Death of a Spy (2 page)

2

Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan

While the late Larry Bowlan was being poked and prodded by a forensic pathologist at Tbilisi’s Central Republican Hospital, former CIA station chief Mark Sava—who happened to have been Larry’s boss—was considering that in the all the years he’d been abroad, every apartment he’d ever lived in had come with an exterior balcony.

This was not a coincidence; balconies were common in the sad constellation of post-Soviet states in which Mark operated. And he was quite fond of balconies, of drinking wine on them as the sun set, or sleeping on them when the temperature was right.

His best, he recalled, as he gently rocked his ten-day-old daughter back and forth—he was cradling her in his left hand the way he would a football—had been when he’d been working as a professor of international relations and living in a high-rise apartment in Baku, Azerbaijan, right after he’d quit the CIA. What a view he’d had of the city!

His worst—and there were many candidates—had been a contemptible, bullet-riddled, railingless, bathtub-sized concrete projection in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, that had looked out over a poorly maintained and frequently used outhouse. That had been nearly two decades earlier, back when he’d been doing paramilitary work for the CIA’s special activities division.

Those two balconies and others were on his mind now only because he was considering them in relation to the balcony he was standing upon at the moment. When he’d first moved in, it had been a miserable affair. Rusted balusters, a cracked concrete floor, too small to accommodate even a table for one. But his wife had since had the floor redone with hand-painted chrysanthemum-patterned tile imported from Iran, and Mark, after painting the balusters a glossy black, had carefully arranged potted tomato plants around the perimeter.

The green tomato vines cheered him now, as did the pleasant June weather, and the feel of his daughter in his arms. But there was nothing he could do about the size of the balcony, and the fact that it was too close to the street for his liking, so he was thinking that, now that he was married, and a father, and the owner of a successful business—which is to say, happier and wealthier than he’d ever been in his life—it might soon be time to upgrade to a balcony that would more accurately reflect his present station.

Turning his attention to his tomato plants, which were the reason he’d ventured onto the balcony in the first place, he bent down and dipped a finger into one of the pots, taking care not to wake his daughter as he did so. Already dry, he noted—with the hotter weather the things were sucking up water like crazy. So he headed to the kitchen, intending to grab a watering can from underneath the sink.

Upon seeing his wife, his face brightened. “Didn’t know you were awake.”

“I just got up,” said Daria, his wife of six months. “How was she?”

“Way too perky until six, snoozing since then, though.”

They kissed, and Mark poured himself a second cup of black coffee before taking a seat across from Daria at the kitchen table. His mind felt a little foggy because he’d been up with Lila since four in the morning. He’d watched competing groups of Russian acrobats perform on a televised talent show while she’d gurgled and burped on his lap, digesting her last feeding. When she’d finally fallen asleep at dawn, Mark had made himself an early breakfast of leftover Chinese food and strong Turkish coffee. It was now eight, and he was tired, but it was an easy, comfortable tired balanced by the caffeine.

Lila started to fuss and Mark rocked her back and forth. “Shh…” he said.

“Is it her diaper?”

He raised Lila up and took a sniff. “Maybe. But I changed it right before she fell asleep.”

“She’s probably hungry again. Here, I’ll take her.”

Mark handed Lila over as Daria opened her yellow cotton robe and hiked up her baggy nightshirt. Lila, still looking a little bruised from the delivery, bunched her fingers into tight balls as she began to nurse. With her left hand, Daria held her daughter; with her right, she grabbed her phone, which lay on the kitchen table.

“Yeah, somebody was hungry,” observed Mark.

Lila had dark hair that, at least for now, was the same shade of brown as Daria’s; Mark hoped it would stay that shade, and that it was a sign that Lila would grow up to have more of her mother’s features—a wide pretty smile, high cheekbones, and delicate hands—than her father’s.

“Ravenous,” agreed Daria.

“That’s my gal.”

Lila started to gurgle and sputter because she was drinking too much too fast.

“Hey, slow down there.” Daria put down her phone and stroked Lila’s hair. But when Lila had settled, she picked up her phone again and began to type with one hand.

“Who are you texting?” asked Mark.

“Nazira.”

“Hmm.”

Daria, who was also ex-CIA, ran a nonprofit organization that helped out orphanages in Central Asia. Nazira, a Kyrgyz woman who had experience running orphanages, was Daria’s friend and second in command.

“Everything good?” As Mark spoke, he leaned over and let Lila grip his index finger. “Hey there. You’re a hungry girl.”

“I’ll need to take some time to meet with donors next week, but right now everything
is
good. Nazira might stop by later today to see Lila. She wants to know if we all want to grab lunch after.”

“Why don’t you two go out? I’ll watch Lila.”

Until recently, Daria’s life had been too tempestuous to allow for lasting bonds of friendship. Mark liked the idea that she now had time to go out for lunch with a friend.

“I don’t mind taking her with me.”

Daria spoke with just the hint of an exotic, upper-crust accent, with her tongue pressed to her teeth, a result of her spending so much time speaking Kyrgyz, or any of several other Turkic-based languages during her usual workday. That, and she’d grown up as the adopted daughter of wealthy diplomats, so she genuinely was—or at least had once been—a little upper-crusty.

“Either way,” said Mark. “Hey, I was thinking. Once Lila starts walking—when do babies walk?”

“Depends. A year, give or take.”

“Well, once she starts walking, it might be nice to be in a bigger place.” Mark sipped his coffee. “Maybe, you know, I’m not talking now, but in say, six months or so?”

