A Place Far Away

by Vahan Zanoyan

  “Very well, Sergey effendi,” said Apo. “I’ll wait for the safe arrival of your nephew.”

  Apo had stopped the pretense with Lara. She had spent her second night in the suite in his apartment, and he didn’t even bother explaining it as a flight delay any longer. He was firm but unusually civil with her.

  “I cannot let you go,” he said. “I will have to hand you over to Ayvazian. After that, I don’t know what will happen to you. He may take you back to Dubai, or back to Armenia, or to Moscow. I have no idea. But I have to hand you over to him.”

  There was no point in arguing or fighting. Things could be much worse. She was being treated very politely, even as a captive. They had not raised a hand against her, nor had anyone tried to rape her or physically hurt her in any way. Only once had Timur come to the apartment to bring three different kinds of slingshots, compliments of Apo agha. He had knocked on the door of her suite and handed her the package, but he had not attempted to enter. His intense stares had persisted, but nothing else.

  “So you’ve been in touch with them,” said Lara. “When do you expect this handover to take place?”

  “Very soon, in a day or two. His nephew will come to pick you up.”

  “Do you know what type of people the Ayvazians are?” asked Lara, looking him in the eyes.

  “Lara khanum,” said Apo politely but firmly, “please do not go there; I know them, and you know them, and we may know the same things about them. I have to hand you over to them, and that is not open for discussion. What I can promise you is that no harm of any kind will come to you while you are in my care.”

  “I appreciate that,” said Lara. “But can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  “What went wrong in the plan? I have a ticket to Tbilisi and was expecting to be home by now. Where did the plan go wrong?”

  “That is an interesting question,” said Apo almost sympathetically, “but it does not have a simple answer. Your plan to go to Tbilisi and then home was spoiled before it was even conceived. It was just a way to fool you. I was asked to send you off to Moscow to be handed over to someone else. So I spoiled that plan by keeping you here. I did not spoil your plan.”

  It was unusual for Apo to be so kind to a woman he held captive and even more unusual to tell her so much. He never treated his own recruits like that. His own girls would have been beaten and raped a few times by now, and not just by him, but also by Timur and sometimes others in his employ. But he had taken a liking to Lara. Besides, it was not his responsibility to break her. He had no reason to beat her or rape her, and decided to treat her like a khanum, a lady. Timur had requested permission several times to have Lara, but Apo had refused.

  “You keep your hands off her, Timur,” he had said. “You treat her with respect and you behave very politely with her, do you understand?”

  “Yes, Apo agha, but why?”

  “She’s not our property. That’s all.”

  In his convoluted way, Apo considered himself a professional, and believed that the beatings and rapes served an important business purpose by bringing the difficult girls into line. He had no such need in Lara’s case.

  Lara was now staring at him, more confused than defiant.

  “They wanted you to send me to Moscow?” she asked, stunned.

  “That’s what your colleague asked me to arrange, yes.”

  “My colleague?” It had never occurred to Lara to think of Farah as a colleague.

  “Yes, the Turkish woman who works there, Farah.”

  “But I have a ticket to Tbilisi. I paid for the whole trip in advance.”

  “Lara, listen. I told you already that your ticket to Tbilisi was just a way to mislead you. They paid me to put you on a flight to Moscow.” Apo was beginning to get uncomfortable with the conversation. He had said enough and wanted to leave her alone.

  “Just one more question, Paron Abo, please,” said Lara as Apo stood up to leave. “Who was going to meet me in Moscow?”

  “I have no idea. Someone was going to be at the airport with Timur’s name on a sign, and Timur was supposed to hand you to him. I really do not know the details after that. Now I have to go.”

  “Thank you for the information,” said Lara quietly.

  Lara was very confused by Apo’s behavior. He was kind, responsive, but dead-firm on keeping her captive and handing her over to Ayvazian. She did not want to scare him away by abusing his willingness to be helpful, but wanted to use it at least one more time before the handover. She had to make that phone call to Avo. But noticing his impatience to leave, she decided to give it a rest for now. She would surely have another chance before Ayvazian sent someone to collect her.

