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.”
Part Five
35
In the wide valley that lay below, sun glinted off the galvanized metal roofs of little houses that lay interspersed among fields of wheat and sugar beet. There were cows, but few sheep — at this time of year, the sheep would be in the high valleys, up in the mountains. On the western periphery lay a man-made irrigation pond.
Though the valley was fertile and welcoming, the badland hills around it were not. Bare and lifeless, they were marked by alluvial fans, and striped with multicolored layers of ancient rock and clay. Deep bone-dry ravines, scorched from the sun, lay between them.
To the northwest, Mark could see Ilan Dag — the rocky mountain where local legend said Noah’s ark first struck land, leaving a deep cleft in the top before landing on the slopes of Mount Ararat, in what was now eastern Turkey.
Wisps of white clouds hovered near the top of Ilan Dag’s twin summits. Mark glanced further west, thinking he might be able to glimpse the snow-covered slopes of Mount Ararat now that he’d gained some altitude, but it was too hazy.
It was only eight in the morning; in a few hours, he thought, the haze might burn off.
He’d been driving slowly along a newly paved road, but now he pulled off and parked on the dirt shoulder, a few feet away from a yellow natural-gas pipeline that followed the road. He’d flown into Nakhchivan the night before and checked into a cash-only hotel on the outskirts of Nakhchivan City. For the exorbitant price of forty dollars a day, the owner had been willing to let Mark use his car, a Renault sedan.
His cover story was that he worked for a Turkish firm that made plastic bottle caps. And that he was here to determine the market penetration and makeup of competitor caps in Nakhchivan.
He’d had business cards made up on the fly in Ganja, and then spent the night creating handwritten logs and entering fake data about bottle caps into his laptop. The gray sport coat he wore was a size too big for him, and his striped tie a bit too wide and too shiny — he was a poorly paid bachelor salesman trying to impress, but falling a little short.
On the front seat of his car were a hundred or so bottle caps in a plastic bag, each one individually labeled. Next to the bottle caps was a map, so that if a cop came by and questioned why he was hanging out on the side of the road — a distinct possibility, as Mark knew the cops in Nakhchivan were paranoid — he could grab the map and pretend to be lost.
In the meantime, his real focus was a slender ribbon of a dirt road about a mile away across the valley; after crossing the fields, it slipped behind a craggy hill and then led to the supposed location of the secret airstrip. He was looking for a car — any car — to emerge from behind the hill.
The first batch of satellite photos that Ted Kaufman had e-mailed him had just shown a green valley, surrounded by bare mountains, and ringed by a tall fence. A road — the road Mark was now watching — entered the valley from the south and ended at a small warehouse-like structure.
And that was it. No airstrip.
A second batch of satellite photos, however, taken some six months prior to the first set, revealed that a large portion of the valley had been covered with a long double line of massive tentlike structures, the effect of which was to hide from view whatever had been going on beneath the tents. And the road leading into the valley had been rutted by vehicles that had left tire tracks wide enough to suggest heavy-duty construction vehicles.
Three hours. That’s how long it took for the first and only vehicle — a beige sedan — to emerge from the valley. Mark couldn’t see who was in the car. He’d refrained from bringing binoculars, or even a decent camera, because having either one in his possession could arouse suspicion.