The Colonel's Mistake Read online

  His question was met with a tight smile and dull stare.

  “Maybe not,” said Mark. “Anyway, it came to my attention that an MEK cell in Azerbaijan had been attacked at the same time Campbell and the CIA were hit. I figured maybe there was a connection between all this killing. So I looked into it. And you know, I was kind of bummed because I really wasn’t able to find any connection, at least not yet, but along the way I did learn that the MEK recently acquired a small amount of highly enriched uranium. Stole it from the Iranians, who got it from the Chinese. It’s potentially weapons grade, dangerous stuff. Maybe, I thought, this uranium has something to do with all these deaths. So I tried to figure out what the MEK did with it after they stole it. Turns out they brought it to Iraq, where they have a big camp, and then here, to Dubai. Stroke of genius, really, the way they did it.”

  Mark explained how the highly enriched uranium had been stored in the tail ballast of a Jetstar business jet. As he did, he studied Holgan’s face. The man betrayed nothing. But the fingernails of Holgan’s hands, which he was steepling under his chin, had turned white from the pressure he was applying.

  “The thing is, on the same day this plane lands in Dubai, it’s sold—becomes the property of this company called the Doha Group. Naturally, I try to find out who owns the Doha Group. Imagine my surprise when I find out they’re owned by Holgan. Or, if you prefer, by you.”

  “Get to your point.”

  “My point is that the MEK stole uranium from the Iranians and then sold it to Holgan Industries. And I know it.” Mark got up out of the giant chair. “And my colleague Daria Buckingham also knows it. And we both think it has something to do with what happened to Campbell and the CIA in Baku. Daria Buckingham is here in Dubai, by the way. Waiting to hear how our meeting goes.”

  Jimmy Holgan shook his head. “Quite a story. What do your buddies at the CIA think of it?”

  “Oh, I haven’t told them about any of this yet. You see, I like to preserve a little operational flexibility.”

  “Operational flexibility.”

  “Means I don’t like people breathing down my neck, telling me what to do. Or what not to do. Like, say, barging in to see you. I’m not sure Langley would have approved.”

  “I see.”

  “Which brings me to why I came here in the first place. You’ve got two choices. The first is that we play it straight. Meaning you tell me why you bought the uranium from the MEK and what you did with it. Eventually—after I’ve concluded my investigation—I’ll report what you’ve told me, along with everything else I’ve learned, back to the CIA. At which point you can deal with Langley and all the questions they’ll have.”

  “Seeing as I don’t have the information you’re looking for, I’m afraid that’s not a viable option.”

  “I’d think about it.”

  “I have.”

  “The second choice is that both Daria Buckingham and I break off all contacts with the CIA and go to work for Holgan Industries. Of course, we would abide by whatever confidentiality agreement you should see fit to impose. Including one that forbids us from discussing the story I just told you.” Mark looked past Jimmy Holgan Jr., out at the sea of construction cranes dotting the Dubai skyline. Eventually he said, “Naturally, Ms. Buckingham and I would expect to be compensated.”

  Jimmy Holgan Jr. was perfectly motionless as he stared down Mark. “How much?” he said after a time.

  “Four million dollars. Cash will do. Dollars or the equivalent in euros.” Holgan was about to respond when Mark said, “You don’t have to answer now—I’ll come back today at five o’clock. Send one of your representatives to the lobby downstairs to meet me.”

  He paused to let his words sink in before adding, “Of course, if anything were to happen to me in the meantime, Daria Buckingham will issue a preliminary report to both the CIA and appropriate media outlets detailing how Holgan wound up buying stolen uranium from the MEK.” Mark checked his watch. “In fact, she’s prepared to deliver such a report within a half hour if she doesn’t hear from me.”

  “You insult me.”

  “Think it over.”

  Holgan stood up and pressed the intercom button on his deck. “Mr. Sava will be leaving now,” he said, glowering at Mark as he spoke. “Please arrange for an escort.”

  Mark stepped out of the ground-floor lobby of the Iris Bay Tower and was blasted by heat so oppressive he felt as though he’d stepped into a steam room.

