The Mingrelian

by Ed Baldwin

  “No, just buying a rug,” he said, signing the paper receipt. The woman had folded his purchase into a square and was stuffing it into a plastic bag.

  “Whoa, you found the right store,” one of the crew said, leering at the clerk, then at the two high school girls in the back.

  “She doesn’t speak English,” he said. He didn’t want this crowd to spend the day looking at rugs. This was serious business.

  “Well, we need to get going anyway,” Bud said. “I think we’ve about maxed out the plastic for this trip.”

  Boyd turned to the woman. She spoke a long sentence in Georgian, and while the crew watched her over his shoulder, she pressed a flash drive into his hand, then handed him the large plastic bag with his rug in it.

  *****

  Ratface also was on Erekle II Street. He had shaved his beard and wore dark glasses. He sat in the back of a café, watching the street, pretending to read a paper. He wore a cellphone earpiece. The aircrew passed. He took no notice.

  “He’s coming,” the phone crackled.

  Ratface was waiting for Lado Chikovani. An assistant was stationed across the street from Kartvelian National Bank on Kote Afkhazi Street waiting to follow Lado, then hand him off to Ratface.

  “He’s coming your way, just like you predicted,” the phone crackled. Ratface paid his bill and stepped into the street, smiling in satisfaction. Lado was a vodka drinker. Just as Ratface paced his afternoon around 5 o’clock prayers, vodka drinkers pace their day around 5 o’clock vodka. Erekle II Street was blocked off into a pedestrian mall just beyond the rug shop Boyd and the crew had just left, and a half-dozen restaurants and bars were on that street. There was no hurry. Lado would be there. Infidels are so predictable.

  Lado Chikovani crossed Erekle II Street and glanced down toward his father’s rug shop but continued into the next block and slipped into a quiet restaurant. Ratface was a block behind.

  Entering the restaurant, Ratface spotted Lado in the back. He was seated with another man. If that man was Eskander Khorasani, he’d have his traitor. Khorasani had been in Tbilisi for a decade. Though he’d been very successful as a banker and money launderer for Iran, there is always a whiff of suspicion when someone has lived the good life away from the strict rules of Islam. It was time for 5 o’clock prayers. Ratface stood and went to the toilet to wash his hands, passing closer to Lado and his contact. He could see the man clearly in a mirror. It wasn’t Khorasani. Ratface passed near the table and went to the men’s room, washed his hands and returned to walk by Lado’s table again, confirming his companion wasn’t Iranian. Then he left.

  “That last shipment emptied our storage tanks in Batumi. The next one will load from Poti,” the Georgian finance minister, Lado’s fellow Mingrelian, said with a chuckle in the Mingrelian dialect. They hadn’t seen Ratface.

  “Twenty-five million dollars-worth of oil is a lot of oil,” Lado said

  “The Iranians want to do it again as soon as possible, so they must be happy with the price.”

  Both men laughed and downed shots of ice-cold vodka.

  *****

  The sun was just breaking on the horizon as Boyd lifted the nose of the C-130 halfway down the runway and followed the standard departure route to the east. They had visited the embassies at Yerevan, Armenia, and Baku, Azerbaijan, before stopping at Tbilisi and spending the night. Now they had 600 miles to Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, then another 600 miles to Tashkent, Uzebekistan, and another overnight. Tomorrow would be Dushanbe, Tajikistan, and Almaty, Kazakhstan, before an overnight at the U.S. base at Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. The following day would be all flying, 1,500 miles at a chugging 300 knots back to Incirlik, Turkey, with all the diplomatic bags from the week and whatever passengers wanted to tour Central Asia in return for bypassing Customs and Immigration on the airlines. None had, so far. That left one day each week for unexpected delays, or training if there were no delays. Boyd would be in Tbilisi one day a week.

