Death of a Spy Read online

  “Not joint citizenship.”

  “Fatima.”

  “I’ve given this a lot of thought.”

  “Subhan’Allah, Fatima!” Glorious is God!

  For seventeen years she had been an obedient girl, but a year ago everything had changed when he’d had her boyfriend, a sniveling long-haired man-child who professed to be a poet—Orkhan suspected the boy had gypsy blood in him—arrested for attending a pro-democracy rally in downtown Baku.

  Although Orkhan had made sure that the arrest was made by the local police, not his men, that was when Fatima had started with all her questions.

  Why had her boyfriend been arrested when other protestors had not? And what could be done about it? And then, after poisoning her mind with articles she’d read online: why was the legal system in Azerbaijan so blatantly unfair? Why was Azerbaijan saddled with a dictatorship when it was clear that the future belonged to the democracies of the world? And what was her father doing to make things better?

  Azerbaijan was not Europe, or America, Orkhan had explained. It was a different culture, with different rules. Be grateful for what you have, be grateful that your father is one of the most important people in Azerbaijan, and remember that with this status comes both privilege and responsibility.

  Fatima had not been impressed. She’d declared that the president of Azerbaijan was an oppressor, and that her father was aiding and abetting this oppressor. By the time she’d declared her intention to move to France to study at the Sorbonne, Orkhan had been relieved. Go study, have your silly late-night talks about God and democracy and oppression of masses and such—smoke marijuana even!—get all this out of your system, then grow up, and learn the real ways of the world. In the meantime, we will agree to disagree.

  “I consider myself a citizen of the world,” said Fatima. “But if I can’t be a citizen of the world, I at least want to be a citizen of a country whose ideals I respect.”

  “That you respect.”

  “Yes. That I respect.”

  “And this country is…France?”

  “I’ve decided France is a better fit for me than Azerbaijan.”

  “A better fit?” Orkhan gripped his phone tightly. It was a struggle not to throw it across the table. “Your country is not something you change like you change your shoes, Fatima!” He took a moment to collect himself, to steady his breathing. He felt his heart pounding against his ribcage. “Have you told your mother of this?”

  “Last night.”

  “And?”

  “She was OK with it.”

  “Unbelievable.”

  His wife was in Dubai, on one of her all-too-frequent shopping trips, spending ungodly amounts of money on jewelry and clothing outfits she might wear once if she wore at all. She was like his son—depressingly stupid, and focused on the material things in life.

  Which made this ever widening schism with Fatima that much harder. He and Fatima had always been the sensible, responsible ones in the family.

  He wondered if she’d even considered the effect renouncing her citizenship might have on his position as minister. If the president found out, well…if Minister Gambar couldn’t be relied on to control his own daughter, how could he be relied on to control Azerbaijan’s preeminent intelligence agency?

  Orkhan said, “Fatima, I know you think what you are doing is right. I know you try to live by your—” He paused as the next word got stuck in his throat. She is young and impressionable, he told himself, don’t say it with sarcasm. “Your ideals, but I am telling you this as a father, as someone who raised you—”

  “I was raised by servants.”

  “Servants I provided! I am telling you, as your father, that people change over the course of their lives. You are a beautiful girl, with your whole life ahead of you. What you think is right for you now might not feel as right in a year, or ten years, or twenty. So I ask that you wait, and give this more thought.”

  “It usually takes up to five years anyway, Dad. They don’t just let you become a citizen right away.”

  Orkhan felt a weight lift from his chest. Five years. In five years, he might be ready to retire anyway. If the job and Fatima hadn’t killed him by then. “This is good.”

  “But I’m hoping to do it in three. If I finish my undergraduate degree early, and then do two years of graduate school while working in France, I’ll be eligible to apply—”

  One of Orkhan’s men cracked open the door to the room in which Orkhan sat.

  “He is here, sir.”

