“I know it’s not why you took the time off,” Darla said. “But things happen. I understand.”
“Damn.”
Despite her words, she didn’t want him to go. Not now. She’d accepted that Mark wasn’t cut out to lead a normal life, and that trying to change him would be futile. He’d tried to change himself a few years ago, had tried to quit the intelligence game and teach international relations — and it hadn’t gone well; his ties to underworlds in which he’d operated for the better part of his life had proved to be too strong to sever. She’d made her peace with that, and was even proud of him — there was no doubt, he was a hell of a spy. But now was their time to be a family. They’d both arranged to be off for a full two weeks after coming home from the hospital, and after that they were both going to ease back into work, sharing responsibility for Lila.
It would eat away at him if he didn’t do what he thought was right by Larry, though. Even if she were able to prevail upon him to stay in Bishkek, his mind would be elsewhere. He’d feel like he was letting down a friend; she didn’t want to be responsible for that.
“We’ll be fine here. We’ve got plenty of supplies, and I can sleep when she sleeps.” Daria mustered a smile and kissed the top of Lila’s head. She loved the feel of her daughter’s hair.
“She’s only a baby once.”
“She’ll still be a baby when you get back.”
“I can go if you want,” said Decker. “But I don’t know that I can run the rest of the business from the road.”
“I’ll go,” said Mark. “I have to. I owe it to Larry.”
Part Two
4
“Mark Sava?”
“The same.”
“Jim Keal. From the embassy.”
Mark pointedly glanced at his phone. It was ten twenty-five in the morning; he and Keal had agreed to meet at ten. Leaving Daria and Lila to deal with the remains of an old friend was one thing; staying in Tbilisi a second longer than necessary just so some guy he didn’t know could have a second coffee with breakfast was another entirely.
“Sorry I’m late,” added Keal, extending his hand. “Welcome to Tbilisi.”
He was about Mark’s height and age — a little under six feet, mid-forties — but carried an extra hundred pounds on his frame. His face was freckled, his nose slightly upturned, and his brown hair had a reddish tint to it.
“Thanks.” Mark shifted the leather satchel he carried on his shoulder so that he could shake Keal’s hand. It had been just over twenty-four hours since Decker had told him about Larry. He’d left Bishkek on a red-eye that had landed in Tbilisi just before dawn.
“So, ever been here before?” Keal asked brightly.
“Yeah.”
“Really, when would that be?”
Mark didn’t like to be rude, but he liked making small talk even less. He wanted to take care of this business with Larry as quickly as possible. “Can we just do this?”
“Sure, sure, let’s do it.”
They were in old Tbilisi, where a hodgepodge of ruined and rebuilt medieval churches, sagging latticed 19th-century balconies, subterranean beehive-domed bath houses, twisting cobbled alleys, and architectural anomalies — a puppet theater built like a ramshackle gingerbread house, a peculiar minaret rising above a solitary mosque — hinted at a history marked by equal parts chaos and creativity.
Amidst all this sat the Dachi, a four-story, twenty-room boutique hotel with a baroque-inspired exterior and an interior that had been completely gutted and rebuilt as part of a wave of government-funded gentrification that was rapidly improving — or destroying, depending on one’s perspective — old Tbilisi.
The Dachi was where Larry Bowlan had died.
Keal, leading Mark inside, said, “I was talking to the coroner, that’s why I was late. Anyway, that blood test they do, where they check for enzymes — you know, that get released if you have a heart attack? Well, they did that test and it came back positive.”
“I see.”
“I figure after you grab his stuff, we can go over the logistics of transporting his remains.”
“His room is on the third floor,” said the receptionist, a petite Georgian woman with sad eyes and overplucked eyebrows, after checking Keal’s identification and matching it to a name on her computer screen. “But first there is the issue of the room charge.”
Her English was clear but heavily accented.
Turning to Mark, Keal said, “They wanted to clear the room and put his things in storage. But I thought it better to leave it all—”
“It’s OK.”
“It seemed disrespectful to have someone who didn’t know him just throw his things into a suitcase, and…since I knew you were coming in a day…”
“It won’t be a problem.” Mark produced a credit card.
The receptionist prepared the bill, charged Mark’s card, then called for the manager. “He’ll bring you up to the room.”
A tiny glass elevator shot up through the center of a wide spiral staircase. Mark was headed for the stairs, thinking they would be faster, but the manager — a stooped man of perhaps seventy years — pushed the elevator button.
Although it appeared to have been designed to accommodate two, all three of them crowded inside when the doors opened.
“Did you know the deceased well?” Keal asked.
“Yeah.”
“Ah, tough one then, coming here. I’m sorry for your loss.”
Mark pursed his lips — however heartfelt, that phrase always struck him as inadequate. Also, he hadn’t really been thinking of Larry that much, other than to consider that his friend’s death had proved to be a major inconvenience. So it felt a little phony to accept sympathy. “Thank you,” he said.
The elevator was small enough that everyone was brushing up against each other. Out of habit, Mark kept his hands near his pockets and maintained situational awareness; a casual physical connection could be a feint for a pickpocket attempt, or a knife in the side.
Keal turned his head aside and coughed. “You must have had some friends high up in Washington, huh?”
“I don’t know about that.”
Keal coughed again; this time Mark could feel the force of it on the back of his neck. He refrained from breathing for a moment.
“At first, this was treated just like any other death of a citizen abroad. It happens from time to time, just part of life, you know? But then we got the cable from Washington that you’d be coming, and we were to do whatever we needed to accommodate you. Must be nice.”
Mark didn’t respond. Larry had been carrying a US passport when he died — albeit not his real one; that was why the Dachi had called the US embassy after they’d found him dead. The embassy had then called the number of the wine exporting company listed on Larry’s business cards — which was really just one of many numbers Mark used to backstop his operative’s aliases. Mark, in turn, had called Ted Kaufman, who was the chief of the CIA’s Central Eurasia Division.
Kaufman had been the one to make sure Mark wouldn’t be given any hassles, but Mark didn’t want to tell Keal that.
The elevator door opened. Everyone stepped out. The manager led them to a room at the end of the hall and inserted an electronic key into the lock.
Mark stepped inside.
In a small sitting area, a wall-mounted flat-screen television had been positioned opposite a love seat. Relatively new beige carpet covered half the floor; the other half was tiled. Insipid photographic reproductions of oil paintings depicting romanticized scenes from medieval Tbilisi hung from the walls. To the side was a bathroom with a glass-walled shower. Only the high ceilings, framed with egg-and-dart crown molding, hinted at the real age of the building. A room service menu lay on an end table. Morning light spilled in from a partially open casement window.