The Colonel's Mistake

by Dan Mayland

  “What do you need, Daria? If I can help I will.”

  “Make sure the right people know I’m here,” she said. “And do it as quickly as you can. That’s all.”

  Mark was dumped just outside the prison gates, which meant that he had to walk three kilometers back to the dusty town of Gobustan—an indignity that someone of his former stature should not have been made to suffer, he thought. It was still dark out and he was tired and irritated that he wasn’t wearing socks or underwear. His feet started to blister and little pebbles kept getting stuck in his shoes.

  You’ve got to be kidding me, he thought.

  He wondered how alarmed Nika would be by this whole incident. As far as she knew, he was a former foreign service officer who’d decided on a midlife career change. Seeing him get carted off like a common criminal by the Azeri security forces would make her scared. And curious. He hoped she’d taken a cab back to her parents’ place, where she lived with her son.

  In Gobustan he managed to convince a young guy who was helping his father open an AzPetrol station to drive him back to Baku for ten Shirvans, payable upon arrival. They careened up the two-lane highway that hugged the coast of the Caspian Sea, driving through a blasted desert wasteland in a wretched old Russian Volga that had dirty blankets for seat covers. The windows of the Volga were closed and the vent fan was going full blast, emitting a piercing whine and blowing in air that smelled like car exhaust.

  To the right, across an expanse of calm sea, massive offshore oil rigs appeared to float above the water in the serene orange light of dawn.

  Nika had left his apartment, but when he called her on her cell phone she picked up after the first ring.

  “Where are you?”

  Her worried tone made him wonder whether she’d slept at all. It also surprised him a bit. They’d only been dating for a couple months. Neither of them had mentioned love or anything like that.

  “Back at my apartment.”

  “Are you in trouble?”

  “Not really.”

  “I called the US embassy. They said they couldn’t do anything about it until morning.”

  “This was all just about some foreign service guy I know. He got picked up drunk on the street and thought maybe I could help him get out of trouble, so he started throwing my name around.”

  “And that is why they have to cart you off like that in the middle of the night?”

  “Yeah, I’m thinking of registering a complaint with my elected representative.”

  “What?”

  Although Nika was pretty fluent in English, sarcasm sometimes went over her head.

  “I’m just kidding,” said Mark, thinking how all it took was a little brush with his old life to bring back the old habits. While working for the CIA, there had been a lot to be sarcastic about. But after quitting he’d resolved not to spend the rest of his life looking at everything with a jaded eye. “Listen,” he said, in as pleasant a voice as he could muster. “I’m sorry about what happened last night. It was a little crazy, I know, but nothing we need to worry about now. Thanks for calling the embassy.”

  He thought about how she’d held her ground in front of the security goons and it made him like her even more than he already did.

  “I’m just glad you’re OK,” she sighed. “Sometimes when these things happen people don’t come back.”

  Mark agreed to tell her all about it over dinner at her place that evening.

  After hanging up, he put on a pair of underwear and socks—which at this point felt like a luxury—and retrieved his silver-rimmed reading glasses and black diplomatic passport.

  Finally, before leaving for the embassy, he gave his apartment a cursory inspection. The place almost looked as though it had been searched, although he didn’t think it had. An orange beach towel lay on the floor outside the bathroom. An unwashed plate from his breakfast yesterday sat on the tile counter near the sink. In the spare bedroom, his computer was surrounded by handwritten notes related to the book he was working on, tentatively titled Soviet Intelligence Operations in the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, 1918–1922.

  Six months ago, Mark would have never let his apartment get so cluttered because it would have made it too difficult to assess whether anything had been moved in his absence. When he was with the CIA, everything had been assigned a precise space. Now there was chaos.

  It was only six thirty in the morning and traffic was light. A few soot-covered minibuses rumbled down the streets. The sidewalk sweepers were out, mostly old women pushing oversized brooms that resembled bundles of kindling. The sight of them sweeping between mulberry trees reminded Mark of why he liked Baku, of why staying on to teach at Western University—to burnish his slender academic credentials before applying for a better teaching job in the US or Europe—hadn’t been such a bad option.

  He’d get this matter with Daria settled quickly, he thought. The death of Campbell was a huge deal, but once the US embassy crew figured out a way to convince the Azeris that Daria didn’t have anything to do with it, she’d be fine. He figured he could get back to his apartment by seven thirty, sleep until noon, and then work on his book for most of the afternoon until it was time for dinner with Nika.

  The embassy was on Azadlyq Avenue, a major thoroughfare that ran north out of the city. Four marines, instead of the usual two, were standing guard outside. All carried M-16 rifles. Since the embassy marines were never posted in Baku for very long, Mark didn’t recognize any of them.

  “Qapali,” said the one manning the guardhouse. “Understand? Closed. Come back nine o’clock.”

  He eyed Mark suspiciously.

  Mark hadn’t shaved in two days and was dressed like a typical Azeri guy—black dress shoes, gray polyester-blend dress slacks, and a rumpled black dress shirt with extra wide lapels. It was the same outfit he’d worn to the beach.

