Death of a Spy

by Dan Mayland

  “You might try the Goy-Gol on Ataturk. It’s not far, you can walk.”

  “Can you make a reservation?”

  “Certainly, sir. But you won’t need one for lunch.”

  The taller man frowned as he tapped the top of the concierge desk. “OK. Thank you.”

  As the men turned to leave, Mark, speaking Russian, said, “I may join you, my friends, at the Goy-Gol, but don’t wait for me to start.” He smiled as he patted the bespectacled man on the shoulder.

  The two men gave him a look. Mark, betting that they would just think he was being friendly to a fellow Russian, added, “I won’t keep you, I must check in myself, I just arrived. What a flight! Go, go. Don’t wait for me.”

  As they were leaving, Mark heard one of them whisper something under his breath to the other. It was just a fragment of a remark, judging by the tone something equivalent to idiot, Mark guessed, but in a language he couldn’t place. Or maybe they’d been speaking Russian, but Mark just hadn’t been able to hear?

  “Sir?” said the receptionist.

  “I’d like a room.” Mark continued in Russian. He gestured over his shoulder to the two men who were walking out the entrance. “Next to my friends.”

  The receptionist typed for a moment on his computer. “Room 816 is not a suite, but it does have a king bed.”

  “I’ll take it.”

  Mark handed over his Azeri passport.

  Behind the reception counter, a door was cracked open. The receptionist called out “I need the key to 816,” and began to enter Mark’s information into a computer. After a minute, the receptionist called out, louder this time, “Salman! Room 816. Do you hear?” When this entreaty was met with more silence, the receptionist, looking aggrieved, retrieved a sheet of paper from a printer behind the counter and placed it in front of Mark. “Sign here,” he said. “I will get your key.”

  The receptionist pushed open the door behind the counter, revealing two men standing in front of an old tube television. “Salman, you don’t have ears?”

  “What?”

  Mark glanced at the TV screen. On it, he saw aerial images of a bombed-out building surrounded by police cars. The logo on the upper right-hand corner of the screen told him it was the state-run AzTV channel. The program cut to what appeared to be a chaotic press conference hosted by a man Mark recognized as the president of Iran.

  The receptionist returned to the counter, and handed a bulky metal key to Mark.

  “What’s going on?” Mark asked.

  “I am sorry to keep you waiting. As you can see, certain employees here are useless. If the Tabriz had to rely on them, the hotel would close.”

  “I mean on the TV. What happened?”

  “Oh, there was a bombing, of course.”

  “In Iran?”

  The receptionist shrugged as he took the sheet of paper Mark had signed and filed it in a cabinet beneath the counter. “Yes! Of course! Someone tried to kill Khorasani. It was his residence that was bombed.”

  Ayatollah Khorasani was the supreme leader of Iran.

  “How?”

  “I don’t know. Some people say a missile, some a car bomb. Right now there are only rumors.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “This morning, before dawn. But it has only just come on the news. Of course, everyone thinks it is Israel.”

  “This could be bad.”

  “Yes, of course. But Khorasani was not at his residence, praise to Allah. He is alive, so I do not think there will be war.”

  38

  Russian Military Base, South Ossetia

  It had only been an hour since Titov had ordered the security tapes at Nakhchivan airport to be searched. And already he had his answer.

  Displayed on his computer screen was an image of a man who had flown under the name of Adil Orlov, but who Titov knew with certainty was Mark Sava, albeit with hair that was darker and shorter than when he’d been in Tbilisi. First he shows up in Tbilisi, now Nakhchivan. The American was onto them, that much was clear.

  “Forward this photo to all our operatives in Nakhchivan,” said Titov to his deputy. “Let them know that this man is working for the CIA. He often goes by the name Mark Sava but is now traveling under the name of Adil Orlov. He’s also been known to use the name Stephen McDougall. Prioritize a watch on the road to the Ordubad airstrip and all surrounding roads. Next target the main hotels. Get a man in every lobby. Then watch the highways going in and out of Nakhchivan City. Nakhchivan isn’t that big a place. Find him. But be careful—he’s dangerous.”

