The Leveling (7 page)

He took stock of what he had—a change of clothes, a black diplomatic passport that he was supposed to have turned in when he left the CIA, a credit card, and $456 in cash because the Azeris had let him stop at his bank in downtown Baku to close out his checking account.

He still hadn’t decided where to go. He thought back to that morning, drinking a cup of thick Turkish coffee at an outdoor café in Molokan Gardens in downtown Baku. That was just before meeting Heydar—what?—five hours ago? Everything had been so pleasantly normal.

He used to thrive on chaos when he was younger, but now…now he was getting too old for this crap.

The Ministry of National Security agent driving the car weaved in and out of the heavy traffic, stopping and starting with sudden, aggressive jerks.

Mark turned in his seat to look back at the city. Several green-domed mosques were sandwiched in among gleaming new skyscrapers. In the distance, bleak desert hills—dotted with oil derricks—marked the southern edge of the city. He’d always liked thinking of Baku as an exotic oasis in the desert, secluded from the wider world. He loved the medieval walls of the old city, the long promenade along the Caspian with its carnival rides and tea shops, the views from the heights at the southern end of the city, the fourteenth-century caravansary restaurant where he’d often met with visiting diplomats in smoke-blackened private rooms.

He was romanticizing the place, he knew. Much of Baku was just a dump. But it had been his dump.

He told himself to let it go. Moving on might be better for him in the long run anyway.

What would anybody want with his damn book, though? What good would it be to them? What was the point, just mindless destruction?

He thought about how Buddhist monks would spend days constructing an intricate sand painting, only to destroy it right after they’d finished. The exercise allegedly helped them embrace impermanence. Which was exactly what he needed to do.

Let it go.

Embrace impermanence.

Those fucking Russians. I bet it was the fucking Russians.

They were obsessive about their history; they’d probably been monitoring him and decided they didn’t like what he was writing. Maybe instead of embracing impermanence he’d just hunt down the Russian dickwads who’d stolen his book and rip their damn throats out.

He started to think through the logistics of how he would launch such a hunt, and the money and time and risk involved, and the odds of it turning out successfully, and then he sighed.

Orkhan pulled up to the airport in his armored black Jeep Commander as Mark was being escorted to the international terminal.

Mark’s minder led him to the back of Orkhan’s car. Orkhan opened the door and Mark climbed in.

“I’ve been speaking to Heydar.” Orkhan frowned deeply.

The back of the car was sealed off from the chauffeur in front by a plate of soundproof glass.

“And?”

“And I have concluded I was too quick to judge the boy. Heydar found out that you were leaving and he was gravely disappointed. He considers you his best teacher.” Orkhan paused, as if preparing to reveal some important bit of information. “He now tells me he thinks he can pass this SAT if he studies harder.”

Given the look of stoic pride on Orkhan’s face, Mark decided not to mention that the test wasn’t pass-fail.

“I sometimes get frustrated with him, and forget that he is just a boy,” said Orkhan. “I was not interested in my studies at that age either.” He shook his head.

“I’m sure you’ll be able to find another tutor,” offered Mark.

“Heydar doesn’t want another tutor. He wants you.”

For a brief moment, Mark though Orkhan might be saying that he could stay in Azerbaijan. Maybe this whole mess could be put to rest right now. Maybe—

“He asks that when you get to America, will it be possible to do a videoconference once a week?”

A long moment passed. Mark reminded himself that one should never burn one’s bridges unless the enemy was directly upon you. Orkhan wasn’t the enemy. But still.

Orkhan added, “I will pay, of course, for all the equipment, and for all the charges. If you require a charge yourself, that will be no problem provided it is reasonable. You have already repaid your debt.”

He looked outside to the airport. In the distance, at the end of one of the runways, he could see the top of a mound of twisted, weed-strewn metal, the remains of previous plane crashes that had been swept off the runway and left to rust. He was going to miss this place.

“I’ll call you,” Mark said. “When I’m settled.”

“Heydar will be grateful.”

That resolved, Orkhan unlocked the door of the Commander, a sign that it was time for Mark to leave.

“What about my computer?”

“What computer?”

Mark explained about his apartment, and his missing laptop and files. “Didn’t your secretary mention it?”

Orkhan said, “Of course I will have my men look for it. Anything they find will be stored with the rest of your belongings.”

“My book was on that computer. It means a lot to me.”

