Titov didn’t answer.
Mark asked, “Why do you care about all this ancient history?” The two men stared at each other for a while, then Mark said, “I went back to the United States, kicked the heroin, and joined the CIA. Larry Bowlan recommended me, made sure I was taken care of.”
“I mean before that, after Bowlan rescued you, but when you were still in Georgia.”
“Nothing. I just left Georgia.”
“You are so full of lies, Sava.”
“I didn’t finish my Fulbright, I didn’t do anything.”
“You just left.” Titov words were undergirded with sarcasm.
“The people who freed me—”
“You mean the people who killed my men.”
“—dropped me off on the streets of Tbilisi. I tried to go back to my apartment, but I’d been away for over two months and it had been cleaned out and re-rented. You know what I looked like, you know what you did to me. I could barely stand. I was going through withdrawal. I needed a fix but I didn’t have the slightest idea where to get one. So I sat outside the door to my old apartment and just…did nothing. The landlady tried to get me to leave, even threatened to call the cops. Your men got to her, I know, that’s why she would barely look at me. I told her I’d leave, but only if she let me use her phone. I tried to call Katerina, but I couldn’t get through to her. I walked out onto the street — Katerina’s apartment was over a mile away, and I didn’t think I could make it there, but I was going to try, and that’s when Larry Bowlan picked me up.”
49
Titov found it impossible to gauge whether Sava was lying or not. Even as a twenty-two-year-old, Sava had been difficult to read, and his stories had always shifted. Though he might not have been a spy at that point, he’d certainly acted like one. If the kid had just broken down and pled for mercy, the interrogation might not have gone on for as long as it had. But Titov had always sensed that Sava had been keeping something in reserve, even if it had just been his dignity. He’d been determined to completely break the kid, to strip him of everything, but he hadn’t been able to do it. Sava had held on. He’d been barely conscious half the time, but had still found the energy to spit — literally and figuratively — in people’s faces.
“What happened after Larry Bowlan picked you up?”
Sava’s eyes looked dead. His mouth formed neither a smile nor a frown. “Of course, as you know, I was addicted to heroin.”
Titov didn’t bother responding. He had many regrets, but what he’d done to Sava wasn’t one of them. After Sava had been set free, and the KGB in Tbilisi left reeling as a result of Bowlan’s death squad, Titov had been demoted to protection duty in Chechnya. Those had been bleak days, and they had become bleaker still when the Soviet Union collapsed. The very existence of the KGB had been called into question, and it had taken many long years for both Titov and the KGB to rise again.
Sava said, “Bowlan took me to a house. In the countryside. He helped clean me up. He fed me. Got me some heroin too, not much, but enough so that I wouldn’t experience any more withdrawal symptoms while still in Georgia. The idea was that he’d patch me up just enough so that I’d be let on a civilian plane. And that’s what happened. A few days after getting to the safe house, I was driven to the airport. Someone from the embassy accompanied me. I was still a wreck, but at least I could walk. The story was I got mugged in Tbilisi. Anyway, I made it home. Kicked the heroin addiction first, then got a call from Bowlan asking whether I wanted to join the CIA.”
“And you said you did?”
“It would appear so.”
“And you never tried to talk to Katerina again?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“It was safer that way.”
“You said you tried to call her right after you got back to Tbilisi.”
“I did.”
“What changed?”
“I had time to think about it. Time to realize that maybe she’d be safer if I stayed away from her. I didn’t want you doing to her what you did to me.”
“What makes you think we would have hurt Katerina?”
“You used her, didn’t you? You and your men planted a listening device on her to get to me.”
It seemed surreal to Mark that they were having this conversation about something that had happened such a long, long time ago, so long ago that it hardly seemed real anymore.
“We might have.”
“We both know you did. And I knew that if I didn’t walk away from her you’d try to use her again to get to me. So I let her go.”
Titov tapped his thigh with his pistol. “Still, not a single call. Not even a note. You must not have thought much of her.”
“Wrong. I thought I loved her.”
Titov stared into Mark’s eyes. They were as dead when he spoke of love as when he spoke of torture. Either the American was an exceptionally good liar, or he honestly didn’t know about what had happened.
“Did Bowlan try to stop you?” asked Titov. “From contacting Katerina?”
“No.”
“Really?”
A silence. Titov wasn’t sure whether Mark was trying to remember or had decided to ignore the question.
“He might have,” said Mark eventually. “We discussed my predicament, and how best to proceed.”
“How to proceed.”
“You’re asking about something that happened over twenty years ago. And you know the condition I was in. My memory of that time is foggy. Why did you kill Larry Bowlan? And what was the painting of Katerina doing in his room?”
“Ah yes, the painting. Let us talk about it.” Titov’s voice rose a notch. “Because if you really left Georgia when you said you did, without bothering to contact Katerina, you would not have been able to recognize it.”
“Not true.”
“The painting does not even show her face, Sava, so you could not have simply recognized her. And I happen to know that this painting, she made it after you were captured! So if you never saw her again after you escaped, then there is no way you would be able to recognize this painting.” Titov let Sava think about that for a moment. “That is how I know you lie. No, what happened is that after you escaped you paid a visit to Katerina. You saw this painting. It was still drying, no? And Sava — I know what you did when you were there.”
Titov glared at Sava, daring the American to deny the truth.
The elevator door at the end of the cavern opened. One of Titov’s men appeared. He wore a combat headset and carried a short-barreled automatic rifle. “Sir, we have a problem.”
Situated on the edge of the badlands ten miles northwest of Nakhchivan City, atop an old salt mine, the Babak Sanatorium was housed in a grand old prewar building that had originally been built to accommodate asthmatic Soviet pensioners seeking refuge from the damp, cold hinterlands of central Russia. More recently, it had been restored by a group of overly optimistic Turkish investors hoping to lure aging pensioners from Turkey and Iran to the restorative air of the mine.
The venture had failed — it turned out the appeal of traveling to a police state and paying top dollar to sleep in a salt mine was limited — and one month earlier, the FSB had bought the property from a Turkish bank. One week ago, Titov had begun quietly transferring his men and matériel from South Ossetia into Nakhchivan, using the sanatorium as his base.
Now, upon exiting the elevator that led from the mine to the ground floor of the sanatorium, Titov was greeted by one of his men, a twenty-five-year-old Muscovite who was the son of the FSB’s Saint Petersburg director.
“How many are there?” asked Titov as he half-walked, half-jogged around a dormant fountain that stood in front of the elevator.