The Leveling

“I AM THE political liaison to the American ambassador!” yelled William Thompson.

Mark’s vision was blurry. He put a hand on the back of his head because it felt as if he were bleeding there, but everything was dry—just a bruise, he concluded, filling with blood from the inside.

The Chinese hadn’t killed him in the square. Which meant that now, despite the attempt on his life in Baku, they must want to talk to him. They’d probably want to kill him afterward, but for the moment they wanted him alive. That bit of knowledge was a tactical advantage.

“I am a diplomat, do you hear me?” said Thompson. “And I know damn well you all work for the Guoanbu. I know this! My government will soon know this. Are you trying to start a goddamn war?”

“Quiet!”

Mark and Thompson had been stuffed into the backseat of the gray BMW, squeezed together by a Chinese who sat on their right, clutching a gun. The Chinese in the front passenger seat was also pointing a gun at Mark and Thompson. The driver made a sharp turn, and the car’s tires squealed. Mark felt for his wallet. It was gone. So were his cell phone and passport.

Thompson turned to Mark. “Why is this happening, Sava!”

The car made another sharp turn. They had left the showy white-marble part of the city and entered a neighborhood lined with old mustard-colored Soviet apartment buildings festooned with a riot of satellite dishes and air conditioners and rotting wood shutters.

“Quiet!” said the Guoanbu agent in the passenger seat of the car.

“I don’t know.” Mark wished everyone would stop yelling.

After speeding through the glum Soviet part of town, they came to a warren of dirt lanes framed by small houses with ramshackle fences protecting little gardens. A couple of minutes later, they skidded to a stop next to an old Russian Lada with bald tires. Everyone climbed out of the BMW and into the Lada.

They took off again, this time more slowly, in the direction of the vast Kara-Kum Desert that began just beyond city the limits. It occurred to Mark that the dunes of the Kara-Kum would be a convenient place to dispose of bodies.

But then they circled back toward downtown Ashgabat. Soon Mark saw the white marble and blue-tinted glass of the President Hotel looming in the distance.

It was Thompson who finally said, “They’re taking us to the Chinese embassy. You will all regret this.”

The Chinese sitting next to Thompson in the backseat smashed the butt of his gun into Thompson’s temple, knocking the station chief’s glasses off his face and opening an inch-long gash that started to bleed.

“Quiet.”

They passed the enormous white-marble embassy of the United Arab Emirates. In the distance, a soldier in an olive-green uniform stood in front of a tall fence. A large red-and-yellow Chinese flag hung from a tall flagpole behind him.

The Chinese in the driver’s seat pulled out an identification badge, as though getting ready to show it to the embassy guard.

Mark figured it was a near certainty that if they drove through those gates, he and Thompson weren’t ever getting out. You don’t abduct and rough up a US station chief and then let him live to tell Washington who did it. After the interrogation, that would be it. He glanced at the Chinese with the exposed gun in the front passenger seat.

The Chinese stared back at Mark and slowly shook his head, as if to say don’t even think about it.

The entrance gate to the Chinese embassy was less than a hundred feet away.

Mark visualized manually unlocking the car door he was pushed up against and rolling out onto the road. They wanted him alive to interrogate him? Well, he’d run and dare them to shoot him. Alone, without Thompson dragging him down, it’d be a footrace, and he’d have a head start.

The car slowed to make the turn into the embassy. Mark was about to go for the lock when out of the corner of his eye he saw a police car on the opposite side of the road careen up onto the grassy median. The police car bounced over the curb, swerved sharply, and then lurched into their lane, going against traffic.

The Chinese driving the Lada cried out and yanked the steering wheel to the right, but the momentum of the two cars speeding toward each other was too much to overcome.

Mark put his arms out and braced himself against the rear of the front seat.





35




DECKER EYED THE couple who’d picked him up. Both early twenties, he figured. The driver wore sunglasses and a tight red ski sweater. He’d combed his longish jet-black hair straight back, exposing a high forehead. The young woman wore makeup and had plucked her eyebrows. Her green headscarf had slipped down to her shoulders, revealing long brown hair that framed a pretty face.

It pained Decker when she looked at him with such horror.