A voice called out for him to stop, but he ignored it. When he glanced behind him, it looked as though the black figure hadn’t gained much ground.
A few steps later he fell, but he instantly lifted himself up from the dirt and continued his march. Hundred ten, hundred eleven…He concentrated on the ground immediately in front of him, taking care with each quick step and only occasionally glancing up at the house to gauge his progress.
His eyes registered a flattening of the ground, followed by the black macadam of a road that had been cut into the side of the mountain, a road that had been hidden from below.
Decker looked up.
Two men, both carrying AK-47s, sprang up from a drainage ditch and rushed at him from opposite sides.
One guy below to flush him out, the other two to capture, Decker realized.
He spun around, took a step back toward the hill, stuck his hand in his coat pocket, and fingered one of the blades from the pruning shears.
The first guard hit him in the gut with a football tackle. As they tumbled to the ground as one, Decker whipped out the blade and stabbed the man’s carotid artery.
The second guard lit into Decker with the butt of his gun, swinging it like an ax. Decker absorbed a few blows to his head and thighs and a glancing blow to a knee. He pulled out the second blade from the pruning shears, stabbed the guy’s Achilles tendon, and was about to try for the femoral artery when a volley of twenty or so bullets flew over him, inches from his head. A hit to his ankle connected, breaking bone. Two men grabbed his arms, pinning them to the asphalt. Another kicked him repeatedly in the balls and guts.
A few seconds later, a sweaty nervous man with ugly cauliflower ears that poked out from beneath his black turban stood over Decker. “You’ll pay for this,” he said.
40
Mark and Daria abandoned the stolen Volga in a vast dirt parking lot crammed almost as far as the eye could see with old trucks and cars and hordes of Turkmen.
The Tolkuchka Bazaar was only a few miles from the sterile white buildings of downtown Ashgabat, but it might as well have been a different country; it was as if all the messiness of human life had been swept up from the streets of the capital and deposited in a stinking heap on the edge of the Kara-Kum Desert.
There were carpets, giant crates of fruit, boxes of hard candy, clothes, spices, stacks of Barf laundry detergent, electronics from China, dromedary camels…It smelled of lamb roasting on ancient iron grills and human sweat and mud. Squat old women with gold teeth and bright, tightly tied headscarves sat on little crates and called out for people to inspect their wares.
Daria bought an embroidered traditional Turkmen robe and several imitation-silk headscarves. Mark bought shoes, shirts, and pants, all locally made, hair dye, and a new wallet, which he filled with Daria’s counterfeit manats. Then he used Daria’s phone to call Holtz.
“Sava, I’m sorry. Thompson pulled a fucking bait and switch—”
“Main entrance to the Tolkuchka Bazaar. Be here at noon.”
“It’s almost noon now.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be at the air—”
“Take surveillance-detection measures, but be quick about it. You rat me out to the Agency or come with a tail on your ass, I’ll shoot you myself.”
Mark hung up without waiting for Holtz’s response, walked back to the parking lot, and haggled with a merchant over the price of a used four-wheel-drive Niva — the Russian version of a jeep. He paid the equivalent of fifteen hundred dollars in cash and drove it to the edge of the parking lot, where Daria cut his hair and helped him dye what remained black. By the time they’d finished, Holtz was there.
Mark saw him scanning the crowd near the entrance to the bazaar, his head protruding a good foot above the crush of bodies flowing past him as if he were a rock in the middle of a fast-moving river.
He called Holtz and told him to meet him inside the bazaar, in the far southern corner. And then, when Holtz was almost there, he called back to tell him to instead meet him in the far northern corner. And then outside the bazaar, in the parking lot by the camels.
“What is this crap?” Holtz said, when Mark finally approached from behind. “Man, what happened to your face?”
“Congratulations, you’re alone.”
“I told you I’d do an SD run,” said Holtz, as if offended that Mark hadn’t trusted him to shake a tail.
“Walk with me.” When Holtz began to follow him, Mark said, “Thompson and I were attacked on the way to the airport. At least one Turkmen soldier was shot, probably fatally. A couple Guoanbu agents are probably also dead. Thompson may or may not survive. Tell me about Decker.”
“A Turkmen soldier was shot?”
“That’s what I said.”
“The city’s going to be in lockdown mode. I mean, this is a fucking police state. The Turkmen don’t screw around with this kind of thing.” Holtz scanned the crowds. “Did you shoot the soldier?”
“No.”
Holtz looked both worried and indignant. “And are you sure you weren’t followed here, dude?”
They’d arrived at the parking lot. Instead of answering Holtz, Mark pointed to an open patch of dirt between a cluster of haphazardly parked cars. “Sit down. You’re easy to spot.”
Eventually Holtz did, although he looked uncomfortable doing so.
“Talk to us about Decker,” said Mark.
“Us?”
Daria appeared and took a seat next to Mark. She’d been following them from a distance, ready to provide backup for Mark if he got into trouble.
Holtz looked at her and rolled his eyes. “Oh, great.”
“So this is the deal,” said Holtz. “A few weeks ago, inflation starts going through the roof here—”
“Daria already told me about all that,” said Mark.
“Yeah, well, what she doesn’t know is that Decker figured out why. Turns out it was the ChiComs. They were printing counterfeit money. Tons of it, just dumping it on the market.”
“I told you I thought it was the Chinese before I left,” said Daria. “You wouldn’t listen. I told Decker that too. That’s how he figured it out.”
“You told me rumors. Decker brought me evidence.”
“What evidence?” asked Mark.
“Decker knew this bartender. Hell, he knew a lot of bartenders, which was kind of an issue with me, but one did black market currency exchange on the side.”
“Got a name?”
“Decker wouldn’t tell me, said he’d promised not to. Anyway, this bartender tells him the ChiComs are buying up US dollars all over the city.”
“With counterfeit manats,” said Mark.
“Yep.”
“What bar was this at?”
“Decker wouldn’t tell me that either, said he’d be compromising his source. Which was a problem. I couldn’t rat out the ChiComs to the Turkmen just because Decker heard something at a bar; I needed real evidence if the charge was going to stick. So I thought, why not find a way to trace all these dollars that were being bought up? If I could show the Turkmen that they were going straight to the ChiComs, well, then the Turkmen would have to boot the bastards. You familiar with RFID technology?”
“No,” said Mark.
Holtz appeared satisfied, but not surprised, by Mark’s ignorance.
“It stands for radio frequency identification,” said Daria. “It’s a—”
“—way to track things,” said Holtz. “Big businesses have starting using it instead of bar codes. They even have passive RFIDs that are like the-head-of-a-pin small and don’t need batteries in the transmitter. With the right transmitter and right receiver, you can track a signal from like a kilometer away. What I did was supply Decker with a one-hundred-dollar bill that had one of these tiny RFIDs inserted into a slice in it. The idea being that Decker’s bartender friend would sell this bill to the ChiComs and then Decker would track where they went. And that’s actually what happened.”