The Colonel's Mistake (25 page)

It was in an end-of-year 10-K report, under a heading listed as
Exhibit 21: Subsidiaries of the Registrant
.

“Goddamn,” said Mark, as he squinted, trying to read the page that had loaded onto Daria’s phone. The Doha Group was near the top of a list of over fifty companies, all owned by Holgan Industries. “Holgan’s not just doing business with the Doha Group. They
own
them, just like they own Richter.”

It made Mark’s head spin to keep all the connections straight, but they were there. The uranium had been stolen from the Iranians and delivered to the MEK. The MEK had passed it on to the Doha Group. And the Doha Group was owned by Holgan Industries. Which made Holgan Industries, a huge American firm, the most likely recipient of the stolen uranium.

“Stu Waltrop, this is your lucky night,” said Mark.

“I’m not following.”

“We don’t need him.”

“Why not?”

“Because I already know who to go after next.”

The receptionist at Holgan Industries was a young blond woman with a Texas accent. She wore a pink blouse and matching pink lipstick. Mark’s question appeared to amuse her.

“And do you have an appointment?”

It was eight thirty in the morning. Mark hadn’t slept more than an hour the night before.

“I don’t.”

A pair of thick-necked guards—expats from Oman or Saudi Arabia, Mark guessed—exchanged a look. Wondering whether they had a crazy on their hands.

Holgan Industries had been founded half a century ago by Jimmy Holgan Sr., a former Eagle Scout and graduate of the US Naval Academy. But recently Jimmy Sr. had turned the day-to-day operations of the business over to his son, Jimmy Jr., who had promptly shifted Holgan’s headquarters from Houston to Dubai, to be closer to his customers.

And unless you were the head of a first-world nation, or a third-world despot with gobs of oil, you didn’t just breeze into Jimmy Jr.’s office.

“Then I’m afraid you won’t be able to see Mr. Holgan,” said the receptionist cheerfully.

“My name is Mark Sava. I’m with the CIA.” He produced his diplomatic passport and allowed her to examine it. “If you tell Mr. Holgan I’m here, I believe he’ll want to speak with me.”

“Mr. Holgan doesn’t speak to anybody without an appointment, sir. There are no exceptions.”

“I said he’ll want to speak with me.”

“And what, may I ask, is the nature of your business?”

“The nature of my business involves national security and it’s between Mr. Holgan and myself.”

She stared at him. Mark stared back.

Holgan Industries occupied the top twenty floors of the Iris Bay Tower, an enormous silver banana-shaped building that had sprung up on Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai’s main thoroughfare. But there were no public elevators to Holgan’s upper floors. To even get near Jimmy Holgan Jr., Mark first had to make it past Holgan’s ground-floor lobby.

And what a lobby it was, Mark thought, looking over the marble floor mosaics and gleaming brass doors and brilliant light shafts set off at an angle as though the ceiling had been pierced like a pincushion. The place was cavernous and smelled of disinfectant.

“If you know Mr. Holgan, why haven’t you contacted him directly or arranged for an appointment?”

“I didn’t say that I knew him. I said that he’d want to speak to me.” Mark pointed to the ceiling-mounted security camera behind the receptionist. “He’ll recognize me.”

He gestured to a cluster of overstuffed wingback chairs that formed a conversation pit near the reception counter. “I’ll wait. But not longer than a half hour. What I have to say to Mr. Holgan is time sensitive.”

The receptionist gave him another stare then reluctantly put in a call and gave a professional account of the situation. When she was through, she said, “Your request has been delivered. Beyond that, I don’t know what to tell you.”

Exactly thirty minutes later, two more security guards showed up. Only these guys were Americans, with close-cropped hair and shoulders that barely fit inside their blue blazers. Each carried a Sig Sauer pistol, visible in shoulder holsters beneath their blazers.

Mark was escorted down a long hall to a locked steel door, which opened with an electronic key.

Three more guards, who looked as though they could have been brothers of the first two, stood in a room with a concrete floor, concrete walls, and a ceiling of exposed I-beams.

“We’ll need to search you. Raise your hands above your head.”

Mark did as instructed. First they used a metal detector. Then they did a pat-down.

“I thought that kind of thing was illegal in this country,” said Mark as they worked beneath his belt. No one laughed. Finally he was told to walk through a backscatter machine. They didn’t find any weapons because he wasn’t armed.

One of the guards ushered him—using subtle pushes and pulls as though leading a horse—into a service elevator. After a fast ascent followed by ten minutes of twists and turns down a maze of hallways, they arrived at Jimmy Holgan Jr.’s private reception room.

What appeared to be original Frederick Remington paintings lined the walls and a bronze Remington statue of a cowboy riding a rearing horse dominated one corner of the room. Behind a desk sat a middle-aged secretary, her hair pulled back in a tight bun. She frowned when she saw Mark and the guard.

After quite a bit more silent frowning, she spoke quietly into her phone. Then she cast a disapproving glance at Mark and said, “Mr. Holgan will see you now.” She got up and opened the oversized French doors behind her. The guard began to follow Mark, but the secretary shook her head. “You wait.”

The inner sanctum was a corner office on the top floor and it came with the obligatory sweeping views. A lord in his seat of power looking out over the sea of humanity toiling below, thought Mark. It was diminished only by the fact that there were so many other seats of power, in so many other skyscrapers, visible across the horizon.

A few ten-foot-tall potted cacti had been placed by the panoramic windows. On one of the inner walls, set in a framed glass display box, lay a rolled horse whip, a bolo tie with a fancy turquoise clasp, and a sheriff’s silver star.

“Nice office,” said Mark, as he looked over the display box.

