The Leveling (20 page)

The US embassy in Ashgabat, a boxy, low-slung building clad in bluish-gray tiles, reminded Mark of a shower stall. The only remarkable thing about it was the massive satellite dish mounted in the rear of the property and the bristling nest of antennae protruding from its roof.

A guy in a black T-shirt with bulging arms and a radio headset kept watch from behind the tall, wrought-iron perimeter fence. A couple of Turkmen soldiers in camouflage uniforms walked back and forth along the outside of the fence.

Daria stopped about fifty feet from the entrance. Mark opened the rear door and dragged Thompson out onto the sidewalk. One of the Turkmen soldiers yelled at him to stop.

Mark hopped back in the car as Daria punched her foot down on the accelerator.

As they sped off toward the northern outskirts of the city, Daria said, “They’re going to come looking for us. The Americans. The Chinese. The Turkmen. Everyone.”

Mark didn’t respond for a while. But as they were passing over the bridge that spanned the Kara-Kum Canal, the artificial waterway that ran almost the entire length of the country, he said, “They’ll come looking for me, you mean. You’re not on the CIA’s radar, and no one saw you at the arch. If you act now, you can probably make it out of the country safely.”

“We need to call Holtz.”

“Did you hear what I said?”

“And we should call him now, before the Agency puts someone on him. He’s our only lead on Decker.”

D
ECKER HOBBLED DOWN
the gentle slope on the right side of the road, but as soon as the couple who’d helped him had driven out of sight, he retraced his steps, climbing backward so the prints made by his bare feet would still appear to be going downhill. He couldn’t bend his left leg, but by keeping it locked at the knee, he was able to use it like a crutch.

Fighting through the pain, he half jogged, half limped up the road a bit then began to climb the steep slope above it. About halfway up, he collapsed behind a large rock as his pursuers raced by in the green Peugeot. They would catch up with the couple soon, he knew. And when they did, the couple would bring everyone back to this place. But with any luck, his pursuers would think that he’d gone down the hill in the direction of the houses below. That’s what a rational person would do.

He still had a chance. The mountains here were huge. Desolate and bare, but huge. All he needed was someplace safe to hole up in for a day, so that his pursuers would be forced to further widen their search and spread themselves thin. The terrain would be as unforgiving for them as it was for him.

Decker took out one of the pruning shears’ blades and used it to stab open one of the Coke cans. He downed it all in a few seconds, carefully put the empty in one of his jacket pockets, ate two handfuls of sugared almonds, and began to climb again. The pain in his leg from the bullet wound was excruciating, but the pain in his bare feet, swollen from the bastinado and bleeding
from the sharp rocks on the mountainside that had pierced his soles, was worse. After five minutes, he collapsed.

He ate more sugared almonds, drank another can of Coke, and forced himself to continue.

At the top of the ravine, a long patch of melting snow lay in a hollow hidden from the road but exposed to the surrounding hills. Decker placed his hands on top of the snow and let them numb up while the sun warmed his face. For there to be snow in April, he reasoned, he had to be at a relatively high altitude.

Which way was the coast? He looked up at the sky, blinking from the brightness. The sun was halfway between high noon and the horizon. Was it morning or afternoon? Which direction was he facing?

He was trained to survive in the wilderness for weeks on end, to orient himself by the sun and stars, to use natural cover as camouflage. But his mind was freezing up. He looked at the whiteness of the snow and began to get dizzy. Moss grew on the north sides of trees, but nothing at all grew up here. Deep in his gut he felt a sharp stab of pain, his stomach revolting against the sudden influx of food and drink.

He should find a hole to hide in and camouflage himself.

Far below, where he knew the road must be, a car skidded to a stop.

The bottle of Smirnoff slipped out of his jacket as he struggled to stand. He slumped back down into the snow, opened the vodka, and poured it over where he knew the bullet wounds on his leg must be. The vodka soaked into the grease-stained work pants and the wound beneath burned. Decker clenched his teeth. His eyes wanted to tear up, but he was still too dehydrated to form tears.

The air was cool and fresh, and he breathed in as deeply as he could, savoring the clean taste of it.

He poured vodka into his swollen hands, soaking his fingers, then poured all that was left into his cupped palms and brought the alcohol to his face, trying to disinfect the cuts as best he could.

Buying time, that’s all you’re doing. Fighting off infection for as long as you can.

His face felt as though it had been doused with acid. He struggled to stand but wobbled on his feet. The blue sky and white snow swirled around him like a kaleidoscope.

Still hidden from the road below, he began to walk slowly uphill again, resting after each step but making steady progress toward a pass between two low hills. When he was halfway to the top, the green metal roof of a house emerged, and then windows with decorative Persian arches. A mountain refuge. He hoped that no one was home, and that he could break in and hide there.

The sun was hot on his neck. He finished the sugared almonds and drank another can of Coke. But when he went to put the empty can back in his coat pocket, he realized that the other empties were gone. They must have fallen out, he realized, left like a bread-crumb trail for his pursuers to follow. And he’d left the vodka bottle on the patch of snow.

He was losing his mind. His feet no longer hurt because he couldn’t even feel them.

Decker looked behind him. And wondered whether the black figure he saw below was a mirage. He looked up to the sky, half expecting to see a dragon from Middle Earth.

When he glanced behind him again, the black figure was still there, climbing fast up the hill.

