by Dan Mayland
Soon they were cruising west down Neftchilar Avenue, parallel to which ran a promenade that followed the coast of the Caspian Sea. Until recently, the promenade had been a shabby but pleasant place to take a stroll, framed at its western and eastern ends by shipping ports that stank of oil. Now the industrial zones, with their rusted yellow cranes and beat-up container-ship barges were gone, shuffled off to a massive new port south of Baku. In their place were several waterfront parks, one of which was anchored by a massive flagpole that—until Tajikistan built an even bigger one—had been the tallest in the world. The promenade itself, once nothing more than a cracked asphalt path that had run along the edge of a rock breakwater that smelled of rotting fish and seaweed, was now a pristine expanse of white tile that extended all the way down to the water’s edge.
Rising up from the hill that lay beyond Neftchilar Avenue, a trio of gleaming flame-shaped skyscrapers dominated the western skyline.
As Mark took all this in, keeping an eye out too for signs that he was being followed, he wondered briefly whether Baku was still the right fit for him. Wondered whether the city had outgrown him. The Baku he knew was one of shady back alleys and pollution and stink and corruption, but this…this place seemed like a shopping mall, a mini-Dubai in the making.
But he was getting older, he reasoned. He was changing himself; he was a father now, and a husband. He no longer took the risks he used to. Maybe it was only right that his adopted city was changing, just as he was changing. They were both cleaning up their acts.
Mark glanced at his face in the rearview mirror of the cab. He saw the crow’s-feet around his eyes; the gray that had once been just around his temples was now peppering the hair on the top of his head.
Baku, he had to admit, was aging better than he was.
“Here’s fine,” said Mark, just before they got to the Four Seasons.
He got out of the cab, shouldered his travel bag, and headed into old Baku. When he’d first come to Baku, the old part of the city had been surrounded by a massive crumbling rock wall that dated from the eleventh century. But once the oil money started pouring in, the Azeris had decided to fix everything. They’d repaired the wall, doing such a thorough job that it now looked new—because it was—and they’d taken the same approach to cultural preservation with the rest of the old city, most of which now appeared to be about as old as the Great Sphinx outside the Luxor hotel in Las Vegas.
The cobbled streets were still narrow, though, and many bottlenecked down to cobbled footpaths that were just a couple of yards wide. The pedestrian traffic was light enough that Mark could focus intently on the footsteps of the few people behind him.
He turned left up a particularly steep alley and passed through a construction site that no one had bothered to rope off, winding his way through a maze of concrete saws and jackhammers and workers hauling mortar. When he reached the top of the alley, he took a quick right. Eventually a newly renovated beehive-domed limestone building appeared, outside of which was a sign that read HAMAM.
There were many Turkish baths in Baku, some of which had been in use for centuries. It depressed Mark that they’d renovated the exterior of his favorite; instead of the sooty stained brown it once had been, it was now a clean light khaki color. But the instant he ducked inside and felt the heat, and smelled the water and the sweat and the ancient wet rocks and the wet wood, and saw the clutter of teacups and papers behind the counter opposite the entrance, and almost tripped on a bucketful of plumbing wrenches and other tools that the Azeri who maintained the bath had left in front of the counter, and when he saw too that the plaster on the arched dome was still crumbling, then all at once Mark felt at home and glad, so profoundly glad, to be back in the city that he loved.
“Mr. Sava!” exclaimed a voice from behind the counter that stood in front of the entrance door. “Oh, but it has been too long. I thought you were dead!”
“Not yet, friend. Not yet.”
Hassan—a heavyset Azeri with a bald head and a beak nose marked by a permanent indentation from heavy reading glasses—stepped out from behind the counter. He wore gym shorts and a sleeveless undershirt.
“It has been too long,” said Mark, embracing Hassan briefly. “How have you been?”
“Well. Very well.”
“And your children?”
“My oldest started working here last month cleaning the baths. He works hard.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“Today you bathe for free, Mr. Sava. To welcome you back.
But I fear you must have found another hamam you prefer.”
“No, no. I’ve been abroad, Hassan. Living in a land where all the hamams are dirty and diseased. I went to one and I needed to bathe again when I got home, just to get clean! But it’s good to be home. Had I known I was leaving for so long I would have told you, but…”
Hassan waved his hand. “It is no matter. And it is good to see you home, Mr. Sava.”
After they spoke of the past year, and of what each of them had done with it—Mark shared that he’d married Daria, and was now a father—Hassan said, “You will take the full treatment, of course.” He gestured to the plastic sandals—loaners provided by the hamam—outside the changing room. “You will also take a robe?” Before Mark could say no, Hassan’s eyes widened. “Wait one minute, Mr. Sava. I have something for you!”
“I don’t—” Mark was going to say that he didn’t have time at the moment for a treatment, but Hassan had already ducked into the employee room behind the front desk. A moment later, the Azeri reemerged. In his hand he held a pair of plastic slippers. They were old, and the plastic was partially ripped on one. But Mark recognized them.
“They are yours, Mr. Sava. When you don’t return for a year, we took them from the changing room, but I saved them.”
