Spy for Hire (19 page)

It wasn’t definitive evidence, Mark thought—images could be doctored. And it bothered him a bit that the photo of Muhammad and Abdullah’s wife had been taken at a group event, when people who didn’t know each other all that well might encounter each
other, rather than just around the house. But big events tended to be when people took pictures.

Mark, thinking it was time to end this, handed back the camera and said, “OK, thank you for sharing that. Last thing—Muhammad keeps talking about a woman I believe is named Anna. Do you know who she is? Does Muhammad have a nanny?”

Abdullah’s smile tightened and his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. Speaking slowly, he said, “I think you misunderstand your role. You are not here to question. You are here to tell me how and when the boy will be delivered to his family. I have given you clear evidence that he belongs here.” Abdullah stared Mark down. But after a long silence, he sighed, then said, “Yes, Muhammad has a nanny. But her name is not Anna.”

Mark studied Abdullah. He noted how tightly the old man was clasping the glass of water, and observed the hint of tension in his jaw. The strain in Abdullah’s voice had also been unmistakable. Mark sensed that he was a man under enormous pressure.

“What is her name?”

“Hasini Ahmed. She is his cousin. Recently she had a case of appendicitis, so for the past week she has been in a hospital in Manama recovering from her operation.”

Over the years, Mark had grown increasingly confident of his ability to detect when someone was lying to him. Sometimes the signs were obvious—forced smiles, inability to make eye contact, a statement followed by a cough or some other covering gesture—but sometimes they weren’t, and then he just had to rely on his gut. Other than exhibiting tension, Abdullah wasn’t showing any obvious signs that he was lying.

But the old man was lying now. Of that Mark was certain.

Dammit, he thought. Why would Abdullah lie about something as basic as who the kid’s nanny was?

The answer was obvious, of course—because divulging the identity of the real nanny would jeopardize the transfer of the child to Abdullah. Otherwise, there would be no reason to lie.

Dammit.

When it came to royal families, Mark figured Muhammad could do a lot worse than the one that ruled Bahrain. They were known, for the most part, for being reasonably enlightened, at least when compared to the other rulers in the region. Not so enlightened that they wouldn’t torture political prisoners—they did—or censor the press and the Internet—they did that too—but they did allow people to vote for members of parliament, they didn’t kill or imprison gays, women were permitted to drive, and people were generally free to practice whatever religion they choose—especially if you weren’t a Shia.

So he wasn’t opposed to handing Muhammad over to the royals. But he was opposed to being lied to.

Mark said, “This nanny. May I speak with her?”

“Unfortunately, no. There were complications with her operation.”

“And you don’t know anyone named Anna?”

“No. If you don’t speak Arabic, perhaps you misunderstood what the boy was trying to say.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then he may have been trying to say something to you in English. He is being taught English at our local school. He goes every Sunday.”

Mark got the idea that Abdullah was offering that bit of information as further evidence of his relationship to the child.

“Isn’t he a little young for school?”

“Not too young to learn a language. At his age, the mind is like a sponge. This is the kind of opportunity we provide for the boy. Now speak to me of Muhammad and how you intend to return him to his family.”

Mark considered his options. And what Daria would do in this situation. After a moment, he asked, “Can you make arrangements to fly Muhammad from Bishkek back to Bahrain?”

“Of course.”

“Then I’ll have the boy transferred to your representative first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Why not now?”

“He’s not in Bishkek now.”

“Where is he?”

“With people I trust somewhere in the countryside, a good distance from the city, in hiding. I don’t even know myself exactly where. The reason for this is the boy’s own security, of course.”

“Of course.”

“It won’t take much time for me to reach my people and for them to bring the boy to the city, but it will take some. The roads are awful, and the country is large. I’ll have him brought to the lobby of the Hyatt Regency hotel in Bishkek at six tomorrow morning.” Mark checked his iPod. It was nine forty-five in the morning. “Will that give you enough time?”

“More than enough.”

“Bishkek is three hours ahead of Bahrain.”

“It will not be a problem.”

“The boy has no passport or documentation. I’d recommend a private plane.”

“I understand. And your arrangements. Would you care to make them from here?”

“I would not.”

34

Delhi, India

Rad Saveljic groaned as he clutched his stomach. Maybe it was cancer, he thought. Because he couldn’t imagine how spicy food and a bad salad could make him feel this awful.

After breakfast at the Connaught, he’d caught a rickshaw to the vacant Delhi lot where the new BP office building would be located. Within minutes, he’d thrown up right in front of his boss. Then he’d thrown up again in the rickshaw he’d hired to take him back to his apartment. Then he’d dry heaved over the toilet for twenty minutes before stripping off his clothes and collapsing on the bed in his boxer shorts and undershirt.

