The Leveling

You’re weirding me out, Deck.

Daria hit Reply and sent [email protected] a message: wtf?

She tried calling Decker’s cell phone. No one answered. When she tried to leave a message, an automated voice told her Decker’s voice mail account was full. Which was also odd, she thought. You’d have to have an awful lot of unopened or saved voice mail messages to fill up an account.

Or maybe someone had just butt dialed Decker and left an hour-long message by mistake. That could fill up a mailbox. Or maybe Decker had just butt dialed himself. That she could see happening.

She sent him a text message—Hey John, what can you tell me about 3 photos from Alty8?

Then she called the Hotel President in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, where, last she knew, Decker had been staying.

No one named John Decker was currently a guest, the receptionist told her.

“He’d be registered under CAIN, or Central Asian Information Networks. A group of us had a block of rooms.”

“Everyone from CAIN checked out three days ago.”

As Daria considered that bit of information, she thought to click on Details at the top of the e-mail from Alty8. It turned out that Alty8 had CC’d one other person: [email protected].

She drew in a quick breath.

What the hell is going on, Deck? And what could Mark possibly have to do with it?




Mark’s apartment in Baku, eight months earlier…

“I didn’t know you were up,” said Mark.

It was seven in the morning. Daria had heard him making coffee in the kitchen but hadn’t wanted to ask for his help.

She was slumped on the hardwood floor in the spare bedroom—a room that had been his office until two weeks ago—trying to tie a plastic garbage bag around the fiberglass cast on her broken arm. Her teeth marks were all over the ripped black plastic. Mark stood in the doorway, his brow furrowed with concern.

The intelligence war that had decimated the CIA’s Baku station was over. That bloody conflict, fought over a proposed oil pipeline from China to Iran, had left her deeply wounded, physically and emotionally. The only reason she was still alive was because of Mark. But she couldn’t stay in his apartment forever. She had to learn to care for herself.

“I want to take a shower.”

Daria tried to speak calmly, but found it impossible to mask her anger. She was breathing heavily and trembling, partly from frustration, partly from the exertion of having attempted to tie the plastic bag around her arm with only one hand and her teeth. She wanted to rip the bag apart and throw it out the window.

“OK,” said Mark.

“I’m not supposed to get the cast wet. I need help tying the bag around my arm. Please.”

She glanced at her bicep, where the cast ended, and was struck by how waiflike it looked. She knew the bruises and cuts on her face still looked angry and raw. She turned her face away from Mark.

“I didn’t know you were up,” he said again. “I would have helped you.”

Daria was embarrassed by the sweat on her forehead. Mark noticed the smallest details when it came to other people; he was always sizing people up. The sweat would tell him how hard she’d been trying to tie the bag herself, how utterly dependent she was on him for even the smallest things.

“Just get it around my arm, above the cast.”

“Yeah, sure.”

As he approached her, she looked at the crow’s-feet around his deep-set, heavy-lidded eyes. Feeling his fingers on her arm filled her with a sense of well-being, and for a second it didn’t bother her that he could see the sheen of sweat on her forehead. He cinched a knot tight above her bicep. She stood up.

“You want help getting to the shower?” he asked.

“I’ll be OK.”

But she wasn’t OK.

She could feel his eyes on her as she made her way from the bedroom to the bathroom. He was sizing her up, she was sure. He was so damn calculating.

Part of her hated him for what he saw. But part of her wanted him to touch her again. To put his hand lightly on her forehead or her shoulders.

She managed to turn on the water and adjust the heat, but a minute into her shower—as she was trying to shampoo her hair—her legs gave way and she fell.

“Daria?” called Mark from the bathroom door.

The deep bruises in her thigh muscles were spasming. Water from the shower sprayed into her nose. She felt as though she were drowning. She wasn’t sure she could pick herself up without falling again.

The bathroom door opened and a little stream of cool air blew over her face.

“Daria?”

“I slipped.”

Her good arm grasped the lip of the bathtub, poking out a bit from behind the dark blue shower curtain.

“Can you stand?”

“I think so.”

She tried to push herself up, but her legs spasmed again.

Mark reached around the curtain, grabbed her wet arm, and lifted her up. Her hand trembled as she struggled to stay upright.