The Colonel's Mistake Read Online Free

he’d left. He remembered a large oak receptionist’s desk in the entrance hall and well-appointed offices where the Trudeau House’s clients—mainly Azeris with newfound oil wealth and connections to the upper echelons of government—were wooed with excellent CIA-subsidized investment returns. The upper levels housed five additional offices that had sat vacant, waiting for operations officers who had been expected but had never arrived.
    Mark felt a spike in his anxiety level until he reminded himself that he’d left all that political crap behind. He’d changed since quitting the Agency, he thought, and for the better. Teaching college kids about international relations, building a sand castle on the beach with a kid and his mom—those were the kinds of things that were important to him now.
    No one responded to the intercom. He pushed the button again and waited, for longer this time. Again, nothing. Someone should have been there by now, asking politely what the hell he wanted. Unless standards had really slipped under Logan, which Mark thought probable.
    He rang one more time and then walked to the end of the block. He turned right, then right again, down an alley that ran behind the Trudeau House and a series of adjacent buildings. He stopped at a steel door that had a small keypad above the knob. The security codes were changed on a weekly basis, but he’d helped implement the system and knew an override code that had worked in the past.
    He typed in the code, opened the door, and descended a flight of stairs into a bare basement with a low ceiling and a stained but clean concrete floor. At the far end of the room stood another steel door. He typed in a second override code and this door opened as well.
    “Hello?”
    He ascended a staircase that led into a narrow back hallway on the first floor. He called out again, more loudly this time.
    Still no answer. When he opened the door to the interior of the Trudeau House, no one greeted him, a lapse he found deeply unsettling. By now security should have been there. The entrance to the room where all the exterior camera feeds were monitored was a few feet ahead. The door was cracked open a few inches, another anomaly.
    He knocked briefly before pushing the door open. Everything was in its place—the security monitors, a black swivel chair, a metal desk, and the central computer, which was used to set all the security codes. Only the guard was missing. Then Mark noticed that all the security monitor disks—which normally lined the shelves on the back wall—had disappeared.
    He backed out of the room and slowly made his way, via another narrow hallway, to the formal entrance hall in the front of the building. Before opening the door, he paused for a moment, listening for sounds of people on the other side. All he could hear was the hum of the central air conditioner and the muted rumble of cars on the street.
    He turned the doorknob. As he stepped into the entrance hall, he noticed that the beige carpet and the cream-colored wall behind the oak desk were stained dark brown with…he squinted, trying to make it out…
    His eyesight was going. He really should get contacts, he thought.
    Mark looked down at his feet and saw that he’d inadvertently stepped on a piece of human tissue, from what body part he couldn’t begin to guess. The brown on the wall was dried blood. Three feet to his left, a body lay facedown, perfectly still, arms at his sides, palms up. A puddle of light from a street-facing window illuminated the man’s head, a portion of which was missing. Beyond him, Mark could see more bodies.
    He pivoted, and the thought of running back the same way he’d come crossed his mind. But if the killers were still in the building, they most certainly already knew he was there. If they wanted to take him out, then he was already dead. He didn’t have a weapon. His heart was going like crazy.
    Mark turned his gaze back to the main room. Once he really started