“I didn’t question his sincerity.”
Saeed clicked his tongue as he shook his head. “Then what were you doing in Al Jasra earlier today?” When Mark didn’t answer, Saeed said, “This need to meddle, this lack of respect, is the same kind of thinking that leads America to think it can force democracy on people who want nothing to do with it. If you truly understood Bahrain, you would not think you had any right to decide what is best for a child like Muhammad. You would understand that this is a matter for the boy’s family and his tribe to decide. Not you.”
“He’s got a pretty big family as I understand it.”
“Any member of which is far more entitled than you are to decide what to do with him.”
“See, the problem here—”
Raising his voice, Saeed broke in, “The problem is that you continue to put what you think is right for the boy above what I am telling you is right.”
“Here’s the thing, Saeed. When your men showed up at that orphanage in Kyrgyzstan, they didn’t come with a nice explanation like the one you’ve offered to me. Instead they lied, and then tried to take Muhammad by force. My girlfriend helps run that orphanage. And when your men crossed her, they crossed my tribe.”
“A girlfriend is not a tribe, Mr. Sava.”
“It’s a small tribe, I’ll give you that.”
Daria and Decker, thought Mark. That was pretty much the extent of it. And though the CIA’s Central Eurasia Division was a tribe of its own, they were definitely an ally he’d at least consider fighting for.
“Americans don’t have tribes. They have America.”
Not so, thought Mark. “I don’t need a lecture, Saeed. I just need the truth.”
“Mr. Sava, I’m not a man who takes pleasure in threatening a fellow intelligence officer.”
“Then by all means, don’t.”
“But you leave me no choice — I warn you, the consequences of your intransigence will be grave. And I strongly urge you to consider the fact that this is not your battle to fight.”
“Who is Kalila Safi? And why have people been lying to me about her?”
“Is that your answer?”
Saeed leaned back. His big knees stuck out on either side of his chair.
“I suppose it is.”
“You disappoint me.”
“I disappoint a lot of people.”
Saeed sighed, then glanced behind him and nodded. Three men appeared from opposite corners of the restaurant. One of the men was the older Saudi Mark had clashed with in Kyrgyzstan. He smiled at Mark and opened his sport coat just enough to reveal a shoulder-holstered 9mm Heckler and Koch P7.
“You will go with these men,” said Saeed. “If you resist you will be shot. They will show you something. When they do, remember that I warned you, Marko. I warned you.”
“What did you call me?”
43
Mark was loaded back into the blue Chevy, which looked out of place next to all the Lexus and BMW 7 Series sedans also parked in front of the golf club entrance.
So this is where it starts, he thought. The blackmail, the manipulation, the coercion. Mark didn’t blame Saeed for playing it that way. He blamed himself for not having seen it coming. For letting himself be blindsided like this.
Marko.
The use of his birth name meant they’d broken his cover, the identity he’d painstakingly crafted, had meticulously backstopped bit by bit over the past twenty years.
But how?
The answer, once he thought about it, was obvious — his personnel file had been violated. There was no other way.
And who might have violated his personnel file?
Rosten.
The call about Kalila Safi must have spooked him. So he’d cut a deal with the Saudis, figured he’d get them to do his dirty work. Well, if Rosten thought he could violate highly classified records with impunity, he was in for a rude awakening, thought Mark. No matter what happened with Muhammad, Rosten had crossed a line that should not have been crossed.
As they drove south, deeper into the desert, the older Saudi sat next to Mark in the back seat, pistol drawn. The car smelled like man sweat.
The sky was a hazy gray and the land a dull brown. In the vast flatlands that extended out from either side of the road, enormous excavators were loading sand into dump trucks; other trucks sent trails of dust in the air as they transported the sand to an industrial complex.
He saw an exit sign for Isa Air Base — home of the Bahraini Air Force — and wondered if that was where they were taking him. But they passed the exit without turning off.
Oil fields appeared. Chain-link fences encircled nodding-donkey pumps that were connected to each other by tangles of pipeline. Flare stacks — tall chimneys that burned wasted natural gas — dotted the landscape. The fires at the tops of the towers shimmered in the midday sun. Random pieces of discarded industrial equipment lay baking in the sand.
They pulled off on a little dirt road and drove for maybe a mile, until they came to a crater-like depression in the sand. It looked to Mark like an abandoned excavation site.
“Get out,” said one of the Saudis.
Mark did what he was told.
“Walk down.”
Mark did so. They’re not going to shoot you, he told himself. Not while you still have Muhammad. But do you? Had they found Decker? Saeed had said there was someone he needed to meet. Was that someone Decker? By now it had to be around one in the afternoon, which would make it four in the afternoon Kyrgyzstan time. He tried to imagine what Decker and Daria and Muhammad were doing but drew a blank.
“Sit.”
Mark sat down on the warm sand in the center of the crater. The men guarding him took turns rotating in and out of their air-conditioned car, listening to bad Arabic pop music, drinking cans of some local soda, and telling jokes. Occasionally, one of them would piss near the lip of the depression.
Mark spent most of the time with his head down, facing away from the sun. It was hot, but not oppressively so. Though he speculated about what they planned to do to him, he primarily thought about what he planned to do to Rosten. He considered trying to escape but ruled it out — both because he doubted he could pull it off and because he was curious about how they intended to try to manipulate him.
Marko.
That had been a warning.
For a while, he thought about the Chinese restaurant in Bishkek and his narde buddies. He wished he was back there with them now, tucked away in a dark corner of the restaurant, drinking beer and listening to the narde pieces smacking against the wood playing board. Once or twice he even drifted off to sleep; when he did, he dreamed of Daria.
But always when he woke, he came back to that name. Marko. And to the reason he no longer used it.
At three thirty in the afternoon, on the fourteenth of April, the bell announcing the end of the school day rang at Elizabeth High. Knowing he had only ten minutes before he needed to begin work at his father’s gas station, Marko Saveljic darted through the crush of students, hurrying to exit the building. His diligence paid off; just five minutes later, he’d reached his home on Coventry Avenue, which left him plenty of time to change into his work clothes and walk down to the gas station.
Marko pushed open the gate in the chain-link fence that stood outside his home and climbed the pitted concrete steps to the front door. A blue Maxwell coffee can, nearly full of cigarette butts, sat to the left of the door. Mounted at chest height above the coffee can, was a rusted black mailbox. His mother, he noticed, had neglected to retrieve the mail.