  Who was that woman? He saw her face in the side window as he looked out at the Caucasus Mountains looming to the north, snowcapped already in October. Was she the Mingrelian? Hard to believe such a vivacious young woman, so full of life, would be mixed up in nuclear weapons and the threat of imminent war. Was she married? She hadn’t worn a ring. Those laughing brown-green eyes twinkled in the window as he flew down a green valley along the railroad and pipeline to Azerbaijan and the Caspian Sea. She knew who he was; she knew everything. He knew nothing. She had flirted, just with her eyes. Or was she just being friendly, to close the deal?

  “Coffee?” Bud asked, unsnapping his seat belt and getting up. They were at 25,000 feet and on autopilot. Baku was just sliding past, and the Caspian Sea spread out before them.

  “Yeah, black. Thanks,” Boyd said, still lost in thought. Just then the radio crackled in his headset, and he responded to a direction to change altitude from the Air Traffic Control Center in Baku. Air-traffic controllers watch all traffic, untangle routes, and guide aircraft around weather and altitudes that have reported turbulence.

  The Caspian Sea had a green tint to it, dotted with oil platforms and sectored by pipelines, snaking out of the water and onto the land converging on the pumping station at Sanachal, south of Baku. Off to his right, to the south, he could see the coast of Iran.

  Boyd had put the flash drive into a box and the box into a bigger box and affixed a diplomatic seal. It was one of a stack in the back. From Incirlik, the other Little Rock C-130 would take the diplomatic mail to Germany, and a C-17 would get it back to Washington in a couple of days.

  *****

  “I need to get another rug,” Boyd told Bud as they got to their hotel the next week, a little late because of weather.

  “I’d keep buying rugs until I at least got her phone number,” Bud said with a laugh. “You want to take someone with you? You’re supposed to have a wingman.”

  He was reminding Boyd that aircrews aren’t supposed to go off alone in a foreign land.

  “I think I can handle this one.”

  “OK,” Bud shrugged.

  Boyd was pretty sure Bud was read into this thing, such as it was. It certainly didn’t seem to be anything like his previous jobs.

  It was nearly dark on a Monday evening when he turned to Erekle II Street. Most of the other shops were closed. Her shop was open. The bell alerted the old man, who returned to the back as soon as he saw Boyd.

  “Hello,” she said, stepping from behind the curtain.

  Boyd’s heart flipped in his chest; she was more beautiful than he remembered. This time, she wore a sweater with a more tailored skirt.

  “I want to buy a rug,” he said, summoning a smile.

  “Yes, over here,” she said leading him to that same section away from the street.

  “I’ve heard of Persian carpets. What’s that?”

  “Carpets are large, rugs are smaller. Persians make very good rugs and carpets, that’s one on the floor there,” she said, pointing to a large floral print in the center of the room. She squatted to pick up the corner and turn it over.

  “The knots are much smaller than these tribal rugs,” she motioned around the shop, indicating that most of her stock was tribal rugs. “With the smaller knots, they can do flowers, vines, even animals. See how she was able to round this flower here? Those rugs are all straight lines.”

  Boyd looked at the tribal rugs and saw the difference.

  “This one is a Mashad, named for the town where it was made, in Persia,” she said. “They make large carpets with a central medallion and floral motif.”

  “Expensive, I’ll bet.”

  “This one, for you,” – she stood and pursed her lips like she was thinking – “six thousand dollars.”

  “Hah! I don’t even own a house. I don’t need a carpet like that.”

  “Oh?” She smiled, then lowered her voice and said in mock disbelief, “An American officer, and no house?”

  “No wife.
No house.”

  “Well, you’ll need a smaller rug, then,” and turned back toward the stack in the rear.

  “How about this one?” Boyd held up a bright rug, mainly red and blue with geometric designs but also some birds and animals. He could see the knots were larger and the animals looked crude compared with the intricate floral pattern on the Mashad. He turned it over and the back had loose yarn between the different color objects.

  “That’s unique,” she said, stepping to his side and standing close while she examined the rug. “There’s no pile. See the open weave on the back, that’s a Soumak, from Borchali here in Georgia. Interesting, but a bit gaudy, don’t you think?”

  He felt her warmth, smelled her fragrance.

  “It has a certain charm,” he said taking it from her and laying it on the floor.

