Surrounded by Iran and Turkey and Armenia, Nakhchivan was around eighty miles long and no more than forty miles across at its widest point. The Azeris were still technically at war with the Armenians — the mutual loathing between those two countries was legendary — and much of the region had just been a secret military zone during the Soviet era, so a siege mentality had developed, a sense among the population that if they let their guard down for even a moment, they would be overrun by the larger, and sometimes hostile, powers that surrounded them. Nakhchivanis were suspicious of foreigners, and people with cameras, and people who asked too many questions. So Mark knew he had to be careful.
He snapped a quick photo with his phone, then enlarged it enough so that he could see the front grill of the car — a Hyundai, he thought, as he deleted the image. Pulling off the shoulder of the road, he began driving slowly toward the main highway a few miles away, waiting for the car to catch up to him. He passed through a little village where roosters pecked at cow dung in the street.
When Mark saw the Hyundai approaching in his rearview mirror, he sped up a bit. The driver and front-seat passenger each wore a suit and tie and looked a bit like Mormon missionaries. The driver, who appeared to be the taller of the two, wore glasses. When the main highway appeared, Mark glanced in his rearview mirror again and saw that the driver had turned on his right blinker, so Mark turned right.
They were headed toward Nakhchivan City. To Mark’s left was the Aras River, which marked the border between Nakhchivan and Iran. To his right, in the distance, lay the snowcapped mountain range through which ran the war border with Armenia.
Wild red poppies grew on the side of the road, reminding Mark of Katerina, and the painting. Keal had left a message for him the night before. Contrary to what Kaufman had said, apparently the Bureau of Vital Records in Tbilisi had been able to provide some information about her — they’d received a copy of her birth record when she’d moved from Moscow to Tbilisi with her family in 1977. There was no current contact information, or any record of marriage or death, but Keal now knew that Katerina had been born on the eighteenth of July, and knew the names and birth dates of her parents; he was forwarding the information to the US embassy in Moscow and would also try searching a few more government databases in Tbilisi.
The highway was lightly trafficked and newly paved. Mark kept to the slow lane. When he passed the surveillance cameras along the side of the road — and there were several of them — he made sure that he was going just under the ninety kilometer an hour speed limit and looking away from the cameras. After a few miles, he reduced his speed enough so that the driver of the Hyundai decided to pass him.
36
Dmitry Titov listened with intense interest as the deputy chief of the FSB’s counterintelligence division informed him that a CIA operative had arrived in Nakhchivan last night.
“And what is the source of this information?” Titov removed his new reading glasses. He’d resisted getting glasses for years, but he’d finally broken down last month when he’d found himself unable to read the morning paper.
“The reports officer we turned at the American embassy in Baku.”
In order to keep tabs on the Americans in the run-up to the upcoming operation in Nakhchivan, the counterintelligence division of the FSB, posing as Chinese intelligence officers, had recently abducted the wife of a CIA reports officer. As a method of recruiting a source—we’ll kill your wife if you don’t spy for us—it was a bit crude, but had proven to be effective, at least in the short term.
“He shared with you a report that this operative in Nakhchivan filed from the field?”
“No — it was a bit strange in that the intel came from a cable sent by Langley to the CIA’s chief of station in Baku, about an operation the CIA is running in Nakhchivan.”
“Cable from whom?”
“It had a routing address that we traced to head of the CIA’s Central Eurasia Division.”
Titov said, “This man is Kaufman, I know of him.”
“The cable was short. All it said was there was a singleton on contract leaving Ganja, arriving in Nakhchivan, and to expect no further reports for forty-eight hours.”
“Singleton on contract?”
“Probably refers to an intelligence agent operating on his own.”
“We don’t have a name.”
“No.”
But Titov wondered whether that was really true.
Sava was reported to be the CIA’s most knowledgeable and resourceful asset when it came to Azerbaijan. Titov hadn’t given much credence to that assessment when it had been originally rendered, but he’d been forced to reconsider when Sava had disappeared from Baku with such ease.
And now an unknown CIA officer had surfaced in Nakhchivan. The investigation in Bishkek hadn’t turned up anything definitive — although FSB men were now looking for an ex — Navy SEAL thought to be an accomplice of Sava’s — but Titov wondered whether the Bishkek angle had just been rendered moot.
“The new officer must be reporting directly to Kaufman,” concluded Titov. “And Kaufman is keeping Baku station informed. Ask counterintelligence whether they have the means to get the security tapes and flight manifests from the airport in Nakhchivan.”
37
Mark had first visited Nakhchivan City in the early 1990s, when he’d been a young officer in the CIA’s special activities division. Trade routes into Nakhchivan had been shut down because the war with Armenia had just started. Jobs had been scarce, and people had been hungry. The infrastructure, after all those years of Soviet rule, was in ruins, and there was no oil or gas in Nakhchivan to anchor the economy. What little help there had been had come from Baku, but that had been before the oil boom; Baku in the nineties had been beset by vicious political infighting, corruption, and above all else a lack of money. So they had been able to do little to prop up the struggling region.
Mark had stayed for a month, and had secretly helped funnel weapons to a group of Turks in Nakhchivan City, who in turn were arming the Azeris. When he’d come back to Nakhchivan ten years later as a CIA case officer, to try to convince a Turkish diplomat to spy for the CIA, the city had been in much better shape. Trade with Iran and Turkey had resumed. Roads were being repaired, and the gentrification of the capital had started.
But now…now Nakhchivan City was almost unrecognizable. All the old tenement houses — completely rebuilt. The ancient monuments — restored. The roads — all new. Nakhchivan was favored by the president of Azerbaijan, because his father had been born here. With the oil money now gushing in faster than Baku could handle, a healthy amount had been diverted to Nakhchivan City, more than any other city in Azerbaijan save Baku.
In the center of this new city stood the thirteen-story glass-clad Tabriz Hotel, the tallest building in all of Nakhchivan. When the Hyundai Mark was following turned into the Tabriz’s parking lot, Mark continued straight and parked in front of a pharmacy down the street. Then he jogged part of the way back to the hotel, slowing to an easy walk only when he was in sight of the entrance.
The lobby was a fair approximation of a reasonably upscale business hotel, but it was empty save for the two men in suits who’d been in the Hyundai. They stood in front of the reception desk.