Spy for Hire (13 page)

If he hadn’t had to look after Muhammad, Decker would have jumped in with Jessica. “Yeah, I’ll go after you.”

Then Decker’s desktop computer beeped five times. Loudly.

Muhammad stopped climbing the mountain of pillows and looked at the computer.

“What was that?” asked Jessica.

Decker walked to his computer and tapped the mouse. The screen came to life. In the upper left-hand corner of it, three black-and-white video feeds were displayed, each in a separate window.

One of the screens showed the figure of a man.

“Turn on the shower,” Decker whispered urgently.

When he’d first moved in, back in the spring, Decker had rigged up a rudimentary surveillance system. Three commercially available exterior video cameras communicated wirelessly with his desktop computer. In addition, the metal door that led to the courtyard had been wired to send a signal to the computer whenever it was opened. Originally, Decker had also set motion detectors on the tops of the courtyard walls, but the red squirrels, who had come to eat his pumpkins, had set off so many false alarms that he’d shut that system down.

“Why? What’s that beeping?”

“Intruder. Go now.”

Jessica half-walked, half-ran to the bathroom. Decker clicked on the video feed in which the figure was visible.

Bruce Holtz was pocketing a long silver electronic lock pick and walking across the small courtyard.

“A guy’s about to knock,” whispered Decker. He rushed up to his front door and silently engaged the dead bolt. “Tell him you’re taking a shower, you’ll get the door in a minute.”

“Tell who?”

Decker pointed to the door. A second later, a fist rapped loudly on it.

“Hey, Deck! It’s Bruce! Open up!”

The house had four windows—one on each side. Two of the windows looked out onto Decker’s small courtyard. The remaining two looked out onto intersecting garbage-strewn alleys, which doubled as a breeding ground for stray dogs. All the windows had heavy curtains pulled over them; the alley-facing ones were protected by metal bars. The same day he’d moved in, however,
Decker had bought a welding torch at a local hardware store and cut an access hatch of sorts through one of the barred windows—so that in a pinch, he’d have more than one avenue of escape.

“Deck, open up! I know you’re in there!”

As he grabbed a key from his desk, Decker made eye contact with Jessica and gestured to the door.

“Hold on!” called Jessica. “I’m in the shower, I can’t get the door.”

“Is Decker in there?”

“Give me a minute, I’m in the shower.”

Decker heard the whir of the electronic lock pick engaging. Holtz, you son of a bitch, he thought. Trying to bust in on my girlfriend while she’s in the shower. I’ll remember that.

Decker opened one of the alley windows and used the key to unlock the access hatch he’d cut through the metal bars. He picked up Muhammad, looked at Jessica, and mouthed the words
follow me
.

Muhammad wasn’t happy about being taken away from the pillows, and when Decker hoisted him through the window and set him down on the ground in the alley, he spit out his pacifier and started to cry.

Decker crawled through the window, picked up the pacifier from the dirt with one hand and the boy with the other, and sprinted to the front of the house. He saw Holtz’s black Jaguar parked next to his Explorer. Without slowing down, he yanked open the driver’s side door to the Explorer and slid Muhammad—who was by now having a full-blown tantrum—into the passenger seat. Pulling a knife out from under the driver’s seat, he pivoted so that he was facing the Jag, and then punctured the sidewall of Holtz’s front right tire.

That done, he started up the car and pulled out into the road just as Jessica ran up.

She hopped into the passenger seat and lifted Muhammad—kicking and screaming—onto her lap.

Decker took off in a swirl of dust. Just before cutting a hard right down a side street, he glanced in the rearview mirror—Holtz had run out of the courtyard and was looking right at them.

“Ha! Smoked his ass, didn’t we!” said Decker.

Jessica was too busy with Muhammad to respond; the kid’s tantrum showed no signs of abating.

Keeping one eye on the road, Decker reached down to the floor of the car and retrieved Muhammad’s pacifier. It was covered in gray dust.

He tried to blow the dust off the pacifier, but that didn’t do any good. So he wiped it on his pants. It still looked dirty, so he popped it in his mouth and sucked it clean.

“Dude, here.” He handed the pacifier to Muhammad, who grabbed it eagerly, stuck it in his mouth, and started sucking as if his life depended on it.

22

As Val Rosten escorted him out of the US embassy in Bishkek, Mark announced that he needed to use the bathroom.

“It can’t wait?” asked Rosten.

“No.” Mark pointed to a bathroom just down the hall.

Rosten nodded.

Mark entered the bathroom, but Rosten followed him in. It was a small space—just two urinals and two stalls, one of which was large enough to accommodate a wheelchair. No windows.

Rosten glanced around, as though looking for possible escape routes. He gestured to the urinals. “Be quick. I got a car waiting.”

Mark gestured to the stalls. “It’s not going to be quick.”

Rosten shot Mark a look that fell somewhere between confusion and revulsion. “I’ll be right outside the bathroom door. Don’t try my patience.”

Rosten left.

Mark entered the handicapped stall, shut the door, fished his cell phone out of his front pocket, and sat down on the toilet seat without pulling down his pants.

He dialed a number. When Belek, the old Kyrgyz he played narde with every day, picked up, Mark said, “I’m going to need a favor.”

After the bathroom break, Rosten led Mark out of the embassy, and into the parking lot, where a black Mercedes was idling with
its front headlights on. Unlike Mark’s Mercedes, which was parked nearby, this was the real deal—a long new S550. Mark recognized it as one of the cars the embassy used for official diplomatic functions.