  He turned right and began walking down a palm-lined sidewalk, staring straight ahead and not even trying yet to get a make on the men he was certain were following him. After a hundred yards or so he hailed a taxi.

  “Mall of the Emirates.”

  They pulled onto Sheikh Zayed Road and soon were speeding past gleaming new buildings and bleak plots of undeveloped land where foundations for even more new buildings had been laid but where construction had come to a halt. In between were a few construction sites teeming with Indian and Pakistani and Iranian workers, all covered in cement dust. The taxi driver played Arabic techno music and the air conditioner was going full blast. The cloudless sky was an angry gray-blue.

  All over the road, cars darted in and out of crowded lanes. Mark used the rearview mirror to note the make of several behind him.

  “Slow down a bit, would you?”

  The driver shrugged and eased off on the accelerator.

  “A bit more, if you could.”

  The car directly behind them honked and then veered to the side to pass. In the taxi’s rearview mirror, a blue Mercedes sedan about a hundred yards behind them slowed down.

  In front of the main entrance to the Mall of the Emirates were a few benches and a fountain that squirted blasts of water timed to the beat of a digitized version of the “Flight of the Bumblebee.” Mark paid the taxi driver, sat down on one of the benches, and called Daria.

  “At least two,” he said.

  “I’ve got a visual on you.”

  She was behind him, somewhere inside the mall, and he was relieved to be in her orbit. Working in the field with someone was a dance routine of sorts, part choreographed, part improvised, with an underlying rhythm that both partners needed to feel for it to work. The night before on their training run, they had both felt it.

  “Can you see the blue Mercedes?”

  “I have it,” she said.

  “That’s our tail. Point was a gray Lexus that came in just before me.”

  “Was there a wing?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “They rotating positions?”

  “Can’t tell yet.”

  The blue Mercedes had pulled over to the curb not far from the turnoff that led to the mall parking lot. Two men still sat in the car. The gray Lexus had disappeared after rounding a corner on the north side of the building. Mark watched the footpath leading from that corner.

  Soon a man in a blue pinstripe suit, wearing a maroon Sikh turban, appeared from that direction. He passed by Mark without even a glance and went into the mall.

  “Our point,” said Mark.

  “Got him.”

  Mark snapped his cell phone shut. The domed entrance leading into the mall resembled that of a nineteenth-century European train station. He walked through it and toward the shops beyond.

  Daria would be watching from one of the upper levels, wearing a sequined green Muslim robe, a green veil, and shoes with two-inch heels. In her purse would be a red veil, a light black silk robe, a spare pair of flat-heeled shoes, and a digital camera.

  Mark took an escalator to the second floor and walked a quarter mile or so deeper into the mall. Just beyond an Adidas store he came to a public bathroom where he locked himself in one of the back stalls and called Daria again.

  “There’s a wing,” she said. “The point stayed on the ground floor and the tail is a couple hundred yards behind you, but your wing, she surfaced and stuck.”

  “She?”

  “High heels, blue blouse. Tan purse. Looks y
oung and slutty. Waiting right outside the men’s room.”

  “She reeling in the rest of the team?”

  “Uncertain.”

  A little while later Daria said, “She just slipped on glasses.”

  “I’m coming out.”

  Mark walked quickly now, at a pace that stood out. He headed past a Chili’s restaurant and on to the five-star Kempinski Hotel. A red-liveried doorman greeted him as he stepped into the second-floor lobby. He took an elevator to the fifth floor, then quickly descended a stairwell to the ground level where there were seven ways to exit the hotel; it would be impossible for his pursuers to know which one he was going to pick.

  He left via a service exit, made his way back into the mall, and called Daria.

  “I think you’re clear,” she said. “I’m on the wing right now, she’s questioning the valet parking guy in front of the Kempinski. As for the tail and point, I had a visual on them a minute ago and I don’t see how they could have picked you up. How do you feel?”

  “Like I’m good. I’m gonna hole up for a while.”

