“And what is the government doing to these people?”
“Oh, the usual harassment and intimidation bullshit. Not a lot of physical violence, but the people in these groups tend to get mugged and robbed a lot more than the general population, you know? At the level it’s at, Langley doesn’t really give a shit — I’m not here to stop it. Washington just wants to know what’s going on so that we don’t get caught flat-footed if things get out of hand. Anyway, the local ex-com is in charge of making sure these groups don’t ever pose a real threat to Baku, so I was also doing what I could to try to get a handle on his operation.”
Ex-com was short for executive committee chairman, which is what the regional governors in Azerbaijan were called.
Cox continued, “He’s one of the president’s cousins. Local big shot, stuffing himself with chapka, that whole deal. The same thing you see in the rest of the country, only here it’s worse.”
No shocker there, thought Mark. All government programs in Azerbaijan were larded up with chapka, which was what the Azeris called kickbacks. If a low-level government lackey wanted to keep his job, he’d kick back some of his salary to his local boss, who would kick back some of his salary to the regional boss, who would kick back some of his salary to the local ex-com, who would then kick back a portion of all his kickbacks to the president.
It was your basic criminal-enterprise pyramid scheme, with the president at the top of the pyramid.
“So I tried for months to recruit an asset that could get me into the ex-com’s inner circle, but I wasn’t having much luck. I finally got a break when this girl, Aida Tagiyev, shows up for English lessons. On the application she fills out, she says she works for Bazarduzu Construction, which is an outfit owned by the local ex-com. I figured I might learn a lot about him by learning about his business. So I started trying to work Aida.”
“What was your angle?”
“She was an accountant for Bazarduzu, so after a few English lessons, I asked whether she’d be able to do the books for the Global Solutions office here in Ganja. She’s got a daughter who’s less than a year old and a husband who teaches kids how to play different types of lutes or something, and I offered her more than the job was worth by a long shot.”
“She do the actual books?”
Global Solutions was a real international nonprofit organization. Cox had just managed to land a cover job working for them.
“Nah, it was bullshit. I took the real books, zeroed everything out, and then made up all the numbers that I fed to her. Tried to make it complicated enough so that she felt she was contributing, but not too complicated. After this goes on for a couple weeks, and we get to know each other a little better, she starts saying how she wished the accounting for Bazarduzu was as straightforward as the numbers I was giving her. That’s when I pitched her — you know, help me expose corruption and move Azerbaijan in the right direction and blah, blah, blah.”
Mark went back to looking out the window. “If you think all this is bullshit, Cox, why’d you even sign up in the first place?”
“Because I wasn’t like this when I signed up.”
“She know you were CIA?”
Cox shrugged. “I told her I worked for Global Solutions but was also helping out the United Nations, and that I was involved in a UN project to document incidences of corruption throughout the Caucasus. I don’t know whether she believed it or not, but she didn’t question it. Anyway, I said that if she was able to get me the financials for Bazarduzu for the past three years, well, that would be worth something — a lot, five thousand dollars.”
“And she bit.”
“I had to convince her that the data she gave me would never get publicly released in such a way that Bazarduzu could trace the leak back to her, but five grand is a small fortune here. And she really did hate that she had to be a part of the whole sordid kickback system. She wasn’t that hard to convince.”
“Were you and her…”
“Were we what?”
Mark raised his eyebrows as he turned to face Cox.
“Was I screwing her?” Cox scratched his stomach. “No. She was like most of the Muslim girls around here — plenty flirty, but nothing more. Anyway, the day she disappeared was the day she told me she’d loaded Bazarduzu’s financials onto a thumb drive. She was going to dead-drop the drive at a supermarket downtown, after eating dinner with her family that night. It wasn’t unusual for her to do a little shopping after dinner, so she was keeping to the routine and all, nothing out of the ordinary.”
“Did she make the drop?”
“If she did, it was gone by the time I got there.”
“Did she even make it home that night?”
“Yeah, that’s where she was when she called me.”
“So she goes to work, copies the financials, goes home, calls you, goes out to make the dead drop, and then at some point while she’s out, gets abducted and killed.”
“That’s probably the way it went down. I’m guessing she got caught copying the financials and they decided to kill her.”
“Who’s they?”
“I don’t know. Thugs from Bazarduzu? Maybe the ex-com’s men?”
“What about Nakhchivan?”
Cox stared at him a moment. “What about it?”
“In one of your reports you mentioned that Bazarduzu Construction did a big project in Nakhchivan last year.”
“Ah, yeah. I guess I did. It was one of the things that came up when Aida and I were talking about what I could expect to see in the financials. She said Bazarduzu supposedly did some big road project there, but she suspected it might just be some big kickback deal. Nakhchivan is a weird place, and Bazarduzu doesn’t usually operate there, so I…well, I didn’t think much of it, but I thought it deserved a mention.” A pause, then, “Does that have anything to do with why she was killed? Why they’re after me?”
Mark thought about Larry, and Katerina — he’d checked his e-mail this morning, but Keal still hadn’t come up with any contact information for her — and wondered himself whether what had happened here in Ganja could possibly have anything to do with either of them.
“I don’t know. Did you give Aida the five grand you promised her?”
“She disappeared before I could.”
“Where is it?”
Cox gestured to an end table that had been pushed into a corner of his office to make room for the yoga mats. “Bottom drawer.”
Mark yanked it out. Inside was a manila envelope.
“That’s government money,” said Cox, as Mark stuffed the envelope into his satchel. “I signed for that.”
“You said Aida had a husband. And a kid.”
“Daughter.”
“Where do they live?”
“On the east side of town. You don’t want to go there. That’s part of why she was doing this, so she could move them out of that dump.”
“I’ll need an address.”
Cox told him, adding, “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Where do you live?” asked Mark.
“Alley off Nizami, west side of town. I got some stuff there still, but I took everything important. I’m not going back.”
“Safest way to exfiltrate you is through the airport.”
“What if they’re watching it?”
“You could drive, but if someone’s following you, the long trip to Baku would give them a lot more time to act. Ditto for the train. Flying is fast, and fast is usually less risky.” Mark decided not to share that he’d opted to take the train from Baku last night, after fishing his Azeri alias out of the garbage and cutting his hair short and dying it black so that it matched his alias photos. Cox might not appreciate that different situations called for different strategies. He added, “I already bought you a one-way ticket to Baku — there’s a flight that leaves in an hour and a half, you’ll get there right before it takes off — and people from the embassy will meet you on arrival. Once you’re in Baku, you’ll be fine. In the meantime…” Mark reached into his satchel, pushed Katerina’s painting to the side, confirmed that the two large tubes of maximum-strength Desitin that he’d bought at a pharmacy attached to the Baku Hyatt were still there, and fished out a sealed envelope. “Here.” He tossed it to Cox. “Your new passport. There’s a New York driver’s license in there too.”