Dan Mayland – författare

Mark Sava, former CIA station chief of Azerbaijan, lives a quiet life as a professor at Western University in the city of Baku. But his peace is shattered by both the assassination of a high-level American during an international oil conference and the arrest of CIA operations officer Daria Buckingham for the crime.

Sava knows the Iranian American Buckingham well—he personally trained her—and doesn’t believe she had anything to do with the murder, so he visits a CIA control center to discuss the situation with the new station chief. When no one answers the outside intercom, Sava overrides the security code and stumbles upon the grisliest scene of his career. Now, he can’t help but wonder if he really knows Buckingham as well as he thought…

Determined to find out, Sava soon finds himself and a partner caught in the middle of the new Great Game—a deadly intelligence war over oil that has Iran, China, and the United States clawing at each other’s throats. Meanwhile, Colonel Henry Amato, assistant to the US national security advisor, is keeping a close watch on the situation from Washington. His stake in the Great Game is high—and personal.

From the shadows of the world’s most volatile region to the highest levels of Washington politics, The Colonel’s Mistake takes readers on an unforgettable ride where the good, the bad, and the brutal play a deadly chess game of global espionage.

These days, Mark Sava spends more time in tutoring sessions than in cloak-and-dagger rendezvous. The former CIA station chief of Azerbaijan has settled into the modest life of a professor in Baku…until an assassin makes a brazen attempt on his life in the hallowed halls of the national library.

The Azeri government deems Sava, with his complex past, a security threat and orders him out of the country immediately. At the same time, the CIA orders Sava back to the US. But when he receives cryptic photos that lead him to believe his friend John Decker has been kidnapped—Sava knows he has no option but to find Decker.

He teams up with ex–CIA spy and former girlfriend Daria Buckingham, and the two soon find themselves being chased by Chinese intelligence agents through the underworlds of Turkmenistan and Iran, caught in the middle of a secret conflict over oil that has the US and Iran tumbling headlong into war.

Filled with the espionage intrigue and pulse-pounding action that made The Colonel’s Mistake a runaway hit, The Leveling brings to life in electrifying detail one of the most dangerous regions of the globe.

A kidnapped orphan triggers an intelligence war in the Middle East, catapulting top-spy Mark Sava into a desperate race against friend and foe alike.

Azerbaijan didn’t want him. And now Kyrgyzstan may not be able to handle Mark Sava either. The ex–CIA station chief has settled into a new, easy life as a spy for hire. But then his girlfriend, Daria, discovers the private intelligence agency employing Sava is connected to a strange plot involving a mysterious orphan.

As Saudi intelligence agents and the CIA seek out the boy for their own ends, Sava and Daria call on old friend and ex–Navy SEAL John Decker to protect the child while they dig for the truth. Soon Sava has a front-row seat to a black ops war between the CIA, US Naval Intelligence, and foreign forces—and the boy is somehow the key to victory. Sava just wants to find the child a good home, but can he do so before his own broken past proves his undoing?