The Leveling

“WHAT THE HELL is he doing here?” asked Daria.

She and Mark had landed at Saparmurat Turkmenbashi International Airport at dawn. Even with approved visas, purchased for the Turkmen equivalent of five thousand dollars apiece, they’d spent an hour in airport limbo before an officious luggage inspector was assigned to search their bags. Then they’d spent another half hour waiting for an aging nurse to inspect them, as if they were livestock, for communicable diseases. Then they’d spent another half hour answering routine questions posed by grim-faced bureaucrats who wore hats with comical upturned brims and who wrote painfully slowly in giant ledger books.

It was nearly nine before they were able to catch a cab to the President Hotel.

And now, when they stepped into the cavernous front lobby, intending to start questioning the staff about Decker, they instead ran into Bruce Holtz.

“You got me,” said Mark.

“You didn’t tell him we were coming?”

“Nope.”

Holtz was slumped in a green-and-gold easy chair. Above him hung an enormous crystal chandelier. Two other men in business suits sat at tables nearby. Other than that, the place was empty, which didn’t surprise Mark. He’d stayed at the President a few years back, while visiting the CIA station in Ashgabat. It was like a lot of things in Ashgabat: superficially fancy, but pretty crappy when you actually got to know it. Its main draw was that it was located right next to the Oil and Gas Ministry.

Holtz looked up when Daria and Mark approached.

“Hello, Bruce,” said Mark.

Holtz took a sip of coffee and motioned to the small table in front of him, upon which sat a basket filled with breakfast pastries. “Join me, please. They brought too much.”

He wore a dark custom-made suit with Gucci wingtip shoes, a gold tie, and gold, diamond-studded cufflinks. His hair was slicked back; a pair of sunglasses, with the Prada logo displayed prominently in gold on the frame, were folded on the table. Mark thought he looked ridiculous, like a Russian gangster on holiday, but he couldn’t fault Holtz for it. That kind of look commanded respect in these parts.

“I take it this is not a coincidence,” said Mark.

“I figured you’d show up here eventually.”

Mark sat down in an adjacent easy chair.

Daria seemed to prefer standing to sitting next to Holtz. “What do you want, Bruce?” she asked.

Holtz turned, as if noticing Daria for the first time. “I see you found her,” he said to Mark, and then he raised his finger for the lounge waitress. “Coffee?”

Mark grabbed a raspberry danish from the basket in middle of the table. “Don’t bother. Cut to the chase, Bruce.”

“You know, Sava, sometimes you can come off as rude.”

“I’ve been told.”

“It occurred to me that we might be in a position to help each other.”

Mark said nothing.

Holtz added, “And that maybe I could have been a little more helpful when you first came to me. Like about where you should start your search for Decker. In fact, I’ll give you a hint right now—not here.”

“If you know where we should be looking, why haven’t you started looking for him yourself?” Daria asked.

Mark could guess at the answer to that question.

Turkmenistan was one of the strangest countries on earth. It had been ruled for years by a megalomaniac who called himself Turkmenbashi, and was now ruled by the late dictator’s dentist. Burdened with an ungodly bureaucracy and obsessed with secrecy, it was as though the Cold War had never ended. Holtz spoke some Russian, which evidently had been enough for him to help the State Department connect with higher-level government types in Ashgabat—Russian was the common language of Central Asia—but he couldn’t navigate the absurdities of Turkmenistan without speaking Turkmen himself. Which he didn’t.

Mark and Daria could speak passable Turkmen, though, because the language was closely related to Azeri, as were many of the other Turkic languages of Central Asia. On top of that, Mark spoke fluent Russian, and Daria spoke fluent Farsi.

“For the same reason that the owner of this hotel doesn’t clean the bathrooms himself,” said Holtz, looking at Daria. “That’s where you come in.”

Mark said, “Enough. What have you got?”

From the inner pocket of his suit coat, Holtz produced a sheet of paper. “This is a contract my attorney drafted last night. I’d like you to sign it.”

Mark picked it up.

The contract said that, for the next five years, Mark agreed to serve as executive vice president of intelligence for CAIN, Incorporated.

“Let me break it down for you,” said Mark. “I don’t really like you, Bruce. Which makes me not want to work for you. And if I sign this, I’m still not going to want to work for you. And that means I’m not going to produce for you, regardless of any contract I may or may not have signed.”

“Relax. I just want to be able to use your name and your résumé to help bring in business.”