“Any other passengers?”
“Usually only the drivers come out, so it’s hard to tell. The windows are blacked out and they are careful to sit very close to where they park, so as to keep a close eye on their cars. They never leave the cars unattended.”
“Do you think they have passengers who stay in the car?”
“As I said, it’s very hard to tell, but my sense is they have something they’re protecting, either valuable merchandise or passengers. They get in and out of the car very quickly, and they never keep the door open for more than a minute. It’s not normal.”
“How often do they pass by here?”
“Actually, not very often. We’ve seen them only three or four times in the past few weeks—I mean three or four times going and three or four times returning. One day they came with two cars, but only one of them returned the same day; the other a day or so later.”
“Nerses jan, it is important that we figure out who they are and how many different cars are passing by here, how often, and if possible which direction they come from and which direction they go once they leave. Can we start by recording their license plate numbers?”
Nerses did not need to be told why this was important. This type of visitor almost always meant trouble.
“I haven’t bothered with license plate numbers until now, but if you want I’ll start recording. And we haven’t tried to follow them. We assume they come from Yerevan and go back there, even though my brother said he thinks he saw one of the cars passing through Yeghegnadzor, which as you know they wouldn’t have to pass through if they went straight to Yerevan from here. But of course he couldn’t be one hundred percent sure.”
Saro, who had been quiet until that point, stirred uncomfortably in his chair. “It’s a good idea to record the plate numbers, but you need to be very discreet, Nerses jan. They must not suspect anything. Act like you don’t even notice they’re different from anyone else who stops here. But following them is not a good idea. They are much better at noticing that than anyone here. We cannot follow their cars and stay unnoticed.”
“I agree,” said Laurian. “No point in following them. If we have their license plates and we have people watching for them in various locations, we can get an idea where they’re going, no? We know people in both directions of the Getap crossroad, both toward Yeghegnadzor and toward Yerevan. Toward Yerevan, you have friends at the nearby gas station, right, Nerses?”
“Of course. And also past the gas station we have friends in most of the street vendors and shops for at least fifty kilometers. We have even more friends on the Yeghegnadzor side, all the way to Vayk and Martashen.”
Saro was happy to notice how Laurian did not show any reaction to the mention of Martashen. In fact, Laurian’s response couldn’t have been better phrased as far as Saro was concerned.
“Nerses jan,” he said, lowering his voice a notch and leaning toward the middle of the table, “we do not want a lot of people to know what we’re doing. The fewer the better. Think of the most trustworthy people on either side, and let’s agree on a plan now. We know some people too, so we can compare. No more than two observers on the Yerevan stretch, and at most three on the Yeghegnadzor stretch, say one in Yeghegnadzor, one in Martashen and one in Vayk. No need to go past Vayk, I don’t think. And all that these people have to do is look for the license plates that we give them and let us know if the cars pass by there. Nothing else.”
At that point, the burly drivers stood. They threw a few one-thousand dram notes on the table and started walking toward their cars. Laurian was very quick on his feet. He excused himself and went inside the restaurant as soon as the two stood up. From the corner of the window, he took some pictures of the drivers on his cell phone. He managed to get one face clearly, but only the profile of the second. He also managed to get pictures of the license plates of the two cars. The drivers had barely started the cars when Laurian was back at his seat at the table. He smiled at the others and resumed the conversation, totally ignoring the SUVs that were pulling out of the parking lot and turning toward the Getap crossroad.
When the cars were out of sight, he called Agassi in Vardahovit.
“Tell the boys in Shatin to expect two black SUVs in around fifteen minutes,” he said. “Tell them to call you when they see the cars. Let me know when they call.”
“Ha, Edik jan. Eghav. Done.”
Although they had a lot organized in Vardahovit and Sevajayr already, this was the first time that Saro felt they were running a well-coordinated surveillance of what was happening in their villages. He now saw firsthand that they had assets and resources, trustworthy people who would cooperate just on the basis of friendship and camaraderie. Between the surveillance operation of the homes in Vardahovit and Sevajayr and the monitoring of car movements on either side of the Getap crossroad, they had engaged over a dozen individuals and they were not paying any of them. These were all volunteers, cooperating because of loyalty to their community, but also because they were asked by Saro and Laurian. It was gratifying for Saro to know that he enjoyed so much credibility with the people in the region, not just those in his village.
Nerses was a valuable recruit. He wondered if Laurian would have talked to him about the newcomers in the region if the cars had not appeared while they were there. Knowing Laurian, he probably would have. Saro wouldn’t even put it past Laurian to suggest the stop at the restaurant just for that reason, using food as a pretext. Although the stop was not unusual for Laurian, Saro would have thought that he’d be more anxious to get back to Vardahovit and hear the latest from the surveillance team about the deserted homes than spend so much time having coffee. He must have had this in his mind all along, and the appearance of the two SUVs at that time was a lucky break.
They had discussed and agreed on the individuals who would monitor the car traffic. In Yeghegnadzor, Nerses’s brother; in Martashen, a cousin of Nerses that Saro knew; and in Vayk, an in-law of Nerses. There were also two contacts on the Yerevan side of the road, one in a gas station and one in a large roadside market. It was agreed that all five would deal only with Nerses and report their findings to him. They did not need to know about the involvement of Saro and Laurian. Nerses would report what he heard to Saro, not Laurian.
