The Leveling

The air grew cooler as they drove up toward the mountain pass that led into Iran. Soon they cleared a gated army checkpoint that marked the beginning of the restricted border zone. The Kopet Dag Mountains here were gently sloping, covered with occasional patches of green spring grass, and broken up by shallow canyons. It was six thirty in the evening. The sun hung low in the sky, and the shadows were long.

Eventually the road leveled out and the truck’s air brakes hissed as it ground to a stop. They’d reached the border. Mark counted six trucks and two cars ahead of them.

The truck at the front of the line was being inspected by Turkmen soldiers dressed in camouflage uniforms and floppy safari hats. Beyond it, Mark could see a squat white-marble building and a ten-foot-tall wrought-iron border fence.

A minute later, Daria pulled up behind them in the Niva. She wore a black headscarf and was smoking. Two more trucks pulled up behind her. Turkmen soldiers with automatic rifles paced back and forth at the very end of the line.

When the lead truck was cleared to pass, the whole line moved forward. Mark wasn’t surprised when he saw the soldier who’d been guarding the Chinese embassy earlier in the day. He wore civilian clothes and stood next to an older Chinese; both men stood off to the side, eyeing the incoming vehicles as the Turkmen soldiers searched them.

Mark turned to the driver. Speaking Russian, he said, “Murat told you of the special problems we’re likely to encounter?”

“Calm yourself.” The driver spoke like a man who was used to dealing with panicked novices. But after a minute of silence, he asked, “What special problems?”

Mark explained that he’d been involved in the shooting in downtown Ashgabat earlier in the day and that it was entirely possible that people at the border would be looking for him, people who almost certainly wouldn’t be bound by any smuggling agreement arrived at between Murat and the border soldiers.

The driver protested that Murat had said nothing of this, nothing at all! And that Mark should have said something earlier! Now that they were in line, they couldn’t turn around without triggering a search.

Mark claimed that he had told Murat about the situation, which was a lie, and that he wished he’d said something sooner, which was another lie—in fact, he’d purposely waited to tell the Russian what was really going on until it was too late to turn around.

A minute later, the line moved forward again. The Turkmen soldiers descended on a new truck. They checked under the hood, inside and under the cab, and through everything being transported in the trailer.

The driver eyed the Chinese observers then banged his hands on the steering wheel. “Murat told me nothing of this.”

“Listen, buddy. This is what we’re going to have to do…”

Mark explained his plan. The driver twisted in his seat to face Mark and clenched his teeth. “Don’t touch me. And keep your clothes on, pedik.”

Mark gestured to the Chinese. “Do you have any better ideas?”

The driver didn’t.




The driver threw his truck into neutral and let it slowly roll back down the hill. When Mark heard the crunch of the truck’s rear bumper ramming into Daria’s front bumper, he slipped out of the cab wearing the Russian driver’s old shirt, pants, plastic sandals, and red-bandana head covering.

Daria climbed out of her car.

“We’ve switched to plan B.” Mark glanced at her dented bumper.

“Yeah, I saw them.”

Mark made eye contact with the trucker directly behind Daria’s car and drew a finger across his throat. Mind your own business and keep your mouth shut. The trucker turned away just as the Russian driver joined them, wearing Mark’s clothes, and began to argue with Mark about the accident. Soon one of the Turkmen soldiers from the end of the line showed up and said to take it up on the other side of the border if they needed to. The line was moving.

Fine, said Mark.

Daria climbed up into the back of the truck, where she took a seat on one of the rolls of black chadors—a religious Iranian woman would never scandalize herself by riding with an unfamiliar man in the cab.

The Russian climbed into Daria’s car, while Mark took his place behind the steering wheel of the 18-wheeler. The seat was frayed, and hard springs poked into his back. He twisted the key in the ignition, shifted into first, gently raised the clutch, and stalled out. The second time he got it and pulled up to where he should have been in line. Then he studied his new passport.

Given the grisly nature of her suicide, Mark had become adept at blocking out most memories of his mother. But he thought of her now because she’d immigrated to the United States from the Soviet state of Georgia as a girl. Her father had been a Russian, and Mark had inherited some of his grandfather’s Russian features—the slightly droopy eyelids, the light skin, the brown eyes. Enough so that he thought he looked at least a bit like the Russian driver, whose passport he now held in his hand. They were also roughly the same height and age. It wouldn’t hurt that the photo itself was creased and dirty.