Spy for Hire by Dan Mayland Page A

like the couch cushions, his confusion only mounted. He took a quick look under the bed.
    Then Decker saw something move, something inside the pile of sheets next to the bed.
    What the hell?
    He caught a glimpse of what—with his night-vision goggles on—looked like fur. His first thought was that it was a rat, or a mouse. He swung his gun around and lifted the sheets up with his foot.
    “Oh, no,” said Decker. “You have got to be kidding me.”

18

    It was nearly nine p.m. by the time Daria and her two CIA minders reached Balykchy. The air had turned cold, hovering around the freezing point, and smelled of wood fires and marshland.
    At a dirt alley that intersected the main road just past the town center, Daria said, “Turn here.”
    They drove past a cluster of abandoned houses—crumbling, roofless structures with tree-sized weeds growing out of them. The decay stretched as far as the glare from the car’s headlights, and beyond. Dogs barked in the night.
    “What the hell is this place?” asked the Asian CIA officer, who was driving. The pothole-riddled road was testing the suspension of the beat-up Russian Lada they were driving in. Daria assumed the car was supposed to help CIA officers fit in with the local population when on assignment. Or maybe the Agency had just been trying to save a few bucks.
    “It’s just Balykchy,” Daria said, adding, “It’s not far now.”
    After a half mile or so, a few inhabited houses appeared on the left.
    “Stop here,” said Daria, when they’d reached the last house on the street. It was a one-story structure, made of dun-colored brick, and topped with a corrugated metal roof. In front of the house, waist-high grass grew around piles of rocks. Electric lights were visible through the single-pane windows. A fence made of scrap wood and barbed wire surrounded three sides of the house; on the right side stood a ten-foot-high concrete walltopped with concertina wire and defaced with graffiti extolling the virtues of a Bishkek-based rock band.
    The wall, Daria knew, marked the boundary of an abandoned factory. A rusted metal door—what had once been a back exit from the factory—stood in the middle of the wall. Beyond the door, in the fields surrounding the abandoned factory, were vegetable gardens. Daria knew this because she’d been here before. The house belonged to a handyman who frequently helped at the orphanage; Daria had driven him home on several occasions.
    The car stopped.
    “I’ll have to go inside to get him,” said Daria.
    “We’ll come with you,” said the redheaded CIA officer.
    “It would be better if you didn’t. The people here, they’re not used to strangers. Especially not at this time of night.”
    “We don’t have any choice in the matter. Nor do you.”
    Daria shrugged. “All right, just be careful. And let me do the talking.”
    All three of them climbed out of the car. It was a starless, moonless night. Daria could hear wind gusting through nearby trees.
    She let herself through the makeshift front gate, which wasn’t locked. The two officers tried to follow closely behind her, but as soon as she was through the gate, she swung it backward as hard as she could, slamming it into the redhead’s knees. She sprinted toward the concrete wall that loomed up thirty feet away to her right.
    Behind her, the officers yelled at her to stop. Dogs started barking inside the house.
    When she reached the rusted door that led to the factory grounds, she pulled as hard as she could on a jury-rigged handle that had been affixed to the door, slipped through the opening, slammed the door shut behind her, swung a heavy latch into place, and began to run.

19

    Jessica’s eyes widened in a cartoonish way when Decker opened the door to his Explorer, holding a child in his arms. The boy had a pacifier in his mouth, which he was sucking on hard as he whimpered.
    All things considered, thought Decker, the kid was holding up pretty well.
    He pulled his keys