  He took out his diplomatic passport, thankful that he’d ignored the order from Langley to trade it in for a regular one.

  “I’m an American. And I know the embassy doesn’t open until nine, but I need to talk to George Logan right now.”

  The marine examined Mark’s passport.

  “He’s the counselor for political affairs,” said Mark.

  “I know who he is.”

  No you don’t, thought Mark. The marines weren’t in the loop when it came to knowing who worked for the Agency and who didn’t. “Just tell him I’m here to see him. He’ll grant the access.”

  The marine picked up the guardhouse phone and asked whether Logan had arrived at work yet. He hadn’t.

  On an ordinary day, Mark wouldn’t have expected George Logan, his successor as chief of station, to be at work so early. But this was no ordinary day. A former deputy secretary of defense had been shot in downtown Baku. Logan should have been in his office at the embassy, working the phones and the cables all night, acting as a liaison between his in-country operations officers, Washington, and the Azeris, trying to figure out who’d killed Campbell.

  Maybe Logan was meeting with the Azeris now, thought Mark. But if that were the case, someone still had to be manning the phones.

  “Then let me talk to his secretary, or the foreign-service officer assigned to him.”

  The marine studied Mark’s passport again.

  “This is important,” said Mark. “It has to do with Campbell’s assassination. You know about that, don’t you?”

  The marine didn’t respond to Mark’s patronizing tone but he picked up the phone again.

  A few minutes later a heavyset, plain-faced woman emerged from the embassy. They met in the courtyard in front of the building.

  “Thanks for coming down, Vicky,” he said to her. “I know it must be chaos up there.”

  “What do you need?” She sounded frustrated. And dead tired.

  “For you to put me in touch with Logan.”

  “I can’t.”

  Mark knew that Logan carried a beeper twenty-four hours a day. A chief of station was al
ways accessible, which was a part of the reason why Mark had left. In the old days, he might have had contact with Washington once a day or so, sometimes even once a week. But now, with e-mail and videoconferencing, it was like Washington practically ran the station.

  Mark figured Vicky was just giving him the brush-off because she and Logan were busy beyond belief trying to deal with Washington and didn’t want him complicating matters.

  “Listen, I don’t care how you do it, or who you wake up, or what Logan told you to tell me. I’ve got to talk to him. I have information about one of his officers that he needs to know. It’s important. It has to do with Campbell.”

  “You don’t understand, Mark. I’ve been trying to reach him all night. He’s not calling in. The whole seventh floor is pissed to hell,” she said, referring to senior management in Washington, DC.

  “You’ve tried the direct line to his apartment?”

  “Of course.”

  Mark studied her face again. Maybe it wasn’t fatigue that was getting to her. Maybe it was worry. “Is there any reason he’d be AWOL?”

  “Sometimes he forgets to turn on his beeper. He might not even know what happened.”

  “You try the Trudeau House?”

  “Four times. No one’s answering.”

  “The main crew usually doesn’t get there until seven thirty.”

  “I know. That’s when I’m planning on calling for the fifth time.”

  Mark envisioned Daria sitting out in Gobustan Prison. He didn’t think the Azeris would be too rough with her, especially if his visit made them think she had ties to the CIA. But still, there was that wide, pretty mouth and damn-near-perfect skin…Her American mutt genes had mixed with Iranian genes in a way that was undeniably attractive. It was one of the reasons, in addition to being bright and too driven for her own good, that she’d been able to recruit so many male agents.

  She would be a temptation. The sooner Logan started working her case, the better.

  “I’ll go by,” said Mark. “One of the morning crew might know where he is.”

  Washington, DC

  The colonel lowered his head and began to speak the Lord’s Prayer. Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum…

  After finishing, he looked up at the candles flickering near the empty white-marble altar, hoping for a sign. Eventually his knees began to ache.

  The moral law prohibits exposing someone to mortal danger without grave reason, as well as refusing assistance to a person in danger.

  He mumbled the words from the catechism in the dim light.

  Grave reason, grave reason…that was the crux of it. There had been no grave reason for Daria to be exposed to mortal danger. To refuse to assist her now would be a mortal sin.

  But he had already tried, and failed, to assist her. He’d sent Campbell.

  There were other options. But if those options meant prolonging the life of the Iranian regime, would he not be committing another mortal sin of sorts?

  The defense of the common good requires that an unjust aggressor be rendered unable to cause harm.

  The colonel made the sign of the cross and touched his forehead to the back of the wooden pew in front of him.

  He wished it were Sunday morning. The sound of the priest at the altar, facing away from the congregation as he spoke the same words in Latin that had been intoned for centuries—words that were uncorrupted by modern, watered-down notions of good and evil—was always a comfort to him. He only attended the old Latin masses now, the Tridentine ceremonies that reminded him of when he used to sit in the pews between his mother and father, all three of them hungry from skipping breakfast so that when they knelt to receive communion they could do so with a clear conscience.

  The colonel looked at his watch. In an hour he would need to be at the White House. In the meantime, he would keep praying for guidance.

  Mark hailed a cab and got dropped off near the crenellated walls of medieval Baku. At a street-level Turkish breakfast buffet, he bought a round piece of simit bread and black tea to go.

