The Doves of Ohanavank (21 page)

Laurian stops to face her.

“LeFreak is after Ayvazian’s business. So are Yuri and Carla. They really are not after you. I admit, your past happens to have a role—a small one, considering the scale of his operation. But we can handle the LeFreaks and Yuris of this world. You have to handle the past.”

“And Ahmed Al Barmaka? If he shows up here wanting to see me, no strings attached, isn’t that part of my past that appears without my permission?” She did not intend to sound so angry.

“If you want the
relevance
of your past relationship with Al Barmaka to be over, kill it. Kill it right now, right here,” and Laurian waves his arm at the panoramic scenery surrounding them. “The minute you decide the past will no longer affect the present, it won’t. Then, if you want to see him again, see him again, but not the way it was before. A new chapter with him can only open if you’ve already pulled the plug on the old one. But if you haven’t, the new chapter will have far too much interference from the old. It will fight you, it will resist, it will make your life a misery.”

They walk in silence for a while. Laurian makes a compelling point, but Lara is not at all convinced that what he says is true. Just kill the past in your head, and it dies. That’s all? Are there really men with that much inner strength, that much will? Is that even humanly possible? Are we even
supposed
to be able to control our minds and emotions to that extent?

“There is one important point I don’t want you to misunderstand,” says Laurian. “I am not talking about denial. If you try to deny your past, you’re fooling yourself. Besides, a past denied does not die. I am not talking about forgetting it, either. You cannot forget everything. I am talking about looking the past straight in the eye, acknowledging that it happened, confronting it, and then banishing it to a quarantine from which it can no longer have any active role in your life. That’s what I mean by ‘killing it.’ Do you see the difference between that and denial or forgetting?”

Lara nods. That seems even less plausible to her. They pass by the poplar forest and Laurian proudly declares, “Four hundred trees last year, six hundred more this year! A thousand poplar trees fully-grown, twenty-five meters high. Imagine this place then!” Lara is amazed at how quickly the deep thinker of a minute ago is transformed into an overexcited child.

Lara asks, “Aren’t they too close together?”

“Not at all,” says Laurian. “These trees grow thin and tall. The branches will end up touching each other when they mature, but that is the idea. It will be dark in this little forest in the middle of day!” Lara’s mind momentarily goes to the pine and spruce forests of Saralandj.

“I’d like to see it then,” she says.

“You will. Let’s walk until we reach the end of the plateau. There is a little surprise there for you. On the way back, I’ll show you the fruit orchard.”

They walk slowly, because the land is rugged, full of rocks, uneven, and covered by thick grass. There are rosehip bushes and wild apple, pear and plum trees everywhere.

“Only the bears enjoy the fruit of these trees,” says Laurian. “That’s another sight I want you to see. I’ll get you back here in the fall when the wild fruits are ripe, and we can keep watch for the bears one night.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Of course not, Lara. I’ve seen them with my own eyes. We’ll choose a night when there is a full moon, so we can really see them. They’re magnificent animals.”

“It’s not dangerous?”

“It can be, if you do something stupid like scaring them or threatening a mother bear’s cubs. But if we sit quietly at a good distance and watch, they just ignore us.”

They reach the end of the western edge and turn to cross the width of the property. It is narrow here at the tip, and widens gradually toward the house.

“There’s your surprise,” says Laurian, pointing at a large teak bench right at the edge of the cliff. Lara is surprised.

“You’re crazy!” she laughs. “How on earth did you manage to bring that thing all the way here? I could barely walk here!”

“Let’s go sit,” says Laurian. “This bench has a past that I do not want to erase.”

They sit and remain silent for a long time. The view is unbelievable. Rivers, boundless valleys winding through intertwined mountain chains, vast plateaus and meadows and a remote mountain range spread right in front of them, as far as the eye can see, disappearing into a thin mist on the far horizon.

“I call this the ‘point of truth and redemption,’” Laurian breaks the silence. “You know what Avo said when I first brought him here?”

“What?” whispers Lara, still awestruck.

“He said your father used to read the Bible to you when you were kids. He said there was a story he remembered where the devil leads Jesus to a mountaintop to tempt him, and offers him dominion over everything that
his eyes could see. Avo said that mountaintop must have been a place just like this.”

“I can certainly see that.” Lara is still whispering, as if in the presence of something that should not be disturbed.

“But that is not the past I referred to,” continues Laurian. “We were sitting right here when you made your first phone call to Avo. Remember, when he told you he was in Vayots Dzor, and you were so worried about what he was doing here, and why he wasn’t home taking care of your mother?”

“Yes,” but Laurian can barely hear her.

“We were sitting right here,” he repeats.

Lara’s mind flies to Dubai, to Sumaya’s villa, where she had used every bit of guile she had to convince Sumaya to allow her to place that phone call. She had not even known that Avo had a cell phone. She had convinced Sumaya to call the post office in Aparan and leave word that she’d call back in an hour to talk to Avo. The post office had sent someone to let the Galians know. And when she had called an hour later, Martha had answered, and given her Avo’s phone number. What a saga that was! What heart wrenching moments those were.

And now, she sits where Avo sat during that call, amazed not only at what nature has spread in front of her, but also at the incredible contrast between here and the compound in Dubai. She cannot imagine two more vastly different worlds, both physically and by what they conjure up in her mind.

“My God, Edik jan” she says at last, “what a heavy history to lay on this poor bench.”

They sit lost in the seeming infinity spread before them.

“What did you say you called this place?” she asks. “The point of truth and what?”

“And redemption.”

“Truth and redemption,” repeats Lara. She likes the phrase. “Now Edik, remember you cannot lie to me here. I want you to answer this: have you really been able to confront and quarantine everything in your past as you were telling me to do? Have you really overcome all your nightmares? I
have
to know the truth.”

