The Colonel's Mistake Read online

  She looked at him as though he were the one who’d betrayed her.

  Mark said, “Was that an MEK safe house that was hit?”

  “Yeah. With people in it.”

  “It’s not a coincidence that this MEK cell was taken out around the same time as the Baku station.”

  “No shit. But I don’t know how they’re related. Yet.”

  “Why did you come down here now?”

  “For the same reason I talked to my agents in Baku last night—to try to find out why Campbell was assassinated.” A tone of exasperation crept into Daria’s voice. “If the Iranians killed him, the MEK might know something about it through their sources in Iran.”

  “And that’s why you want to talk to this guy Yaver?”

  “Yeah. He was second in command of the cell that got hit and now he’s the leader. And you know what? If you’re hanging around, he’s not going to talk to me. And if the guy waiting for me now suspects I’m in league with you—”

  “That would be Tural?”

  “—he won’t even take me to Yaver.”

  “Get ready, I’m going to push you.”

  Mark suddenly sprang into Daria and shoved her hard, so that she fell backward on the sand.

  She looked up at him, shaken. “What the fuck is the matter with you!”

  “If you’re armed, get out your gun now and point it at me.”

  Daria didn’t need much prompting on that account. She lifted up her chador, pulled out a small pistol from between her jeans and her waist, and pointed it at Mark’s chest.

  “Tural is coming up behind you,” said Mark. “Tell him to back off.”

  “Up yours.”

  “I pushed you so he won’t think we’re working together, Daria.”

  “We’re not.”

  But Daria stood and gestured for Tural to back off, which he did. She kept the gun pointed at Mark. Her arm was shaking a bit.

  “I saw you crying outside that MEK building. You cared a lot about those people who died. They weren’t just agents you were running.”

  “Don’t go there.”

  “You know, Daria, after I found out Logan was dead, I called Kaufman. I told him what had happened and that you were in trouble and that he damn well needed to help get you out of Gobustan before you wound up dead too. You know what he said?” Daria just stared at him. “He said he didn’t trust you. He even thought maybe you had something to do with Campbell’s death.”

  “That’s bullshit.”

  “The reason he didn’t trust you is because you’re half-Iranian. I told him to go stuff it—that you were one of my best officers and that I believed in you. And when it was clear that Kaufman wasn’t going to bend over backward to get you out of Gobustan, I did it myself by cutting a deal with Orkhan.”

  “I didn’t ask you to do all that.”

  “Kaufman would have let you die there. I wasn’t going to let that happen.”

  From the pained look on her face, Mark could see the guilt trip he was serving up was having the desired effect.

  “What do you want from me, Mark?” She sounded weary.

  “The truth.”

  “And then you’ll leave?”

  Mark pretended to consider her proposition. She really didn’t know him that well, he concluded. “OK. You have my word on that.”

  “You’re not going to like it.”

  “I’m not expecting I will.”

  “I’m not who you think I am. You should have listened to Kaufman.”

  “Get on with it, Daria.”

  “I need to talk to Tural first. He’s freaking. Wait here.”

  “I gotta take a leak, but I’ll be right back. Hey, how would you feel about giving me my phone back?”

  “You’ve got to be—”

  “Please.”

  She threw up her hands as she walked away.

  Mark swung by the Ferris wheel.

  “How’d it go?” asked Decker, who’d remained hidden behind it. “You guys patch things up?”

  “Ah, I’d say we still have a few outstanding issues to work through.” Mark crouched behind the metal axle tower and lifted his binoculars to his eyes. As he watched Daria argue with Tural, he explained about how Daria had been two-timing the CIA and secretly sending information to the MEK.

  “Who the hell is the MEK?”

  “Iranian opposition group, trying to overthrow the regime in Iran.”

  “So, they’re the good guys?”

  “Kind of. Not really. You remember the Shah?”

  “The who?”

  “The Shah of Iran, guy who used to rule Iran.”

  “Oh, yeah. Him.”

  Not convinced that Decker really knew who the Shah was, Mark said, “He got overthrown by Ayatollah Khomeini in ’79?”

  “You know, I was born in the eighties.”

  “Anyway, the MEK started out trying to kick the Shah and the US out of Iran. They killed a few Americans and supported the Iranian revolution at first, but then they broke with Khomeini and thousands were executed. Now they claim to support democracy, but they have jack for support among regular Iranians and the organization is run like a militant personality cult. You ask me, the mullahs in Iran and the MEK deserve each other. They’re both fucking nuts. Daria’s gonna be back soon, I gotta blow.”

  “She know I’m here?”

  “I suggested I was just good at following her. Don’t know if she bought it or not. Get back to your car, wait for me to call.”

  Daria handed Mark his cell phone.

  “Hey, thanks.”

  “Walk with me.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “What do you know about my mother?”

  Mark ran a few steps through the sand to catch up to her. “She had to leave Iran right after the revolution, because she was married to an American diplomat. Lives in DC and Geneva now.”

  “Wrong.”

  “What does this have to do with Campbell’s assassination?”

  “I was adopted as a child.”

