Death of a Spy (12 page)

21

After satisfying himself that he wasn’t being followed, Mark bought a cup of Turkish coffee from a street vendor and walked to Western University, which was housed in a six-story turn-of-the-century building just outside the walled old city. He was waved through the massive oak entrance door by a security guard who accepted his explanation that, although he didn’t have a university ID, he was there to meet with the head of the International Relations department.

Once inside, he quickly climbed the wide central staircase to the third floor, eager to get in and out before he ran into anyone who knew him. His brief stint as an academic had been an aberration. When he moved back to Baku, it would be as a spy for hire—and he didn’t want to have to explain that career choice to his former colleagues at Western. Nor did he want to lie to them, though, so avoidance, as much as possible, was the best option.

His old office on the third floor overlooked a lonely inner courtyard where a few straggly fig trees were shaded by laundry lines. But the room itself had an old-world charm to it—high ceilings, like his old office at the embassy, carved oak wainscoting, and a fanlight above the eight-foot-tall door.

Mark cracked the door open, then knocked when he saw someone sitting at his old desk, back to the door, tapping a pencil on the desktop and staring at a laptop.

Receiving no response, Mark knocked again, louder this time.

The man held up a finger, typed on his laptop for a moment, as if finishing a thought, then turned. His eyes were puffy, his nose red; a box of tissues sat on top of his desk.

“Can I help you?”

Mark knew the guy, but only from a few casual encounters. He was a mathematics professor, Iranian by birth. One of the few professors at Western, other than Mark, who had refused to take bribes in return for good grades.

“You have a minute?”

They spoke in Azeri.

“Office hours are Tuesday.”

“I used to teach here at Western. I believe we’ve met.”

The man turned in his seat. “We have?”

“In the faculty lounge. It would have been over a year ago.” Mark entered the room, transferred his coffee to his left hand, and offered his right as he introduced himself and explained that he used to teach international relations. “Listen, this was my old office. When I retired, it was due to a family emergency. I didn’t have time to properly clean out my things. I left something here that I need to retrieve.”

“From
my
office?”

“It’s in the desk. Underneath the bottom drawer on the right. I’d be surprised if it wasn’t still there.”

“I’m sorry, who did you say you were?” The professor’s eyes darted toward the door.

Mark repeated his name. “I worked with Professor Samedov,” he said, giving the name of the man he thought still ran the International Relations department. “I’ll need to remove the drawer to get my things.” He placed his coffee on the desk. “Just briefly. I’ll put it right back.”

“Professor Samedov retired. At the end of last semester.”

“Did he now? I knew he’d been considering it.”

“Did you check in with security?”

“Oh, they know me.”

“You wouldn’t mind if I called them, would you?”

“Not at all.”

A cordless phone sat on the desk. A phone line, however, snaked up to the charger base. As though trying to be helpful, Mark slid the base towards the professor. As he did so, he used his index finger to unclip the line—but in such a way that the line was still touching the base.

“While you’re calling, if you don’t mind, I’m going to retrieve my things.”

Mark knelt down, bumping up against the professor’s leg, and pulled out the bottom drawer. It was stuffed with books and loose-leaf binders, making it heavy to lift off its runners.

The professor, who now appeared bewildered, grabbed the cordless. “In fact, I do mind. If you were to have made an appointment—”

“I’ll only be a moment.”

Mark set the drawer down, reached far into the empty space, and removed a small plastic Ziploc bag that had been duct-taped to the interior wall of the desk. A quick inspection confirmed that his alias packet—a custom one that he’d personally commissioned—was as he’d left it: one well-worn Azeri driver’s license, a government ID card, and a Western University ID card, all of which displayed his photo, hair cropped short and dyed dark black, next to the name Adil Orlov. There was also a Visa card in Orlov’s name that wasn’t due to expire for another three months, and ten $100 bills.

Mark didn’t need the money; he’d brought plenty with him from Bishkek, but seeing the crisp bills raised his spirits. He slipped the Ziploc bag into his back pocket and replaced the drawer.

The professor was punching buttons on his phone, trying to get a dial tone, glaring at Mark as he did so.

“I’ll be leaving now,” said Mark. “Thanks for your help.”

He scooped up his coffee and downed the rest of it in one long slug. He considered leaving the empty cup on his old desk but decided not to be a jerk.

As Mark left the university, intending to check out the new Port Baku mall to see about getting diaper cream—he had time to kill while waiting for the Ganja branch chief’s alias packet—he was thinking about where he’d live. Definitely somewhere on the east side of town, where he’d be less likely to run into former academic colleagues. Maybe in one of the new high-rises. He wondered how much a penthouse condo would cost—maybe instead of a balcony he’d have a whole rooftop patio. How about that? He envisioned setting up a little jungle gym for Lila; she’d be crawling soon enough.

