Death of a Spy (8 page)

“No can do, Ted.”

“I may have more work for you.”

“Great. Submit a request for proposal. I’ll take a look and price it out whenever you get it to me.”

“This might be more urgent.”

“I could probably line up someone for you ASAP if you’re in a pinch.”

“The job I’m thinking of is one you’d be better suited for.”

“My plane boards in an hour. I’m heading back to Bishkek, Ted. Tonight. But we can talk tomorrow.”

So put that in your pipe and smoke it, thought Mark as he clicked off his phone.

When Mark had been the chief of the CIA’s Azerbaijan station, Kaufman had been his boss, so he knew just how far he could push him without seriously damaging the relationship. Besides, while he wasn’t just going to forget about what had happened to Larry, Mark knew there was a lot he could do from back in Bishkek. He’d wait for the CIA’s Russia specialists to analyze the missing photos. Maybe by then Keal would have come up with contact information for Katerina. He considered trying to hunt her down on his own, but until he had a better grip on the situation, decided he belonged back in Bishkek.

For a moment he started to think about how satisfying it would be to be back home, with Daria and Lila. Then the memory of Katerina burrowed its way into his thoughts.

What if she had left that painting there to send him a message? Was it a coincidence that all this was happening now, right after the birth of his first child? He and Katerina didn’t know each other anymore. But had she somehow connected with Larry? Mark couldn’t fathom how or why they would have, but that painting…what was equally unfathomable was that such a painting could have wound up in that hotel room if there hadn’t been some sort of link between Larry and Katerina.

Mark checked his watch. He still had a half hour before his plane was due to board, so he flagged down the waiter, ordered another vodka on the rocks, and tried to remember as much as he could about Katerina and that spring of 1991. Mostly what he remembered now, though, was how quickly everything had spiraled out of control.

In retrospect, Mark could see that agreeing to help Larry funnel money to the Press Club hadn’t been one of his smartest moves. And ignoring the warning lights that started flashing in his mind after Larry intimated that other types of aid might become available if things in Georgia really started to heat up, maybe even weapons—ignoring that danger…well, he’d been young.

Mark recalled that it was shortly after the mention of weapons that Larry had said he wanted to make sure that the Soviets hadn’t planted a mole in the Press Club. Money was one thing, but before any weapons were transferred, he needed to be sure the Press Club was clean. Larry had said he’d come up with a plan. Meanwhile, Mark had started paying closer attention to all the members of the club.

Mark had known he was playing with fire. He’d known Larry wasn’t just some businessman. He’d known too that he was being watched—the old woman who pottered about in the street in red sandals, sneaking nips of apricot moonshine, who was always full of questions; the same black Volga sedan with a dented fender he’d see several times over the course of a normal day. But he’d wanted to do it, he’d wanted to help fight the communists who had wronged his mother, to be a part of history, to help make history.

Then, Mark found a pill-sized listening device affixed to the underside of the rough pine headboard attached to his bed frame. That was when things
really
had started to go downhill.

Mark thought again of Katerina, tried to bring himself back to that time, to search for clues in the past that might help him understand what was happening to him in the present. Would she have any cause to harbor lingering anger, because of the way things had turned out between them? Was that what this was all about? Mark didn’t think so, but the honest answer was that he didn’t know. He tried to recall the last time they’d seen each other, when everything had gone to hell...

15

Tbilisi, Georgia
June 1991, six months before the dissolution of the Soviet Union

Marko was on his way to the Rustaveli metro stop late one afternoon when a white van that looked like a bread loaf on wheels pulled up next to him; before he could react, someone shoved him into the cargo bay.

A figure appeared as the cargo door slammed shut. Marko scrambled to his knees and raised his fist, intending to strike.

“Easy there, cowboy. This ain’t my first rodeo. Don’t make it hard on yourself. Or me.”

Larry was sitting on a creaky bench seat that had been repaired with clear packing tape. He took a swig of some brown liquid in a clear bottle—Marko suspected it was
kvass
, a local concoction made from fermented rye bread.

“What the hell, Larry?”

“Hey, Saveljic, you ever hear of a honey trap?”

“What am I doing here?”

