On the table to the right of the Russian lay a pack of cigarettes and an old-style Zippo lighter. Using one hand, the Russian tapped out a cigarette, stuck it between his lips, and lit it with the Zippo.
The blood flowing out of the cut in Mark’s tongue was pooling in his mouth, mixing with saliva.
“I can’t…breathe.” Mark spoke in a pained whisper. “Oh, God…” Mark coughed again, and this time spit up blood, which rolled down his chin and dripped onto the bright-orange fleece blanket that covered his lap and forearms.
The Russian let loose a string of expletives.
Mark began to make croaking noises, as though he could barely get air into his lungs. Then he spit up more blood and coughed again, trying to make it sound like he was choking on his own blood, or vomit.
The Russian relayed what was happening into his Bluetooth, then said, “How should I know? Am I a doctor?”
“I’m drowning,” said Mark.
Ignoring Mark and speaking instead into his headset, the Russian said, “All I know is what I have told you.” Then, “OK, OK. Two minutes.”
Mark rolled his eyes back into his head and kept up the labored breathing.
The Russian stood, Grach pistol in hand. “OK, sick man. We are going on a little trip.”
Upon being wheeled out of the room, Mark learned two things: the first was that he was on the twelfth floor of the Tabriz, and the second, from the speedy and surreptitious manner in which he was transferred to the elevator, was that the Russians didn’t fully control the twelfth floor.
The same could not be said, however, for the top floor.
When the elevator doors opened, arranged in front of a waist-high decorative garbage bin-cum-sand-filled ashtray were four corpses, piled atop one another. The armed Russian who stood near the bodies spoke into his radio headset. “They’ve arrived.” A pause, then, “Yes, sir.” To the Russian who was wheeling Mark around, “Follow me.”
In an alcove attached to the main restaurant, a black baby grand piano, a lonely little fish tank, and several circular tables had been pushed aside to make room for a large rectangular table that had been placed in the center of the red marble floor. General Dmitry Titov sat at the table amidst a jumble of communication equipment: two army-green radio stations, several tactical headset systems, smaller commercial headsets, a satellite phone, two laptop computers, and a tangle of extension cords and assorted wires.
An AKS-74 rifle, equipped with a thermal night-vision sight, also lay on the table. Titov put his hand on the grip.
Mark coughed up more blood and wheezed.
“How long has he been like this?” asked Titov.
“Since he woke up.”
“Open his shirt.”
Mark didn’t resist as the Russian agent who’d been wheeling him around stripped the blanket off his lap and then ripped open his shirt.
63
Titov sighed.
The elderly medic who had performed the operation on Sava was in the field, supporting the Vympel commandos who were operating near the northern border. Though Titov and the agents he had with him at the Tabriz were all trained in first aid, this situation with Sava’s lung was beyond their ability to address.
The American really was a mess. And that flexible plastic tube sticking out of the side of his chest was just repulsive. At this point it might be a kindness to kill him, thought Titov, but he’d delayed doing so for a reason.
“Can you talk, Sava?” Titov spoke loudly, as though addressing someone with a hearing problem.
Sava didn’t answer.
“Maybe he should be lying down,” said Titov. “Maybe the tube is getting crimped.”
“You want me put him on the ground?”
“Do it. But give me your weapon, just in case.”
The Russian operative handed his Grach, grip first, to Titov, then pulled out a long double-bladed combat knife from an ankle holster. He pressed the tip into Sava’s throat. “You try to fight, I cut. Understand?”
Sava took a few quick, shallow breaths, as if trying to get the air he needed to respond. “Understand.”
The agent cut the surgical tape away from both of Sava’s forearms, hoisted him out of the wheelchair, then laid him on the red marble floor. Sava rolled to his good side and lapsed into a coughing fit. Blood dribbled out of his mouth.
“Leave us,” said Titov to his man. “Help Sergei with guard duty.” When they were alone, Titov pulled Sava’s leather satchel off the communications table. He flipped open the top flap and removed the painting of Katerina.
Standing over Sava, holding his pistol in one hand and the painting in the other, Titov said in English, “You had collapsed lung. Broken ribs, other things. Very big problems. We operate to relieve pressure, lung is better — very good doctor, I work with him in Chechnya for very long time, he heals my shoulder once when I am shot.”
“I need him…now.”
“Not possible. You can breathe better now, no?”
Sava pushed himself up, so that he was on his hands and knees.
“Stay down.”
“This position…it’s better, there’s not so much pressure.” Sava spit out more blood, then glanced down his shirt. “What the hell was that needle you stuck in my chest…and what is… what is that plastic tube with the rubber thing stuck to it…doing there now?”
Titov watched Sava warily.
“Needle was to let air out, and create path for plastic tube. Once plastic tube goes in chest, needle comes out. Rubber tip from glove at end of plastic tube makes air not go back in.” Switching back to Russian, Titov said, “I wish to speak about the painting.” He walked around to the front of Sava, and let the painting fall to the floor near Sava’s face. “You saw her and this painting after you escaped.”
“I was in the desert after I escaped…I saw nothing, I passed out and then your men caught me.”
“Not today, idiot! In 1991. After you escaped from me in Tbilisi with the help of your criminal friend Bowlan. You must have seen this painting then. Otherwise, you would not have recognized it three days ago. And I think I know why you are lying to me about it now. But I want to hear it from you.” Titov waited a moment, then added, “I tried to help you with this injury to your lung, Sava, but it was only a temporary measure. You are going to die here. If not from your wounds, then…” Titov tapped his Grach pistol against his thigh. “I think you understand what I mean. As we Russians say, life is not a walk across a meadow.” Speaking those words caused Titov to think of his mother. She’d buried two husbands and a daughter before she’d died of heartache and cancer. It was hard to complain about his own lot in life, or to feel pity for Sava, when he thought about all the pain she’d borne. “It is time for the truth.” Titov stared at Sava, waiting for the American to respond. When he didn’t, Titov asked, “Are you dying now?”
“No. Thinking. Trying to remember.”
“Remembering what?”
“That phrase, life is not a walk across a meadow. I’ve heard it before.”
Titov wondered whether Sava was losing his grip on reality. “It was a line in a poem from Doctor Zhivago. That is why you know it. The truth, Sava.”
“Did you know Katerina and I used to visit the botanical gardens?”
“What botanical gardens?”
“In Tbilisi. We went there the last night we were together, just before your men kidnapped me. But we’d been going there for weeks before that. There was one day, it was early spring, if you’d been there you would understand.”