The Leveling

59


Tehran, Iran



MARK EYED THE fence surrounding Ayatollah Bayat’s estate. Made of decorative wrought iron, it was ten feet tall and topped by sharp black spikes. He figured it would have taken Decker an effortless two seconds to vault right over it.

It was one in the morning, and he was standing in an alley across the street. He was tired. He tried to do a few last-minute stretches. Crap, he thought. He was too old for this.

He tried to rile himself up by thinking about his ransacked apartment in Baku and the loss of his book.

Nothing, no anger whatsoever.

He remembered the call from Decker’s father. Do this for him, do it for Decker’s mother, do it for Decker.

He eyed the spikes on top of the fence again.

Or not. Suffering through god-awful, heart-wrenching tragedy was just part of the human condition. It wasn’t his job to try to fix everything for everybody.

Then he thought about what Daria would think of him if he backed out.

Shit, he was really going to have to do this.

A couple of minutes later, he heard the sound of squealing tires and crunching metal. Then the horn of the stolen Paykan began to wail. That would be Daria, he knew. Evidently she wasn’t having any last-minute doubts.

The German shepherd guard dogs that had been released at midnight started snapping their jaws and barking like crazy. Mark counted three of them racing off. The two guards by the front gate also took off at a run.

Mark couldn’t see the Paykan on the opposite side of the estate, but if Daria had done her job well, the guards would find it lodged in the fence. Spray-painted on the hood, in Farsi, would be the words Death to the Guardian Council! and Independence, Freedom, Iranian Republic!

Another guard emerged from the black woods, sprinting to the front of the mansion.

Mark eyed the fence one last time, ran at it, and found a purchase for his feet on the intricate scrollwork about halfway up. Spikes jabbed into his chest as he tried to swing his body over the top. The crotch of his pants ripped, and the five-inch knife strapped to his ankle got caught on one of the spikes.

It took him a few seconds to kick himself free.

He hit the grass and felt a sharp pain in his kidneys as he fell on his back, but in an instant was up and racing across the open lawn toward the mansion.

Within seconds he had reached a gutter downspout. The copper was green with age and anchored into the brick. He began to shimmy up as best he could.

Voices were screaming out from the site of the Paykan accident.

Although he was wiry and strong, Mark nevertheless kept slipping down until he found he could gain more traction by wedging his foot between the gutter and the wall.

About halfway up, he noticed handprints other than his own—visible because they had disturbed the copper’s green patina—going up the length of the downspout.

The space between the handprints was huge.

He imagined Decker running at the wall, leaping up and grabbing the downspout ten feet off the ground, then scaling the rest within seconds.

Mark felt himself slip. If the guards had half a brain, he thought, one of them would do a perimeter sweep soon. He strained to shimmy up the rest of the way. Lifting himself over the lip of the gutter nearly proved too much. By the time he was actually sitting on the tile roof, he was exhausted, but he forced himself to keep going until he reached the ridgeline.

The first of the three chimneys was ten feet away. He checked his watch—thirty seconds behind schedule—then removed a small penlight from his pocket and inspected the exterior of the first chimney, looking for a sign from Decker. He inspected the flashing and tiles around the chimney, pulling them back, looking for a piece of paper, or anything that Decker might have left behind. He pulled himself up over the top of the chimney and stuck his head inside.

Nothing.

Below him, the guards were trying to push the Paykan off the fence. He could see them clearly, which meant they could see him too, if they chose to look up.

An inspection of the exterior of the second chimney revealed nothing, but this time, when he reached his hand into the blackened interior, he felt a collection of loose wires. The wires had been affixed to a piece of metal protruding from the interior of the chimney. When he tugged on the wires, there was resistance, as though something were tied to the end of them.

Mark pulled up a small waterproof gear bag with a shoulder strap, detached it from the wires, and stuffed it into his backpack.

Police sirens drew near.

One of the guards who had left the front gate returned to his post, putting him in a direct line of sight to the gutter downspout.