The Leveling

“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.

Holtz looked at her and rolled his eyes. “Oh, great.”




“So this is the deal,” said Holtz. “A few weeks ago, inflation starts going through the roof here—”

“Daria already told me about all that,” said Mark.

“Yeah, well, what she doesn’t know is that Decker figured out why. Turns out it was the ChiComs. They were printing counterfeit money. Tons of it, just dumping it on the market.”

“I told you I thought it was the Chinese before I left,” said Daria. “You wouldn’t listen. I told Decker that too. That’s how he figured it out.”

“You told me rumors. Decker brought me evidence.”

“What evidence?” asked Mark.

“Decker knew this bartender. Hell, he knew a lot of bartenders, which was kind of an issue with me, but one did black market currency exchange on the side.”

“Got a name?”

“Decker wouldn’t tell me, said he’d promised not to. Anyway, this bartender tells him the ChiComs are buying up US dollars all over the city.”

“With counterfeit manats,” said Mark.

“Yep.”

“What bar was this at?”

“Decker wouldn’t tell me that either, said he’d be compromising his source. Which was a problem. I couldn’t rat out the ChiComs to the Turkmen just because Decker heard something at a bar; I needed real evidence if the charge was going to stick. So I thought, why not find a way to trace all these dollars that were being bought up? If I could show the Turkmen that they were going straight to the ChiComs, well, then the Turkmen would have to boot the bastards. You familiar with RFID technology?”

“No,” said Mark.

Holtz appeared satisfied, but not surprised, by Mark’s ignorance.

“It stands for radio frequency identification,” said Daria. “It’s a—”

“—way to track things,” said Holtz. “Big businesses have starting using it instead of bar codes. They even have passive RFIDs that are like the-head-of-a-pin small and don’t need batteries in the transmitter. With the right transmitter and right receiver, you can track a signal from like a kilometer away. What I did was supply Decker with a one-hundred-dollar bill that had one of these tiny RFIDs inserted into a slice in it. The idea being that Decker’s bartender friend would sell this bill to the ChiComs and then Decker would track where they went. And that’s actually what happened.”

“So where’d he track it to?” asked Mark.

“Last I know he was driving east on the M-thirty-seven toward Dushakh. His bartender buddy was with him.”

“That’s no-man’s-land out there. Who else besides the bartender was helping Decker at this point?”

“I gave him some tips,” said Holtz.