These days, Mark Sava spends more time in tutoring sessions than in cloak-and-dagger rendezvous. The former CIA station chief of Azerbaijan has settled into the modest life of a professor in Baku…until an assassin makes a brazen attempt on his life in the hallowed halls of the national library. The Azeri government deems Sava, with his complex past, a security threat and orders him out of the country immediately. At the same time, the CIA orders Sava back to the US. But when he receives cryptic photos that lead him to believe his friend John Decker has been kidnapped—Sava knows he has no option but to find Decker. He teams up with ex–CIA spy and former girlfriend Daria Buckingham, and the two soon find themselves being chased by Chinese intelligence agents through the underworlds of Turkmenistan and Iran, caught in the middle of a secret conflict over oil that has the US and Iran tumbling headlong into war. Filled with the espionage intrigue and pulse-pounding action that made The Colonel’s Mistake a runaway hit, The Leveling brings to life in electrifying detail one of the most dangerous regions of the globe.