The Colonel's Mistake (32 page)

Decker vaulted into the surveillance hole.

“Daria’s gone. I did a complete perimeter sweep. There was a car outside the farmhouse. It’s gone too.”

Amato cradled his head in his hands.

Mark said, “We need to double back, pick up the Iranian who’s down, and interrogate him.”

“Firemen already grabbed him,” said Decker.

“You’re sure the second guy on my team doesn’t have her?” asked Amato.

“Your second guy was trying to track me, not Daria.”

Mark turned to Amato. “Why do you care so much what happens with Daria?”

“None of your damn business.” But then Amato appeared to think better of it and said, “I know her parents in Washington, they both work for the State Department.”

“So you’re just a good Samaritan, a guy who’s had a change of heart?”

“A man like you wouldn’t understand.”

“You’re right. I don’t.”

“She was never supposed to have been a target. No one in the MEK or CIA was. That was all Aryanpur, trying to cover his ass so
that when he assumed power no one but Ellis and me would know how he did it. He started killing everyone.”

“Not Minabi.”

“Ellis insisted she be spared, but he’ll kill her soon too. I tried to help Daria by sending Campbell to warn her, by the way, and I tried to get someone to help her in Esfahan.”

“And you did this because she was the daughter of friends.”

“Believe what you want.”

Mark stared at Amato for a moment. Showing that kind of sympathy was the way a normal person might act. But Amato hadn’t gotten to where he was in life by thinking like a normal person.

“You’re full of shit, dude, but whatever.”

“I want to help find her.”

“That much I believe.”

“Aryanpur will have her killed, but probably not before his men interrogate her, to find out who else she’s told about the stolen uranium. We still have time. I’ve severed all my ties to Ellis and the Security Council but Aryanpur doesn’t know that. There’s a chance he’ll tell me where his men are taking her.”

“You’re telling me you could pick up a phone and talk to General Aryanpur? Like now?”

“It would take more than a single call.”

Mark thought about that for a moment.

Amato said, “Sooner or later—probably sooner—people in Washington are going to figure out that I’m not playing their game anymore. When that happens, those two ISA soldiers working for me out there are going to be ordered to take me into custody. Let me call Aryanpur before everything goes to hell.”

“You’re not using a cell phone until we’re in a car, moving fast enough that we’ll be hard to intercept even if we’re tracked,” said Mark.

Decker had the Hyundai stashed nearby. Mark got in the driver’s seat, Decker sat right behind him, and Amato sat across from Decker.

Mark turned right when he got to the main road. After a mile he handed his cell phone back to Amato. “You’re up.”

Amato fumbled the phone because his hands were still cuffed, but he eventually managed to dial the right number. Following a long wait, he spoke in Farsi for a minute and then hung up. “Someone will call back.”

They were hurtling east, on a dark road that led through farmland. Both of Mark’s hands were tight on the steering wheel. “You speak Farsi well,” he said, as a thought suddenly occurred to him. “Ever been to Iran?”

Amato took a long time to answer. “A long time ago. Before the revolution.”

“Not during?”

“I saw some of it.”

“You deal with the hostage situation?”

“I got out just when that hit.”

“What were you doing there in the first place?”

“It’s really not relevant.”

It was dark outside and even darker in the car. Mark glanced in the rearview mirror. Amato’s face was little more than a sinister black shadow.

“Daria had an uncle—Reza Tehrani, he was Minabi’s advisor. I believe you know him.”

Amato didn’t respond. Deep in thought, Mark let the car drift toward the shoulder.

“Watch the road,” said Decker.

“Just for the record, I know why you’re here,” said Mark. “I know who you are.”

Mark glanced in the rearview mirror just as Amato flashed him a nasty look.

“Daria’s uncle is dead,” said Amato. “Aryanpur had him killed two days ago.”

Mark’s cell phone rang and Amato answered it. After five minutes of heated conversation in Farsi, he clicked the phone shut and announced that he’d been talking to Aryanpur. “Daria’s being flown out of the country.”

Mark took his phone back and shut it off. “Can you stop them?”

“I said we had a team here that could interrogate her. But Aryanpur doesn’t trust us when it comes to interrogations. He’s having her taken to an offshore base in the Caspian, on Neft Dashlari.”

Oil Rocks, thought Mark. That was the literal translation. It was a huge Azeri oil-production outpost in the Caspian Sea, a byzantine maze of stilt roads, leaky pipes, bleak communist dormitories built on landfills, and endless oil derricks. Fifty years ago it had been the pride of the Soviet Union. Now the place was a decaying and rusted embarrassment, and much of the infrastructure had succumbed to the rising sea waters. It was still pumping out oil in places, but the BTC pipeline had overshadowed it.

“I know it,” said Mark.

“The Azeris have been leasing out some of the derricks.”

“So I’ve heard.” Mark had also heard that the big players hadn’t been interested. It was too much of a hassle, dealing with the Soviet’s god-awful mess, for too little oil.

“An Iranian oil company Aryanpur controls is leasing extraction rights near the southern end. Aryanpur’s been using it as a military base.”

“Can we intercept them before they get there?”

“No. Aryanpur’s men are going through a rapid extraction contingency plan. Aryanpur hasn’t even talked to them and won’t until they’re off French soil. He just knows where he’ll order Daria taken once his team contacts him.”

“And you think Aryanpur was being straight with you?”

“I gave him an incentive to tell the truth.”

