Decker opened one of the alley windows and used the key to unlock the access hatch he’d cut through the metal bars. He picked up Muhammad, looked at Jessica, and mouthed the words follow me.
Muhammad wasn’t happy about being taken away from the pillows, and when Decker hoisted him through the window and set him down on the ground in the alley, he spit out his pacifier and started to cry.
Decker crawled through the window, picked up the pacifier from the dirt with one hand and the boy with the other, and sprinted to the front of the house. He saw Holtz’s black Jaguar parked next to his Explorer. Without slowing down, he yanked open the driver’s side door to the Explorer and slid Muhammad — who was by now having a full-blown tantrum — into the passenger seat. Pulling a knife out from under the driver’s seat, he pivoted so that he was facing the Jag, and then punctured the sidewall of Holtz’s front right tire.
That done, he started up the car and pulled out into the road just as Jessica ran up.
She hopped into the passenger seat and lifted Muhammad — kicking and screaming — onto her lap.
Decker took off in a swirl of dust. Just before cutting a hard right down a side street, he glanced in the rearview mirror — Holtz had run out of the courtyard and was looking right at them.
“Ha! Smoked his ass, didn’t we!” said Decker.
Jessica was too busy with Muhammad to respond; the kid’s tantrum showed no signs of abating.
Keeping one eye on the road, Decker reached down to the floor of the car and retrieved Muhammad’s pacifier. It was covered in gray dust.
He tried to blow the dust off the pacifier, but that didn’t do any good. So he wiped it on his pants. It still looked dirty, so he popped it in his mouth and sucked it clean.
“Dude, here.” He handed the pacifier to Muhammad, who grabbed it eagerly, stuck it in his mouth, and started sucking as if his life depended on it.
22
As Val Rosten escorted him out of the US embassy in Bishkek, Mark announced that he needed to use the bathroom.
“It can’t wait?” asked Rosten.
“No.” Mark pointed to a bathroom just down the hall.
Rosten nodded.
Mark entered the bathroom, but Rosten followed him in. It was a small space — just two urinals and two stalls, one of which was large enough to accommodate a wheelchair. No windows.
Rosten glanced around, as though looking for possible escape routes. He gestured to the urinals. “Be quick. I got a car waiting.”
Mark gestured to the stalls. “It’s not going to be quick.”
Rosten shot Mark a look that fell somewhere between confusion and revulsion. “I’ll be right outside the bathroom door. Don’t try my patience.”
Rosten left.
Mark entered the handicapped stall, shut the door, fished his cell phone out of his front pocket, and sat down on the toilet seat without pulling down his pants.
He dialed a number. When Belek, the old Kyrgyz he played narde with every day, picked up, Mark said, “I’m going to need a favor.”
After the bathroom break, Rosten led Mark out of the embassy, and into the parking lot, where a black Mercedes was idling with its front headlights on. Unlike Mark’s Mercedes, which was parked nearby, this was the real deal — a long new S550. Mark recognized it as one of the cars the embassy used for official diplomatic functions.
Two men were already inside. A blond-haired tank of a man in a marine security guard uniform, armed with a waist-holstered pistol, sat in the front passenger seat; a younger guy in khaki slacks and a pinstriped oxford drove. Rosten and Mark got in the back.
“All right, Sava. Where to?”
Mark gave the driver the address for his condo.
It was quiet and warm inside the car, and the leather seats were comfortable. But Mark could tell it was windy outside by the way the people on the dark streets were walking with their heads down and their hands tucked into their coat pockets.
“Turn here,” he said, when the black silhouette of the hospital opposite his condo loomed before them. A few patients bundled in heavy overcoats were wandering around the dimly lit park behind the black hospital gates. “Stop at the building up on the left, next to the green door.”
“So you had the kid at your place this whole time?”
“No, he’s not here.”
“Where is he?”
“At a safe house in Bishkek. But I won’t be able to get him until I retrieve my iPod from my place.”
“What do you need your iPod for?”
“The people I hired to guard Muhammad won’t recognize me. But they’ve been told to release the child to anyone who provides the proper codes.”
“Codes that are stored on this iPod?”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t remember the codes?”
“No. They’re numeric.”
“Why the iPod? Why not your phone?”
“Because that’s the way I did it.”
“I’ll go up with you.” Rosten gestured to the armed marine security guard. “He will too.”
“Be my guest.”
The Mercedes pulled to a stop outside Mark’s place. Mark, Rosten, and the marine security guard climbed out.
“Wait here. We’ll just be a minute,” Rosten said to the driver.
Mark led them up the narrow staircase, which had recently been painted pale yellow — a color that Daria had picked out. The walls were bumpy, the result of too many bad repairs to the plaster over the years.
He opened the door to his condo with a key that he’d retrieved from his front pocket, flipped on the lights, and approached the digital keypad to the left of the door, intending to disable the burglar alarm. But he saw that it had already been disabled — which told him Daria had fled in a hurry. And likely not through the front door.
“My iPod’s in the back.”
The living room was still littered with paper printed with outlines of Middle Eastern countries.
“The kid was here,” Rosten observed.
“For a while. Dammit.”
“What?”
Mark approached his narde board. It was on the coffee table in front of the couch, which wasn’t where he’d left it. The pieces had just been dumped on the board in one big pile.
Mark held up a piece that had been chipped. “Look at that,” he said. “I brought this from Baku. Inlaid with teak, silver, and camel bone. Cost me a hundred and fifty bucks. Now it’s a toddler toy.”
Mark tossed the chipped narde piece back onto the pile and walked into the room he and Daria used as an office. Two desks faced each other — his, which he rarely used, was a mess; Daria’s wasn’t. His was closest to the door. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Rosten pick up the chipped narde piece and examine it.
Mark opened his desk drawer. He sensed that the marine security guard was right behind him, watching.
With his right hand, he pulled out his iPod Touch and the small headset that was plugged into it; at the same time, with his left hand he palmed a small leather wallet-like case that contained three forged passports. Because he’d positioned his body in such a way that it blocked his left hand from the gaze of the marine security guard, who was focused on the iPod anyway, Mark was able to pocket the passports without attracting notice.
One of the passports was Azeri, one Turkish, and one British; he’d picked them all up recently, as a result of his work for CAIN. Two credit cards accompanied each passport.
All three identities were just notional covers — good enough for commercial travel, but not backstopped nearly enough to withstand any real scrutiny.