“Big.”
“Does Anna feed Muhammad?”
“Yes.”
“Anna is your mommy?”
“No.”
“Where does Anna live?”
“My house.”
“Where is your house?”
“Ba-bay.”
“I don’t understand ba-bay.”
“Anna in ba-bay.”
8
“Did you at least ask Rosten why he wasn’t using CIA assets here in Bishkek, or anywhere else throughout Central Asia, to place the kid?” asked Mark.
They’d reached Frunze Street, a wide road that bordered Panfilov Park. A white garbage truck, spewing black diesel smoke, drove by. Behind it was a pickup truck that stank of raw meat, a result of all the beef carcasses that had been stacked high in the open bed. Mark kept walking on the sidewalk.
“Well, I didn’t ask, but it seemed pretty obvious that Rosten was trying to do right by Muhammad’s parents without making the Agency look like it was running a baby-trafficking op.”
“And it’s OK for CAIN to run a baby-trafficking op?”
Mark had always known Holtz was aggressive when it came to his business. He’d known Holtz wasn’t afraid to cut a few corners, maybe make promises he wasn’t sure he could deliver on. But this was breaking new ground.
“Hey, man. If the CIA could do everything CAIN was willing to do, we’d be out of business. Rosten wanted to keep the CIA’s hands clean with this deal. I thought, fine — I’ll take the risk and their money. And it’s not a fucking baby-trafficking op. I placed the kid in a decent orphanage and paid to grease the adoption wheels.”
“Does Central Eurasia even know Rosten is running an op in their territory?”
“I don’t know. You’d have to ask Rosten.”
“Was Kyrgyzstan station given the heads up?”
“Again—”
“Ask Rosten.”
“Yeah. I didn’t ask about that stuff because I didn’t want to know. It’s not my business to play referee between Near East and Central Eurasia.”
“Central Eurasia’s going to be pissed if they find out Near East was running a black op in Kyrgyzstan, behind their backs.”
Holtz threw his hands up. “So they’re pissed. Not my problem.”
“Ninety percent of our contracts with the CIA are run through Central Eurasia, Bruce. If we piss them off, it’s definitely our problem.”
Mark thought of all the cash he’d raked in over the past seven months. He’d been trying to pull off a delicate tightrope act — to profit from his association with Holtz without getting dragged down by it.
He had a sense that he’d just fallen off the rope.
“Which is why I thought doing a job for Near East would be a good way to grow the business, broaden our reach a bit. Anyway, I agreed to fly down to Jordan and pick up the kid. I brought him back here because I knew Daria’s been involved with that orphanage in Balykchy and I figured it was as good a place as any to keep him while I lined up some reasonably normal parents to adopt him.”
“You didn’t think Daria would find out?”
“I didn’t care if she found out. Or if you found out. We’re all on the same team, remember?”
“Daria’s not on your team, Bruce.”
“Once I brought the kid here, I figured the decision would already have been made and that the solution would be obvious to everyone — to find some decent adoptive parents for him and move on.”
“I think you might have misjudged the situation.”
“Well, what the hell else are we going to do?”
“How much is CAIN getting for the job?” asked Mark.
“A hundred K. Which covers picking the kid up and watching over him until he gets adopted. I left a donation at the orphanage to make sure they took good care of him. And the orphanage gets another ten K bonus when they line up good parents for the kid. It was a no-worries deal.”
“You didn’t think that a hundred thousand for a couple days’ work might not come with a few worries attached?”
“You’re not one to talk, Sava. Everything we do at CAIN comes with a few worries attached. That’s why we get paid. I’m vulnerable to blowback from the jobs you bring in, and you’re vulnerable from the jobs I bring in.”
“Yeah, but I tell you about the jobs I bring in.”
Holtz laughed. “Dude, you negotiate deals behind my back with your old CIA contacts, and then pretend that you’re actually considering my input after the deal is already done. You tell me as little as possible about whatever it is you do. Besides, my not telling anyone else at CAIN, or the CIA, was part of the contract. Rosten made me agree to personally handle the placement and adoption of the kid.”
“He mention anything about the possibility that a couple of pissed-off Saudis might show up?”
“No, he sure as hell didn’t.”
“Call Rosten,” said Mark. “Tell him what happened. See how he reacts. Ask him why a couple Saudis would want the kid.”
“And when he tells me to bring the kid back in and stonewalls me on the Saudis, then what do I tell him then?”
“You tell him it’s not up to you. It’s up to me.”
“He’s not going to like that.”
“He doesn’t have to like it. Tell him I’m being a dick about it.”
“You kind of are. Hey, where are you going?”
Mark kept walking away without looking back. “Call Rosten. I’ll be in touch.”
9
To prevent the Agency or anyone else from tracking him, Mark powered down his cell phone and removed the battery. Then he hailed a cab and got dropped off at a pharmacy, where he bought three cheap cell phones that came with prepaid SIM cards.
The pharmacy sat across from Victory Square, in the center of which stood a three-pronged granite arch that was supposed to be suggestive of a yurt and which had been erected to honor the Kyrgyz soldiers who’d died fighting for the Soviets in World War II. Under the arch was an eternal flame, which Mark was surprised to see was burning — he’d heard it had gone out recently because of a dispute over the gas bill. As he’d hoped, there were enough people milling about the square that he didn’t stand out.
He took a seat on one of the chestnut-red granite steps leading up to the flame, activated one of his new phones, and called Ted Kaufman, the division chief for the CIA’s Central Eurasia Division. Kaufman, a tired bureaucrat who was nearing the end of a forty-year career with the CIA, answered his personal cell phone on the fourth ring.
“I need you to run a couple names for me,” Mark said as soon as Kaufman picked up.
Kaufman didn’t speak for a moment, prompting Mark to consider the eleven-hour time difference between Bishkek and Washington, DC. He did the math in his head, then envisioned Kaufman swinging his spindly legs off the bed, his paunch hanging out over his boxer shorts, shaking off sleep.
“Sorry if I woke you,” Mark added.
“I’ve been well, Sava. Thanks for asking. And you?”
“Listen, I’m going to text you two files. They’re both images of Saudi driver’s licenses. The names are in Arabic, so I couldn’t read them. I need you to figure out who these guys are.”
“First, I’m not your secretary, Sava. Second, you shouldn’t have called this number — I don’t recall ever giving it out to you.”
“Ever hear of caller ID? You’ve used it to call me.”
“Third, apparently you’ve forgotten that Saudi Arabia is part of the Near East Division, so go bug them. Fourth, it’s six thirty in the damn morning. And my alarm is set for seven.”
Kaufman had been Mark’s boss at the CIA for seven years before Mark had finally quit. For better or worse, they knew each other pretty well.