Death of a Spy by Dan Mayland

really good news.”
    Daria checked the time. Mark was supposed to be in flight at the moment. “Where are you?”
    “That’s the bad news part. I agreed to do a job for Kaufman.” A three-second silence, then, “Mark—”
    “It might be related to what happened to Larry, otherwise I wouldn’t have said I’d do it. That airline sticker from Nakhchivan that you noticed, it’s had some ripple effects.”
    “You already accepted this job?”
    “I said I’d see what I could do over the next couple days.” Before she could object, he added, “I know, I know, the timing completely sucks.”
    Another silence, then, “You didn’t think to maybe call me first? I mean, dealing with Larry, that I understood. But…” Daria shook her head. She’d known calls like this would come. Just as she knew there’d be times when her work would get busy and she’d need Mark to cover the home front. They’d talked about all that. But she hadn’t thought it would start up so soon after Lila had been born. “What kind of job?”
    “An investigation of sorts.”
    “Why do they need you?”
    “I guess the guy they have on it now is running into some trouble.”
    “What kind of trouble? And if he’s running into trouble, why wouldn’t you?” Upon not receiving an answer, Daria said, “Mark, I don’t—”
    “Listen, the good news—make that the great news—is that the job is in Azerbaijan. I’ll be in Baku by tomorrow morning.” He neglected to mention that he’d be traveling to Baku, a mere three hundred miles southeast of Tbilisi, via Istanbul, which lay over eight hundred miles to the west. If the Russians really were after him, it would be better to stay moving, and to get out of Georgia sooner rather than later. And he’d feel safer sleeping on the plane than he would here at the airport, even in the secure zone. True, the Russians also had deep ties to Azerbaijan, but that was Mark’s turf as well; if anyone tried to follow him there, he’d lose them in no time.
    “OK, now I’m confused.”
    “Kaufman got our PNGs lifted, Daria. It was part of the deal I struck with him. We can go back to Azerbaijan. We can raise Lila in Baku.”
    The news was so unexpected that Daria didn’t know what to say. But she could hear the excitement in Mark’s voice, and he wasn’t an easily excitable guy. And she knew how much he loved Baku. She didn’t want to be a downer. Besides, they’d talked before about the possibility of moving back to Baku if their PNGs ever got lifted, and she’d agreed she could run her foundation from there, maybe expand into helping orphanages on that side of the Caspian.
    But those talks had always been theoretical, because Mark had never been able to make any headway with the Azeris on getting his PNG, much less hers, lifted. “I thought Kaufman hated me?”
    “I told him that I wouldn’t take the job unless we both could resettle in Baku.”
    “Oh. Thanks.”
    A year earlier, she might have greeted the news with more enthusiasm. She’d come to Bishkek not because she’d harbored any particular fondness for the city, or for Kyrgyzstan, but just because it happened to be close to some of the orphanages she’d arranged to help fund. She’d originally viewed the move as temporary, while she did penance for past misdeeds and figured out what to do with the rest of her life. But her penance had become her passion. She took immense satisfaction from interacting with the kids, and working with Nazira, and managing a foundation that was now funded by real donors instead of just money she’d wheedled out of the CIA.
    And at the same time, she’d come to like Bishkek. She liked the leafy parks, the nearby mountains, and summer trips to Lake Issyk-Kul. And she sensed that undertaking a major move—Baku was a thousand miles away—on top of running her foundation and raising Lila would be a recipe for stress and anxiety.
    “Baku has got so much more going for it than Bishkek. We’ll have