  To Fatima, Orkhan said, “Wait a moment.” He pressed the phone to his chest, muffling the microphone, then spoke to his man. “Bring him to me.”

  “He refuses.”

  “Tell him he doesn’t have a choice.”

  “We have. He still refuses. He said he’d meet you in the courtyard.”

  Orkhan was tempted to have his men just clobber Sava on the head and drag him into the restaurant. Establish right away what the pecking order was going to be now that Sava was back in Baku. But he worried that if he issued such an order, one of his men might end up with a ruptured testicle, or blind in one eye. Sava may not look like much—physically, he was more than a few years past his prime—but he was a survivor. Orkhan had learned that much about the American over all the years they’d known each other.

  “Zirrama.” Idiot. He muttered this under his breath.

  Orkhan stood. As he did so his gut, which had never been a small affair but over the past year had grown to be a bit unwieldy, brushed against the table, causing some of his tea to spill onto the white tablecloth. “I’ll be right out. In the meantime, search him.” He raised his phone back to his ear. To Fatima, he said, “I need to go.”

  “Of course you do. The president calls and you must come. He’s a brute, Ata.”

  “Silence, child. Silence. It is not the president.”

  23

  As Mark observed Orkhan Gambar approaching, he noted that his old confederate, and sometimes friend, had grown fat.

  Orkhan had always been a big man, but in a powerful, bearlike way. His nose was crooked and huge, configured in a way that most Americans might think ugly but in Azerbaijan was anything but. The nose made Orkhan look like a man to be reckoned with, as did his shoulders, which were broad like a weightlifter’s.

  But now Orkhan’s neck had gone from thick to unhealthy and his midsection from impressively stout to obese. Thirty pounds in just over a year, Mark guessed.

  “Minister Gambar,” said Mark. “It has been too long.”

  Orkhan frowned and exhaled loudly through his nose.

  “No weapons, sir,” said one of Orkhan’s men. “Here is his passport and wallet.”

  Orkhan flipped through Mark’s brown official passport. “New,” he noted.

  “Issued yesterday.”

  Orkhan gestured to the leather satchel Mark was carrying. “What else is in the bag?”

  “Phone, iPad, clothes, toothbrush, razor, and such,” said Orkhan’s man. “And a painting.”

  “A painting?”

  “Show him,” said one of Orkhan’s men to Mark.

  Mark carefully pulled out Katerina’s painting and removed the shirt he’d wrapped around it. “I picked it up in Tbilisi. Do you like it?”

  Orkhan studied it briefly. “No. You have bad taste, Sava. Put it back.”

  When Orkhan’s men looked to him for further guidance, he gave a sharp nod of his chin towards the exit.

  His men backed away, leaving the tiled courtyard of the fourteenth-century caravansary—a Silk Road inn of sorts—empty save for Orkhan and Mark. Given that it was approaching lunchtime, Mark assumed Orkhan had ordered the restaurant that now occupied the caravansary cleared for the occasion. High walls, broken up by arched alcoves where traders used to store their livestock and wares, surrounded the courtyard.

  Mark said, “I thought it might be you.”

  “Your powers of deduction are remarkable.” Orkhan handed back Mark’s passport and
wallet. “I am told you married. This is true?”

  “It is true.”

  “And you did not think to tell me this yourself? No wedding invitation? No card?”

  “I’m sorry. It happened fast.”

  “A marriage should not happen fast, my friend.”

  “Mine did.”

  Orkhan’s expression made it clear that he didn’t think much of that.

  “And it is with this woman you now have a child.” It wasn’t a question. Orkhan had clearly been briefed. He pressed his lips together into a disapproving frown. “Ah, Sava…This return to Baku. Perhaps you should have notified me first.”

  “There wasn’t time.”

  “Always, always you Americans are too rushed. Come, we must talk.”

  Orkhan turned toward a building in the center of the courtyard. Mark followed behind him, noting that as Orkhan descended the staircase which led to the basement he gripped the handrail tightly, as though worried that he might tumble down the stairs. A fat-fold had developed in the back of his old friend’s neck.

