Black Ops

“The Tsar understood that he could not tolerate doubt or criticism. And so Ivan set out for Tver, where the Metropolitan lived. On the way, he heard a rumor that the people and the administration in Russia’s second-largest city, Great Novgorod, were unhappy with having to support Oprichina.

“Just as soon as he had watched Metropolitan Philip being choked to death, the Tsar went to Great Novgorod, where, over the course of five weeks, the army of the Oprichina, often helped personally by Ivan himself, raped every female they could find, massacred every man they could find, and destroyed every farmhouse, warehouse, barn, monastery, church, every crop in the fields, every horse, cow, chicken—”

“At the risk of repeating myself,” Castillo interrupted, “nice guy.”

The look she gave him was one of genuine annoyance.

What’s that all about?

How long is this history lecture going to last?

Where the hell is she going with this?

She went there immediately.

“And so, Colonel Castillo, what we now call the SVR was born.”

“Excuse me?”

“Over the years, it has been known by different names, of course. And it actually didn’t have a name of its own, other than the Oprichina, a state within a state, until Tsar Nicholas the First. After Nicholas put down the Decembrist Revolution in 1825, he reorganized the trusted elements of the Oprichina into what he called the Third Section.”

Castillo looked at her but said nothing. He saw that Davidson was also now looking at her in what could be either confusion or curiosity.

“That reincarnation of the Oprichina lasted until 1917, when the Soviets renamed it the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for the Suppression of Counterrevolution and Sabotage—acronym CHEKA.”

“That sounds as if you’re saying that the Tsar’s secret police just changed sides, became Communists,” Castillo said.

It was his first real comment during the long history lesson.

“You’re saying two things, you realize,” Svetlana said. “That the Oprichina changed sides is one, that the Oprichina became Communist is another. They never change sides. They may work for a different master, but they never become anything other than what they were, members of the Oprichina.”

With a hint of annoyance in his voice, Castillo said, “Svetlana, the first head of the CHEKA—Dzerzhinsky—was a lifelong revolutionary, a Communist. He spent most of his life in one Tsarist jail or another before the Communist revolution.”

“Challenge your sure and certain knowledge of this with these facts, Colonel,” Svetlana said. “Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky was born on the family’s estate in western Belarus. The Dziarzhynava family was of the original one thousand families in Ivan’s Oprichina. The estate was never confiscated by the Bolsheviks or the Mensheviks or the Communists after they took power. The family owns it to this day.

“The Tsar’s Imperial Prisons were controlled by the Third Section. How well one fared in them—or whether one was actually in a prison, or was just on the roster—depended on how well one was regarded by the Oprichina. The fact that the history books paint the tale of this heroic revolutionary languishing, starved and beaten, for years in a Tsarist prison cell doesn’t make it true.”

She lit another cigarette, considered her thoughts, then went on:

“And don’t you think it a little odd that Lenin appointed Dzerzhinsky to head the CHEKA and kept him there when there were so many deserving and reasonably talented Communists close to him?”

Castillo said what he was thinking: “I’m going to have to think about this.”

She nodded as if she expected that would be his reply.

“The CHEKA was reorganized after the counterrevolution of 1922 as the GPU, which was renamed later the OGPU. A man named Yaakov Peters was named to head it. By Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky, who was minister of the interior, which controlled the OGPU.

“Dzerzhinsky died of a heart attack in 1926. And there were constant reorganizations and renaming after that. In ’34, the OGPU became the NKVD. In ’43, the NKGB—People’s Commissariat for State Security—was split off from the NKVD. And in ’46, after the Great War, it became the MGB, Ministry of State Security.”

“And you are suggesting, are you, that this state within a state . . .”

“The Oprichina,” she furnished.

“. . . the Oprichina was in charge of everything? Only the names changed and the Oprichina walked through the raindrops of the purges they had over there at least once a year?”

“You’re putting together things that don’t belong together,” she said. “Yes, the Oprichina remained—remains—in charge. No, not all the oprichniki managed to live through all the purges. Enough did, of course, in order to maintain the Oprichina and learn from the mistakes made.”

“You’re saying the Oprichina exists today?” Castillo said.

“Of course it does. Russia is under an oprichnik.”

“Putin?”

“Who else?”

“And you and your brother were—are—oprichniki?”

“And my husband is.”

“I’m a little confused, Svetlana. From what I understand, the intelligence services live very well in Russia. And from what you’ve just told me, you and your brother and your husband are members of this state within a state that lives very, very well.”

She nodded.

“So then why did you defect?”

She replied by asking a question.

“What do you really know about Vladimir Putin?”

Plenty—far more than you think I do.

“That, for example,” he replied somewhat defensively, “while Putin’s grandfather might really have been Stalin’s cook during the Second World War, he was also a political commissar in the Red Army. Including, among other places, Stalingrad.”

I said that because her attitude pisses me off.

What I should’ve said was, “Very little.” And the look in Jack’s eyes confirms that I should have.

She smiled. “So you have read a little about my country?”

She’s trying to make me mad. And succeeding.

“Colonel, you had best stop thinking about Russia as your country,” Castillo said. And then his mouth ran away with him. “But since you seem so curious about Mr. Putin, I know that his father was not foreman in a locomotive factory, or whatever the official bio has him doing, but was at least a colonel in the KGB.”

“Actually, a general. I’m impressed.”

“Charley, why don’t we call this off for tonight?” Davidson asked. “I don’t know about you, but I’m beat.”

Meaning, of course, that you think I’m about to lose it.

And my behavior suggests that I am.

What the hell is the matter with me?

“Yeah, me, too. It’s been a very long day. Couple of days,” Castillo said, then stood.

Svetlana said: “You said your question is, ‘Why did we defect?’ I am about to tell you.”

“Okay, tell me,” Castillo said more than a little sharply, and sat down.

“Because we came to the conclusion that sooner or later, Mr. Putin was going to get around to purifying us. We know too much. We have one family member who has, if not defected, done the next thing to it.”

“Really?” Castillo asked sarcastically.

“Really,” she said. “I don’t think Putin would throw us to starving dogs or off the Kremlin wall, but keeping us on drugs in a mental hospital for the rest of our lives seemed a distinct possibility.”

Castillo looked into her eyes.

I’ll be damned if I don’t believe her.

Svetlana smiled wanly and shrugged. “I told you that you weren’t going to believe me.”

“And why did you want to come here?” Castillo asked.

“We have a relative here, who saw what was going to happen long before we did. And got out in the chaos, when the Soviet Union was falling apart.”

“And he’s here?”

“Somewhere here. I don’t know exactly where. I was hoping, frankly, that you’d help me find him. His name is Aleksandr Pevsner. His mother and my mother were sisters.”

Castillo was quiet a long moment, hoping that he appeared to be in thought, not caught off guard.

“I’ve heard the name, of course,” he finally said as he stood up. “The last I heard, there were thirteen Interpol warrants out for him.”

He motioned for her to go to the door.

“Agent Britton will take you to your room, Colonel. If you need anything, ask her. Breakfast will be served at seven-thirty. I expect you and your brother to be there.”

She ground out her cigarette, stood, and walked through the door to the bedroom without saying anything.

Davidson followed her, and Castillo heard murmured conversation between Davidson and Sandra Britton, and then the sound of the door closing.

Davidson came back into the office.

“Thanks, Jack,” Castillo said.

“For what?”

“You know damned well for what.”

“Okay. Then you’re welcome,” Davidson said, then added, “Pevsner!”

“Jesus Christ!”

“That would explain why they came to you in Germany,” Davidson said. “They know you know him.”

“I don’t think so. If they were in touch with Pevsner, and he wanted to get them out, he would have sent planes and people. Alex is very good at that sort of thing.”

“What did you think of that state-within-a-state business she fed us?”

“It may be proof that I was in no shape to interrogate anybody, much less a pro like that one. I think it’s probably true.”

“Me, too. You never heard anything like that before?”

“That the SVR is a separate class within Russian society, sure. Not that it goes back to Ivan the Terrible with the same people.”

“I always forget not to look in the mirror when I’m thinking about the Russians,” Davidson confessed. “Maybe because I’m a half, two-thirds, a bunch of Russian myself. Those Russians are not like our Russians. I should write that on the palm of my hand.”

“How’d you do with those account numbers?”

“It worked the way she said it would. But no names.” He paused. “Christ, her face when you told her we had the chip. If looks could kill, in other words. I almost felt sorry for her.”

“Feeling sorry for Little Red Under Britches would be very dangerous.”

Davidson started to speak, stopped, and then went on: “I’m glad you said that, Charley. Otherwise, Colonel, sir, I would have had to say it to you, and sometimes you are not as grateful of my wise counsel as you should be.”

Castillo gave him the finger.

“Come on, let’s go out to the quincho and see how the professionals did with the colonel. And get those account numbers to Two-Gun and Mrs. Sanders, to see what they make of them.”

“I don’t suppose we could stop in the living room and have a little taste on the way, could we? Trying to read that dame wore me out.”

“Every once in a great while, Sergeant Major, you have a great idea.”

[THREE]

“First impressions,” Edgar Delchamps said. “Berezovsky is what he says he is, and you don’t get to be the Berlin rezident unless you are very, very good. It’s almost as important as a posting to Washington or the UN.

“Second, I have the feeling he’s not used to being on the receiving end of being scared, which both supports the previous impression and may explain why, I think, operative word think, he has been telling us the truth, and will continue to do so. We didn’t get into many specifics. I want to do that tomorrow, after I have a chance to ask some questions to verify the unimportant stuff he gave us.” He paused thoughtfully, then waved at Alex Darby. “Alex?”

“I agree. I wanted to get more into why they defected, but there wasn’t the chance.”

“According to Little Red Under Britches,” Castillo said, “they were afraid of getting thrown out with the bathwater when Putin inevitably cleans house.”

Castillo raised his eyebrows, asking for Delchamps’s and Darby’s reaction to that.

“Credible,” Darby said, and Delchamps nodded his agreement.

“Did Aleksandr Pevsner’s name come up?”

Darby and Delchamps shook their heads.

“All we know about him,” Castillo said to ensure everyone had the same story, “is that there are fourteen Interpol warrants out for him.”

Everybody nodded their understanding.

“What did she have to say about Pevsner?” Delchamps asked.

“They’re cousins. His mother and theirs are sisters. He was an oprichniki who got out—”

“A what?” Delchamps said.

“An oprichniki is a member of the Oprichina, the secret police state-within-the-state that goes back to Ivan the Terrible. She gave us quite a history lesson. And Jack and I think it’s probably true.”

“Wow!” Darby said.

“Anyway, she says Pevsner got out when everything was upgefukt when the Soviet Union was coming apart—”

“A lot of them got out when that happened,” Delchamps offered. “It explains why the Russian mafia suddenly became so successful: Three-quarters of them are ex-KGB.”

Castillo nodded. “—and that he’s here. She doesn’t know where.”

“At noon he was in Bariloche,” Alfredo Munz offered. “And there was no indication that he planned to go anywhere.”

Alfredo, my friend, Castillo thought, you have just earned your OOA salary for the rest of this year—and for six months of next year.

And wasn’t I smart to put you on the payroll?

“Alfredo, I’m thinking I may have to go there. Do you think Duffy can arrange for me to borrow his friend’s Aero Commander again?”

“Probably,” Munz said. “You can ask him in the morning when he comes here?”

“ ‘When he comes here’?” Castillo parroted incredulously.

“I thought it better to tell him you were here than for him to find out himself then think you were trying to keep something from him. Which would have destroyed his current—if fragile—belief that you are a wonderful human being.”

And wasn’t I stupid not to realize that the former head of SIDE was not going to ask anybody’s advice—or permission—before doing what he thought was obviously the appropriate thing to do?

“What time’s he coming?”

“I invited him for breakfast,” Munz said.

“You tell him who’s here?”

Munz shook his head. “I didn’t know how you’d feel about that.”

“Well, see if you can get in touch with him and convince him that we don’t need any help in dealing with our guests.”

Munz nodded.

“Prefacing this by saying I don’t think any of them are going to try to escape—operative words don’t think—how do we keep our chickens in the coop overnight?” Castillo asked. He looked at Sergeant Kensington. “Bob?”

“I just checked the motion sensors, Colonel. A-OK. I also took a look at the house from the driveway. Maybe the colonel and the lady could get into the drive—where they would set off the sensors—by making a rope from sheets. But I don’t think Sof’ya or her mother could climb down a rope.

“So we leave the floodlights on in the backyard. The guy on the radio—and, by the way, I checked out Mr. and Mrs. Britton on the AFC—would see anyone out there, and then they’d have to get over the fence.

“What I would suggest, Colonel, is that we station one guy in the foyer of the house, have another guy wandering around, and someone on the radio. And then change the team around, so the guy on the radio could get a little sleep. So I see it as me, the Brittons, and somebody else.”

Castillo had used the military technique of soliciting opinions starting with the junior member. As he was trying to decide who would be the least pissed off by being selected as the next-to-junior member, Tony Santini jumped in and answered the question for him.

“Let Sandra get some sleep,” Santini said, “so she can deal with the women tomorrow. I’ll take her place.”

Castillo looked around and saw that the suggestion met everyone’s approval.

“Anybody else?” he asked.

There were no takers.

“Okay. That’s it. I’m off to bed. Breakfast at half past seven.”

[FOUR]

Stripped to his T-shirt and shorts, Castillo walked into the bathroom of the master suite—everything but the doors and ceiling was either marble or mirrors—carrying his toilet kit and a clean set of underwear.

He laid the toilet kit on the marble, twin-basin sink, then pulled his T-shirt off, balled it up, and took a basketball shot at the wicker laundry basket against the wall.

“Three-pointer!” he said, then pulled off his shorts. They dropped to the floor. He put one hand on the sink to steady himself, then kicked the shorts into the air and grabbed them. He balled them up and took another shot at the laundry basket.

“Shit,” he said, and walked to the basket to pick them up.

As he dropped the shorts into the laundry basket, he noticed a door. He had seen it before, of course. The architect who had designed the house had taken into consideration the possibility that the occupants of the master suite would reproduce. Thus, the room next door, the smallest of the three on the floor, could serve as the nursery. It certainly wasn’t being put to that use now, but the fact remained that there was a door leading to it from the master-suite bathroom so that Momma could rush to soothe a squealing baby.

Without really thinking about it, he tried the handle. The door was locked, and there was no key. But his curiosity having gone this far, he bent over and looked through the keyhole. He could see nothing.

He walked to the glass-walled shower and turned on the water. He sniffed his armpit. It didn’t exactly exude the fragrance of a flower shop, but he decided it didn’t smell as foul as it could—probably should—have considering that the last shower he’d had was at das Haus im Wald, some twelve thousand kilometers away and God Only Knows how many hours before.

When the water had reached a satisfactory temperature, he stepped under it and just stood there.

A forbidden question crept into his mind: I wonder what Svetlana looks like in the shower starker? I’ve already been blessed with the sight of those marvelous nipples erect on those marvelous breasts—

He forced the image from his mind and started with the soap.

What the hell is wrong with me? I’m too old to be behaving like a seventeen-year-old suffering from raging hormones.

And I should be smart enough to realize this is one situation where I cannot, absolutely cannot, let a stiff dick take control of the brain.

When he decided his rigorous shower had cleansed him as well as he could be cleansed, he sucked in his breath and turned off just the hot-water faucet.

When he was actually shivering, he turned off the cold water, opened the shower door, and reached for a towel.

And then he quickly tried to modestly cover his groin with his hand.

Lieutenant Colonel Svetlana Alekseeva was in his bathroom. She was fully covered by a thick white terry-cloth bathrobe, but for all practical purposes it was transparent above the waist—Castillo’s memory bank had automatically kicked in and he again was looking at her bare bosom and erect nipples in the pool.

A number of thoughts zipped at a dizzying speed through his brain as he tried to think of something to say, how to say it, and then actually say it.

“I checked that door just now. It was locked.” That was what finally came out of his mouth.

She held up something red, about the size of a pencil, and smiled.

What the hell is that?

He looked at the object again.

Oh, shit!

Tradecraft 101: How a Cigarette Lighter Flame Can Turn Ordinary Objects into Other Useful Tools.

In this case, remolding a toothbrush handle into a key for a simple lock.

She opened that door!

“I don’t wish to be alone tonight,” Svetlana said softly if a bit awkwardly. “Do you?”

“Jesus H. Christ!”

She looked into his eyes and then, as if suddenly embarrassed, averted them.

Then, still looking down, she chuckled softly and said: “I’ll take that as ‘No, I don’t wish to be alone either,’ yes?”

“What?”

She nodded toward his groin. He looked.

The father of all erections was standing out from the hands with which he had hoped to conceal the symbol of his gender.

“Jesus H. Christ!” Castillo said when he had regained enough breath to speak.

“I hope that’s an expression of satisfaction,” Svetlana said.

He turned his head to look at her.

She was also sprawled on her back, with her head turned to him.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“I don’t have much to compare it with,” she said.

Oh, for Christ’s sake, don’t try to paint yourself as Little Miss Goody Two-Shoes. You couldn’t do what you just did without a lot of practice.

I don’t know how you feel, but that was the best piece of ass I’ve had in a long, long time.

Ever.

“Really?” Castillo asked.

“You’re the second man I’ve been with.”

“That’s a little hard to believe.”

“And you don’t believe me?”

“Let it go, Svetlana.”

“I can’t.” She sighed. “Will you listen?”

He shrugged. “Why not?”

“Sexual relations can cause a lot of trouble . . .”

No fooling?

Like this one’s going to cause more fucking trouble than I want to think about?

“. . . and in the Oprichina there are rules,” she went on.

“You don’t say?”

What comes next? That the Oprichina is a place where females are virgins until marriage, and faithful ever after?

But he saw the hurt in her eyes and was sorry for his sarcasm.

“A man is, of course, permitted to do what he pleases with women, so long as they are not oprichniki. For women, it is different. If it becomes known that an unmarried woman has taken a lover, that will bar her from a career of her own. She cannot handle her emotions and therefore cannot be trusted.

“Should it come out that the wife of an officer has been unfaithful—”

“She will be shot at dawn?”

“You said you would listen, Charley.”

“Sorry.”

That’s the first time she’s called me that.

And I like the way it sounds.

“If it becomes known that an officer’s wife has been unfaithful to him, it is the end of his career. If he can’t control his own wife, how can he be expected to control other men?”

Christ, I’m starting to believe this!

“He can, one time, and one time only, prove his dependability by killing her.”

“And he gets away with that?”

“One time only,” she said matter-of-factly. “If he marries again, and the second wife is unfaithful, that’s proof that he cannot judge character.”

Castillo suddenly realized he had turned on his side.

And then his hand, as if with a mind of its own, reached out and his fingertips brushed her cheek.

“I have never been with another man, Charley. Only Evgeny. Is true.”

“Well, what did you think?”

“I didn’t know it could be like that,” she said, smiling warmly.

“Either did I.”

