by Dan Mayland
Katerina had been concentrating on her poppy. “What do you think about him?”
“Well, I like his politics now, of course.”
Stifling a yawn as she dipped her brush into a dollop of Venetian red paint, she said, “Then I like him.”
“But I worry that he doesn’t care about democracy, that he’d be just as bad as the communists if he ever had his way. I mean, he’s not a communist, but...”
As Katerina painted one of the poppy’s petals, she offered, “I too would prefer democracy.”
“You just say this to please me.”
“And does it?”
Katerina professed to have no love for communism, but Marko knew that mostly she simply didn’t care. She preferred to talk about Renoir—do you think he really was happy, or just trying paint in a way that would inspire happiness in others?—or if not Renoir, then she’d gladly engage in long conversations about Manet or Corot or Matisse or Cassatt or Picasso. She didn’t like Picasso, but one of her art books had paintings from his blue period that she knew Marko liked, so she’d try to use Picasso as a way to lure Marko in...or if not conversing about painters then she’d gladly discuss American movies or U2 or sex or cats—she wanted a cat, but the university wouldn’t allow her to keep one in her dorm room…
“You should come with me to the next meeting,” said Marko, referring to the next meeting of the student Press Club.
A gentle sigh. “And what would I do at this meeting? My mother and brother made me promise not to take part in any of the protests.”
Marko had never met Katerina’s mother, or her brother, because Katerina worried they might not approve of her dating an American. They were, she’d explained, more traditional in their views than she was.
“Going to a meeting is not the same as going to a protest. At the next meeting, we’re discussing the kind of government we would like to see for Georgia once the Soviets are gone. I mean, a democracy, yes, of course. But will there be a president? A prime minister? There are many questions to resolve.”
Katerina tilted her head, smiled, and then leaned down to where Marko was sitting. When she spoke, she breathed into his mouth. “OK. We’ll go together then.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
They kissed. Katerina went back to her painting and Marko went back to struggling with his book on Georgian history. After an hour, though, Marko took a break to light another cigarette. It was late in the day, nearly five o’clock, and the way the sun was filtering down through the trees and dappling Katerina’s dirty-blond hair struck him as exceptionally beautiful. So he reached for his backpack, unzipped the top flap, and pulled out a small point-and-shoot camera.
65
Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan
The present day
Mark told Titov all that he remembered of that day, then said, “The painting is a reproduction of a photograph I took of Katerina a month before your men captured me. I didn’t visit her after I escaped. I wasn’t lying to you.” Katerina has always been beautiful, but she’d been exceptionally so that day and Mark had wanted to capture it. “It was one of my favorite images of her, and she knew it. That’s why she used it to paint her self-portrait.”
Mark let his voice trail off as he rested his forehead on the floor. He was sure that was what Katerina had been thinking. He felt connected to her right then.
“So you really don’t know.”
“Don’t know what?”
Instead of answering, Titov said, “I am glad I had the opportunity to kill that scum Bowlan, but now that you have told me this story, I confess that it is with regret that I must kill you, Sava. Come, I will make this easy. But first you must move to the carpet. I cannot have the hard floor here getting wet, not with all the electric wires.”
As Titov bent down next to him, Mark considered asking the Russian to explain whatever the hell he’d just been talking about, and why he cared so much about Katerina, and why he’d really killed Bowlan. But then he thought of Lila, and Daria, and concluded that he didn’t have time for that luxury. His first priority had to be staying alive.
The second Mark felt Titov’s hand under his armpit, he pushed up off the floor with everything he had, slammed the back of his head into Titov’s chin, and then twisted and threw a punch into Titov’s neck, aiming for the windpipe. Titov took a step back, trying to aim his Grach at Mark, but he stumbled on an extension cord that led to the communications table.
Mark dove for Titov’s gun hand and simultaneously kneed him in the balls. Then he bit the base of the Russian’s thumb as hard as he could. He felt the skin break, and bone separate from tendon.
