Mark wasn’t. He felt unsettled, blind to a danger he sensed was near.
He studied her slender fingers and the black lacquered paint brush those fingers gripped. He wanted to turn the woman around, and stare upon what he knew was a strikingly beautiful, and kind, face.
Because there was no doubt in his mind. He knew the woman in that painting. But the last time he’d seen her was twenty-four years earlier, here in Tbilisi, when Georgia had still been a part of the Soviet empire, and he’d been a young man named Marko Saveljic…
5
Fifty-six-year-old Dmitry Titov removed the black loafer on his right foot, stripped off his sock, opened the top drawer of his desk, extracted a Kalashnikov bayonet from its scabbard, and began to slice off a callus on the side of his deformed big toe. Ever since a 120mm mortar round had been dropped, fins first, on his foot during the war in Chechnya, that big toe had stuck out at an unnatural angle, causing it to rub against his boot in a way that was a constant source of irritation.
As he tended to his foot, an army meteorologist on his computer screen explained that a high pressure system over Russia would likely dip down into Armenia, displacing a low pressure system that was currently bringing cloudy skies to Iran.
It was a private two-way videoconference, so Titov knew the meteorologist could see the contempt implicit in his blithe foot maintenance. It was an intentionally dismissive gesture that said, I can get the same information on the Internet from BBC weather, and in fact, I have.
Titov was the commander of an elite paramilitary unit within the spy organization known as the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, or FSB — an organization that, during the Soviet era, had gone by the name of the KGB. But it was a position that afforded him little respect, because everyone knew that he hadn’t earned it so much as had it bestowed upon him.
So the meteorologist didn’t respect Titov — Titov had been able to discern that much from their brief conversation a minute earlier — and Titov was returning the favor. He also knew this personal weather briefing wasn’t designed to inform so much as it was a way for the director of the FSB in Moscow to cover his rear. If the operation that was planned for three days from now went forward as scheduled and the weather didn’t cooperate, at least he could say General Titov was briefed by our top meteorologist and signed off on going forward with the operation. Blame him.
The meteorologist finished his presentation just as Titov finished slicing a final half-inch-long strip of calloused skin off his toe.
“Yes, yes, thank you, Captain,” said Titov, flicking the skin into a nearby waste bin. “Your contribution is appreciated.”
“Is there anything else you require, General?”
“No.”
Titov clicked the Disconnect button on his computer screen and leaned back in his chair. He was tired, especially after that business with the American. His arms felt heavy in a way that they never used to when he’d been a young man. It made him grateful to be sitting in a heated office rather than out in the field, where he’d spent most of his career. How he’d grown to hate the cold. He ran a hand over his balding scalp, and thought about how surreal it was that Bowlan had surfaced at a time like this.
Then again, the Americans were famously incompetent when it came to fielding operatives who were fluent in Georgian. Certainly the CIA operations officers who operated out of the embassy in Tbilisi were a sorry lot. So Bowlan had been a logical choice — his Georgian was excellent, his Russian even better, and the fact that he was white haired and wrinkled had made him easy to dismiss as a potential spy.
The FSB officers who’d stopped Bowlan at the border between South Ossetia and Georgia had just been erring on the side of caution, because Bowlan was a foreigner in a place that saw few. His papers had checked out; he’d been carrying a pocket camera, but none of the photos on them — mainly of local wineries — had raised suspicions. And his cover story had been deemed plausible — he’d claimed to be a supermarket box-wine importer searching for new suppliers.
But when the FSB check had triggered a possible facial-recognition match with a former Moldovan CIA station chief, Titov had been notified. He’d known right away who it was. It had been over twenty years, but he’d never forgotten that face, had never forgotten what Bowlan had done.
Titov’s phone, which sat beside a heavy brass double-headed-eagle paperweight, rang. He answered it.
“Someone came for the personal belongings we left at the Dachi.”
“Who?” asked Titov.
“Two Americans. One is James Keal. He’s CIA, works out of the embassy here in Tbilisi. The other we haven’t identified yet.”
“Video?”
“You should have it.”
Titov clicked around on his computer. He did.
“Where are they going?”
“The hospital. Keal has booked a flight for the body that leaves tonight.”
“You have a man there?”
“Yes. And the coroner and morgue director have been cooperative.”
“I’d like a confirmation when the body has been accepted for transport.”
“Understood.”
Titov hung up and clicked on the file he’d been sent. The video camera had been hidden in the smoke detector above the bed.
For the first thirty seconds, Titov watched, unperturbed. It was just two unimposing men cleaning up after a dead geriatric.
But then…
It can’t be.
Titov watched as the unidentified one yanked Bowlan’s camera out of the suitcase. His motions were quick, and reptilian. There was no hint of a smile on his face. No hint of empathy for the deceased.
The cheeks had filled out, the hair was shorter and now streaked with gray at the temples. But the dark eyes, the sharp chin, those thin lips…Titov knew those lips. Ordinarily they weren’t distinctive, but when pressed together into a mean expressionless slit, or curled into a half sneer…
Titov stood watching the video for a few seconds more, transfixed as his breathing accelerated.
Could he be wrong?
No. That was Saveljic.
6
Mark stood in front of the painting at the Dachi hotel, recalling his first visit to the city when he was twenty-two years old.
He’d loved Tbilisi back then; had loved the cliffs along the Kura River, the foothills of the green mountains that rose up on the west side of the city, the majestic art nouveau buildings that lined the bustling Rustaveli Prospekti, the opera house where he’d seen Verdi’s La Traviata and Wagner’s Tannhäuser for four rubles…he’d never been to the opera before, but for that price, why not?
He’d lived alone in a one-bedroom apartment with a rickety wood balcony covered with brilliant purple wisteria vines.
“Hey, are you all right?” asked Keal.
Mark took another look at the painting on the wall. Yes, he was certain that was Katerina, a woman he’d once known, and cared quite a bit about. He had never seen the painting before, but the scene it depicted was intimately familiar to him. And furthermore, he was sure that it was a self-portrait. Even after all these years, he recognized her style.
“I’m fine,” said Mark. There was no signature on the painting. Mark pulled it down and checked out the back side. Just blank canvas.
“Shouldn’t we leave that there?”
Mark hadn’t seen or heard from Katerina in twenty-four years. And as far as he knew, Larry had never even met her — although Larry had been in Tbilisi back in the 1990s, lurking in the shadows. He’d certainly been there when everything had gone to hell. But that was all so long ago. Mark tried to think of some link between that dark past and the present, and drew a complete blank.