Death of a Spy (18 page)

33

At four that afternoon, Mark observed the chief engineer of Bazarduzu Construction hurrying down the street towards his apartment, carrying a briefcase in his right hand. His eyes looked angry. His thin gray hair was unruly.

“As we discussed,” said Mark to his cab driver.

Mark stepped out of the cab and bumped into the engineer, as though he hadn’t been watching where he was going. As he did so, he said, “Check your bank account.”

“What?”

“I made a deposit today. It should cover the cost of the damages.”

“Who are you?”

“A friend.”

Mark walked back to the cab, leaving the engineer standing in front of his building, staring at Mark, a confused expression on his face. As the cab driver pulled away, he handed a camera back to Mark.

“Where to, sir?”

Mark slipped him a hundred dollar bill. “End of the street is fine.”

Mark bought a Turkish coffee and loitered in the park opposite the engineer’s apartment, eyeing the people going in and out. After a half hour—more than enough time, he figured, for the engineer to have checked his bank balance—he got up off his bench, intending to go have a chat with the man. But as he was crossing the street, a guy in a Bazarduzu Construction truck pulled up. Guessing that he was there to inspect the damage caused by the overflowing toilet, and that the engineer would be occupied with that for a while, Mark bought another coffee and returned to his bench. As he waited, his thoughts turned back to Daria and Lila. If the engineer knew why Aida Tagiyev had been killed, and what this whole Nakhchivan business was about, Mark thought he might be able to wrap everything up tonight and catch a flight from Baku to Bishkek as early as tomorrow morning.

After an hour, the guy who’d pulled up in the Bazarduzu Construction truck left, prompting Mark to head once again towards the engineer’s apartment. This time, however, his plans were upended when he observed the engineer and his wife leaving their building on foot.

Mark, seeing them before they saw him, turned back to the park, and then shadowed the couple to a crowded, dimly lit restaurant where the walls had been decorated with lots of plastic red-leafed maple-tree branches, and an advertisement for Xirdalan beer hung above the bar. In the open kitchen in back, two young men in white aprons and tall white chef hats were cooking
lahmajoon
—the Turkish version of pizza—in a wood-fired oven. Between them, a buxom woman with flour-covered hands fed bread dough through a double roller.

Mark took a seat at the bar and ordered a half-liter bottle of Xirdalan.

“And I’ll buy drinks for the couple dining in the back.” Mark gestured with his head and put a twenty-manat note down on the bar. “Whatever they want.”

The bartender, a slender, dark-complexioned Azeri woman, shrugged. “OK.”

The engineer looked up after the bartender delivered the offer. Mark met his gaze, then nodded when the engineer appeared to recognize him.

The offer of a drink was declined, but minutes later, the engineer approached Mark at the bar.

“Who are you?”

“You checked your bank account?”

“Why would you do such a thing?”

The tone was accusing, incredulous.

“I want to show you something.” Mark pulled his iPad out of his satchel, opened it on the bar, and clicked on the Excel file. Mark slid the iPad over. “Take a look.”

The engineer’s eyes widened, and his nostrils flared, as he examined the screen. “How did you get this?”

“Of course, this is just a backup. The original is safe with my colleagues. You made three hundred and sixty-seven thousand manats last year, I see.”

The engineer smiled weakly at his wife, who was staring at them from across the restaurant. “You stole this information, I presume?” Without waiting for an answer, he added, “Do you know who I am?”

Although the engineer spoke in Azeri, he did so in a stiff, formal tone that came across as haughty, the way a nonnative speaker might. Educated abroad, Mark concluded, probably in England.

“I know you’re a Javadov.”

Javadov was the last name of the local ex-com.

“I am.”

“You asked whether I stole this. I didn’t. You did, though. And then you sold it to me. For the ten thousand dollars that you see in your account.”

“I see,” said the engineer calmly.

“Do you?”

“I see that you are attempting to blackmail me. It won’t work, of course. In fact, I think you would be wise—”

Mark opened his iPad and a photo appeared. “Here we are together, meeting outside your apartment, just after ten thousand dollars was transferred to your account. That’s when you passed me the information.”

“You embarrass yourself,” said the engineer, but he looked stricken.