“It’s when a foreign intelligence service employs someone who possesses means of persuasion beyond what, say, I would possess. See, I’m old, and I smell.” The van hit a pothole, jolting both Marko and Larry up in the air. “So even if you were a switch hitter, you probably wouldn’t want to screw me. No honey in that trap. But a nice young lady? Potentially very effective against a young guy like you.”

“What are you getting at?”

“Your girlfriend’s a honey trap. You’re trading sex for secrets and you don’t even know it. I’m sorry, I should have considered it earlier. Stupid that I didn’t.”

Marko laughed. The thought was absurd. “No she’s not.”

Larry spoke slowly and definitively. “Yes, she is. She’s using you.”

“She’s a painter. And a student.”

“And a KGB agent who was sent to spy on both you and the Press Club.”

“Bullshit.”

“You told her about me. You told her that you were being watched. You told her you were helping me help the Press Club.”

That much was true, Marko admitted.

“Why in God’s name would you tell her all that! Why? Even if she wasn’t a KGB plant—didn’t I tell you I suspected there’d be one somewhere?—even if she wasn’t, why would you share that with anyone?”

“Last night Katerina went to visit her mother. I had trouble falling asleep, I was thinking about what you’d said about my apartment probably being bugged. Even though I’d checked all over for bugs weeks ago—”

“You found one.”

“Yeah. Underneath the bed. So when I saw her this morning, I told her about the bug, and yeah, I mentioned that I was helping get money to the Press Club, and that maybe that had something to do with what I found.”

Larry shook his head, disgusted.

“I didn’t mention your name, or describe you or anything. I mean, what did you expect me to do? You were the one who told me that if I ever found any bugs to just leave them in place, so we don’t tip people off that we’re onto them.”

What, was he supposed to continue to make love to Katerina while the KGB was listening? The breach of trust would have been unforgivable. He’d had to tell her something. They couldn’t continue to sleep together in that bed.

“And Katerina. What was her reaction when you told her about all this?”

“Well, she wasn’t happy about the bed thing—I mean, that’s a pretty sleazy asshole move, even for the Soviets.”

“This is a sleazy business, Marko. Did she seem worried?”

“More disgusted than worried.”

Katerina had known that the Soviets viewed the Press Club as an irritant; given that Marko was both an American and regularly attended Press Club meetings, she’d already assumed there would be a certain level of surveillance on him. He suspected she would have been more worried if she’d known the amount of money he was funneling to the Press Club, but he’d been intentionally circumspect on that front.

“It’s possible she didn’t know about the listening device. But that doesn’t mean she’s clean, Marko.”

“You’re so full of it. Really, Larry. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The KGB already knows about the conversation you had with her this morning, kid. A conversation that, if I’m not mistaken, occurred outside of your apartment. On the street. Where no one should have been able to hear you.”

“You were watching me.”

“No, Marko. But someone was watching…” Larry pointed a finger at him. “And listening. And I was watching and listening to the people who were watching and listening to you. I believe I may have intimated that we have ways of intercepting certain types of…let’s call them communications.” When Marko didn’t respond, Larry added, “They know about your conversation with Katerina this morning. They know you’ve been helping me funnel money to the Press Club. I know this for a fact. She must have told them about it. There’s no other explanation. You’re completely blown. You fucked up, Saveljic.”

“She doesn’t care about politics. I got her to go to one Press Club meeting a few weeks ago, and then she never went back.”

“Maybe she doesn’t care about politics. Maybe she even really likes you. Who knows what they have on her, why she’s helping them. They play an ugly game, Marko. But she is helping them, believe it. She’s selling you out.”

Marko recalled how Katerina had taught him how to speak Russian without sounding like a fool, and all the funny and not-so-funny stories that they’d told each other about what it was like to grow up as a kid in Tbilisi, Georgia, or in Elizabeth, New Jersey—like when Katerina, as a three-year-old, had released the parking brake on the family car and crashed it into the neighbor’s fence, or the time Mark had gotten into trouble for climbing onto the roof of his duplex and throwing rocks at a neighbor’s window, this when he was six. Katerina liked U2 and Madonna and REM. She’d wept when she’d told Marko about the death of her father. He couldn’t believe that she could have been that good an actor.

Larry said, “If I were you, I’d leave Georgia tomorrow. The Soviets have been playing nice with you up until now, but now that they know you’re a conduit for resistance money, there’s no guarantee they’re going to continue to play nice. I’m telling you this because you’re an American citizen, and even though you completely botched my operation, I kind of like you, and I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

The van came to a stop.

