Spy for Hire (30 page)

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 key.

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.

The inside of this one smelled like a sheep, Decker noted. Which didn’t surprise him, given that the felt blankets that had been stretched over wooden trellises to form the walls of the yurt had been made from sheep’s wool, as had the blankets that lay over the roof ribs. On top of that, the exterior-facing side of the blankets had been waterproofed with sheep’s fat. Decker still hadn’t gotten used to the pungent, musky smell.