As Mark was stepping out onto the sidewalk, Orkhan said, “Next time you should back up off-site.”

“What?”

“Back up off-site, you know, through the Internet. Heydar tells me about this—he is not always as stupid as he seems. The young, they know these things.”

“I’m only forty-four. That’s not old.”

Orkhan shrugged. “Have a good trip, my friend.”

Baku, Azerbaijan

T
HE PERKY TWENTYSOMETHING
woman at the Azerbaijan Airlines ticketing window informed Mark that there were no direct flights to the States, but that a red-eye was leaving for London in three hours. From there he could catch a flight back to Washington.

If that was where he wanted to go.

It had been nearly three years since Mark had been stateside. The thought of going back now felt to him a little like going back to imperial Rome after a long stint manning a lonely outpost in the German hinterlands. It wasn’t that he’d gone native, as some in the CIA had feared. But it was true that being abroad for so long had changed him. He suspected he knew how to navigate the intricacies of Azeri culture better than his own.

Back home, things were more complicated, more personal. There was too much lingering rancor.

“Sir?” prodded the woman.

Mark pictured the sterile halls of CIA headquarters in Langley. He imagined being hooked up to a polygraph when he first showed up, and then being debriefed by a bunch of young, well-intentioned analysts who’d never been to Azerbaijan. Did he really want to go back to that?

But Baku had changed since he’d first arrived. The airport terminal was modern and clean, having been recently renovated. At his local grocery store, the Russian checkout lady was no longer reflexively rude. There were giant malls, 3-D cinemas,
and wireless hot spots all over the city. Armani and Tiffany had invaded years ago.

With all the oil money sloshing around, the idea that Baku was still the hinterlands was a fiction. Christ, he could see the sign for the airport Holiday Inn from where he was standing. He’d been hiding in a remote corner of the world, but the world had found him.

Langley, he thought. It would only be for a few days. Inevitably he’d run into people he knew, but that too could be minimized. But then what?

“Yeah, get me on the flight to London,” he told the ticketing agent. “But route me all the way to Washington, DC, if you can.”

“What class will you be flying, sir?”

Mark glanced back at his minders from the Ministry of National Security. One of them shrugged. Orkhan had approved payment for the flight home but evidently hadn’t been more specific than that.

“Make it first.”

While waiting for his flight, Mark ate a plate of bad lamb kebabs and downed a half-liter bottle of extra-strong Xirdalan beer—the local favorite—at the Holiday Inn bar.

As he watched BBC News on a flat-screen television and nursed a second beer, he remembered that he was scheduled to teach a senior seminar on American foreign policy during the Cold War the next morning.

At a computer station in the Holiday Inn, he composed his resignation—effective immediately—to the chairman of the International Relations Department, added a vague apology for the abruptness of his departure, CC’d half a dozen colleagues, and clicked Send. That done, he turned to the long list of unopened e-mails in his account.

He deleted the solicitations to visit porn sites or buy Viagra that had slipped past his spam filter. There were a few notices from Western University concerning changes to the spring schedule, which he deleted as well.

Then he came to an e-mail with a blank subject line. It had been sent from [email protected]. Someone with the e-mail address of [email protected] had been CC’d.

If he’d been on his own computer, he might not have opened the e-mail for fear of downloading a virus. But at the Holiday Inn, what did he care?

“What are you doing?” demanded one of his minders, jogging to keep up with Mark.

“I need to back up some files.”

“Slow down.”

“No.”

Mark bought two thumb drives at a little hotel store just off the main atrium. Back at the Holiday Inn business center, he made two copies of the photo files. Then he deleted all the e-mails in his online account and changed his password.

“Change in plans,” he told his minders. “I’m not going to London.”

“There is no choice, sir. Minister Gambar has insisted that we witness you leaving the country.”

Mark recalled with photographic precision the departure list he’d seen in the airport terminal, comforted by the fact that he was naturally reverting back to his hypervigilant self. He considered about ten flights that were departing soon before deciding, “Flight nine eighty to Bishkek takes off in fifteen minutes.”

“Why there?”

“Personal business.”

That e-mail had been sent just ten hours before someone had tried to kill him. If he hadn’t been at the conference in
Tbilisi, he would have downloaded all his e-mails to his laptop first thing in the morning, just like he always did.

That’s why someone had stolen his laptop.