  “That wasn’t in your file.” Mark glanced behind him and saw Tural was following them. “Where are we going, Daria?”

  “The mother you read about in my file isn’t my birth mother, she was the woman who adopted me.”

  “The Agency checks these things—it would have come up.”

  They reached the street. Daria didn’t even break stride as she crossed the line of trucks waiting to enter Iran. She was headed west, toward the center of town.

  “Well, it didn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  Daria told him about her uncle’s revelation. “I was a normal kid back then, Mark. I had a boyfriend, I thought I was going to be a doctor…” As they reached an intersection and waited for a break in the traffic, her eyes closed for a brief moment, as though she were hoping to transport herself back to that time of innocence. “I wasn’t like I am now…”

  “You’re telling me that’s why Campbell and Peters and everyone at the Trudeau House were killed?”

  “I don’t need your sarcasm.”

  “I don’t have time for bullshit.”

  She glowered at him.

  “Say what you have to say, Daria. Just get it out.”

  “Fine. My real mom was murdered. End of story. Don’t worry, I won’t waste any more of your damn time.”

  “Who did it?”

  “The mullahs. In 1979, during the revolution.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she and her family backed sane people during the revolution and—”

  “The National Front?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I was with my mom when it happened, in our home.”

  “Why didn’t you tell the CIA this?”

  “After it happened, a neighbor took me to the US embassy and dumped me on the first American she saw heading for the entrance. She told him he needed to find this piece of shit Derek Simpson and make him take responsibility.”

  “Whoa, back up. W
ho’s Derek Simpson?”

  “The guy who got my mom pregnant. My real father.”

  “He worked at the embassy?”

  “Yeah. He’d dated my mom for like half a year, everybody knew him, but he ditched her right after she told him she was pregnant. I was a mistake.”

  “Nice guy.”

  “He could have helped her. He could have helped me. Instead he ran. Anyway, the guy I got dumped on was a diplomat named John Buckingham—”

  “Who told you all this? Your uncle?”

  “He and his Iranian wife never even officially adopted me, they just brought me to America after the hostage crisis hit, claimed me as their own, and filed for a birth certificate. Yeah, my uncle told me most of it.”

  Mark just shook his head. He didn’t know what any of this had to do with the current mess, but it was clear she was up to her neck in old grievances and abominations. It didn’t bode well for her, he knew. Or for him. She stopped walking and turned to face him. They stood in the middle of a garbage-strewn alley.

  “Did you ever confront your adoptive parents?”

  “Oh yeah. They admitted everything. They even said they’d tried hard to find Derek Simpson, both in Iran and back in the States. But it was like the guy had never existed. The embassy wouldn’t even acknowledge that he’d worked there.”

  “Was he CIA?” said Mark.

  “Probably.”

  Daria looked down at her feet for a moment, then pulled her chador tightly to her chest.

  “How’d you take the news?” asked Mark.

  “How do you think?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I made peace with my parents but I was still furious—at the mullahs for killing my mother and at my father for what he did to my mom. I wanted to do something to make things right.”

  Out of the corner of his eye Mark saw Tural approaching.

  “Why have we stopped walking?”

  “After the revolution my uncle joined the MEK—that’s how he found out what really happened to my mother, because he had access to MEK spies in the Revolutionary Guard. Anyway, I told him I wanted to join too. He said I was too young, but I kept bugging him and eventually he suggested that as an American citizen I might be more useful in another capacity.”

  “Working for the CIA.”

  “The MEK wanted someone on the inside, someone who could let them know what America was really up to. So I studied Farsi and international law. I practiced taking polygraph tests. It worked. I applied to the CIA and was accepted.” She paused before saying, “That’s it. Now you know. Kaufman was right—you shouldn’t have trusted me. I’m sorry I used you. I’m sorry for everything.”

  Mark considered how oblivious he’d been, how easy he’d been to fool. “Did you ever sell out any of your CIA agents?”

  “No, never. I just had multiple loyalties, that’s all.”

  “Multiple loyalties,” Mark repeated, remembering the slaughter at the Trudeau House. Treason was another word for it.

  “You know as well as I do that I gave the Agency a lot of good information.” Daria jabbed a finger at him. “Information I would never have been able to get if it hadn’t been for my relationship with the MEK. And the MEK and the CIA both want to take down the mullahs. They should be working together anyway. It’s stupid that they’re not.”

  Mark said, “You have ties to the CIA and MEK, and both were hit. The attacks have some connection to you, Daria.”

  “But I don’t know what the connection is. Nor do I know why Campbell was killed. Or why someone tried to kill you.”

  “But you still know a lot more than you’re telling me, don’t you?”

  This time Daria didn’t even try to lie.

  By now Tural had reached them. Mark stepped back a foot, prepared to defend himself, but Tural breezed by him on his way to a beat-up Russian version of a Vespa motor scooter. It was parked in front of a run-down hotel that catered to Iranian men looking for cheap sex just over the border—Love Rooms read a sign in Farsi. Tural hopped on the scooter and Daria took a seat behind him.

  “I can’t just let you just go,” said Mark.