Castillo leaned to her and kissed her gently on the lips.

The gentleness didn’t last long.

VIII

[ ONE ]

Nuestra Pequeña Casa

Mayerling Country Club

Pilar, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina

0705 30 December 2005

Max was having trouble waking Castillo, who was sleeping soundly and who had not responded to either a gentle nudge with Max’s muzzle or a paw laid gently on his chest. Finally, Max delicately took the pillow edge in his mouth and, without apparent effort, jerked it out from under Castillo’s head.

That did it.

Castillo opened his eyes, saw the dog, and reached out and scratched his ears.

Then he was suddenly wide awake.

He looked quickly to the other side of the bed. It was empty.

“Where the hell were you last night, Max? Getting an eyeful?”

Castillo sat up and swung his legs out of the bed.

Max gave him his paw.

“Okay, okay,” Castillo said, and walked somewhat awkwardly to the door to the corridor, unlocked it, and stepped into the hall.

“Who’s down there?” he called.

“It is I, the warden,” Sandra Britton cheerfully called back. “Seven bells and all is well in the cell block!”

“Let Max out, will you, please?”

“Your wish is my command,” she called. This was followed by a shrill and surprisingly loud whistle. “Come on, Max, baby!”

Max happily trotted down the corridor toward the stairway.

Castillo went back into his room, closed the door, and walked to the bed. Then he went back to the door and locked it, cleverly deciding that if someone walked in on him while he was concealing the traces of his nocturnal visitor, there would be a certain curiosity aroused.

He remembered that at some time during the night, she had gone and gotten her cigarettes and an ashtray. And when he had seen her coming back into the bedroom from the bath, starkers, he had decided on the spot that she had to be the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

Yet there was absolutely no trace of Svetlana.

Nothing in the bed, nothing around the bed, nothing—surprisingly, remarkably—in the bathroom.

That may be, of course, because Lieutenant Colonel Alekseeva of the SVR, as a highly trained intelligence officer, knows how to remove all traces of a clandestine visit to someone’s room.

He tried the interior door of the bathroom. It was locked.

Or it may be that it never happened at all, that it was an incredibly realistic wet dream—courtesy of my active imagination and that wine I chug-a-lugged.

That could very well be it: I haven’t had one of those since West Point. The sight of those erect nipples really got to me, and I haven’t had my ashes hauled in a long time.

You are pissing in the wind, Charley.

It happened.

The proof of that came immediately when he looked in the mirrored wall over the sink. There was an angry, curved, bluish bruise on the soft skin between his right shoulder and armpit.

He remembered when she had bit him.

“Why the hell did you bite me?” he had asked some minutes later.

“I didn’t want everybody rushing in here to see who was screaming. I knew I couldn’t scream if I had my mouth full of you.”

He gently rubbed the teeth marks with his index finger.

I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to do about that, except maybe swim wearing a T-shirt.

And I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to do about Lieutenant Colonel Svetlana Alekseeva.

With whom, I think, as incredible as it sounds, and as fucking insane as I know it is, I think I’m in love.

No, lust.

No, love.

“I couldn’t scream if I had my mouth full of you.”

Wow!

He stripped off his underwear as he had the last time he had taken a shower, and this time got both the shorts and the T-shirt into the wicker laundry basket, the latter with a rim shot.

And then he stepped under the showerhead. This time he didn’t even turn on the hot water. He just closed his eyes and let the cold water stream on him until he heard his teeth chatter.

Edgar Delchamps, Alex Darby, Jack Britton, and Tony Santini were waiting for Castillo, when he came down the stairs dressed in a polo shirt and swimming trunks, five minutes later.

“We need to talk, Ace,” Delchamps said seriously. “Okay?”

Oh, shit! They know!

Castillo nodded, gestured toward the door of the library, and raised a questioning eyebrow.

“Fine,” Delchamps said.

What the hell am I going to say?

“Sorry, guys, it won’t happen again”?

“Excuse the stupidity”?

Or maybe “Well, you guys know how it is. When was the last time you turned down a piece of tail?”

No, that one I won’t use.

That wasn’t a piece of tail. I don’t know what it was, but it was a hell of a lot more than a wham, bam, thank you, ma’am quickie.

The words “a meeting of souls” just popped into my feverish brain.

Castillo was somewhat surprised—But not really; the help here is incredibly efficient, and thank God for that . . . I need a jolt of caffeine—to find an insulated carafe of coffee and a half-dozen china mugs on a tray in the center of the library table. There was a red leather-upholstered captain’s chair at the head of a library table. Castillo poured a cup, sat in the captain’s chair, and made a two-handed gesture signifying Let’s have it.

“Charley, we’ve been talking,” Delchamps began.

I’ll bet you have. And have decided the appropriate course of action for me to take is resign my commission and check into one of the better mental health facilities.

“We think there’s something to the chemical factory in the Congo,” Delchamps said.

What did he say?

“Something really heavy, Charley,” Darby added.

“You ever wonder, Charley, why the ragheads didn’t hit us again after 9/11?” Santini asked.

“Other than us good guys are doing a helluva job shutting them down? Last I looked, the Liberty Bell was still intact.”

“There is that,” Delchamps said. “But there’s something more.”

“What ‘more’?” Castillo said.

They don’t know about me and Svetlana?

“You think maybe they’re sorry, have gone to confession, received absolution, and ain’t gonna do nothing like that never no more?” Santini pursued.

“Where’re you headed, Tony?” Castillo asked.

“Hold that thought, Ace,” Delchamps said, and gestured to Britton.

“Colonel,” Britton asked, “did you ever wonder who was really behind the stolen 727 headed for your beloved Liberty Bell, and why whoever it was had involved the African-American Lunatics in Philadelphia, only a very few of whom can walk and chew gum at the same time?”

Castillo held up both hands in a helpless gesture.

“Same question,” Castillo said. “Where’re—”

“Same response,” Delchamps said. “Hold that thought.”

“Okay.” Castillo leaned back and slowly sipped his coffee.

“Have you considered the possibility that our Russian friends were already en route to Vienna to defect when you were dumped in their lap?” Delchamps asked.

“Yeah, I have,” Castillo said. “What’s been bothering me is how they knew that I’m Gossinger—”

“They know who you are, Ace, because Berezovsky is very good and because he runs their show in Germany.”

“—and how they knew I was going to be at the Friedler funeral.”

“That one’s even easier to explain, Ace. It was in the Tages Zeitung newspapers, on the front page. ‘Tages Zeitung Publisher to Attend Final Rites’ or something to that effect.”

“Are you going to give me a scenario, or keep me guessing?”

“Berezovsky is in Marburg to supervise the taking out of Otto Görner, following which he will go to Vienna to meet the people with the wax statue of Whatsisname?”

“Peter the First,” Castillo furnished.

“Following which, he and Little Red Riding Hood will defect. Hold that thought, too.”

“Get on with the scenario, Edgar,” Castillo ordered.

“The day before, maybe still in Berlin, maybe in Marburg, he hears that the Kuhls got eliminated. That scares the hell out of him. He didn’t know about that.

“Conjecture: Kuhl didn’t go to him to try to turn him. Berezovsky went to Kuhl; they knew who he was. Who they were.

“Are they onto them? What to do?”

“Keep doing what he was supposed to do, take out Otto Görner. And then he hears that you and Kocian are going to be at Friedler’s funeral. . . .

“Now, going off at a tangent: Why was Friedler terminated? Because he was getting too close to what? German involvement in this African chemical factory maybe?

“Then, after Berezovsky orders that you and Billy get taken out, he has a second thought. Or maybe—even probably—Little Red Riding Hood does. She’s as smart—”

“Little Red Under Britches,” Castillo corrected him without thinking, then had a mental flash of her coming out of the bath sans any britches.

“What the hell is your fascination with her underwear all about?”

“Not now,” Castillo said. “Keep going.”

“Little Miss Red Underpants is as smart as Big Bad Wolf is. She says, ‘If they’re onto us, maybe Gossinger/Castillo can be useful. If he’s alive, of course. He has an airplane. If SVR is onto us, they’re onto Kuhl and the CIA station chief in Vienna, but not onto him.’

“So Berezovsky warns you that you’re going to be hit. That makes him a good guy in your eyes. And then he’ll find you in Vienna. . . .”

“Instead, we get on the same train,” Castillo said.

“Right,” Delchamps said. “By that time, he’s really scared. When he called off the hit on you, he called it off on Görner, too. Which he was supposed to ensure. And he doesn’t know what the hell he’s going to find in Vienna. With no other options, short of swallowing his own bullet, now he really has to use you. So he offers you the most important thing he has to barter, the chemical factory in Congo-Kinshasa.”

And, very probably, since sex is what makes the world go ’round, he offers up his baby sister, too.

It took you a long time to figure that out, didn’t it, Romeo?

“You think that’s important?” Castillo said.

“Charley, do you know what’s there, what was there?” Darby asked.

Castillo shook his head.

“In the bad old days, the West Germans had a nuclear laboratory there,” Delchamps said matter-of-factly. “That area was German East Africa before Versailles. We pretended not to know, but when the wall came down, we made them shut it down. It’s another of the reasons the Krauts don’t like us much anymore; the Israelis have nukes and they don’t.”

“You’re saying there’s a nuclear laboratory there?”

“I’m saying there’s a chemical laboratory there, Ace, and a factory.”

“Making what?”

“Maybe something as simple as Francisella tularensis,” Darby said. “Or . . . you know what I’m talking about, Charley?”

“I think I probably read the same bio-warfare stuff that you did,” Castillo said. “It causes rabbit fever, right?”

Darby nodded. “Or something else: anthrax, botulinum toxin, plague . . .”

“I’m not trying to be argumentative, Alex, but what I’ve read says that, as scary as all that stuff sounds, it’s not all that dangerous. Only anthrax and the rabbit fever virus can survive in water, and the ordinary chlorination of water in a water system kills both.”

“And both can be filtered out by a zero-point-one-micron or smaller filter, right?” Delchamps asked, paused, and then said, “You want to take a chance that these bastards haven’t developed a chlorine-proof bacterium, or something that’ll get around or through that point-one filter?”

“You think this is the real thing, don’t you?”

Delchamps did not answer directly. Instead, he held up his index finger in a gesture of Hold that thought, then said, “Now, throw this into your reasoning.”

He nodded at Jack Britton.

“This is conjecture again, Colonel,” Britton said. “But it fits. I’ve been wondering why they tried to whack Sandra and me in Philly. First, they had to go to a lot of trouble to find out who Ali Abid ar-Raziq was—I just disappeared from the mosque, you’ll remember; no busts, no questioning by me, nothing that would tell them I was a cop—and then for them to set up the hit. They’re just not smart enough to do that, period. Somebody smart found me.”

“And why was that so important?” Castillo asked.

“I knew which of the mullahs had gone to Africa, including the Congo, on somebody else’s dime,” Britton said, “and one of the things I did for Allah was take pictures of the water supply so it could be poisoned. When I turned that in, both to the Department and to Homeland Security, the response was not to worry, chlorine and filters, etcetera.”

“Moments ago, Jack, you asked me if I ever wondered why the people responsible for—”

“Stealing the 727 bothered with a bunch of morons?”

“Essentially.”

“I have my own theory, which nobody agrees with, except sometimes Sandra.”

“And, since last night, me,” Santini offered.

“And me and Darby,” Delchamps added. “This is what really pushed us over the edge, Charley. Listen to him. Go on, Jack.”

“The people behind this, Charley, don’t really expect to wipe out half the population of Philadelphia by poisoning the water any more than they expected the morons to be able to find the Liberty Bell, much less fly into it with an airliner.”

“Then what?”

“To cause trouble in several ways. First, exactly as the greatest damage done by the lunatics who flew into the Twin Towers was not the towers themselves, but the cost, the disrupted economy.

“There would be mass hysteria, panic, chaos—call it what you will—if it came out that any of those things had been dumped into the water supply. And if they caught one of the AALs pouring stuff into the water supply, it would do the same thing for we colored folks as 9/11 did for the Arabs. You’ll recall that every time we saw a guy who looked like he might be an Arab, we wondered if he was about to blow something up. So if a black guy got caught—and those AAL morons are expendable; they might arrange for the whole mosque to get bagged with anthrax spores and the photos I took of the water supply—every time someone who wasn’t black looked at someone who was, it’d be, ‘Watch out for the nigger; he’s going to try to poison you.’ ”

“Ouch,” Castillo said.

“Jack’s right, Ace. Nobody will talk about it, but that’s the way it is.”

“Okay,” Castillo said. “I’m convinced that this thing should be looked into, and we’re not equipped to do it. So, what you’re suggesting is that I get on the horn and call Langley and say I have two defectors?”

“No. That’s exactly what we’re going to try to talk you out of doing, at least until we have looked into it and have something Langley—and Homeland Security and the FBI—can’t look at, then laugh in our face and condescendingly say, ‘Oh, we know all about that, and there’s nothing to it.’”

“I don’t think I follow you,” Castillo said.

“Okay. Let’s suppose that I’m right, and Berezovsky and the redhead were headed for Vienna, having arranged to defect. Who was going to help them do that?”

“My friend Miss Moneypenny,” Castillo said.

“Right, Ace. And they never showed; they have disappeared. So Miss Moneypenny—that’s not her name; why do I let you get away with that?—Miss Eleanor Dillworth, the station chief, who is about to become famous at Langley for being the one who turned in the Berlin rezident and the Copenhagen rezident in one fell swoop of spook genius, is more than a little worried.

“She would have kept Langley posted on what’s going on. So they probably sent somebody over there to help her carry this off. For sure, they have assets in place—an airplane standing by, and someone turning the mattresses and polishing the silver in one of those houses on Chesapeake Bay. Wouldn’t surprise me if the DCI already is practicing his modest little speech in which he lets slip, ‘Oh, by the way, Mister President, my station chief in Vienna just brought in the SVR Berlin rezident,’ etcetera, etcetera. . . .

“But suddenly no Berezovsky. Anywhere. He’s vanished. So the DCI asks Station Chief Dillworth, ‘What has happened? Has anything unusual happened around here lately?’ And Dillworth replies, ‘Not that I can think of,’ but does think to herself, Except that good ol’ Charley Castillo was in town, very briefly.”

“Okay, so she suspects we have them. So what?”

“It is not nice to steal the agency’s defectors, Colonel. They might let you off with a warning if you promptly hand them over and say you’ll never do it again. But don’t hold your breath. And if you did hand them over, we’re back to: ‘We know all about that Congo facility, and there’s nothing to it.’ ”

“So what am I supposed to do?” Castillo said.

“If Alex and I have another forty-eight hours, minimum, I think we can get a hell of a lot more out of Berezovsky than we have so far. One of the problems—and this is where you will get your feathers up, Ace, but that can’t be helped—is your method of interrogation. He thinks you’re a fool with this ‘Let’s have a swim and some steak and wine and be friends’—and that makes all of us fools.”

Castillo was silent a moment, then put down his coffee mug with a clunk that seemed to resonate in the table.

“You’re right, Edgar. My feathers are up. But you damn sure aren’t going to put him—either one of them—naked into a chair, pour ice water on them, and start shining bright lights into their eyes.”

Delchamps shook his head.

“You underestimate me, Ace. Me and Alex and Santini. That doesn’t work on people like Berezovsky and Sister, and we know it. What we’re going to do is give him a little opportunity to worry while we question him just about around the clock in two-man relays.”

Shit. This is really where my new relationship gets rocky.

“What’s he going to worry about?” Castillo said.

“Where his sister is and what she is telling us.”

What the hell is he thinking?

“And where is the sister going to be?”

“Same place as you, Ace.”

What did he say?

“What?”

“Anywhere but here, Ace, when Ambassador Montvale calls to ask if you happen to know anything about Berezovsky. Bariloche would make sense. You’re going there to see Pevsner, right?”

“And I should take her with me? Is that what you’re saying?”

For a romantic interlude in Bariloche?

Jesus, maybe they do know!

Is that what this is?

They want me out of the way because I just proved my gross goddamn stupidity by screwing a SVR agent?

And since they can’t order me out of the way, they’re offering me three sex-filled days in beautiful Bariloche.

Well, sanity has returned.

Svetlana, my love, I now understand what happened. I’m not even angry with you. You did what you thought you had to do, and you did it with great skill. I will remember that piece—those pieces—of absolutely superb ass to my dying day.

But . . . Yea, I have seen the light, Praise Jesus, and ol’ Charley ain’t gonna sin no more.

“Okay, Edgar,” Castillo said. “Let’s cut the crap. Why do you want me out of here?”

The question surprised—maybe shocked—not only Delchamps but the others as well. It showed on their faces.

“Ace, I just told you. We want to interrogate that bastard for forty-eight hours.”

“You could do that if I was here. You know I usually defer to you in matters like this. What else is there? I either get a good answer or I stay and wait for the agency to send people to take these people off my hands.”

“Jesus Christ!” Darby said.

“I told you something like this would probably happen,” Delchamps said.

“Let’s have it,” Castillo ordered.

Darby threw up his hands in resignation. “Tell him.”

“You’re not going to like this, Ace.”

“Come on, come on.”

“Our egos are involved,” Delchamps said.

“What?”

“Nobody in the agency is supposed to know what anybody else has done, right? If you get blown away, they put a star with no name on it on the wall. But that’s bullshit. Anybody with enough brains to find his ass with both hands knows what’s going on.”

“Where the hell are you going with this?” Castillo demanded.

“We weren’t going to tell you this until this little escapade . . . scratch ‘little escapade’ . . . until this situation is over, one way or the other.

“What happened after we had our discussion last night, leading to everything I said before, is that Darby and I had a couple of belts and, write this down, Ace, in vino veritas, I told him that I had had enough of the agency, even my dealings with it while working for you.”

“I keep saying this, but I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“Okay. If I was a good agency man, when you told me in Vienna that you had these two in the bag I would have insisted that we follow the rules and hand them over to Miss Moneypenny, she being the CIA officer responsible for defectors, according to paragraph nine, subparagraph thirteen. If you had not done that, I was obligated to inform her or a suitably senior agency bureaucrat of your defiance of the United States Code and the rules governing the clandestine service of the CIA.”

“You didn’t say anything.”

“Because you were doing the right thing, Ace. You had the ball and you ran with it.”

“Charley,” Darby said, “when you told me you were drafting me to work for you again, and not to tell anybody, I didn’t.”

Castillo looked at him and waited for him to go on.

He didn’t. Delchamps answered for him: “Even though he had a direct order from Frank Lammelle, the DDCI, to call him—or the DCI—immediately and personally if he ever had any contact with you about anything ever again. And, of course, not to tell you about the order.”

“I’ll be a son of a bitch,” Castillo said.

“And you thought good ol’ Frank just came to see you in the hospital and wish you a speedy recovery from taking that hit in the tail, right? I think his primary purpose in coming down here was to fumigate his people who had been contaminated by you.”

“He gave the same speech to the Sienos and Bob Howell,” Darby said, mentioning the CIA station chief in Montevideo.