Laurian looks at her for a long moment. There is no way to get around this girl. He is tempted to lie, and even tries to formulate the words in his mind, words that would give Lara a sugarcoated account of how he has
managed to do what he has been advocating. But an entirely different word comes out of his mouth.

“No,” he says.

“Tell me,” she says, dead serious.

“Tell you? Now?”

“Tell me, now.”

Laurian hesitates for a minute.

“We were in Spain, on holiday,” he starts, speaking more slowly than usual. “With my parents and twin sisters, Arpi and Sirarpi. They were twelve, I was fourteen. We were standing in front of a statue of Don Quixote when we realized that Sirarpi was gone. Just disappeared, in broad daylight. We searched for her for two months. Those two months were the most difficult and trying times for my family. My father stayed in Spain to make sure the police did not stop searching. My mother took Arpi and me back to Switzerland because we were in school, but she would leave us with friends and join him on weekends. The police were not helpful. They said they thought sex traffickers had taken her, and it was rare that they could rescue victims of sex trafficking. Two months after she was taken, they found her in the Casa de Campo Park. There were no fatal wounds on her body. She had died from repeated rapes and beatings…” Laurian stops for a minute to manage the surge of emotion rising in his chest. When he finally catches his breath, he adds: “And malnutrition.”

Lara, who until that point had tried to avoid all physical contact with Laurian, throws her arms around his neck, unable to control her tears. Laurian remains still, staring into the vast space ahead.

“That was some thirty years ago,” he says at last. “And
that
, my dear Lara, I have not been able to quarantine. I am very sorry. Because I still want
you
to believe that it is possible to put the past firmly behind you, to render it irrelevant to your future.”

“Hush,” says the eighteen-year-old girl, holding the forty-five year old man more tightly in her arms. “I understand everything. Let it go, Edik jan. Just let it go.”

It is almost noon when they get back to the house, having lingered on the bench for a while, then walked back slowly and toured the orchard. Laurian shows her several remnants of Bronze Age walls buried in the thickets. “This place has been inhabited for thousands of years,” he says. “I
can never stop wondering how they lived here, how they hunted, fought, defended themselves from the elements.”

Lara cannot focus on any of that right now. This has been an eventful walk already, with so much to process, from the will to kill the past, to the history-laden bench, to the twelve year old Sirarpi. There is no room for the Bronze Age.

Avo and Gagik are anxious to leave. There is too much to do.

Vartiter has prepared a light lunch, which, after the large breakfast that they’ve had, does not generate much interest. But Laurian insists that they have something. “You have a long drive,” he says. “Eat something light now, and Vartiter will pack something for the road.” They know better than to argue with him.

Thomas Martirosian, Anna’s divorce lawyer, calls Laurian the next day.

“Her husband seems to have some backing,” he says. “Are you sure you told me everything?”

“Everything that I knew. I don’t even know the bastard’s name.”

“His name is Hov Samoyan,” says the lawyer. “And Hov is not short for Hovannes. Hov, believe it or not, is his full, official first name. His nick name, on the other hand, is Hovo, which is…”

“Thomas, stop,” says Laurian, “enough with the name. What makes you think he has backing?”

“The poor soul has been an unemployed hooligan for almost a year. Then he gets hired as a ‘bodyguard.’ His official title on his papers is ‘security officer.’ And guess what? He gets a license to carry a firearm. He walks around with a pistol in his belt.”

“Who does he work for?” Laurian has an uneasy feeling that he already knows the answer.

“Officially, no one knows. The person who hired him is a nobody, like him. But unofficially, every one says LeFreak is behind the organization that employed him.”

“What does his organization do?” asks Laurian, knowing that Thomas will not have a clue.

“Depends on who you ask,” comes the answer, instead of the ‘beats me’ that Laurian was expecting. “Some say LeFreak imports so much from Georgia or through Georgian ports, that he needs a large organization in Lori to help with the logistics of clearing customs and distribution. Others say he is building up muscle because he is planning an expansion. You can believe or disbelieve anything you want. If this guy has the protection of LeFreak, I wouldn’t want to rush into divorce proceedings yet. He can badly damage your friend Anna when it all comes out in the open.”

“I agree. Put the divorce on hold for now. But I want to find out everything about what our man Hovo is doing. Everything, Thomas, do you understand? Don’t worry about the cost, I’ll cover it.”

“I understand,” says Martirosian.

“One more thing,” adds Laurian. “Can we put the word out that his wife is trying to formally divorce him, just to see how he will react? His reaction may give us a hint of how to proceed.”

“Edik, I have to say that it is dangerous to think about experiments like that in situations like this. But having said that, yes, I can put out the word”

“What are the risks?”

“The risk is that we’ll remind him that he has a wife. And now that he thinks he has real muscle behind him, he will get more aggressive in trying to track her down. But the bigger risk is that if LeFreak decides to back him up in the divorce process, we’ll have most judges turned against us. He’ll bribe them all.”

“
De lav
, Thomas,” says Laurian. “Why on earth would someone like LeFreak go into that much trouble for a minor underling, a new recruit with no record of any achievement, before you even file for divorce?”

“Just saying,” says Martirosian. “You asked about the risks. I had to tell you what the risks are.”

“If those are the risks, let’s go with it. Put the word out. I am dying to know what he’ll do.”

Chapter Nineteen

F
rom mid-afternoon until the early hours of the morning Anastasia is usually with clients, and then she sleeps till noon. It is best to catch her soon after she wakes up. I’ve learned from the days that I used to spend at her apartment in Moscow that that’s when she can focus, but she’s not yet so awake and full of energy that it becomes difficult to keep her attention on one thing.