Spy for Hire (29 page)

Nine women filed into the room, all of whom had been summoned by the pimp. Mark wasn’t sure what countries they were from, but based on their looks, he could guess—Russia, China, Thailand, Indonesia, Ethiopia… Some were tall, some short, some young like Ivana, others in their twenties or thirties.

Mark sat on the couch as they lined up in front of him. The pistol he’d stolen from the bodyguard was hidden under his left
thigh. He’d had the pimp drag the bodyguard into the bedroom and then clean up in the front room as best he could, using a towel from the bathroom and bed sheets. Even so, there were stains on the carpet that just wouldn’t come out.

The women didn’t seem to notice the stains, but they certainly suspected something was wrong, that much was obvious. They kept their heads down, and no one smiled. Mark supposed that anything out of the ordinary was cause for concern, but a mass summons from their boss—a summons that wasn’t clearly sexual in nature—was cause for real fear.

The pimp stood near the door to the bathroom, holding Mark’s iPod. His temples glistened with sweat.

“Start,” Mark said to the pimp.

The pimp lifted up the iPod. “I want each of you to look at this man, and tell me if he has ever been one of your clients. His name is Bandar bin Salman, but he might have used an alias.” When none of the women responded, the pimp thrust the iPod at the girl on the far left. “Do it. Translate what I said for the rest of the girls.”

The pimp’s hand trembled as the girl took the iPod. The girl looked at the image of Bandar, claimed not to recognize him, then translated the pimp’s directive into English and Arabic as she handed the iPod to the next girl.

She didn’t recognize Bandar either, but the sixth in line, an older woman with black hair and almond-shaped eyes, did. She only spoke Thai, though, so another Thai woman had to translate what she said into English.

“Maybe three months ago she meets this man. One night only.”

“Does she know where?” demanded the pimp.

“The Golden Tulip,” she replied.

The pimp breathed an audible sigh of relief. “The Golden Tulip,” he repeated to Mark.

“Yeah, you know, I heard. Give me your phone.”

The pimp handed Mark his smartphone, which Mark used to google
Golden Tulip Bahrain
. After finding the hotel website, he clicked on the Accommodations button.

“How many beds were in the room?” he asked.

The question was translated. The answer came back as one.

“A big bed? The biggest size?”

The girl confirmed that yes, the bed was huge.

Mark opened up three different tabs on the Internet browser. On each tab, he followed links to a different sample photo of the available room options. The first was of a standard room with a king bed, the second of a deluxe room with a king bed, and the third was of an executive suite with a king bed. The carpet, bedcovers, headboard, and furniture were the same in the standard and deluxe rooms, but different in the executive suite.

The girl only needed a moment to confirm that she was certain she’d met Bandar in the executive suite. She recognized the distinctive metal scrollwork on the headboard.

“Which room?” asked Mark.

She didn’t remember the room number, but she said she thought it had been one of the corner suites.

50

As Mark fled the Victory Towers complex via a fire exit stairwell, he wondered whether he’d been caught on any closed-circuit surveillance video. The likelihood that there’d been a camera in the lobby, or outside, was high. It was even possible that a camera had been hidden in the room itself, though he doubted it; he’d questioned the pimp at gunpoint, and the guy had insisted the room was clean. In the end, he decided that trying to track down and remove all evidence of his presence at the Towers would take too long and potentially just result in more violence.

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.