It was mid-afternoon and the sun was still deliciously warm when they left the restaurant. Agassi had called back twenty minutes after Laurian had alerted him to say that the SUVs had passed Shatin as expected and were headed straight up to Vardahovit. Some forty-five minutes later he called back to say that they had crossed Hermon and had almost reached Vardahovit. Saro and Laurian left too, headed in the same direction. Saro and his Chevy Niva seemed more at ease navigating the disastrous road than Laurian and his Prado. As he drove, Saro seemed to know the location of every pothole by heart, even the ones that sometimes popped up in front of the driver immediately after a dangerous turn. He seemed to be bypassing the potholes even before seeing them. The constant zigzagging turns to avoid the countless potholes, which tired and frustrated Laurian to no end, did not seem to bother Saro at all. Potholes were a fact of life; there was no point in getting emotional about them.
At mid-afternoon, the road was almost empty. Most of the moving activity in the villages happened in the early morning or later afternoon, when the animals were either being taken to the fields to graze or returning home, and when the children, already back from school, were playing in the streets. The only things to watch for on the road at this time of day, aside from the potholes, were the occasional chickens or geese wandering around. The area seemed even more peaceful and quiet than usual.
“Well, Edik, you should be happy with all we’ve done in the past three days,” Saro told Laurian as he maneuvered around another major pothole. “The surveillance operation is now fully underway.”
“Let’s see where it will lead us,” said Laurian. “I hope we’ll be equally ready to deal with what we find.”
“It all depends on what we find
. Ayvazian may get away with a lot, but even he cannot get away with everything. I doubt this is just a matter of illegal goat hunting. If he’s doing something criminal here in our own backyard, he can and must be stopped.”
Laurian was impressed with Saro’s last comment. This was the first indication from Saro that he actually wanted to catch Ayvazian.
“I wonder how the boys are doing in Sevajayr and Vardahovit,” said Laurian.
“We’ll get a report as soon as we arrive at your place, I’m sure,” said Saro. “By the way, getting Nerses involved was very smart.”
“He has a stake in this as much as any of us,” said Laurian. “Ayvazian can be very bad news for him too. He could decide to take over his restaurant from him for a song and use it for his other activities. Nerses is no fool.”
“But does he know it is Ayvazian? He did not say anything.”
“I think he knows, but is being careful. We know, right? Why shouldn’t he know?”
“I don’t know… We know because his men bought the houses in our villages. Nerses may suspect, but I don’t think he knows for sure.”
“At any rate, the presence of those thugs cannot be welcome by Nerses or any of the businessmen along the road, regardless if Ayvazian is behind it or not. If not Ayvazian, some other mafioso would be behind it, right?”
“Right.”
They fell silent for a while. Laurian looked at the mountainsides and at the brook flowing in the valley at the right of the road, and his heart seemed to slide into a blanket of calmness. It was one of the streams that joins the Yeghegis river, which flows south and in turn flows into the Arax river that marks the border between Armenia and Iran. The Arax river is very much part of the Armenian psyche, and Laurian watched the happy stream in the valley right below the road, its flow bumpy because of the rocks on the riverbed, the little waves jumping and dancing, seeming anxious to get to ‘Mother Arax,’ the popular name that the river has acquired over the centuries. The thought that these waters, originating right here in these mountains, go to feed an eternal, legendary symbol of Armenia moved him in a way that he could not explain.
Agassi swung the iron gates open and they drove in, continuing straight to the main house. Agassi’s dog, a young white pup of unknown breed but with traces of Alaskan Husky on her face, ran the distance with the car, reaching the main house before the men. Agassi closed the gate and followed them by foot.
Although it was one of those crystalline afternoons when Laurian would insist on sitting on the front terrace to wait for the miraculous Vardahovit sunsets, they sat inside. Agassi’s grandson Hayk had also just arrived and was holding Laurian’s Nikon D-90 camera.
Before anyone had a chance to say much, Laurian checked the photos in the camera. Most were too dark. Some had slightly visible images that were dark, grey and grainy, almost like shadows. But there were clear silhouettes of people, and not just of drivers and bodyguards.
Vartiter brought in coffee.
“We better take a look at these on a larger screen,” said Laurian, walking over to his bedroom to bring his laptop. As they were sipping coffee he inserted the memory stick from the camera into his laptop and opened the file. Agassi and Saro got closer on each side of him. Hayk, who had taken the pictures, sat on the opposite sofa. Laurian took his time with each shot, all of which were taken at night.
“These are at the Sevajayr house, not Vardahovit, right?” asked Laurian.
“Ha, Paron Edik. I was in the barn across the street from the house, on the upper loft. I took all these pictures last night, from the top window. It was dark. The only light was from the car when they opened the door, and a little from the house when they opened the front door. The curtains were drawn on the front window of the house, and there was very little light.”
“Hayk jan,” said Laurian, “come sit next to me here. At what time were these taken?”