But when he pictured himself with Daria and Lila on top of the roof, lounging in the sun, the image only lasted a moment before he began to imagine Lila crawling to the edge, curious, then trying to climb what would probably be a protective wall that was far too low.

A rooftop patio, with a little kid...what was he thinking? But if a rooftop wasn’t safe, would any balcony be—

Mark stopped short.
Shit
.

Two men were approaching, both dressed in dark suits with white shirts. He considered making a run for it—he had plenty of avenues of escape, and he’d noticed them in time—but stopped himself because he didn’t sense danger the way he had in Tbilisi, and he trusted his instincts.

“Mark Sava?”

“No,” said Mark.

“Mr. Sava, we are here on behalf of someone who would like to meet with you.”

The one who had spoken, a stocky man with a helmet-style haircut and a thick monobrow in need of a trim, had done so in perfect Azeri. Mark breathed a little easier.

“Who?”

“If you could come with us, please.”

“You must be kidding.”

A silence ensued. The man gestured to a Mercedes idling on the street.

Mark said, “I’m not getting in your car.”

“I am not inviting you. I am ordering you.”

“I’m not getting in the car.”

“Get in the car.”

“No.”

The men glanced at each other. The one who had spoken first shrugged, then said, “It’s not that far. We can walk.”

Mark was tempted to make a belated run for it. But he
still
wasn’t getting the sense that these guys meant to do him harm. “Walk to where?”

The man considered, then named a restaurant in old Baku that Mark knew well.

“Who runs this restaurant?”

The name offered matched the name Mark knew.

“How will we get there?”

“Istiglaliyyat, right, left to Kichik Qala, then—”

“OK, I know it, I’ll follow you.”

From the way they spoke Azeri, the quick answers to his questions, and the easy way the men carried themselves, they almost certainly were Azeris, Mark determined. Probably—given their civil-servant uniformity—from the Ministry of National Security. And the Azeris, while not exactly his allies, weren’t his enemies either.

Mark raised his empty coffee cup with his left hand and gestured down the street, drawing the attention of the two men away from his right hand, which he dipped into his back pocket. He palmed his alias packet, and then transferred the empty coffee cup into his right hand, using it to hide the alias packet.

After a minute of walking, they passed an urn-shaped garbage bin. The garbage around downtown, Mark remembered, was emptied every day—but not until early in the morning, just before dawn. He tossed the coffee cup, and his identification, into the urn.

22

There were few things in this world that intimidated Orkhan Gambar, but his daughter was one of them.

As Azerbaijan’s Minister of National Security—the Azeri equivalent of the CIA—
he
was used to doing the intimidating. Thousands of men and women worked under him. When he arrived for work each morning, dropped off by a black limousine in front of the ministry building on Parlament Prospekti, the halls were always silent save for the occasional muted, “Good morning, Minister Gambar.” Doors were opened, heads were down at desks.

Deference, that’s what he was accorded. Deference and respect. His daughter, however, accorded him neither.

At present, Orkhan was seated in a cool stone-walled basement of a restaurant in old Baku, attempting to conduct a Skype video chat with his daughter. He tapped on his smart phone. “I think I have it now,” he said, speaking loudly.

“I still can’t see you,” snapped his daughter, who was in Paris.

She’d sent him a text late last night, asking him whether he could make time for a video chat today. Of course he could, he’d said, but that had been before this business with Sava had come up, and truth be told, he wasn’t good with the video thing.

“I have done everything exactly as you said!” Orkhan insisted.

“Well, it’s not showing up—all I have is the audio. Make sure the app knows to use the internal camera on your phone. It might be thinking you want to use an external camera.”

It annoyed him that she spoke to him as if
he
were the child. “This app—where do I look for this?”

As his daughter attempted to instruct him, Orkhan grew increasingly frustrated. “This phone, it is broken, I think.”

She tried to instruct him again.

“Maybe we could just talk,” said Orkhan. “Maybe we don’t need the video.” He didn’t want to be sharp with his daughter, but enough already. Sava would be here soon.

A sigh of frustration and disappointment—
how could you possibly be so stupid?
—then, “OK. We just talk.”

“How are your studies progressing?”

“Fine.”

When it came to his daughter, Fatima, that was one thing Orkhan didn’t have to worry about. She was everything his doltish son was not—intelligent, energetic, and hardworking. She’d applied to, and had been accepted at, the Sorbonne. The
Sorbonne
. It filled him with pride him just to think of it. And this based entirely on her own merits.

“And your job?”

“
Ata
, I have something we need to talk about. It is important, that is why I wanted the video.”

Orkhan leaned his head back and stroked his mustache. “What is important?”

“I’ve decided to apply for French citizenship.” A half-minute passed. “
Ata
? Are you still there?”

“You wish to have joint Azeri and French citizenship? Fatima, this…this…well, you know my position, this could be complicated.”

“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.”