  39

  Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan

  As Mark approached the door to his room at the Tabriz he glanced at the doors before and after his own. A Do Not Disturb sign hung from the one numbered 817. He guessed it was there because the men he’d followed didn’t want a maid rifling through their things.

  A ceiling-mounted security camera was pointed at him, so as Mark reached into his front pocket for his pick tools, he shifted the travel bag that hung from his shoulder so that it blocked the camera’s view of the doorknob.

  The lock was a basic four-pin variety, so he had the door open in under a minute. Inside, the room was clean and uncluttered. A bag of potato chips—a local brand—and an open bottle of Georgian wine sat on a table next to the television. Two queen-size beds took up most of the floor space; both were unmade. Large windows looked out over the red roofs of Nakhchivan City and the Aras Reservoir, the Aras River having been dammed up just south of the city. Because the reservoir marked the border with Iran, it was a restricted no-man’s-land, a place that lay empty and wild.

  He turned from the window and began searching the bathroom. Because the two toothbrushes that lay next to the sink weren’t branded, he couldn’t tell where they might have been purchased. Same with the little travel containers of shampoo. There were no medications. The two razors were decent Gillette four-blades—but they could have been purchased here in Nakhchivan or practically anywhere else in the world. The waste bin was empty, save for a couple of used tissues.

  Back in the main room, he searched the dresser and TV cabinet, but they too were empty. Next to the phone was a pad of hotel paper which he picked up and examined from an angle, hoping that the old spy trick of reading the indentations from the previous note would prove useful. It wasn’t—the paper was perfectly smooth.

  In the closet, on a luggage rack, he found a single, open carry-on-sized Samsonite suitcase filled with black satin boxer shorts, black socks, and white undershirts. The boxer shorts and undershirts were made by Marks & Spencer, a British firm, but one with worldwide distribution; the socks weren’t branded. There were no luggage tags on the suitcase.

  Hanging from the clothes bar above the suitcase were two dark blue suits and four white dress shirts encased in dry-cleaner plastic. Mark checked the suit coats; the neck labels had been removed, as had the labels on the rear of the suit trousers, and the neck labels on the shirts.

  They were careful men, that much was clear.

  He turned both of the jackets and trousers inside out, but found no identifying marks. The suits looked custom made. He could cut away the inner lining, hoping that the tailor had left some identifying marks on the interior. But then the owners would know that their room had been violated.

  For a moment, Mark stood there, listening and thinking. He glanced at the shirts again. They hung on paper-encased dry-cleaner hangers. On a hunch, he undid the top two buttons on one of the shirts and slipped it off the hanger.

  In light beige lettering, Mark read—in English—KLEINMANN CLEANERS, BEN YEHUDA STREET, TEL AVIV, 03/523-8967. Above the English was text that Mark couldn’t read but which Mark guessed was simply the same information in Hebrew.

  Hebrew, he thought. That was the language he’d caught a snippet of down in the lobby.

  40

  Baku, Azerbaijan

  Orkhan had just gotten off the phone with the director of Israel’s Mossad spy agency when his secret
ary rang.

  Sounding flustered, she said, “Sir, they’re here for you. Five men, they won’t leave, I don’t know what to tell them, I—”

  “What five men?”

  “From the Interior Ministry. They have a warrant they say is signed by the president.”

  “A warrant for what?”

  “Sir, I’m sorry.”

  “A warrant for what?” Orkhan repeated, though he knew the answer. He was going to be arrested and accused of leaking information about the operation in Nakhchivan to the Russians.

  “For you, sir. For your arrest.”

  “I see.”

  His secretary was calling from the Ministry of National Security in downtown Baku, but Orkhan was at his home south of the city, seated on the periphery of an inner courtyard that extended out from his ground-floor office. Ten years earlier, he and his family had moved out of the densely populated part of the city and into this mansion. It was a move he’d come to regret. At the time he’d thought being in the desert highlands, with the other wealthy Bakuvians, in a fenced compound with a pool he’d never use and a state-of-the-art security system, was where he belonged. But he missed his old neighbors.

