by Dan Mayland
Titov’s head dipped. So that surly, contemptuous kid hadn’t been scared off by his experience in Georgia in 1991. Titov had imagined that after leaving, Marko Saveljic had stumbled back to the United States thankful just to be alive; that he’d been so emotionally and physically scarred that the rest of his life had been a train wreck. Instead, just three years after leaving Georgia, Sava had shown up in the breakaway Georgian republic of Abkhazia, just in time to meddle in what had been a brutal civil war.
Titov stopped typing on his laptop and gripped the phone. “What’s his reputation?”
Knowing that Larry Bowlan died looking at Katerina’s self-portrait had cheered Titov to no end, but he now realized it had been a terrible mistake to have left that painting in the room. He’d abandoned it, thinking that now that justice had been served, he could let both the painting, and all the memories associated with it, go. But he hadn’t considered that perhaps the one person in the world who could have recognized that painting would walk into that room.
“He was one of the best the Americans had. When he ran the CIA station in Azerbaijan, he poisoned many—too many—of the wells we tried to dig there. And he had high-level contacts in the Azeri government. His departure presented an opportunity for us to expand our operations in Azerbaijan.”
“What’s he been doing lately?” asked Titov, although he thought he could guess the answer to that question.
“Private contract work. Mainly for the CIA. He runs a small operation out of Bishkek.”
“I see,” said Titov.
What Titov saw was that Bowlan, although he’d claimed to be a lone-wolf contractor hired by the US Department of Defense to surveil the base in South Ossetia, almost certainly had instead been working with Sava on a CIA contract. Just as Bowlan and Sava had been working together, again for the CIA, twenty-four years earlier.
“Do you need me for anything else, sir?”
“Yes. Find out everything you can about Sava. Where he lives, who he lives with, who he works with, when he eats, where he eats, when he shits, where he shits, when—”
“I’ll need the approval of the director to allocate that kind of manpower to Bishkek.”
“Which is why I will call him. In the meantime, make what preparations you can.”
If all went as planned, Titov’s men would take Sava within the hour, before he left Georgia. An interrogation would follow, to find out whether Sava knew any more than Bowlan had about the upcoming operation. When that happened, Titov wanted to be prepared. If Sava had weaknesses that could be exploited, he wanted to know about them; experience had taught him that without that kind of leverage, Sava would be hard to break.
After the interrogation, of course, they’d have to kill the American; on a purely personal level, Titov would welcome the opportunity to do it himself, but even if he hadn’t borne Sava any personal ill will—and he bore him plenty—abducting and interrogating such a man, and then releasing him so that he could share his unfortunate experience with the CIA, wasn’t practical.
“This American, why does he worry you?”
When it came to dealing with his colleagues in the FSB, Titov was inclined to keep the personal to himself and emphasize the professional—it was enough that Sava was tied to Bowlan, an American spy who’d been snooping around the base here in South Ossetia just days before the launch of the big operation. But Titov didn’t know the extent to which the deputy chief had been briefed on that. So all he said was, “Because it is my job to worry. If the director chooses to say more, that is his prerogative.”
14
Tbilisi, Georgia
Mark suspected he’d picked up a tail.
As he purchased an International Herald Tribune from a newsstand inside the terminal, he noted that, fifty feet away, next to a kiosk that sold tacky plastic drinking horns and snow-globe reproductions of medieval churches, a guy wearing jeans and a blue hoodie was seated on a bench, tapping nonstop on his phone. A backpack lay by his feet. Sunglasses were pushed up on his lacquered black hair.
Not so different from hundreds of other guys Mark might have expected to see on the streets of Tbilisi.
But Mark had noted a few anomalies. For one, the guy was dressed as if he were a club-hopping twentysomething. But his black hair was gray at his temples. And he wore a wedding ring. And the camera on the back of his phone was often pointed right at Mark.
Mark had been planning to go through security and wait by his gate, but he had another hour before his flight boarded, so instead he shouldered his satchel, picked up the plastic shopping bag he was using to carry Larry’s electronic equipment, and took a stroll outside. As he darted across two lanes of traffic and into the parking lot opposite the terminal, he observed that the guy with the backpack had also left the terminal; he was standing a hundred feet away, near the road that paralleled the parking lot, looking like he was trying to hail a cab.
Mark wasn’t shocked. He was often tailed by foreign intelligence services. And if Keal had been CIA, as Mark suspected, well, maybe the Georgians or Russians or whoever just thought—correctly—that Mark was guilty by association. He took heart from the fact that the backpack guy appeared to be operating alone; had he been part of a larger team, someone else almost certainly would have handled the exterior surveillance.
Mark made a show of pulling a pen and pad of paper out of his satchel and pretending to record the license plate numbers of two random cars—let the backpack guy waste time puzzling that out, he thought—then headed back toward the terminal, intending to surreptitiously snap a quick photo of his tail on the way inside. He made it as far as the end of the parking lot, and was preparing to traverse the two-lane road, when he sensed a shadow on his left, and caught a brief whiff of a menthol cigarette.