Now, after trying to fall asleep for the better part of an hour as his stomach writhed, he threw the single cotton sheet off his body, stood up, and put his hand up to the wall-mounted air conditioner gurgling above his bed. He knew it. The air coming out of it wasn’t cold, not cold at all!

The building superintendent had come over the day before and supposedly fixed the thing. For a while Rad had thought he’d detected slightly cooler air coming out of it, but now the air conditioner was functioning more like a heater—and a loud one at that.

It was early afternoon and it seemed hotter than it had been in days past. Ninety degrees at least, and this in November for crying out loud. The pollution seemed thicker, too. And even
though it was the middle of the day, it was hotter inside than out. He felt as though he were in a steam room.

Rad was half-tempted to take a rickshaw right back to the Connaught Hotel and check himself in for the night. But that would cost him a hundred and seventy bucks. He’d already been spending too much on food at the Connaught.

Better to just crack a window, see if he could get a bit of a breeze going.

But then he’d have to worry about the monkeys.

They were all over the city, begging and stealing food, terrorizing little kids. The day he’d moved in, a gang of them had clustered in his backyard. At first, he’d thought they were cute. He’d even taken a picture of one of them and texted it to his fiancée. How cool is this! Monkeys! Then he’d tried to feed one of them half of an apple he’d been eating. The little bastard had snapped at his finger and seconds later a half a dozen other monkeys had gathered around him, screeching.

He’d been driven back inside his apartment. Shaking. They’d scratched at the rear door and windows. Ever since, he’d kept out of the back garden and made sure to keep all his windows and doors shut tight.

But it was so hot in here. Surely everyone in Delhi didn’t keep their windows shut twenty-four hours a day. He’d overreacted. Reassuring himself that the monkeys weren’t going to climb through his window, Rad slid off the bed, walked to a nearby double-hung window, unlocked it, and slipped the top part down. A puff of air—not a cool one, but cooler than the stale air in his bedroom at least—wafted across his face. He stood there for a minute, enjoying the light breeze and listening for monkeys.

He heard nothing.

Another open window would make the air flow even better, he thought—get a cross draft going. He walked into his living room, but none of the windows there would open. They’d either
been painted shut or become swollen shut from the humidity. So he cracked the door that led out to the back garden—just a few inches—and made sure the screen door was locked.

Then he went back to bed. This time, he was able to fall into an uneasy sleep.

35

Bahrain

As a young operative, Mark had never felt much sympathy for those in the CIA old guard who’d sat behind their desks at Langley, mourning the end of the Cold War. At least with the communists, there had been a defined enemy—the Soviet Union—and an ideology—communism—to fight. Now there wasn’t, which made things more complicated, so…

So adapt, Mark had thought. Yes, the world’s morphed into a big chaotic cesspool of sectarian violence and intolerance. Deal with it or retire.

As he’d gotten older, though, he found himself sympathizing with the old guard more and more. Because the cesspool was starting to drive him crazy.

He rubbed his temples, his head spinning as he thought of the Sunnis and Shias and the royal family of Bahrain. The boy, though, what to do with the boy?

One option was to stop trying to figure it all out, declare victory, and hand Muhammad over the next morning as he’d already promised to do. The only problem with that plan was Daria. And what remained of his own conscience.

That old man had been lying.

Dammit.

“Where shall I drop you?” asked the Bahraini taxi driver who was bringing Mark back to Manama.

Mark considered his next move. It was only eleven in the morning; he had the whole day ahead of him. “What’s the nearest big hotel?”

Mark checked into the Sheraton in downtown Manama, taking a room with a king bed on the fifteenth floor. It was a business-class hotel near the diplomatic section of the city. The Bahrain World Trade Center—two gleaming wedge-shaped skyscrapers joined by slender sky bridges—was just a short walk away, as was the Central Bank of Bahrain.

He found a men’s shop on the first floor and bought a maroon oxford shirt, dark gray slacks, underwear, black socks, black wing-tip shoes, and a soft leather briefcase equipped with a shoulder strap. After completing his purchases, he showered, shaved, dressed in his new clothes, and then picked up his iPod.

A wall of disinformation had been thrown up in front of him. His job was to find a weakness in that wall and exploit it.

After connecting to the Sheraton’s Wi-Fi, he googled
royal family Bahrain schools
and learned that most of the extended royal family had been educated, at least at the elementary school level, at an exclusive bilingual English-Arabic private school on the west side of Riffa. He went to the school’s website, and saw that regular classes began in kindergarten, for which a child needed to be five years old.

But he also found a weekly child-parent class that was offered on Sundays, which was described as a way for parents to introduce their preschool-age children to the English language. It was restricted to parents whose children had already been accepted as future students at the school and was intended to complement the kindergarten curriculum the children eventually would encounter.