  It is full circle back to the beast. I only hope he takes me back to Armenia, and not Dubai.

  The panic at Al Barmaka’s compound had spread beyond Sumaya. Farah, Natalia, the guard at the gate, and even Manoj were shocked and had started expecting the worst when he returned. Some of the maids and workers in the gardens were questioned, which did more to frighten them than lead to any new information. There would be no mercy for betrayal. The mildest punishment would entail losing their jobs and being deported from Dubai. The harshest could easily be long jail terms.

  Viktor arrived and after a brief meeting with Ano, called Sumaya and drove to the compound. Manoj and Sumaya met him at the front entrance office. All three looked tired and dead serious; no pleasantries were exchanged, no coffee or tea offered.

  “The money will be transferred today,” said Viktor. “Just give me the wiring instructions. And we’ll get the story soon. But first, tell me what you know.”

  Sumaya was noticeably the most uncomfortable.

  “She just escaped,” she said. “She stole her passport from my office, arranged for a driver who had been here before, which put the guards at the gate at ease, and just left. Someone from outside must have helped her.”

  “She has not contacted anyone in our organization,” said Viktor so dryly and confidently that it sent a chill down Sumaya’s spine. It would not be easy to make that story hold. “Besides, how did she manage to call outside from the compound? Ano tells me that this is neither allowed nor possible.”

  “I wish we knew,” said Manoj. “There is no record of phone calls from the compound. I’ve checked everything. There is also no record of her being on any flight to Istanbul from either Dubai or Abu Dhabi. We checked all the records.”

  “Well, record or no record, she got there. Even more so than His Excellency, we want to know what happened. So we’ll get to the bottom of this soon. Are you sure there is nothing more you can tell me?”

  “There is one thing,” said Sumaya. “You know how we have an arrangement whereby she wires money to her family through your office in Moscow?”

  “Yes,” said Viktor impatiently.

  “Well, several days before she disappeared, she asked me to send instructions to wire a larger sum than usual. She said her mother had looked very ill when she left home and was worried about her health, and then she dreamt that she was ill and felt that they might need the money. I didn’t think much of it. She gave me the cash, and I sent it through Western Union to your offices, and from there I believe it was transferred like all the other transfers.”

  “How much money was it?” asked Viktor.

  “Not much, just a lot more than usual. Usually she’d send a hundred or two. This time it was eight-thousand dollars.”

  “Eight thousand?” asked Viktor. “How did she get hold of that kind of money? She’s barely been here for three months.”

  “I don’t know,” said Sumaya, even though for her the amount did not seem so unreasonable. “His Excellency can be very generous at times, but we don’t know how much money she had when she arrived here. She may have had some savings.”

  XX

  Viktor caught a late morning Emirates Airlines flight from Dubai to Istanbul. He needed the five hours of quiet on the plane to think things thro
ugh; their most lucrative recruit had just caused the single most costly incident, and they may not have seen all of the fallout yet.

  Everyone agreed on one thing. Lara couldn’t possibly have pulled off the escape without some help, either from inside the compound, the possibility of which Sumaya and Manoj were categorically refuting, or from outside the compound, which both he and Ano found extremely unlikely. And if she indeed had managed to build some relationships outside of their organization in Dubai, then he would have to admit that they had entirely underestimated the naïve, unworldly seventeen year old.

  Viktor had seen his uncle’s calm anger only twice before, and both times things had ended in bloodshed. He shuddered to think what would happen in this case, especially since sending Lara to Dubai had been his idea. But clearly, the problem was not Dubai; it was Lara. She could have done even worse things in Moscow.

  Madame Ano was worried as well; she was afraid the incident would have a permanent impact on their Dubai operations, regardless of how it was resolved. For starters, they probably wouldn’t be able to sell anyone else’s contract for a while. And the security bureaucracy wouldn’t look kindly at all on such an extreme breech of the rules. Ultimately, they would be blamed, whether they had anything to do with the incident or not; after all, Lara was a product of their organization.

