The Leveling

Mark left a twenty-dollar American bill on the table—the smallest he had—to cover what was only four dollars’ worth of beer, and followed her out the back of the restaurant. She led him down an alley that smelled of cat piss, then through the rear door of a two-story apartment building. After turning down a flight of steps, she stopped in front of a metal door and fished an oversized key out of her jacket pocket.

The door opened onto a small room. A streetlamp cast dim light through the basement windows near the ceiling. The dirty white walls were bare, and a single uncovered lightbulb dangled from the ceiling. Daria turned it on. A brown mini-refrigerator with a dented door sat in the corner next to a utility sink. The faded green plastic table in the center of the room looked as though it had spent many years aging in the sunshine. There was one fold-up chair, on which Daria now sat down.

She pointed to a couple of wooden milk crates in the corner. “Grab a few.”

Mark stacked them on top of one another and sat across the table from her. They looked at each other for a while.

“It’s good to see you,” said Mark.

“Stop staring at my face.”

“I wasn’t staring.”

“Yes you were.”

“I was just staring at you, not at—”

“You were staring at the scars.” She put a hand to her temple and turned away from him.

“I can’t even notice them. You look great, Daria.”




Mark’s apartment in Baku, seven months earlier…

Mark had slept around plenty, and had even had some decent long-term relationships over the years, but the only other time he’d woken up in the morning with a woman actually in his arms was when he’d had sex for the first time, back when he’d been a sophomore in high school.

Ordinarily he preferred a certain distance when he slept. He didn’t like people breathing on him, no matter how good they looked or how nice they smelled, and he got hot if he felt crowded in bed. Even a light hand on his chest could lead to insomnia.

So even though he and Daria had started having sex weeks ago, not long after she’d started making good dinners and he’d started buying good wine, he’d always moved over to his side of the bed afterward. Until last night, that is, when they’d fallen asleep in each other’s arms.

Now it was morning, and since he’d woken up before her, he just lay there for a while, thinking. Her breathing was light, and her bare skin was cool where it touched his own. On the end table next to the bed, the wilted stargazer lilies that he’d bought two weeks ago hung limp in a vase. After fifteen minutes of just lying there, he started getting antsy, remembering why he liked his space in bed. He considered getting up. It was already late.

Then the phone on his end table rang.

“What time is it?” Daria stretched her arms up toward the headboard.

“Eight.”

Mark leaned out of bed and checked the caller ID. It just registered as an international number. “Shit,” he said.

“Are you going to answer it?”

Mark picked up the phone and listened silently as Daria curled up into the covers. He said “Yeah” a couple of times, and then, “Is that subject to discussion?” and finally, just before hanging up, “I’ll tell her.”

“Tell me what?”

Mark sat up in bed and ran his hand through his hair. “That was Kaufman.”

“And?”

“He’s calling you in. Back to Washington, to debrief you.”

“You mean fire me.”

“We knew it was coming.” The fight over the pipeline had exposed Daria’s divided loyalties between the CIA and an Iranian resistance group. It had just been a matter of time until the CIA fired her. They’d just been waiting until she recovered enough to go through the exit interviews.

Daria curled into him. “Can’t I do the debrief at the embassy?”

“No.”

“Fine, then I’ll go back to the States for a few weeks. What’s wrong? You’re tense.”

Mark didn’t answer right away. “Kaufman also told me the Azeris have filed a PNG on you.”

Daria froze up. PNG stood for persona non grata. It meant the Azeris were kicking her out of Azerbaijan.

“It sucks, I know,” said Mark.

They lay in silence for a minute as they both considered the full implications of what that meant.

“Did you know this was coming?” asked Daria.

Ordinarily Mark considered himself to be an adept liar. As a CIA officer, he’d had plenty of practice. But even before he spoke, he was afraid that his timing and intonation would be subtly off. A normal person would never notice, but Daria wasn’t normal. She’d been his best operations officer. “No.”

“You did know. Didn’t you?” She pulled her hand off his chest.

“I suspected, that’s all.”

“You didn’t talk to Orkhan about it? He didn’t tell you?”

“He didn’t tell me anything.”

“So all that talk about my taking courses here—”

“I didn’t know this was going to happen, Daria. I just know the system. I knew it was a possibility.”