly small either. As he stood listening to the cleaner pad around the bathroom, he practiced slipping his key in and out of his front pocket, using his index and middle finger as pincers.

  He considered that some aspects of tradecraft were like riding a bike, in that one never really forgot how to do them. But physical tricks were more difficult—they required regular practice. Though Mark had successfully pickpocketed before, the last time he’d done so had been over ten years ago, when he’d still been in the field. Now, he was rusty. And this would be a dicey operation, because he’d need to both pick and plant at the same time.

  He sat down at the foot of the king bed. The TV remote lay on the bed to his left. He’d palmed his room key in his right hand. When he heard the cleaner emerge from the bathroom, he bent down, his back to the cleaner, as if tying his shoe. The television was positioned opposite the bed.

  He listened to the nearly silent footsteps traversing the padded carpet. When he sensed the cleaner was right behind him, he grabbed the TV remote, stood up, turned on the television, and took a quick step into the cleaner. Their bodies collided, though with a little more force than Mark had intended.

  Mark cried out as his fingers dipped into the cleaner’s front pants pocket. The television was shockingly loud and set to a music video station that was playing Arabic music.

  “Whoa!” Mark cried, putting his left hand, which was still clutching the remote, on the cleaner’s right shoulder. The cleaner had dropped his bucket. Mark stepped away from him. “Who listens to television that loud!”

  “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.”

  Mark stepped back, pointed the remote at the television, and turned it off. “Good Lord, whoever was watching that last must have been deaf.” Turning to the cleaner, he said, “Are you OK?”

  “I’m fine, sir. So sorry.”

  “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were there.”

  “No doubt, sir.”

  Mark helped the cleaner load his bucket back up, then slipped him a ten-dinar note on the way out.

  “No sir, that’s not necessary.”

  “Actually, it is,” said Mark.

  Two minutes after the cleaner left, Mark knocked on the door across the hall, waited a minute, then knocked again. When no one answered the second time, he dipped the cleaner’s key into the electronic lock.

  The lock beeped, and the LED light flickered from red to green. He had one of the hotel’s master keys.

  52

  Mark walked back to room 517 and knocked.

  As before, no one answered. So he inserted the master key into the lock and let himself in, wheeling his suitcase behind him.

  It was a suite like his own, spacious and with a view that overlooked both Bahrain Bay and the diplomatic zone. But this suite looked more lived in, more like an apartment than a hotel room. A large office desk cluttered with papers and pens and a Dell laptop sat in one corner. The dresser was filled with clothes, the armoire stocked with custom-made suits and Kiton ties and thawbs that smelled freshly laundered. Mark inspected the thawbs. They were made of cotton, but with such fine thread that they felt like silk. The cuffs and collars were starched.

  A bottle of Laphroaig single-malt scotch sat on a table next to the entertainment center. Mark was tempted to take a plug.

  There were no suitcases, indeed no luggage at all save for a small carry-on made of soft black leather. Though the carry-on piece was empty, a tag designed to accommodate a business card was attached to it.

  Mark opened the leather flap that covered the tag. On a card embossed with gold script were a series of characters in Arabic that Mark couldn’t read. The English translation underneath the Arabic was perfectly legible, however—it read Bandar bin Fahd.

  Mark sighed. All right then, he thought. This just might work.

  He called Bowlan, told him to catch the next plane to Bahrain, and ran through a detailed list of tasks that he needed performed. Then he called Garver.

  53

  Rear Admiral Jeffrey Garver settled back in an easy chair, swirled the ice around in the tumbler of Maker’s Mark bourbon—Garver’s favorite after-dinner drink—that Captain Hugh Jackson had handed him, and sighed.

  “I tell you, Hugh, it’s been a hell of a day.”

  Jackson, a black, six-foot-two, gray-templed fellow Tennessean and the commander of Naval Support Activity Bahrain, said, “Well, I certainly wouldn’t want your job. Not right now at least.”

  Over dinner, with their wives in attendance, they hadn’t really been able to talk about all the wartime-like preparations that were going on at the naval base. Of course, their wives knew something was up, but not the extent of it.

  “Anybody want coffee?” called Jackson’s wife from the kitchen, where she and Garver’s wife were packing up leftovers from the Romano’s Macaroni Grill takeout meal they’d just eaten. “I can make decaf.”

  Jackson eyed Garver, who shook his head no and lifted his tumbler of Maker’s Mark, indicating he already had his drink of choice.

  “No thanks, dear. We’re all set out here.”

  Although both Tennesseans, Garver and Jackson had grown up in different worlds; Jackson in Memphis, Garver in the wealthy suburbs of Nashville. As kids, neither would have been a likely friend for the other. But they were friends now—bound by the traditions of the navy, by their mutual love of the University of Tennessee football program, by Maker’s Mark, and by the fact that their wives liked each other. Garver had come to realize that, once you got to a certain age, you really couldn’t be friends with a man if your wives didn’t get along.

  His cell phone rang. “That damn thing’s been going all day. I’ll just let this one go.”

  He didn’t care if it was Saeed or the commander of CENTCOM. Or the president himself for that matter. If it was important, whoever it was would leave a message and he’d check it then.

  He leaned toward the coffee table, picked up a Ritz cracker, and loaded it up with cheese spread. His phone stopped ringing.

  “So’d I tell you I’m two guys down on the Force Protection Unit?” asked Jackson.

  “That so?”

  “Brass suggested I beef up Emergency Management with a couple of officers who’d been cross-trained. As if Force Protection isn’t going to be front and center if things go to hell around here.”

  “I don’t see—”

  Garver’s phone rang again. He didn’t recognize the number, but someone was obviously trying to get through to him. With all that was going on… “I’m sorry, Hugh.”

  “Don’t worry about it, take the call.”

  Garver put down his drink, stood, and walked over to a window in the living room that looked out onto the Jacksons’ small garden. “This is Admiral Garver.”

  Garver’s stomach did a little flip when the man on the other end of
the line gave his name. For a moment, he was speechless. Then, “Who gave you this number?”

  “We need to meet.”

  Garver’s mind raced through the reasons Mark Sava might be calling him directly. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

  “Tonight.”

  “Mr. Sava—”

  “I’m going to give you one chance to make this right. One chance to avoid being court-martialed for exposing the identity of a former CIA operative to a foreign intelligence agency.”

  Garver’s heart started racing. He felt as though the floor had fallen out beneath him. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Drive to the Manama fish market. Park in the main lot and wait for me to arrive. I might get there in an hour, or it might be a lot longer than that. If you value your career, you’ll be there when I arrive. Tell no one—including your Saudi buddies—about our meeting.”

  54

  Kyrgyzstan

  John Decker woke up to the sound of a fifty-year-old Kyrgyz man shoveling dried cow dung into a little pot-bellied stove. He and Jessica lay on the ground; Muhammad lay between them, swaddled in heavy felt blankets; there was a raised platform next to the stove, which was where the man-and-wife Kyrgyz owners of the yurt slept.

  After the confrontation with Holtz, Jessica and Decker had fled to the mountains north of Lake Issyk Kul, a part of the country Jessica had trekked through when she’d first come to Kyrgyzstan two months ago. The yurts that had been there in September to accommodate tourist trekkers had long since been taken down for the winter. But those belonging to the local sheepherders remained.