The Leveling by Dan Mayland Page B

partner.”
    “I did.”
    “And you claim this partner now has your belongings, including your cell phone and camera?”
    “He does.”
    “Where is this partner now?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Is he also working for Sava?”
    “I told you I’m not working for Sava. I can’t tell you who I’m working for.”
    A second later, Decker absorbed a heavy blow to the head, which was followed by another, and another. Amateurs, he thought.Beating someone was a lousy way to extract information. He began to think that maybe he could handle this.
    You have a partner. Something happens in two weeks. Keep the lies simple. Wait for them to make a mistake.

19
    Almaty, Kazakhstan

    D ARIA SAT WITH her hands crossed over her chest as Mark told her about the assassination attempt, his expulsion from Azerbaijan, the e-mail from Decker, and finally, his meeting with Holtz.
    She thought he looked about the same as the last time she’d seen him. The same brown eyes; still not visibly muscular, though she knew he was deceptively strong, in a lithe, sinewy way. Maybe a little more gray around the temples, but not much. He could have passed for an old thirty or a young fifty. Not the kind of guy most people would notice.
    She’d once been fooled by his average-looking appearance, but now she saw past it. Now she noticed right away that his eyes were cold, and just a bit too wide set, making him look a little reptilian. Now she picked up immediately on the natural half sneer on his lips. Though she knew he was capable of great kindness, that expression reminded her that he was equally capable of apathy, even cruelty.
    “It was Holtz who told me where to find you,” said Mark.
    “You didn’t get my message?”
    “What message?”
    “I called you in Baku.”
    “Must have been after I left.”
    “I called because I got the e-mail too.”
    “So you were the CC on it. I wondered.”
    “I recognized Deck’s arm too. I thought he might be in trouble, so I wanted you to contact Holtz. Which you did anyway.”
    “Why didn’t someone come after you the way they did to me?”
    “Maybe because my e-mail address doesn’t have my name on it?”
    “Clever.”
    “Maybe because all my e-mails are run through an account that encrypts them before forwarding them to a second account?”
    His eyes fixed on her. “I wasn’t thinking like a spy, Daria. I was thinking like a professor. Because that’s what I am. Or rather, was.”
    “By the way. Holtz was lying. He didn’t fire me. I quit.”
    “OK.”
    Daria stared at Mark for a second, trying to gauge whether he believed her. Then it hit her—he didn’t care one way or the other. Because he didn’t care about her. She had to get that through her head once and for all.
    “Let’s look at the pictures,” she said.
    Mark pulled the flash drive out of his coat pocket.
    “Don’t bother, I’ve got them on my laptop,” said Daria. “They’re in my bedroom.”

20
    Almaty, Kazakhstan

    D ARIA CRACKED HER bedroom door open just enough to slip inside, but Mark was still able to get a glimpse of her setup. A hotel blanket covered a low cot, she’d stacked her clothes on an industrial metal shelf, and a postcard-sized reproduction of van Gogh’s
Irises
had been affixed to the wall with a pink thumbtack. He thought of Daria going to sleep in there alone, staring up at those irises as the night closed in around her.
    She emerged from the room with a new-looking laptop in hand.
    “Jesus, Daria. This place depresses me.”
    Daria had always been a bit of a loner—the old-school boys at the CIA had never really trusted her, given the Iranian-American mixed-race thing—but not this much of a loner.
    “I don’t need your pity.”
    “I was just—”
    “It’s not as bad as it looks.”
    “OK.”
    “I’m spying on the Chinese. I’ve only been here a couple weeks. I’m still getting settled, and most of the time I’m at the hotel, which is where all the Chinese government types hang