The Leveling Read online

  Now what?

  Now you think about how to get your ass out of here. For starters, where is here?

  Decker recalled the exposed ceiling joists, cinder-block walls, and smell of mold in the room above him. He’d been certain it was a basement. But he was below that room now, in a cellar below the basement.

  He forced himself to stand. He couldn’t see a thing, but he could feel that the wall he was bracing himself against was made of brick. He ran his finger across the mortar joints. They felt solid. When he pounded the wall with his elbow, the bricks didn’t move. He ran his hand over every inch of the wall. It was in decent shape all the way down to the rotted bits of floor planks that ringed the perimeter of the hole.

  The rotted floor planks, and the dirt beneath them, felt damp on his bare feet. He could try to start tunneling down through the floor. But in what direction? And he was presumably deep underground. He’d be found out long before he made much progress. If that was his only option, he’d try to make a go of it, but he was almost certain the effort would be futile.

  The floor is damp. Almost muddy. Water’s getting in from somewhere.

  Decker slowly made his way over to another wall, and here, up near where the brick wall met the concrete slab of the basement floor, he felt a damp, flaky substance on the brick and mortar. He put a finger to his mouth and tasted salt.

  When Decker had patched up the leaky basement walls of his family home in New Hampshire, he’d tasted that same salt.

  It came from disintegrating mortar, or from the soil behind the mortar. He knew it had to have leeched through the porous wall, pushed through by the water, before crystallizing. There was no leaky bathroom right above him. The only place that water could have come from was from rain or snow.

  Which meant the salt patch on the wall had to be close to the exterior of whatever building he was in.

  Decker felt the mortar joints. Behind the salt crystals, they were damp and soft. He hammered his elbow right into the center of the soft spot, and felt a little movement.

  24

  MARK STOOD UP and walked slowly over to the basement window. Outside lay a pile of yellow snow. He could faintly smell the cat piss even though the window was closed. With his back turned to Daria, he said, “Holtz said Deck had a thing for you.”

  They’d all known each other back in Baku. Mark hadn’t been surprised by what Holtz had said. Daria, scarred or not, was the kind of woman who attracted a lot of guys. Some were attracted to her broad smile, some to her high cheekbones, some—he counted himself in this group—to her quick wit and natural intelligence.

  Mark figured Deck—not exactly the most sophisticated guy—had probably just fancied her ass.

  Daria’s chair creaked as she adjusted herself in it. Eventually she said, “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Did you have any contact with Deck—conversations or e-mails or whatever—after you left Turkmenistan?”

  “He sent one e-mail right after I left.”

  “Saying what?”

  “That he wanted to meet me here in Almaty after he got done with the job in Turkmenistan.”

  “How’d you respond?”

  “I didn’t. I mean, I like John well enough, but…anyway, I didn’t want him around when I was working here.”

  “So you two weren’t—”

  “No.”

  Mark decided Decker was actually a pretty good guy. And a lot more sophisticated than people gave him credit for.

  “And nothing since then?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Meaning?”

  Daria pulled out a new-looking smartphone from the pocket of her hotel-uniform blazer, tapped the touch pad a few times, stared at the screen for a moment, and then handed the phone to Mark.

  “What do you think?” she said.

  Meet me in front of Turkmenbashi Ruhy Mosque, Tuesday noon. If not Tuesday, Wednesday, noon. Sincerely, John Decker.

  Below that e-mail was another consisting of just three letters.

  “What does W-T-F mean?” asked Mark, reading the second e-mail. “Is that a code or something?”

  Daria gave him a funny look. “That’s how I responded to the e-mail with the photos attached to it.”

  “With a code?”

  “No not a code.” Her mouth formed a big, broad, pretty smile. “It just means, you know, ‘what’s up with this?’ I was asking whoever sent the photos why they sent them.”

  Mark didn’t get it, but he didn’t feel like pressing the point. He studied the e-mail that had allegedly been sent by Decker.