Delchamps said: “No witnesses. Nothing in writing. The sonofabitch even told the Sienos one at a time, so that it would be he-said/she-said.” He paused, then went on: “And if you went to Montvale with this—I suspect that thought is running through your head—what would happen, Ace? Not a goddamn thing, and you know it. You could go to the President, and he would have the choice of firing the DCI, the DDCI, the ambassador, or Lieutenant Colonel Charley Castillo—and you know who would win that one.”

Delchamps paused and waited until he saw that Castillo couldn’t argue with what he had just said, then went on: “Okay, so getting back to why do we want you out of here: I told Alex I was going to stick around until this esc—situation—is resolved one way or the other, and then I’m really going to put in my papers.”

“You ever hear ‘great minds travel similar paths,’ Charley?” Darby said. “I told Edgar that I’ve been thinking about hanging it up since I got the speech about you from Lammelle, and that, when I hadn’t called the SOB when you drafted me again, it looked like I’d made up my mind.”

“And that started the mutiny,” Santini put in. “I said, ‘Count me in. If they don’t trust me to protect the President because I slipped on an icy step, then fuck ’em.’ ”

“And,” Jack Britton said, “for much the same reasons as my distinguished comrade has offered, Colonel, I, too, have decided that my Secret Service career has been nipped in the bud. Somebody tried to whack me, and getting shot at is just not allowed.”

Castillo shook his head. “And why did you think you couldn’t, or shouldn’t, tell me this?”

“I’m not through, Ace. Now, several things are going to happen when this situation is resolved. I think this factory is heavy. So does Alex. If we’re right and something can be done about it, that’s a very good way for Alex and me and Santini to be remembered.

“Worst-case scenario: We’re wrong. It’s bullshit. But it comes out—and it will—that you did indeed snatch Berezovsky and Sister from the CIA, aided and abetted in this criminal enterprise by renegade Clandestine Services and Secret Service agents. They would ordinarily try to make an example of us, but I don’t think so. That might get in the papers, and make the agency and the Secret Service look foolish. We’ll all just retire—quietly fold our tents and steal away into the night.”

“All of you? Two-Gun, for example?”

“Two-Gun can never go back to the FBI, no more than . . .”

He stopped.

“Finish what you were going to say,” Castillo said.

“No more than you can go back to the Army, Ace, if the worst scenario is what happens. You know that you’ve been a pain in the ass to Montvale since this whole OOA business started. Now, when the DCI goes to him—or directly to the President—he has all the reasons he needs—you gave them to him when you snatched Berezovsky—to say, ‘I knew all along, Mister President, that something like this was going to happen. Castillo is a loose cannon,’ etcetera, etcetera.”

“Yeah,” Castillo agreed.

“Maybe you could walk on this, Ace, if you truthfully said that you never interrogated Colonel Berezovsky and that as soon as you could, you turned over him and his family to the CIA. You didn’t even know that the sister was a spook.”

“What makes you think I’d want a walk?”

“Because you’re very good at what you do, Ace. You are far too young to retire, and can probably be very useful to the President in the future.”

“You know goddamn well that’s not going to happen,” Castillo said. “Snatching the Russians was my idea. If everything goes sour, I’ll take the lumps.”

Delchamps nodded. “And lumps there will be, Ace. Whether or not it goes sour. I told you that in Vienna. Let’s say we”—he gestured at the others—“are right. And we get Berezovsky to tell all. That would really put egg on the agency’s face, and Montvale’s. They would really come after you.”

“You’re all determined to quit, right?”

They all nodded.

“Charley, there’s no other option,” Darby said, and chuckled. “ ‘No good deed ever goes unpunished.’ You never heard that?”

“Is Duffy here?” Castillo asked.

Delchamps shook his head.

“If I’m going to go to Bariloche, I’m going to need his friend’s Aero Commander.”

“Duffy’s at Jorge Newbery arranging that,” Delchamps said. “Where shortly he will be joined by Sergeant Major Davidson and Corporal Bradley, whom he picked up at Ezeiza. Davidson said the Cherub could sit on Red Underpants while you’re visiting Pevsner.”

“You must have been pretty sure I was going to go along with this,” Castillo said.

“Davidson was. He’s also a mutineer, Ace.”

“He said he’s got his twenty years in,” Santini said. “And he’s sick of being pushed around by a chickenshit, just-promoted light colonel who’s younger than he is.”

“Don’t take it to heart, Charley,” Britton said. “He probably didn’t mean it.”

“And what do we do with Lester?” Castillo asked.

“The Cherub, I am ashamed to say, did not come up in the course of this conversation,” Delchamps said. “I don’t think the Marine Corps will let him retire at nineteen. But we’ll think of something.”

“And now I suggest we go in and have breakfast with our guests,” Darby said. “And while we’re doing that, the housekeeper will throw a few things in a bag for Colonel Alekseeva, just enough for a day or two of fun and romance in the beautiful Llao Llao Resort and Casino.”

Castillo looked at him and after a long moment decided that the word “romance” had gone innocently into what Darby had said.

[TWO]

KM 28.5, Panamericana, Southbound

Buenos Aires Province, Argentina

0820 30 December 2005

“Colonel Castillo,” Lieutenant Colonel Svetlana Alekseeva said, “we are being followed by three men in a Peugeot sedan.”

They were in Darby’s embassy car, an armored BMW with diplomatic license plates and equipped with a shortwave radio. Darby was driving. Castillo was in the front passenger seat holding the puppy, his lap protected by a copy of that day’s Buenos Aires Herald, which had been a sanitary/sartorial suggestion of Sandra Britton.

Max and Svetlana Alekseeva were in the backseat. Darby had confided in Castillo that he had switched on the baby locks, a statement that he had to explain to a baffled Castillo, who was grossly ignorant of most things having to do with any aspect of child rearing, and had no idea there was a device available to keep youngsters—and adult female ex-SVR agents—from opening the rear doors of a car once they had been closed on them.

“Not to worry, Colonel,” Darby replied. “They’re Gendarmería Nacional. Comandante Duffy doesn’t want anything to happen to you before you tell us who ordered the hit on him and his family.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Svetlana said, somewhat plaintively.

“Right,” Darby said. “What about that promise you made to Colonel Castillo to tell him everything he wanted to know?”

She did not reply for a moment, but then said, again, somewhat plaintively, “I know nothing about a Comandante Duffy.”

“Your call, Colonel Alekseeva,” Darby said.

Aside from a general “good morning” addressed to everyone at the breakfast table, Castillo had not said a word to Svetlana—nor she to him until just now—since he’d gotten up.

But this, Castillo realized, was not because he had inadvertently signaled her—or she had somehow figured out—that he now understood the greatest love story since Anna Karenina—or maybe Doctor Zhivago?—was really her putting into practice what she had been taught in How to Be a Successful Spy 101: Fucking Your Way Successfully Through a Difficult Interrogation.

She thinks she still has me in the bag, and that I am just trying to make sure our great romance is kept in the closet.

Which of course means that she thinks she has had enough postcoital experience to be able to judge the morning-after reaction of the interrogator.

She’s wrong.

Stupid here finally woke up.

[THREE]

Jet-Stream Aviation

Aeropuerto Internacional Jorge Newbery

Buenos Aires, Argentina

0845 30 December 2005

Castillo could see Comandante Liam Duffy, Sergeant Major Jack Davidson, and Corporal Lester Bradley—whom he expected to see—and Alfredo Munz and Captain Dick Sparkman, USAF—whom he did not expect to see—at the airport, standing around the nose of the trim, high-wing, twin-engine Aero Commander 560 when Darby’s embassy BMW drove up to the tarmac fence.

“Keep her in the car until I see what’s going on,” Castillo ordered, and, holding the pup with one hand and the sanitary/sartorial newspaper in the other, got out of the car.

Max nimbly jumped from the backseat, went out Castillo’s door, and raced toward Corporal Bradley, clearing the waist-high fence as if it wasn’t there.

By the time Castillo reached the gate in the fence, and the airport policeman guarding it, two of the men in the Peugeot sedan that had been following them were out of the car and at the gate. One held it open for him, and the other one said, “I will take that newspaper from you, Colonel, and get rid of it.”

Castillo handed it to him, marveling at both how soaked the newspaper had become on the way from Pilar—You little sonofabitch, he thought, scratching the pup’s ears, you must be mostly bladder—and at the unaccustomed courtesy of the gendarmería officers.

They usually stand around practicing how to look dour.

The reason became immediately apparent. Their commanding officer walked toward Castillo, then broke into a trot and, when he reached Castillo, wrapped him in a bear hug, pounded his back, and kissed him wetly on both cheeks.

“Oh, my friend Charley,” he said. “It is so good to see you!”

What the hell is this all about?

“El Coronel Munz told me that you understand,” El Comandante Liam Duffy said. “But that doesn’t make it any better.”

“There’s nothing to be concerned about, Liam.”

“I had three men killed and six wounded—in addition, of course, to the two men those bastards massacred as soon as we were”—he paused, smiled, and switched to English—“boots on the ground”—then back to Spanish—“and there were funerals and I had to deal with the families.”

“I understand, Liam.”

“I just could not get to Uruguay right away, and when I did, you had already gone to the U.S. of A.”

He grabbed Castillo’s arms with both hands.

“I should have somehow arranged to go to Montevideo,” he said. “You shed blood with us! You are one of us, Carlos!”

He got control of himself.

“You remember Segundo Comandante Martínez and Sargento Primero Pérez, of course?” Duffy said, indicating the two gendarmes who’d opened the gate for Castillo and taken care of the sodden newspaper.

Why do I think the last time I saw these guys they were in camos and had black-and-brown grease all over their face and hands?

“How could I forget?” Castillo said, smiling broadly, offering his hand, and then—Oh, hell, when in Rome or Buenos Aires!—hugging them and kissing their coarse cheeks.

“You have luggage, mi coronel?” the younger one—Probably the sergeant, Castillo thought—asked.

“There’s a couple of bags in the trunk,” Castillo said.

“And is the Russian woman in the car?” Duffy asked.

Castillo nodded.

“I would like to introduce her to my wife and children,” Duffy said, “and then kill her slowly and painfully.”

And that, Castillo decided, is not what they call hyperbole.

“Liam, she was in Europe when that happened,” Castillo said.

“She’s one of them,” Duffy said simply.

“She and her brother have information I need.”

“So Alfredo says. What I want are the names of the people who tried to kill my wife and children.”

“I will first have to find out who ordered the attack on you,” Castillo said. “And then, if you can get him, you can find out from him who actually attacked you and your family.”

“You find out who he is—or she is—and I’ll get him,” Duffy said.

“I’ll do my best, Liam.”

Munz, Sparkman, Davidson, and Bradley walked up to them.

“Nice flight, Lester?”

“I was never in first class before, sir,” Bradley said.

“Well, that was certainly a mistake. We’ll take the difference out of your pay.”

Bradley recoiled at that, but it didn’t take him long to realize he was having his chain pulled.

“Do you have a pistol, Lester?”

“No, sir.”

“Get him one, Jack,” Castillo ordered. “Make sure Little Red Under Britches sees you give it to him—and that she sees you chambering a round, Lester.”

“Yes, sir,” Bradley said. “Little Red—what did you say, sir?”

“The lady in the car is a SVR officer, Les. A lieutenant colonel. I don’t think she’ll try to run away—she’ll have no idea where we will be, and I have all of her identification in my briefcase—but she may. I don’t want her dead.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I just happen to have one with me,” Davidson said, and took a Colt Model 1911A1 from the small of his back. He handed it to Bradley. “There’s already one in the chamber.”

“Yes, Sergeant Major,” Bradley said politely, then with speed and precision that visibly astonished the gendarmes, he ejected the magazine, worked the action to eject the round in the chamber, caught it on the fly, examined the pistol to make sure the chamber was indeed empty, fed the just-ejected round to the magazine, fed the magazine to the pistol, let the slide slam home, carefully lowered the hammer to de-cock it, and finally slipped the pistol under his belt on the small of his back.

“He’s usually much faster than that,” Davidson said with a straight face.

“Bradley—” Castillo began.

“May I see you a moment, please, Colonel?” Alfredo Munz interrupted.

Castillo followed him toward the Aero Commander.

Duffy’s face showed that he didn’t like Munz and Castillo having a private conversation.

But there doesn’t seem to be anything that can be done about it.

Munz, his back to Duffy, immediately proved him wrong.

“Take out some money, and count out a lot of it, and hand it to me,” Munz said. “I’m making it seem like I don’t want Liam to see.”

Castillo didn’t hesitate.

“Charley, I think I had better go with you to Bariloche,” Munz said.

“I can handle her, Alfredo.”

“And I can handle Liam’s gendarmes in Bariloche,” Munz said, “who I suspect are going to try to be far more helpful than you want them to be.”

Munz put the money in his pocket, laid a hand on Castillo’s shoulder in thanks for the cash, and led him back to the others.

“Colonel,” Sparkman said, and handed him a flight plan. “Perfect weather all the way.”

“Thank you,” Castillo said.

And what happens to you, Dick, if—when—the worst scenario happens?

That would effectively end your Air Force career. Getting shot down in flames for your association with the disgraced OOA will be even worse for you than your association with the Air Commandos.

“Colonel,” Davidson said, “I put an AFC device aboard.”

“Thank you.”

Munz handed Davidson the wad of hundred-dollar bills Castillo had given him.

Duffy’s face showed he wondered what the hell that was all about.

“Lester,” Castillo ordered, “go with Colonel Munz and put the lady in a backseat in the airplane.”

“Yes, sir.”

As she walked past him, Lieutenant Colonel Alekseeva asked Castillo if she could ask where they were going.

He didn’t reply.

[FOUR]

The Llao Llao Resort Hotel

San Carlos de Bariloche

Río Negro Province, Argentina

1625 30 December 2005

The manager of the luxury resort—who was attired in a tailcoat and striped trousers—met them at the front door, shook Munz’s hand, ignored everybody else, and led them through the lobby—where a dozen employees were engaged in changing the holiday decorations from Christmas to New Year’s—then to the elevator bank, and on to a top-floor suite.

“This will do nicely, thank you,” Munz said after examining the four rooms. “I will need keys for all the doors, of course.”

The manager handed him a dozen keys on a ring.

“The boat is available at the dock, Colonel,” he said, bowed his head, and left.

“May I use the restroom?” Svetlana asked.

Munz pointed to a door.

“Wait outside for her, Bradley,” Castillo ordered. “If she tries to get away, try not to shoot her, but . . .”

“Yes, sir.”

Svetlana did not look at Castillo as she walked past him. Max walked after both of them. Castillo set the puppy on the floor, where he immediately followed his father to the bathroom door, then raised his leg against the leg of a small table and puddled the carpet.

“I wonder where he gets it all,” Castillo said, almost admiringly.

“You’re taking him with you?” Munz asked.

Castillo nodded.

“He’s for Elena. For her and Sergei and Aleksandr, but primarily for her.”

Munz nodded.

“I’d like to think I’m doing that simply to be a nice guy,” Castillo said. “But I’m not sure if it’s not because it will get to Pevsner.”

“I like the kids, too,” Munz said. “And I know you’re a nice guy, whether or not you like to admit it.”

Castillo looked at him but remained silent.

And what happens to you, Alfredo, when the worst scenario comes down?

A nice settlement payment, of course, but what about after that?

Munz pulled back his jacket, revealing a revolver in a high-mount hip holster.

Castillo recognized the offer and shook his head. “I go in peace. And I would be heavily outgunned, anyway.”

“Well, don’t worry about Mata Hari. I can deal with her,” Munz said, then smiled and added, “Or if I can’t, Lester can.”

Castillo chuckled.

She’s figured that out. She may be curious about Lester, but she saw that very professional display of pistol handling, and as a pistoleer herself, she knows that there is a very strong chance she will be wounded seriously with a heavy-caliber bullet if she tries to run.

And by now she also knows that despite some spectacular initial success in turning me into a chump, that’s over. She’s given up on the soulful looks into my eyes.

“You know how to get to the boat?” Munz asked.

“Get on the elevator and push the Minus-2 button, and then down the corridor.”

“You sure you don’t want me to go with you?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

Castillo walked to the bathroom door, scooped up the puppy, said, “Come on, Max,” then nodded at Munz and walked out of the suite.

Castillo heard the boat’s engine quietly burbling when he walked out onto the long pier jutting into the lake, but he couldn’t see it until he was almost to where it was tied by the stern to the pier.

He was a little surprised by the boat. He expected a cabin cruiser. This was—he searched for the word and after a moment found it—a speedboat. There had been one like it when he was a kid, at the beach house on the Gulf of Mexico. That had been a Chris-Craft, and he and Fernando were never allowed to take it out themselves—but of course had—as their grandfather thought it was dangerous in ocean water.

The speedboat waiting for him now was made of mahogany and had two passenger compartments, one fore and one aft, with the engine mounted between them. The forward compartment had the controls and an automobile-like steering wheel. The aft compartment had a leather-upholstered seat for three behind a small windshield that was supposed to protect the passengers from spray—but never did.

The man standing on the pier directed him: “In the rear seat, please, mi coronel . For the balance.”

“Thank you,” Castillo said, and, holding the puppy against him, carefully stepped into the boat and then down into the seat. Max leapt effortlessly aboard, inspected the front compartment, then came back and sat beside Castillo.

Castillo then set the pup on the footboards. He had not thought to bring newspaper or one of the Llao Llao’s monogrammed towels with him.

The man untied the stern, then jumped onto the boat, causing it to rock somewhat. He squatted beside Castillo and handed him a cellular phone.

“I know the colonel has probably told you, mi coronel, but button seven is my phone and button four is the colonel.”

Munz had not said a word.

“Thank you,” Castillo said.

“I will take you to the pier. You can get out without help?”

“Yes.”

“And then I will go beyond the floodlights, which, if they don’t come on as we approach the pier, will do so as soon as you step on the pier. There are motion sensors.”

“Okay.”

“There is a guard shack, usually only one man, at the shore end of the pier.”

Castillo said, “Thank you,” instead of what started to come to his lips: “I know. This is not my first visit to ‘Karinhall.’”

The man moved on hands and knees to the forward compartment and dropped into it. Castillo both heard and felt the chunk as the man engaged the transmission and the propeller began to spin.

Thirty seconds later, the engine revved and Castillo sensed the speedboat going up on the step. Ten seconds after that, he got a face full of spray. Max went down on the floorboards next to the puppy. Castillo sought what refuge he could behind the windshield.

The speedboat slowed and almost stopped as suddenly as it had accelerated twenty minutes before.

Castillo raised his head above the windshield and saw in the faint light that they were very close to a pier. He grabbed the puppy from the floorboard by the loose skin above its neck and stood up on the leather seat.

The man driving the boat skillfully put the stern against the pier and held it there long enough for Castillo to jump out of the boat. The moment Max leapt onto the pier, the engine revved and the boat headed back out on the lake.