  Still, he enjoyed his courtyard patio, particularly when it was sunny and hot, as it was today; even though he was wearing a suit and tie, he welcomed the heat. It sank into the dark fabric of his suit and deep into the knotted aches in his shoulders. The heat slowed him down, calmed him, helped him to think more clearly. A fountain in the center of the courtyard made a pleasant burbling noise.

  First Mark Sava shows up, then a Russian spy is found to have evidence of the Nakhchivan operation, then someone tries to drop a bomb on the supreme leader of Iran, and now the interior minister was trying to arrest him.

  Orkhan had a feeling that the confluence of all these events was not coincidental. Something big, and almost assuredly unpleasant, was about to happen. But what?

  He eyed the guard standing at attention near the French doors that led to his office. He had a total of eight men here at his house. All loyal, all related to him by blood. There was a reason he had elected to work from home today; he’d suspected this was coming.

  “This warrant,” he asked. “It has been signed by the president?”

  “I saw the signature myself. What should I tell them?”

  “Tell them the truth. If they wish to find me, I am at my home.”

  Silence. Orkhan considered the public humiliation that was now being inflicted upon him. Five men, marching into his ministry.

  He’d leave immediately, but two of his men would remain behind to challenge the warrant, to make the interior minister’s men wait, to buy time.

  “Are you sure—”

  “One more thing—record the names and positions of the five men now attempting to serve this warrant. This violation will not be forgotten. Is that clear?”

  “Perfectly, sir.”

  41

  Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan

  Were the two men he’d been following really Israelis? Had he really, Mark wondered, heard a snippet of Hebrew?

  If they were Israelis, Mark guessed they’d immigrated to Israel from Russia and had been picked for this job because of their fluency in Russian. Assuming they were Israelis, though—what were they doing visiting a secret restricted area in Nakhchivan?

  Mark could guess at part of the reason. Relations between Azerbaijan and Israel were surprisingly good, despite the fact that Azerbaijan was a predominantly Muslim nation. Because of all the regional sensitivities, neither country could publicly admit how close the relationship was, but Israel got around forty percent of its oil from Azerbaijan and Azerbaijan was buying Israeli arms—drones, antiaircraft and missile defense systems—at a rapid clip. In a leaked cable, the president of Azerbaijan had once compared the Azeri-Israeli relationship to an iceberg, where ninety percent was below the surface.

  So if a couple of Israelis were traveling incognito to a secret restricted zone, Mark knew the likelihood was high that it was because the Israelis and Azeris were cooperating on some project, probably military in nature, they didn’t want the rest of the world to know about.

  The only question was: what was it? An airstrip that couldn’t be seen from the air? Or had the engineer from Bazarduzu Construction been lying? Mark recalled the briefcases each of the Israelis had been carrying. He suspected answers to his questions lay inside them.

  Mark stopped by his room at the Tabriz, stuck his iPad Mini in his back pocket and his permanent phone and two prepaids in his front pockets, placed his leather satchel in the closet—he hesitated to leave the painting unattended, but didn’t want to carry anything that would slow him down—and then exited the Tabriz on foot, intending to intercept the Israelis at the Goy-Gol restaurant and steal one of their briefcases.

  His plans were disrupted, however, when a gaunt young man with eyes set too close together followed him out the door of the Tabriz—without even making much of an effort to be discreet about it. He looked too fair skinned to be a true Nakhchivani, but just as in Azerbaijan proper, the long Soviet rule had left a lot of Nakhchivanis with Russian blood in them.

  Crap, he thought. He was hoping the guy was a Nakhchivani, because it would be bad news if the Russians had found him here. Whatever the case, he’d have to deal with the guy behind him first, and quickly, before the Israelis were done with their lunch. He exhaled, and pictured the layout of the city in his head, and where the Goy-Gol was relative to places he that might best ditch a tail. The path of least resistance, he told himself. Find it.

