The Colonel's Mistake Read online

  They drove absurdly fast, first along a dirt road and then down a two-lane highway. The engine whined at a high pitch and the wind roared through the open windows, so no one talked. Mark sat in the passenger seat and Daria sat wedged between him and the driver. The land was arid and flat and there was little to see except other cars and an occasional convoy of military vehicles.

  On the outskirts of Baqubah they stopped at a service station and parked behind a row of rusting gas pumps. The woman with the tobacco-stained teeth got out of the pickup and opened the back of a nearby white refrigerator truck. She removed some cartons of processed chicken parts from it, and beckoned to Mark and Daria. When they climbed up into the back, they discovered a trapdoor that lay flush to the floor. The woman pulled it open, exposing a long shallow smuggler’s compartment, and gestured for Mark and Daria to climb in.

  They lay down as instructed, squeezed up next to each other. The trapdoor was lowered. When the chicken parts were stacked back on top of it, the inside of the trapdoor just touched Mark’s nose. The air was cold but he found it preferable to the heat outside. The darkness was absolute.

  Daria gripped his hand. “We’re close now,” she whispered. “This is just to get us past the gates.”

  They drove for maybe ten minutes before the truck came to a stop, at which point Mark heard the muffled sound of Iraqi soldiers talking outside. Which told him they’d arrived at Camp Ashraf, a plot of land Saddam Hussein had given to the MEK decades ago. More recently it had been limping along as a diplomat’s nightmare, with four thousand or so rabidly antiregime Iranians huddled inside and no country willing to take them off Iraq’s hands other than Iran—to kill them. The Iraqis had wanted to shut the place down for years but had defaulted to treating it as a refugee camp/prison until someone figured out what to do with all the MEK soldiers.

  The Iraqi soldiers standing outside the truck posed a series of routine questions—what was the truck carrying, where was it coming from—and then asked for documentation. Mark heard the back door open and observed a sliver of light as it widened around the perimeter of the trapdoor. Then all was darkness and the truck started moving again.

  Two minutes later, it came to a stop. This time the engine was turned off and Mark heard people pulling out the chicken cartons. When the trapdoor was finally pulled open, he saw that he was in a warehouse, surrounded by an unimpressive cadre of unarmed soldiers. They were clad in olive-green uniforms and gathered in a big clump behind the truck, frowning and looking nervous. Half were women.

  A squat, ugly woman stepped forward. She wore a headscarf and prescription glasses that magnified her eyes so that they looked unnaturally big.

  “Sister Daria,” she said, opening her arms. “It has been too long.”

  Her expression conveyed genuine warmth but was tinged with worry. And maybe fear, thought Mark.

  “Welcome to Ashraf,” she continued. “I rejoice that you reached out to us in your hour of need.” When she turned to Mark, her expression turned hard. “And who is your friend?”

  Mark wondered whether this was another of Daria’s double-cross deals.

  Within minutes of getting to Ashraf, she and the squat, bespectacled woman—who turned out to be the camp commander—left to meet privately while he was taken to the other side of the camp, possibly as a prisoner, to have tea and cookies with a couple of grim-faced MEK soldiers.

  They sat in the shade on a concrete patio, just outside an all-male residential unit.

  The soldiers were jumpy, glancing at Mark then scanning the perimeter of the camp, as though they expected to be attacked at any minute. In the distance, across an expanse of flat, burnt desert, stood an Iraqi guard tower.

  “Did my friend say when she was coming back for me?” asked Mark.

  “No.”

  Just past the patio lay a vegetable garden. After sitting in silence for a few minutes, one of the soldiers explained with aggressive pride how they grew much of their own food, and that the MEK had built this camp up from nothing over the years and that the Iraqis would never succeed in shutting it down. Did Mr. Sava know there was a swimming pool?