  “It is less expensive than your other rug,” she said, stepping back so they stood together admiring the rug. “It looks like something you’d find in a Russian theater.”

  Boyd didn’t know if that was a compliment or not.

  “I like it,” he said.

  “Then you should have it,” she said gaily and bent to pick it up.

  Boyd followed her to the cash register.

  “You know all about me. Can I know your name?” he asked quietly as he handed her his MasterCard.

  She looked up anxiously but said nothing.

  He nodded.

  She ran his card and handed him the receipt to sign. He signed it and handed it back and she pressed a flash drive into his hand. They walked to the door. She was silent.

  Was she mad that he asked? It was a risk, for her.

  She stopped as she was about to open the door to let him out. The street was empty. It was dark. She looked in his eyes.

  “I am Ekaterina Dadiani.”

  Chapter 16: Tehran, Iran

  “M

  ay I have a cigarette?” Eskander Khorasani asked casually as the meeting took a midmorning break.

  Lado had been invited – no, summoned – to a meeting in Tehran, ostensibly to cement Kartvelian National Bank’s relationship as a correspondent bank with Petroleum Bank. He’d been to Iran many times. As a young man, he’d traveled to Tabriz, Kashan, Herat and Kerman with his father and grandfather to buy Persian carpets, which they sold to the Russians through their shop in Tbilisi. He’d learned Farsi and was fluent enough to negotiate with Persian rug merchants while still a college student.

  Bright, he’d wanted something better than being a rug merchant, so he’d earned a highly coveted scholarship to Moscow University and majored in mathematics. But he soon discovered that success in the Soviet Union was based on ideology and not reality. Returning home, he eschewed the offer of a government job and went back to rugs. Banking was a natural extension of the rug trade, and when the Soviet Union dissolved and banking became possible in the new, independent Georgia, he opened a tiny bank two blocks from the Erekle II Street rug shop.

  Eskander Khorasani had been his first foreign depositor. Later, they were friends, as Eskander opened a branch of Petroleum Bank in Tbilisi, and then collaborators in Iran’s smuggling and money-laundering schemes. Capitalizing on the differences between Muslim and Christian banking regulations, Eskander and Lado were partners in many successful ventures. Eskander helped Lado’s bank succeed, and now Lado was rich because of it. But, there was more. It was Eskander who gave him the Iranian nuclear program secrets to pass to the Americans.

  Eskander was a dedicated and observant Muslim, a loyal Iranian, an experienced international banker operating in the innermost circles of his government’s financial dealings and a clandestine member of the National Resistance Movement of Iran. His was a dangerous road, working for the overthrow of the Mullahs from within the regime, and Lado was his accomplice.

  They stepped out onto a smoking balcony located just across the lobby from the boardroom where they’d been discussing a sudden change of plans for the flow of oil money back to Tehran. The regime wanted everything it could get in the next week. Something was up. Several other smokers followed them onto the balcony.

  “Point to your left as if you were asking about a landmark,” Eskander whispered in Georgian. They’d been speaking Farsi all morning.

  Lado pointed to his left and asked a question. They strolled to the end of the balcony, away from the others. Eskander pointed to something and spoke quietly.

  “I was given an unexpected vacation, a month to return home to be with my family.”

  “Reward for your work,” Lado offered.

  “No. But now I know why. Don’t react when I tell you.”

  Lado tensed.

  “The Chechens are going to assassinate the Russian president in Tbilisi tomorrow.”

  Lado gasped. Now the change of financial plans made sense. If someone succeeded in assassinating the czar the Red Army would be in Tbilisi in two days. By next week, they’d all be speaking Russian again.

  “But ...”

  “Don’t speak,” Eskander cautioned. “Point to your right.”

  Lado pointed to his right. Eskander faked a small laugh and spoke loudly about some building in the distance as others walked by, circling the balcony while they smoked.

  “It could still be a trap, a ruse to expose traitors,” Eskander whispered when the smokers had passed.

