The Colonel's Mistake by Dan Mayland Page A

able to get a steady supply of oil,” said Mark.
    “If that pipeline gets built, most of the oil that Iran exports will go to China for the next thirty years. The US and Europe can say good-bye to pressuring Iran through oil embargoes.”
    “How definite is this?”
    “Construction has already started in China and Iran. They won’t make any official announcement until they have to, but it’s well past the planning stages.”
    “Did Washington order you to take any countermeasures? Something that could have resulted in blowback?”
    “No. But I was worried to hell the agent who told me all this would get caught. That’s why I was armed at the convention, by the way, even though Logan hadn’t authorized it. I was worried, Mark. For good reason it turns out.”
    “What about the rest of the station? Were they taking countermeasures?”
    “I would have known about anything big. If you ask me, we should have been taking countermeasures, but you know Kaufman. He’s not going to stick his neck out. Maybe the Near East Division was doing something, but if they were, Central Eurasia was out of the loop.”
    Daria went back to staring out the front windshield, looking worried. And angry.
    As Mark studied her face, the feeling of dread that he’d felt in Peters’s apartment washed over him again. He wished that Daria would just walk away from all this. Go back to the States, get a real job, marry someone decent, have a few kids, and enjoy life. She was young enough that she could still do it.
    It’s not worth it, he wanted to tell her. People had been killing each other over control of Central Asia and its resources for nearly two hundred years. First it was the British versus the Russians, then it was the Americans versus the Soviets, and now it was a free-for-all, with Russia, China, and the West all clawing at each other’s throats over oil. It was the latest incarnation of the Great Game—and it would be played the same way it always had been played, with or without her.
    She wouldn’t get out, of course, any more than he would have packed up and gone home himself if someone had told him to twenty years ago. She still believed that there was some largerpurpose, that she was making a difference, that it wasn’t just people killing each other over money.
    Mark said, “So Iran and China have a huge pipeline deal going on, we’re not doing anything about it, and that’s all you know?”
    “That’s all I know.”
    “Fuck it. I’m gonna get to the bottom of this, Daria.”

They bought clothes and essentials in Baku and paid cash for two rooms at the Absheron Hotel. A sixteen-story monolith, it had been the place to stay during the Soviet era but was now a worn-out has-been. It suited their purposes perfectly, though, because the different floors were managed by different hotel operators who barely noticed who was coming and going.
    Inside Daria’s room on the eleventh floor was an ancient refrigerator that sounded like a diesel truck when it kicked on and a stained carpet that looked as though it had been installed around the Brezhnev era. The bathroom, another Soviet relic, featured rusted pipes, a wobbly toilet, and cracked tiles.
    But there were clean sheets, hot water, and a view. The Absheron overlooked the Caspian Sea and the hulking Dom Soviet, the old communist government building which was now a largely deserted curiosity, still waiting its turn, along with the Absheron itself, to be gentrified with new oil money. In front of the Dom Soviet lay a vast asphalt parade ground where the Red Army used to goose-step behind missile launchers.
    Mark followed Daria to her room. He walked to the balcony and drew the blinds closed as she stuck a new SIM card into his cell phone and proceeded to make a series of calls. She spoke inAzeri, Farsi, and even a little Chinese, reflecting the multiethnic composition of her foreign agents, of which she had many.
    Using coded language, she was able to set up meetings with