  Located on the outskirts of Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan, the Turkmenbashi Ruhy Mosque was, he knew, the largest mosque in Central Asia. But it was also a bit of a joke—few Muslims actually worshipped there because the Soviet bureaucrat-turned-dictator who’d ordered it built had inscribed his personal words of wisdom all over it, right next to verses from the Qur’an. Attendance at prayers was more likely to consist of ten worshippers than the ten thousand the mosque could hold. Mark doubted that Decker had even heard of the place.

  “He would never sign off on an e-mail with sincerely,” Mark also noted.

  “With me he always signed off as D or Deck.”

  “And he wouldn’t use any capital letters,” said Mark. “Worth a trip to Ashgabat, though.”

  “Yeah, if we show up at the mosque tomorrow and act polite—”

  “You know the kind of operation I’m talking about.”

  “It’s Monday night. How are you going to get a visa for Turkmenistan by tomorrow? It takes them a week just to open a piece of mail, much less process a visa.”

  Mark knew Daria was right. The Turkmen government was vigilant about keeping foreigners out of their country. Even his black diplomatic passport wouldn’t let him cut any corners. But someone would be at the Turkmen embassy at this hour, and bribes to rush through visas weren’t exactly unheard of. He eyed the sack of counterfeit money.

  “That’s evidence,” said Daria.

  “One or two bills would be enough to prove your point about Chinese meddling. You can take a picture of the rest.”

  “I’m not giving you twenty thousand dollars.”

  “It’s not twenty thousand dollars. It’s a bag full of paper made to look like twenty thousand dollars’ worth of Turkmen manats. Besides, this is my life we’re talking about.”

  “Your life?”

  “Yeah. My job, my book, my home. My life. All that got trashed. I want to know why, and what I can do to fix it.”

  “The only reason you had a life to get trashed was because of Decker. You’d be dead if it weren’t for him.”

  “Are you talking about what happened in Baku?”

  “What else?”

  “I was paying him a boatload to provide protection then, Daria. He was doing his job. I don’t owe him anything.” Although, as Mark spoke, he realized that wasn’t quite true. The first time Decker had saved his life, Decker had been under contract with the US embassy in Baku. It was only later, because of that incident, that Mark had hired him. “Besides, we don’t even know that he’s in trouble.”

  Daria stood up, shouldered the bag of money, flipped a lock of hair out of her face, and began walking toward the door. Then she turned to face Mark.

  “Did you ever consider that whoever came after you might also be after me? I might not have been stupid enough to use an e-mail address that sent them straight to my door, like you did, but encryption software isn’t perfect. There’s a digital trail that they can use to track me down if whoever came after you has enough money and expertise. I’m not safe here any more than you were safe in Baku. Did you ever think about that?”

  “I didn’t even know you were involved until now. Where are you going?”

  “First the Turkmen embassy on Abay Street to get myself a five-day transit visa, then the President Hotel in Ashgabat, which is where Decker and I and everyone else involved in the negotiations stayed while
we were over there. I’ll see if I can pick up any leads at the hotel. Then I’ll go to the meeting at the mosque.”

  Mark doubted that the few hundred dollars in US cash he had on hand would be enough for the bribes that would be needed to secure a visa. Prior experience suggested it would cost several thousand. Maybe more, given that it was after-hours.

  “You know I can help, Daria.”

  “Yeah, but help at what? I’m going over there to help Decker. That’s my main objective. I have to know you’re OK with that. If you can get your life back in the process and I can get some peace of mind, that’s great too, but…”

  “If I can help Deck, I will. You have my word.”

  Daria let out a genuine, spontaneous laugh.

  “That wasn’t meant to be a joke,” said Mark.

  “Are you forgetting I know you?”

  “Come on, Daria. I bullshit people when I need to bullshit them, but I’m not bullshitting you now.”

  After a long time she gave a slight nod.

  “Thank you,” said Mark.

  25

  DECKER ALMOST PASSED out from the pain when he first sank his swollen hands into the dirt behind the two-layer-thick portion of the brick wall he’d removed. But after a couple of minutes, his injured fingers numbed up and he began to use them like little spades. Each shovelful of dirt he placed quietly on the ground.

