8
“The Azeris are trying to give me the boot.”
Mark spoke into his cell phone as two plainclothes agents from the Ministry of National Security — protection, to ensure Mark’s safety, Orkhan had explained diplomatically — escorted him across town in a black Mercedes. Mark was seated in the back.
“I know,” said the new CIA chief of station/Azerbaijan, a woman who’d been transferred from Turkey six months ago. “I’ve been in touch with the Az interior minister. Where are you?”
“Almost at my apartment.” The tree-lined promenade between Neftchilar Avenue and the Caspian Sea was crowded with pedestrians, and a knot of people had gathered at the base of a nearby carnival ride. In the distance, rusted shipping cranes and oil derricks poked out of the shallow waters of the sea. After the violence at the library, Mark found the normalcy of the city — even the stink of diesel exhaust and petroleum — to be comforting. There had to be a way for him to resolve this in a way that allowed him to remain in Baku, he thought. There was always a workaround, always an angle. “Listen, I want to stay on.”
The CIA hadn’t been thrilled about his staying in Baku after he’d quit the Agency. Such an unorthodox move had only confirmed his superiors’ fears that he’d been abroad too long and had gone a little too native. But in exchange for being given the green light to stay on in Baku, he’d agreed to provide the Agency with a monthly report on the state of Azeri politics. And then eight months ago, he’d bailed the Agency out when a bloody intelligence war over an oil pipeline had erupted.
So they owed him. Just how much he was about to find out.
“Not a chance.”
“Get me six months to wrap things up on my own terms. I’ll make it worth the Agency’s while.”
“It’s not my decision.”
One of Mark’s minders from the Ministry of National Security glanced back at him from the front seat.
“Besides,” added the new station chief, “Kaufman wants you back for a full debriefing.”
Ted Kaufman was the division chief for the CIA’s Central Eurasia Division. Mark had reported to him for years.
“Kaufman can screw himself. He owes me.”
“I wouldn’t get on the bad side of the seventh floor if I were you,” she said, referring to the upper management of the CIA. “They’re your reference for the twenty-five years of work you put in.”
“Twenty-three years.”
Mark had been twenty-one years old when the Agency recruited him.
“Whatever.”
“No, not whatever. I helped build this station. And I bailed Kaufman’s ass out eight months ago. I’m calling in my chits.”
“Listen, even if Washington was inclined to let you stay on, which they’re not, I don’t think we’d get far with the Azeris anyway. You’ve got too much history with them, not all of it good.”
“Not all of it bad, either. Orkhan and I are tight.”
“The interior minister was adamant, and he was speaking for Aliyev.”
Aliyev was the guy who ran the country.
“Great.”
“Go back to the States, get debriefed, let the dust settle. Meanwhile the station will start digging. After what happened at the library, we’re all on alert, I can guarantee you that. You’re still one of our own.”
9
Daria considered the three photos again. Even after she’d studied them for the better part of a half hour, the first two meant nothing to her. Nor did the e-mail address of the sender — Alty8@online.tm. She couldn’t remember having met anyone named Alty when she’d been in Turkmenistan.
The only thing she was reasonably sure of was that the third photo showed Decker’s arm.
Which meant what?
Had someone captured him, and the photo of the arm was there to prove it? Would demands for cash follow?
Or had Decker himself sent the e-mails to her?
Was he in trouble?
One person who might be able to answer those questions was Bruce Holtz, Decker’s boss. Holtz owned Central Asian Information Networks — CAIN for short — a spies-for-hire firm. Although Daria had worked for Holtz too, she and Holtz hadn’t left on good terms. On top of that, she was now competing against him in the intelligence business. No, Holtz wouldn’t tell her anything.
But he might talk to Mark.
Mark. Her stomach turned over.
She checked her watch. She should start getting ready for work soon. If she was going to call him, she should do it now. But was she overreacting? Just looking for an excuse to call? Or was she looking for an excuse not to call him, when it was obvious she should?
She thought about the first of the three photos. Two men had been exchanging a briefcase. A briefcase full of what?
Daria had a bad feeling about that briefcase.
Call him.
She checked her phone, confirmed that Mark’s contact info was still in it, and hit Dial. His cell number was no longer good — which didn’t surprise her. When he’d been her boss at the CIA, he’d been religious about regularly swapping the SIM card out in his phone; he’d rarely kept the same number for more than a few days. Old habits die hard, she thought. She tried his home phone. The answering machine picked up.
“Mark, this is Daria. Call me back, please, as soon as you get this message. I need you to call Bruce Holtz for me. I’m hoping he knows where I can find John Decker. Something weird’s come up. I wouldn’t bother you if I didn’t think it might be important.” Then she left her number.
She’d sounded professional, she thought. Nothing more.
10
Mark took one step into his apartment and stopped short.
The bookshelves in the living room had been torn apart, and the hand-knotted Azeri carpets he’d hung on the wall had been ripped down. The kitchen cabinets had been pulled open, and glass jars of red pasta sauce lay shattered on the tile floor. All the furniture cushions had been slit; white stuffing protruded from them like entrails.
In the center of his living room, three twentysomething uniformed officers from the Ministry of National Security sat on his mutilated leather couch, smoking cigarettes and using one of his kitchen plates as an ashtray. One of them stopped mid-laugh when he saw Mark and his escorts.
“What the hell?” said Mark.
The security officers stood as one. The tallest demanded to know who Mark was.
Mark stood there in shock for a moment, taking it all in. His easy chair, where he liked to read in the early evening, when natural light spilled in from the balcony, had been flattened. The tomato plants he’d kept outside had been overturned. The little American flag he’d stuck in one of the planters lay on the floor half-covered with potting soil. “I live here.”
One of his plainclothes minders from the Ministry of National Security nodded in confirmation.
Mark’s apartment building was a gleaming modern construction, completed just two years ago as part of the oil-fueled gentrification that was sweeping the city, but he’d always loved the literal window into history his balcony had afforded him — the end of the Cold War, the ruins of an empire he’d helped, in a very small way, to bring down…Past the sliding glass doors leading onto his balcony, he could see the top of the old Dom Soviet, a government building that had been built during the Stalin era. Next to the Dom Soviet sat the Absheron, an enormous, bulky Soviet-era hotel that had recently been turned into a high-priced Marriott.