  Mark had gotten a fleeting glimpse of the “swimming pool” on the way over. All the water had been drained out, and weeds were growing out of cracks in the concrete apron that surrounded it. And the vegetable garden in front of him consisted of little more than a feeble collection of green beans and rows of what looked like wilting lettuce.

  Even the soldiers looked wilted. They were too slender and their uniforms hung too loosely on their frames.

  No, there was nothing in this refugee camp to be proud of, thought Mark. It was a pathetic, dusty, miserable shithole-under-siege in the middle of the desert. And the people who lived here were deluding themselves if they really thought they could topple the regime in Iran. It was a testament to the folly of hanging on to a dream for too long.

  He found the occasional mixed-gender squads of MEK soldiers marching by on a nearby road, going double time—as if it mattered—to be dispiriting, as he did the framed photo of Maryam Minabi, which hung from a post on one corner of the patio. She had green eyes, and her broad smile was framed by a green headscarf. Mark recalled that she’d taken over the leadership of the MEK after her husband had disappeared in the wake of the Iraq War. Now she hung out in France at the MEK headquarters, giving speeches that hardly anyone listened to.

  He gestured to the photo. “She ever leave France to come visit you guys here on the front lines?”

  His question was met by silence and a glare from the soldier closest to him.

  “It must be difficult, not being able to leave the base,” Mark offered a little while later, after he got tired of sipping his tea in silence.

  “One must be willing to pay the price for freedom,” said the soldier, sounding a bit like a robot.

  “Hmm,” said Mark agreeably.

  “I will show you something.” The soldier left and returned with a three-ring binder. Evidence, he said, of atrocities the mullahs had committed against the MEK and the people of Iran. The soldier flipped through photos of gruesome executions and clear evidence of horrific torture: mangled bodies, burnt limbs…

  It was all true, Mark knew, all of these awful tragedies. And every one no doubt was a mini-holocaust for the families involved. But he’d heard so many similar stories coming out of Iran—and Iraq, and Armenia, you name it—that he’d become numb to the misery.

  He wished Daria would show up.

  A half hour later she did, moving quickly.

  “Follow me.”

  Daria started walking off at such a fast clip that Mark had to jog a few steps to catch up.

  “Where are we going?”

  “So the original camp commander, the guy who might have really known whether the uranium ever made it to Ashraf, was shot by a sniper three days ago. People are blaming the mullahs and the Iraqis. Everyone is in a panic.”

  “Anybody got any evidence?”

  “No. They just always blame the mullahs and Iraqis when something goes wrong.”

  “This time maybe they’re right.” Mark wondered whether the sniper was still around, and whether his and Daria’s arrival had been detected.

  “Anyway I explained to the new commander why we’re here and got her to check Ashraf’s records. Turns out that the day after I brought the uranium to Esfahan, one of the unit leaders here was smuggled out of Ashraf.”

  “To pick up the uranium.”

  “Maybe. All we know is that he came back the next day, was smuggled out again a week later, and then disappeared. In between he apparently spent a lot of time at the repair shop. It’s our one lead.”

  She gestured to the large steel-sided warehouse in front of them. “We’re here, now.”

  Mark and Daria stepped into a large bay, where a few disabled armored vehicles and stripped-down Brazilian Cascavel tanks were stored, the sad remnants of what had once been a sizable battalion. One of the armored vehicles was up on
a hydraulic lift. Around the perimeter of the bay were tool shelves, a large drill press, a milling machine, welding equipment, and a large waist-high electroplating bath.

  Two machinists, looking slightly disheveled and apprehensive, stood in front of the tanks. Next to them the new camp commander slouched on a tall three-legged stool. Unruly strands of hair stuck out from under her headscarf and her mouth was set in a deep, tired frown.

  She ordered the machinists to share everything they knew about the unit leader who’d disappeared, and in particular to explain why he’d been visiting the weapons shop in the week prior to his disappearance.

  One of the machinists stepped forward. In Indian-accented English, he recounted that this unit leader, acting under the authority of the old camp commander, had ordered him to help create two replicas of a heavy block of metal.