“Four days ago, an employee of Bazarduzu Construction—Aida Tagiyev—was murdered. Perhaps you heard of her death.”

“No.”

Mark watched for signs that would suggest the engineer was lying; he saw none.

“She was killed because of the information you see on my computer. Because she tried to steal it and sell it. Now, consider what might happen if it gets out that
you
gave me this information—”

“This girl. Who killed her?”

“Who do you think?”

“I couldn’t begin to guess. And no one will believe that I gave you this information. Do you understand that? I am a Javadov.”

The clear implication being that his relationship with the ex-com would insulate him from suspicion. Mark wasn’t buying it—people in power were usually the
most
suspicious of family members. Kings weren’t deposed by peasants, they were deposed by their kin.

“What I understand is that if you don’t help me, I will call Bazarduzu and offer to sell this financial information back to them. When I do this, the ex-com will have his men trace the call to my hotel. When they search my room, they will find copies of reports I’ve written, detailing how I recruited you to spy for me.”

“Spy for you,” repeated the engineer. “Ridiculous. And in this fantasy, who exactly might you be that I would agree to do this?”

Ignoring the question, Mark said, “There will be photographic evidence and bank receipts. Now, you might be thinking, you can just go to the ex-com now, to neutralize whatever evidence his men might find against you. But know that this photograph of us together”—Mark pointed to the iPad—“is just one of many. I have been following you for several weeks. When you had dinner two Saturdays ago at the Elnur, I was there standing behind you as you walked in, when you picked up your shirts from the cleaners on Vagif Street three weeks ago, I was there, close enough for us to have been talking. All that has been documented by people I work with, photographed, so I could report to my superiors that I was making progress in recruiting you.”

The engineer had used a debit card tied to his bank account to make several purchases over the past month, and those charges had shown up on his bank statement.

“I don’t think…” The engineer shook his head as though angry, but now he was clearly unnerved. His voice trailed off.

“I’ll add another five thousand dollars to your account. But that’s my final offer.” Carrot and stick. “You have a choice to make.”

“I don’t want your money.”

“I know. Bazarduzu completed a project in Nakhchivan last year. I need to know what that project was. When you give me what I need, all this unpleasantness goes away. No one will know that we ever spoke.”

The engineer cast another glance at his wife, looking as though he hoped she’d come to his rescue. He looked down at the bar, and then scratched his head.

“We don’t know each other.”

“True.”

“I can’t trust you.”

“I work for a respected foreign intelligence agency.”

“Who? What agency?”

“And while sometimes the methods of my agency are unpleasant, we don’t stay in business by turning our backs on people who help us. If you help me, I will protect you. As I’ve protected you tonight by making certain I wasn’t followed here.”

A minute passed.

“I only know a little about the Nakhchivan project,” said the engineer.

“I’ll take a little.”

“What happens then?”

“Then I destroy any evidence of collusion between us and I go away. Permanently.”

“This isn’t fair.”

“I know.”

Another minute passed. Then, “It was an airstrip. We built an airstrip. ”

“Civilian?”

“I don’t think so. It was in a…a remote location.”

“Where?”

“Close to the border with Iran and Armenia, but not so close that it could be seen from the border.”

“Do you have GPS coordinates?”

“No.”

“How do I get there?”

“Go to Unus.”

“What’s that?”

“A town. There’s only one road going north out of Unus. You’ll eventually see a fence. It will be guarded. The entire zone is guarded.”

“What are they using that airstrip for? What kind of planes fly there? Military ones?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t believe you,” said Mark.

“It doesn’t matter whether you believe me or not. I still don’t know.”

“You guys got paid a lot of money just to build an airstrip.”

The engineer shrugged.

“Why was Bazarduzu chosen to build it?” asked Mark.

“Whoever was paying us didn’t want to use any of the big firms in Baku, they would have attracted too much attention.”

“Who was paying you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Guess.”

“That was above my pay grade. Someone who needed an airstrip.”

Mark clicked open a window on his iPad, revealing recording software. “I will keep this tape I have made of our conversation—”

The engineer let loose an insult that, loosely translated, meant
fuck your ancestors
.

“—until I receive confirmation that the information you have given me is correct. But I must ask you. Is all the information you have given me correct? Think carefully. Your life might depend upon the answer you give.”

