The Colonel's Mistake
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Text copyright ©2012 by Dan Mayland.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer
P.O. Box 400818
Las Vegas, NV 89140
ISBN-13: 9781612183350
ISBN-10: 1612183352
To my mother, Nan
And to the memory of my father, Paul
Cursed are those who perform the prayer
unmindful of how they pray
who make of themselves a display
but hold back the small kindness.
—
THE
Q
UR’AN
, S
URA
107
Baku, Azerbaijan
The first week of August was the hottest ever recorded in Baku. The stink of petroleum and sulfur fouled the stagnant air, grapevines wilted, and despite the halfhearted efforts of city employees who drove around in huge watering trucks, the leaves of the olive trees turned brown.
People looked to the sea and shook their heads, incredulous that there still was no sign of the
khazri
, the strong north wind that often blew down from Russia. It has to come soon, they said.
But this summer, what little wind there was drifted slowly up from the south, from the hell-furnaces of Iran’s Kavir and Lut Deserts. The second week of August delivered no relief, nor the third. The children ran through the warm waters of Fountains Square each morning, but by noon the broiling city streets were empty except for air-conditioned cars and wild cats sleeping under sidewalk benches.
The
khazri
finally did come, but not until in the middle of the fourth week.
When it did, the cool wind brought back crowds and carnival music to the long promenade that ran along the Bay of Baku. And at night it brought people out onto their balconies.
Former CIA station chief Mark Sava had never known a city more in love with its balconies than Baku. Even the Soviets, when they’d defaced the city with their concrete housing developments, had been civilized enough to provide a private balcony for every apartment above the first floor. So it was a given that Sava’s own apartment, part of a brand-new twenty-story complex, had one as well.
On the first night the wind started to blow, he was asleep outside on it. Asleep, that is, until someone started knocking on his door.
“Did you hear that?”
The woman who lay next to him slowly opened her eyes. “Hear what?”
“Someone at the door.”
“No.” The woman, whose name was Nika, lifted her head off his chest and stretched her bare, olive-skinned arms. “What time is it?”
A half-moon hung in the sky. Mark picked his wristwatch up off the ground and turned it so that it faced the bleak moonlight, but he didn’t have his reading glasses on, and even squinting he couldn’t distinguish between the hour and minute hands.
Nika took the watch from him and read it herself. “It’s nearly midnight. I should call a taxi.”
Mark figured maybe the knocking had been coming from a neighbor’s apartment. “I’ll drive you.”
Nika smiled and settled her head back on Mark’s shoulder. “OK.”
They were pressed up tight next to each other, sharing a single cushioned lounge chair and surrounded by potted tomato plants. The feel of Nika’s moist breath on his chest, and the heavy weight of her leg atop his own, annoyed him a little.
Eight stories below, the streets of Baku were silent except for the sound of an old Russian delivery truck rumbling over potholes. Even with the breeze, the air remained thick and hot, and it still stank of petroleum.
Mark kissed the top of Nika’s head and closed his eyes, still groggy from the liter bottle of Georgian wine they’d finished earlier that evening. Her hair smelled of sand and saltwater and it reminded him of the day they’d spent together with her son.
But then the knocking started up again, this time with more authority. Nika stiffened. “It’s late,” she said.
“I’ll see who it is.”
Mark lifted himself out of the lounge chair and searched unsuccessfully for his underwear. Another series of rapid-fire knocks broke the silence. Screw it, he thought, giving up. He threw on his shirt and slacks and slipped his bare feet into a pair of black dress shoes. As he stepped inside his apartment, he heard a blunt object being hammered against his front door.
He put his eye to the peephole just in time to see a thickset man in a gray uniform holster his gun. Mark wondered how badly his door had been dented and how much it was going to cost him to fix it.
Ignorant fucker, he thought.
Behind him, Nika flipped on the light and began pulling up her skirt. Mark blinked as his eyes adjusted to the glare. The empty
bottle of wine still sat on his kitchen counter. Nika’s black hair was disheveled. He wanted to shut the light off and return to the quiet peace of the balcony.
Instead he put his eye back to the peephole and saw that several more uniformed men had appeared behind the guy with the gun. Mark turned to Nika.
“It’s state security.”
“What are they doing here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Have you done anything wrong?”
That was a considerably more complicated question than Nika intended it to be. “Not that I’m aware of,” he said, by which he meant not lately.
The banging started up again. With each blow the wooden door flexed. Mark was afraid they were going to break it down.
“Get back,” he said. “Hide in the bedroom.”
“I’m not hiding.”