  “What kind of metal?” asked Daria.

  “Depleted uranium, my sister. He brought it with him.”

  “Depleted uranium?” said Mark.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Are you sure?”

  The machinist shrugged. “He told me it was depleted uranium. And it was very, very heavy. I could barely lift it.”

  “It was just a block?”

  “No, it had six holes in it, I think to accept bolts. Around this big.” With his hands, the machinist indicated it had been about the size of a large tissue box.

  Mark looked at Daria. “Did the package you brought to Esfahan have holes in it?”

  “No.”

  “Sir, it also had the name Lockheed Aeronautics stamped onto it. This means it is from a military airplane, no? Made by the Americans?”

  Depleted uranium was used in armor-piercing bullets and armor plating because it was dense, cheap, and only mildly radioactive, but Mark hadn’t heard of a use for it in planes. “Was this depleted uranium kept in a lead case or anything?” He still wondered whether it was actually the highly enriched uranium.

  “No, it was just wrapped in a towel.”

  “And the unit leader handled it himself?”

  “He did.”

  “And you did what he asked you to? You made the replicas?”

  “Yes, out of lead, as I was ordered to do. And since the block of depleted uranium was plated with cadmium, I plated the lead replicas with cadmium too.” He pointed to the electroplating bath and added, “We used to use cadmium to refinish old weapons that take rust. And molds for lead, they are easy to make.” Almost as an afterthought he said, “The only difference between the original block of depleted uranium and the lead replicas I made was that the replicas were hollow, with a cover that was easy to screw on and off.”

  “Can you draw us a sketch of what this block of depleted uranium and your replicas looked like? To scale?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  The camp commander’s office was a drab room, located in a desultory concrete monolith called the castle, near the center of Camp Ashraf. The carpets were worn and the poorly constructed Chippendale furniture looked ready for the dump. A dim incandescent bulb glowed overhead.

  In the corner sat an old Compaq computer, which Daria used to Google “depleted uranium cadmium aircraft.”

  The computer was connected to the Internet through a phone line and it took several minutes to spit out the information. But when it finally did, thousands of search results came up. The first was a US Federal Aviation Administration memo.

  Mark pulled a chair up next to Daria’s. The memo explained how some planes still used depleted uranium as ballast, either in the tail or the wings, because depleted uranium was remarkably heavy relative to its size. When it was used, it was always plated with cadmium to prevent rust.

  “That’s it,” said Mark. He turned to Daria. “You get it?”

  “That means the uranium could be anywhere in the world by now,” she said.

  “Get what?” said the camp commander.

  Mark stared at the screen for a moment longer. “This is what happened. Your missing unit leader did bring the stolen uranium from Iran back to this camp. The problem then was how to deliver the uranium to its final destination.” Mark tapped on the computer screen. “And this tells us how it was smuggled out of Ashraf and probably out of Iraq—depleted uranium ballast from a Lockheed airplane was replaced with enriched uranium ballast that was encased in lead. Now, even encased in lead the enriched uranium might still have thrown off some radiation. Enough maybe to set off airport sensors if the plane was ever checked. But if the sensors went off, no one would think anything of it, because the original ballast was made of depleted uranium, which also would have thrown off a little radiation. That plane probably could have gone anywhere in the world and no one would have known what it was really carrying.”

  Daria did a series of new searches and discovered that, while most new planes used tungsten as ballast, thousands of Lockheed C-130 military planes still used depleted uranium. Even a few of Lockheed’s civilian planes—older DC-10s and Jetstar business jets—still used it.

  Mark tapped his knee with his hand as he thought. “Do a search of airports in Iraq.”

  At that point, the commander said, “Sister Daria. I tried contacting Paris again while you were retrieving Mr. Sava. There was still no answer.”

  “I have tried many times as well,” said Daria.

