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avalanche of new business for CAIN: evaluating security procedures at oil installations in Kazakhstan, supplying the CIA with a steady stream of capable bodyguards, helping the NSA set up and maintain listening posts throughout Central Asia, helping to translate phone or electronic communications that the CIA or NSA had intercepted… The work was coming in at a frenzied pace. Mark had served in the Caspian region and Central Asia for the better part of twenty years. Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, the war in Nagorno-Karabakh, the war in Abkhazia, the buildup of Manas Air Base in the run-up to the war in Afghanistan… He had the kind of résumé, and the kind of connections throughout the region, that attracted both good clients and good employees. Holtz, by contrast, had only served as a CIA officer for five years before starting CAIN.
    Initially, Mark hadn’t been especially enthusiastic about the prospect of entering into a business relationship with Holtz; he didn’t really like Holtz, and he thought it was at best stupid and at worst corrupt the way the CIA bureaucrats in Langley were willing to pay private contractors—often former and maybe future colleagues—ridiculous amounts of money to execute ops that should have been done in-house for a fraction of the cost. But once the money had started to flow his way, he’d gotten over his qualms. And besides, he’d reasoned, as long as the CIA was the dysfunctional, sclerotic bureaucracy that it was, they needed the private contractors.
    He’d also come to realize that he liked keeping his feet wet when it came to the intelligence business.
    “Call our relationship what you will, Bruce. Bottom line is that I’m not giving the kid back to you until I learn what’s going on.”
    And maybe not even then, Mark thought.
    They stared at each other for a long moment. Mark was reminded that the history between them hadn’t always been good.
    “It was a CIA contract,” said Holtz.
    “Who was your contact?”
    “Val Rosten.”
    That bit of news gave Mark pause. Val Rosten was the highly-regarded deputy chief of the CIA’s Near East and South Asia Division, better known simply as Near East—the bureaucratic fiefdom that covered hot spots like the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Pakistan; any Agency op in Kyrgyzstan should have been handled by the CIA’s Central Eurasia Division, or maybe the CIA’s counterterrorism center in consultation with Central Eurasia.
    “I didn’t know you knew him,” said Mark.
    “I didn’t, at least not personally. I mean, I’d heard the name of course. But I’ve worked with people who work for Rosten. That’s how CAIN got the recommendation.” Holtz let his last sentence hang there, as though waiting for Mark to say something.“Ah, yeah… so anyway, Rosten calls, tells me that he’s got a problem. He says he’s got this kid on his hands. Son of a Jordanian couple who died in a car accident while doing work for the Agency. The kid was in the car, but survived. So now, because Langley had promised the parents that if anything like this ever happened, they’d make sure the kid—”
    “Muhammad.”
    “Muhammad,” agreed Holtz. “They’d make sure that Muhammad was cared for.”
    They’d come to a roller coaster. The electric-green metal track was rusted, and there were big patches of dirt in between stands of unmowed grass—the Kyrgyz, originally a nomadic people, rarely bothered to waste time on an endeavor as stupid as cutting grass; that’s what cows were for.
    All the rides in the park had been shut down for the winter.
    “Muhammad didn’t have any other family members in Jordan?”
    “Guess not.”
    “Huh.”
    “That’s why Rosten figured finding someone to adopt him was the best option.”
    A string of lights, haphazardly joined together with wire and black electric tape, hung across the brick-paver path. Holtz ducked his head to avoid hitting them.
    “Two thousand miles away in Kyrgyzstan?” said