Larry added, “If you don’t leave and things go south for you, I can’t protect you, your government can’t protect you.” Larry handed him a stack of 100-ruble bills. “This was supposed to be for the Press Club. Use it instead to buy a ticket home. Pretend you got sick, I’ll make sure the Fulbright people don’t screw you over.”

“I didn’t ask you to protect me.”

“We won’t see each other again.” Larry pulled open the cargo bay door, doing so in a way that allowed him to stay hidden behind it. “Now get out.”

After walking the streets for an hour, Marko came to a decision. He called Katerina from a pay phone.

“What’s wrong?”

“You know your favorite place to paint?”

“You mean—”

“Don’t say it! Just meet me there.”

“When?”

“Now. Can you go now?”

“Yes…OK, yes, but what’s wrong, Marko?”

“I’ll talk to you soon.”

Marko climbed the hill that rose up behind the old city, past the tiny crooked homes and little churches, until it became too steep for buildings and was just overgrown grass and rocks and garbage.

It was dark now, ten o’clock in the evening. The lights of the city twinkled below him, and the sky above was a strange shade of violet. A gentle breeze blew waves through the scrub grass. To his right rose an enormous aluminum statue of a woman who in one hand held a sword and in the other a bottle of wine: treat Georgians well, you will be welcomed with wine; if not, then you’ll be fought with a sword. Well, thought Marko, that would be his motto too from here on out.

He climbed until he got to a paved footpath that traversed the top of a long ridge. He turned left, passing the funicular, which had been shut down for the night, and walked until he reached the entrance to the botanical gardens.

Tucked away on the back side of the ridge, in the shadow of a medieval fortress, the gardens of Tbilisi were a welcome refuge from the city. It was a wild place, crisscrossed by little dirt trails and crumbling stone walls. Because the city was on the other side of the ridge, the sound of cars was barely audible, and he could hear little but the wind rustling through the leaves.

During the day, the price of admission was just a pittance—twenty kopeks, payable to a gnarled old woman who, if she was lucky, collected enough over the course of a day to justify her pittance of a government salary. Now, the gardens were closed for the night, but there was no gate. Just beyond the entrance, Marko veered off the path and hid in the woods.

Katerina walked by him twenty minutes later, traveling quickly down the steep gravel path. She wore designer jeans—American style, but made cheaply in East Germany—that Marko had given her. Her loose white poet shirt had frilly flounces at the wrists and reflected enough moonlight that she seemed to glow amidst the trees.

Marko waited in the shadows, watching. Convinced that no one was following her, he ventured out of the woods, stepped quietly onto the path, and began walking in the direction Katerina had gone, keeping to the moon shadows on the path’s periphery. Before he got to a terraced section, where there was a stand of bamboo and a reflecting pool overgrown with lily pads, he ducked back into the woods.

Katerina would be waiting for him to approach on the main path, Marko reasoned, so he approached instead through the woods. Though he couldn’t make out her expression, he could see that she was pacing, with a nervous energy that was at odds with her usual languid demeanor.

Marko waited, listening to the surrounding woods. The light breeze rustled the leaves of the trees; branches squeaked as they rubbed together. After a time, he made his way silently to the edge of the terrace, picked up a golf-ball-sized rock and, standing hidden behind a tall pine, hurled it into the woods on the opposite side of the terrace.

Hearing the noise, Katerina turned. But Marko wasn’t focused on her. Instead he listened to the woods, straining his ears to pick up sounds of anyone else who might be out there.

Nothing.

“Katerina.” Marko spoke her name in a loud whisper. She turned.

“Marko?”

He stepped out briefly from behind the pine. “Over here.”

“What are you doing?”

“Making sure you weren’t followed.” He spoke in Russian.

“You’re scaring me.”

“I think we’re safe. I was watching the path. Come with me.”

“Where are we going?”

“Into the woods, to our campsite.” Last week, they’d stayed at the gardens until dark—Katerina had been painting, Marko reading—and then hiked to the edge of the preserve, down by a stream at the base of the hill. They’d drunk wine around a small campfire, and eaten bread and sheep’s-milk cheese. “Will you come?”