Hayk squeezed between his grandfather and Laurian on the leather sofa. “Around ten o’clock,” he said. “We got the news that the cars were on their way when they crossed Shatin, and we were ready for them.”
Laurian looked at the first three photos for a long time, but skipped each one without asking any questions. They showed two SUVs pulling in and parking perpendicular to the façade of the house, to the left of the main door. Their headlights had illuminated the front wall and door; no one had yet left the cars in these pictures. He dwelt longer on the fourth one. The headlights were turned off. The back right door of the car was open, and the inside light of the car was on. Hayk was facing the back of the cars and front of the house. One of the bodyguards was standing in front of the open back door, as if allowing someone to exit. But his body was blocking whoever was getting out. All that could be seen was the back of the bodyguard.
“Did you see someone else get out of the car?” asked Laurian to Hayk.
“I can’t be one hundred percent sure,” Hayk said. “You will see in the next pictures that a second man came from the other car and they all went inside. The two men were all I could see, but judging from their movements, there could have been a third hidden from view.”
Laurian zoomed in on the area right next to the open door of the car. Then he zoomed in farther, not on the person, but on the ground. There were two shadows on the ground next to the car. One was clearly that of the bodyguard, but next to him was another, shorter shadow.
“You see that?” asked Laurian to no one in particular, pointing at the second shadow, which was sandwiched between the shadow of the bodyguard and that of the open car door. “Whose shadow is that? There is someone else standing in front of this guy. The person is totally blocked from the view of the camera, but his or her shadow is not.”
“You think it’s a woman?” asked Saro.
“Could be. He or she is shorter than the man. The bodyguard is obviously taller than the car, so his shadow is truncated above the neck; you can see here the shadow of part of his head, maybe that of his chin, but nothing above that,” said Laurian as he pointed to where the bodyguard’s shadow stopped. “But you can see a clear shadow of the head of another person, here, see? It’s hard to tell anything else from this photo. The shadows of their bodies are overlapping and fuzzy. But there are distinct shadows of one full head and one truncated head. Let’s see what else Hayk has for us.”
The fifth photo showed roughly the same scene, but the second driver was standing in front of the smaller person, facing the camera. His face was too dark to make out any details. But as Laurian zoomed in again, his overall posture and the position of his right arm suggested that he was helping the person walk into the house. The front door of the house was open also, even though they could not see anyone at the door.
“Did you see who opened the front door?” asked Laurian. “I mean, was it someone from inside, or was it one of the drivers?”
“I’m sorry, Paron Edik. I did not notice. I was watching the second driver get out of his car. Also for a few seconds I did not look out because I changed my position. You can see in this picture I have a wider view of the side of the car. That is when the front door must have opened. The whole process of them parking, turning off their headlights, getting into the house and closing the front door lasted less than a minute.”
“Hayk jan, you’ve done a very good job,” said Laurian, sensing that the fifteen-year-old kid was desperate to impress him. “Really excellent. Now we know that they brought someone into the house, and that person needed assistance walking the few steps from the car into the front door. I just want to say, for the future, you could have had ten maybe even a dozen pictures between the fourth and the fifth. Easily a dozen. You can just snap almost continuously, especially when your targets are moving. That way we can look at each frame and get something new. You understand, Hayk?”
“Ha, Paron Edik, I understand. Eghav.”
The sixth photo was the most informative and probably the most interesting. There were three silhouettes inside the doorway, and one person at the
threshold. None of the faces could be made out clearly, as the back of the bodyguard at the threshold was blocking most of the view. But the three silhouettes were clear and distinct, two men standing inside and facing out, and a smaller, diminutive figure, already inside and facing in. Although he still could not be one-hundred percent sure, Laurian felt certain that the diminutive figure was a woman. The picture showed a slight profile, the tip of the nose barely visible as a dark spot, and a dark patch at the side of the silhouette that could easily be her hair, straight, medium-length, possibly reaching a bit below her shoulders.
The next several photos did not offer much new information. They showed a closed front door and a faint light inside showing through the curtained front window. The front of the house was dark, the street quiet, the black SUVs barely visible in the dark night. When Laurian got to the very last photo, he was a bit surprised. It was already morning and there was only one car in front of the house.
“What happened here?” he asked Hayk.
“When we woke up, one of the cars was gone. We did not notice it leave, so we don’t know when it left or how many people left in it. Sorry.”
“That’s okay, Hayk. Did you sleep in the barn?”
“Yes, Paron Edik. It was my cousin Sago and I. We slept in the loft on the hay.”
“What time do you think you fell asleep?”
“It was past two in the morning, but I’m not sure of the exact time. I remember Sago saying it was two already. We both must have fallen asleep after that.”
“No problem, Hayk jan. You’ve done very well for your first surveillance mission. Remember what I said about taking many shots when people are moving. Now, we know that two more SUVs headed there earlier this afternoon, so it is important that you get back in there. Be very discreet. Can you get back to the barn without anyone in the house noticing you?”
“Yes, that’s not difficult. The entrance to the barn is on the other side altogether. The loft window is at the back of the barn. We can sneak in without being noticed.”
A Place Far Away Page 17