The Leveling

Mark stood a foot behind her.

He’d actually been thinking that she was still beautiful, despite all she’d been through. She’d probably never see it that way, though.

He could see someone else’s garbage—old fava beans and a bunch of used tissues—in the waste bin under the sink. The fava beans smelled sour, and a stink of sewage gas seeped up from the base of the toilet.

Daria didn’t belong in this dump, he thought. No one did.

“You look fine.”





51


China, Above Xinjiang



THE BEIJING-BOUND ARMY transport plane was pretty utilitarian inside, but Li Zemin was seated up front, where a few comfortable captain’s chairs had been bolted to the steel floor—a first-class section of sorts, reserved for military and intelligence bigwigs. A young lieutenant general sat beside him.

Not long into the trip, an air force steward asked Zemin and the lieutenant general if they wanted tea and crackers.

Zemin said he’d brought his own tea. Just hot water would be fine. He sneezed and rummaged through his shoulder bag for the mix of oolong tea and medicinal herbs that his trusted herbalist in Beijing had prepared for him.

“Try it with some baijiu,” said the lieutenant general. He produced a green porcelain bottle and offered it to Zemin. “A little bit will help clear your nose.”

Zemin was about to refuse the offer—baijiu was a notoriously strong liquor that his wife had frowned upon when she’d been alive. And Zemin had never been much of a drinker anyway. But he found himself thinking that baijiu might be just the thing he needed to help him deal with his uncle. So he accepted the bottle, and after steeping his tea in hot water for a few minutes, he poured a few ounces of the alcohol on top.

The baijiu had been infused with the fragrance of honey, so despite its potency, it slipped down Zemin’s throat with ease. It did nothing to clear his nose, but he announced the success of the treatment to the lieutenant general anyway.

“Then the bottle is yours,” replied the lieutenant general, as Zemin had known he would.

“But I couldn’t possibly accept.”

“I insist.” He explained that the brand was common in his home city of Shanghai, but hard to find in Beijing.

Zemin offered his thanks for the gift and, an hour later, when he ordered more hot water for tea, he topped off his cup with another healthy pour of the liquor.





52


Mashhad, Iran



MASHHAD AT DAWN was frantic with honking cars, tour buses and construction trucks, and crowds of people streaming along with great purpose. The pollution was so thick in the streets that Mark’s eyes began to water as he walked. It was a city that had grown too fast, he thought, with no central planning.

In the city center, towering high above the maze of clogged streets and surrounding buildings, loomed an enormous dome tiled in solid gold and topped by a green flag. It was the shrine of Imam Reza, Daria said, one of Shiite Islam’s most revered figures. Tall golden minarets rose on either side of it, and strings of lights suspended from the top of the minarets flared outward like bell-bottoms. A massive Vatican-like city-within-a-city had grown up around the shrine.

When Mark got to the high tiled walls that separated the shrine complex from the rest of Mashhad, he presented his Iranian driver’s license to one of the guards standing at the men’s entrance. Having already used it at two police checkpoints, when he and Daria had breezed into Mashhad early that morning, he was confident by now that it would be accepted.

The guard glanced at the license, as though to be polite, swept a hand-held metal detector across Mark’s body, and asked a question in Farsi.

Mark didn’t understand the question, but guessed the guard was asking him what his intentions were.

“Pilgrimage, pay my respects to Imam Reza.” Mark spoke in Azeri. More Azeris lived in Iran than in Azerbaijan, and it was a common language of commerce in Iran. He figured in a place so heavily trafficked as this that the guards would understand him.

“Camera?” asked the guard, this time in Azeri. He patted Mark’s body down, but stayed away from Mark’s genitals, where Mark had hidden a roll of tape and a sheaf of paper fliers. Mark had figured it would be like a football game, where you were allowed to smuggle in as much booze as you could fit next to your balls.

“No.”

The guard motioned for him to pass through the gates, and Mark entered the first of a series of interlocking courtyards that surrounded the shrine. In front of him, a woman in a black chador was praying, her eyes cast toward the sky, her hands held up in front of her as though holding an imaginary box. A nearby signpost pointed the way to ancient mosques, museums, religious schools, libraries, tourist centers, guest houses…