Death of a Spy
Page 27
At the moment, though, he had an expression on his face that she hadn’t seen before—one that, if she hadn’t known him so well, she would have sworn was sadness.
“Hey.” She leaned into him, gently this time, careful not to aggravate his wounds. His head dipped toward hers, their breath intermingled. “You going to be OK?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“You’re sure about that?”
Mark lifted his head. At first his smile was clearly forced, but then his eyes seemed to relax, and he looked at her as though seeing her for the first time, and a genuine smile—albeit crooked and tough—appeared. “Yeah. You, me, Lila. We’re all going to be OK.”
Epilogue
Baku, Azerbaijan
Six months later
“But you grow skinny, Minister Gambar! Surely this is too much. A man like you must eat.”
Orkhan Gambar lay naked, face down on a masseur’s table in his favorite Turkish bath in downtown Baku. The masseur—an enormous Azeri with a belly suggestive of a sumo wrestler—was in the process of massaging Orkhan’s upper thighs and buttocks.
“Two more kilos. I must lose two more kilos,” said Orkhan. He was still fat. If not by the standards of his masseur, then certainly by the standards of his daughter and his personal physician. But he had made considerable progress. “I must follow the treatment.”
“This treatment, I don’t agree with it.”
The masseur ground his palm into the back of Orkhan’s lower right buttock, leaned all his weight into it, held the position for several seconds, then released it and gave Orkhan’s posterior a smack. The pasty mass of flesh jiggled.
“My daughter. I made her a promise. She said, maybe if I am not so fat, she will be more respectful to me. I told her this was no way to talk to her father, but I also think that maybe she has a point. And that maybe she says this out of concern for me.”
Orkhan was in a good mood because the minister of the interior had finally been executed at Gobustan Prison the day before, the last of the United Nations monitors that had been overseeing the dismantling of the drone base in Nakhchivan had left, and the Russians were signaling through back channels that they would leave Azerbaijan be, provided the Azeris limited the volume of natural gas they sent directly to Europe.
“Daughters,” said the masseur. “I have a daughter. Always this talking back to their fathers. They learn things on the Internet that are not good for them.”
Orkhan grunted in agreement. “It is much easier when they are younger,” he observed.
“You speak the truth. Arm.”
Orkhan extended his right arm and the masseur began to knead it roughly.
“For example, I know this American,” said Orkhan. “Now, it is easy for him. He and his wife just moved to Baku with their baby daughter, a very nice girl, I have met her. But she is so young, she cannot even talk. She does not know what her father does for a living. And I cannot say what he does, but it is not always nice, you understand?”
“Of course, Minister Gambar.”
“Yes, well, when this little girl gets older and finds out what her father does, then he will have trouble!”
Orkhan closed his eyes, as he began to really relax. He considered how nearly every day Sava, looking stupid and emasculated, pushed his little girl in a fancy stroller—the men Orkhan had assigned to watch Sava claimed it cost over four hundred dollars!—on the promenade by the Bay of Baku. What kind of man does this?
“Maybe this American will stop doing what he does?”
Orkhan laughed, then coughed up some phlegm, and spat. “No, I don’t think so.”
Acknowledgments
The more I write, the more I realize how lucky I am to be lifted up, with such regularity, by people who are in equal measure intelligent, constant, and kind.
With that in mind: I am deeply grateful to my agent Richard Curtis for his wise counsel, editorial advice, and for role he played in publishing this novel. I also can’t thank Christina Henry de Tessan, my developmental editor, enough; her contributions to the Mark Sava series, and to this novel in particular, have been invaluable. Tim Gifford, David Mayland, Scott Stone, Heather Cathrall, John Vickerstaff and Mark Burstein all read early versions of Death of a Spy; the novel is far better as a result of their corrections and suggestions. Mike Lindgren did a brilliant job proofreading the book.
Christopher Lane deserves special thanks for bringing the Sava series to life in his outstanding audio versions of the novels. With foreign accents galore and place names like Nakhchivan, I know these aren’t easy stories to narrate, but he makes it seem as though they are.
XNR Productions of Madison, Wisconsin did their usual great work with the maps for Death of a Spy. The Book Designers of Fairfax, California designed the cover—which I absolutely love—as well as the interior of the book.
While researching Death of a Spy, I traveled to the regions in which the story is set and interviewed a wide range of people. The contributions these individuals made to the novel were enormous, but given the political realities of the situation, to name these people here—many were government officials—would do them no favor. I am, nevertheless, indebted to them. I would also like to thank the many reporters, scholars, and ex-CIA officers who, through their books, lent insight to this novel. An annotated bibliography can be found at danmayland.com.
Finally, many thanks are due to my wife, Corinne, and my children Kirsten and William—for their enduring love and support, but also for serving as my sounding board of first resort.
About the Author
Dan Mayland lives in Pennsylvania with his family and frequently travels to the remote corners of the world that he writes about. His first novel, The Colonel’s Mistake, was the inaugural novel of the best-selling Mark Sava series.
Photo by Corinne Mayland, 2012