  A short walk brought him to a 125-year-old limestone mansion. Covered in gnarled grapevines and topped with gargoyles, it was a relic of Baku’s first oil-boom years, when rich Europeans like the Nobels and the Rothschilds had developed the oil fields in and around the city. Following the Cold War, the mansion had proved attractive to the CIA because after seventy years of vodka-swilling Russians using it as an overcrowded tenement house, no one had questioned the need to completely gut the place—making it easy for the Agency to install all the surveillance and security equipment that was needed.

  Mark pushed the button on the intercom to the left of the brass plate that read Trudeau House International, Inc., allegedly a financial services company run by expatriate Canadians.

  He’d get in and get out, he thought as he tapped his foot impatiently, taking a swig of tea and looking up at one of the gargoyles, a smiling chimera.

  It was seven thirty. By eight thirty, he figured, he could be back at his apartment. He wouldn’t get much sleep, but if he pounded enough Turkish coffee this afternoon he’d be able to get some work done.

  As he waited for a response, he wondered if the place had changed much since he’d left. He remembered a large oak receptionist’s desk in the entrance hall and well-appointed offices where the Trudeau House’s clients—mainly Azeris with newfound oil wealth and connections to the upper echelons of government—were wooed with excellent CIA-subsidized investment returns. The upper levels housed five additional offices that had sat vacant, waiting for operations officers who had been expected but had never arrived.

  Mark felt a spike in his anxiety level until he reminded himself that he’d left all that political crap behind. He’d changed since quitting the Agency, he thought, and for the better. Teaching college kids about international relations, building a sand castle on the beach with a kid and his mom—those were the kinds of things that were important to him now.

  No one responded to the intercom. He pushed the button again and waited, for longer this time. Again, nothing. Someone should have been there by now, asking politely what the hell he wanted. Unless standards had really slipped under Logan, which Mark thought probable.

  He rang one more time and then walked to the end of the block. He turned right, then right again, down an alley that ran behind the Trudeau House and a series of adjacent buildings. He stopped at a steel door that had a small keypad above the knob. The security codes were changed on a weekly basis, but he’d helped implement the system and knew an override code that had worked in the past.

  He typed in the code, opened the door, and descended a flight of stairs into a bare basement with a low ceiling and a stained but clean concrete floor. At the far end of the room stood another steel door. He typed in a second override code and this door opened as well.

  “Hello?”

  He ascended a staircase that led into a narrow back hallway on the first floor. He called out again, more loudly this time.

  Still no answer. When he opened the door to the interior of the Trudeau House, no one greeted him, a lapse he found deeply unsettling. By now security should have been there. The entrance to the room where all the exterior camera feeds were monitored was a few feet ahead. The door was cracked open a few inches, another anomaly.

  He knocked briefly before pushing the door open. Everything was in its place—the security monitors, a black swivel chair, a metal desk, and the central computer, which was used to set all the security codes. Only the guard was missing. Then Mark noticed that all the security monitor disks—which normally lined the shelves on the back wall—had disappeared.

  He backed out of the room and slowly made his way, via another narrow hallway, to the formal entrance hall in the front of the building. Before opening the door, he paused for a moment, listening for sounds of people on the other side. All he could hear was the hum of the central air conditioner and the muted rumble of cars on the street.

  H
e turned the doorknob. As he stepped into the entrance hall, he noticed that the beige carpet and the cream-colored wall behind the oak desk were stained dark brown with…he squinted, trying to make it out…

  His eyesight was going. He really should get contacts, he thought.

  Mark looked down at his feet and saw that he’d inadvertently stepped on a piece of human tissue, from what body part he couldn’t begin to guess. The brown on the wall was dried blood. Three feet to his left, a body lay facedown, perfectly still, arms at his sides, palms up. A puddle of light from a street-facing window illuminated the man’s head, a portion of which was missing. Beyond him, Mark could see more bodies.

  He pivoted, and the thought of running back the same way he’d come crossed his mind. But if the killers were still in the building, they most certainly already knew he was there. If they wanted to take him out, then he was already dead. He didn’t have a weapon. His heart was going like crazy.

  Mark turned his gaze back to the main room. Once he really started looking, he couldn’t stop himself from staring, struck by the fact that he’d been alive for as long as he had, that he hadn’t just accidentally cut himself and bled to death. Because the people in front of him reminded him that bleeding to death was a terribly easy thing to do.

  He approached the bodies so that he could see who they were. One was the security guard. He’d died with his gun drawn in front of a tiled fireplace. The body Mark had first noticed he now identified as a twenty-five-year-old operations officer, a man who’d been posing as a Canadian financial wizard. He’d been a top recruit from MIT and Mark had been his mentor. The third was a matronly Canadian woman who’d served as the administrator of the Trudeau House without ever knowing it was a CIA front company. She was slumped against the wall behind her desk, beneath an elongated brass sconce. Her chair had fallen over, likely pushed away, Mark thought, as she’d scrambled to try to save herself. All the bodies were riddled with bullet holes; Mark counted twenty, even thirty in each of them.