Castillo had just enough time to change his grip on the squealing puppy when floodlights came on, blinding him.

It took perhaps twenty seconds for his eyes to adjust enough for him to see down the pier.

Twenty yards away a man came warily, in a half-crouch, down the pier toward him. He held an Uzi. Max was halfway between them; his hair bristled, and he was growling deeply.

The man cocked the Uzi.

“If you shoot the dog,” Castillo called in Spanish, “you will die!”

He repeated the same threat in Russian and then a third time in Hungarian.

“Lower the gun!” a voice from farther away called, loudly and authoritatively, in Hungarian.

Castillo could now see the second man, who also had an Uzi.

“Hey, János,” Castillo called in Hungarian to Aleksandr Pevsner’s bodyguard. “What are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere?”

And then, as János kept advancing toward them, Castillo ordered in Hungarian, “No, Max! Sit!”

Max sat, but Castillo could hear him growling still.

János looked around the pier.

“You are alone?” János asked, then without waiting for a reply: “You didn’t bring the redheaded woman?”

“Do you see her, János?”

“He does not expect you,” János said, then corrected himself: “He did not expect to see you.”

“Well, he knows as well as I do that life is full of surprises,” Castillo said.

János gestured for him to walk down the pier. Halfway to the shore, the floodlights died and were replaced with small lights illuminating the pier and a path beyond.

“You are well now, Colonel?” János asked softly.

“It hurts me a little to sit down,” Castillo said honestly. “The leg’s okay.”

“My woman says I now have a zipper,” János said, and drew a line from his waist up his side to his armpit.” He was quiet a moment, then added, “I never say, ‘Thank you, Colonel’—so, thank you.”

“You’re welcome, János.”

A Jeep Wrangler, so new it looked right off a showroom floor, was at the end of the pier. It had a driver waiting behind the wheel.

Max jumped in the front seat and sat there.

“In the back, Max,” Castillo ordered.

Max reluctantly complied after the order had been repeated three times.

“He bite me if I get in back?” János asked.

“Probably,” Castillo said, and somewhat awkwardly got in the back.

[FIVE]

Aleksandr Pevsner, a tall, dark-haired man, wearing linen trousers and jacket and a yellow polo shirt, was waiting for them under a huge chandelier in the foyer of the enormous house.

“You’ve lost a lot of weight, Hermann,” Castillo greeted him in German. “And some hair, too. Been on a diet here in ‘Karinhall,’ have you? Nothing but knockwurst und sauerkraut?”

Pevsner smiled as if he really didn’t want to.

“Frankly, there are times when one wishes never to see dear friends again,” Pevsner replied in Russian. “This is one of them.”

“I love you too, Aleksandr,” Castillo said. “But I hope you aren’t going to kiss me.”

“Never fear. Where’s the redhead?”

“What redhead?”

“The one you flew here in that little airplane.”

“A gentleman never discusses his love life. Didn’t your mother teach you that?” He held up the puppy and gestured at Max. “Besides, I’ve come to trust only canines.”

Pevsner ignored that. “How is your . . . wound?”

“My leg is coming along just fine. My ass, not so good. Thank you for asking.”

“You are absolutely impossible!”

“Does that mean you’re not going to offer me a drink?”

“Now that I see you don’t have some floozy with you, I would be honored if you would have a glass of champagne with Anna and me.” Pevsner gestured toward the open door of the library.

“Where’s the statue?” Castillo said, looking around the foyer. “I would have thought it would be at the foot of the stairs.”

“What statue?” Pevsner asked automatically, and then his face showed that he understood he was about to have his chain pulled.

“Of Lenin,” Castillo said. “To prove you didn’t buy this place because of your admiration for the late Reichsforst-und-Jägermeister.”

He threw Pevsner a stiff-armed Nazi salute.

“Charley, you’re not teasing him already?” a tall, svelte blonde asked in Russian as they walked into the library.

“Teasing him?” Castillo replied as he walked to her and kissed her cheek. “If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and has a house made from the same plans as Hermann Goering’s hunting lodge . . .”

“We didn’t realize that until we bought the place, and you know it,” she said, laughing. Her attention went to Castillo’s arms. “What are you doing with that puppy?”

“Trying to get rid of it,” Castillo said. “You don’t happen to know of some kind and gentle young lady of thirteen or so who would take it off my hands, do you?”

“You’re serious? You brought that for Elena? What is it?”

Castillo gestured at Max.

“A little version of him. By way of Marburg, Germany, and Vienna,” Castillo said, looking at Pevsner as he spoke, and not being surprised when he saw that Pevsner’s eyes had turned to ice.

“Let me see it,” Anna said, taking the puppy from Castillo, then holding it up and rubbing noses with it. “Charley, he’s precious! Elena will be crazy with him. Thank you so much!”

“The small horse is the father?” Pevsner asked, indicating Max. “It will grow to be the same?”

“Yes, indeed.”

Anna picked up a telephone, waited a moment, and then said, “Will you ask the children to join us in the library, please?” She hung up and turned to Castillo. “Alek said you might be bringing someone with you and . . .”

“I know,” Castillo said. “Your husband always thinks the worst of me.”

“If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck . . .” Pevsner said.

Castillo laughed.

A maid rolled a bar service into the room.

“What can we offer you, Charley?”

“I’m feeling Russian. Is that vodka I see?”

“How do you want it?” Pevsner asked.

“In a glass would be nice,” Castillo said straight-faced.

Anna laughed.

“I meant, from the freezer, or with ice, or room temperature,” Pevsner said, shaking his head.

“From the freezer, please,” Castillo said.

Pevsner wagged a rather imperious finger at the maid and told her in Spanish to bring a bottle from the freezer.

“Your Spanish is getting better,” Castillo said.

“Better than what?” Pevsner asked suspiciously.

“Better than it was,” Castillo replied.

“What does he eat?” Anna asked.

“Puppy chow,” Castillo said, and took a plastic zip-top bag from his jacket pocket and laid it on a small table. “I have more in the hotel. And I am assured it can be found in any supermarket in the country. This is Royal Canine Puppy Chow For Very Large Dogs. Max loves it.”

“I’ll have to write that down,” Anna said, and went to an escritoire that looked as if it belonged in the Louvre and did so.

“I have a little trouble picturing you, Friend Charley, traveling the globe and caring for a puppy,” Pevsner said.

“He brings out the paternal instinct in me,” Castillo said piously.

“What were you doing in Germany. Visiting home?”

“Actually, I had to go to a funeral.”

“How sad,” Anna said. “Family?”

“Employee,” Castillo said. He met Pevsner’s eyes. “He died suddenly.”

Three adolescents entered the room and politely, shyly, made their manners to Castillo. The girl kissed his cheek and the older boy shook his hand.

“Oh, where did that puppy come from?” Elena Pevsner said. She took him from her mother, matter-of-factly held him up to examine his belly, and finished. “He’s adorable. What’s his name?”

“That’s up to you, sweetheart,” Castillo said.

It took her a moment to take his meaning. “Really?”

Castillo nodded.

“Oh, Charley, thank you ever so much!”

“Honey,” Castillo said, picking up the bag of puppy chow. “Why don’t you take him someplace, get two bowls, put the bowls on newspaper, put water in one, and this in the other?”

“How much do I give him?”

“Honey, you’re lucky. Dogs are like people. Some are pigs and eat whatever is put in front of them—then get sick and throw it up. The others, like Max and Nameless here, are gentlemen. They take only what they need, when they need it.”

My God, her eyes are shining!

Like Randy’s eyes.

I just did a good thing,

But if no good deed goes unpunished . . . ?

The maid appeared with a bottle of vodka encased in ice.

“Can Max come?” Aleksandr, the oldest boy, asked.

“If I can have him back,” Castillo said.

The children left the room. Max trotted after them.

“That was a very nice thing for you to do, Charley,” Pevsner said as he handed Castillo a small glass of the vodka. “Thank you.”

“My son has his brother,” Castillo said. “I thought Elena would like one.”

“You saw your son?” Anna asked.

“His grandfather brought him to our ranch for quail hunting. I hunted with him, and then I started to teach him how to fly.”

“And he doesn’t know?” Anna asked softly.

Castillo shook his head.

“Oh, Charley!” Anna said, and went to him and laid her hand on his cheek and kissed him. “I am so sorry.”

Castillo shrugged.

“Me, too, but that’s how it is.”

“Would you think me terribly cynical if I suspected there’s more to your visit than bringing the children a puppy?” Pevsner asked.

“Alek!” Anna said warningly.

“I don’t know about cynical. I guess it’s to be expected of an oprichniki. I know you guys have to be careful, even of your friends. Or maybe especially of your friends.”

If looks could freeze, I would now be colder than that ice-encased bottle.

He raised his vodka glass to Pevsner and drained it.

“Mud in your eye, Alek!”

Anna’s face had gone almost white.

“What did you say?” Pevsner asked coldly.

“About what?”

“Goddamn you to hell, Charley!”

“You’re not supposed to have secrets from your friends,” Castillo said. “I remember you telling me that. Several times.”

“You are on very thin ice, Friend Charley.”

“Speaking of ice,” Castillo said, raising his glass. “That was just what I needed. May I have another?”

He went to the ice-encased bottle of vodka and refilled his glass.

“Can I pour you one? You look like you could use it,” Castillo said, and then asked, “How come you never told me you are a card-carrying member of the Oprichina?”

“Was a member,” Anna said very softly.

Pevsner glared at her, then moved the glare back to Castillo, who went on: “Okay. Was an oprichniki. Did you formally resign? Or just not show up for work one day as the Kremlin walls were falling down?”

“What do you want, Charley?” Pevsner asked very softly.

“I want you to tell me everything you know about Colonel Dmitri Berezovsky.”

Anna sucked in her breath. Her lips looked bloodless.

God, I hope she’s not about to pass out!

“Berezovsky, Dmitri, Colonel. The Berlin rezident,” Castillo pursued. “A high muckety-muck of the Oprichina. Tell me about him, Alek, please.”

“Why are you interested in Berezovsky?”

“Fair question. He had a man who worked for me at the Tages Zeitung killed. And he tried to take out two people very close to me. Oh, and me. I’m always curious about people who want to kill me.”

“If Berezovsky wanted you . . . eliminated . . . you wouldn’t be standing here,” Pevsner said.

“Well, you’re wrong. He did, and here I am. You should not believe your own press releases, Alek. The SVR isn’t really that good.”

“Why did he try to kill you, Charley?” Anna asked.

He saw that some of the color had returned to her face.

And there was something about her carriage that told him that she had abandoned her just-a-wife-who-doesn’t-have-any-idea-what’s-going-on role.

And Pevsner has seen that, too. He’s not trying to shut her up.

“I don’t really know. I think he was trying to send a message for the SVR. Maybe make a statement. ‘We’re back, and we’re going to kill everybody who gets in our way.’ ”

He gave that a moment to register and then went on. “I know why he took out the reporter for the Tages Zeitung. He was getting too close to the connection between the Marburg Group who made all that money sending medicine and food to Iraq, and what’s going on in the African chemical factory. I want you to tell me everything you know about that, too.”

That was a shot in the dark.

But his eyes—and especially the tongue quickly wetting his lips—show I hit him hard with it.

The proof came immediately.

“In exchange for what?” Pevsner asked.

“Well, for one thing, it will keep our professional relationship where it is. The agency and the FBI will leave you alone . . . presuming you don’t break any U.S. laws.”

That’s bullshit.

The agency and the FBI will no more obey the President’s order to leave him alone than they obeyed Montvale’s order to leave me alone. They will do whatever they can to silence him. The agency’s skirts are the opposite of clean.

“How cynical are you, Friend Charley?”

“Well, probably not as much as I should be. But I can learn, I guess.”

“I have personal reasons for not telling you all I know about Dmitri Berezovsky. I won’t tell you what they are, and that’s not negotiable. I will tell you what I know—which isn’t much—about the chemical laboratory in the ex- Belgian Congo, and my price there is very cheap. You don’t tell anyone—anyone including the agency—where you got it.”

So Berezovsky wasn’t lying. There is a chemical laboratory. His big chip to deal with me. Or was Svetlana the big chip?

“Why are you being so good to me, Alek?”

“That’s why I asked how cynical you are. Are you capable of believing it’s because I think what they’re doing there is despicable?”

“Define despicable.”

“Biological warfare that would kill millions of innocent people is despicable. Wouldn’t you agree?”

“Why would you say that none of this has come out?”

“It has come out. The Muslims boast there will be a caliphate from Madrid to Baghdad and that they will kill how many millions of Christians—and, of course, Jews—as necessary to accomplish that. Nobody wants to believe that, so they pretend they didn’t hear it.

“Exactly as they didn’t want to hear that Hitler was murdering undesirables by the millions, and Stalin’s starving Russians to death by the millions in the gulags, and Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical weapons to kill several hundred thousand of his own people.”

“So you’re suggesting that there’s nothing that can be done, that we should lie down and let these people roll over us?”

“I’m suggesting that the best that people like you and me can do is stop a little here, and a little there, and meanwhile try very hard to keep yourself and the people you love alive.”

“Is that the voice of experience I hear?” Castillo asked without thinking, and hearing himself, immediately regretted the sarcasm.

Pevsner’s icy glare showed he didn’t like it either.

For a very long twenty seconds, he said nothing. Then: “As a matter of fact, it is. It is the experience of my heritage speaking.”

He paused again, almost as long.

“Friend Charley, you’re very good at what you do. God gave you an ability few have.”

Where the hell did God come from?

There was no sarcasm in the way he said that.

Alex believes in God?

I’ll be damned!

“You didn’t come here and throw the Oprichina in my face without knowing something—probably a good deal, but not as much as you think you do—about it.”

He paused, obviously thinking, before going on: “You know how far back it goes?”

Castillo nodded. “Ivan the Awesome.”

“A terrible, tormented, cruel, godless man, who by comparison makes Stalin and Hitler and Saddam Hussein look like Saint Francis of Assisi,” Pevsner said. “But not all of the people he took off into the state within the state were like him. There were good, God-fearing people among them, who went with him because the alternative to being of unquestioned loyalty to Ivan was watching your family being skinned alive and fed to starving dogs.”

“Your ancestors?”

“Don’t mock me, Charley.”

“I wasn’t. I was asking a question.”

“Our ancestors, Charley,” Anna said softly.

“Some of those who went with Ivan were minor nobility, and some were soldiers, like you and me.”

“You were a soldier?” Castillo asked.

“Former Polkovnik Pevsner of the Soviet Air Force at your service, Podpolkovnik Castillo. I was simultaneously, of course, a colonel in the KGB. My father and Anna’s father were generals. Anna’s mother was a podpolkovnik. My mother never served. Her father, of course, did. Are you getting the picture, or should I go on?”

“What did you do?” Castillo asked.

“Is that important?”

“If you feel uncomfortable telling me, don’t.”

“I was in charge of ensuring the loyalty of Aeroflot aircrew, service personnel working outside the Soviet Union for Aeroflot, and the transmission—the protection—of diplomatic pouches sent by whatever means.”

“For all of Aeroflot?”

“I was considered one of the very reliables,” Pevsner said. “And I was. But let me get back to what I was saying: In the beginning, it was the women who kept their faith—their faith, not the Church per se; after Ivan had Saint Philip, the Metropolitan of Moscow, strangled”—he paused to see if Castillo was following him, then went on—“the women understood that being too good a Christian was about as dangerous as harboring disloyal thoughts about Ivan, so while paying lip service to the Church, as was expected of them, aided by some clergy, they kept their faith private, within the family. You understand?”

“I think so,” Castillo said.

“It was impossible to really be a Christian—standing up to Ivan and the others we served over the years would have been suicide—but it was possible, here and there, from time to time, to act with great caution and, for example, warn the Jews of an upcoming pogrom so that some of them would survive, or arrange for someone about to be executed or sent to the gulag to make it out of Russia to China or Finland. . . . You understand?”

Castillo nodded.

“That’s what I meant, Friend Charley, when I said that the best that people like you and me can do is stop a little here and a little there.”

“Why did you leave?”

“Because the opportunity was there. Half of what would become the FSB left as Soviet Russia started coming apart.”

“Half of the Oprichina left?”

“Not everybody. Probably less than one-quarter, one-fifth of the FSB—or the Cheka, or the NKVD, whatever, by whatever name—was Oprichina.”

“In other words, a state within a state within a state?”

“Precisely.”

“Okay,” Castillo said. “So why, if you were a card-carrying oprichniki, and doing pretty well, did you leave?”

“I told you, there was the opportunity.”

“To swap the good life to make a few bucks as an arms smuggler, which would have not only most of the world’s police departments trying to put you in jail, not to mention your former pals in Moscow and in Saint Petersburg trying to whack you and your family, as an example pour les autres? Come on, Alek!”

This time it was more than twenty very long seconds before Pevsner replied.

“It is only recently—since I have met you, as a matter of fact, Friend Charley—that I have been—my family has been—in any danger from the FSB.”

“ ‘He’s pals with Castillo. Kill the bastard!’?” Castillo said sarcastically.

Pevsner looked at his wife.

“Tell him, Aleksandr,” she said. “Or I will. You are alive because of Charley. He is now our family.”

Pevsner considered that a long moment, then waved his hands, signaling, Okay. If that’s what you want, you tell him.

“The Communist Party, Charley, was very wealthy,” Anna began. “Another state within a state, if you like. There was more than one hundred billion—no one really knows how much, and I’m speaking of dollars; no one cared then or now for rubles—some in cash and some of it in gold and platinum. Tons of gold and platinum. The Communists had no intention of turning this over to a democratically elected government. They planned to take power again, and they would need the money to do this.

“The first thing they did was authorize what was then the KGB to go into business in Moscow—regular businesses, car dealerships, real estate, everything. The idea wasn’t to make money—although that happened—but to find places to hide the money.

“But what to do with the gold and platinum? It had to be taken out of the country and hidden somewhere.

“So how to do that?” Anna asked rhetorically, then gestured at her husband. “ ‘Ask Comrade Polkovnik Pevsner of the KGB and Aeroflot. He has spent more time out of the Soviet Union and been more places than just about anybody else.’ ”

“And I was a respected oprichnik,” Pevsner interjected, “one who was trusted by them. So when they came to me, I suggested that I knew where to hide it. Saudi Arabia, the U.S., places like that. And I even had a cover story. I would leave the KGB, it would be arranged for me to buy several Ilyushin transports, and I would grow rich transporting small arms around the world and bringing luxury cars and French champagne into Russia. No one would notice—and no one did—that when my Ilyushins left Moscow or Saint Petersburg, several of the wooden crates ostensibly holding Kalashnikov rifles or ammunition for them actually held gold bars. Or platinum.”

“Jesus Christ!” Castillo said.

“And, to make sure everybody believed that I had really left the Oprichina, it was arranged for Anna and the children to escape.”

“What did you do with the gold and platinum?”

“After taking my agreed-upon fee of five percent—”

“You took five percent of a billion dollars’ worth of gold?”

