The Leveling

“They won’t believe it.”


“I don’t expect them to. Parliamentary elections in Afghanistan are going to be held five days from now, on the seventeenth. We’ll tell them the Nimitz will be fully repaired and leaving the Arabian Sea by the eighteenth. They’ll think we’re trying to tell them not to meddle with the elections.”

“That might fly.”





15


Manas Air Base, Kyrgyzstan



BRUCE HOLTZ WAS a square-jawed thirty-two-year-old former football player for Texas A&M who towered over Mark as they faced each other at the entrance to Manas Air Base, the main transit station for NATO supplies bound for Afghanistan. On his hip he wore a smartphone as if it were a sidearm.

“Mark Sava. I gotta say, this is definitely a surprise.”

Holtz flashed a big smile that appeared genuine, extended his hand, and did the squeeze-too-hard thing.

It was early evening. The air was cold, the sky an angry gray that promised rain. In the distance, a few US Air Force C-130 planes were lined up near the main runway, ready to fly arms and rations to Bagram. The flight from Baku to Manas International Airport—Kyrgyzstan’s biggest airport, located just outside the leafy capital city of Bishkek—had taken four hours. After landing, Mark had caught a cab to the section of the airport leased by the US military, the part known as Manas Air Base.

He and Holtz exchanged a few lies disguised as pleasantries. Eventually Mark got around to saying that he’d gotten sick of teaching college kids, so he’d quit his university job in Baku and left for good.

“That mean you’re looking for work?”

“Maybe…”

“CAIN could use you.”

“I’ll give it some thought. Right now I’m working on another project.”

“You’ve been giving it some thought for a year now.”

“I’ll think harder.”

Over the course of his career, Mark had served in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Abkhazia, Tajikistan, Nagorno-Karabakh Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and even briefly in Kyrgyzstan when the Americans were building Manas Air Base in the run-up to the war in Afghanistan. All that experience had earned him the kind of reputation that was worth something. Especially to someone like Holtz, who had only served with the CIA as an operations officer for five years before starting up CAIN.

Mark added, “I’m actually trying to track down one of your employees. Was hoping you might have some contact info.”

“I got a lot of employees. We’re up to twenty now.”

“John Decker.”

“What do you want with him?”

“He’s kind of a friend.”

“Friend?” Holtz crossed his arms and stared down at Mark.

Mark noted that Holtz’s eyes were small and mouse-like.

“I didn’t think you had friends, Sava.”

“Well, acquaintance might be closer to the mark. We worked together last year. Can you help me?”

“Come on, we’ll talk inside.”




They cut across the air base in Holtz’s black Jaguar, on a utility road that paralleled a tall chain-link fence that separated the US section of the airport from the civilian section. Holtz parked between a couple of Humvees, in front of a one-story steel-sided building that looked like something in between a shed and a small warehouse. Mark had heard that Holtz was allowed to lease office space from the US military in exchange for giving them priority status whenever they needed to use CAIN.

“So, yeah, we’re up to twenty employees now,” Holtz repeated as they entered his office. On his desk were a couple of manila folders, a few loose papers, and a laptop.

Mark took a step toward the desk. One of the papers showed a diagram that looked like the sketch of a subway system. On the back wall, a Dallas Cowboys pennant was pinned to imitation-wood paneling, just above a watercooler. The whole place had a temporary, slapped-together feel to it.

“That so?”

Holtz gathered the papers on his desk and placed them inside his top drawer. “We’re in five countries; business is good. Decent client base, some industry gigs, some government.”

Mark had heard that Holtz, though considered more brash than bright by CIA insiders, had landed quite a few DoD and State Department jobs simply because the United States had no one else to turn to in Central Asia. After all the cutbacks at the CIA, Holtz was one of the few players in the region.

“Heard you were in Turkmenistan,” said Mark.

“Who told you that? Decker?”

Decker had indeed been the one to tell him, over beers in Baku, three months ago. He’d said that Holtz had approached him about a security job in Turkmenistan and that he planned to take it.

“No, but word gets around, you know.”

“That’s confidential information. Deck shouldn’t have been running his mouth.”