Spy for Hire (2 page)

Tomato plants… they’d freeze here in the winter, but maybe in the spring, he’d buy some. He looked out to his rump of a balcony again, imagining where he’d put a few pots, but instead his eyes fixed on what was going on just outside the Soviet-era hospital building across the street.

“In November?” he said out loud, speaking half to himself and half to Daria Buckingham, an Iranian American former CIA operative who was also his live-in girlfriend.

“What?” called Daria.

Mark stepped into the kitchen, where Daria was frying chicken with onions and carrots in a large cast-iron pot. She turned, and smiled at him. It was a wide, easy smile that reminded Mark why he’d fallen for her.

“They’re bringing the mattresses out again.”

Every so often, orderlies would drag out the frayed, red-striped, futon-like hospital mattresses and air them out in one of the building’s courtyards. It always depressed Mark to think that a human being, a sick human being no less, had to sleep on one of those things.

“You know, you could volunteer to help.”

“Yeah, and after that I’ll volunteer to help Sisyphus push his rock up the hill.”

“Maybe figure out a way to get them some good mattresses.”

“It’s not like, if there’s piss on them, they’re going to dry out. It’s too cold. What do they think they’re doing?” When Daria didn’t answer, Mark added, “Remind me never to have a heart attack here. I take it the chicken’s for the kids?”

“Yeah.” Daria used the back of her wrist to wipe a strand of her long dark hair out of her eyes.

Mark took a moment, as he always did upon entering a room, to analyze the situation. Daria was wearing an apron over a nice black skirt and a green blouse, which told him she’d come from a meeting, probably in Bishkek, and that she had more meetings planned for later in the day; her phone was on the counter, and
turned on, so she’d likely been trying to conduct business while she cooked; onion skins were scattered all over the countertop cutting board, which suggested she was rushed because she typically cleaned as she cooked; and her large brown eyes looked happy but tired.

He’d be tired too if he worked as much as she did, he thought. Her work helping orphanages throughout Central Asia—work funded by an intelligence operation she’d made a killing on—was what motivated her. She was constantly meeting with wealthy supporters of her cause, traveling to orphanages, making dinners…

He admired her dedication. Not so much that he wanted to join her cause, but he was relieved that, after going through hell while working for the CIA, she’d lived to find her true calling.

“Smells great.” Mark put a hand on her waist and leaned into her for a kiss. Daria surprised him with a more passionate response than the perfunctory peck he was expecting, given that he hadn’t shaved or showered yet that day. The feel of her smooth warm cheek as it brushed against his own was a comfort.

“It’s for the orphanage in Bishkek,” she said. “One of the kids is being adopted, it’s his last night. Remember?”

Mark didn’t. “Oh, yeah.” He started cleaning up the onion skins on the cutting board, but then he felt Daria’s eyes on him and he turned to face her. “What?”

His first thought was that she was annoyed at him for claiming to have remembered the dinner, when in fact he hadn’t—she was perceptive that way—but her expression looked more intense than that. He couldn’t tell whether she was holding back laughter or tears. They locked eyes for a moment.

“Nothing.” Daria turned back to the chicken.

Between the kiss and now this, Mark wondered what was up, but he figured that if it was important, he’d find out soon enough—probably that night. They often saw each other only in passing during the day, but they always made a point of catching up before going to sleep.

“Hey, another deal came through this morning,” he said. “The Agency’s subbing out an intel job they want done in Almaty.”

In his teens, Mark had worked his butt off after school and on weekends as a gas station attendant in Elizabeth, New Jersey. In his twenties, he’d served as a CIA case officer and paramilitary operative in the CIA’s Special Activities Division. In his thirties, he’d been one of the youngest officers in the CIA to be given his own station. But now? Now he was pretty much just loafing, cashing in on his CIA experience by drumming up business for a privately owned spies-for-hire firm that operated out of the nearby US air base. Every time he brought in work, he collected fifty percent of the profits.

“What’s the job?” she asked, sounding less than enthusiastic.

“Intel op on a Chinese construction firm that’s upgrading the oil ministry building. We’ll have to put a couple officers on TDY in Almaty.”

TDY was short for temporary duty.

“Is the job already cleared with State?”

“Seems to be. I talked to—”

The phone started ringing.

Mark didn’t feel like talking to anyone, so he didn’t move to answer it.

Daria flashed him a look that said,
Listen, I’ve been working like crazy all day trying to help impoverished kids while you’ve been sitting on your ass playing that silly narde game with your old geezer buddies down at that filthy Chinese restaurant and making money hand over fist by selling your reputation. The least you could do is shuffle a few feet to the phone.

“I’ll get it,” said Mark, but he was a second too late.

Daria picked up the phone. After listening for a minute, with the handset held a little ways from her ear because the person on the other end was talking so loudly, she said, “Hold on, slow down. No. Tell them they need to go through the normal channels, no exceptions.” And then, “
No
, they can’t do that. Absolutely
not.
Do not
let them take that child.” And then, “OK, I’ll be there as soon as I can. Stall them until I get there.”

