Even after that relationship had ended, he’d kept stretching — that was what he preferred to call his yoga — and climbing. And climbing had led him to Jessica.
They’d met two weeks earlier at an expat bar in Bishkek and had been together ever since. Last night, they’d camped out at an old Soviet hut frequented by climbers; today they were climbing a mixed ice-and-rock route up the north face of Free Korea Peak, a nearly three-thousand-foot wall. They weren’t in any rush, though, and had stopped early to set up camp and have a little fun.
Decker tried to reposition Jessica, causing the portaledge — a platform that ice and rock climbers slept in when ascending huge rock or ice walls — to rock back and forth.
“Careful!” she said.
Decker wasn’t worried. He’d personally attached the portaledge to a bomber anchor — a big rock nose, over which he’d draped a long sling — ten feet above them. And then he’d backed that up with another anchor. And if those anchors failed, it still wouldn’t matter because he and Jessica were both wearing climbing harnesses that were affixed to well-placed cam anchors above them.
Granted, they’d both unsnapped the leg loops on their harnesses, so that they could remove their pants, but the leg loops weren’t essential. Worst-case scenario, Decker figured they would just be left hanging by their waist belts.
That was a risk Decker was more than willing to take. His knees sank into the nylon floor of the portaledge, his right shoulder kept hitting the rock wall on one side of the tent wall, and the whole contraption was swinging back and forth. Through an open air vent, he could see the rock wall and a little picturesque silver thread of a stream cutting through the valley far below them. Jessica laughed and so did Decker. Life just didn’t get much better than this, he thought.
Then his cell phone rang.
He ignored it. From the ring tone, he knew it was a call from home — almost certainly his mother or father, the last people he wanted to speak to right now. Talk about a buzzkill.
“Why are you stopping?” said the Aussie. She reached around and smacked his thigh as though taking a crop to a lazy horse.
“Who’s stopping?” said Decker — though he had slowed down. He loved his parents, but they weren’t exactly an aphrodisiac. When his phone stopped ringing, he flipped Jessica into a doggie-style position, smacked her rear, and got back to business.
But a few seconds later, his phone started ringing again. It was the same ring tone. Which meant it was almost certainly his mother — if he didn’t pick up the first time, she always tried again. His father would have just left a message.
“Shit, Mom.”
Jessica gave a little huff of disgust. “I’m not your mom.”
No, she most certainly wasn’t his mother, Decker thought. He forced himself to ignore both the ringing and the image of his mother standing impatiently — phone in hand — in the kitchen of the New Hampshire home he’d grown up in. But before long, he’d gotten one of his knees wedged painfully under one of the metal bars that formed the frame of the portaledge. Time to finish this off, he thought.
His phone started ringing again.
“You gotta be kidding me. I’m sorry, I have to answer this.”
“Shut up.”
“Something’s wrong.”
“I’ll really scratch you this time, you fruit loop.”
“I have to take this. No joking, Jess. Three calls means there’s a problem.”
Jessica sighed as he pulled out of her, then she flipped to her back, and patted him gently on the chest.
Decker fished his phone out of the pocket of his Gore-Tex shell jacket, which he’d wedged in a corner of the portaledge.
“Hello?”
As expected, it was his mother. “John,” she said. “How are you?”
“Ah…” He detected a quiver in his mother’s voice.
“I’ve got some bad news, honey.”
Decker felt his stomach rise up to his throat. His mom was a call-it-as-she-sees-it tough army wife who’d raised three huge boys in northern New Hampshire, all of whom had entered the military. Overly sentimental, or dramatic, she wasn’t. If she said she had bad news, it was bad news.
“What is it, Mom?”
Jessica unzipped another air vent in the portaledge. Decker felt a cool breeze on his bare schlong. In the distance he could see a line of snow-capped, glaciated mountains. Pine trees grew in the canyon below. He loved it here. The lakes in the valleys were pristine, the streams filled with trout. People called it the Switzerland of Central Asia and he thought that was about right. In between jobs for CAIN, he’d taken to exploring the countryside, often hooking up with expat women looking to explore the world. He’d been pretty damn happy over the past six months.
He had a feeling all that was about to end.
“It’s your father.”
“What happened?”
His mother began to cry. “He…” It sounded as though she’d pulled the phone away from her mouth. A moment later, she came on again. “He got up real early like he always does, to load the stove, and he was out back at the wood shed, when…”
She started crying again.
Decker glanced at Jessica. She looked up at him with a worried expression. He shook his head.
Over the phone, a distant voice Decker recognized as his younger brother’s said, “Let me tell him, Mom,” and then his brother was on the phone, saying, “He had a heart attack. When he was splitting wood.”
“Is he… dead?”
“No, but he’s in the ICU. I don’t know, Deck.”
“When did this happen?”
“An hour ago. We’re at the hospital.”
“Is he going to make it?”
“I don’t know, man. They’re running tests now. We should know more soon.”
“I’ll come home.”
Decker did the calculations in his head. There was still a little light left. On the way up, they’d climbed a mixture of ice and rock, but if they packed up quickly and rappelled down now, avoiding the ice as much as they could and sacrificing gear to the mountain to speed things up, he figured they could be on the ground in under an hour. Once on the ground, they’d have a decent hike back to the car ahead of them, but it was mostly downhill and they were both in good shape. They could run it. Getting back to Bishkek tonight was doable.
“I think mom would appreciate it.”
11
“So I talked to Rosten,” said Kaufman. “The son of a bitch turfed me up.”
“How high?” asked Mark.
“High enough.”
“To the top?”
“No.”
Mark figured that meant Rosten had sent Kaufman to the deputy director of the CIA.
“And?”
“And I’m to tell you that you’re to proceed immediately to our embassy in Bishkek, wait for Rosten to arrive, and then turn the child over to whoever Rosten tells you to. The Bishkek station has already been given the heads up. They’re expecting you. You’re to say nothing more about this to anyone except Rosten, including Bamford.”
Serena Bamford was the chief of the CIA’s Kyrgyzstan station.
“Huh. Did you get any answers as to why Near East was running an op in Kyrgyzstan behind your back?”
“No. Nor did they tell me what the op was. Apparently Central Eurasia’s role now is to provide support services for Near East.”
Kaufman’s sarcasm was evident.
“What happens if I don’t turn in the kid?” asked Mark.