Mark had helped train Daria. And as her station chief, he’d always looked out for her, just as he had the rest of his operations officers. Now that Logan was dead, she had no one in Azerbaijan to turn to for help.
But the thought of potentially sticking his neck out to help her any more than he already had was setting off alarm bells in his head. Don’t go being some kind of delusional do-gooder, he told himself. Fifty-fifty he’d just make the situation worse by meddling. He’d seen it happen time and time again. Wait for the Agency to restaff. Let them handle this mess.
But by then it might be too late.
“Shit,” he muttered and picked up his phone and dialed. After waiting on hold for a long time, his contact came on the line. Mark spoke to him briefly and then hung up.
Minutes later he was on the street, starting up his Russian-made Niva, a boxy four-wheel-drive car that he’d purchased after going on a professor’s salary.
He headed north toward the center of the Absheron Peninsula, a scarred and grossly polluted spit of land fifty miles long that jutted out into the Caspian Sea. The roads were crowded with an unruly mix of sleek Western cars — BMWs, Mercedes, Land Cruisers — and old Russian jalopies that belched noxious fumes. He passed decrepit Soviet factories, some languishing, some completely abandoned, many of which sat right next to gleaming new high-rises. Gas pipelines, huge billboards with photos of the current president, and piles of garbage lined the sides of the road.
Near the Balaxani oil fields — a purgatorial wasteland of oil sludge and rusting nodding-donkey oil pumps — he pulled over and bought pistachios from a guy who was selling them out of the back of his battered truck.
Just beyond the oil fields the landscape opened up; interspersed among the hellish images of industrial waste were a few green fields. When Mark came to a collection of vacant buildings on the left-hand side of the road, he pulled into an adjacent gravel lot and parked in front of a tall cypress tree, next to a stray dog. A minute later a black Mercedes pulled up next to him. A driver got out of the car and opened the rear door.
“It is really you, Sava?” The dark-haired man who emerged spoke in heavily accented English. He wore a charcoal-gray suit, a conservative red tie, and long and pointed black leather shoes that reminded Mark of witches. His face showed the beginning of a very early five o’clock shadow and he had a large Turkic nose. “I see this car,” he said, frowning and pointing at Mark’s Niva, “and I think maybe a gypsy, or even a Kurd, has come!”
Mark smiled. “I’ve been downsizing.”
“Downsizing, what is downsizing?”
“Downsizing is what you do when you start to teach,” said Mark, switching to Azeri.
They shook hands.
“Ah yes. I remember. Western University. I have to admit I wasn’t sure you were being completely — how do I put it—open with me when you told me of your intentions. But my people tell me you actually do teach classes. They learn much from you.”
“I’ve wondered about some of my students.”
“My men have been attentive, I hope.”
“Very. Thank you for coming, Orkhan.”
Orkhan Gambar was the Azeri minister of national security. Given that the United States and Azerbaijan were on good terms, Mark’s affiliation with the CIA had been known to Orkhan and they’d frequently exchanged information. But since the CIA’s presence in Azerbaijan wasn’t officially acknowledged, their meetings had been held in secret. Often they had met here.
“Come.” Orkhan lightly guided Mark by the elbow as his driver produced an M-16 rifle and began to stand guard. “We talk by the fire.”
Mark followed Orkhan down a series of worn stone steps, into the bottom of a little depression. A white plastic table and three white plastic chairs had been set up a few feet away from a hillside that had been burning ever since an underground reservoir of natural gas had caught fire decades ago. A few enterprising Azeris had tried to set up a tea shop near the flames, but the tourists had proved few and the shop had gone out of business.
Orkhan settled into a chair and pulled it up close to the fire. On previous occasions he’d told Mark that getting extremely hot for a half hour or so made one feel cooler for the rest of the day. All Azeris know this, he’d said.
Mark sat down next to him now and pulled out the bag of pistachios, certain that Orkhan wouldn’t be fasting during Ramadan.
“You remembered. This is why we get along so well.”
That and the fact that the US government had sent an ocean of what was supposed to have been counterterrorism money Orkhan’s way, thought Mark.
Not for the first time he considered that Azerbaijan was a country with a lot of things going for it. Though its people were predominantly Shiite Muslims, they were tolerant of Christians and Jews. Women could wear whatever they wanted without risking being stoned to death. In the south there were vast forests and lush groves of citrus trees. To the north, the snowcapped mountains and picturesque little villages almost could have been Switzerland were it not for the general lack of indoor plumbing. And the coastal center was rich with oil. But the country was also hopelessly corrupt. Mark had little doubt that plenty of America’s money had gone directly into Orkhan’s pocket. That was why they got along so well. But the pistachios didn’t hurt either.
“How is your family, Orkhan?”
They exchanged pleasantries for a while. Then Orkhan asked about Nika. Although Nika had made the mistake of marrying a Russian when she was twenty-four — a marriage that had lasted only six months because all Russians are thieves and drunks — he indicated that she came from a decent family and that her job as a professor of English literature at Western University appeared to be secure.
“But you must tell her not to smoke around her child,” Orkhan said. “This is very bad for children, I hear. I see she does this at her home.”
“I wasn’t aware.”
Orkhan sat back and smiled, a hard smile that showed his teeth. Mark caught a glimpse of a gold crown in the back and recalled that the Ministry of National Security was the Azeri equivalent of the old KGB. They even occupied the same building that the KGB had operated out of, and had wound up employing many of the same people — people like Orkhan.
“Surely you know she and her child share a bedroom at her parents’ house? It is in this bedroom that she smokes. You must get her to stop.”
Mark shrugged, as though a little bored by the small talk. “You make a good point.”
10
Mark had aged well, Orkhan observed with grudging admiration.
Ten years ago, back when Mark had first been posted to Azerbaijan, he almost certainly would have expressed some pointless and typically American moral outrage at the news that his girlfriend’s bedroom had been violated.
But not this older version of Mark. This Mark had perfected a look of cruel apathy, a dead-eyed look that reminded Orkhan of Uzbek sex-traffickers and Russian mafia assassins.
Of course, Orkhan suspected that behind his facade Mark was just as stupidly idealistic and dangerously sentimental as he and the rest of his American colleagues had always been. But he respected his counterpart’s evolving ability to hide those weaknesses.
Mark said, “A prominent American was killed yesterday.”