Spy for Hire (7 page)

“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 being 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.

Granted, they’d both unsnapped the leg loops on their harnesses, so that they could remove their pants, but the leg loops weren’t essential. Worst-case scenario, Decker figured they would just be left hanging by their waist belts.

That was a risk Decker was more than willing to take. His knees sank into the nylon floor of the portaledge, his right shoulder kept hitting the rock wall on one side of the tent wall, and the whole contraption was swinging back and forth. Through an open air vent, he could see the rock wall and a little picturesque silver thread of a stream cutting through the valley far below them. Jessica laughed and so did Decker. Life just didn’t get much better than this, he thought.

Then his cell phone rang.

He ignored it. From the ring tone, he knew it was a call from home—almost certainly his mother or father, the last people he wanted to speak to right now. Talk about a buzzkill.

“Why are you stopping?” said the Aussie. She reached around and smacked his thigh as though taking a crop to a lazy horse.

“Who’s stopping?” said Decker—though he had slowed down. He loved his parents, but they weren’t exactly an aphrodisiac. When his phone stopped ringing, he flipped Jessica into a doggie-style position, smacked her rear, and got back to business.

But a few seconds later, his phone started ringing again. It was the same ring tone. Which meant it was almost certainly his
mother—if he didn’t pick up the first time, she always tried again. His father would have just left a message.

“Shit, Mom.”

Jessica gave a little huff of disgust. “I’m not your mom.”

No, she most certainly wasn’t his mother, Decker thought. He forced himself to ignore both the ringing and the image of his mother standing impatiently—phone in hand—in the kitchen of the New Hampshire home he’d grown up in. But before long, he’d gotten one of his knees wedged painfully under one of the metal bars that formed the frame of the portaledge. Time to finish this off, he thought.

His phone started ringing again.

“You gotta be kidding me. I’m sorry, I have to answer this.”

“Shut up.”

“Something’s wrong.”

“I’ll really scratch you this time, you fruit loop.”

“I have to take this. No joking, Jess. Three calls means there’s a problem.”

Jessica sighed as he pulled out of her, then she flipped to her back, and patted him gently on the chest.

Decker fished his phone out of the pocket of his Gore-Tex shell jacket, which he’d wedged in a corner of the portaledge.

“Hello?”

As expected, it was his mother. “John,” she said. “How are you?”

“Ah…” He detected a quiver in his mother’s voice.

“I’ve got some bad news, honey.”

Decker felt his stomach rise up to his throat. His mom was a call-it-as-she-sees-it tough army wife who’d raised three huge boys in northern New Hampshire, all of whom had entered the military. Overly sentimental, or dramatic, she wasn’t. If she said she had bad news, it was bad news.

“What is it, Mom?”

Jessica unzipped another air vent in the portaledge. Decker
felt a cool breeze on his bare schlong. In the distance he could see a line of snow-capped, glaciated mountains. Pine trees grew in the canyon below. He loved it here. The lakes in the valleys were pristine, the streams filled with trout. People called it the Switzerland of Central Asia and he thought that was about right. In between jobs for CAIN, he’d taken to exploring the countryside, often hooking up with expat women looking to explore the world. He’d been pretty damn happy over the past six months.

He had a feeling all that was about to end.

“It’s your father.”

“What happened?”

His mother began to cry. “He…” It sounded as though she’d pulled the phone away from her mouth. A moment later, she came on again. “He got up real early like he always does, to load the stove, and he was out back at the wood shed, when…”

She started crying again.

Decker glanced at Jessica. She looked up at him with a worried expression. He shook his head.

Over the phone, a distant voice Decker recognized as his younger brother’s said, “Let me tell him, Mom,” and then his brother was on the phone, saying, “He had a heart attack. When he was splitting wood.”

“Is he… dead?”

“No, but he’s in the ICU. I don’t know, Deck.”

“When did this happen?”

“An hour ago. We’re at the hospital.”

“Is he going to make it?”

“I don’t know, man. They’re running tests now. We should know more soon.”

“I’ll come home.”

Decker did the calculations in his head. There was still a little light left. On the way up, they’d climbed a mixture of ice and rock, but if they packed up quickly and rappelled down now, avoiding the ice as much as they could and sacrificing gear to the
mountain to speed things up, he figured they could be on the ground in under an hour. Once on the ground, they’d have a decent hike back to the car ahead of them, but it was mostly downhill and they were both in good shape. They could run it. Getting back to Bishkek tonight was doable.

“I think mom would appreciate it.”

11