When Titov’s grip loosened on the Grach, Mark snatched it, fired a quick shot directly into Titov’s chest, pivoted, lurched to the communications table, stuck the Grach in his belt as he grabbed the AKS rifle, and fired on automatic as he stumble-sprinted toward the Russian operative who had been guarding the elevator but who was now running for cover.
To the left of the elevator, an open metal fire door led into an emergency stairwell. Mark ran to it, slammed it shut, and took cover behind the cinder-block wall to the side of the door. One of the Russians pinged the door with bullets. Beneath Mark, in the stairwell, a man called out in Russian, “Sergei! Is that you?”
Responding in Russian, Mark said, “Yes, the American, he’s escaped!”
As he spoke, Mark took a step forward. He didn’t have a clear shot at the Russian below him and he didn’t know how many men there were in the restaurant. He glanced up. The stairwell rose one more level and ended at a door that led to the roof.
The Russian below him called out, “Thirty-seven, nine! Identify!”
It was a code of some sort, Mark assumed. One that required a proper response. Instead, Mark fired a single shot down the stairwell and headed for the roof.
He twisted the doorknob, encountered resistance, flicked the firing mode to semiautomatic, fired two shots at the latch, then kicked at the door, but it held firm. He fired two more shots, and this time broke through.
66
Titov groaned as he lifted himself off the floor. It wasn’t the burning in his chest—that was minimal, he’d been wearing body armor—but the thought of what had just transpired that really pained him.
Sava.
He should have known the American would pull something like this. But Sava’s lung really had collapsed on him. He really had to be hurting. Just not as much, evidently, as Titov had thought.
“Vlad!” called Titov.
“Here, sir!”
Titov stumbled into the main room. His right thumb was dripping blood. He thought his nose might be broken. And his balls were killing him. He observed Vlad—a twenty-year veteran of the FSB—on one knee, back pressed against the wall adjacent to the stairwell entrance, AKS rifle pressed to his chest, finger on the trigger. The bullet-riddled stairwell door was open.
“Where did he go?”
“The roof, sir.”
“Who’s hurt?” Titov was tempted to admonish his operative for having let Sava run past him, but to do so would have only emphasized Titov’s own lapse.
“Sergei’s down.”
“Dead?”
“Maybe.”
Two piercing beeps sounded from the communications table. That would be the command center at FSB headquarters in Moscow, Titov knew. He cursed.
“Sir?”
“Keep watching the stairwell. I have to take this.”
Moscow had told him they would let him know when the Russian ground forces were about to cross the border. Shortly thereafter, Titov could expect to see Russian tanks rolling into Nakhchivan City and a Russian helicopter on the roof of the Tabriz. Russian ground troops would clear the hotel from the bottom up while Titov’s men and a spetsnaz platoon from the helicopter would clear from the top down. Once the hotel was clear, the Tabriz would serve as the main communications center of the Russian occupation.
But now the roof was not secu
re. That had to change.
He jogged back to his communications table and answered his satellite phone.
“We are at the border. Prepare yourself,” said the voice on the other line.
“Understood,” said Titov.
As he hung up the phone, Titov heard screaming. At first he was confused as to its origin, but after a moment realized it was coming from the roof.
Titov took a step toward the window that overlooked the parking area in front of the Tabriz. An Azeri armored car had just pulled into the lot. Sava was yelling, thirteen stories down to them, at the top of his lungs. The Azeri in the armored car appeared to be listening to him.
Titov could make out some of the words. Russians, taking over, restaurant, killing Azeris…
67
At first it wasn’t even a fair fight, thought Daria.
“JDAMs,” said Decker, with whom Daria was communicating via the radio headset she was wearing. “Probably five-hundred pounders. Anything more would be overkill.”
