So it’s your own safety you’re concerned about, Avery though, but he understood why. If the IMU posted Cramer’s interrogation, and he named agents, Oleg Ramzin could expect a long and unpleasant stay at the Lubyanka. He probably hoped that Cramer was already dead. “I’ve heard nothing to indicate that you personally may be in danger, but you know how the game’s played. If Robert is under extreme duress and drugged, it’s a possibility that you’ll be named. Hey, just be careful and smart. If we suspect you’re compromised, we’ll bring you out.”
That seemed to placate Ramzin, though Avery realized he’d just made a promise he didn’t know if CIA would keep. It depended on how valuable he was to the Agency. He suspected the answer was not very much. The joke was that agents, except for the rare highly placed one, were like mushrooms. They were best kept in the dark and fed shit.
“When was the last time you spoke with Robert?” Avery asked.
“Last month. We meet once a month.”
“You were supposed to see him this past Sunday, in Ayni.”
“This is true.”
“What happened?”
“He never came. I arrived at the café, our meeting place for this month, at three that afternoon. I wait another ten minutes, and he never arrives, never contacts me. So I leave. It happens sometimes that he may not be there, but he leaves the signal, a chalk mark, so that I know. This time, there was no chalk mark, and later there was no communication from him to reschedule.”
The gears turned in Avery’s head. Cramer left the embassy at 2:34PM. If he never made it to Ayni, then he must have been nabbed within an extremely short time-frame. According to Gerald, it was maybe a twenty minute drive to Ayni from the embassy.
That meant Cramer allowed himself twenty-five minutes to make a twenty minute drive. That’s nowhere near sufficient time to do a proper surveillance detection run and then make it to Ayni, signal SCINIPH they were clear, and get to the designated meeting site. That was just sloppy and lazy tradecraft. That definitely wasn’t Cramer.
Avery’s instincts also told him that SCINIPH was omitting something. Maybe not necessarily lying outright, but he was almost definitely withholding something. Avery checked his watch. He didn’t have much time left. He continued chatting with the Russian for another several minutes, then placed some money on the table to cover his dinner and left Ramzin alone in the restaurant.
EIGHT
An hour later, Avery discovered that Dushanbe had an active nightlife. Near the hotels there were numerous restaurants, bars, and clubs, with bright, flashy lights and loud music blaring. An assortment of local Tajiks in Muslim-style clothing, Euro-trash with popped collars and designer labels, Westerners in jeans and t-shirts, young men from the Russian and French military contingents in the country, and local prostitutes traversed the sidewalks and flowed in and out of these establishments.
From the outside, Port Said looked like a shabby, dirty dive bar. It was a small and low white brick building with big red doors and no exterior lights. The signs outside were in Tajik Persian, and Avery only recognized the building from pictures he’d looked up on a tourist website. He paid the cover and was ushered through the door.
Inside, the latest European techno music blasted loud enough over a poor sound system to become distorted. Young inebriated women, most of them prostitutes, in short, tight-fitting dresses grinded their bodies against over-eager men pumping their fists in the air and reeking of cigarette smoke, beer, and heavily lathered cologne. Local Tajik men happily danced with each other. They weren’t gay; it was just how Tajiks partied. A large throng of people surrounded the bar across from the dance floor. There were tables hosting couples or groups of people eating and chatting.
Avery pushed his way through the crowd and got to a spot off the side of the bar offering him a good vantage point. He didn’t know what Dagar Nabiyev looked like and had no means of identifying him. He’d expected Port Said to be a quiet, local bar, not a goddamned circus.
People started eying Avery, so he ordered a Coke. He rarely consumed alcohol, never on a job and never to excess. Last time he’d been drunk, two years ago, a rare breakdown of discipline, he’d come close to blowing his brains out, and it had taken his body three days to fully recover from the extreme intake of cheap convenience store vodka. He tried hard, struggled, to not have another moment like that.
The Coke came in a highball glass with two thin straws and packed with ice.
With a drink in his hand, he could better blend in now. Drunken partygoers were inherently suspicious and unwelcoming of a sober person in their midst. As he took a wad of cash out of his pocket, counted out a few bills, and paid the bartender, he was aware of a pair of tough-looking Russians seated nearby watching him. He glanced their way and maintained eye contact with them until they averted their glare, letting them know he knew what was up and warning them not to fuck with him.
Once a stool opened up, Avery sat down. He put his back to the bar and sipped his Coke and scanned the crowd. A whore approached him with a fake smile. As she came up between his legs, brushing her hands over his knees, he shook his head and sent her away before she could even verbalize her solicitation. She pouted and moved over to the Russians. One of them slapped her ass, while the other lasciviously eyed her up and down, and she giggled.
Several minutes passed, and Avery was soon nursing his second Coke and continued sweeping his eyes over the crowd. He did a double take when he spotted the dark pakol hat. It was a Pashtan hat worn by every man and his brother in Afghanistan. It was also common among Tajiks from the Gorno-Badakhshan region. It was an obvious recognition signal.
Damn, so that meant Dagar had somehow managed to slip by him undetected.
Avery got up and carefully squeezed and pushed through the sea of people. Near the dance floor, a young and pretty Tajik girl came enthusiastically up to him, swaying with the rhythm of the techno music. Avery smiled at her, flattered, but passed by her, missing the disappointed, pouty look on her face once his back was to her.
The Tajik in the pakol hat watched Avery approach his table, sized him up, and gestured for him to take a seat. He held a bottle of Stary Melnik, cheap and strong Russian beer. Three more identical bottles, empty, had accumulated on the table.
Avery took the open chair across from the Tajik.
“You’re Dagar?”
“You’re the fucking American spy?” Dagar Nabiyev looked Avery up and down, and shook his head. “What the hell is wrong with you Americans? You ask for attention, coming to Dushanbe like this and looking like a fucking American spy. The way you move, the way your eyes take in everything around, the way you carry yourself, and the clothing you wear to conceal your weapons and armor. Exactly like a goddamned American spy. You think you blend in, but you do not. I can spot your kind anywhere; you’re all over Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
Avery managed to exercise restraint. “Are you finished?”
The Tajik shook his head again, exhaled through his nose, and sipped his beer. “I spotted you as soon as you walked in. How long did it take you to find me?”
“Look, asshole,” Avery said through gritted teeth. “This isn’t my first rodeo. I know how to cover my back, and I’ve never gotten anyone else compromised before. Jack said you’d help me. Am I wasting my time here?”
It took a lot to get a rise out of Avery, but the fastest way was to accuse him of sloppy tradecraft or question his intelligence.
“I suppose there is no harm done this time,” Dagar finally relented. “Jack is well and sends his regards, Mister Carnivore.”