Death of a Spy

by Dan Mayland

  Larry added, “Of course, you’re not fooling me. These interviews you’re doing, you’re not just focusing on some old protests. You’re here to make a list of all the shit the Soviets have pulled in Georgia over the past seventy years, listen to sob stories, maybe weave in your mom’s own sob story, and then write all about it when you get back home. Stab the commies in the back. Not that your little project will make a damn bit of difference, but at least your heart’s in the right place. But I’m here to tell you that now the Soviets also know what you’re up to. There’s only a handful of Americans in Tbilisi. They try to keep tabs on all of us—they think we’re all spies. Haven’t you ever noticed you’re being followed?”

  Marko didn’t respond. He was trying not to appear as unsettled as he felt. Everything Larry had said was true.

  Larry said, “They’re keeping at least four guys on you. One’s your neighbor from across the street. The fat schmuck who never tucks in his shirt and is always so friendly? Here’s a news flash, Saveljic—he ain’t really that friendly. He just wants to know where you’re going.”

  Marko had been wondering about the weird, aggressively congenial guy across the street. He’d thought it was just a cultural thing.

  “Was I followed here?”

  “Yeah. By me.”

  “I meant—”

  “I know what you meant. You come here so often they don’t bother following you here anymore. Which, come to think of it, is something to remember—if someone’s trying to follow you, and you’ve got the time, boring them into complacency is never a bad option. Here’s another news flash. All those notes you’ve been taking? They’ll get around to stealing them eventually. Right around the time you’re gearing up to leave. Also, assume your phone and apartment is bugged.”

  “Are you—”

  “I’m a businessman. I buy Georgian cheese and export it to the States—there’s a big market for that, you’d be surprised. I’m also in contact with the American government a lot—you know, import licenses and such. So I hear things.”

  “You heard all that about me because you buy and sell cheese? Gimme a break.”

  Larry made a little slurping sound as he took a big slug off his beer. “You sure you don’t want one?”

  Marko was thinking maybe he did. “No. Why do you care about me? Why bother digging up all that?”

  “Anyway, so the, ah, we’ll call them local authorities, they’re onto you. They know you’re not doing what you said you came here to do. But if it was just that, I wouldn’t alarm you like this.”

  “I’m not alarmed,” lied Marko.

  “That little Press Club group you’re a part of—between you and me, it’s stuff like that that really gets them wound up...especially since you lied to them about what you planned to study while you were here.”

  The Press Club was an informal organization made up of a ragtag bunch of student journalists, student journalist wannabees, and random anticommunist groupies. Its purpose was to support anticommunist journalism, arrange for student protests, and generally be a thorn in the side of the Soviet bureaucracy. Marko had been attending Press Club meetings for the past month.

  He dipped one of the torpedo-shaped pieces of bread into his soup. “I’m not sure what your point is.”

  “You know how animals that are scared are the most dangerous? Well, God knows these bastard Russians are animals and I’m telling you they’re running scared, they can feel the revolution coming. You might think just because that Press Club of yours is made up of a bunch of idiot kids that they don’t care, but you’d be wrong about that. They’re skittish, they see danger all around them. So you gotta be careful. That’s my point.” Larry finished his beer and wiped his mouth. “Also, if you think the Press Club could use some financial help, well, I might be in a position to provide it.”

  At that, Larry got up and walked away as quickly as he had come, leaving Marko, deep in thought, staring blankly at the exit.

  11

  Tbilisi, Georgia

  The present day

  His real name had been Lawrence Prentis Bowlan. Fluent in Russian and a handful of other Slavic languages. He’d even picked up some Georgian, and knew a little Arabic. Old-school white-bread CIA elite, a Yale graduate—Larry had lied about a lot back then, but not about that—recruited to spy for the CIA at the height of the Cold War. He’d been able to pull off a pretty good impression of a boozy and brash American, though. As Larry had gotten older, that persona had become less and less of a fiction.

  Mark focused on the corpse in the bag again.

  After noting that it was indeed Larry, he pressed his index finger down on his old boss’s cheek—it felt like rubber; Larry had been embalmed.

  “What happened to transporting him in a cold storage unit?” Mark asked in Russian.

  A man from the Georgian customs department observed, clipboard in hand, as a hospital orderly began to seal up the zinc casket.

  “Oh, but that was not a possibility,” replied the hospital administrator, in Georgian. She was dark-haired, maybe fifty, and wore an unobtrusive gold cross necklace. She smiled at Mark with a practiced sympathy reminiscent of an undertaker.

  “It was a possibility yesterday.” When Mark had spoken with Kaufman, they’d agreed that Bowlan’s body should be preserved as it was at the time of death, so that an effective forensic autopsy could be performed back in the States.

  “The body cannot be transported internationally if it has not been embalmed. If you were told otherwise, I apologize.”

  “I was told otherwise.” Mark turned to Keal. “Did you know anything about this?”

  “Yeah. When I spoke to the coroner yesterday we talked about the cold storage option. He said he’d look into it.”

  “He must be packed in such a way that the airlines and receiving country will ship him as cargo. Now if you please, I have some forms you’ll need to sign.”