Mark waited for Amato to elaborate.

“I told him my men had captured you. Because I knew he’d want to interrogate you and Daria together, so your stories could be matched against each other.”

“So you offered—”

“To bring you to him.”

“To Neft Dashlari. To be interrogated.”

“I don’t expect you to actually come,” said Amato sharply. “I don’t expect a damn thing out of you, Sava. I told Aryanpur what I had to so he’d tell me where he was taking her.”

“But you’d go if I let you? With or without me?”

“Of course.”

“How would you get there?”

At Le Bourget Airport, Amato said, just outside Paris, a government plane was waiting—assuming Washington hadn’t figured out what he was up to yet. If Mark were to drop him off there, he’d arrive in Baku around the same time as Daria.

As he drove, Mark thought about Neft Dashlari. It was a wretched place. The rotting detritus of an old empire.

He wondered how Nika would react if he were killed there. Would she mourn him? At this point, given all she’d been through on his account, she might be relieved.

He considered the rest of his ties to the world. His students at Western University could easily be taught by someone else. His mother had committed suicide over twenty years ago and he hadn’t spoken to his father since, so ties to parents weren’t an issue. He was on good terms with his two younger brothers and older sister, there was real love there, but he hadn’t seen much of them since joining the Agency.

It really didn’t say great things about his social abilities, he thought, that the only person in this world who had any real need of him was Daria.

“I’ll go with you to Neft Dashlari,” he said to Amato. “But going in is pointless if we don’t have a decent plan to get her out.”

As the C-37A circled over Heydar Aliyev International Airport, Mark had the sense that he was coming home. From up high the polluted Absheron Peninsula didn’t look so dreary, and there were even wide patches of deep green interspersed among the ribbons of road and gray blocks of industry.

Flashes of white reflected off the sea in the Bay of Baku. The long promenade that ran along the sea was clearly visible and, using the promenade as a landmark, Mark was able to pinpoint where his apartment building must be. As the plane descended, he saw cars moving along the highway and it suddenly struck him that none of what had happened since the night he was brought to Gobustan Prison was really relevant to the lives of the vast majority of the people below. If the United States and Iran wanted to claw each other to death, what did they care? Even if the Azeri’s crown jewel, the BTC pipeline, were to be rendered obsolete, the average person wouldn’t be affected much. Despite a state oil fund that had been set up to combat corruption, most of the money was going to the government elite anyway.

Two black Mercedes were waiting for Mark on the tarmac when the plane touched down, the result of a series of calls he’d made while airborne.

He was driven through downtown Baku, with Amato and Decker trailing in the second car, and then up through the Yasamal Slopes section of town, past modest apartment buildings and houses that predated the Soviet period. Just past the green-domed Taza Pir Mosque, in the shadow of one of its minarets, the car stopped.

The streets were crowded with worshippers who had just finished the morning
Fajr
prayer.

A long black Jeep Commander with dark windows pulled up next to the Mercedes.

“Get out,” said Mark’s driver.

Mark did so and then looked behind him. The car that was supposed to have followed with Amato and Decker was nowhere to be seen. A rear door opened on the Jeep Commander. Mark climbed inside.

Orkhan Gambar wore a dark blue suit with pinstripes and smelled of aftershave. The air conditioner was going full blast and it was excessively cold. “Welcome back to Baku,” Orkhan said, frowning, in a tone that Mark sensed was faintly hostile.

“I know who killed Campbell.”

He told Orkhan everything, or nearly so.

Orkhan never questioned the truth of the story. Nor did he seem particularly surprised. Violent plots, gross deception…that was just the way the world worked.

“Of course, even if this coup in Iran was to succeed, Aryanpur would never give up Iran’s nuclear weapons, any more than Khorasani will,” said Orkhan.

“Of course not. Ellis and everyone else at the NSC are deluding themselves.”

Iran was sitting on the world’s fourth-largest reserves of oil in an unfriendly locale. The United States was at their door in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Russia to the north was always a worry. Aryanpur would want the weapons for the same reason Khorasani and the Iranian people did—for protection, pride, and power. To really get rid of the weapons you had to address those issues. Which deposing Khorasani wouldn’t do.

Eventually Mark came around to explaining what had happened to Daria, and that she was being held prisoner in Azeri waters.

Orkhan said, “If what you say is true, then we will evict the Iranians. They have no right to station armed forces at Neft Dashlari. As for your compatriot, I grieve for her.”

“I didn’t come to you looking for sympathy. I came for help.”

“Then I fear you will leave disappointed.”

“I was hired by the CIA to find out who killed Campbell and took out our station in Baku. I found out. And on the flight from Paris, I told my former division chief what I just told you. Bottom line is that the CIA got slaughtered because of something our National Security Council cooked up with Aryanpur. The CIA won’t take that lying down. They certainly won’t let Aryanpur seize power. He’s toast.”

“Toast?”

“Finished. As good as dead. I guarantee you the Agency will try to shut down the phony attack on the
USS Reagan
. But even if it goes off you can be damn sure they’ll find a way to fix it so that Aryanpur never gets his chance to rule Iran. They’ll expose his ties to the National Security Council and once that happens, the Iranians will kill him themselves. There’s nothing either you
or I can do about it. But meanwhile, Aryanpur’s still operating in Azerbaijan, right under your nose. Which means you’re backing the loser in this game and it will come back to bite you.”