The Leveling

“Fuck yeah.”


Mark took a Makarov pistol from the dead Iranian on the steps. “Careful, it’s off safety.”

“Will I need it?”

“I don’t know. I think the house is clear but I haven’t done a sweep.”

He heaved Decker up to a standing position again and together they navigated the steps up to the ground floor.

Decker blinked at the bright natural light spilling in from the windows.

“Daria!” called Mark. “I got him.”

They stumbled into the front foyer. The Paykan was still lodged in the entrance door.

“Back it up,” said Mark. “We’re getting out of here.”

Daria, who’d been concealed behind an overturned table in an adjacent room, showed herself.

“John, God…” She looked horrified. “What did they do to you?”

Decker was filthy, leaning to one side as he favored his good leg, and barely recognizable. He was also buck naked, and the dirt couldn’t hide his massive torso and tree-trunk thighs.

“Back up the car, we’re getting out of here,” Mark repeated.

Daria kept her eyes fixed on Decker.

“Daria, let’s go,” said Mark.

She climbed over the hood of the car and slipped into the driver’s seat. The hood was smashed in, but the car started. She pulled back a few feet. Mark helped Decker to the rear door, intending to seat him opposite Amir Bayat.

Decker took one quick look at Bayat, raised his Makarov, and—without even seeming to think—shot Bayat in the temple.

“I promised him I’d let him live,” said Mark.

“I didn’t,” said Decker.





67


Northern Iran



THE CABIN WAS tiny, partially hidden by a grove of date palms, and one of twenty in a largely vacant vacation camp that was nestled on the shores of the Caspian Sea. Its roof was covered with quaint-looking thatch that had been put there for show, but the rusted corrugated metal beneath it was visible.

Daria stood in front of the cabin and looked out toward the bright horizon on the sea. The waves lapped gently on the beach. It was a pretty but deceptive picture, she knew. The Caspian was a dumping ground for all of Central Asia. Filth from the Volga, oil spillage from the international rigs, sewage from all over…

Decker lay on a bed inside the cabin. She and Mark had cleaned and tried to disinfect the wounds on his leg, made him drink a liter of juice and eat some rice, and then given him lots of painkillers and several amoxicillin pills, an antibiotic that Daria had bought over the counter at a pharmacy.

Daria looked around for Mark and eventually noticed him sitting in the shadow of a nearby tree, where the scrub grass ended and the beach began. They’d checked in as a married couple from Turkey, on their way back from a pilgrimage to Mashhad, and had smuggled Decker into the cabin after the woman who ran the place had gone back to the office.

Daria strolled up to Mark, sat down next to him, and dipped the tips of her shoes into the gray sand. Their shoulders touched.

“Hey,” she said, pretending not to be nervous. She’d been doing a lot of thinking on the drive down from the mountains, and she’d come to the conclusion that she needed to leave—the sooner the better. There were two reasons for that, neither of which she wanted to share with Mark.

“Hey.”

Daria waited for Mark to say more. When he didn’t, she said, “Listen, I’m thinking the intel Deck collected should be seen by Washington soon. All that talk of Natanz and Fordo…”

“Yeah. But we can’t send the files from here.”

Daria had figured Mark would say that. The Iranian government monitored Internet traffic and overseas telephone calls. It was too risky to try to transfer the information while they were still in Iran.

Mark added, “And we can’t move Deck yet. In a day or two, maybe.”

“Yeah, but I can be at the Azeri border in a couple hours. And I can cross it no problem with my Iranian passport.”

Mark appeared to consider her proposition for a moment. “And I stay here with Deck?”

“You don’t need me for the extraction.” They’d talked about what he planned to do. He’d be fine without her. “And we should copy and split the files anyway, in case one of us gets caught.”

Even though what she was saying made perfect sense, Daria knew she was being manipulative, which made her feel guilty.