  Daria’s next call came ten minutes later. “Your tail is staking out the main entrance by the fountain. The point is at the hotel entrance, and the wing is between the car park entrance and the entrance to the indoor ski area, trying to do double duty.”

  Once they’d lost him, Holgan’s surveillance team had spread out and covered the multiple exits as best they could. The way Mark had suspected they would.

  As he exited the mall he intentionally passed within fifty feet of the point man, who was sitting at a bench near the musical fountain.

  “He has you,” said Daria.

  Mark climbed into a taxi. “The Gold Souk Hotel,” he said.

  The Gold Souk Hotel stood adjacent to the gold souk itself—a massive shopping bazaar crammed with shops where people from all over the Middle East came to buy and sell gold jewelry. There was no doorman at the hotel, only a sullen-looking Indian guy at the front desk who didn’t even glance up at Daria and Mark as they passed.

  Inside the shabby room they’d taken the night before, everything was as they’d left it—the voice recorder, the timers, the cameras, their change of clothes…

  Mark walked to the big front window, cracked it open, and pulled back the curtain. The sweet and fruity smell of hookah smoke drifted up from a nearby café. Car horns were honking. They were in an old part of Dubai where the streets were narrower, the sidewalks cracked, and the buildings less glitzy. It was a part of the city that had just evolved gradually over the years, instead of being planned out and built overnight by global construction firms.

  Daria came to his side and for thirty seconds or so they pretended to have a real conversation, so that Holgan’s men—who had followed them from the mall to the hotel—would report back to their boss that Daria Buckingham and Mark Sava were in hiding together, unprotected. They’d say, Sava thinks he’s evaded us. He suspects nothing.

  When Mark was reasonably certain he and Daria had been spotted together, he closed the curtains and donned a woman’s black chador, headscarf, and veil. Daria put on tight black jeans, a sleeveless red blouse, Prada sunglasses, and a New York Yankees baseball cap.

  They left via a store in the back of the hotel and individually made their way to another dumpy hotel across the street. In a room on the third floor, Daria sat down on a frayed easy chair and stared at the LCD screen of a digital camera. She had slipped the camera’s long telephoto lens under the bottom left-hand corner of one of the closed window shades. Slipped underneath another window shade was a digital camcorder, held in place with a tripod.

  “We got movement?” Mark asked, after she clicked a few photos.

  “Just the team that followed us here. They have all the exits covered.”

  “Give it a half hour. They’ll be replaced.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “No way those clowns are breaking down doors.”

  Mark had pegged the team that had followed them to and from the mall as Holgan’s regular security detail. But he was certain that once Holgan was told that Daria Buckingham had been found, and that she was with Mark Sava, Holgan would send a different team to execute a takedown—he wouldn’t be able to resist trying to save himself $4 million and a potential headache. The new team would be an elite force, probably comprised of people already in the know about the uranium, people Holgan trusted to keep their mouths shut no matter what they heard.

  Those were the guys Mark was after.

  On a table in the center of the room, a laptop computer played live video and audio from a wireless webcam hidden in the corner of their room at the Gold Souk Hotel.

  Over the laptop audio, Mark heard his own voice declare, “I’m going to take a shower.”

  The digital voice recorder they’d purchased the night before at a Radio Shack was set on playback. Anyone trying to listen to what was going on in the room would hear the occasional sound of Mark and Daria walking around, using the bathroom, or discussing the logistics of the $4 million cash transfer they believed would take place at five o’clock that evening.

  The attack came at half past two that afternoon. Mark almost missed the initial entry, it was so subtle—just a quick popping sound as the weak door was forced open with a crowbar, followed by the soundless entry of three men, each of whom held a silenced pistol.

  An unshaven guy with an angular face and jet-black hair ordered the other two to search under the bed and in the bathroom. What struck Mark most was that the guy spoke in fluent Farsi.

  All the men were professional, communicating with hand signals and holding their weapons like soldiers. Definitely not MEK, Mark judged. Instead they reminded him of Yaver.

