The Colonel's Mistake Read online

  “Listen, Daria, I know the way the system works. It’s easy to get in over your head.” He remembered when they’d first met, how she’d come charging in, twenty-nine years old and all fired up to fight the good fight after being deskbound as a CIA analyst for three years. He’d found her enthusiasm, while naive, to be refreshing. But now he wondered whether that enthusiasm had led her to do something she shouldn’t have. “I’ve been there myself, I’m not perfect.”

  The drip from the sink ticked off a few seconds.

  Eventually Mark said, “I care about you, Daria. I’m trying to help.”

  He was actually telling the truth, but his voice sounded patronizing and false even to himself.

  “You are helping, Mark.” She spoke with forced politeness. “Thanks again for coming for me.”

  “Anything you tell me will stay in this room,” he added.

  For a moment her face seemed to soften, as though she were actually considering confiding in him. But then she went back to her hair, and to whatever dark thoughts were eating away at her.

  Duke University, Fourteen Years Ago

  “Miss? Oh, Miss? Just a moment?”

  Daria eyed the little man walking toward her with suspicion. At first glance there was nothing alarming about him—he was clean-shaven and wore rumpled khaki pants and an ill-fitting brown blazer. Maybe a professor, she thought, looking at the little crow’s-feet wrinkles around his eyes. But the unnerving intensity of his smile made her wary.

  “Miss, I apologize for the intrusion. If I could just have a minute of your time.”

  He spoke in an overly formal tone.

  “I’m actually kind of busy.”

  “It concerns a matter of utmost importance to you.”

  She was on her way to visit a friend at Alspaugh Hall. The slender leaves of the nearby willow oaks were a vibrant spring green. The afternoon sun shone brightly in the cloudless sky. A few classmates lay reading nearby on the lawn. She sensed no immediate danger.

  So she stopped. “OK…Why are you staring at me like that?”

  “You remind me of someone I haven’t seen in a long time.”

  “I didn’t get your name.”

  “My name is Reza Tehrani.”

  An Iranian name, she noted. Which explained the olive skin similar to her own.

  Tehrani unzipped a leather-backed folder and removed a square, faded color photo. “This is the woman you remind me of, dear. That’s me standing next to her, over thirty years ago.”

  Daria saw that Tehrani’s hand was trembling. She clutched her biology textbook a little tighter to her chest.

  “Please, take it.”

  Hesitant but curious, Daria took the photo. The petite woman in the pale green sundress did remind her a little bit of herself.

  “Who is she?”

  “That, my dear…” Tehrani paused for a moment. “That is your mother.”

  “Ah, I think you have the wrong person. That’s not my mother.”

  “I know this comes as a shock—”

  “I said that’s not my mother.”

  “If I knew of another way—”

  “I really am busy.”

  “You have her eyes, her hair, her nose, her skin.” Tehrani’s eyes were tearing up. “She died when you were young. You never knew—”

  “You’re wrong. I have a mother. She lives in Geneva with my father.”

  “You refer to the good woman who raised you. And raised you well from what I can see. But the woman who gave birth to you is the woman you see in this photo.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Look at her. She looks like you, dear. You must know it.”

  “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

  She tried to hand the photo back to him but he wouldn’t take it.

  “The people who raised you—”

  “I’m outta here—”

  “Adopted you when you were a baby. You are old enough now to know the truth. I have waited so long.”

  “I said leave!”

  Daria began to walk away.

  “I am your uncle, my child! Your mother’s younger brother! I mean you no harm.”

  She broke out into a jog.

  “My phone number, I wrote it on the back of the photo!”

  “Get the hell away from me or I’ll call the cops!”

  “Do these people remind you of anyone?”

  Daria stood in her friend’s dorm room. Through a window she could see the lawn outside of Alspaugh Hall, but the man who’d accosted her was no longer there. She laid the old photo he’d given her on her friend’s desk.

  “Julie thinks her brother can get us stuff for margaritas tonight. Can we use your blender?”

  “Yeah, fine.”

  “Yuck, you’re all sweaty. Did you run here?”

  Daria realized she had been running. All the way up to the third floor. “Take a look at the woman in this photo. Who does she look like?”

  “Gimme a second, I’m almost done.” Daria’s friend typed a few more words into her computer, then glanced at the photo. “I’ll pick up some frozen strawberries too. Is that you?”

  Mark paid a visit to Decker in a room across the hall.

  He was lounging on a narrow twin bed that sagged under his weight. One hand was channel-surfing with the TV remote and the other was wedged in his pants above his crotch.

  “News have anything about Campbell?” asked Mark.

  “Negative. Hey, I forgot to buy toothpaste. Can I bum some of yours?”

  Instead of answering, Mark pushed a few buttons on his cell phone, trying to retrieve the list of calls Daria had just placed to her agents. He saw that she had taken the precaution of deleting them. “Change of plan.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Daria’s going to be meeting someone tonight.”

  Decker kept watching the television. He was a bit of a strange bird, thought Mark. A guy who gave the impression that he’d like nothing better than to hang out with his buddies in a frat basement every night, playing beer pong until three in the morning. But instead he was hanging out in Baku. By himself.