  He focused on his training. Even when things seem hopeless, keep pushing, keep probing any way you can. Make every effort to escape.

  Knock this out.

  Above him, he heard voices arguing, but he couldn’t tell what about.

  When light appeared in the cracks around the trapdoor, he spread out the bricks and pile of dirt on the ground and tamped it down, slipped his legs back through his arms so that his hands were behind him, limped to a spot beneath the trapdoor, and carefully positioned his body so that it hid his handiwork. He couldn’t let anyone come down to get him.

  “I’m hungry!” Decker called out, his voice barely a whisper. The trapdoor creaked and the guard lifting it groaned. “Please.”

  The man with the black turban appeared from above.

  “Don’t shut the door,” said Decker. “I can’t stand it down here.”

  “If you agree to help us, you may eat as much as you like.”

  “I’ll help you,” said Decker.

  “You may breathe fresh air. Why should you live like an animal?”

  “I’ll tell you where my partner is, and why I was sent here.”

  “Then climb up.”

  Decker struggled to ascend the rickety wooden ladder they lowered down. When he’d almost reached the top, two guards hooked their hands under his armpits and pulled him out the rest of the way.

  “Now what was it you wanted to tell me?” asked the man in the black turban.

  Decker didn’t say anything. When the question was repeated, he turned his head and waited for the blow.

  PART II

  26

  Ashgabat, Turkmenistan

  “WHAT THE HELL is he doing here?” asked Daria.

  She and Mark had landed at Saparmurat Turkmenbashi International Airport at dawn. Even with approved visas, purchased for the Turkmen equivalent of five thousand dollars apiece, they’d spent an hour in airport limbo before an officious luggage inspector was assigned to search their bags. Then they’d spent another half hour waiting for an aging nurse to inspect them, as if they were livestock, for communicable diseases. Then they’d spent another half hour answering routine questions posed by grim-faced bureaucrats who wore hats with comical upturned brims and who wrote painfully slowly in giant ledger books.

  It was nearly nine before they were able to catch a cab to the President Hotel.

  And now, when they stepped into the cavernous front lobby, intending to start questioning the staff about Decker, they instead ran into Bruce Holtz.

  “You got me,” said Mark.

  “You didn’t tell him we were coming?”

  “Nope.”

  Holtz was slumped in a green-and-gold easy chair. Above him hung an enormous crystal chandelier. Two other men in business suits sat at tables nearby. Other than that, the place was empty, which didn’t surprise Mark. He’d stayed at the President a few years back, while visiting the CIA station in Ashgabat. It was like a lot of things in Ashgabat: superficially fancy, but pretty crappy when you actually got to know it. Its main draw was that it was located right next to the Oil and Gas Ministry.

  Holtz looked up when Daria and Mark approached.

  “Hello, Bruce,” said Mark.

  Holtz took a sip of coffee and motioned to the small table in front of him, upon which sat a basket filled with breakfast pastries. “Join me, please. They brought too much.”

  He wore a dark custom-made suit with Gucci wingtip shoes, a gold tie, and gold, diamond-studded cufflinks. His hair was slicked back; a pair of sunglasses, with the Prada logo displayed prominently in gold on the frame, were folded on the table. Mark thought he looked ridiculous, like a Russian gangster on holiday, but he couldn’t fault Holtz for it. That kind of look commanded respect in these parts.

  “I take it this is not a coincidence,” said Mark.

  “I figured you’d show up here eventually.”

  Mark sat down in an adjacent easy chair.

  Daria seemed to prefer standing to sitting next to Holtz. “What do you want, Bruce?” she asked.

  Holtz turned, as if noticing Daria for the first time. “I see you found her,” he said to Mark, and then he raised his finger for the lounge waitress. “Coffee?”

  Mark grabbed a raspberry danish from the basket in middle of the table. “Don’t bother. Cut to the chase, Bruce.”