  Viktor shared these concerns. He decided to focus on the most immediate tasks. He had to reach an agreement with Apo about access to the Dubai market, even though he knew that Ayvazian would sooner or later find an excuse to renege on the deal. Had Al Barmaka wanted Lara back, Apo’s contribution would have had a lot more value; they’d keep their money and get back in the good graces of Al Barmaka. But under the circumstances, it made very little sense to let Apo onto their turf when they already had suffered a major blow both financially and in terms of their credibility. But regardless, he had to make the deal and take Lara away. His plan was to fly with her to Tbilisi and connect to a flight to Yerevan, then drive straight to the safe house in Sevajayr. His bodyguards would be at the airport with two cars. The guards at Sevajayr had been alerted. It would be easy once they landed in Yerevan; the trick was to get Lara to behave on the two flights. If Viktor didn’t feel that fear would be an adequate deterrent for Lara not to misbehave, he was prepared to drug her heavily.

  The money was another mystery haunting Viktor. If she sent eight thousand dollars after covering the cost of her escape, which, Viktor assumed, must have included bribes in addition to the cost of tickets, how much money must she have had? She couldn’t possibly have ‘saved’ much, as Sumaya had suggested. Viktor knew exactly how much she was paid before being handed over to Al Barmaka, and how much of that she sent home. Her so-called savings couldn’t possibly have added up to more than a thousand dollars. How generous was Al Barmaka? Had Lara been stealing from them or not declaring everything she made? Viktor then remembered that he used to suspect that with Anastasia, when Lara was still in Moscow. They were generating a lot of money in those days. Could they have stashed away a few thousand each? Very likely. And now Lara’s family had the money that she and Anastasia had stolen from them. There were many scores to settle, he thought.

  No one yet knew what to do with Lara once they got her to Sevajayr. Even Ayvazian wasn’t sure. Breaking her seemed to be his first choice, but he had not ruled out killing her. Even factoring in the huge setback with Al Barmaka, Lara was still one of the best earners they had ever had. So she was worth keeping, if they could manage her. But this time they had to be absolutely sure.

  Lara decided enough time had passed since her last meeting with Apo, so she called him again the next day.

  “Paron Abo, can we please have another short conversation?”

  “Ha, Lara khanum,” responded Apo cordially, “I have news for you anyway. I’ll be down soon.”

  When he entered the apartment, Apo was surprised to see Lara so relaxed. She was in her jeans and sweater, hair down, lying down on the sofa in the living room of the apartment, watching television. For a moment he imagined her as his lover, living there at his beck and call. What a prize that would be. But he put the thought out of his mind as quickly as it had arisen. Lara sat up straight, turned off the television and put on her slippers.

  “You have news for me, Paron Abo?” she asked sweetly.

  “Yes, someone’s coming for you. He’ll be here this afternoon. You will most probably leave with him today.”

  “Do you know who it is?” asked Lara. “Is it his nephew as you mentioned last time?” Her calm, composed manner was distracting for Apo.

  “Yes, Viktor. Ayvazian’s nephew.”

  “Oh yes, I know him,” said Lara dismissively. Then she turned her attention on him. “Paron Abo,” she said, “you’ve been very kind to me considering, well, the circumstances under which we met. I have had captors before, but none as kind as you, and none as gentlemanly as you. First, before I take my leave, I want to thank you for that.”

  “You are very welcome, Lara khanum,” said Apo. The irony of the situation had not escaped him.

  “So even at the risk of appearing like I am abusing your kindness,” continued Lara, “I have one last request; like the last request they grant prisoners on death row.”

  “Oh, Lara khanum, you exaggerate,” said Apo with a chuckle. “You most certainly are not on death row. Just being returned to the barn, so to speak.”

  “Maybe so,” laughed Lara. “The barn, eh? Interesting way of putting it. Anyway, maybe so, but one never knows for sure in this business. So I still have one last request, if you’d be kind enough to hear it.”