  “Something terrible has happened.”

  Daria turned from the computer to face the camp commander. “I fear it.”

  “It was brought on by the mullahs who are looking for this uranium we stole.”

  “I fear that too.”

  “Do you also fear that the wishes of our leaders were not honored? That this uranium was taken somewhere it should not have been?”

  “I do.”

  The commander seemed torn, but only for a moment. “Then I must tell you that while you were retrieving Mr. Sava I spoke with a sister who claims she helped smuggle our missing unit leader out of the camp on the day he disappeared. She believes she was the last person in the camp to see him.”

  For a moment the room was silent.

  “She told me he was traveling with two extremely heavy trunks, and that it took all her strength to help him lift just one. She brought him to Jalaula—it’s a town north of here, not far away.”

  “And from there,” said Mark. “Do you know where he went?”

  “In Jalaula there is a road that branches off and leads to Kirkuk. He was dropped off after this intersection and the sister saw him get in a car with two other men and drive north. If you are right and he was headed for an airport, then they must have gone to Sulaimaniyah. It is the only airport in that direction.”

  Sulaimaniyah was north of their current position, Mark knew. In the Kurdish region of the country.

  “The airport there is new,” said the camp commander. “It was built after the invasion.”

  “What kind of planes can it handle?”

  “Any of the planes you’re looking for.”

  If there was one thing Mark had learned in his twenty years of working for the CIA, it was that most people would believe almost any lie you told them provided that you followed two rules.

  The first was that the lie had to be within the realm of plausibility. The second was that the lie had to be framed in such a way that it didn’t appear to be in the self-interest of the person who was telling it.

  With those rules in mind, Mark handed the deputy director of security at Sulaimaniyah Airport a business card. It had his real name on it, along with a phony title—executive director of security, US Embassy, Baghdad, and a version of the Great Seal of the United States that he’d downloaded from the Internet.

  “Your purpose?”

  Mark pulled out his black diplomatic passport.

  “A joint investigation is being conducted by the US embassy and the Iraqi Department of Border Enforcement.” He gestured to Daria. “This is my assistant.”

  He explained that he needed records of all arrivals and departures from May
and June of this year. “For both commercial and charter flights.”

  Mark wore a charcoal-gray pinstripe suit. A cell phone hung on his belt.

  The security official, a middle-aged man with a Saddam Hussein mustache, frowned. He said he thought it could be arranged—eventually—if the request were made through the proper channels.

  “They’re not classified documents and Border Enforcement and the US Embassy want them now.”

  “For what purpose?”

  Mark glanced around the terminal—it was empty except for himself and Daria, a handful of airport workers, and one family sitting in a waiting area off to the right next to a pile of luggage that consisted of cellophane-bound cardboard boxes. He wrote down a telephone number on the back of one of his business cards. “This is the direct line to the ambassador’s office. His people can answer your questions.”

  The number was actually for a telephone at Camp Ashraf that would be answered by a twenty-two-year-old MEK soldier who’d once studied at the University of Illinois.

  The security official stared uneasily at the number for a moment before saying reluctantly that he would consult with his director of security, who was in Mosul for the week.

  “I can see you are uncomfortable giving Border Enforcement access to your records,” said Mark.

  “It is simply a matter of—”

  “I’m willing to come to an accommodation.”

  “Sir?”

  “Five hours, five hundred dollars.”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “I’ll leave and come back in five hours. I’ll tell the embassy I got lost. That should give you the time you need to fix the records.”

  The deputy director of security stared first at Mark, then at Daria. “And why, sir, would I want to do that?”

  “Listen, I don’t give a shit what happens to Kirkuk or the cash that’s been smuggled through this airport. It’s an Iraqi problem as far as I’m concerned. But you want five hours, it’ll cost you five hundred dollars. If you try to stall without paying me, I’ll call the embassy myself and they’ll have a peshmerga general in the airport within the hour. Those are your options.”