by Dan Mayland
Keal was staring at him with a curious expression. “Did you want to pack his belongings?”
“What was he wearing when he died?”
“Ah, I don’t know. The coroner will have noted it, probably saved the clothes, I would think. Would you like help packing?”
“No.”
Larry had come with one small suitcase and a garment bag. Mark started with the bathroom. In Larry’s toiletry kit, he found Coumadin, a blood thinner; Vasotec, a drug used to treat high blood pressure; and Lipitor, a cholesterol-lowering medication. Mark had known about the Vasotec and Lipitor, but not about the Coumadin.
He should have known about the Coumadin, though, because he’d recently grilled Larry about what drugs he was taking and his overall health. Throwing people into the field who were about to keel over from a heart attack was no way to run a company.
So apparently Larry had lied about his health.
Thanks for that.
Mark also found a lighter in the toiletry kit, so after packing up everything in the bathroom, he smelled Larry’s clothes in the armoire. The blue sport coat stank of smoke. Which meant either Larry had been hanging around smokers or sneaking smokes himself. Mark didn’t care about the smoking—he’d assumed Larry had been overly optimistic when he’d claimed to have quit a few weeks back.
“Where’s his passport?” Mark asked, forcing himself to ignore a sudden twinge of melancholy. “And wallet?”
“I have them here.” Keal patted the briefcase he’d been carrying.
Mark checked the pockets of all the hanging clothes and found another lighter and a handful of Georgian lari, less than twenty dollars’ worth. He pulled down the clothes, and then the garment bag, and dumped everything on the bed. It was when he was stuffing the clothes into the garment bag, thinking that Larry probably had just smoked and drunk himself into a heart attack, that he saw it.
On the wall opposite the door to the bathroom was a waist-high furniture piece designed to accommodate a minibar refrigerator and a microwave. On top of it sat a two-cup coffee maker and a basket filled with tea bags and individual-sized coffee packs.
Above the coffee maker, on the wall, was a painting. Mark gave it a brief look, turned away, then seconds later stopped short and began to stare at it. No, it couldn’t be, he thought. He had to be wrong. It was his mind playing tricks on him, just because he was back in Georgia.
At first glance it hadn’t looked so different from the rest of the cheap poster-quality photographic reproductions. But it was different. This was a real painting. The brush strokes were broad and a bit rough-textured, sharp lines had been softened, and the colors, they were bright and happy. Mark realized that he knew all those colors, knew them all by their proper names—cobalt blue, cadmium orange, yellow ochre, viridian…
Up close, the painting looked like a jumble of random brush strokes, but when Mark stepped back a few feet, it came into focus. It was, he was certain, an attempt—and not a terrible one—to paint in the impressionistic style of early Renoir.
He swallowed, blinked, then reached out and touched the frame. It was simple, made of stained pine. “You say they found the body here? Around where I’m standing?”
“I think. They told me they found him just outside the bathroom, so I’d say yeah.”
“Which way was he facing? Was he facing this wall?” Mark pointed toward the microwave and minibar.
“I don’t know.”
The painting depicted a woman sitting in front of an easel, palette in hand, painting a picture of a flower. Mark sucked in a quick breath as he focused on the flower—it was a cheerful Venetian red, a bright shade that might delight a child—and yes, the flower, it was definitely a poppy.
Of course it’s a poppy.
The woman’s face wasn’t visible, just the hint of a high cheekbone, so Mark focused on the way her long dirty-blond hair had been casually tucked behind her small ear. She wore a sleeveless white blouse that flattered her figure and a frilly orange-colored gypsy skirt. Beyond her lay what appeared to be a stand of bamboo and a neglected reflecting pool overgrown with lily pads.
“Are you OK, buddy?”
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
Russian Military Base, South Ossetia
Seventy miles north of Tbilisi
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 for
eigner 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
Tbilisi, Georgia
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.
“I said”—Keal’s voice rose a notch—“shouldn’t we leave that there?”
“No.” Mark opened his leather satchel and wedged the painting in between his toiletry bag and Larry’s laptop. “Did the police inspect this room?”
“I believe so.”
“Did they find anything out of the ordinary?”
Keal looked as though he still wasn’t happy about Mark having taken the painting. “Not that I know of.”
“Did they dust for fingerprints?”
“I don’t think so. But when a US citizen dies here, they have to look into the cause of death pretty closely. Someone from the local and regional police inspected the room, along with a forensic expert—all this before they even moved the body. There was no sign of forced entry or foul play, though, so my understanding is that they didn’t treat it like a crime scene.”