As he spoke, Mark gazed past the kitchen and into the cluttered dining room. When he and Daria had first moved into this apartment a year ago, they’d been reluctant to do much in the way of decorating. Mark, at least, had viewed it as a temporary place to hole up in while they decided where they really wanted to live. Then they’d both gotten so busy there hadn’t even been time to think about what that next step might look like. But in the past six months, he and Daria had begun to accumulate a lot more… stuff. Some of it was baby related—a Graco crib Daria’s adoptive parents had shipped from Virginia, a diaper genie, a high chair, a bouncy chair, a car seat/stroller combo unit, Boppy pillows and a BabyBjörn—but some of it wasn’t. Often they’d take a trip to the local bazaar to pick up a twenty-kilo bag of rice, or fresh vegetables, and wind up also buying house furnishings, like the hammered brass candlesticks on the kitchen table, or the antique Chinese settee in the living room, or the twelve-by-twelve-foot felt
shyrdak
carpet in their bedroom…the place had begun to feel like a permanent home, more than he’d ever intended it would.

“What?” asked Daria. “Move to somewhere else here in Bishkek?”

“Well, we wouldn’t have to stay in Bishkek, would we? I mean, there are other options.”

Bishkek was in the middle of Central Asia and surrounded by mountains. Mark didn’t hate it here, but winters were bleak, dark, bitterly cold, and long. This past one, the sidewalks had been perpetually covered with a dirty slush until late March; it was now June, and the city’s many poplar trees had only really leafed out a few weeks ago.

Mark looked to his balcony. From where he sat, a sliver of azure-blue sky was just visible. Inside the kitchen it smelled of coffee and baby, but also of grass and earth and wood fires. No, Bishkek wasn’t the end of the world, but he’d never envisioned spending the rest of his life here. If he could live anywhere, it would be—

“What about Almaty?” asked Daria, interrupting his thoughts. Just a hundred and twenty miles northeast of where they were now, Kazakhstan’s largest city was much larger and far wealthier than Bishkek. “I’m there every other week anyway.”

“Yeah, maybe.” That wasn’t the city Mark had been thinking of, but Almaty was at least a realistic option.

“Better hospitals.”

“There’s that.”

Fortunately, there had been no complications with Lila’s birth, but that had been at least in part because Daria, after learning that there was never a time when the anesthesiologist didn’t stink of vodka sweat and that he was prone to reuse epidural needles, had opted for a natural—albeit painful—delivery. Having better health care options in the future was definitely a consideration.

“But I’d be just as happy staying in Bishkek.” Daria paused, then added, “I like it here. At first I didn’t think I would, but…”

“Maybe next week I’ll price some places. I’m gonna go water the tomato plants.”

Mark retrieved the watering can from underneath the sink, filled it, and then walked back to the balcony.

He wore a short-sleeved dress shirt that had developed a hole underneath the right armpit. His charcoal-gray polyester-blend dress slacks were stained in a few places with baby vomit. It had been two days since he’d last shaved.

While pouring water into one of the pots, Mark recalled the intensity of the actual delivery—he’d been in the room—and the outpouring of joy and relief when it was clear that Lila had been blessed with ten fingers and ten toes, and how they’d worried about jaundice, and whether Lila was feeding OK that first day, and…God, his life had changed.

“Hey
myrk
!” called a voice in Kyrgyz. “Watch it with the water.”

On the sidewalk below, Mark observed a twentysomething guy in a slim-cut Euro suit and clunky black hipster glasses brushing water off his shoulders.

Mark glanced at his tomato pot. He’d overfilled it; the water was bubbling out of the drainage holes in the bottom, running in rivulets off the edge of his balcony, and raining down to the cracked sidewalk.

He was in an exceptionally good mood, and would have been inclined to apologize had it not been for the gratuitous insult.
Myrk
was what Kyrgyz city folk called the uneducated peasants who lived in the surrounding hills.

So instead of apologizing, Mark said, in Kyrgyz, “Screw you.” And when the guy lifted his middle finger without looking back, he repeated the same in Russian, just to make sure his sentiments were clear.

“Nice to see you too,” called a different voice from the street.

Mark turned. Behind and below him on the sidewalk was his friend, former Navy SEAL John Decker.

“Watch out for the water,” said Mark.

“Making friends in the neighborhood, I see.”

Decker wore khaki shorts—perhaps the only person in Bishkek to be doing so, even though it was summer—flip-flops, and a loose yellow T-shirt that accentuated his massive biceps.

“Did you hear what he called me?”

“You ever think of working for the State Department? You’d make a good diplomat.”

“What are you doing here?”

Mark was the owner Global Intelligence Solutions, a small spies-for-hire firm based in Bishkek. He and his firm helped provide security for CIA and State Department employees operating out of the embassy in Bishkek, did intel work for multinationals operating in Central Asia, translated communications that had been intercepted by the NSA, and showered cash on local politicians and businessmen in exchange for confidential information.

Decker was Mark’s right-hand man and had been running the day-to-day operation of the business for the last ten days while Mark took what amounted to paternity leave. But Decker lived across town in a tiny one-bedroom house with his Australian girlfriend; if some routine problem had come up, he would have just called.

Upon considering Mark’s question, Decker’s expression changed, as though he’d just remembered why he’d come. “Listen, you got a sec?”

“Sure.” Decker proceeded to just stand there, without saying anything, so Mark added, “Why don’t you come on up?”