  “What did you do with his blood?” demanded Mark, still in Russian.

  “Sir?”

  “The blood you took out of his body.”

  Mark was no expert, but thought it was safe to assume that pumping Larry full of toxic chemicals would shoot to hell any chance of the CIA being able to perform accurate toxicology tests back in the States.

  “I took nothing out of his body.”

  “The coroner, then.”

  “I’m sure it was properly and respectfully disposed of, sir.” The administrator produced a sheet of paper that certified the body had been embalmed, and then a Georgian death certificate, and then something she called a sanitary epidemic certificate. She handed the papers to Keal. “The customs authorities at the airport will need to view these before they will issue an exit permit.” Gesturing to the customs official who was now watching the hospital orderly seal up the outer wooden casket, she said, “And he should be able to give you his report shortly, which you will also need.”

  “May I?” Mark took the forms and read that the official cause of death was a heart attack. “I was told some tests were performed. Before he was embalmed. May I see the lab results?”

  “Certainly you may request a copy of the physician’s report of death.”

  “Meaning the autopsy results.”

  “Yes, but if you are not the next of kin…”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” said Keal.

  “I’d rather see them now.”

  Keal asked the administrator if that was possible. It wasn’t.

  “I also have received police authorization to release the body,” said the administrator. She produced three pieces of paper that had been stapled together and marked up with a multitude of official-looking stamps and signatures.

  “What police?”

  “The regional police here in Tbilisi. They reviewed the autopsy report and lab tests. To insure that the cause of death was a natural one.”

  “And they are satisfied that it was?”

  “They would not have provided the clearance necessary to
release the body had they not been.”

  Keal and Mark were met at Tbilisi International Airport by a perky first-year employee of the State Department who was on her way to Madison, Wisconsin, to attend her brother’s wedding. She’d reluctantly agreed to accompany Larry on a Turkish Airlines cargo flight to Chicago. There, she was to transfer him to a funeral director who would bring him to Cleveland, Ohio, and stick him in cold storage until the CIA arranged for an autopsy. Eventually the body would be cremated and the remains delivered to Larry’s mother.

  Mark had spoken to Larry’s mother the night before. The call hadn’t been the emotional disaster that he’d been afraid of, but only because it turned out that his mom, who was confined to a nursing home in Ohio, was senile.

  I’m a friend of Larry’s, Mrs. Bowlan. And I’m so sorry, so very sorry, to have to tell you that your son has died.

  Larry? How is Larry?

  After the handover at the cargo terminal, Keal dropped Mark off at the main passenger terminal.

  “No word yet on that name I gave you?” Mark asked.

  “No. I can look into it when I get back if you like.”

  “I’d appreciate it.”

  “What’s your number?”

  Mark gave Keal a Bishkek number for an automated answering service that would digitize the message and forward it to an e-mail account. “If I don’t pick up, just leave a message.”

  “Got it.”

  They shook hands. As Keal walked away, Mark reflected that even in a nation like Georgia—which had never fully embraced Soviet-style inefficiency and had only been too happy to get rid of it at the first opportunity—navigating the bureaucracy usually took some doing. It was true, the Georgians had recently done a fine job of ridding many of their institutions of corruption, particularly the police, but even so, the bum’s-rush speed with which Larry’s death had been investigated, the body embalmed, and then released—in the hospital parking lot!—only served to reinforce Mark’s belief that Larry had been murdered.

  And probably by the Russians. They were the only players, other than the Georgians themselves, who had the resources to manipulate so many layers of Georgian bureaucracy so quickly.

  The only question now was what, if anything, he was going to do about it.

  12

  Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

  When the phone rang and no caller ID showed up, Daria was pretty sure it was Mark. He’d taken to using a top-of-the-line iPad Mini to route phone calls over the Internet, because such calls were harder to trace and intercept. They also didn’t show any caller ID.

  She picked up.

  “Hey, how’re my gals?”

  Daria smiled. It was good to hear his voice. “We’re fine. Lila, say hello to Daddy.” She let Lila stare blankly at the phone for few seconds, then put it back to her ear. “She told me to tell you she misses you.”

  “How’s the diaper rash?”

  When they’d spoken earlier in the day, Daria had mentioned that she’d taken a long walk around a nearby park, with Lila riding on her chest in a BabyBjörn carrier. Although still a little sore from the delivery, she was eager to get back to her normal weight—she was sick of maternity clothes and dying to wear a normal pair of jeans—and besides, she hadn’t wanted to deal with lugging the stroller down the steep narrow steps that led up to their apartment. She’d also just been restless, and the walk had felt good. All the bouncing around on her chest, though, combined with a wet diaper, had resulted in Lila developing a bit of a rash.

  “Not worse,” she said. “Oh, and her umbilical cord fell off.”

  She wished Mark had been there for that milestone.

  “Wow, already.”

  “It was time. Her belly button’s a little red. I swabbed it with alcohol, but it didn’t seem to hurt her.”

  “Good to hear.”

  “How are things on your end?”

  “I’m out of here.”

  “That was quick.” Daria hadn’t anticipated that Mark would return for at least another day.