  “I’ll hear it,” said Apo, “but I cannot promise anything until I know what it is.”

  “Very well. Before I am taken away, I would like to make that one phone call that I requested earlier. And,” added Lara with a little hesitation, “ideally, I’d like to make the call after I know where they intend to take me.”

  Apo was impressed with her persuasiveness. He had thought about letting her make the call anyway, as a final departing good will gesture. But now Lara had added a new dimension to the request, and Apo saw through it immediately.

  “First of all, that is two requests, not one,” he said, maintaining a warm smile. “You want me to first find out where they plan to take you and then let you make a call before handing you over to them, is that it?”

  “That’s it,” said Lara.

  “Second of all,” continued Apo, “you hope to alert someone about their plan by your call, which could get me into a lot of trouble. Is that what you want?”

  “Paron Abo,” said Lara so seriously and softly that it almost broke his heart, “nothing I do can ever get you into a whole lot of trouble. You are the boss here; I’m a prisoner. Please consider my request.”

  “I’ll let you make the call,” said Apo. “But I cannot promise that I’ll be able to find out your next destination.”

  “Thank you,” said Lara. She stood up to shake his hand, as if sealing a deal.

  Do not be surprised—

  from the beginning I have searched for you

  in foreign places

  in every teardrop and every laughter

  my restless soul

  scrambling in the dark like a specter

  has yearned for your traces…

  When Laurian wrote that verse, he was not sure whom he was searching for. His thoughts were on a lost and rediscovered homeland, but could it have been about an old love? Or maybe a future love, one that he was still seeking? Or an idea? A nostalgic memory?

  Ever since they had eased the surveillance, his evenings had quieted down and he had spent more time on his poetry. He was considering publishing a collection of his poems, but, unlike the confidence he had in his professional reports, he had recurring doubts about his poems. A poem that inspired him one moment could seem lame and lifeless the next. Literature, and especially poetry, depended a lot on moods; one’s mood while writing a verse set the tone, and if the m
ood was different when reading the verse later, it could sound so different it might even be difficult for the author to recognize it as his own work.

  In spite of the partial reprieve, the Ayvazian phenomenon still haunted him. The men had not abandoned the houses in Sevajayr, and their SUVs were still sighted up and down the road. Saro was relieved that the stakeout had gone unnoticed by Ayvazian’s men, and even more so that it had been suspended, albeit temporarily. There was no point in risking being discovered, especially when they didn’t know what to do with the evidence they had managed to gather so far.

  There was no news from Lara. Avo, who had managed to suppress his fury right after his mother’s death, had become increasingly belligerent every time Ayvazian was discussed. And now that he didn’t have much to do until next spring, he had a lot of time to nurture his anger. Both Laurian and Gagik became very concerned when, during a meal at Saralandj, Avo, after a few glasses of vodka, started talking about taking revenge and ‘erasing Ayvazian’s shadow from Saralandj.’

  “He is angry, he has time, he now has money, and he’s sixteen,” Laurian said to Gagik on the drive back. “If that is not a recipe for disaster, I don’t know what is.”

  “And he has identified the enemy,” Gagik added. “If this was the old days, I’d say you’re describing one of our revolutionary comrades.”

  “I hope he doesn’t make a habit of drinking like that,” said Laurian. “There should be an adult watching him. He has no one with any authority to advise him. None of his sisters, even though older, can tell him what to do.”

  “I’ll talk to his brother-in-law,” Gagik had said. “He seems like the reasonable type.”

  “Yes, he could be a stabilizing influence, if he spends the time,” agreed Laurian.

  Laurian used his free time to do more soul-searching about his attachment to the Galian family.

  “Their struggle is not much different than the struggle of this nation,” he had once told Gagik. “I could draw a hundred parallels.”

  “Ha, Edik jan, I understand,” Gagik had answered, “but that still doesn’t make it our business to get too involved. We’ll help where we can, but you need to keep a little distance.”