  “I’d like you to help me keep an eye on her.”

  Decker turned his head. “I’m game.”

  “Yeah, I figured you would be.” Mark pocketed his phone and sat down on the twin bed adjacent to Decker’s. He took the remote from Decker’s hand and shut off the TV.

  “Actually, I was watching that,” said Decker.

  “Why are you here, John?”

  Decker looked up at him from the bed. “Uh, because you’re paying me, sir.”

  “I mean here in Baku, working on your own. You were only a SEAL for three years.”

  “So?”

  “So were you discharged honorably?”

  “It was a general,” said Decker.

  “That explains a lot.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means you’re working on your own because no big security firm would hire someone with just general discharge papers. Because they know that the navy doesn’t spend over a million bucks training a SEAL just to kick him out early unless they have some serious problems with him.”

  Decker made a lousy attempt to conceal his discomfort.

  Mark said, “I want to know what those problems were.”

  “I tell you what,” said Decker. “You start filling me in on all you know about what’s going on with this Daria chick and people taking potshots at us and I’ll get into my deal. Unless you’re willing to do that, back off and let me do my job.”

  Mark took out his wallet, pulled out $3,000, and placed the money on the end table between the two beds. “There’s a bonus payment in there as an extra thanks for your service,” he said. “Really, I mean it. For what it’s worth I’ll tell the embassy that I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  Mark was walking out of the room when Decker said, “I’m here because if I go back to t
he States with a general, it’s like I might as well have never been in the military. I can’t put that shit on my resume. Not to mention I got family.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “New Hampshire. My father was a marine sergeant, my brother is a marine corporal. We don’t do general discharges.”

  “They know you left the SEALs?”

  “Fuck no.”

  “You planning on telling them?”

  “After I get my general upgraded to an honorable.”

  “That’s what this is all about? That’s why you’re hiding out in Baku?”

  “General discharges are upgraded all the time, and in three months I’ll be eligible to apply for an upgrade myself. If I help out the US government over here, it’ll only help my case.”

  “I’m out of the loop, John. Nothing you do while working for me is going to help you in the slightest. Even what you did in Peters’s apartment. I wish I could say otherwise.”

  “Did I ask for your help?”

  “No, I guess you didn’t.” Mark picked up the remote control again and tapped it on his knee for a few seconds. “Want to tell me what you did to deserve a general?”

  “It was a rules of engagement issue. You don’t have anything to worry about.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning I refused a bullshit order.”

  “To do what?”

  “Take out this Afghani dude.”

  “Why’d you refuse?”

  “Because the guy wasn’t a threat.”

  “Was he armed?”

  “Everyone’s armed over there.”

  “Was it your first time in combat?”

  “I’m telling you it was a bullshit order. My CO was just jumpy and wouldn’t admit it. They offered me a demotion to regular navy, I told them to go screw themselves.”

  Mark tapped the remote on his knee a few more times. Then he shrugged, turned the television back on, and gave the remote back to Decker. “The thing is, Daria can’t know you’re going to be helping me.”

  “I’m not working for her. Just tell me where you want me.”

  “You up for a long night?”

  Decker cracked a wry smile and clicked the TV to a Russian food channel. A fat chef in a white hat was carving up a chicken with a meat cleaver. “At this point, sir, I’m game for almost anything.”

  Daria watched with something bordering on alarm as Mark strolled back into her room, tossed a bag with his stuff in it on one of the two twin beds, and slumped down into a dirt-brown easy chair with squeaky springs.

  “Figure I’ll crash here for tonight if you don’t mind,” he said. “I was thinking we could help protect each other.”

  Daria wondered whether that was just Mark’s way of saying he didn’t trust her. Or whether he was trying to come on to her. Or whether he thought she was incompetent and needed protection. She tried to read his face but found she couldn’t. She should have tried to run while he was next door talking to Decker.

  “I thought you were staying next door. With Decker.”

  “I sent him away.”

  Daria closed her eyes for a moment, relieved. One less person to run from.

  “Why’d you change your mind about him?”

  “I don’t need him anymore. I was just keeping him around for protection when you met your agents, but you made it clear you don’t want us around, so I let him go.”

  “Where’s he going?”

  “If he’s smart, he’ll hole up in the embassy and fly home. Anyway, I figured it’d be safer if we were in the same room.”

  “Fine.”

  The sooner she could get to Astara the better, thought Daria. She should be driving there now.

  “Nice getup.”

  She was wearing designer jeans, gold hoop earrings, a tight T-shirt that accentuated what little chest she had, and a modest amount of glossy red lipstick. She couldn’t tell whether Mark was being sarcastic or not. It bothered her that he’d become so inscrutable, at least to her.

  “It’s how my agents know me. Minus the new hair.”

  What she was wearing, she knew, also had the benefit of lulling older men into thinking she was some naive twenty-five-year-old who was probably loose with her affections, easily impressed by classified information, and too dim-witted to be deceitful. Tonight, though, the only person she was trying to fool was Mark.