  Daria turned so that she was facing him. Her face was contorted into an expression that fell somewhere between despair and rage. Her chador slipped open, and she gripped the handle of the pistol, holding it so tightly that Mark worried she was going to inadvertently shoot herself. She didn’t point it at him, but said, “You don’t have a fucking choice.”

  Mark stuck a new SIM card in his phone and called Decker.

  “They just took off. Watch the road leading back out of town. She’s probably headed for the mountains and that’s the only way to get there.”

  He jogged back to his Lada, which was still parked by the café. As he started driving out of town, Decker called back.

  “They just passed me. They’re now in a black Land Cruiser, an old beater with a roof rack.”

  “They see you?”

  “No way. I haven’t even pulled out yet.”

  “Follow them, but stay far back. I’ll be coming up behind you.”

  A few minutes later, Decker called again to say that the Land Cruiser had turned left onto a dirt road.

  “I see it and I see you. Fall off, I’ll lead from here.”

  The road was a muddy and rutted disaster. Mark’s Lada labored through enormous potholes and up sharp inclines as it tackled the foothills of the Talysh Mountains, where thick hardwood forests grew between citrus groves and fields planted with tobacco and tea leaves.

  Little private roads frequently branched off, leading to farmhouses with sedge-grass roofs. And unlike the relatively straight coastal highway, where sight lines of a half mile or more were common, this road twisted and turned, rendering Mark’s binoculars useless. Which meant that, once he caught up to the Land Cruiser, he had no choice but to stay close behind, sometimes within a couple hundred yards.

  “I think someone’s following us,” said Tural, sounding a little panicky.

  He’d been staring intently out the back window for the last minute.

  “The gray Lada.” Daria glanced at the rearview mirror. She’d insisted on driving, given how agitated Tural was.

  “You’ve seen it?”

  She had—several times on the more open stretches of road. “It’s a common car.”

  “What if it’s that CIA guy?”

  Daria checked her rearview mirror again but couldn’t see anyone behind them now. “It couldn’t be.”

  “He followed you all the way from Baku.”

  “We left him on foot in Astara.”

  “He could have run back to his car.”

  “Fast enough for him to see where we went? To follow us?”

  Tural went back to peering anxiously out the back window. “If it’s not him, then—”

  “Then it’s just a farmer—”

  “Or whoever hit us in Astara.”

  It was a possibility, Daria knew, although she hadn’t wanted to alarm Tural by voicing her fears. She wondered whether someone had been watching the burned-out safe house in Astara.

  “Go faster!”

  The Land Cruiser was already bouncing all over the road. But Daria sped up a bit more anyway.

  “Are you armed?” she asked Tural.

  “No.”

  They skidded around several turns before rounding a tight curve and nearly driving into a pile of rocks that had slid down a steep bank, blocking the road.

  She threw the Land Cruiser into reverse and backed up, preparing to gun it through a narrow detour had been cut into the lower bank.

  Just then, the gray Lada rounded a corner and stopped suddenly, fifty feet or so behind her, close enough that she was able to see, and recognize, the driver.

  No, it couldn’t be.

  But it was. Somehow he’d found her. Again. And she’d let it happen.

  “Asshole!” she yelled, slamming her hands down on the steering wheel, infuriated at herself, and him. “Asshol
e!”

  She flipped Mark the bird, threw the car into drive, and slammed her foot down on the accelerator.

  No more screwing around, she told herself. This time she was going to stop him for good.

  After ten minutes, the road dead-ended without warning. Mark had lost sight of the Land Cruiser for the last mile, and there was no sign of it now. In front of him rose a steep rocky outcropping, marking the end of the foothills and the beginning of the real mountains. He got out of the car and climbed it, and from the top had a decent view of the land below—a vast green expanse that ended sharply in the distance at the blue sea’s edge.

  Maybe a half mile or so away he saw a farmhouse, in front of which the black Land Cruiser was parked.

  Mark called Decker then jogged back down the road, looking for the turnoff he knew he must have missed. It came up soon on the left, hidden by large oak-tree branches that had been dragged in front of the entrance. He pulled them away, revealing a path. The long grass that covered it had been recently matted down by car wheels in two long parallel strips.

  Mark walked for a quarter mile along the edge of an overgrown citrus grove where unpicked lemons and oranges were rotting on the trees. Eventually a modest one-story house appeared in the distance. It was surrounded by a clay privacy wall common to Muslim homes. The Land Cruiser was parked in front of the wall.

  Behind him, Daria said, “That’s far enough.”

  Mark turned around slowly. Daria was gripping a pistol with both hands, and she was pointing it at him.

  Washington, DC

  Colonel Henry Amato and his boss, National Security Advisor James Ellis, were alone in Ellis’s West Wing corner office when a call from the deputy director of the FBI was patched through on speakerphone.

  “Campbell was shot twice, once in the chest, once in the head,” said the deputy director, reading from a preliminary forensic report. “Spent shell casings recovered at the scene were from a 7.62 mm rifle cartridge. Same goes for the casings we recovered at the Trudeau House.”