  He began walking, at a fast clip, south down Heydar Aliyev Prospekti. His tail followed about fifty feet behind, not bothering to use pedestrians or vehicles as cover. Just past a mosque, Mark stepped into a virtually empty Soviet-era park that was several hundred feet wide, and equally long. There were no roads in the park, so he didn’t have to worry about being overtaken by someone in a car.

  At the end of the park stood a ten-sided eighty-foot-tall 12th-century mausoleum that was decorated with the word Allah rendered in Arabic. Mark headed for it, but instead of going inside, ducked around the structure and began to sprint in a line he calculated would keep the mausoleum between him and his tail for the longest time possible.

  That line took him through a tulip garden and then down a steep grassy embankment. At the bottom, he turned sharply to his left and, using the embankment as a blind now instead of the mausoleum, sprinted along the edge of a large public square that overlooked the Aras Reservoir. When he reached the southeast corner, he vaulted over a decorative waist-high metal fence and began to run down a steep hill overgrown with wild lilac bushes and evergreen trees.

  But before disappearing into the vegetation, he cast a quick glance back up the hill—and that was when he really began to worry. A man—shorter and older than the one who’d originally been following him—was climbing over the fence. Mark ran, dodging branches, then hit a road, and sprinted south as fast as he could, downhill, searching for escape routes and improvised weapons, thinking this was exactly the type of situation he was too damn old for.

  Behind him he heard footsteps pounding on pavement. By now, Mark was breathless and his chest was heaving.

  “Stop!” The word was spoken in English, but with a heavy Russian accent. Glancing behind him as he ran, Mark saw yet another guy, this one young and lithe, built like a cross-country runner.

  A line of parked cars came up fast on Mark’s right. He made for the first, as if he planned to run right over it. Instead he hit the front grill with his right foot, pivoted a hundred and eighty degrees and instead of stopping, charged. As they collided, Mark tried to slam his fist into the man’s throat, but only half succeeded. Momentum carried them both onto the hood of the car. As they fell, Mark threw another punch to the throat and this time connected.

  A hundred feet away, a car was speeding toward them. Another car appeared from behind, the engine revving far louder than normal. Mark cut left, but the gu
y who’d been following him from the Tabriz had caught up and was trying to outflank him.

  The Tabriz guy produced a pistol and fired two low shots—he appeared to be aiming for the legs—but missed. Running for all he was worth, Mark eyed the wooded hill that paralleled the road. Running back to it now would be crazy, but he was boxed in and there was nowhere else to go. His only option was to try to lose the men who were after him in the lilacs and evergreens that covered the hill.

  The slope was steep, and Mark was tired. He climbed up maybe twenty feet, then turned sharply to his left. Below him he heard bodies crashing into the woods. Above him, from the edge of the public square by the mausoleum, he heard shouts, people issuing orders—in Russian—to the people below.

  Dammit all.

  A small army was chasing him. Why, though? What had he stumbled upon that that was so important?

  He estimated that the odds he was going to get caught were approaching a hundred percent. He cursed under his breath, took a few more steps walking as quietly as he could, rolled under the low branches of a tall pine tree, and pulled out one of his prepaid phones.

  42

  Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

  Daria tested the water in the small plastic baby bath with her index finger—it was warm, but not too warm—and then slowly lowered Lila into it for the first time, the small umbilical-cord wound on Lila’s belly button having healed over to the point where Daria thought it was OK to submerge it. She squeezed out a little baby shampoo onto a yellow duck-shaped washcloth and began to clean her daughter.

  Lila cooed and her mouth formed what Daria imagined was a smile, even though she knew babies weren’t supposed to really be able to smile with happiness at that age.

  “You like that, don’t you?” Daria was on her knees in front of the bathtub. The baby bath was inside the larger tub. She tickled Lila’s belly a bit. “Bath time is fun for Lila!”