  That was an old Russian trick: Fake a crisis and see who finds out on the other side, then follow up how they found out. When in doubt, imprison, torture, execute.

  “But, why?” Lado asked.

  “Look at a map. You will see. I am afraid for my family. This will be our only contact.”

  “But, what can …”

  “If it is the will of Allah to stop this, you are His tool. If it is the will of Allah, you cannot fail. Go with God.” Eskander stubbed out his cigarette and turned quickly to return to the meeting.

  *****

  Back in the boardroom, Lado forced himself to stare at a point behind the speaker’s head and let his eyelids droop. Though his mind was racing and his pulse pounding, he appeared to nod off. He awoke with a start, looking furtively around the room to see if he was caught sleeping. He dared not think about the consequences for Eskander and himself if this were a trap. When he saw he was ignored, he began to focus on the other bankers in the room. They asked all the right questions; they were curious about a sudden change of plans. It’s all temporary, a cash shortage, they were being told.

  Lado dared not call home. He was sure they’d monitor his cellphone. The Internet was also out of the question, as the Wi-Fi in his hotel room was surely monitored. He’d attract attention if he made any attempt to change his airline reservation for the following morning. So he’d have the night to think about it, and maybe be too late to stop it – if it were real instead of a trap.

  Miserable with worry and sorry that he’d ever gotten into this mess, Lado ate a simple meal alone in the hotel restaurant that night and read a Russian newspaper. Indeed, the Russian president was due to speak in Freedom Square in Tbilisi the next day. It made no sense; the Russian president was a good friend to Iran. Politically, he had been a staunch supporter. Why would they want to assassinate him?

  “All power rests with the Supreme Leader,” Eskander had told him many times as they’d discussed the world situation together candidly at Lado’s estate in Zugdidi, his ancestral home where they could be assured they wouldn’t be overheard. “There are political advisers, economic advisers and military advisers, but the final authority always rests with the Ayatollah.”

  So, this was the Ayatollah’s doing.

  “Look at the map, you’ll understand,” he’d said.

  Lado drew a map of Georgia on a piece of paper and added the surrounding countries. To the south is Muslim Turkey, a sliver of Christian Armenia, then Muslim Azerbaijan and the Caspian Sea. The Caucasus Mountains to the north are inhabited only by wild men, whose primitive passions are easily stirred by Islamic m
ilitancy of several flavors, all bad. Chechnya is in the center of that. To the west, as the Caucasus slope down to the Black Sea, Abkhazia, which was part of his Mingrelian homeland, is occupied by the Russian Army. A crisis in Georgia causing Russia to reoccupy it to deal with Chechnya eliminates a sovereign Christian nation and pushes the fault line for Islamic expansion north to the Caucasus. Politically and economically, that would be a blunder, but in the mind of an Islamic scholar with a thousand-year timeline, a tactical advance. Or, a trap.

  ****

  Lado Chikovani’s plane from Tehran landed the next day at 3 p.m. There had been no flights out the night before, and he’d spent a sleepless, fearful night. Rushing through customs, he searched frantically for the first telephone he could find. He’d played all the alternatives through his mind during the past 20 hours and had decided to alert the Americans at the embassy and let them handle it. They’d have a hot line to local police, and he’d have minimal exposure.

  “Embassy of the United States,” an officious voice answered in Georgian.

  “I need to speak to the ambassador,” Lado said, breathlessly.

  Then he waited.

  “Ambassador’s office,” a secretary answered, still in Georgian.

  “I need to speak to the ambassador,” he said.

  “Could I tell the ambassador what it concerns?”

  “It’s very important, and urgent.”

  “The ambassador is out of town. I could let you speak to the deputy chief of mission,”

  “Yes, please.”

  “This is Dabney St. Clair”.

  “The Chechens are going to assassinate the Russian president here, in Tbilisi.”

  “Oh?”

  “Today,” he said, still breathless. Why didn’t she respond?

  “Who is this?” she asked.

  “I can’t say, it is too dangerous.”

  “Can you give me any details?”

  “I don’t have any details, just call the police, please.”