“I took five percent of a lot more than a billion dollars’ worth of gold, Charley. And about twice that much of platinum.”

He saw the look on Castillo’s face.

“Is true,” he said, chuckling. “And when that was over, I began to spend a very great deal of money ensuring that no one I formerly knew would ever see me or hear of me ever again. So you’ll understand my annoyance, Friend Charley, when I heard that a young American colonel—no, a young American major—was looking for me because he thought I’d stolen a worn-out, old 727 from an airfield in Angola. At the time, I was buying four new 777s—through other people, of course—more or less direct from Boeing.”

He smiled and reached out and touched Castillo’s arm.

“Who would have thought the night we met in Vienna that one night we would be sitting together halfway across the world, as Anna put it, as family?”

“Jesus Christ, Alek!” Castillo said.

“If I tell you what I know about—and what I can learn about—the chemical factory outside Kisangani, you will not tell anyone where you got the information?”

“You have my word.”

“And maybe you will be able to convince your superiors to do something about it?”

“It’ll go, if I have to take it out myself.”

Pevsner nodded his approval.

“You heard about the factory from your journalist? Is that what started you on this? ‘If it’s rotten, Aleksandr Pevsner will certainly know something about it’?”

“Actually, Colonel Dmitri Berezovsky told me about it.”

Pevsner clearly bristled at that. “All you had to say was ‘None of your business. ’ I don’t find that funny. In the old days, I knew Berezovsky. Despite what he tried to do to you, he’s a good man.”

“Colonel Dmitri Berezovsky told me about the factory,” Castillo said. “I don’t lie to friends. If you don’t believe me, you can ask your cousin Svetlana.”

“I told you, I don’t think this is funny. Sometimes, when you think you’re being funny, I could kill you.”

“Did your cousin Svetlana have red hair the last time you saw her?”

It took a moment for Pevsner to take his meaning.

“Svetlana is here with you?” he asked finally.

“I thought, if it’s all right with Anna, you might want to ask her to have dinner with us. I am invited, right?”

“And Alfredo is with her?” Pevsner asked.

“And my bodyguard,” Castillo said. “You remember him?”

“The boy with the gun,” Pevsner said.

Castillo nodded. “Who killed your pal Lieutenant Colonel Yevgeny Komogorov in the garage of the Sheraton Pilar when Komogorov was trying to kill you.”

“And they nearly killed János,” Pevsner said. “Yes, Charley. I remember.”

Castillo took out his cell phone. “Should I call Munz and tell him to put her on his boat?”

“Where is his boat?”

“Bobbing around in the lake, just outside the reach of your floodlights.”

“I always keep a boat at the hotel,” Pevsner said. “Get him on the line for me, please, Charley.”

Thirty-five minutes later, Pevsner and his wife were standing together under the enormous chandelier in the foyer. Castillo had taken a seat at the side of the room.

János came into the house first, then Munz, then Svetlana, and finally Lester Bradley. Two men followed them, carrying everybody’s luggage, including, Castillo saw, the AFC radio.

Svetlana, somewhat confused, looked quickly around the foyer, settled her eyes on Castillo, and asked, somewhat plaintively, “Charley?”

And then Anna sobbed, and Svetlana looked at her and for the first time recognized her. Anna held her arms open and Svetlana ran to her.

Without realizing he had gotten out of the chair, Castillo was now standing.

Anna let go of Svetlana, who moved to Pevsner’s open arms. Castillo saw tears running down his cheeks.

Pevsner finally let Svetlana go, took a handkerchief from his pocket, and mopped his eyes.

Svetlana looked at Castillo for a moment, then ran to him.

Castillo decided it would be ungentlemanly of him to refuse her gratitude, even if he was aware that her previous manifestations of affection for him had been solely professionally motivated.

She threw herself into his arms and pressed herself against him.

“Oh, Charley, my Charley, thank you, thank you. I love you so much!”

And then her mouth was on his.

Some time later, Castillo heard Anna say, “If you two are about finished, the children are waiting to see Svetlana.”

IX

[ONE]

La Casa en Bosque

San Carlos de Bariloche

Río Negro Province, Argentina

0845 31 December 2005

“I love you, my Charley,” Lieutenant Colonel Alekseeva announced, and kissed him very quickly, if incredibly intimately, and then went on: “And I love this room! I’m going to have one just like it!”

She jumped out of the bed and trotted naked to the window on her toes. She pulled the translucent curtain aside and further clarified her desire. “With a view of a lake, like this, and the mountains!”

They were in “The Blue Room,” so identified by a little sign on the bedside telephone, the walls of which were covered with pale blue silk brocade—Castillo thought it was the same shade of blue as that on the Argentine flag and had, when he had been shown—alone—to the room, wondered if that was intentional or coincidental.

He had had perhaps three minutes to consider this and a number of other things when the door to the adjacent room had opened and Lieutenant Colonel Alekseeva, attired as she was now—and carrying a bottle of champagne and two glasses—had joined him.

It was some time later that he noticed through the open door that the walls of the adjacent room were covered with dark green silk brocade and wondered if it was called “The Green Room.”

By then, he had come to several philosophical conclusions:

Live today, for tomorrow you may die was one of them.

Anything this good can’t be bad was another.

So I’m out of mind, so what? was yet another.

Svetlana let the curtain fall back into place and looked at Castillo.

“I see your face,” she said. “Anything worth having is expensive.”

Then she trotted back to the bed and dove into it.

“You don’t like this room?” she asked.

“I like it fine.”

“Then I will buy one just like it for you,” she said, and then corrected herself. “For us, my Charley!”

He put his arms around her shoulders and she crawled up on his chest and bit his nipple.

He had time for just one more philosophical conclusion, There’s no such thing as too much of a good thing, when there was a knock at the corridor door.

“Oh, no!” Svetlana said, raising her head to look at it.

“May I come in?” Anna Pevsner called.

“One moment,” Svetlana called, rolled onto her back, pulled the sheet—which was also, Castillo noticed for the first time, Argentina blue—modestly over them, and then called, “Okay. Come!”

Anna came into the room and stood at the foot of the bed with her hands folded in front of her.

“This is difficult for me,” she said. “But the children . . .”

“What, Anna?” Svetlana said.

“I believe, as I know you do, what Holy John Chrysostom said about ‘the sacrament of the brother.’”

“Good,” Svetlana said. “Then don’t do it.”

What the hell is this?

Who the hell is Holy John whatever she said?

“Would you like me to . . . uh?” Castillo asked, pointing to the bathroom door.

“This concerns you, too, Charley,” Anna said.

Svetlana nodded to confirm this.

“Then somebody please tell me about Holy John,” Castillo said.

“You are a Christian, Charley?” Anna asked.

“I don’t think I’m in particularly good standing.”

“I’m sorry,” Anna said.

“I will fix that,” Svetlana said.

“What about Holy John Whatever?”

“Holy John Chrysostom said one must avoid . . .” Anna began.

“What he said was one must certainly avoid judging or condemning one’s brother or sister,” Svetlana corrected her. “Certainly avoid.”

“And that’s what I’m trying to do. If you want to . . . be intimate . . . with a man not your husband, that’s between you, God, and Evgeny.”

“Between me and God, certainly. It’s none of Evgeny’s business.”

“Evgeny’s your husband.”

“Was my husband. If he’s still alive, he’s trying to find me so he can kill me.”

“He is still your husband,” Anna insisted.

You didn’t challenge that “he’s trying to find me so he can kill me,” though, did you, Anna?

“No, he’s not. I left his bed four years ago.”

Four years ago?

“You can’t break the covenant.”

“I did. And you know that the Holy John Chrysostom wrote that it’s ‘better to break the covenant than to lose one’s soul.’ ”

“That’s between you and the Lord.”

“Yes, it is. And as far as my Charley is concerned, I’ll go with what Saint Paul said in First Corinthians.”

“That’s up to you.”

“I’m a little rusty about First Corinthians,” Castillo said. “What exactly did Saint Paul say?”

Anna looked uncomfortable. Svetlana blushed.

“Well?” Castillo pursued.

“Why not? You know anyway. ‘If they cannot control themselves, they should marry.’ The moment I saw you on the train, I knew I was through controlling myself.”

“Saint Paul said that about the unmarried and widows,” Anna said.

“I told you, I broke the covenant; I’m not married,” Svetlana said. “And when I first saw my Charley, I had been controlling myself for four long, long years. You try that sometime, Anna.”

“This is getting us nowhere,” Anna said.

“Well, at least it’s out in the open,” Svetlana said.

“All I’m asking is that you try to . . . behave appropriately in front of the children. Especially Elena. She remembers Evgeny.”

“The last time she saw Evgeny she was practically in diapers. She wouldn’t know him if he walked in the door right now.”

But that would certainly be interesting, wouldn’t it?

“Breakfast will be in half an hour,” Anna said. “And after that, we’re going to decorate the Novogodnaya Yolka.” She looked at Castillo, said, “Thank you for understanding, Friend Charley,” and walked out the door.

Svetlana waited until it was closed, then got quickly out of bed, went to the door, made sure it was locked, and then got back in bed.

She put her hand on the bodily appendage peculiar to his gender and gave it an affectionate squeeze to which it immediately responded.

“Are you happy, my Charley, that I cannot control myself?”

Before his mind moved almost immediately afterward to other thoughts of a more erotic nature, Castillo had time to think, Both of them are genuinely devout. How the hell can that be?

[TWO]

“Forgive me for starting my breakfast without waiting for you,” Aleksandr Pevsner said absolutely insincerely. “I hope you slept well?”

“Better than I have in years,” Svetlana said as she took one of the chairs. Then she asked, “What in the world is that you’re eating?”

“American pancakes,” Pevsner said. “I thought it would be nice for Charley and Corporal Bradley. They get the sauce by bleeding a tree.”

“What?”

“Tell her, you Americans.”

“It’s maple syrup, Colonel,” Bradley explained. “A tap is driven into maple trees, which are common in the northern United States. And, of course, in Canada. Possibly in other similar climates, but I just don’t know. When there are below-freezing nighttime temperatures followed by daytime temperatures above freezing, the sap of the tree drips from the tap into a container. It is collected, then boiled until the desired consistency is reached.”

“And now you know,” Castillo said. “Thank you, Bradley.”

“You’re quite welcome, sir. Was the explanation sufficient, Colonel?”

“Yes, it was,” Svetlana said. She turned to a maid and said, in Spanish, “Please bring me black coffee and a pastry of some kind. A croissant would be nice.”

“Oh, try a pancake with tree sauce,” Castillo said. “Live dangerously.”

“I thought I was,” she said. “But all right. Bring me one, please, a small one.”

Castillo smiled at Elena, who was cuddling the puppy.

“And how did it go with Nameless, sweetheart?”

“Well, he wouldn’t stop crying until I took him into bed with me,” she said. “Then he was all right. When I woke up this morning, Max was in there with us and he wouldn’t let the maid in the room.”

“That animal was in bed with you?” her father asked incredulously.

“And he wouldn’t let Delores come into the room until I screamed at him,” she said. “And the puppy’s not nameless anymore. He’s Ivan.”

“Why Ivan?” her mother asked.

“Well, the first thing he did when I took him to my room was wee-wee on the floor. So I took him outside so he could do his business, and brought him back, and the first thing he did when I put him on my lap was . . . you know. So I told him ‘you’re terrible’ and there it was: ‘Ivan the Terrible.’ ”

“That seems to fit,” Castillo said.

“Right after our breakfast, we’re going to decorate the Novogodnaya Yolka,” Anna said quickly. “Do you know what that is, Charley?”

“No, but I’ll bet Lester does,” Castillo said, and gestured to Bradley.

“My understanding, Colonel,” Bradley began, “is that the Novogodnaya Yolka is sort of the Russian version of our Christmas tree but is symbolic of the New Year rather than of Christmas. It is topped by a star, and decorated with candy and small pastries. Father Frost, sort of a Russian Santa Claus, and his daughter—”

“Granddaughter,” Pevsner interrupted. “Ded Moroz’s granddaughter, Snegurochka, the Snow Girl.”

“Thank you for the amplification, sir,” Bradley said. “I didn’t know that. Please feel free to correct me at any time.”

“You are doing very well, Corporal,” Anna said. “Please go on. My husband will not rudely interrupt you again.”

Bradley acknowledged that with a nod and went on: “Father Frost and the Snow Girl bring in presents for the good children and leave them under the Novogodnaya Yolka. More or less a variation of presents left under the Christmas tree. That is about the sum of my knowledge, sir.”

“Thank you, Lester,” Castillo said.

“You’re very welcome, sir.”

“And since I have been a very good girl for years and years,” Svetlana said, looking directly at Anna, “and Ded Moroz and Snegurochka knew how very, very hard that was for me, they brought me my present early. Last night.”

Castillo realized he was being groped under the table.

“What was it, Aunty Svet?” Elena asked.

“I promised not to tell; if other girls knew what it is, they’d be jealous. Something I really needed. I’ll have to take very good care of it.”

Anna’s face was frozen.

“And while Anna and the children are decorating the Novogodnaya Yolka,” Pevsner said quickly, as if trying to shut off that line of conversation, “I need to have a word with Colonel Munz and Charley. And you, too, Svetlana, unless you’d rather help decorate the tree.”

“I told you I’ve already gotten my present,” Svetlana said, giving the present a farewell squeeze. “So I’ll go with you.”

The maid placed a plate with one solitary pancake on it before Svetlana and a plate with a stack of half a dozen pancakes and four strips of bacon before Castillo.

Svetlana watched as Castillo buttered his pancakes and poured maple syrup over them. She buttered her pancake, put maple syrup on it, and then sawed off a small piece and forked it into her mouth.

Then she reached over to Castillo’s plate and transferred two pancakes and two strips of bacon to her plate.

She caught the maid’s attention and said, “We’re going to need some more of this, if you’d be so kind.”

[THREE]

János was in the library when Pevsner, Castillo, Munz, and Svetlana walked in, followed by a maid pushing a cart with a silver samovar, a silver coffee thermos, and the necessary accoutrements on it.

Pevsner waited somewhat impatiently for the maid to leave, then gestured to János to arrange chairs in a circle around a small low table. When he had, everybody sat down.

János then served. He poured coffee for Castillo and Munz without asking, asked Svetlana with a gesture whether she wanted tea or coffee, then poured tea for her and Pevsner.

“Since the circumstances have changed somewhat—” Pevsner began. “God, what an understatement that was!” he interrupted himself, and then went on: “Under the new circumstances, certain things have to be discussed and dealt with.

“I will start with János. Svet, János has been protecting me and the family for years. We have almost died together. Most recently, I was betrayed and lured to the basement garage of the Sheraton Pilar—near Charley’s safe house—where Podpolkovnik Yevgeny Komogorov, whom you know, and several of his friends tried very hard to kill us both. János was severely wounded. Only Charley’s people kept us alive. The boy who just now delivered the lectures on tree syrup and the Novogodnaya Yolka took care of Komogorov.”

He laid his index finger just below his eyeball.

“From at least fifteen meters with his pistol. Bradley is a very interesting young man.”

“Why did Komogorov want you removed?” Svetlana asked. She didn’t seem surprised to learn of Bradley’s skill as a pistoleer.

“We’ll get into that later. Let me continue,” Pevsner said. “So, Svet, you may trust János completely.”

Svetlana nodded.

“Now we turn to Alfredo, which shames me,” Pevsner said. “He was advising me. Not about any of my business enterprises, but how best I could disappear in Argentina, how best I could protect Anna and the children, things of that nature. I repaid his faithful service, when others were betraying me, by suspecting Alfredo was among them. Charley was a far better judge of character than I; he knew Alfredo was incapable of what I suspected. Charley also knew what I was capable of when someone threatened my family, that I believed what the Old Testament tells us in Exodus, ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,’ rather than in turning the other cheek.

“Charley sent Alfredo’s wife and children to his grandmother in the United States to protect them from me. And Alfredo went to work with Charley. And when the time came, when Alfredo had every right in God’s world to apply what it says in Exodus to me, he instead turned to Saint Matthew and turned the other cheek.”

Castillo was having irreverent thoughts: While this theological lecture by the Reverend Pevsner is certainly interesting—and Svetlana is swallowing it whole as if he just carried it down from Mount Sinai carved in stone—the truth is if Alfredo could have got a shot at you when your thugs were following him around, he damn sure would have taken it. And then, when you found out he was really a good guy after all and called off your bad guys, he didn’t whack you because (a) he doesn’t like killing people unless he has to, and (b) it would have caused more trouble than the satisfaction would have been worth.

Or am I the only near heathen around here? Is Alfredo a Christian in the closet? “As a good Christian, Aleksandr, I forgive you. Go and sin no more”?

Or am I committing the sin of looking in the mirror? Just because I have trouble believing a lot of the things I’ve heard in church doesn’t mean that Alfredo does. And Svetlana and Aleksandr sound like they’re perfectly serious.

Jesus, what did she say when I wisecracked that I wasn’t a Christian in good standing?

“I’ll fix that” is what she said.

Jesus Christ!

“Have you been able to find forgiveness for me in your heart, Alfredo?” Pevsner asked.

“Of course,” Munz said. “You thought you were protecting your family, and I knew how you felt about that.”

“And will you come back to work for me?”

“No.”

“You can name your salary.”

“This isn’t about money, and you know it. Or should. And anyway, it’s moot. I work for Colonel Castillo.”

“And there is some reason you can’t work for both of us?”

Munz chuckled.

“Yes, there is, and you probably know it as well as I do,” Munz said, and then went on to quote effortlessly: “Saint Matthew, Chapter Six, Verse Twenty-four, ‘No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.’ That’s from the King James Bible. But there’s not much difference between that and other versions of Holy Scripture.”

I will be damned.

You have been looking in the mirror, stupid!

“You’re right of course,” Pevsner said after a moment. “But that’s going to cause a problem.”

“How so?” Munz asked.

“I was about to tell János to contact everybody and tell them that you are back, and that you speak with my voice.”

Munz considered that quickly and replied. “If it’s all right with Colonel Castillo, that’s probably a good idea.”

“How so, Alfredo?” Castillo asked.

Pevsner answered for him: “Before the Buenos Aires rezident learns that you have brought Dmitri and Svetlana here, we’re going to have to move Dmitri out of your safe house. The Cubans do most of the work for him, for the obvious reasons—and we’ve seen the proof—and while they might not know specific details, the Cubans know the Americans have something, most likely a safe house, in Mayerling Country Club, and if the Cubans know, the rezident knows.”

Munz nodded his agreement.

And the Central Intelligence Agency, which will also shortly be looking for Berezovsky and family, also knows about Nuestra Pequeña Casa.

“Move them where?” Castillo asked. “Here?”

“No,” Munz said. “I think the thing to do is for Alek and his family to stay here. So far as I know, the rezident doesn’t know anything more than that Alek has a place in Bariloche, but they don’t know which one.”

“There’s more than one?” Castillo asked.