She turned to Mark, looking frustrated. And tired. “Any way you can finish the
paloo
?”

“Yeah, sure.”
Paloo
was what the Kyrgyz called meat and rice mixed together in a big pot. Mark figured he could handle it.

“And drop it off?”

“No worries. I got it covered. What’s up?”

Daria had already left the kitchen and was putting on her coat. “Problem in Balykchy with one of the kids.”

“What problem?” asked Mark, but Daria was already on her way out the door.

2

The road to Balykchy, a town of forty thousand people about one hundred miles east of Bishkek, shot straight through a fertile valley that was one of the few flat places in all of Kyrgyzstan. Mountains rose up from the northern and southern edges of the valley.

As Daria pushed the limits of her Volkswagen Jetta, trying to make good time before she hit the part of the highway the Chinese hadn’t fixed yet, her thoughts turned to Mark. And to the fact that her period was a week late. Was it possible?

Yes. Unlikely, but possible.

Neither of their efforts to prevent conception had been heroic. Birth control pills made her feel bloated, and besides, she didn’t trust the quality of the locally available brands. So instead they’d relied on the rhythm method and the occasional condom. She’d known the risks, and had accepted—maybe even welcomed—the possible consequences. But could the same be said for Mark?

She exhaled and gripped the steering wheel a little tighter, wondering what his reaction would be if this wasn’t just a scare; she hoped the news would bring them closer, but worried he would pull away from her.

Truth be told, though they’d been living together in Bishkek for more than seven months now—ever since Mark had gotten kicked out of Azerbaijan—she still sometimes felt as though she didn’t understand him. She certainly didn’t understand the rationale behind what he was currently doing with his life.

During their first month living together in Kyrgyzstan, she’d sympathized with him wanting to take it easy for a while. He was more than ten years older than she was. He’d already seen, and done, plenty with his life. Running away from home at seventeen, putting himself through college, joining the CIA and rising quickly through its ranks… It had been nice to see him just relax in a way that, she suspected, he’d never done before.

Maybe the fact that he’d gotten kicked out of Azerbaijan had been a blessing in disguise, she’d thought. She’d continued to feel the same way during the second month. He just needed time to unwind.

By the third month, she’d started wondering just how long this unwinding business was going to last. In Azerbaijan, after leaving the CIA, he’d taught international relations at a university in Baku. She’d figured he’d try to land a similar teaching position here in Bishkek. It wouldn’t have been hard, given his credentials.

Instead he played narde. Every day. And worked halfheartedly for that spies-for-hire outfit. She couldn’t understand how someone as bright and capable as Mark was could be satisfied with that kind of life.

Balykchy was a wretched place.

During the Soviet era, the town had been a thriving factory center, a rail hub where wheat, corn, tobacco, cotton, beef, and wool had been consolidated and then shipped out across the Soviet Union. Situated on the far western end of Lake Issyk Kul—the tenth largest lake in the world—it had also been a big fishing port. But when the Soviet Union collapsed, Balykchy collapsed with it. The factories had closed. The trains had stopped. The orders for trout and whitefish had dried up. And most of the Russians had gone home, taking most of the jobs with them.

Twenty years later, what was left was a scarred and abandoned relic, a place that had sunk low and was still sinking.

Daria turned onto a rutted road that cut through the center of town. Along the roadside, women wearing tightly wrapped headscarves sold ten-kilo sacks of flour and round—to represent the sun, said the locals—loaves of
lepeshka
bread. Men in wool sweaters sat on their haunches in front of collections of used hardware equipment, or beside piles of salt- and mineral-rich boulders that would be used as cattle licks.

It was getting cold out—snow was visible on some of the distant peaks. She shivered, turned up the heat, and took a left off the main road. As she headed down toward the lake, she passed a few abandoned factories and horses grazing in marshy fields.

The local orphanage was in a converted one-story home that had been enlarged to serve its current purpose. It sat behind fencing made of corrugated-metal roofing panels, and the building’s exterior white-stucco walls had been repeatedly patched with gray mortar. A telephone pole leaned against the roof. The bright-blue wooden shutters on the front windows had been closed tight.

As Daria pulled up to the entrance gate, a gray Volkswagen police car, its red, white, and blue lights flashing, pulled up behind her.

“Shit,” she said. The police car could only mean one thing. She was too late.

3

Mark had grown to love the Shanghai, a Chinese restaurant in Bishkek.

The wine-red carpets were stained, half the plexiglass lids on the buffet-station dishes were cracked, and the ceiling had cobwebs in the corners. The fancy coffee shop next door—which offered free Wi-Fi and pricey double espressos to diplomats and government types—only made the Shanghai appear all the more shabby by comparison. But the Shanghai had both cold beer and an owner who tolerated daily narde games, and that was more than enough to make up for its faults.