Death of a Spy (32 page)

70

Mark heard two sharp beeps. After a time, Titov, sounding as though he was speaking on the phone, said, “I understand. Thank you for all you have done for me.”

Titov was then silent for several minutes.

Below them, the sound of gunfire grew louder and more frequent. An explosion, maybe a door being blasted open, echoed up the stairwell.

“What’s the news?” asked Mark.

“Do you know what I planned to do when I retired, Sava? No, of course you don’t, but I will tell you. Manager for a hunting and fishing lodge. A big one, the best in eastern Russia. Of course, I would prefer to own such a lodge myself, but I have always known my place, and I know that ownership is not possible for a man like me. But I am very good at helping people for whom ownership is possible. And that would not have been such a bad life.” Titov paused, then said, “There will be no helicopter. Our troops are retreating back to Armenia. The attempted incursion never happened. I was never here.”

Mark smiled grimly, relieved, but too battered and weak to take much satisfaction in the news.

“Was this your work, Sava? The Azeris could not have stopped us on their own. They had help, from the Americans, I think.”

Mark considered that if he hadn’t investigated Larry’s death, and found out about the drone base, and told Orkhan about the Russian military buildup and Titov’s paramilitary operation in Nakhchivan, then Orkhan would never have thought to ask the Americans for help—Mark was certain that was what had happened—and then Nakhchivan might have fallen to the Russians, and the Russians might have used their position in Nakhchivan to bully the Azeris for years to come, and to make an example of Azerbaijan so that other former Soviet states would know what was in store for them if they dared to resist a resurgent Russia. In that sense, he’d stopped one very important domino from falling.

But that was false reasoning, he knew. By that standard, Titov himself had stopped the domino from falling by killing Larry and inviting a deeper investigation. Or Orkhan had stopped it, by coming himself to the sanatorium. One could even say Katerina had stopped it decades ago by saying yes when Mark had asked her whether she wanted to go out for tea, for without Katerina, Titov and Mark would never have crossed paths.

In the end, Mark didn’t believe—despite superficial appearances to the contrary—that any one man or woman had much control over the fate of nations…whether that man was a president, a spy, or just a young woman who wanted to paint like Renoir.

Mark said, “If you surrender yourself to me now, I will try to see that you live.”

The torture Mark had endured as a young man, and the executions he’d witnessed—even when he tried to consider that bleak, awful time from a distance, to imagine what it would have been like to be in Titov’s shoes—even then he didn’t believe Titov’s actions had been necessary evils. No, Titov had inflicted far more unnecessary pain than any decent human being should have been capable of inflicting. He might have been Katerina’s half brother, but he didn’t have her kind soul.

Still, Mark wasn’t out for revenge. He’d do what he could to see that Titov wasn’t hanged in the streets by an angry mob.

“Being kept alive is different from living, Sava. You of all people should know this.”

Mark didn’t answer.

Titov said, “The Azeris are not a particularly forgiving lot. I’m going to stand up now.”

Mark stiffened, and readied his assault rifle. “Put your hands above you. Leave your weapons where they are.”

“You know, I have a different idea, Sava.”

Mark lifted an eye just above the air-conditioning condenser he was using as protection. In the dim light of a half-moon, he could see Titov’s silhouette at full height, completely exposed, holding his pistol at his side. The night-vision goggles he wore on his head were flipped up. Mark knew what Titov was asking of him, but he didn’t want to do it.

“Stand down!” called Mark.

“Do it, Sava!”

Titov fired a shot above the condenser. Mark’s ears rang.

“Stand down!”

Titov fired again.

Ignoring the pain in his chest, Mark rolled out from behind the condenser, flicked the safety switch to semiautomatic, and fired a single round at Titov’s chest. When the Russian fell back, Mark advanced quickly, shot Titov’s gun hand, and then kicked the Russians’ assault rifle aside.

Titov’s eyes were wide open, as was his mouth. For a moment, he appeared to be incapable of breathing. But then one breath did come, and then another.

“You fool! I told you I was wearing armor.”

“I remembered.”

Titov closed his mouth and took several short, sharp breaths through his nose. “Please. If not for me, then for Katerina.”

Mark slowly raised the rifle, aimed for the center of Titov’s head, and pulled the trigger twice.

Speaking now only to himself, he said, “For Katerina then.”

71

Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan
Six hours later

Daria hadn’t been certain whether the American the US Rangers were whispering about was really Mark.

Certainly when classified reports began to come through about a man, possibly American, who had single-handedly stopped a group of Russians from taking over the Tabriz Hotel, she’d hoped it was him. And when Decker had called Kaufman, and received word that Mark had made contact and might be able to meet them at the airport, her hopes had soared. But until she actually saw him step out of the Azeri armored car and onto the airport tarmac, carrying the leather satchel he’d left Bishkek with, she hadn’t been sure.

“Mark! Mark! Over here!” Daria started jogging toward him. He turned, and when he saw that it was her, his face registered disoriented confusion. He gestured to the two Azeri army officers standing on either side of him that it was OK.

“Daria?”

His face was haggard, the circles under his eyes unusually dark, and he sounded exhausted, and confused. He appeared to be trembling, or maybe shivering.

“Oh, Mark.” She’d been so, so worried.

They embraced, but Mark’s body stiffened when she wrapped her arms around him, as though he were in pain.

“You’re hurt,” she said.

“I’m OK.”

“No, you’re not.” Daria had felt something when they’d embraced, something protruding from his chest. She put her hand out to touch it. “What is that?”

“It’s nothing.”

His voice sounded gravelly, as if he’d been smoking too many cigarettes.

“No it’s not.”

“Had a little lung issue, but it’s going to be OK.” He coughed. “Orkhan’s got some doctors lined up for me, one should be here at the airport. Daria, what are you doing here?”

“I came to look for you.”

Daria told him about receiving his text, and of the deal she’d struck with Kaufman, and the role she and Decker had played in helping to fend off the invasion.

“I don’t know what to say. Thank you.” Then, “But where’s Lila?”

Daria wasn’t sure whether the question was just a display of fatherly concern or an implication that she should have stayed home and worried about caring for their daughter, even if it meant he might not return.

“With Nazira. They’re staying at Nazira’s cousin’s place in Tokmok… Lila’s safe, don’t worry.” Daria had just talked to Nazira ten minutes earlier. Lila had taken well to a bottle, and accepted the formula.

“Good.” Mark’s eyes closed for a moment. “Good.” He inhaled deeply, then said, “I got the diaper cream.”

“What?”

“Desitin, the kind you wanted, they had it in Baku.”

“OK.” Daria wasn’t sure whether he was delirious, trying to be funny, or just telling the truth. But she couldn’t care less about diaper cream just then. “What happened to you, Mark? You look like you’ve been through a war.” She observed the way his shoulders slumped, as though he barely had the energy to stand. “Here, let me take that.”

Daria lifted the strap from the leather satchel he carried and slung it across her own shoulder.

“I’ve got something else in there for us. We don’t have to hang it up, but I couldn’t throw it out, and I didn’t know what else to do with it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’ve had a strange few days, hon. I…” his voice trailed off as he gently shook his head.

Daria studied him, concerned.

She knew her husband well enough to know that when things got tough for him, he typically closed up. His eyes would go dead, in a mean sort of way, and with ruthless emotionless efficiency he’d do what it took to get the job done. It was a disconcerting aspect of him that Daria both admired and feared, but she also knew it was the reason he’d survived for so long.

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.”