The Leveling

“I knew it,” said Nuriyev. “Alty denied it when I asked him, but I knew if he made it to Iran, you must have helped him.”


“My father’s brain doesn’t work right anymore. All he does is smoke all day. I have run the business myself for the past two years.”

“Murat!”

Murat gestured to his father. “He knows it’s true. And he knows I helped Alty and an American cross the border—last I heard they are in Mashhad.”

Mark had never been to Mashhad, but he knew it was close to the border with Turkmenistan and one of Iran’s most important cities. Millions of devout pilgrims flocked to it each year to visit a holy shrine in the center of the city. Which meant Decker would have been ridiculously conspicuous there. The image was almost comical.

“When was this?” asked Mark.

“Four days ago. They crossed in a supply truck, on one of our regular runs.”

Mark counted the days back in his head. The photo of the man in the black turban exchanging a briefcase with Li Zemin—the one sent from Alty’s iPhone—must have been taken in Mashhad.

“My colleague is a big man,” said Mark.

“A giant!” said Murat with enthusiasm. “My brother thought he was a wrestler. Like maybe the brother of Edge.”

“How would such a man go unnoticed?”

Murat shrugged. “He was not unnoticed. I paid the border guards a percentage of the money your friend gave me, so there was no problem.”

“Were they supposed to come back?”

“The next day.”

“What happened?”

“Alty called from Mashhad. He said there was a delay and he’d call again when he needs me. Then I don’t hear from him.”

“Where in Mashhad was he staying?” asked Mark.

“He didn’t say.”

“Where was he going after Mashhad?”

“I don’t know.”

Mark took out Daria’s phone and brought up the photo of a man in the black turban exchanging a briefcase with Li Zemin. “This photo was taken by either my colleague or by Alty. From what you just told me, and by the time stamp on this photo, it must have been while they were in Mashhad. Do you recognize the man in the black turban?”

Murat studied it. “No.”

“How much to smuggle me and an associate into Iran?”

“When?”

“Now.”

“No, there was a shooting in Ashgabat today. There will be more security on the borders. And the time, it’s late, too late to arrange.”

Mark checked the sun. He estimated it was around four thirty. But the border was close, he knew. No more than an hour away. “I can’t wait.”

Murat shrugged. “Then three thousand dollars. One way. This is double what it usually costs. Today there will be more people to pay, and if you want to leave today I must offer more money. Even so, it will take some time to arrange.”

“How much time?”

“I don’t know, maybe an hour, maybe two. I will tell you where to meet your driver and I will bring him there as soon as I can.”

“I’ll also need you to exchange four thousand dollars of manats into Iranian rials for me.”

Murat smiled. His teeth were deteriorating where they met his gums. “OK.” He named a price that included a five-hundred-dollar service charge for himself. Mark let it go. There was a time to bargain and a time to pony up.





47


Washington, DC



THE PRESIDENT LEANED forward and rested both forearms on his desk in the Oval Office, exhausted after sitting through the four-hour targeting meeting in the situation room on only two hours of sleep. And it was only nine in the morning. He still had the whole day ahead of him.

In front of him sat Melissa Bates, formerly the head of the CIA’s Office of Near East Analysis, now a member of the CIA’s Persia House.

“What have you got for me?”

“You asked for a quantitative analysis regarding the likelihood that intelligence reports regarding Khorasani are correct.”

The president opened his palms. Get on with it already.

After reviewing the essentials of what the CIA knew about Iran’s dictator, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khorasani, Bates got to the point: “The question becomes, what is the likelihood that someone like Khorasani would seek revenge, given what we believe happened to his daughter? In an attempt to answer that question, our statisticians compiled data from other Iranian fathers who have experienced similar situations. Data from Iran itself wasn’t available, but there are millions of Iranians spread out across the world, in Bahrain, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the United States…”

After twenty minutes of listening to Bates walk him through all the figures, the president rubbed his temples. “What’s the bottom line here?”