“And the room has been unsecured ever since they found the body.”
Mark was having difficulty making sense of the idea that one of the last things that Larry had seen on this earth was a self-portrait of his old girlfriend. Katerina hadn’t even known Larry. Or had she? Had they ever met back then? He didn’t think so.
“Well, it’s been locked. But, yeah, like I said, it hasn’t been treated as a crime scene if that’s what you’re getting at. Because the Georgians didn’t think any crime has been committed.”
Mark finished packing Larry’s things into the garment bag and suitcase, then said, “All right, let’s go get the body.”
“You sure you’re OK? I mean, I get now that you two must have known each other pretty well.”
“I’m fine,” said Mark, but he wasn’t. He couldn’t get Katerina out of his head.
They’d met, he recalled, just a short ways away, at Tbilisi University, in a class on the history of medieval Georgia. The professor had been a mumbling septuagenarian…
7
Tbilisi, Georgia
January 1991, eleven months before the dissolution of the Soviet Union
The American Marko Saveljic was one of thirty-three students enrolled in the class entitled Medieval Georgia: A History, but even on the first day, only twenty-five showed up.
The problem was that the professor lectured in Russian, but with a virtually impenetrable Georgian accent, while chain smoking Troika cigarettes. Indeed, Marko himself might have dropped the class after that first day, had he not taken a seat near the back of the classroom, next to a young Russian woman.
Katerina Kustinskaya was her name—she’d given it when attendance had been taken at the beginning of the class—and at first, Marko had judged her to be out of his league.
He wasn’t ugly, but was self-aware enough to know that he wasn’t exactly a knockout either. He was of average height, strong but not outwardly muscular, and had an angular face that some women found attractive but that most found easy to ignore. So when he felt Katerina’s eyes on him as he sat down, his first thought was that he probably had something stuck to his shirt, or between his teeth; maybe the remains of the pork dumplings he’d eaten before class? Could she even see his teeth? He hadn’t been smiling.
He felt his teeth with his tongue, wiped his hand across his lips, and casually glanced at his shirtsleeves and pant legs. Nothing out of the ordinary.
And yet he could still feel her eyes on him. She was trying not to be obvious about it, but Marko had always been adept at noticing things in his peripheral vision.
The professor lectured with his head down, his eyes focused on his prodigious notes, which he’d placed on a podium in the front of the room. Every so often, in between taking a drag off his cigarette, he’d rub his nose. Behind him hung a blackboard and several musty old maps of medieval Georgia.
Marko turned toward Katerina, and met her gaze. She registered surprise, then embarrassment, and turned away.
Marko wasn’t as enamored with beautiful women as some men were. He’d discovered that, when naked, he was as attracted to plain women nearly as much as he wa
s to the beauties, and often the plain women were just nicer people. Still, for the rest of the class he was aware of her to his side, aware of her movements. Her eyes were blue, her Slavic cheekbones high, and when she pursed her lips, as though privately questioning something that the professor had said, Marko found it hard not to turn and stare. Every so often he got a whiff of something that smelled like lilacs. He wasn’t sure whether it was her perfume or her shampoo, but he wasted quite a bit of time trying to sort it out.
Halfway through the class, he realized that all of his fellow students were scribbling madly in their composition books. All except for himself, and Katerina.
She was dressed in layers of loose bohemian clothing; it was a look that, along with her drowsy eyes, Marko found intriguing.
But she’s a Russian, he thought; that much he could tell from her name.
He didn’t have anything against Russians. Ethnically, he was a quarter Russian himself. But when it came to communists—many of whom happened to be Russian—that was another matter.
At the end of class, the students began to stand. Marko hesitated, then stood himself. Katerina closed her composition book, prompting Marko to glance at it. It was the same thin-papered hundred-page bound book that most students carried, that Marko himself was carrying. They sold for a single ruble down at the university store. Katerina had drawn some frivolous doodles on the gray cover—flowers and trees and a horse carrying a long-haired girl that bore some resemblance to Katerina herself. But in the left-hand corner she’d taped a picture of Saint Ilia, a man revered by modern Georgians because, in the 1800s, he’d pushed for Georgian independence from the Russian Empire. Now, with the Soviet Union teetering, Saint Ilia had become a symbol of modern resistance against the communists.
Considering that sufficient evidence that she wasn’t a communist, Marko turned to face her. At first she turned away, but when he persisted, she met his gaze.