Two men were already inside. A blond-haired tank of a man in a marine security guard uniform, armed with a waist-holstered pistol, sat in the front passenger seat; a younger guy in khaki slacks and a pinstriped oxford drove. Rosten and Mark got in the back.

“All right, Sava. Where to?”

Mark gave the driver the address for his condo.

It was quiet and warm inside the car, and the leather seats were comfortable. But Mark could tell it was windy outside by the way the people on the dark streets were walking with their heads down and their hands tucked into their coat pockets.

“Turn here,” he said, when the black silhouette of the hospital opposite his condo loomed before them. A few patients bundled in heavy overcoats were wandering around the dimly lit park behind the black hospital gates. “Stop at the building up on the left, next to the green door.”

“So you had the kid at your place this whole time?”

“No, he’s not here.”

“Where is he?”

“At a safe house in Bishkek. But I won’t be able to get him until I retrieve my iPod from my place.”

“What do you need your iPod for?”

“The people I hired to guard Muhammad won’t recognize me. But they’ve been told to release the child to anyone who provides the proper codes.”

“Codes that are stored on this iPod?”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t remember the codes?”

“No. They’re numeric.”

“Why the iPod? Why not your phone?”

“Because that’s the way I did it.”

“I’ll go up with you.” Rosten gestured to the armed marine security guard. “He will too.”

“Be my guest.”

The Mercedes pulled to a stop outside Mark’s place. Mark, Rosten, and the marine security guard climbed out.

“Wait here. We’ll just be a minute,” Rosten said to the driver.

Mark led them up the narrow staircase, which had recently been painted pale yellow—a color that Daria had picked out. The walls were bumpy, the result of too many bad repairs to the plaster over the years.

He opened the door to his condo with a key that he’d retrieved from his front pocket, flipped on the lights, and approached the digital keypad to the left of the door, intending to disable the burglar alarm. But he saw that it had already been disabled—which told him Daria had fled in a hurry. And likely not through the front door.

“My iPod’s in the back.”

The living room was still littered with paper printed with outlines of Middle Eastern countries.

“The kid was here,” Rosten observed.

“For a while. Dammit.”

“What?”

Mark approached his narde board. It was on the coffee table in front of the couch, which wasn’t where he’d left it. The pieces had just been dumped on the board in one big pile.

Mark held up a piece that had been chipped. “Look at that,” he said. “I brought this from Baku. Inlaid with teak, silver, and camel bone. Cost me a hundred and fifty bucks. Now it’s a toddler toy.”

Mark tossed the chipped narde piece back onto the pile and walked into the room he and Daria used as an office. Two desks faced each other—his, which he rarely used, was a mess; Daria’s wasn’t. His was closest to the door. Out of the corner of his
eye, he saw Rosten pick up the chipped narde piece and examine it.

Mark opened his desk drawer. He sensed that the marine security guard was right behind him, watching.

With his right hand, he pulled out his iPod Touch and the small headset that was plugged into it; at the same time, with his left hand he palmed a small leather wallet-like case that contained three forged passports. Because he’d positioned his body in such a way that it blocked his left hand from the gaze of the marine security guard, who was focused on the iPod anyway, Mark was able to pocket the passports without attracting notice.

One of the passports was Azeri, one Turkish, and one British; he’d picked them all up recently, as a result of his work for CAIN. Two credit cards accompanied each passport.

All three identities were just notional covers—good enough for commercial travel, but not backstopped nearly enough to withstand any real scrutiny.

Mark walked back into the living room.

“We ready?” asked Rosten.

Mark walked to his balcony door. A Kyrgyz cop car had pulled up a few feet behind the black embassy Mercedes on the street below. “This shouldn’t be open,” he said. He closed the door and locked it. “OK, let’s blow.”

After Mark reset the burglar alarm, he and Rosten trudged back down the narrow flight of stairs. Out on the street they were greeted with a blast of wind and the smell of wet oak leaves rotting in the street gutter. The marine security guard opened the rear door of the idling Mercedes for Mark.

Suddenly sirens started sounding.

Two cops piled out of the Kyrgyz cop car and started running toward Mark.

A second Kyrgyz cop car, closely followed by a third, barreled down the one-way street, going the wrong way.

The Kyrgyz cops—both fit older guys—charged Mark. One had his gun drawn. The other carried a set of handcuffs.

The cop with the gun called out Mark’s name and ordered him to stop.

“What’s going on, Sava!” said Rosten, his voice wary.

Speaking rapid-fire Kyrgyz, the lead cop explained that the police were there to arrest Mark. Rosten couldn’t understand a word, so Mark translated while allowing himself to be handcuffed.

“No,” said Rosten. “No, Sava. No. I’m not letting you walk off like this.”

“I have some outstanding parking tickets. It’s probably that.”

“You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you Sava?”

“Parking tickets in Kyrgyzstan are no joke.”

Rosten put his hand on the elbow of the man who’d handcuffed Mark. “You’re not going anywhere.” He turned to the marine guard. “A little help, here?”

As the marine closed in, three more Kyrgyz cops jumped out of the two cop cars that had just screeched to a stop in front of the Mercedes.

Rosten pointed a finger at Mark. “You tell them that if they don’t release you now, they’re going to have a diplomatic incident on their hands.”

Mark turned to the cops and said in Kyrgyz, “This guy is crazy. Watch for weapons, and don’t let him get close.”