[b]Baku, Persian Azerbaijan[/b]

	It was incredible what only a few years of peace and progress could do. Since the Artsakh War and the Persian occupation of Azerbaijan, the turbulent border between Armenia and its Muslim neighbor had calmed. Fortifications were dismantled, troops were demobilized, and the ground had been broken on an oil and gas pipeline from the Caspian Sea to Armenia. The real key to economic progress, however, was the completion of the Stepanakert-Baku railway in the late 1950s. Passenger and cargo rail between Persian Azerbaijan and Stepanakert allowed for a massive boom in the Artsakh’s export economy. Stepanakert went from a modest provincial capital to a trade hub, its spokes stretching from Baku to the east and Ardabil in the south all the way through Lachin towards Armenia proper and, by extension, Yerevan. Lumber from the black forests was used to build new developments in Azeri towns, while Persian coal and gas fueled electrical plants in the mountains of Armenia. The benefits to jobs and the economy could not be understated, even if the developments were sure to have the members of Armenia’s hardline ethnic old guard rolling in their graves.

	Mikael and Hagop were purchasing a different kind of cargo to take back with them to their country. Every half a year or so, they were the official envoys of the Mafiya to the burgeoning Baku crime syndicates. The dockside shanties and slum neighborhoods of the capital were rife with smugglers and illicit manufacturing. In particular, the Mafiya had begun a newfound relationship with the Afghan diaspora. Old gunsmiths, famously improvisational and resourceful, moved from the Khyber Pass through Central Asia as the Persian Shah slowly opened the country of Afghanistan to foreign investment and travel. People went where the money was and, in the strange absence of war in Afghanistan, the money was in crime. Afghan gunsmiths quickly made a name for themselves manufacturing increasingly quality illicit firearms from Kabul to Tehran to Baku. Police were finding these weapons as far away as Cairo and Athens, sometimes even China. Chances are, if the weapon wasn’t Tsarist or sold off by a conscript, it was an Afghan-made version of a European firearm.

	Their train had rattled its way through the countryside, belching black smoke from its coal engine, past the dirt roads and farmers working the fields. Mules carried bales of hay and crops, fresh from the summer harvests, to small town markets just as they always had. It was a curious sight, even for someone who had been there many times before. Hagop had been raised with public schools teaching about the war in the Artsakh, and general opinion at the time was that the Azeris were no more than Turkish lackeys at best. Oftentimes, they were just the “Turks of the East” to people, especially older ones like his parents. Many of them still scoffed at the notion of going to Baku for business or, worse, a holiday, despite the fact that it was run by the Shah of Iran now. The holiday season, however, was over, and the regular workers were coming back from their vacation destinations. Ironically, this provided enough cover for Hagop and Mikael as they rode the train with a crowd of returning Azeris and their families.

	The locomotive, one of the many Spanish-designed machines traveling the rails and roads in the Persian kingdom, screeched to a halt as it approached the station. A long blast of its whistle shrilly alerted the passengers to its arrival, waking some from their naps and frightening crying babies. The trip was three hours in total duration, counting the distance of over two-hundred and fifty kilometers and various stops in some of the smaller towns along the track. In Baku, a thick fog had descended upon the coastal city, obscuring most of the buildings that were slowly being rebuilt after the Persians’ four-month siege of the city. Their conquest was swift and met little resistance, but despite the intentions of minimizing collateral damage the Shah’s army still shelled Baku until the last holdouts of the government’s elite units surrendered. The Shah had wanted to unify Azerbaijan’s territory with Iran’s Azeri provinces in the north of the country: for decades, both countries squabbled over claims and nomenclature. Now, officially, the Persian-annexed Azerbaijan region was simply known as “North Azerbaijan.”