The engineer glanced at the iPad, looking as though he were tempted to smash it. Mark slid it off the table and into his satchel.

The two men stared at each other for a long moment. Eventually, the engineer said, “It’s not near Unus. Go to the town of Ordubad. If you drive north out of Ordubad you will find it.”

“Thank you, my friend. The tape I made will be destroyed, along with the rest of the information that might incriminate you, when I confirm this to be true. In the meantime, I will keep all of it safe, as promised. Bazarduzu will not learn of our agreement.”

In actuality, Mark would delete the file from his iPad as soon as he left the restaurant, just to be safe. He never kept anything on it or his phone that could be used to incriminate himself or any of his sources. And he frequently restored both to their original store-bought settings, permanently erasing all new files in the process.

“You’re not my friend.”

“No, I suppose I’m not. Look for the extra five thousand dollars tomorrow.”

34

Mark found a Wi-Fi hotspot at an Internet café and called Kaufman’s secure line. “Raymond Cox should be in Baku by now. Davis is going to be looking for a report from me. Can you deal with him?”

“Done. Any idea yet on who killed Cox’s source?”

“Lots of ideas, no answers.”

“No sign of the Russian involvement you suspected in Tbilisi?”

“This has more of a local feel to it. I’m guessing security was far tighter at Bazarduzu than Cox and his source knew—probably because of whatever’s going on in Nakhchivan—and they got caught as a result.”

“So the only link between Bowlan’s death and Cox’s source, assuming there really is a link, is still Nakhchivan.”

“That appears to be the case.”

“What
is
going on in Nakhchivan?”

Ignoring the question, Mark asked, “Why were you so eager to have someone on the ground at the Russian base in South Ossetia? Why not just continue to have the NRO monitor it?”

The National Reconnaissance Office was the intelligence agency that ran the US spy satellites.

“Like I told you—we wanted better intel on the makeup of the ground units.”

“Yeah, I got that. But I wouldn’t think that a little extra activity, at one base, in a place like South Ossetia, would have been a cause for much alarm.”

A long pause, then, “We’ve also detected unusual Russian troop movements elsewhere.”

“Where elsewhere?” Mark added, “If it’s genuinely not relevant, don’t tell me.” He was comfortable operating on a need-to-know basis—often it was safer that way.

“At their bases in Armenia. And Dagestan.” Armenia and the Russian-owned territory of Dagestan both bordered Azerbaijan.

“When was this?”

“Past two weeks. The movement followed a pattern similar to the movement in South Ossetia—never too many men or too much matériel entering the bases at one time, but over several weeks it was substantial. And the movement’s all been one way—into the bases, not out.”

“What does the NSA say?”

“They got nothing, yet.”

“Anyone ask the Russians for clarification?”

“Hell, no. We’re not going to let them know we’re onto them. What did you find out about Nakhchivan?”

Mark told him about the airstrip. When Kaufman started in with the questions, Mark said, “That’s really all I know right now,” but added, “I’m going to check it out tomorrow.”

Sounding genuinely pleased and grateful, Kaufman said, “Fantastic, Sava. Fantastic.”

“But I wouldn’t mind having the chance to review some satellite data before I do.”

Kaufman agreed to look into it ASAP. Mark was about to end the conversation, when Kaufman added, “By the way, I just got a cable from the guy who runs Tbilisi station. Says you’ve got one of his men trying to dredge up contact info for some woman who might have met with Bowlan, before he died?”

Mark paused, then said, “Ah, yeah…that’s right.”

“What’s
that
all about?”

“I found…something that belonged to this woman. In the room where Larry died.”

“Huh. And who is this woman?”

“I’d rather not get into it.”

“I’d rather you would.”

“Just tell Tbilisi to run the name.”

“They already have. Nothing comes up for someone with that birthdate in Tbilisi.”

“They run it through the records bureau and people at the state pension system?”

“Yeah. Tbilisi station sent a cable to me because they wanted to know whether to blow you off from here on out, or whether we should ask Moscow station to try to do a wider search for this woman in Russia, given that she was a Russian.”

“Do the wider search.”

“What did you find that belonged to her?”

“It’s a long story, Ted. When and if I find out anything that you need to know, I’ll tell you.”

“Sava—”

“Please, Ted. Just do this for me.”