Decker eyed the house. It was no more than a few hundred feet away, but up a long steep slope. If he could get there and get inside, he might have a chance. There might be a gun, or a car.

He climbed, going faster now, no longer resting between steps, driven by a hidden store of adrenaline. He kept his eyes focused on the ground and began to count his steps…
one, two
…

A voice called out for him to stop, but he ignored it. When he glanced behind him, it looked as though the black figure hadn’t gained much ground.

A few steps later he fell, but he instantly lifted himself up from the dirt and continued his march.
Hundred ten, hundred eleven
…He concentrated on the ground immediately in front of him, taking care with each quick step and only occasionally glancing up at the house to gauge his progress.

His eyes registered a flattening of the ground, followed by the black macadam of a road that had been cut into the side of the mountain, a road that had been hidden from below.

Decker looked up.

Two men, both carrying AK-47s, sprang up from a drainage ditch and rushed at him from opposite sides.

One guy below to flush him out, the other two to capture, Decker realized.

He spun around, took a step back toward the hill, stuck his hand in his coat pocket, and fingered one of the blades from the pruning shears.

The first guard hit him in the gut with a football tackle. As they tumbled to the ground as one, Decker whipped out the blade and stabbed the man’s carotid artery.

The second guard lit into Decker with the butt of his gun, swinging it like an ax. Decker absorbed a few blows to his head and thighs and a glancing blow to a knee. He pulled out the second blade from the pruning shears, stabbed the guy’s Achilles tendon, and was about to try for the femoral artery when a volley of twenty or so bullets flew over him, inches from his head. A hit to his ankle connected, breaking bone. Two men grabbed his arms, pinning them to the asphalt. Another kicked him repeatedly in the balls and guts.

A few seconds later, a sweaty nervous man with ugly cauliflower ears that poked out from beneath his black turban stood over Decker. “You’ll pay for this,” he said.

Ashgabat, Turkmenistan

M
ARK AND
D
ARIA
abandoned the stolen Volga in a vast dirt parking lot crammed almost as far as the eye could see with old trucks and cars and hordes of Turkmen.

The Tolkuchka Bazaar was only a few miles from the sterile white buildings of downtown Ashgabat, but it might as well have been a different country; it was as if all the messiness of human life had been swept up from the streets of the capital and deposited in a stinking heap on the edge of the Kara-Kum Desert.

There were carpets, giant crates of fruit, boxes of hard candy, clothes, spices, stacks of Barf laundry detergent, electronics from China, dromedary camels…It smelled of lamb roasting on ancient iron grills and human sweat and mud. Squat old women with gold teeth and bright, tightly tied headscarves sat on little crates and called out for people to inspect their wares.

Daria bought an embroidered traditional Turkmen robe and several imitation-silk headscarves. Mark bought shoes, shirts, and pants, all locally made, hair dye, and a new wallet, which he filled with Daria’s counterfeit manats. Then he used Daria’s phone to call Holtz.

“Sava, I’m sorry. Thompson pulled a fucking bait and switch—”

“Main entrance to the Tolkuchka Bazaar. Be here at noon.”

“It’s almost noon now.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be at the air—”

“Take surveillance-detection measures, but be quick about it. You rat me out to the Agency or come with a tail on your ass, I’ll shoot you myself.”

Mark hung up without waiting for Holtz’s response, walked back to the parking lot, and haggled with a merchant over the price of a used four-wheel-drive Niva—the Russian version of a jeep. He paid the equivalent of fifteen hundred dollars in cash and drove it to the edge of the parking lot, where Daria cut his hair and helped him dye what remained black. By the time they’d finished, Holtz was there.

Mark saw him scanning the crowd near the entrance to the bazaar, his head protruding a good foot above the crush of bodies flowing past him as if he were a rock in the middle of a fast-moving river.

He called Holtz and told him to meet him inside the bazaar, in the far southern corner. And then, when Holtz was almost there, he called back to tell him to instead meet him in the far northern corner. And then outside the bazaar, in the parking lot by the camels.

“What is this crap?” Holtz said, when Mark finally approached from behind. “Man, what happened to your face?”

“Congratulations, you’re alone.”

“I told you I’d do an SD run,” said Holtz, as if offended that Mark hadn’t trusted him to shake a tail.

“Walk with me.” When Holtz began to follow him, Mark said, “Thompson and I were attacked on the way to the airport. At least one Turkmen soldier was shot, probably fatally. A couple Guoanbu agents are probably also dead. Thompson may or may not survive. Tell me about Decker.”

“A Turkmen soldier was shot?”

“That’s what I said.”

“The city’s going to be in lockdown mode. I mean, this is a fucking police state. The Turkmen don’t screw around with this kind of thing.” Holtz scanned the crowds. “Did
you
shoot the soldier?”

“No.”

Holtz looked both worried and indignant. “And are you sure you weren’t followed here, dude?”

They’d arrived at the parking lot. Instead of answering Holtz, Mark pointed to an open patch of dirt between a cluster of haphazardly parked cars. “Sit down. You’re easy to spot.”

Eventually Holtz did, although he looked uncomfortable doing so.

“Talk to us about Decker,” said Mark.

“Us?”

Daria appeared and took a seat next to Mark. She’d been following them from a distance, ready to provide backup for Mark if he got into trouble.