  “You will perhaps be surprised to hear that Heydar is now at university,” said Orkhan, as they descended.

  “Congratulations. Where?”

  “University of Texas. He studies petroleum engineering.”

  Orkhan, Mark knew, had been exceptionally keen on getting his son, Heydar, into the University of Texas. The main problem, however, had been the SAT. Mark, because he’d owed Orkhan a favor, had tried to help Heydar prepare for the test.

  “I know how hard he must have worked to get in. The SAT is a difficult test.”

  Orkhan’s eyes sagged. “Work, no. He paid someone to take this test for him, and to make his application. This is common, I hear? Now he chases American girls and gets as drunk as a Russian with my money.”

  “And Fatima, she is well?”

  “She studies at the Sorbonne. But we will not talk of her now.”

  They passed through a long cave-like room with smoke-stained stone walls that arced inward to form an arched ceiling. Gilded couches were arranged on threadbare Persian carpets. At the end of the room stood a massive revolving door made of centuries-old oak and reinforced with thick iron bands. Orkhan pushed his way through it, as though entering a medieval dungeon.

  Two place settings had been arranged at the end of a long table. Dim light from chandeliers trimmed with tassels cast reflected light off the water glasses and silverware. On a shoddy modern shelf behind the table, antique earthenware jugs fought for space with a Sony boom box. Mark liked to think of all the spice traders and oil barons and spies and diplomats who had taken shelter in these rooms over the centuries.

  “Wait outside,” said Orkhan to the man who stood behind his chair, holding his coat in such a way so that it wouldn’t become wrinkled. “You will be called when you are needed.”

  24

  Orkhan slumped down in his seat, comforted by the cool cellar air.

  “Please.” He gestured to the lamb stew in the center of the table. Also on the table was a large bowl of sliced lemons, a pot of tea, and bread.

  “No thanks.”

  Orkhan frowned. “So.” He served himself a ladleful of stew.

  “How did you know where to find me?”

  “You were followed. From the embassy.” Orkhan took one of the lemon slices and used his teeth to peel the pulp from the rind.

  “Those were your men?”

  “No. The men you saw were Russians. My men observed them following you, or they would have picked you up after you left the embassy. Instead we watched.”

  “Russians. You sure about that?”

  “Yes.” Orkhan said, “We, and the Russians, did lose you in the old city, but I had men posted at Western University just in case. You had, as I recalled, a strange fondness for the place. Why are the Russians following you?”

  “That’s a good question.”

  Orkhan ate the pulp of another lemon slice, then a spoonful of stew. “In any case, I must make a confession: it is satisfying to see you have once again decided to do something useful with your life.”

  “Teaching international relations wasn’t useful?”

  “When you were a teacher, they kicked you out of Azerbaijan. Why? Because you were not useful. Now, you work again in your field, you are useful, and just like that you are welcomed back. This is what I see.”

  “You approved my return?”

  “No. I was not consulted.”

  Bypassing the normal channel of communication through the American embassy in Baku, the US State Department’s undersecretary for political affairs had made a direct appeal to the office of the president, asking for Sava’s PNG to be lifted. Orkhan felt certain that the president, or whatever underling he’d assigned to deal with the matter, hadn’t had a clue as to what they’d approved.

  “Hmm,” said Sava.

  “And now I must admit to some uncertainty.” Orkhan reached for another slice of lemon.

  “Uncertainty.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve developed an affinity for lemons, I see.”

  Orkhan shrugged. “They are good for the circulation. And I have some circulation problems.” He gestured to the bowl. “Please.”

  “By circulation problems, you mean heart problems?”

  “Not big problems.”

  “You are seeing a doctor, of course.”

  “Of course. The best.”

  Mark took a lemon slice.

  Orkhan said, “So this new station chief, Roger Davis. Does he work for you, or do you work for him?”

