The Leveling

“I could not. Your furniture and other belongings will be packed for you.”


“That’s over the top and you know it.”

“This was my decision, but if I hadn’t made it, it would have been made for me. You understand?”

Mark was an intensely private person. He didn’t like the thought of Orkhan’s goons rummaging through his things.

“I’ll need to know where you want me to send your belongings. As a courtesy from my country to yours, we will pay to have them shipped wherever you like.”

“I can’t believe this.”

“Perhaps you have a relative, back in the United States?” asked Orkhan.

Mark’s mother was dead, and his father wasn’t an option because the guy was a prick. His one living grandmother had been battling senility for years in a cheerless nursing home in Elizabeth, New Jersey.

He thought briefly of his older sister and two younger brothers. Any one of them would probably be too polite to decline a request, but the conversation would be awkward. The last time he’d talked with any of his siblings was fifteen years ago.

Baku was his home, his family.

“Or a friend?” pressed Orkhan.

Mark had plenty of colleagues from Western University with whom he was friendly. But they weren’t friends, in the true sense of the word. He was kind of on friendly terms with this young guy named John Decker, a private security contractor, and an old guy named Larry Bowlan, his first boss at the CIA, but not on such friendly terms that he felt like asking either of them to store his stuff. He briefly considered Daria Buckingham, a former lover. As far as he knew, she was still back in the States.

“Or I could store your things here for now,” said Orkhan. “And when you are settled in your new home, you can call me and I can send them to you.”

No, he couldn’t call Daria.

It occurred to Mark that it was a poor reflection on his social skills for it to have come to the point where the only person he could turn to in a time of desperate need was the corrupt minister of national security from an oil-rich kleptocracy—the same person, in fact, who was throwing him out on his ass.

“I would appreciate that.”





6




JOHN DECKER WOKE up in darkness again.

He was in motion. That realization, coupled with the sound of an engine and the high-pitched squeaking of rear shocks pounding up and down right underneath his head, led him to conclude he was locked inside the trunk of a car.

In front of him, he detected the muffled voices of several men.

Every time the car went over a large bump or pothole, the shocks bottomed out and sent a punch-like jolt through his body.

Assess your wounds.

He felt his fingers, then his forearms, then his shoulders. After working his way over his entire body, he concluded that he had a massive bruise on the top of his head—and probably a concussion, given the throbbing pain and the fact that he felt like puking. His arm had small puncture wounds in it from a dog bite, and he’d been shot twice in his left leg—once up in his thigh and again just behind his shinbone.

The bullet to his thigh had entered about six inches above his knee. Because of the placement of the exit and entry wounds, and the fact that he was alive and could still move his leg, he knew it hadn’t struck bone. The bullet to his shin had grazed the bone but hadn’t shattered it. He didn’t remember taking that hit. Someone must have tagged him just as he was jumping off the roof of the mansion. That would explain why he’d screwed up the landing.

He also determined that he must have been knocked out for quite a while, because both wounds had stopped bleeding on their own. His thigh muscle had tightened up into a rock-hard knot that ached like hell.

The pounding in his head made it hard to think. His training told him that he should be trying to notice details, trying to figure out where he was being taken.

You’re going up. The road is bumpy. Lots of turns.

He remembered the e-mail he’d sent to Mark and Daria. He’d only managed to attach three photos to it. There hadn’t been time for more.

Decker briefly thought of Daria with a sense of longing, then stopped himself.

He thought again of the e-mail he’d sent. If he’d been on the receiving end of it, he’d have sent it right to the trash with the rest of his spam. After all, he’d sent it from an address neither Mark nor Daria would recognize. But Mark had been one of the CIA’s best spies and Daria was no slouch either. They were trained to notice things that most people didn’t.

But even if they looked at the photos, what then?

Mark will use people, like he once used you. He knows how to leverage his power. God knows, he can be a mean son of a bitch when he needs to be.

Decker closed his eyes.