	With a rumbling of metal, the doors opened and the train attendants called out through each of the cars that they had reached Baku. Hagop nudged Mikael awake and, groggily, both collected their things. They both wore simple clothes, tan and brown pants with dull cotton shirts tucked in and the sleeves down to cover up their tattoos, each carrying only a small briefcase. They wouldn’t be there for very long. The pair exited off onto the platform and melded in with the crowd, walking quickly to the edge of the station. Baku’s old city train station was remarkably Persian in design, a tan stone building with oriental carvings and tall, arced windows. Atop the castle-like building were four minaret-like towers around the edges, and a large dome in the middle. As they moved quickly off the platform, Hagop felt a tap on his shoulder: he turned around to see Mikael hurriedly lighting up a cigarette with a match. “Shit,” he grumbled. “I tried to smoke on the train but one of those mothers with the screaming kids kept giving me dirty looks.”

	Hagop chuckled and replied: “You know, I think people are starting to say that smoking around babies is a bad thing. It’s bad for them or something… I don’t see it. My parents smoked all the time in the house.”

	“This whole country is just shitty for this sort of stuff,” Mikael observed, looking over his shoulder. Smoking in public places was technically outlawed by the Shah to appease the Islamic clergy that still maintained strong influence in the country. In the outer edges of its territory, this rule was hardly ever enforced, but Mikael had paid fines for it before. “That’s why all the Persians go to Sevan to spend their money. There’s no gambling, no strippers, and no hookers here. I even heard the bars close at midnight. Midnight!”

	Hagop just shrugged and nodded towards the entryway of the train station’s grand, carved arch. “I suppose they’re just better Muslims than we are Christians.”

	Baku’s cobblestone streets bustled with activity. Merchants hawked their products on the street, demanding Hagop and Mikael’s attention. One particular one was selling traditional Azeri musical records, sending a child no older than twelve to ambush the pair while holding a disk up in his hands. “Mister! Mister!” he called out, pointing to the record. “I have music! Meykhana.”

	Meykhana, being a traditional Azerbaijani spoken word to a beat, was popular with the urban youth in Stepanakert. They switched out the lyrics for Armenian stories and experimented by adding in instrumentals with the duduk, guitar, or other instruments. When the kids went to Yerevan to work or travel, they found other likeminded musicians in underground basement clubs. They happened to mingle with, of all people, Ethiopian expatriates who worked and lived in the surprisingly similar religious climate of Armenia. Afro beats and intonation quickly fused into the Armenian-Azeri music, the end result being almost indistinguishable from traditional song and quite unique. It took to the clubs of the casinos in Sevan rather quickly, the drug dens and opium trips warping the music to almost a spiritual level. Young people in their late teens and early twenties would go there to drink, do drugs, have casual sex, and listen to the blended multicultural beats called [i]halum[/i], or “melting.” Being offered a meykhana record on the street seemed old-school at this point for Hagop and Mikael, in the same way that listening to the scratchy recordings of folk music on the radio with their grandparents seemed boring and dull. Pitying the boy, Mikael squatted down: “How much?”

	“Twelve manat!” the boy exclaimed, excited. He pointed to the record again. “It’s very good, it’s my brother’s. He recorded this whole thing.”

	Mikael raised an eyebrow. The manat was still widely-used in Persian Azerbaijan despite the “official” currency being the Iranian toman. It ran about a roughly similar exchange rate to the Armenian dram, a little less valuable as of late. Even so, twelve manat was still too high a price for a simple record. Mikael tried to lower it. “I only have tomans, kid. I can give you six toman. It’s like…” he paused to think for a moment: “Maybe eight or nine manat.”

	The child scoffed. Managing the two currencies at once clearly wasn’t ideal for him or the owner of the stall. But he was bargaining closer to a deal when most people paid him no mind. Mikael reminded him that he could just take his money elsewhere, before the kid shook his head. “Alright,” he agreed. He took a hand off the record and proudly thrust it out towards Mikael, eliciting a rare smile from the Russian criminal. He took it and shook it, then reached into his pocket. Hagop closed in towards his partner, eyes scanning the street to make sure it wasn’t a distraction to get them robbed: a classic trick in the market sections of Caucasian and Persian cities. Nobody came running out of the alleys to steal their wallets, and Hagop relaxed himself. His hand, which had been placed inconspicuously atop the handle of his concealed knife, moved back down to his side. With the record in his hand, Mikael waved the child off: he returned triumphantly to his market stall, money proudly in hand. They continued on their journey down the stone streets of the town.