  “Larry’s on a plane to Chicago. Things went faster than I thought they would.”

  “Well, that’s good news. I guess. Is it?”

  “No direct flights to Bishkek tonight, but I was able to get a seat on a flight to Almaty. I’ll just cab it from Almaty to Bishkek early tomorrow. It’ll be faster that way.”

  Daria detected a note of unease in Mark’s voice. “So, the medical stuff…”

  “The coroner’s report said heart attack. And he was taking Coumadin, which he’d neglected to tell me about. Part of the reason I ask for people’s medical history is so that I don’t have to worry about them dying on the job.”

  Mark spoke as if he were just annoyed, but Daria knew better. He’d liked Larry a lot.

  “I’m really sorry about all this, Mark. I know how much—”

  “Can I ask you a favor?”

  “Sure,” said Daria. But Mark’s tone gave her pause. “What?”

  “Open my bottom left desk drawer in our office. There’s a couple prepaid phones in there.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “You been snooping?”

  “What do you need, Mark?”

  “Activate the blue one.”

  A minute later, the blue phone rang and Daria answered it.

  “You got a pen?” asked Mark.

  “Give me a sec.” Daria retrieved one, along with a notepad, from a drawer underneath her desktop computer. “OK.”

  Mark read off the Internet address and passwords that would be needed to access the storage site where Larry’s most recent photo files had been saved. “Larry took twenty-eight still photos on the morning of June seventh. Would you mind taking a look at them? I’d have Decker or some of my other guys do it, but honestly, I trust you on this more than I do them.”

  “What are these photos of?”

  “Vehicles and personnel entering and exiting a Russian military base. In South Ossetia. They need to be enlarged with the equipment we have at home, and I’d rather not wait until I get there. Since you can read Russian—”

  “Is that what Larry was doing? Staking out a Russian military base?”

  “It was a contract for Central Eurasia.”

  “For Kaufman.”

  “Yeah. Langley detected some unusual movement via satellite, but Kaufman wanted eyes on the ground.”

  “You think Larry was killed.” She paused. “What, by the Russians?”

  “I’d rather not speculate.”

  “Jesus.” A CIA operation—and probably, from what she knew of the Agency, a senseless and stupid one—was a hell of a thing for Larry to have lost his life over, thought Daria. “What am I looking for?”

  “I’m not sure. But someone deleted those files from the memory cards Larry had with him. I assume they did it for a reason. I’d start by checking for identifying words or symbols on the men and matériel in the photos. Look for equipment you don’t recognize, new-model vehicles, anything unusual.”

  “I’m guessing there’s going to be a lot I won’t recognize.”

  While in the CIA, Daria had been trained to identify the military insignia of Azerbaijan—that’s where she’d been posted—and other countries in the region, Russia included. But Iran had been her specialty.

  “Do your best, use whatever online resources you can. This is just a preliminary look, Russia specialists at the Agency will eventually pick these photos apart.”

  “OK,” said Daria, but what she was thinking was, if that was the case, why the rush? Was he just upset about what had happened, and fishing for immediate answers? Or was he worried about something else?

  “Thanks. I appreciate it.”

  “You’d…you’d tell me if you were in trouble, wouldn’t you? I mean, after what happened to Larry…”

  “I’m not in trouble. There’s just some weird stuff going on that I need to sort out, that’s all.”

  Daria thought about that for a moment. She reminded herself that she�
��d known there’d be times like this; she’d known it when she’d accepted his proposal of marriage. “What weird stuff?”

  “I’d rather not get into it at the moment.”

  She debated whether to press him further, then said, “OK. I’ll check out the photos and call you back.”

  13

  Russian Military Base, South Ossetia

  “He now goes by Mark Sava,” said the deputy chief of the FSB’s counterintelligence department. “He’s worked the region for years, particularly Azerbaijan.”

  When Dmitry Titov had tried to search FSB files for information about the man he’d known as Marko Saveljic, nothing had come up. Nor did the FSB have any information on Stephen McDougall—the name on the fake passport Saveljic had used to enter Georgia. So he’d sent a photo of Saveljic—taken at the Dachi hotel—to analysts at FSB headquarters in Moscow. Facial-recognition software had done the rest.

  “Not recently,” said Titov. He cradled the phone between his ear and shoulder as he swiped the touchpad on his laptop computer, intending—now that he had a name—to access what FSB records he could on his own. “Or I would have known it.”

  “Well, until two and a half years ago he was the CIA’s station chief in Azerbaijan, worked out of the embassy in Baku. Before that he was an operations officer in Azerbaijan, and before that he was all over the Caucasus and Central Asia.”

  When Sava had been active in Azerbaijan, Titov had still been in intelligence purgatory, doing penance in Chechnya, just trying to survive. Titov’s promotion to his current position—which might have led to him intersecting with someone of Sava’s stature—had only come recently, after Sava had left the CIA.

  The analyst at FSB headquarters added, “We also believe, but aren’t certain, that he served in the CIA’s special activities division in the 1990s. He was operating under a different alias at the time, but we have a likely sighting from 1993 in Abkhazia.”