“I was wondering whether I’d ever get those back. You are too good to me.”
Hassan tipped his head briefly, acknowledging the compliment.
Mark said, “But right now I don’t have time for a treatment. I just need a favor.”
“Anything, Mr. Sava. What can I do?”
Hassan loaned Mark his spare jacket, sunglasses, and straw cowboy-style hat—the type favored by men who labored long hours in the sun. And he let Mark exit the hamam via an old tunnel that cut underneath the baths and which was used to service the heating elements beneath the hot rooms. The tunnel opened onto an alley behind the hamam; Mark had used the same exit many times in the past, often after the hamam had officially closed—it was one of the ways he’d managed to arrange secure meetings with his potential informants.
21
After satisfying himself that he wasn’t being followed, Mark bought a cup of Turkish coffee from a street vendor and walked to Western University, which was housed in a six-story turn-of-the-century building just outside the walled old city. He was waved through the massive oak entrance door by a security guard who accepted his explanation that, although he didn’t have a university ID, he was there to meet with the head of the International Relations department.
Once inside, he quickly climbed the wide central staircase to the third floor, eager to get in and out before he ran into anyone who knew him. His brief stint as an academic had been an aberration. When he moved back to Baku, it would be as a spy for hire—and he didn’t want to have to explain that career choice to his former colleagues at Western. Nor did he want to lie to them, though, so avoidance, as much as possible, was the best option.
His old office on the third floor overlooked a lonely inner courtyard where a few straggly fig trees were shaded by laundry lines. But the room itself had an old-world charm to it—high ceilings, like his old office at the embassy, carved oak wainscoting, and a fanlight above the eight-foot-tall door.
Mark cracked the door open, then knocked when he saw someone sitting at his old desk, back to the door, tapping a pencil on the desktop and staring at a laptop.
Receiving no response, Mark knocked again, louder this time.
/> The man held up a finger, typed on his laptop for a moment, as if finishing a thought, then turned. His eyes were puffy, his nose red; a box of tissues sat on top of his desk.
“Can I help you?”
Mark knew the guy, but only from a few casual encounters. He was a mathematics professor, Iranian by birth. One of the few professors at Western, other than Mark, who had refused to take bribes in return for good grades.
“You have a minute?”
They spoke in Azeri.
“Office hours are Tuesday.”
“I used to teach here at Western. I believe we’ve met.”
The man turned in his seat. “We have?”
“In the faculty lounge. It would have been over a year ago.” Mark entered the room, transferred his coffee to his left hand, and offered his right as he introduced himself and explained that he used to teach international relations. “Listen, this was my old office. When I retired, it was due to a family emergency. I didn’t have time to properly clean out my things. I left something here that I need to retrieve.”
“From my office?”
“It’s in the desk. Underneath the bottom drawer on the right. I’d be surprised if it wasn’t still there.”
“I’m sorry, who did you say you were?” The professor’s eyes darted toward the door.
Mark repeated his name. “I worked with Professor Samedov,” he said, giving the name of the man he thought still ran the International Relations department. “I’ll need to remove the drawer to get my things.” He placed his coffee on the desk. “Just briefly. I’ll put it right back.”
“Professor Samedov retired. At the end of last semester.”
“Did he now? I knew he’d been considering it.”
“Did you check in with security?”
“Oh, they know me.”
“You wouldn’t mind if I called them, would you?”
“Not at all.”
A cordless phone sat on the desk. A phone line, however, snaked up to the charger base. As though trying to be helpful, Mark slid the base towards the professor. As he did so, he used his index finger to unclip the line—but in such a way that the line was still touching the base.
“While you’re calling, if you don’t mind, I’m going to retrieve my things.”
Mark knelt down, bumping up against the professor’s leg, and pulled out the bottom drawer. It was stuffed with books and loose-leaf binders, making it heavy to lift off its runners.
The professor, who now appeared bewildered, grabbed the cordless. “In fact, I do mind. If you were to have made an appointment—”
“I’ll only be a moment.”
Mark set the drawer down, reached far into the empty space, and removed a small plastic Ziploc bag that had been duct-taped to the interior wall of the desk. A quick inspection confirmed that his alias packet—a custom one that he’d personally commissioned—was as he’d left it: one well-worn Azeri driver’s license, a government ID card, and a Western University ID card, all of which displayed his photo, hair cropped short and dyed dark black, next to the name Adil Orlov. There was also a Visa card in Orlov’s name that wasn’t due to expire for another three months, and ten $100 bills.
Mark didn’t need the money; he’d brought plenty with him from Bishkek, but seeing the crisp bills raised his spirits. He slipped the Ziploc bag into his back pocket and replaced the drawer.
The professor was punching buttons on his phone, trying to get a dial tone, glaring at Mark as he did so.
“I’ll be leaving now,” said Mark. “Thanks for your help.”
He scooped up his coffee and downed the rest of it in one long slug. He considered leaving the empty cup on his old desk but decided not to be a jerk.
