The Colonel's Mistake by Dan Mayland Read Free Book Online Page A

living there, for it had been furnished with care—supple leather couches from Turkey, a fancy espresso maker, dark blue curtains…The bed had been made. Other than the few things in the living room and kitchen that appeared to have been disturbed as the result of a struggle, nothing was out of order.
    Mark went back into the bathroom and examined the body. Decker stood behind him, Glock drawn. There were gunshot wounds on Peters’s arms, but also precise shots to his head and chest, reminiscent of the clustering Mark had seen at the Trudeau House. The body rested in a seated position with one arm hanging over the side of the tub, like a modern-day
Death of Marat
.
    Mark noted the purple livor mortis on the hand outside the tub. He squeezed it gently between his forefinger and thumb. Peters’s skin remained purple. The arm and fingers were stiff. He was no expert and he knew that estimating the time of death, especially in a stiflingly hot apartment, was a crapshoot in the best of circumstances. But he guessed Peters had been dead for around as long as the people at the Trudeau House.
    “You better call your contact at the embassy.” Mark glanced at Decker.
    “Yes, sir.”
    But Decker didn’t move. His lips were pressed tightly together and he was breathing through his nose as he stared at Peters. Sweat glistened on his forehead. The air was hot, easily in the upper nineties. Behind Decker, sunlight streamed into the apartment through large sliding glass doors that led to a balcony. Mark had noticed a window-unit air conditioner in the living room, but it wasn’t on.
    “Come on,” said Mark. “We’ve seen enough.”
    Decker still didn’t move, so Mark turned around and grabbed his elbow. “Come on, buddy, let’s get some air.”
    They retreated to the balcony, where Decker crouched down and cradled his big head in his big hands for a moment. “It’s just the heat,” he said.
    “Compared to last week this is nothing.”
    Decker took a deep breath. “I’ll call the embassy.”
    “I think that’s a good idea.”
    Just then Mark noticed an irritating flash of light, like an errant ray of sunshine, fixing on his eye. The next second he was rocketing sideways, tackled by Decker.
    He blacked out momentarily. When he came to, Decker was on top of him.
    The wind had been knocked out of his lungs, rendering him unable to speak. He tried to lift his hands up to Decker’s throat, intending to choke him, but Decker pushed them down.
    “Keep below the wall.” Decker gestured with his chin to the waist-high brick parapet on the edge of the balcony.
    Mark kept quiet until the excruciating pain gripping his chest subsided a bit. “Get the fuck off me.”
    “Someone just took a shot at you, sir.”
    “I said get off me!” The remains of Mark’s crushed reading glasses slipped out of his shirt pocket. He could smell lamb meat—probably from a
döner
kebab—on Decker’s breath.
    “Check out the door,” said Decker.
    Mark looked up and observed a tiny bullet hole right around where his head had been.
    “I saw the red sight dot on your face.” Decker rolled off him but stayed below the balcony wall. “The bullet hit the far wall at about the same height it penetrated the glass. Judging from the angle, whoever took a shot at you has to be almost right across from us.”
    That would be the Kura Araksvodstroi apartment complex, thought Mark, with a constricting feeling of dread and anger. A run-down 1950s-era Soviet behemoth, it was a veritable rabbit warren of dilapidated apartments. A shooter could hide for weeks in that building and never be found.
    He looked at the sliding glass door again, just to confirm that he wasn’t going insane. The bullet hole was still there. He suddenly felt old. He wondered what underworld he’d let himself get sucked into, and how he could get the hell out.
    They rolled into the apartment, keeping close to the ground. But when Decker went to open the door to the common hall,