She was in northern Nakhchivan, crouched in a decades-old trench that overlooked the Armenian border, peering out of a small hole that had been cut through a low stone wall that ran parallel to the trench. The Russian T-90 tanks had seemed so large and menacing, their diesel engines so loud, that it had been hard for her to imagine anything could resist them. They’d stopped at the border fence, but only to demand that the Azeri troops let them pass. A man claiming to be a Russian general had stood in front of the tanks with a bullhorn.
We come in peace, to help defend the southern border of Nakhchivan from an Iranian attack. Open the gates now or we will drive through them. You have one minute.
A minute had passed. The gates had remained shut. So the tanks had advanced, pounded through the gates as if they were made of paper, and then—before a single shot had even been fired by the Azeris—the first two tanks in the Russian column had been blown to hell by a single B-2 stealth bomber circling some fifty thousand feet above. Daria could see the two tanks now, smoldering. She felt awful for the soldiers who’d been inside them. Because one thing she knew for certain—this invasion loosely disguised as assistance certainly hadn’t been their idea.
The Azeri general who commanded the defense stood by her side, dressed in desert camouflage.
Boom! Then two seconds later, Boom!
Two more Russian tanks that dared to cross the border were destroyed. And then two more after that. It was clear to her that the Russians hadn’t been prepared to encounter anything close to such resistance. The advance, which had been thrown into disarray after the first two tanks were hit, halted.
Below Daria, on the Azeri side of the border, were some thirty Azeri military vehicles, most of which were Russian-made: T-90 tanks, but older versions than the Russians were using; armored personnel carriers topped with antiaircraft machine guns; and a few surface-to-air missile systems. The trenches closer to the border were packed with heavily armed troops, as were the surrounding hills. The Azeris were waiting for the Russians to advance further before engaging them. Daria wasn’t sure that was even going to happen.
One of the Rangers’ voices sounded on her headset.
“Tell the Azeris to expect incoming! Someone’s lighting up the friendlies!”
Daria passed along the message to the Azeri general standing next to her. Moments later, an Azeri armored personnel carrier was hit by a missile that streaked down from a neighboring hillside.
Turning to Daria, the Azeri general said, “We have Russians behind the lines. I need you to relay these GPS coordinates to your team.”
The general read them off; as he spoke Daria translated the numbers into English for the Ranger she was linked to via a secure radio connection.
Seconds later, there was an explosion on a nearby hillside.
68
Alarms began to sound all over Nakhchivan City. Army trucks rumbled through the streets.
The Azeri soldier Sava had called down to had radioed for backup. Titov and his men had disabled the elevator right after Sava had pulled his stunt, so the Azeri infantry men sent to investigate Sava’s claim had been forced to trudge up the stairs. After two were shot, the rest had fled, but minutes later, what Titov guessed was an entire infantry platoon had pulled up to the hotel and raced inside.
So the Azeris were coming; it was just a matter of time.
And the minute Titov saw the antiaircraft lighting up the sky to the north, he knew something else had also gone wrong. The Russian MiG fighter jets that had been assembled at the air base in Armenia weren’t supposed to be part of the incursion unless the Azeris used the few MiG fighter jets they had stationed in Nakhchivan to attack the advancing Russian ground forces. The MiG made a distinctive sound, audible from many miles away, but Titov couldn’t hear any in the air.
In fact he couldn’t hear any fighter jets in the air.
Which meant there should be no need for antiaircraft fire at all. But there was antiaircraft fire, so something had to be up there, way up high, where it couldn’t be heard. The randomness of the antiaircraft fire suggested that whatever it was couldn’t be seen by radar any more than it could be heard.
Which meant the Azeris had, at the last minute, found someone to help them. The Turks, perhaps, or more likely, the Americans. FSB counterintelligence would eventually find out who—their mole in the US embassy probably already knew—but by then it might not matter.
Titov’s satellite phone began to ring. Ignoring it, he walked to the emergency stairwell.