Out of the corner of his left eye, he saw that he was being overtaken by a blue van, and came to the split-second realization he was being played for a fool. Stopping short, he turned to his right and made eye contact with a broad-shouldered bearded man who was tossing a cigarette to the ground. With one hand Mark threw his newspaper into the man’s face and with the other, jabbed a thumb into his eye.
The van came to a quick stop just as someone inside it yanked the cargo door open. Mark jumped in front of the van, smacking the hood hard as he did so, then cried out in pain, and fell to the ground—attracting concerned looks from travelers gathered near the terminal entrance.
“Idiot!” yelled Mark in Russian as he picked himself up off the ground.
The bearded man was clutching his eye, but advancing.
As Mark backed away from the van, he pointed a finger at the driver. “Watch where the fuck you’re going!”
The cargo door of the van slammed shut. The bearded man glanced at the van as though confused and not sure what to do, but by now Mark was safely surrounded by the people gathered near the terminal entrance.
Stupid, thought Mark as he caught his breath inside the terminal. He’d come within a hairsbreadth of being abducted. The guy with the backpack had probably been bait, sent into the terminal with a lousy disguise, and snapping photos with his smartphone to goad a stupid American into trying to flush out a tail.
He massaged the thumb he’d used to poke the bearded guy in the eye. After what had happened to Larry he should have been paying more attention, watching for that van, or something like it, anticipating that someone might try to grab him. If he’d been anticipating instead of reacting, they never would have gotten close.
But who were they? The Russians? Maybe. Probably. Did it have anything to do with this business about Katerina? Mark had no idea. What he did know was that he was getting too old to count on being able to fight his way out of scrapes. He needed to look harder for paths of least resistance. Use his brain to avoid conflict, so that he didn’t wind up like Larry.
He took a few more deep breaths—he was still a bit shaken, although he didn’t like to admit it—looked around him, and decided that, just then, the path of least resistanc
e led through the passenger-screening security checkpoint. Once he was past that, in the secure zone of the airport, the chance of anyone being able to pull off an abduction was close to zero.
In retrospect, he realized he should have headed straight there in the first place.
After passing through the checkpoint, Mark found a coffee shop near his departure gate and took a seat where he had a wall at his back and a clear view of anyone entering the shop. To his left was a service door exit.
He ordered a double espresso, and downed it right away. When Daria called him back on his iPad, which was connected to the Wi-Fi at the coffee shop, he was sipping a vodka on the rocks.
“I copied and cropped the photos from June seventh,” she said, “focusing on any identifying marks I could make out. They were all taken from the same vantage point of the earlier photos, so I didn’t worry about the visible buildings or anything else that’s consistent across all the dates.”
“And?”
“Two Tenth Brigade spetsnaz guys, another guy who I believe was VV.”
Spetsnaz referred to any number of Russian special forces units. Mark assumed plenty were in and around the base at South Ossetia, especially those from the Tenth Brigade, which was known to operate in the region; VV—short for vnutrennye voiska—referred to troops controlled by the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. Though they were common too, there were special units within the VV that, if present, would have raised red flags.
“The VV guy, was he North Caucus or—”
“Couldn’t tell. I extracted a head shot for him and everyone else that I could, and enlarged and enhanced all identifying marks, so maybe you can make more sense of it. There was another guy who was a general whose last name begins with Golo—it was a side shot, the rest of the name on his uniform wasn’t visible. Plenty of Forty-Ninth Army troops too, but that’s to be expected.”
“Yeah, that’s their backyard.”
“There was one guy in civilian clothes who got dropped off in a cab. His back was to the camera, but the duffle bag he was carrying had a sticker on it with the letters NAJ. I wasn’t sure what it was at first, but I did a little research—that’s the code for the main airport in Nakhchivan.”
“Nakhchivan?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s kind of random.” Nakhchivan was a tiny scrap of land wedged between Turkey, Iran, and Armenia. Though it was technically a part of Azerbaijan, Nakhchivan was an exclave, to Azerbaijan what Alaska was to the continental US, in that it wasn’t physically connected to the main part of the country.
“Yeah, I thought so too.”
“I’ll put together a full report for Kaufman when I get back, but in the meantime could you shoot me encrypted copies of the crops you made, and write out what you just told me?”
“Already on it. Check your e-mail.”
“Thanks. How’s Lila?”
“Sleeping.”
Mark considered telling Daria about Katerina, but explaining to his wife that he’d just been blindsided by a self-portrait of a former lover was a much longer conversation than he wanted to have at the moment. They’d have plenty of time to talk about all that when he got back home. And he also saw no point in mentioning that he’d almost been abducted, and that, upon landing in Almaty in the morning, he planned to spend a lot of time making sure that no one was still on his tail. He had to make sure he was perfectly clean before coming anywhere near Bishkek. Why worry her about all that? “All right, talk soon.”
“Travel safe.”
“Always.”
Still connected to the Wi-Fi signal at the coffee shop, Mark called Ted Kaufman’s secure landline in Langley, Virginia, where it was morning.