Pevsner nodded. “Plus two more that might be suitable in San Martín de los Andres, which is several hours by car and forty minutes in the helicopter,” he said. “One of them, come to think of it, is a fly-fishing estancia. When the fish are not in season, we have paying guests, who find it a beautiful, romantic, out-of-the-way place just to get away.”

Munz nodded his agreement.

There’s that word “romantic” again. Is there an implication that the Reverend Pevsner approves of our sinful relationship? Munz’s nod, I think, means simply it would be a good place to hide.

“And there is the second place in the Buena Vista Country Club in Pilar, and then of course the place at the Polo & Golf,” Munz said. “I’m sure the Cubans will have an eye on the big house.”

“I miss that house,” Pevsner said, then turned to Castillo. “Well, Charley, you can see why I need Alfredo’s advice and why his speaking with my authority is more than useful, absolutely necessary. Are you willing to take the chance that there are exceptions to what Saint Matthew said, and this is one of them?”

“Why is there any question at all?” Svetlana began. “We’re all—”

“He was asking me,” Castillo interrupted.

She flashed him a look that was more anger than hurt.

“Far be it from me to challenge Saint Matthew,” Castillo said. “Would this be satisfactory? Alfredo will advise you, and speak with your voice, with the clear understanding that he has only one master, me?”

“I thought that was understood,” Svetlana said.

Castillo gave her a look he hoped she would interpret as saying, You are pissing me off.

“Well?” Castillo said. “Alek?”

“Understood and agreed to,” Pevsner said.

“Okay, Alfredo, let’s hear your advice.”

“As soon as we can, move Colonel Berezovsky to the small house in Buena Vista. Preferably in something that won’t attract much attention. Alek, where is the Coto supermarket delivery truck?”

“In the garage,” Pevsner said. “János?”

“It’s there. But the battery may be dead.”

“When you get on the phone, make sure it is not dead.”

János nodded.

“If that doesn’t work,” Munz went on, “Darby can arrange a black embassy car.”

“Delchamps and Darby will go with him?” Castillo asked.

“Of course.”

“And what about the radio?”

“Leave the radio with Davidson,” Munz said. “If they’re watching Nuestra Pequeña Casa, a sudden mass exit of people and lack of activity—”

“What radio?” Svetlana asked.

“If I wanted you to know, I would have told you,” Castillo said.

Pevsner chuckled.

“This man may be good for you, Svetlana,” he said. “You do not cow him.”

“I think it would be a very good idea to let Colonel Berezovsky talk to both Alek and Svetlana,” Castillo said.

“Yes,” Pevsner said. “For both personal reasons and so that he can stop dancing with Darby and Delchamps.”

“If they are watching Charley’s house and this one, there will be telephone taps,” Svetlana said disgustedly.

“Thank you for sharing that with us, Colonel,” Castillo said. Then he put his index finger over his lips and said, “Sssshhh.”

János and Munz tried not to smile. Pevsner laughed out loud.

“János, what has Bradley done with the radio?” Castillo asked.

János pointed to the window.

“It’s up?” Castillo asked, surprised.

“He had it up last night, right after you went to bed.”

“Go get him and it, please,” Castillo said.

János left the room.

“I would like to know about the radio,” Svetlana said.

“So you said,” Castillo said.

“I am a podpolkovnik of the SVR!” Svetlana announced angrily. “I will not be treated as a foolish woman!”

“You were a podpolkovnik of the SVR,” Pevsner said, rather unpleasantly. “And from your behavior, I’d say you just proved you are a foolish woman.”

“That is between Charley and me. None of your business.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Svet,” Pevsner said. “What I meant is that only a foolish woman loses her temper when there is nothing whatever she can do about what has angered her. And I know very well that when Friend Charley decides to tease you, there is nothing you can do but smile.”

Corporal Lester Bradley entered the room carrying the handset of the AFC radio.

“I can run the secure cable if you would like, sir,” he said. “But I rather doubt if there are intercept devices within the hundred-meter possible intercept range. And, of course, Class One encryption is active. In my opinion, sir, the secure cable is unnecessary.”

“Your opinion is good enough for me, Lester,” Castillo said. “But before I get Delchamps on the radio . . . You may have noticed a certain change in the relationship between myself and Colonel Alekseeva?”

“No, sir. I have not. Is there something I should know?”

“May I speak?” Munz said.

“You don’t have to ask, Alfredo.”

“I was thinking just then about what Davidson said when you sent Bradley to the Delta camp at Fort Bragg to hide him. Do you recall what he said?”

“He said trying to hide Lester at Camp Mackall was like trying to hide a giraffe on the White House lawn.”

Pevsner smiled broadly.

“Am I being called a giraffe?” Svetlana asked suspiciously.

Pevsner put his index finger in front of his lips and made a shushing sound.

“I take your point,” Castillo said. “So let’s get it out in the open. I can’t explain what happened between us. Bottom line, it did. I can’t even work up much guilt for doing what everybody in this room, everybody I know in our line of work, will regard at least as goddamn foolish, and—with absolute justification—as gross dereliction of duty, not to mention conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. Bottom line here: I will try to carry out my duties to the best of my ability, and believe I can. And I realize I really don’t give a good goddamn what anybody thinks about it; all I care about is what Svetlana thinks about me.”

“Oh, my Charley,” Svetlana said, and got out of her chair and went to kiss him.

“Obviously, the others are going to find out,” Castillo said a moment later. “The later they do, the better. I’ll cross those bridges when I get to them.”

“If I may say so, sir,” Bradley said, “I have seen nothing in your behavior toward Colonel Alekseeva, or in hers toward you, that in any way suggests any impropriety of any kind on the part of either party.”

“That sums it up pretty well for me, too, Charley,” Munz said. “Anything else?”

Castillo shook his head. He didn’t trust his voice to speak.

“Lester, call the safe house, and get Mr. Darby on there, please,” Munz ordered.

“I was wondering when you were going to check in, Ace,” Edgar Delchamps’s voice came over the AFC handset loudspeaker perhaps thirty seconds later. “Your pal the ambassador has been looking for you.”

“Ambassador Silvio? Oh, shit. What did he want?”

Juan Manuel Silvio was the American ambassador to Argentina. He had courageously risked his career to help Castillo in the past, doing things an ambassador just should not do. Castillo did not want to involve him in the current situation.

“No. The one who doesn’t like you. Montvale. That ambassador.”

“What did that ambassador want?”

“Aside from talking to you, do you mean?” Delchamps asked, then went on: “Well, he wanted to know where you were.”

“And?”

“And I told him you were off in the Andes with a redhead studying geological formations, and would return after the New Year’s holiday. I may have given him the impression I suspected you were going to try to hide the salami in the redhead.”

Svetlana’s face showed that it had taken her five seconds to take Delchamps’s meaning. Then it showed indignation, perhaps even outrage. Then it colored.

“And his response?”

“Something to the effect that if you had been able to keep your salami in your pants in the past you wouldn’t be in the trouble you’re in now. No. Actually, what he said was ‘We wouldn’t be in the trouble we’re in now.’”

“Did he say what trouble that was?”

“He alluded to a preposterous notion apparently held by the agency’s Vienna station chief—which she has apparently relayed officially to the DCI—and unofficially to a former co-worker at the CIA, one Mrs. Patricia Davies Wilson, who in turn just happened to mention it in passing to C. Harry Whelan, Jr., of The Washington Post.”

“Did he say what this preposterous notion was?”

“As a matter of fact, he did. He said that a Miss Dillworth—she’s the Vienna station chief—has somehow gotten the preposterous idea that you swooped into Vienna and snatched away two very important Russians she had labored hard and long upon to change sides and who were about to do so.

“The ambassador said he found this impossible to believe—even of you—especially inasmuch as you had an arrangement with him to tell him whenever you were going to do something out of the ordinary, but he would like to have a little chat with you as soon as possible to straighten the matter out.”

“Well, I guess I’d better call him in the next day or two. How are you and Alex doing with Polkovnik Berezovsky?”

“In Russian, huh? Can I infer from that your relations with Podpolkovnik Alekseeva have been going well?”

“Answer the question, Edgar.”

“Not well. He’s one tough sonofabitch, Charley. And we’re running out of time.”

“Well, don’t break out the ice water and the bright lights just yet. Get him on the radio.”

“Really? You got something out of Red Underpants we can use on him?”

“Get him on the horn, and make sure everybody else can hear.”

“The way you said that sounds like maybe I didn’t have to put an edge on my hari-kiri sword after all; maybe I won’t have to commit seppuku.”

Castillo happened to glance at Svetlana. She was glaring at him.

“Sit there, Colonel, and just talk in a normal voice. Okay, Ace, we’re all gathered here to witness the miracle.”

“Colonel Berezovsky, can you hear me?” Castillo asked.

“I can hear you.”

Castillo gestured to Aleksandr Pevsner.

“God has mercifully answered our prayers, Dmitri,” Pevsner said. “Our mothers are smiling down on us from heaven. Thanks be to God, you are safely out of hell on earth.”

And we will now sing Hymn Number One One Four, “Onward, Christian Soldiers.”

Castillo was immediately sorry when he heard Berezovsky finally manage to ask, in a choked voice, “Aleksandr?”

And even worse when he saw that Pevsner couldn’t find his voice, either.

I hate to tell you, Edgar, but right now neither of them looks like a tough sonofabitch to me.

“Pity you’re not here, Tom Barlow, ol’ buddy. You could help us decorate the Novogodnaya Yolka.”

That earned him another icy glare from Svetlana.

Pevsner found his voice.

“Dmitri, the situation has changed greatly. Listen to me carefully. Do whatever Mr. Darby—or any of Charley Castillo’s people—tells you to do. Tell them anything they want to know. Do what they say.”

“You know this man Castillo?”

“He is the next thing to family,” Pevsner said. “He is family, if you ask Anna.”

“Or me, Dmitri,” Svetlana said. “So far as I am concerned, before God and the world, he is family.”

“Has he met Alfredo?” Pevsner asked Castillo, who nodded.

“Dmitri, Colonel Munz is not only my friend, but he speaks with my voice,” Pevsner said. “We’re going to move you from where you are to a safer place. Alfredo will explain.”

Munz then addressed Darby. “Alex?”

“Here, Alfredo.”

“There is a second safe house at the Buena Vista Country Club. Colonel Castillo wants you to go there—you and Delchamps; everybody else stays at Nuestra Pequeña Casa—with Colonel Berezovsky and his family. Within the hour, a Coto supermarket delivery truck will come there and back up to the front door. Load everybody in it.”

“Whose truck?”

“Pevsner’s, and the men in it will be his. We’ve got another place at the Golf and Polo Country Club as a backup.”

“This is Charley’s idea?” Darby asked dubiously.

“Until something better can be worked out, yeah,” Castillo said. “By the time I get back to Buenos Aires—”

“When will that be, Ace?” Delchamps asked.

“I’m going to leave here at first light on the second. I’ll be at Jorge Newbery—and somebody will have to meet me—four hours and something after that. I’ll have Alfredo and Lester with me.”

“And me,” Svetlana said.

“I’m going to leave Colonel Alekseeva here. And probably move Mrs. Berezovsky and Sof’ya here.”

“Is leaving her there smart, Charley?”

“It’s out of the question,” Svetlana said. “‘For wither thou goest, I will go’ . . . Read the Bible, my Charley, that’s in the first chapter of Ruth.”

“I don’t want all our eggs in one basket,” Castillo said.

“That’s right. You trust Pevsner, don’t you?” Delchamps asked sarcastically.

“I’m with Charley, Alex,” Munz said. “Leaving her here makes sense.”

“Well, I guess that makes two of you,” Delchamps said.

“I’m going to find out as much as I can about the money from her. Alek is going to tell me what he knows about the Congo operation, but he says he doesn’t know much, so get what you can out of the colonel.”

“Dmitri, tell them everything you know about that,” Pevsner ordered.

It took Berezovsky a long moment to reply.

“You are sure, Aleksandr?”

“Of course I’m sure. We can do something about that, Dmitri, through Charley.”

“If you’re worried about the two million, Colonel,” Castillo said, “Alek will tell you I’m a man of my word. I promised it to you, and I’ll pay it.”

Castillo saw that Svetlana shook her head as if wondering how stupid just one human male could be.

What the hell is that all about?

“One quick question, Colonel, now that we’re no longer dancing,” Castillo said. “And we’re no longer dancing, right?”

“I trust Aleksandr’s judgment, Colonel,” Berezovsky said. “We are no longer, as you put it so quaintly, dancing.”

“Did you go to the Kuhls when you decided to leave, or did he try to turn you?”

“I went to him. We have known about them for years.”

“And he put you in contact with our station chief in Vienna?”

“Finally.”

“What about her?”

“I presume you wish an honest, rather than a courteous, opinion?”

“Yes, I do.”

“She was the problem. She would do nothing without permission.”

“Is that what you meant by she ‘finally’ made contact with you?”

“She finally allowed us to make contact with her. And it was Svetlana and I who were taking the risk, not she.”

“Is that why you suddenly decided to approach me?”

“There was a possibility they were onto us. That was a possibility. In Svetlana’s and my judgment, it was a certainty that should it appear to Miss Dillworth that there was any possibility of anything going wrong, we would be left to fend for ourselves.”

“Thank you for your honesty,” Castillo said.

“And speaking of Vienna, Charley,” Delchamps said, “Miller said that guy you wanted an eye on . . . what the hell was his name?”

“Alekseeva?”

“Some kind of a relative of Little Red Under Britches?”

“Yeah. What about him?”

“Miller said NSA said they were already running an eye on him for somebody else. They wouldn’t tell him who, but it sounds like the agency. Anyway, he’s on an Air France—not Aeroflot—flight to Rome from Moscow sometime this afternoon. And then has a train reservation to Vienna.”

“That means they have allowed him the opportunity to redeem himself by eliminating Svetlana,” Colonel Berezovsky said. “Be careful, Svet!”

“And you don’t think he’s coming after you, too?” Svetlana said.

“I can deal with Evgeny. It’s you I’m worried about.”

“Pride goeth before a fall,” she said.

“And I’ll bet that’s in the Bible, too,” Castillo said sarcastically.

“Proverbs 16:18,” she replied matter-of-factly.

“I think it might be useful if we knew what everybody’s talking about,” Delchamps said.

“This guy’s out to whack our new friends. Tell Miller to get NSA to keep an eye on him. I want to know if he’s in Vienna, and if and when he leaves Vienna. And where he’s headed when he leaves.”

“And don’t bother the agency with this, right?”

“Absolutely don’t bother the agency with this.”

“Anything else?”

“I can’t think of anything.”

“You want a call to report we’ve made the move?”

“Not unless something goes wrong.”

“Okay. See you the day after tomorrow at Jorge Newbery.”

[FOUR]

“The possibility exists, Aleksandr,” Svetlana said, “that even if they weren’t onto us, they are now, and consequently may have already learned about the money, and we must presume that if they haven’t, they soon will. I have the numbers memorized . . .”

She stopped when a maid came into the library. It was just the three of them. Munz was off somewhere, presumably on the telephone, and Lester had been summoned by Anna to see if he could do something about Max, who was apparently snatching the small pastries off the Novogodnaya Yolka as soon as they could be hung, then growling at any adult who tried to stop him.

It was the fourth time their conversation had been interrupted by one of the help.

“Enough,” Pevsner declared in Russian, which caused the middle-aged maid to look at him almost in alarm.

“When you finish whatever it is you have to do in here, please tell Madam Pevsner that we will be in the Green Room, where we do not wish to be disturbed unless it’s the Second Coming of our Lord and Savior.”

The maid nodded her understanding.

She almost prostrated herself before Tsar Aleksandr. It was—Castillo stopped the thought until he came up with the word he was searching for—serflike. Not almost. Serflike. And she’s Russian. So how did a Russian serf wind up in Bariloche?

“There is a study in the Green Room,” Pevsner announced. “Large enough. We will continue this there. With the door locked.”

“I want one of those,” Svetlana said as Castillo opened the lid of his laptop. “Will you get me one, Charley?”

“No,” he said simply.

Pevsner chuckled.

“Then I will buy one myself.”

“I don’t think that’s very likely,” Castillo replied. “But speaking of money, as we were when we were interrupted—”

“What about it?”

“Those bank account numbers you told Alek you have memorized—”

“What about them?”

“I’ve got them in here,” he said, tapping the laptop. “Why don’t I just put them on a CD if Alek needs them?” He was looking into her eyes and hoping he was at least somewhere close to matching the icy looks Pevsner was so good at.

And I hit home. Her eyes show it.

“Or are we talking about bank account numbers you somehow forgot to mention when you were telling me everything, Girl Scout’s Honor?”

“Oh, God, Charley, I was going to tell you about them!”

That look of genuine remorse is either genuine, or she should be on the stage.

Svetlana looked at Pevsner for support and, Castillo saw, got none.

“Before we get into what else may have slipped your mind and you didn’t tell me,” Castillo said, “what are the memorized account numbers?”

“That’s where most of the money is,” she said. “Most of it in Lichtenstein, but some in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. There are five accounts in all.”

“And the numbers you gave me?”

“What we did, Charley, is put a little bit of money in those accounts, so in case we were found out, they would think they had found the money and stop looking. You understand?”

“Define ‘a little bit of money.’ ”

“Usually never more than a quarter of a million dollars.”

“Looks can be deceiving, Svetlana. I’m not really stupid enough to believe that.”

“Before God, it is the truth.”

He did the math in his head before going on. “You expect me to believe that whoever chases after dirty money in Russia is going to come across your lousy eight thousand dollars and say, ‘Eureka, we found it. Call off the search’?”

“Eight thousand dollars?” she asked in what seemed to be genuine confusion.

Pevsner laughed.

“This is not funny, goddamn it, Alek. First she lies to me, and then she insults my intelligence. What happened to the ‘we’re all family and have no secrets’ bullshit?”

“A moment ago, Friend Charley, you owed her an apology. Now you owe us both one.”

“How?”

“First that I consider you family is not bullshit. You have wounded me by thinking that.”

“And?”

“What did you do, Charley, divide a quarter of a million dollars by the number of small accounts to come up with eight thousand dollars in each?”

“That’s exactly what I did.”

“I think what Svetlana was trying to tell you is that there’s about a quarter of a million in each of those accounts.”

As one part of his brain began to suspect that he had just made an ass of himself, another part did the math.

“Christ, that’s almost eight million dollars,” he said. “You were prepared to spend eight million dollars to throw the SVR off the scent?”

Svetlana nodded. He saw tears in her eyes.

Oh, Jesus, don’t do that!

“Before God, it is the truth,” she sobbed. “I can’t stand it when you look at me with hate and suspicion in your eyes!”

“Oh, baby,” Castillo heard himself say.

And then she was in his arms, sobbing.

“I think I will go see how they’re doing with the tree,” Pevsner said. “It might be wise to lock the door after I go.”

“We have just had our first fight,” Svetlana said. “And our first makeup, and our first you-know-what in my bed. Up to now, all the you-know-whats have been in your beds.”