  “You fucker,” he said, thinking of Holgan. He wondered whether Holgan had cut a deal with the Iranian regime.

  After it became evident that the room was empty, one of the men noticed the hidden webcam on top of a curtain rod. The leader picked it up, turned it over in his hands, and then threw it into the wall.

  But it was too late.

  Daria replayed the video of the attack. Whenever she had a good view of one of the attackers’ faces, she paused the recording, cropped and expanded the image, and then saved the file as a still photo.

  Seeing how fast she worked made Mark feel old.

  After she’d compiled decent head shots of all three, he said, “All right then, let’s get these to Bowlan.”

  Mark slid the cash-stuffed briefcase to the side of Holgan’s desk.

  He’d shown up at Holgan Industries headquarters at five o’clock as though nothing had happened and he was just there to collect his money. Only instead of taking off with the cash, he’d demanded to see Holgan again. Jimmy Jr. wouldn’t kill him now and risk exposure, he knew. Not with Daria at large again.

  Where the briefcase had been, Mark placed a laptop computer, turned it so that the screen faced Holgan, and pushed Enter.

  “I’d like you to take a look at this,” he said, and then he methodically walked Holgan step by step through the evidence that he and Daria had accumulated related to the path of the stolen uranium. There were copies of the plans for the hollowed-out tail ballast, of the flight records at Sulaimaniyah Airport, of information about the Lockheed Jetstar that proved the Doha Group had bought the plane from a company controlled by the MEK…Finally there were photos from that afternoon that tied Holgan to a Revolutionary Guard hit squad that had shown up at the Gold Souk Hotel just a few hours ago.

  Holgan, however, didn’t appear particularly threatened, or even interested. He observed the presentation sitting far back in his chair, twirling a gold pen around in his hand and occasionally glancing at his watch. When Mark started explaining how the CIA had helped him identify the leader of the hit squad—evidently he was well-known on the streets of Dubai—Holgan, with little enthusiasm, said, “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Lie with dogs you’re gonna get fleas. You’d be one of the dogs, by the way. A mangy two-pound poodle.
Just take the damn money and get the hell out of here, Sava. You’ve done all right for yourself considering you’re dealing with shit you don’t understand.”

  “It’s not about the money.”

  “I’ve heard that one before.”

  “I won’t take the money.”

  “Now you’re breaking new ground.”

  “I want to know what happened to the stolen uranium. And if I don’t get what I want, I’m going public with all I just showed you as soon as I walk out this door. Or Daria Buckingham will if I can’t.”

  Holgan cradled his head in his hands for a moment. Sounding tired and a little annoyed, he said, “OK. You win. You want information, you got it. It’s not my fault that the National Security Council didn’t send the memo to the CIA.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning the only reason I came up with the cash that’s in front of you now is that James Ellis—that would be the president’s goddamned hand-picked national security advisor!—asked me to. Which is the same reason I bought that plane with the uranium on it—paying forty million for it when the plane itself is worth maybe a quarter of that. And I didn’t even get to keep the damn plane! Furthermore, I didn’t know there was uranium on the thing until you showed up. But I refuse to put Holgan Industries at risk anymore by playing the middle man between all you bumbling government idiots. I’m out—I’m not carrying Ellis’s water anymore. It’s just not worth it.”

  “You know, I’m gonna need more information than that. Because I don’t have a clue as to what the fuck you’re talking about.”

  “Three years ago I get a call from Ellis. He tells me he knows one of Holgan’s subsidiaries—the Doha Group—is working with some top Revolutionary Guard generals in Iran. Which we were.” Holgan jabbed a finger at Mark. “Iran’s a big market. If in ten, twenty years the US and Iran ever put their differences behind them, I want Holgan positioned to do some real business. Of course we’re not allowed to contract with the Iranians directly, but the Doha Group was a foreign subsidiary with no Americans on the payroll. I’ll admit it’s kind of a gray area, and I thought Ellis was going to pressure me to sell Doha, get the hell out of Iran and whatnot, but instead he asks if he can slip a couple of his men into Iran by having them pose as employees of Doha.”