As Mark left the university, intending to check out the new Port Baku mall to see about getting diaper cream—he had time to kill while waiting for the Ganja branch chief’s alias packet—he was thinking about where he’d live. Definitely somewhere on the east side of town, where he’d be less likely to run into former academic colleagues. Maybe in one of the new high-rises. He wondered how much a penthouse condo would cost—maybe instead of a balcony he’d have a whole rooftop patio. How about that? He envisioned setting up a little jungle gym for Lila; she’d be crawling soon enough.
But when he pictured himself with Daria and Lila on top of the roof, lounging in the sun, the image only lasted a moment before he began to imagine Lila crawling to the edge, curious, then trying to climb what would probably be a protective wall that was far too low.
A rooftop patio, with a little kid...what was he thinking? But if a rooftop wasn’t safe, would any balcony be—
Mark stopped short. Shit.
Two men were approaching, both dressed in dark suits with white shirts. He considered making a run for it—he had plenty of avenues of escape, and he’d noticed them in time—but stopped himself because he didn’t sense danger the way he had in Tbilisi, and he trusted his instincts.
“Mark Sava?”
“No,” said Mark.
“Mr. Sava, we are here on behalf of someone who would like to meet with you.”
The one who had spoken, a stocky man with a helmet-style haircut and a thick monobrow in need of a trim, had done so in perfect Azeri. Mark breathed a little easier.
“Who?”
“If you could come with us, please.”
“You must be kidding.”
A silence ensued. The man gestured to a Mercedes idling on the street.
Mark said, “I’m not getting in your car.”
“I am not inviting you. I am ordering you.”
“I’m not getting in the car.”
“Get in the car.”
“No.”
The men glanced at each other. The one who had spoken first shrugged, then said, “It’s not that far. We can walk.”
Mark was tempted to make a belated run for it. But he still wasn’t getting the sense that these guys meant to do him harm. “Walk to where?”
The man considered, then named a restaurant in old Baku that Mark knew well.
“Who runs this restaurant?”
The name offered matched the name Mark knew.
“How will we get there?”
“Istiglaliyyat, right, left to Kichik Qala, then—”
“OK, I know it, I’ll follow you.”
From the way they spoke Azeri, the quick answers to his questions, and the easy way the men carried themselves, they almost certainly were Azeris, Mark determined. Probably—given their civil-servant uniformity—from the Ministry of National Security. And the Azeris, while not exactly his allies, weren’t his enemies either.
Mark raised his empty coffee cup with his left hand and gestured down the street, drawing the attention of the two men away from his right hand, which he dipped into his back pocket. He palmed his alias packet, and then transferred the empty coffee cup into his right hand, using it to hide the alias packet.
After a minute of walking, they passed an urn-shaped garbage bin. The garbage around downtown, Mark remembered, was emptied every day—but not until early in the morning, just before dawn. He tossed the coffee cup, and his identification, into the urn.
22
There were few things in this world that intimidated Orkhan Gambar, but his daughter was one of them.
As Azerbaijan’s Minister of National Security—the Azeri equivalent of the CIA—he was used to doing the intimidating. Thousands of men and women worked under him. When he arrived for work each morning, dropped off by a black limousine in front of the ministry building on Parlament Prospekti, the halls were always silent save for the occasional muted, “Good morning, Minister Gambar.” Doors were opened, heads were down at desks.
Deference, that’s what he was accorded. Deference and respect. His daughter, however, accorded him neither.
At present, Orkhan was seated in a cool stone-walled basement of a restaurant in old Baku, attempting to conduct a Skype video chat with his daughter. He tapped on his smart
phone. “I think I have it now,” he said, speaking loudly.
“I still can’t see you,” snapped his daughter, who was in Paris.
She’d sent him a text late last night, asking him whether he could make time for a video chat today. Of course he could, he’d said, but that had been before this business with Sava had come up, and truth be told, he wasn’t good with the video thing.
“I have done everything exactly as you said!” Orkhan insisted.
“Well, it’s not showing up—all I have is the audio. Make sure the app knows to use the internal camera on your phone. It might be thinking you want to use an external camera.”
It annoyed him that she spoke to him as if he were the child. “This app—where do I look for this?”
As his daughter attempted to instruct him, Orkhan grew increasingly frustrated. “This phone, it is broken, I think.”
She tried to instruct him again.
“Maybe we could just talk,” said Orkhan. “Maybe we don’t need the video.” He didn’t want to be sharp with his daughter, but enough already. Sava would be here soon.
A sigh of frustration and disappointment—how could you possibly be so stupid?—then, “OK. We just talk.”
“How are your studies progressing?”
“Fine.”
When it came to his daughter, Fatima, that was one thing Orkhan didn’t have to worry about. She was everything his doltish son was not—intelligent, energetic, and hardworking. She’d applied to, and had been accepted at, the Sorbonne. The Sorbonne. It filled him with pride him just to think of it. And this based entirely on her own merits.
“And your job?”
“Ata, I have something we need to talk about. It is important, that is why I wanted the video.”
Orkhan leaned his head back and stroked his mustache. “What is important?”
“I’ve decided to apply for French citizenship.” A half-minute passed. “Ata? Are you still there?”
“You wish to have joint Azeri and French citizenship? Fatima, this…this…well, you know my position, this could be complicated.”