Between all the marble and artsy-fartsy light shafts in the ground-floor lobby, the original Remingtons, and now this office, Mark thought that if he’d been a client actually considering hiring Holgan he’d worry about how much effort was going into impressing people rather than just focusing on delivering a good product. Apparently his sentiment was not mirrored by actual clients, however, because business for Holgan was booming.

“The Arabs like this crap, Mr. Sava.” Holgan was seated behind a vast desk into which a variety of horse-themed scenes—a herd drinking by a river, a lone horse galloping across a plain, another pulling a plow—had been painstakingly carved. “When they visit they want a show. They like to think they’re doing business with a hard-headed cowboy.”

“That would be you?”

Holgan laughed, but it wasn’t a nice laugh. He was a big man, in both height and girth, with bags under his eyes. His teeth were straight and white but they seemed a little too small for his mouth. Mark remembered reading that he was worth around $30 billion.

He tried to wrap his head around that figure, to imagine what it must feel like to be Holgan.
Holy shit
that was a lot of money.

“I just canceled a meeting with the Emirates energy minister to accommodate you. So maybe you should sit down and tell me why you’re here.”

Mark felt swallowed up by the oversized leather chair in front of Holgan’s desk. He wondered whether it had been designed to make people feel small. If so, it was working.

“I work for the CIA. I used to be the station chief in Baku, but now I’m on contract. You already knew that, though, or I wouldn’t be here talking to you right now.”

“I wouldn’t make any assumptions about what I know and what I don’t know.”

“How about Jack Campbell. You know him?”

“Former deputy sec. def.”

“Assassinated in Baku five days ago.”

Jimmy Holgan Jr. fixed his unblinking eyes on Mark for a moment before saying, “So I’d heard.”

“I won’t bore you with all the details, but suffice it to say that Campbell wasn’t the only American killed in Baku. A lot of CIA personnel were also hit. I was hired to figure out who did it. My investigation led me to an Iranian resistance group—the Mojahedin-e Khalq, or MEK as they’re known in Washington. I believe you’re familiar with them?”

His question was met with a tight smile and dull stare.

“Maybe not,” said Mark. “Anyway, it came to my attention that an MEK cell in Azerbaijan had been attacked at the same time Campbell and the CIA were hit. I figured maybe there was a connection between all this killing. So I looked into it. And you know, I was kind of bummed because I really wasn’t able to find any connection, at least not yet, but along the way I did learn that the MEK recently acquired a small amount of highly enriched uranium. Stole it from the Iranians, who got it from the Chinese. It’s potentially weapons grade, dangerous stuff. Maybe, I thought, this uranium has something to do with all these deaths. So I tried to figure out what the MEK did with it after they stole it. Turns out they brought it to Iraq, where they have a big camp, and then here, to Dubai. Stroke of genius, really, the way they did it.”

Mark explained how the highly enriched uranium had been stored in the tail ballast of a Jetstar business jet. As he did, he studied Holgan’s face. The man betrayed nothing. But the fingernails of Holgan’s hands, which he was steepling under his chin, had turned white from the pressure he was applying.

“The thing is, on the same day this plane lands in Dubai, it’s sold—becomes the property of this company called the Doha Group. Naturally, I try to find out who owns the Doha Group. Imagine my surprise when I find out they’re owned by Holgan. Or, if you prefer, by you.”

“Get to your point.”

“My point is that the MEK stole uranium from the Iranians and then sold it to Holgan Industries. And I know it.” Mark got up out of the giant chair. “And my colleague Daria Buckingham also knows it. And we both think it has something to do with what happened to Campbell and the CIA in Baku. Daria Buckingham is here in Dubai, by the way. Waiting to hear how our meeting goes.”

Jimmy Holgan shook his head. “Quite a story. What do your buddies at the CIA think of it?”

“Oh, I haven’t told them about any of this yet. You see, I like to preserve a little operational flexibility.”

“Operational flexibility.”

“Means I don’t like people breathing down my neck, telling me what to do. Or what not to do. Like, say, barging in to see you. I’m not sure Langley would have approved.”

“I see.”

“Which brings me to why I came here in the first place. You’ve got two choices. The first is that we play it straight. Meaning you tell me why you bought the uranium from the MEK and what you did with it. Eventually—after I’ve concluded my investigation—I’ll report what you’ve told me, along with everything else I’ve learned, back to the CIA. At which point you can deal with Langley and all the questions they’ll have.”

“Seeing as I don’t have the information you’re looking for, I’m afraid that’s not a viable option.”

“I’d think about it.”

“I have.”

“The second choice is that both Daria Buckingham and I break off all contacts with the CIA and go to work for Holgan Industries. Of course, we would abide by whatever confidentiality agreement you should see fit to impose. Including one that forbids us from discussing the story I just told you.” Mark looked past Jimmy Holgan Jr., out at the sea of construction cranes dotting the Dubai skyline. Eventually he said, “Naturally, Ms. Buckingham and I would expect to be compensated.”

Jimmy Holgan Jr. was perfectly motionless as he stared down Mark. “How much?” he said after a time.

“Four million dollars. Cash will do. Dollars or the equivalent in euros.” Holgan was about to respond when Mark said, “You don’t have to answer now—I’ll come back today at five o’clock. Send one of your representatives to the lobby downstairs to meet me.”

He paused to let his words sink in before adding, “Of course, if anything were to happen to me in the meantime, Daria Buckingham will issue a preliminary report to both the CIA and appropriate media outlets detailing how Holgan wound up buying stolen uranium from the MEK.” Mark checked his watch. “In fact, she’s prepared to deliver such a report within a half hour if she doesn’t hear from me.”

“You insult me.”

“Think it over.”

Holgan stood up and pressed the intercom button on his deck. “Mr. Sava will be leaving now,” he said, glowering at Mark as he spoke. “Please arrange for an escort.”