	Alongside the docks of Baku was a sprawl of corrugated metal warehouses built with a labyrinthian system of alleyways between them. Freight doors opened to dirt roads that led directly to the docks, where the longshoremen would hoist pallets of consumer goods usually across the sea to the Turkmen and Kazakh port cities. Armed guards, some policemen but many private mercenaries hired for anti-piracy functions, strolled along the docks beneath the huge cranes and hills of cargo. Hagop and Mikael descended into the warehouses, turning off a residential street just before a trash-ridden alley, where they reached a rusted iron gate. Hagop withdrew the keys from his pants pocket, jiggling the ring until he got the right one. A worn sign declaring that it was private property dangled limply by one bolt, the other one long since rusted off. He clicked through the lock, pushing the gate on its rusty hinges before locking it again when Mikael walked ahead of them. They navigated through the shadows of the alleyway, turning past clumps of workers on cigarette breaks or rolling dollies of boxes through doors.

	Mikael counted the numbers on the buildings in his head until he found the right one: 1092. He delivered a swift three knocks to the wooden door, listening for the faint sounds of footsteps. A few moments later, the door handle turned and the entryway swung open to reveal an older man, dark-skinned with a hooked nose and grey flecks in his scraggly beard. A loose, tan linen garment flowed down his body: he was their Afghan gunsmith. The man immediately smiled to reveal a row of bright white teeth and extended his hand: “Ah, welcome back! I’ve been expecting you!” he exclaimed in his accented Persian.

“Thank you, Ashraf,” Mikael replied, shaking his hand. The gunsmith’s name was well known amongst the Sevan Mafiya communities: Ashraf Herati. He had supplied arms to groups fighting Shahist incursions into Afghanistan, other tribes, and even as far east as Indian criminals and dissidents. He had moved to Baku after Afghan police raided his village and found him: Ashraf had paid the judge at his trial to sentence exile instead of execution, so he packed his bags and made his way to newly-annexed Azerbaijan to try and find a way to exploit the lawlessness of the region. His employees got to his equipment before the police did or simply bought his tools out of evidence lockers, where they were driven through to Central Asia and put on boats to Baku. His operation downsized and still concerned with being caught again, Ashraf began a contract with the Mafiya to send weapons over the border to Armenia where the legal technicalities of arresting him became more complicated. Whatever his reasons, the Mafiya were glad to have a cheap source of weaponry and ammunition for their hitmen.

“[i]Bache[/i]!” shouted Ashraf into the office of the warehouse. A young man appeared almost instantly in a doorway, wearing a blue suit, jacket open, with no tie on his light grey dress shirt. This was his apprentice, Muhammad Zahir. His hands were black with grease, one of them wiping the other on a handkerchief. “Fetch the Armenians some tea,” he ordered.

	Muhammad returned a few minutes later with a platter of teacups and a kettle. Wordlessly, he sat them down on the low table where the three sat on the carpet and returned to the workshop in the next room. For the next hour, they talked. Hagop and Mikael personally thought that this was a waste of their time, but they knew Ashraf and the other Afghans loved to talk about anything and everything. Most of it revolved around families, of which neither Mikael nor Hagop had: Mikael hadn’t heard from his in Russia since he went to jail and was subsequently released, and Hagop hadn’t talked to his parents ever since his sister died in her car accident years ago. Both of them had on-and-off girlfriends who knew little to nothing about what they really did, but nothing ever got serious for them. Yet Ashraf proudly made small talk about his two sons and two daughters, and what his six siblings were doing in Afghanistan or Persia. The topic went to the weather, then to the latest football scores, then to complaining about the city’s new dumpster ordinance. They finished their [i]chai[/i] and sweets and headed into the workshop.

