“If you get in an accident—”
“I’m not gonna get in an accident. Talk to me about Holtz.”
“When I asked Nazira how the boy—”
“Does he have a name?”
“Muhammad.”
“Great, that should help us identify him.”
Muhammad was the most popular boys’ name in the world.
“When I asked Nazira how Muhammad came to the orphanage, she told me a big American dropped him off yesterday. She said he was wearing a belt buckle in the shape of a football helmet. And that he had a goatee. And—”
“OK, that’s Holtz.”
“One of us has to call him.”
“Maybe I should handle it,” said Mark. Before starting her orphanage project, Daria had worked briefly for Holtz, and it hadn’t gone well. “I’m kind of headed his way anyway.”
CAIN’s headquarters was located at Manas, a major US air base just north of Bishkek.
“I don’t want Holtz anywhere near Muhammad.”
“Then hustle back to Bishkek, and you take Muhammad while I meet with Holtz. Besides, the boy needs someone who can understand him and I’m not doing so well on that front.”
Daria wasn’t fluent in Arabic, but Mark was certain she could do better than he was managing to do. He glanced at Muhammad again, who was now twisting his shirt up into his fists.
Mark didn’t connect with kids the way Daria did. He had no experience with them and had no idea how to put them at ease. But he wanted someone to put Muhammad at ease. No little kid should be scared; no little kid should have to get shuffled from an orphanage to a cynical middle-aged spy with a beat-up car, a two-day beard, and a gun.
“All right,” said Daria. “I’m already halfway there, probably just a little bit behind you. Meet at our place?”
“I’ll be there.”
6
Muhammad started crying when he was handed off to Daria, but Mark was pretty sure the boy would warm up to her. Either way, he figured Daria was the child’s best option at this point. After making the transfer, he drove to the White House because he’d been told Bruce Holtz would be there.
The White House in downtown Bishkek was similar to the White House in Washington, DC, in that it housed the office of the president, was open to anyone willing to make a large political donation, and was, in fact, white. In the Kyrgyz version, however, it was because the Soviets had glued white-marble tiles all over its clunky concrete frame.
While waiting for Holtz, who evidently had stopped by to make a strategic political donation, Mark sat outside on a low wall stained with pigeon droppings, across from a long line of thick blue spruce trees. The nearby guards who were manning the west-side service entrance were dressed in army-green camouflage and teal berets. They ignored Mark, and he ignored them.
One of the few good things about Bishkek, Mark thought, was that it was a pretty easygoing town. Sure, they had an occasional political riot here and there, but for the most part, the city had an open, leafy Midwestern-college-town feel to it. The cops and soldiers didn’t bother people much unless they wanted bribes.
Holtz walked out of the building ten minutes after Mark got there. He was a tall man, well over six feet, with broad shoulders that had grown even broader over the past year — the result of fine dining rather than time in the gym. But in a custom-made suit and a tightly cinched belt, Holtz looked like a guy to be reckoned with as he strode confidently across the brick pavers in front of the White House. His goatee, which he’d started growing a month earlier, made him look mean. Which he pretty much was.
Holtz shook Mark’s hand enthusiastically as they met outside the gatehouse.
“Sava! You stalking me, dude?”
“I called the office. Jana told me you had a late meeting here. Figured I’d wait.” Jana was the suspiciously attractive secretary Holtz had recently hired. “Listen, we need to talk.”
“We’re talking now.”
“Tell me about the kid.”
Holtz tried to keep the grin that had been on his face fixed in place, but he couldn’t quite manage it. “You don’t have to speak in code, Sava. There’s no one around us that can hear.”
Mark started to walk toward Panfilov Park, a weedy Soviet-era amusement park located behind the White House. “Tell me about the kid, Bruce. The kid you dropped off at the orphanage. The orphanage Daria’s been helping.”
“Oh. That kid.”
“Yeah. That kid. Muhammad.”
“Why do you ask?”
Mark explained what had happened with the Saudis.
Holtz looked stricken.
“That’s how I feel too,” said Mark. “What’s going on?”
Holtz exhaled. His jaw was set in a hard frown. “Fuckin-a. I knew this was gonna come back to bite me in the ass. I knew it. OK, bring him to me, I’ll deal with it.”
“Oh, yeah. Daria will agree to that, I’m sure.”
“Daria has him?”
“She does now. And you’re the last person she’d turn a child over to.”
“I know you guys are tight, but she can go stuff it.”
“Believe me, she returns the sentiment. Now, what’s up?”
“I’m sorry you got involved in this. I didn’t think—” Holtz shook his head. “Well, what’s done is done. I can’t go into details, but I promise I’ll figure out a way to make it right.”
“You gotta fill me in on this one, Bruce. We’re partners.”
Holtz made a face. “You’re the figurehead executive vice-president of a company I own. We’re not partners.”
“Close enough.”
“No, not close enough. I bust my ass running the company, you collect a check for sitting on your ass. That’s not partners.”
But they were, in a way, thought Mark.
To be sure, Holtz had been doing pretty well on his own — despite his light résumé—before Mark had come on board. With the war in Afghanistan winding down, the CIA had been cutting down on personnel in Central Asia, and the air base at Manas was seeing a lot less traffic. CAIN had been in the right place at the right time, one of the few reasonably reputable private intelligence firms in the region for governments and energy companies to turn to.
But getting Mark on board had resulted in an avalanche of new business for CAIN: evaluating security procedures at oil installations in Kazakhstan, supplying the CIA with a steady stream of capable bodyguards, helping the NSA set up and maintain listening posts throughout Central Asia, helping to translate phone or electronic communications that the CIA or NSA had intercepted… The work was coming in at a frenzied pace. Mark had served in the Caspian region and Central Asia for the better part of twenty years. Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, the war in Nagorno-Karabakh, the war in Abkhazia, the buildup of Manas Air Base in the run-up to the war in Afghanistan… He had the kind of résumé, and the kind of connections throughout the region, that attracted both good clients and good employees. Holtz, by contrast, had only served as a CIA officer for five years before starting CAIN.
Initially, Mark hadn’t been especially enthusiastic about the prospect of entering into a business relationship with Holtz; he didn’t really like Holtz, and he thought it was at best stupid and at worst corrupt the way the CIA bureaucrats in Langley were willing to pay private contractors — often former and maybe future colleagues — ridiculous amounts of money to execute ops that should have been done in-house for a fraction of the cost. But once the money had started to flow his way, he’d gotten over his qualms. And besides, he’d reasoned, as long as the CIA was the dysfunctional, sclerotic bureaucracy that it was, they needed the private contractors.