  “Neither.”

  “And your relation to the ambassador?”

  “We coordinate.”

  “You see, this is the cause of my uncertainty.”

  “I’m a private contractor now, Orkhan. When they need me, they hire me. When they don’t…” Mark shrugged.

  Orkhan knew perfectly well that the Americans often liked to hire private contractors to do jobs that should have been handled by the government. His feeling was, if the Americans wanted to pay two dollars for a job that should cost one, that was their business. They had money, they liked to spend it. Just like his wife liked to waste money in Dubai. No problem. But using someone of Mark’s stature on a contract basis, that was a different matter altogether. That complicated the chain of command, it complicated diplomacy with the Americans.

  Mark added, “It’s the new way. Some people in the CIA are looking for ways that the Agency can exercise more operational flexibility. Be less bound by the bureaucracy.”

  “And you welcome this trend?”

  “I neither welcome it nor reject it. I observe it and react to it.”

  “Bureaucracy is not always a bad thing.”

  “Not always a good thing either.”

  “It can help prevent confusion.”

  “Or create it, depending on who’s at the top.”

  “Enough of this, Sava. On whose authority are you here? Who pays you? This is what I need to know.”

  “Washington. Ted Kaufman. He’s the—”

  “Yes, yes, I know. Central Eurasia, CIA. So you and Roger Davis have the same boss.”

  “We do.”

  “Roger Davis, and the ambassador, you realize they are fools, no?” Orkhan fingered his lemon rind. “The protestors here, the opposition, they talk of human rights and monitors, always monitors, for elections, but they play the US. They only say these things so your State Department will find creative ways to get money to them. They don’t expect to actually change anything, and they won’t.”

  “I realize the situation is complicated.”

  “I know you do. It is Davis I worry about. The job you have been hired to do. What can you tell me about it?”

  When Mark spoke, he chose his words carefully. “It involves a woman in Ganja who was advising us. She died recently, perhaps not from natural causes. I’ve been asked to look into it.”

  “This woman, she was Azeri?”

  M
ark nodded. “You wouldn’t happen to know what I’m talking about, would you?”

  Orkhan genuinely didn’t, which bothered him. “No.”

  “Pity.”

  “Azerbaijan is a friend to America. Why do you waste time spying on us?”

  “I didn’t say we were spying on you. Do you know why the Russians were following me?”

  “No. When do you intend to travel to Ganja?”

  “Soon.”

  “If you’d like, I can arrange for transport.”

  “Oh, I think I’ll manage.”

  “If there are problems, Sava…”

  “I will call you.”

  Orkhan and Mark had worked well together in the past, and Orkhan hoped to do so again in the future. They’d both benefited from the relationship, each often telling the other more than their respective governments would have liked, an arrangement that had allowed both of them to appear particularly well-connected. But Orkhan also realized it was possible Mark had been assigned a job that would put him in conflict with Azeri operatives, in which case his alliance with Mark would be tested.

  Orkhan sighed and massaged his temples as he recalled the conversation he’d had with his daughter.

  “How have you been, Orkhan?” asked Mark, adding, “It’s good to see you again.”

  “As we get older it doesn’t get easier, does it, Sava?”

  “No, I guess it doesn’t.”

  25

  Russian Military Base, South Ossetia

  Titov could sense the resentment, could see it in the eyes of the men who stood before him. Fine. Let them resent him.

  Yesterday he’d sent their beloved squad leader back to the main Forty-Ninth Army base at Stavropol, Russia. Some people were too smart for their own good, too questioning, too disrespectful of authority. The squad leader had been such a man; he’d thought himself Titov’s better, more capable of leading. The final indignity had come when Titov had overheard him instructing his squad not to bother with their ballistic goggles when packing for the upcoming operation—in direct contravention of orders Titov had given. The insolent fool had forgotten that before a Russian soldier could lead, he first had to learn how to kneel.