  “I know,” he said.

  “I hate wearing makeup.”

  Mark was still staring at her, and it was putting her on edge. She started looking for something in the shoulder bag she’d bought earlier that evening.

  Mark stood up. “I was gonna order us some dinner. There’s a restaurant on the sixteenth floor. They’ll bring it down.”

  “First we’re changing rooms. If someone picks Decker up and he talks, this place’ll be compromised.”

  “Good point. By the way, even though Decker won’t be tailing you tonight, I will be.”

  “I told you, my agents expect—”

  “It’s not open for discussion. You won’t see me, but I’ll be there.”

  She gave him a look that said back off, but he either didn’t get it or didn’t care. She wondered whether he was intentionally making it hard for her to run or just being stubbornly protective.

  “I don’t want your help, Mark.”

  She looked at her watch, thinking she had to get to Astara.

  “Yeah, I’m getting that.”

  Washington, DC

  “The Azeris just let her go?” asked Colonel Amato, upon hearing that Daria was no longer imprisoned at Gobustan.

  “Her release was arranged by Mark Sava, the contract operative I told you about,” said Kaufman.

  “I thought you said we were looking at a couple days, minimum?”

  “Evidently he saw an opportunity.” Kaufman spoke with little enthusiasm.

  “Excellent.” Amato nodded his head as he held his phone to his ear. “Excellent work. I assume that upon her release, Ms. Buckingham was taken to the embassy, for a debrief?”

  “In fact she was not.”

  After a silence, Amato said, “So when’s she coming in?”

  “Whenever Sava decides he doesn’t need her anymore for his investigation.”

  “He’s using her? After what she’s been through?”

  “Our assets in Azerbaijan are limited. He’s doing what he has to. And since Ms. Buckingham was carrying an Iranian passport when she was picked up by the Azeris, it could get sticky if she’s seen approaching our embassy. We haven’t officially acknowledged her as one of our own and the embassy is almost certain to be under surveillance.”

  “Is she at least under protection? After what happened in Baku, under your watch I might add, I’d think protecting your remaining assets would be paramount.”

  “Well, yes. If you count Sava as protection. He’s still with her, and he’s an experienced operative. One of our best.”

  Amato recalled the section of Mark’s file that had detailed his history as an operations officer. “I didn’t see any military experience in his file, nothing to suggest he’s qualified for a real protection detail.”

  “Are you kidding? In the nineties he served as an advisor to our Special Activities Division. Abkhazia, Tajikistan, Nagorno-Karabakh…that’s three civil wars right there that he was in the thick of. The file might not have spelled out all the details, but I can assure you, the guy knows what he’s doing.”

  Amato sighed. “Where are he and Buckingham now?”

  “Baku, I think.”

  “You think?”

  “He didn’t say and I knew better than to ask. He was on a cell phone. It was a thirty-second conversation.”

  “Call him—immediately. If he’s half as good as you seem to think he is, he should be able to find a way to safely bring both Daria Buckingham and himself to the embassy for a debriefing. If he still needs her to help with the investigation she can do it from the embassy.”

  Kaufman sighed. “I ha
ve the last cell number Sava used. But this guy changes his phone number practically every time he makes a call.” He explained about SIM cards. “He’s obnoxiously obsessive about it. I doubt I’ll even be able to reach him until he calls me.”

  Speaking slowly, as if addressing a hapless private, Amato said, “Both Buckingham and Sava need to be questioned about what happened in Baku. And quickly, so the president can properly instruct State on how we can get ahead of this mess. Campbell’s assassination has got the Azeris worried that an intelligence war is about to break out in their country between us and the Iranians. If we don’t play this right, it’s possible the Azeris will restrict all our in-country assets, including the military’s. So I don’t care how you do it, you bring Sava and Buckingham in ASAP.”

  “If that’s the way the president truly feels, I’d advise you to have him communicate the same to the DCI. Because right now you’re the only person who’s pressing me on this. And I don’t take orders from you, Colonel. We’ll hear from Sava when we hear from him.”

  Mark forced himself to stay awake, secretly keeping watch over Daria as he stared up at the swirls in the dark textured ceiling and turned everything over in his head. The Iranians, the Chinese, the pipeline, Campbell, Daria…nothing was in focus.

  She’d returned at midnight from an unproductive meeting with a middle-aged Chinese diplomat and now lay in the twin bed next to his own, curled up into a fetal position. He suspected she was still awake because her breathing was irregular and every so often the sheets rustled in a way that suggested consciousness. They were both fully clothed, ready to bolt at a moment’s notice if need be.

  At one in the morning he got up to go to the bathroom. As he was taking a piss, he dialed Decker’s number.

  “I’m up!” said Decker.

  Mark hung up without speaking and went back to bed. And this time, knowing that he’d transferred the rest of the night watch to Decker, he fell into a deep sleep—until four thirty in the morning, that is, when his cell phone started ringing.

  He fumbled for it in his front pocket. When he finally flipped it open, Decker said, “Get your ass moving, boss!”

  Mark jumped out of bed and turned on the light. Daria was gone. “Where is she?”