Spy for Hire by Dan Mayland Page B

out of his pocket and tossed them to Jessica. “Here. You drive. I’ll sit in back with the kid.”
    Jessica just stared at him as if he’d lost his mind.
    Decker added, “He’s the package I needed to pick up.”
    “He’s not a package. He’s a child.”
    “Yeah, I figured that out.” Decker slipped into the back seat of the car, still holding Muhammad tight to his chest. “Drive! Please, Jessica. Just drive.”
    “What’s the rush?”
    “I don’t know. I got a feeling.”
    “You’re weirding me out, John.”
    “I’m just kind of babysitting, that’s all. No biggie.”
    “Yes, this is a biggie!”
    “Go!”
    Jessica started the car and pulled out into traffic. “Babysitting for how long?”
    “A few hours. Maybe a day.”
    “Well, whose child is it?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “You don’t know.” Jessica sounded incredulous.
    “I know this woman who runs an orphanage, OK? So I’m guessing the kid’s an orphan, but evidently there’s been some complications.”
    “This woman who runs the orphanage—is
she
the friend that asked you to do this?”
    “No. That’s this other guy. But I think he was asking for her. They’re like, almost married.”
    Jessica gripped the steering wheel with both hands, staring with deer-in-the-headlights eyes out the front windshield. She shook her head a few times, as though having a conversation with herself.
    Decker added, “The kid’s in some kind of danger, some people are after him, and I’ve been asked to protect him. That’s all I know and all I have to know. I’m gonna take him to my place, deal with things there. You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.”
    Jessica took a full minute to answer. “I said I’d stay. We’ll take care of him together.”

20

    Val Rosten, the deputy director of the CIA’s Near East Division, showed up at the US embassy in Bishkek just after nine.
    Mark had met Rosten years before at Langley, when they’d both been station chiefs. Rosten had just given an intense, one-hour, head-spinning sixty-slide presentation on Jordanian economic policies. In the years since, Rosten had made short work of climbing over colleagues to get to his current position.
    He took a seat across from Mark at the conference table in the room where Mark had been kept waiting. He was rail thin, short, and dressed in a navy-blue pinstriped suit with a yellow tie. His white shirt looked a little rumpled from travel and his mouth had taken the shape of something close to a smile.
    “I’ll get right to it,” said Rosten.
    “Please do.”
    “The boy.”
    Mark sat back in his chair and studied Rosten. He figured they were roughly the same age. “What of him?”
    “I believe Ted Kaufman spoke to you about the necessity of releasing him to us. So we can place him under protection.”
    Rosten spoke quickly, but he enunciated each word with studied precision. Mark had heard he’d been recruited from MIT, where he’d double majored in math and Middle Eastern studies.
    “He sure did.”
    “Evidently you didn’t feel it necessary to communicate the same to your companion, Daria Buckingham, though.”
    “Oh?”
    “Buckingham promised to lead two local ops officers to the boy. Instead she drew them away from Bishkek and left them standing with their dicks in their hands. I just got the report from Serena Bamford.”
    “Hmm.”
    “You knew she was going to do it. Didn’t you?”
    “I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”
    “Don’t be coy with me, Sava. Do you know where the child is?”
    As Rosten spoke, he tapped his foot. He struck Mark as one of those guys who had more energy—physical and intellectual—than he knew what to do with.
    “Why’d you involve Holtz in this?” asked Mark.
    “One of my younger colleagues used to work with him. He knew about CAIN, and better yet, he knew Holtz.”
    “Knew Holtz probably would take the job without asking a ton of questions. Even if the job involved kidnapping a two-year-old