“She didn’t know about me. She just thought I worked at the embassy.”
Mark tried to remember back that far. He thought, yes, Katerina had talked of an older brother. He recalled her saying that her mother and brother supported the Soviet Union, and that she was afraid they wouldn’t like him, because he was an American. So she’d never taken him to meet them. Mark had been too absorbed with Katerina to care.
“What didn’t she know about you?”
“When I was twenty-one I was pulled from university in Moscow and sent to the war in Afghanistan. After the war, the commander of my tank battalion was recruited to work for the KGB. He brought me with him.”
Remembering what Orkhan had told him, Mark said, “You dealt heroin in Afghanistan. Your commander was your krisha, and still is. He is the director of the FSB. That is why you are here.”
“This is true. I am not proud of everything I have done, but I will not deny it. Katerina never knew I was a KGB officer, though. She just thought I was in the army, and then worked at the embassy in Tbilisi.”
A thought suddenly occurred to Mark. “Did Katerina know about your history with heroin?”
“No.”
“The painting of the poppy — it wasn’t a message?”
“I wondered the same thing once, but no. I don’t see how she could have known. I look at a poppy and I see seeds that can be made into a drug. She sees a pretty flower.” Titov let a weary sigh escape. “It was a mistake for me to have come to Tbilisi, where Katerina was, where my mother was. But I did not choose the posting. And, of course, I didn’t ask her to get close to you, do you understand? I didn’t intend to use her like that. But when she told me she was seeing an American, well, of course I was going to investigate who this American is, and why he was in Georgia. She was my sister. And when I investigated, I learned things about you. I learned that you associated with bad people at the university, people who would cause trouble, so I made sure you were watched closely, and then I saw you met with this Bowlan man who we knew was CIA…I should have told Katerina to break it off then. I should have told her you were dangerous.”
“Not to her I wasn’t.”
“But I made a mistake. I told my superiors about Katerina’s relationship with you. And they insisted that we use her to learn more about you, and what you were doing with Larry Bowlan. You understand, being in the KGB, this was a very good job for me. I alone was supporting my mother, helping to pay for Katerina to go to school.”
“You—you were the one who planted the bug on her?”
“So, yes, I planted this listening device on her. And this was my mistake. Because if I hadn’t involved her in my world, she would never have been targeted.”
“What happened to her?”
“She was killed the same day that you were freed.”
Mark felt his heart rate quicken as he anticipated what Titov was going to say next.
“You see,” said Titov, “your friend Larry Bowlan, he didn’t just arrange for those Georgian criminals—”
“They were Georgian patriots fighting an occupation.”
“Ioseliani and his men were criminals!” Titov’s voice trembled. “Bowlan didn’t just arrange for those Georgian criminals to attack and kill the men who were holding you prisoner. He also arranged for them to kill…”
Titov stopped in midsentence, unwilling or unable to finish.
“Katerina,” said Mark. “You’re saying Larry Bowlan arranged to have her killed?”
Could Bowlan have done it? A man Mark had considered a friend for twenty-four years?
The answer, Mark knew, was yes. If Bowlan had thought Katerina was a willing agent of the KGB, and not just the unwitting half sister of one, he could have done it.
“Yes. That criminal son of a bitch Bowlan and his gang of criminals had her killed! Because of her association with me. For years I looked for him…”
Mark was too old, and too weathered, to cry anymore, but if he’d been twenty years younger, he might have now. In the years right after leaving Georgia in 1991, whenever he’d thought of Katerina, he’d imagined her living a happy life somewhere. Falling in love with someone who was kind to her, painting for pleasure, taking joy in beauty, aging with grace. Maybe even thinking of him every so often. Their relationship had been transitory, but in the end, what relationship wasn’t? What mattered was that, for a time, however brief, they had loved each other.
He wanted to bridge the gap of time, to go back and comfort her, to let her know that he was sorry about what had happened, and that he wished her well.
“Our mother never recovered, you know,” said Titov. “The death of Katerina was too much for her to bear. She only lasted a year.”
Mark let his head hang as he recalled the lethal efficiency with which the team of Georgian men who’d rescued him had dispatched his Russian captors. It sickened him to think that Katerina had met a similar fate. It was such a shitty, mean thing. Why God or fate had allowed him to survive for so long, when others more deserving had long since passed, was beyond him.
He realized he was breathing quickly, almost to the point of hyperventilating.
“The painting,” Mark said. “Where—”
“I found it in Katerina’s dormitory room. It was still wet, she must have just finished it before she was murdered. I gave it to our mother. She lit a candle next to it every day until she died. When I inherited her house, I stored the painting in the attic over all the years I rented the place out. I thought I was saving it because I couldn’t bear to throw it out. But now I know it was so that I could bring it to the Dachi hotel, so it could be the last thing that son of a bitch Larry Bowlan saw before he died.”
She’d been one of the innocents, thought Mark, collateral damage in a cold war that had already gone on for far too long, a war that had already destroyed far too many lives. Her death hadn’t even helped to end that war; it had been utterly pointless.
Titov was quiet for a long, long time. Mark listened to the shouts and sirens in the city, and the sound of sporadic gunfire below them.
Just when Mark was beginning to wonder whether Titov was through talking, the Russian added, “Life is funny, Sava.”
Mark closed his eyes, leaned his head against the warm condenser, and let both his pistol and assault rifle rest loosely in his lap. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, it sure is.”
70
Mark heard two sharp beeps. After a time, Titov, sounding as though he was speaking on the phone, said, “I understand. Thank you for all you have done for me.”
Titov was then silent for several minutes.
Below them, the sound of gunfire grew louder and more frequent. An explosion, maybe a door being blasted open, echoed up the stairwell.
“What’s the news?” asked Mark.
“Do you know what I planned to do when I retired, Sava? No, of course you don’t, but I will tell you. Manager for a hunting and fishing lodge. A big one, the best in eastern Russia. Of course, I would prefer to own such a lodge myself, but I have always known my place, and I know that ownership is not possible for a man like me. But I am very good at helping people for whom ownership is possible. And that would not have been such a bad life.” Titov paused, then said, “There will be no helicopter. Our troops are retreating back to Armenia. The attempted incursion never happened. I was never here.”
Mark smiled grimly, relieved, but too battered and weak to take much satisfaction in the news.
“Was this your work, Sava? The Azeris could not have stopped us on their own. They had help, from the Americans, I think.”