“Baby, I’m really sorry.”

“I know. I can tell,” she said. “Can I say something?”

“You can say anything you want.”

“I know what it was, why you disbelieved me.”

“Because I’m stupid?”

“Because you are a man,” she said. “Like other men, insecure. When a woman throws herself at you, you are incapable of just accepting your good fortune. You don’t think you are worthy of what you are being given, so the woman has to have some ulterior motive.”

“What is that, Psychology 101?”

“It is the truth,” Svetlana said. “And I have something else to say. I am not a foolish woman. I am probably less foolish than any woman you have ever known.

“And like you, I have been trained to look for the worst scenarios. I thought about the worst scenarios before I put the toothbrush in the lock of your bathroom.”

“And what are the worst scenarios?”

“Actually, there were three,” she said, propping herself on her elbow to look down at him, which caused her breast to rest on his chest. “The first was that I was wrong about what I thought I saw in your eyes, and that you felt nothing for me.

“The second was your professionalism would be so strong that you would reject me no matter how you felt. That really worried me.”

“And the third?”

“That’s still viable, my Charley. You know what the chances are of our spending our lives together? You’ve never thought about that?”

“I’ve thought about it,” Castillo said softly.

“I don’t think there’s a chance in a thousand that we will be able to do that.”

“Okay. So what do we do?”

“I will pray. I have been praying. Do you pray, Charley?”

“Not in a long time.”

“That’s between you and God. My father never prayed either. He said that God knew his mind, so it was pointless. God was going to do with his life whatever God wanted to do.”

“I’m something like that,” Castillo said. “And if God is reading my mind, He knows how I feel about you.”

“So there is a tentative scenario we can run. We just put all the reasons we shall most likely not grow old together from our minds and pretend that we will be together forever.”

She raised her eyebrows questioningly.

“Deal,” he said.

“You mean that?”

“I mean that.”

“Good. Then I will go with you to Buenos Aires and you will give me a computer just like yours.”

“I’ve just been taken,” Castillo said.

She nodded happily in agreement.

“Can I ask a question?”

“Anything, just so long as it’s not about money.”

“Actually, it is. How much money is in the accounts, the ones you memorized?”

“So that’s it. You’re a gigolo? After my money?”

“A lot more, I would guess, than the eight million you were willing to spend to throw the dogs a bad scent.”

“If I told you forty, fifty times that, would that make you happy? You want me to give you money, my Charley? Just ask.”

“I’m not in that league, but I’m not going to have to sell Max anytime soon to pay the rent. What I’ve been wondering about is that two million you asked for on the train.”

“Two reasons. You needed to hear a reason—right then—why we were willing to defect, a reason you would believe. And if you thought we needed money, you probably wouldn’t start looking for any that we might have.”

“One more question?”

“One.”

“Do you have any idea what it does to me when you rub your breast on my chest that way?”

She blushed, but then confessed: “Oh, I was hoping that would work!”

[FIVE]

The Great Room

La Casa en Bosque

San Carlos de Bariloche

Río Negro Province, Argentina

0915 1 January 2006

Charley had learned the night before that there were two celebrations marking the New Year. First was the family celebration, an enormous meal—there had been two roast geese on the enormous table, plus a suckling pig—starting at half past ten.

The meal itself had been preceded by Pevsner giving a lengthy prayer/ speech—not unlike Grace—in which he offered thanks to not only the Divinity but also to a long list of saints, only a few of whom Charley had ever heard of, for God’s munificence to the family—including the reuniting “now, of Svetlana, and soon, very soon, of Dmitri and Lora and Sof’ya to the bosom of those who love them” and for the “presence at our table and in our lives of Charley and Lester and Alfredo and János, who have lived the words of our Lord and Savior that there is no greater love than being willing to lay down one’s life for another.”

At that point, Svetlana had grasped his hand—not groped him—under the table, and he had looked at her and seen tears running down her cheeks.

Then they had moved into the Great Room where the Novogodnaya Yolka had been set up. Servants dressed as Father Frost and his granddaughter, Snegurochka the Snow Girl, danced to the music of a balalaika quartet. The balalaikas were of different sizes, the largest as big as a cello.

Charley was a little ashamed that his first reaction to this was to decide that Father Frost’s costume was designed for Santa Claus, the Snow Girl’s for Mrs. Santa Claus, and both had probably been made in China by Buddhists.

He was touched, and finally admitted it.

The children—Elena clutching Ivan the Terrible to her—sang several Christmas songs, following which Father Frost and Snegurochka danced out of the room, to dance back in a few moments later heading a column of servants, who deposited gaily wrapped boxes under the tree.

The children, Svetlana told him, would get their presents in the morning.

Charley at this point, possibly assisted by the champagne that had been flowing since they sat down for dinner, came to the philosophical conclusion that maybe the Russians had the better idea, passing out the presents at New Year’s rather than at Christmas, which was, after all, supposed to be a Christian holiday—meaning Holy Day—not one of gluttony under Santa Claus’s benevolent eye.

He shared this observation with Svetlana, who laid her hand on his cheek and kissed him.

At five minutes to midnight, everybody was out on the pier, trailed by servants carrying an enormous grandfather clock and pushing a cart holding half a dozen bottles of champagne.

The clock was set up, the hands adjusted, and at midnight began to bong its chimes.

Pevsner counted loudly downward from twelve.

As the last bong was fading, there was a dull explosion, which startled Castillo, followed by another and another and another.

He had been enormously relieved when the first of what turned out to be a fifteen-minute display of fireworks went off.

And enormously pleased when Svetlana had kissed him, as Anna was kissing her husband.

The celebration today was for what Pevsner described as “the people.”

It was held in the Great Room, which Castillo, perhaps because too much champagne always gave him debilitating hangovers, decided had been converted into a throne room for Tsar Aleksandr I, Empress Anna, Grand Duchess Svetlana, the Imperial Children, and visiting nobility, such as himself, Corporal Bradley, and Colonel Munz.

There were no actual thrones, but the chair in which Pevsner sat had a higher back than that of his wife, which in turn was higher than those of everybody else. János was not around, and Castillo wondered where he was.

Father Frost and Snegurochka were back, as was the balalaika quartet. This time Father Frost and Snegurochka were standing by an enormous stack of packages. The quartet began to play. János appeared, ushered into the room perhaps eighty people, ranging from bearded elders to children, and then walked up to Father Frost.

Father Frost took a small package from the stack and gave it to Pevsner, who unwrapped it, opened a small box, and took from it a wristwatch, which he then held up for everybody to see. There was a murmur of approval from “the people.”

Next, Father Frost gave Anna a package, and a moment later, she held up a string of pearls for everyone to see. Next came Svetlana, who also got a string of pearls.

Castillo had just decided that the kids had gotten their presents earlier. He looked at Elena and saw there was a string of pearls around her neck he hadn’t noticed before.

Now what?

Father Frost handed him a small box.

Jesus Christ, a Rolex.

“Hold it up, hold it up!” Svetlana hissed.

He held it up.

Corporal Bradley got a small package and moments later held up his Rolex for the approval of the people.

Colonel Alfredo Munz got his Rolex.

Well, Pevsner probably gets a discount if he buys them by the dozen.

What did he say? “I took five percent of a lot more than a billion dollars’ worth of gold, Charley. And about twice that much of platinum.”

And finally, János got his Rolex, and then began reading from a list of names.

An old man left the group, approached the throne, literally tugged at his hair in front of Pevsner. Pevsner nodded. Father Frost handed the old man a package. He opened it. It contained a small, flat-screen television. The people murmured their approval.

János called out another name, and a young woman approached the throne, and tugged at her hair, then took her package from Father Frost.

It was more than an hour before the last of the people filed out of the throne room carrying their New Year’s presents.

Tsar Aleksandr rose from his throne.

“This will displease Anna,” he said. “But despite the hour, I am going to have a drink. That always wears me out. But the people expect it of me. You’ll join me, of course?”

This is where I am supposed to say, “Alek, neither Lester nor I can accept a gift like those Rolexes.”

Castillo saw that Lester was examining the new watch on his wrist.

What the hell. He saved Pevsner’s life.

“Just one,” Castillo said. “And then I’m going to take a nap. I have to fly in the morning.”

“Happy New Year, Charley!” Pevsner said, touching his glass of vodka from an ice-encrusted bottle to Castillo’s glass.

“Happy New Year,” Castillo said. “Alek, those people. They were Russian, right? Or at least most of them?”

Pevsner nodded.

“Where did they come from?”

“Russia,” Pevsner said, obviously delighted with himself. When he saw the look on Castillo’s face, he said, “I learned that from you. If I do that to Anna, she usually throws something at me.”

“How’d they get here?”

“They’re Jews, most of them. They have worked for people in the Oprichina for many years. When the Communists decided to let some of the Jews leave to go to Israel, we first warned them they probably wouldn’t like it, and then we arranged for them to go first.

“They didn’t like it. The culture shock, the climate—what is it you Americans say? ‘One more goddamned sunny day in L.A.’?; Tel Aviv is worse—what they saw of the future, the suicide bombers. They wanted to leave, but they didn’t want to go back to Russia. So I arranged for them to come here. One day the children will join all the Russian Jews in Argentina. There are forty thousand Jewish gauchos here, originally from Eastern Europe. Did you know that?”

Castillo nodded. “I’d heard that.”

“For now the parents work for me.”

“Alek, I don’t know what to say about that Rolex.”

“How about ‘thank you’?”

“You have learned, haven’t you?”

“The people, the Jews, would say, ‘Wear it in good health.’”

“Thank you.”

[SIX]

Aeropuerto Internacional Jorge Newbery

Buenos Aires, Argentina

1240 2 January 2006

As Castillo taxied the Aero Commander to the private aircraft tarmac, he saw that there were two Gulfstreams parked side by side.

One was his. The other bore USAF markings and was painted in the paint scheme of the Presidential Flight Detachment.

“Oh, shit,” he said.

He parked the Aero Commander by the USAF Gulfstream.

“I see Davidson,” Munz said. “And there are several of Pevsner’s people, too. And several of Duffy’s.”

“And I see that Gulfstream. Alfredo, can you take Svetlana to that second safe house you mentioned? Golf and Polo, Polo and Golf, whatever?”

“I am going with you,” Svetlana announced.

“You’ll do what I say. Fun-and-games time is over. Got it?”

She nodded.

“What I’m going to do is get out and have a word with the pilot,” Castillo said. “You stay—everybody but Max—in the airplane. If I walk toward Davidson, stay in the plane until we’re gone, then take Svetlana and Lester to the Polo whatever. Got it?”

“What is it, Charley?”

“I suspect it’s very bad news. The only thing that could make it worse is if they see me with Svetlana.”

“You don’t think that’s Montvale?”

“I think it’s either him or his flunky,” Castillo said. “We’ll soon find out. Open the door, please.”

Svetlana didn’t kiss him as he walked, bent nearly double, past her seat. But she stopped him, laid her hand on his cheek, and looked for a long moment into his eyes.

That was at least as intimate as a kiss.

There were two Air Force types in flying suits standing near the nose of the Gulfstream. One drew the attention of the other to Max performing his ritual at the nose gear, and then to the man in khaki trousers and a polo shirt walking toward them.

The taller of them, Castillo saw, was a light colonel wearing command pilot wings, the other a captain wearing ordinary wings.

“You speak English, sir?” the lieutenant colonel asked.

“I try,” Castillo said.

“Nice dog,” the lieutenant colonel said.

“Thank you.”

Max trotted over, sat down, and offered his paw.

The lieutenant colonel squatted and scratched Max’s ears.

“Nice airplane,” Castillo said. “Presidential Flight Detachment, right?”

The lieutenant colonel looked up at him, then stood up, but did not reply.

“I’m the SVR rezident in Buenos Aires, Colonel. We like to keep up on what our American friends are doing.”

He then handed the lieutenant colonel the identification card of Lieutenant Colonel C. G. Castillo, Special Forces, U.S. Army.

The lieutenant colonel, recognizing the card immediately, smiled, then did a double take and examined it carefully.

“I was about to tell you, Colonel,” he said, “as tactfully as I could, that I just can’t talk about the mission of this aircraft. But since you are the mission . . .”

“Excuse me?”

“. . . I will tell you, out of school, that you’re probably in the deep shit.”

“How’s that?”

“Ambassador Montvale just blew his top at the ambassador. You didn’t miss them by five minutes. Ambassador Montvale said, and this is almost verbatim, ‘I just flew five thousand goddamned miles down here to see Lieutenant Colonel Goddamn Charley Castillo, and you’re telling me you not only don’t know where the sonofabitch is, but that you didn’t even know the crazy bastard is in Argentina?’ ”

He turned to the captain and asked, “Is that about what the ambassador said, Sam?”

“Almost verbatim, sir,” the captain said. “I somehow got the idea, sir, that Ambassador Montvale doesn’t like Colonel Castillo very much.”

“I always knew that Ambassador Montvale doesn’t like anybody very much, but I don’t ever remember him being as pissed as he was just a couple of minutes ago,” the lieutenant colonel said. “What the hell did you do, Colonel?”

“I guess I have been a very bad boy,” Castillo said. “And we never had this conversation, Colonel.”

Fully aware that rendering the hand salute while not in uniform is proscribed by Army regulations, Castillo saluted.

The lieutenant colonel and the captain returned the salute.

Castillo turned to the Aero Commander, intending to wave.

He changed his mind and blew a kiss.

Then he said, “Come on, Max,” and walked to where Jack Davidson was waiting for him.

“You just missed Ambassador Montvale,” Davidson said as they shook hands.

“Did he see you?” Castillo asked.

“No. The gendarmería had a heads-up that an Air Force Gulfstream was coming in, so I erred on the side of caution and waited in Darby’s car.” He pointed to a BMW with darkened windows and Argentine license plates. “The Mercedes SUV next to it used to be Duffy’s. Unless you look close, you can’t see where all the bullet holes were.”

“You’re sure Montvale didn’t see you?”

Davidson nodded. “Moot point, though. He doesn’t know who I am, much less what I look like.”

“Never underestimate Montvale. Was he alone?”

“Three guys with him. Two of them probably his Secret Service . . .”

“Who just might have recognized you.”

“If they had seen me, which they didn’t, since I had erred on the side of caution, Colonel, sir.”

“Sorry, Jack. I’m tired. And the third guy?”

“Six-two, maybe six-three, one eighty, forty-odd, GI haircut, Sears, Roebuck suit. I’d guess he was military. Probably Army.”

“Why?”

“Officers of our brother services in civvies tend to look like civilians. Our officers in civvies tend to look like Army officers in civvies.”

Castillo chuckled.

“I wonder who he is,” Castillo said rhetorically. “What happened?”

“Right after I erred on the side of caution and got in the BMW, Ambassador Silvio showed up. With an embassy Suburban. And no, Colonel, sir, he didn’t see me, as I had erred on the side of caution. . . .”

“Okay, Jack,” Castillo said.

“But I think it’s possible he recognized Darby’s car, as he is a clever guy. He did not come over to say ‘Howdy.’ Then the Gulfstream landed and Montvale and the others got out and had a conversation in which Montvale got red-faced and waved his arms around. I think maybe they were talking about you.”

“And then?”

“They loaded into the Suburban and drove off.”

“You have any idea where they went?”

“Yes, sir, Colonel, sir, I do. In the BMW to which I retired, erring as I said—”

“Enough, goddamn it, Jack,” Castillo said.

“There is an embassy radio, to which I listened, and am thus able to tell you they reported they were going to the embassy.”

“Not to the safe house?”

“I’m guessing, Charley, I can’t read lips, but I think maybe one of the reasons Montvale was so pissed was that he asked the ambassador about the safe house and the ambassador said, ‘What safe house?’”

Castillo turned and looked at the Aero Commander.

Everybody had gotten out of it.

And why didn’t I think that at one o’clock in the afternoon of a sunny summer day in Argentina, the sun quickly turns the interior of an Aero Commander into an oven?

He signaled to Alfredo Munz to come over. Munz alone.

And why am I not surprised that everybody’s coming over?

When Pevsner’s men saw Munz, Svetlana, and Bradley walking to Castillo and Davidson, they got out of their cars and walked to them. When the gendarmería officers saw Pevsner’s men walking to Castillo and Davidson, they got out of their cars and walked to them.

Davidson read Castillo’s mind.

“Well, maybe they’ll think Little Red Under Britches is a movie star and we are her groupies.”

“The Air Force Gulfstream brought Ambassador Montvale here,” Castillo announced when the little group had gathered around him. “They went to the embassy, which is where Jack and I are going. Alfredo is going to take Svetlana to Pilar. Lester, you take the AFC and go with them.”

“Yes, sir.”

Castillo turned to the gendarmería officer.

“What are your orders?”

“To place ourselves at your orders, mi coronel.”

“You have two cars?”

“Si, mi coronel. The Mercedes and the Ford.”

“Send one of the cars with me, and the other with El Coronel Munz. Follow him and these gentlemen, but go no farther than the gate of the country club; we don’t want to attract any more attention than we have to.”

“Si, mi coronel.”

He turned to the people Munz had called “Pevsner’s people” and took a chance and spoke Russian.

“The Panamericana is so busy this time of day that following someone is very difficult.”

One of “Pevsner’s people” nodded his head in understanding. He was to lose the gendarmería car if possible.

Podpolkovnik Svetlana Alekseeva, presumably reasoning that if it was safe for Lieutenant Colonel Castillo to speak Russian it would be safe for her, too, had a question of her own, which she expressed in Russian:

“When will you join me, Charley, my darling?”

Castillo saw the look on Jack Davidson’s face.

Well, fuck it. The cow’s out of the barn. I’d have to have told him anyway.

“Just as soon as I can, my love,” he said in Russian, then met Davidson’s eyes. “Are you all right to drive, Jack? You look like you’re in shock.”

X

[ONE]

The Embassy of the United States of America

Avenida Colombia 4300

Palermo, Buenos Aires, Argentina

1325 2 January 2006

It was a fifteen-minute drive from Aeropuerto Jorge Newbery, on the west bank of the River Plate, to the American embassy, and their route through heavy noontime traffic took them past six traffic lights, all of which were red when they reached them, and all of which seemed to be timed on a five-minute sequence.

Jack Davidson didn’t say a word during the entire trip, even when waiting for the lights to change. But his face showed that he was thinking of what he needed to say—and how to say it.

Castillo spent the trip dreading this inevitable dropping of Davidson’s shoe.

Not shoe, Charley thought.

Boot—damned lead-soled, thirty-pound diver’s boot.

Castillo, of course, had all that time to think, too. He had known Davidson just about as long as Castillo had been in the Army. Technical Sergeant Davidson had been covering Colonel Bruce J. McNab’s back—with a twelve-gauge sawed-off Remington Model 870 shotgun—when Second Lieutenant Castillo had reported to McNab for duty in the First Desert War.