  “You know, Sava, sometimes you can come off as rude.”

  “I’ve been told.”

  “It occurred to me that we might be in a position to help each other.”

  Mark said nothing.

  Holtz added, “And that maybe I could have been a little more helpful when you first came to me. Like about where you should start your search for Decker. In fact, I’ll give you a hint right now—not here.”

  “If you know where we should be looking, why haven’t you started looking for him yourself?” Daria asked.

  Mark could guess at the answer to that question.

  Turkmenistan was one of the strangest countries on earth. It had been ruled for years by a megalomaniac who called himself Turkmenbashi, and was now ruled by the late dictator’s dentist. Burdened with an ungodly bureaucracy and obsessed with secrecy, it was as though the Cold War had never ended. Holtz spoke some Russian, which evidently had been enough for him to help the State Department connect with higher-level government types in Ashgabat—Russian was the common language of Central Asia—but he couldn’t navigate the absurdities of Turkmenistan without speaking Turkmen himself. Which he didn’t.

  Mark and Daria could speak passable Turkmen, though, because the language was closely related to Azeri, as were many of the other Turkic languages of Central Asia. On top of that, Mark spoke fluent Russian, and Daria spoke fluent Farsi.

  “For the same reason that the owner of this hotel doesn’t clean the bathrooms himself,” said Holtz, looking at Daria. “That’s where you come in.”

  Mark said, “Enough. What have you got?”

  From the inner pocket of his suit coat, Holtz produced a sheet of paper. “This is a contract my attorney drafted last night. I’d like you to sign it.”

  Mark picked it up.

  The contract said that, for the next five years, Mark agreed to serve as executive vice president of intelligence for CAIN, Incorporated.

  “Let me break it down for you,” said Mark. “I don’t really like you, Bruce. Which makes me not want to work for you. And if I sign this, I’m still not going to want to work for you. And that means I’m not going to produce for you, regardless of any contract I may or may not have signed.”

  “Relax. I just want to be able to use your na
me and your résumé to help bring in business.”

  Mark didn’t respond.

  “You may have to sit in on a few conference calls,” said Holtz. “That’s all. And before you start threatening to tell the Kazakhs about CAIN’s surveillance op up at Atyrau, you might want to think about who hired me to gather that information. Go on, take a guess.”

  Mark still didn’t respond.

  “Try the US military,” said Holtz. “I fell for your BS blackmail the first time, but then I got to thinking, and I’m not falling for it again. You want to expose your own government? Because that’s what you’d be doing.”

  Holtz pushed the contract toward Mark. “I didn’t think so. You get one dollar a year for each of the five years. But if you actually want to go to work and bring in any new business, I’ll give you twenty-five percent of the profits from it. It’s a fair deal. The contract is clear. If you want to do jack squat, you get jack squat but I still get to say you’re part of CAIN. If you want to do more—”

  “Hundred thousand yearly retainer for the use of my name, fifty percent of profits from business I bring in.”

  “Fuck you.”

  Mark glanced at Daria. She looked appalled by the whole exchange.

  “I’m also gonna need a little preview on what you have on Decker.”

  “I can tell you who he was with when he disappeared, what he was doing, and where he was going. I can’t tell you where he is.”

  “Is he alive?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Hundred thousand, fifty percent. Keep in mind, I’ve got a good sense of what you’re raking in by bilking State and DoD. I know you can afford it.”

  “Fine,” said Holtz. “I accept your terms.”

  “I guess that means I should have asked for more.”

  “You’re making a mistake, dealing with this asshole,” Daria said to Mark.

  Holtz pulled another set of papers out of his inner coat pocket. “One more thing. Noncompete agreements.” To Mark he said, “When you’re working for CAIN, you’re not two-timing me on the side.” To Daria he said, “Yours is the noncompete I should have had you sign when you were working for me. Translator, my ass. I did a little asking around. You were a fucking CIA NOC that went bad. The only reason you were working for me was to gather intel from my operation so that you could start up your own operation and cash in.”