	Ashraf’s workshop, hidden behind boxes of faux-commercial goods, consisted of as more machines than Hagop or Mikael knew about. From mills to presses, lathes to belt sanders, or welders to drills and hand tools. A few employees worked the Afghan’s stations, assembling components while Muhammad walked around to inspect them. Ashraf had made headway into professionalizing the often-accurate reputation of the Khyber Pass weapons’ poor quality: he had entire drawers full of stolen or bought blueprints, and even more shelves with original models of the firearms he derived from. While material quality often suffered compared to the real designs, these weapons and their ammunition sufficed for the Mafiya’s activity. Ashraf led them to a crate with weapons stacked neatly inside.

	“Let’s see, my friends,” he said, reaching into a pocket to withdraw circular reading glasses that he sat low atop his nose. A manifest was included on top of the crate. “Twenty-five bolt-action rifles, British Lee-Enfield pattern,” he began, noting a classically reproduced weapon in Afghanistan. Mosins were easy enough to just find laying around, but the Afghan guerrillas had been using Lee-Enfields to great effect since the imperial Russians and British played their Great Game in the country. “Ten shotguns, Armenian police pattern; fifteen handguns, Russian Tokarev pattern; and finally five semi-automatics of the K4 type.”

	He reached inside and pulled the wooden receiver of a K4-copy out. The Armenian semi-automatic service carbine had been difficult to reproduce, since the only base weapons were often stolen from armories and subsequently hunted down. Hagop had heard that a thief in Gyumri had been apprehended by the Armenian military police while trying to sell a supply truck’s worth of equipment to racial gangs in the city ghettos. This was the first sample of them that the gunsmith had produced: a trial run. His workshop generally only produced what was reliable and profitable, with little to no special requests. His workforce was just too small. Ashraf handed the weapon to Mikael, who squinted at it and pulled on the charging handle to observe the action. As he fidgeted with the controls, Hagop grabbed one of the black handguns to check the quality. The Afghan put the receipt back into the box and said: “Let me know if you have problems with it. People have been wanting these for a while. More firepower.”

	The Afghan raised his hands to mime shooting a gun and pulled the trigger three times. He chuckled to himself, then asked: “So I’m guessing that briefcase has the money, yes?”

	“It does,” Hagop answered. “The previously agreed-upon sum.”

	Ashraf reached his hand out and Hagop handed over the cash. He popped open the lock to see stacks of tomans inside, to which he began counting. “No counterfeits, yes?” Ashraf asked nonchalantly as he tapped each of the stacks of bills. Mikael laughed at the suggestion.

	“We would never do that to you,” he replied simply, now peering down the sights of the rifle at a nearby wall while he played with the sight adjustment screw. “We save those for our lesser business deals. We like you in Sevan.”

	“[i]Tashakor![/i]” beamed the old man, placing his hand over his heart. He closed up the top of the suitcase and placed it down by the side of the crate. “It seems everything is in order. We’ll handle delivery to the trucks, you don’t need to help. I have Muhammad for the heavy lifting. He’ll also accompany you to the border. [i]Bache![/i]”

	As Muhammad scurried towards the crate, Ashraf turned to walk the Armenians out the door. He informed them that the weapons would be loaded into a truck following in a convoy of coal-haulers that was making its way to the Artsakh, so that they could bury the crate inside of them to avoid the customs and Border Service personnel. Hagop and Mikael had their passports under false names and changes of clothes as employees of the trucking company brought from Armenia. The trucks would load next to the docks by the coal-yard in the evening time, most likely around six or seven. The Armenians thanked the Afghan for his work, before they left. It was still the mid-afternoon as they walked back to the main road and discussed the work ahead. The drive was easy enough, four or five hours to their pickup point in a small Artsakh village. They had done this job many times before: the Border Service in the Artsakh operated out of small outposts were often bored. There were no Ottomans to fight like in the west and no Georgian bandits to shoot at like the north. Their complacency routinely let Hagop and Mikael traffic whatever they wanted through the border.

	In the meantime, Hagop turned to his partner and asked if he was hungry. Mikael shrugged. “Well, I still want to eat before we head out,” the Armenian said. “Let’s go get a to a cafe or something.”