“Larry’s en route.” Mark started to bring Kaufman up to speed on what had transpired over the course of the day. But, as with Daria, he left out the bit about the painting—that angle was far too unsettled, too strange, too raw for him to be able to draw any conclusions from it. He needed to get a better handle on what was going on before he mentioned that to anyone.
He was relaying Larry’s flight information, when Kaufman interrupted.
“Hold on, let me get a pen. Actually, screw it. Just e-mail me what I need to know. Talk to me more about these missing photos.”
“Daria just put together a preliminary report—”
“Daria, as in Daria Buckingham?”
“Yeah. As in my wife.”
“I knew you’d married a trait—”
“Don’t go there.”
“—but now you’ve got her working for you? Nice to know. Brilliant move, Sava.”
Daria hadn’t just quit the CIA the way Mark had. She’d been kicked out because her idealistic streak had led her to do some things that she shouldn’t have. Mark had long since forgiven her, but Kaufman hadn’t.
“She’s just helping out in a pinch.”
“She’s not the one with the clearance. You are.”
“You want the preliminary intel on the missing photos?”
“What have you got?”
Mark started to repeat what Daria had told him.
“Back up,” said Kaufman. “Did you say Nakhchivan?”
“Yeah. Why?”
No response.
“Ted?”
“You sure on that?”
“No, I haven’t even looked at Daria’s crops yet. I’m just telling you what she told me.”
“What else could those letters stand for?”
“A lot of things probably.”
“But she thinks it’s an airport security sticker.”
“Yeah. The kind they slap on your bags after they inspect them.” Mark waited a moment, then said, “We good?”
He heard tapping on a computer keyboard, then a sigh. Finally, Kaufman said, “Listen, Sava. What if, instead of heading back to Bishkek, you were to hold tight for a bit? While I check something out.”
“No can do, Ted.”
“I may have more work for you.”
“Great. Submit a request for proposal. I’ll take a look and price it out whenever you get it to me.”
“This might be more urgent.”
“I could probably line up someone for you ASAP if you’re in a pinch.”
“The job I’m thinking of is one you’d be better suited for.”
“My plane boards in an hour. I’m heading back to Bishkek, Ted. Tonight. But we can talk tomorrow.”
So put that in your pipe and smoke it, thought Mark as he clicked off his phone.
When Mark had been the chief of the CIA’s Azerbaijan station, Kaufman had been his boss, so he knew just how far he could push him without seriously damaging the relationship. Besides, while he wasn’t just going to forget about what had happened to Larry, Mark knew there was a lot he could do from back in Bishkek. He’d wait for the CIA’s Russia specialists to analyze the missing photos. Maybe by then Keal would have come up with contact information for Katerina. He considered trying to hunt her down on his own, but until he had a better grip on the situation, decided he belonged back in Bishkek.
For a moment he started to think about how satisfying it would be to be back home, with Daria and Lila. Then the memory of Katerina burrowed its way into his thoughts.
What if she had left that painting there to send him a message? Was it a coincidence that all this was happening now, right after the birth of his first child? He and Katerina didn’t know each other anymore. But had she somehow connected with Larry? Mark couldn’t fathom how or why they would have, but that painting…what was equally unfathomable was that such a painting could have wound up in that hotel room if there hadn’t been some sort of link between Larry and Katerina.
Mark checked his watch. He still had a half hour before his plane was due to board, so he flagged down the waiter, ordered another vodka on the rocks, and tried to remember as much as he could about Katerina and that spring of 1991. Mostly what he remembered now, though, was how quickly everything had spiraled out of control.
In retrospect, Mark could see that agreeing to help Larry funnel money to the Press Club hadn’t been one of his smartest moves. And ignoring the warning lights that started flashing in his mind after Larry intimated that other types of aid might become available if things in Georgia really started to heat up, maybe even weapons—ignoring that danger…well, he’d been young.
Mark recalled that it was shortly after the mention of weapons that Larry had said he wanted to make sure that the Soviets hadn’t planted a mole in the Press Club. Money was one thing, but before any weapons were transferred, he needed to be sure the Press Club was clean. Larry had said he’d come up with a plan. Meanwhile, Mark had started paying closer attention to all the members of the club.
Mark had known he was playing with fire. He’d known Larry wasn’t just some businessman. He’d known too that he was being watched—the old woman who pottered about in the street in red sandals, sneaking nips of apricot moonshine, who was always full of questions; the same black Volga sedan with a dented fender he’d see several times over the course of a normal day. But he’d wanted to do it, he’d wanted to help fight the communists who had wronged his mother, to be a part of history, to help make history.
Then, Mark found a pill-sized listening device affixed to the underside of the rough pine headboard attached to his bed frame. That was when things really had started to go downhill.
Mark thought again of Katerina, tried to bring himself back to that time, to search for clues in the past that might help him understand what was happening to him in the present. Would she have any cause to harbor lingering anger, because of the way things had turned out between them? Was that what this was all about? Mark didn’t think so, but the honest answer was that he didn’t know. He tried to recall the last time they’d seen each other, when everything had gone to hell...
15
Tbilisi, Georgia
June 1991, six months before the dissolution of the Soviet Union