One of his men was still positioned to the side of the door, waiting to shoot up the stairwell should Sava show himself. Before seeing the antiaircraft fire lighting up the sky, and hearing what sounded like aerial bombs exploding, Titov had planned to order his men to take the roof. But given what was going on at the border, he’d decided on a different course of action.
He slung an AKS assault rifle with a strap on it over his shoulder, stuck two extra thirty-round magazines in the pocket of his armored vest, pulled his combat knife from his ankle holster, and affixed his night-vision goggles to his head, but with the dual tubes flipped up.
“I recommend you step back, sir,” whispered the operative guarding the door. “The stairs are not secure. If you—”
“Dammit.”
Titov was trying, using his knife as a lever, to pry the top hinge pin from the bullet-riddled metal door that led from the restaurant to the stairs. The door was thick heavy steel, designed to stop fires from penetrating the hallway; though it was pockmarked with bullet holes on one side, there were no exit holes on the opposite side.
Titov’s throbbing right thumb was useless because of Sava’s bite. He transferred the knife to his left hand. It took him a couple of minutes, but eventually he managed to work all the pins out. He pulled the door off its hinges.
“I’m going up,” said Titov. The metal fire door had been overengineered; as a result, it was exceptionally heavy. With his useless thumb, he struggled to keep it off the ground. “Cover me.”
“Sir, I wouldn’t recommend that.”
“I said, cover me.”
Titov stepped into the stairwell and eyed the door that led to the roof. Sava appeared to have attempted to shut it, but because the latch had been shot up, it remained cracked open an inch. As Titov slowly climbed the stairs, lugging the door up with him, he considered the layout of the roof.
Sava would be positioned so that he had a clear shot of anyone trying to access the roof from the stairwell. Because of the way the door opened, that meant the American would have to be somewhere to the right. So what was to the right?
A big air-conditioning condenser, that was what.
With that in mind, and using the fire door as a shield, he bounded up the last remaining steps, kicked open the door to the roof, and burst through it—holding the fire door between himself and where he thought Sava would be.
69
Mark had been faking exhaustion when he’d been with Titov in the re
staurant, but he wasn’t faking it now. He was seated, leaning up against one of several large rooftop air-conditioning condensers. While the condenser probably wouldn’t stop a bullet, it was at least a decent blind and might also help mask the heat of his body. The rifle he’d taken from Titov was equipped with a thermal sight, making it likely the rest of the Russians had been issued similar equipment. But the heat was also making him sweat; he felt light-headed, and his heart was beating faster than it should have been.
He was trying not to move any more than he already had, so as not to disturb the flexible plastic tube protruding from his chest. Although he could still breathe well enough, his left lung ached, and he worried that he’d further damaged it when fighting Titov. He desperately wanted to rip the tube out—it felt as though he’d been shot in the chest with an arrow—but knew better than to act on his instinct.
An involuntary shudder swept through him. He thought of Daria, and how they’d strolled through the streets of Florence on what had passed for a honeymoon, recalled how they’d started most mornings taking long breakfasts, him downing double espressos, she with her cappuccino… He’d been uncharacteristically calm, and happy, and content to just let time pass; he’d never been to Italy before and maybe because of that, because he had no history there that could have come back to bite him, he hadn’t been constantly looking over his shoulder. As his thoughts turned back to the present, he pictured Daria back in Bishkek with Lila, holed up somewhere safe, he hoped, and he steeled himself to the task of guarding his position and holding onto consciousness. At least the light show he’d seen in the northern sky suggested that the Russians were encountering—
The door to the roof burst open.
Mark fired two quick shots at someone who appeared to be using a metal door as a shield. The man made it to a second air-conditioning condenser and dropped the door in front of it.
“Enough, Sava!” cried a voice in Russian, a voice Mark recognized. “You are surprised I am alive, no? Well, there is this thing they make now, armor that can stop bullets. You wear it like a vest. Perhaps you’ve heard of it?”