And then Sergeant Major Davidson had manned the Gatling gun in the Black Hawk helicopter that Major Castillo had “borrowed” in Afghanistan to go see if he could get back Major Dick Miller and the crew of his shot-down Black Hawk before the bad guys overran their position, a task that had been solemnly considered by some very senior officers and pronounced absolutely impossible.

Between their first meeting and this latest trip around the block, Charley and Jack had gone around many blocks together.

Castillo also thought about when Lieutenant General Bruce J. McNab had released Davidson from his duties at Camp Mackall to join Castillo at the Office of Organizational Analysis. McNab had called Castillo to tell him: “Just in case you might be thinking I have mellowed in old age, Colonel, and was being a nice guy, know that the sole reason I’m loaning you Sergeant Major Davidson is because he’s the only guy I know who can pour cold water on you when you’re about to fuck up big-time. So, Colonel, one more time I’m telling you something that you should have learned as a second lieutenant: ‘When Jack Davidson tells you not to do something, for God’s sake take his counsel and don’t do it!’ ”

Castillo knew that that counsel also worked in other ways.

In Afghanistan, when Castillo had told Davidson that he was going to “borrow” the Black Hawk and go after Miller despite just having been ordered not to—“Frankly, Major,” the brigadier general had barked, “I’m starting to question your mental health for even suggesting you try something so suicidal. What part of ‘Absolutely no!’ don’t you understand?”—all Davidson had said was, “You sure you want to do this, Charley?”

And then Davidson had gone to get them flak vests to wear over their Afghan robes and to make sure he had enough ammo for the door-mounted Gatling gun.

Castillo now thought:

Viewed objectively, as an indication of poor judgment and mental instability, “borrowing” a Black Hawk to fly through a snowstorm to go after Dick and his crew pales when compared to considering oneself in love with a lieutenant colonel of the SVR and deciding that she is telling me the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

I knew I was safe to fly that day. I wouldn’t have taken Jack along if I didn’t really believe I could do it.

And the cold truth here is that whenever I look into Svet’s eyes—or in other more intimate situations—and hear the celestial chorus singing “I Love You Truly”—the small, still voice of reason keeps popping up and whispering, “This is wrong, you dumb fuck, and you know it. That violin music you hear is her playing you.”

Davidson pulled the BMW nose-in to the curb in front of the embassy. The gendarmería’s Mercedes-Benz SUV pulled in beside them.

Davidson put both hands on the top of the steering wheel and turned to Castillo. Their eyes met.

Here comes Jack’s lead boot. . . .

After a moment, Davidson said, “Please tell me, Charley, that you are (a) fucking Little Miss Red Underpants as an interrogative technique to gain the confidence of the interrogatee, or at least (b) you had a couple of belts and things got temporarily out of control.”

“None of the above, Jack.”

“Oh, shit.”

Castillo shrugged. “I’m in love.”

“Well, then I guess it’s a good thing that I’m going to retire. When McNab hears about this, the most I could hope for would be to spend the rest of my days in the Army counting tent pegs in a quartermaster warehouse in Alaska.”

“I’ll make sure he knows that you did everything possible short of shooting me in the knees with a hollow-point .22 to dissuade me from my insanity.”

Davidson shook his head in resignation. “If I thought that would do any good, that’s just what I would do.”

“I would resign today, Jack, if it wasn’t for this chemical operation in the Congo.”

Davidson met his eyes again.

“When Berezovsky started talking,” Davidson said, “it looked like Delchamps was on the money when he said that was heavy.”

“It is. Very heavy.”

“Okay. You and Delchamps believe him. I’ll grant you that; I’m not going to say both of you are wrong. So I’ll give you that. But what the hell do you think you can do about it? Delchamps says the CIA knows about the plant and doesn’t think it’s a threat. And I don’t think they’ll listen to you or Delchamps that it is. They probably wouldn’t believe Berezovsky and/or your lady friend if they had them. Which they don’t. Which opens that can of worms.”

“Can I wave duty in your face, Jack?”

Davidson shook his head. After a moment, he softly said: “Yeah. For Christ’s sake, you know you can, Charley.”

“I think it’s my duty to take out that chemical factory, even if the CIA doesn’t think it’s a threat.”

Davidson nodded his understanding. “And how are you going to do that?”

“I haven’t quite figured that out yet.”

After a moment, Davidson said, “Are you willing to listen to some unpleasant facts?”

“I’ll be surprised if you can think of any I haven’t thought of myself—that’s not a crack at you, Jack; I’ve really given this a lot of thought—but go ahead.”

“The CIA is already pissed that you have the Russians.”

Castillo nodded his acceptance of that statement.

“And I don’t think you’re going to turn either of them over to the agency.”

“I’m not, Jack.”

Davidson shook his head again. “Which is really going to piss them off. And Montvale, too.”

Castillo nodded again.

“Your authority, Charley, comes from the Presidential Finding, which is to ‘locate and render harmless’ the people who whacked Jack ‘The Stack’ Masterson. Period. Nothing else. It says nothing about turning Russian spooks and nothing about going into the Congo and taking out a chemical factory—one the agency knows about and doesn’t think is a threat.”

He paused for a long time, a period that Charley took to mean that Jack was letting that counsel sink in.

Then Davidson shook his head again and went on: “So where do you think we’re going to get what we need to take out the factory? That’s got to be a helluva long laundry list—”

He said, “What we need.”

He’s in.

And he doesn’t care what that may cost him.

Castillo felt his throat tighten.

When he trusted himself to speak, Castillo admitted: “I haven’t figured that out yet either.”

“So what happens now, Chief?”

Castillo intoned solemnly: “ ‘The longest journey begins with the smallest step.’ You may wish to write that down.”

Davidson chuckled.

“What happens now is that I go in there”—Castillo nodded toward the embassy building?—“and, while trying very hard to keep Ambassador Silvio out of the line of fire, deal with Ambassador Montvale. And while I’m doing that, you go to Rio Alba, taking the gendarmería with you, and wait for me.”

“For how long?”

“I don’t know. Get some lunch. If I don’t call you in thirty minutes, call me. If I answer in Pashtu, hang up and head for the safe house.”

“And?”

Castillo was silent a moment, then shrugged and shook his head again, and said, “I just don’t know, Jack.”

“Okay. We’ll wing it.”

Castillo glanced at the Mercedes-Benz parked beside them. Then he looked over his shoulder and said, “Max, you stay.”

Castillo opened his door. When he did so, one of the gendarmes got out of the Mercedes and stood by the open door.

When Castillo headed for what he thought of as the embassy employee’s gate in the fence, the gendarme closed the vehicle’s door and walked after him.

Davidson backed out of the parking spot and drove toward the restaurant Rio Alba, which was a block from the embassy in the shadow of—at fifty stories—Argentina’s tallest building. The gendarmería Mercedes followed him.

The fence surrounding the embassy had three gates, a large one to pass vehicular traffic and two smaller ones for people. The employees’ gate was a simple affair, a turnstile guarded by two uniformed, armed guards of an Argentine security firm.

Castillo was absolutely certain that a couple of Argentine rent-a-cops wouldn’t deny entrance to the embassy grounds to a United States federal law-enforcement officer who presented the proper identification.

He was wrong.

The rent-a-cops were not at all impressed with the credentials identifying C. G. Castillo as a supervisory special agent of the United States Secret Service.

The rent-a-cops advised him that if he wished to enter the embassy grounds, he would have to use the Main Visitors’ Gate, which was some three hundred yards distant, down a sunbaked sidewalk.

Castillo bit his tongue and started for the other gate, with the gendarme on his heels.

The last hundred yards of the sidewalk was lined with people—clearly not many of them, if any, U.S. citizens—patiently baking in the sun as they awaited their turn to pass through the Main Visitors’ Gate to apply for visas and other services.

There has to be a gate for U.S. citizens.

For Christ’s sake, this is the American embassy!

He did not see anything that looked helpful until he was almost at the single-story Main Visitors’ Gate building. Then he came across a ridiculously small sign that had an arrow and the legend: U.S CITIZENS.

He pushed open the door and was promptly stopped by another Argentine rent-a-cop who—not very charmingly—asked to see Castillo’s passport.

After examining it carefully, the rent-a-cop motioned that Castillo was now permitted to join one of two lines of people waiting their turn to deal with embassy staff seated comfortably behind thick plateglass windows. The scene reminded Castillo of the cashier windows in Las Vegas casinos.

He got in line and awaited his turn. Ten minutes later, it came.

“I’d like to see the ambassador, please.”

“Passport, please.”

The not-unattractive female behind the thick plate glass examined it, then carefully examined Castillo, and then said, “What time is your appointment?”

“I don’t have an appointment. But if you will get the ambassador on the phone, I’m sure he’ll see me.”

The lady scribbled a number on a small pad and slid it through a tray at the bottom of the plate glass.

“You can call this number and ask for an appointment.”

“Is there an American officer around here somewhere?”

Three minutes later, a pleasant-looking young man appeared behind the woman, looked at Castillo, and said, “Yes?”

Castillo remembered Edgar Delchamps telling him that new graduates of the CIA’s Clandestine Services How-to-Be-a-Spy School were often given as their first assignment duties as an assistant consul at an embassy where their inexperience would not get them in trouble.

If I were into profiling, I’d bet my last dime I’m facing one now.

“Good afternoon,” Castillo said politely, and slid his Army identification through the slot under the plate glass. “I’d like to see the ambassador. Would you be good enough to call his office and tell him I’m here?”

The fledgling spook examined the ID card and slid it back through the slot.

“Let me give you a number you can call, Colonel,” the pleasant-looking young man said.

Castillo slid his Secret Service credentials through the slot.

“Listen to me carefully, please,” Castillo began, keeping his voice low but his tone that of one not to be questioned. “If you don’t get on the phone right now, I will personally tell the DCI that you wouldn’t call the ambassador for me. And the result of that will be that you’ll be sitting in one of the parking lot guard shacks at Langley this time next week.”

They locked eyes.

The assistant consul picked up the telephone handset, then spoke into it.

A moment later, he slid the handset through the slot.

“I don’t know where he is, Colonel,” Ambassador Silvio’s secretary said. “He went to Jorge Newbery to meet a VIP and hasn’t checked in. Would you like to wait for him here?”

Sonofabitch, they’re on the way to Nuestra Pequeña Casa!

“No, thank you,” Castillo replied. “When you’re in touch, tell him I’ll call him later.”

Castillo slid the handset back through the slot, then without a word turned from the window and took out his cellular telephone.

A rent-a-cop laid his hand on Castillo’s arm and pointed to a sign on the wall. It forbade the use of cellular telephones.

Castillo left the building and went back into the one-hundred-degree, one-hundred-percent-humidity Buenos Aires summer afternoon. He saw that the gendarme was waiting for him.

Castillo punched one of the cell phone’s autodial buttons. Davidson answered on the second ring.

“He’s here with Montvale,” Davidson said by way of answering.

“Keep them there if you have to break Montvale’s legs,” Castillo said, and then began to walk on the sunbaked sidewalk toward the fine steak house called Río Alba, the gendarme on his heels.

[TWO]

Jack Davidson and his gendarme were sitting at a table just inside the restaurant door. Both looked to be halfway through with eating their luncheon of steaks.

Davidson caught Castillo’s eye and indicated with a nod toward the rear of the restaurant.

“You wait here with them,” Castillo said to his gendarme, motioning to the table with Davidson and the other gendarme. Their table had a clear view of a round table at the rear of the establishment.

Castillo walked toward the round table, seated at which were the Honorable Charles W. Montvale, the United States Director of National Intelligence who liked to be called “Ambassador”—in his long career of public service he had been deputy secretary of State, secretary of the Treasury, and ambassador to the European Union—the United States Ambassador to Argentina Juan Manuel Silvio, and a man in his late fifties, tall and trim with closely cropped hair.

Castillo decided unkindly that the tall, trim man’s suit indeed looked, as Davidson had said, as if it had come off a chromed rack at Sears, Roebuck & Co.

At a table against the wall were two neatly dressed, muscular men who Castillo decided were almost certainly from the agency or were Montvale’s Secret Service bodyguards. Montvale spotted Castillo, paused momentarily in the act of forking a piece of steak to his mouth, then completed the motion.

“Well, what a pleasant surprise!” Castillo announced as he approached. “I was just at the embassy to make my manners, Ambassador Silvio, but they didn’t seem to know where you were. And Mr. Montvale! What brings you down this way?”

“I think you’ve got a very good idea, Colonel,” Montvale said sharply, chewing as he spoke.

Castillo glanced around the room, then looked back at Montvale. “Aside from thinking you’ve heard the reputation of the Río Alba as the world’s best steak house, I haven’t a clue.”

Montvale swallowed, then sipped at his glass of red wine. “Why don’t you sit down, Colonel.”

“Thank you very much.”

Castillo took his seat, looked around for a waiter, and motioned for him to come over.

“I’m starved. I had breakfast very early,” he said in English to Montvale, and then switched to Spanish to address the waiter: “Would you bring me a Roquefort empanada, please, and then a bife de chorizo punto, papas fritas, and a tomato and onion salad?”

He picked up the bottle of wine on the table, read the label, made a face, returned the bottle to the table, and added, “And a bottle of Saint Felicien Cabernet Sauvignon, please.”

“Something wrong with that wine, Colonel?” Montvale said, an edge of sarcasm rising in his tone.

“Well, according to the label, it’s Malbec.”

“Yes. And?”

“And, Mr. Montvale, I thought you knew. ‘Malbec’ is French for ‘bad taste.’ I don’t know about you, sir, but that’s enough to warn me off.”

Ambassador Silvio chuckled.

The man in the Sears, Roebuck suit stared icily at Castillo.

Castillo reached across the table and offered him his hand.

“My name is Castillo, sir. Any friend of Mr. Montvale—”

“Lieutenant Colonel Castillo,” Montvale interrupted, “this is Colonel Remley.”

“How do you do, sir?” Castillo said politely.

“Of Special Operations Command,” Montvale added.

“Oh, really? Well, if we can find the time, sir, maybe we can play ‘Do You Know?’ I know some people there.”

Colonel Remley neither smiled nor replied.

“Speaking of time, Castillo,” Montvale said. “I’d like to get back to Washington as soon as possible. How long is it going to take for you to get your ‘guests’ to the airport?”

“I have no idea who you’re talking about.”

Montvale, looking over the top of his wineglass, stared down Castillo. “You know goddamn well who I’m talking about.”

The waiter arrived with Castillo’s wine. Castillo took his time going through the ritual of approving the bottle, finally taking a long sip, swirling it in his mouth, then shrugging to the waiter as if signifying that it’d have to do.

After the waiter poured the large glass half full and left, Castillo picked up the glass, looked at Montvale, and said, “Even if I did know about whatever it is you suggest that I do, a public restaurant wouldn’t be the place to talk about it, would it?”

Montvale glowered.

“Or in front of these gentlemen?” Castillo pursued.

“Then let’s go to the embassy!” Montvale said angrily under his breath.

“After I’ve had my lunch, that would probably be a good idea.”

“Castillo,” Colonel Remley snapped, “you know who the ambassador is. How dare you speak to him in that manner?”

“Colonel, no disrespect to either ambassador was intended, sir. It’s just that I suspect Mr. Montvale was alluding to something that is highly classified, and I know that neither you nor Ambassador Silvio is authorized access to that material.”

“Ambassador Montvale briefed me fully on this situation on the way down here, Colonel!”

“With respect, sir, I doubt that.”

“You arrogant little sonofabitch!” Remley said sharply, almost knocking over his water glass. “Just who the hell do you think you are?”

“Sir,” Castillo replied evenly, “the reason I doubt that Ambassador Montvale would make you or anyone else privy to what I think he’s referring to is that only two people have been authorized to decide who has the Need to Know. And as I haven’t done so and I have not been informed by the other person so authorized that you have been briefed, I’m reasonably certain that you have not been made privy and thus do not have the Need to Know, sir.”

“Goddamn you, Charley!” Montvale said.

Castillo raised his eyebrows in mock shock. “If everybody is going to swear at me, I’m just going to have to be rude and change tables. I’m very sensitive, and I don’t want to have indigestion when I’m eating my lunch.”

“One of my options, Castillo,” Montvale said, ignoring him, “is to ask Colonel Remley to place you under arrest, then have those gentlemen escort you to my airplane.”

He nodded toward the two neatly dressed men.

Castillo looked at them, then at Ambassador Silvio, who now looked more than a little uncomfortable, then back at Montvale. “What are they, Secret Service?”

“Yes, they are,” Montvale said.

“And I’ll bet they’re armed, right?”

“Yes, they are.”

“Do you see those three men at the table in the other room looking this way, Mr. Ambassador?”

Montvale looked. “What about them?”

“Two of them are officers—commissioned officers—of the Gendarmería Nacional. If either of your Secret Service agents even looks like he’s going to do anything to me, the gendarmes will come over, ask them for their identification, and then pat them down. If they are armed—the Secret Service has no authority in Argentina—they will be arrested, their weapons confiscated, and then Ambassador Silvio will be forced to see what he can do about getting them out of the slam. With a little quiet encouragement from your table guest here, they might even detain you and the colonel for questioning.”

“I’ll see you before a general court-martial, Colonel!” Colonel Remley exploded.

Castillo met Remley’s eyes.

“With respect, sir, on what charge?” he said calmly. “I have always been taught that an officer is required to obey his last lawful order unless that order is changed by an officer senior to the officer who issued the initial order. You are not, sir, senior to the officer whose orders I am obeying. And both Ambassador Silvio and Mr. Montvale know that.”

“Gentlemen,” Ambassador Silvio said with some awkwardness, “this is getting out of hand.”

“Mr. Ambassador, with respect, I suggest that I’m trying to keep it from really getting out of hand. And with that in mind, vis-à-vis my going to the embassy to have a private chat with Mr. Montvale, I’m going to have to ask for your word that I will be allowed to leave the embassy whenever I choose to do so.”

Castillo saw the waiter approaching with what he guessed was his meal, and he remained quiet as the waiter placed it before him, then picked up the bottle of Saint Felicien and refilled Castillo’s large glass before leaving.

“You really should try some of this, Mr. Montvale,” Castillo said, raising the glass in his direction. “It’s very nice and can get that ‘bad taste’ out of your mouth.”

Montvale just stared back.

“And if I don’t give you my word that you will be free to leave the embassy?” Ambassador Silvio asked.

“Then I will have my lunch and leave.”

“Colonel Castillo,” Colonel Remley said, his tone hard-edged, “I am about to give you a direct order—”

Montvale held up his hand, interrupting him.

“Drink your wine, Castillo,” Montvale said. “And have your lunch. Then we will go to the embassy.”

Castillo looked at Montvale, then back at Silvio. “And have I your word, Mr. Ambassador, that I’ll be allowed to leave?”

“You have my word,” Ambassador Silvio said.

[THREE]

Ambassador Silvio’s armored BMW was waiting at the curb when everyone in their party walked out of Río Alba fifteen minutes later.

“I suggest that it would be easier to walk,” Silvio said.

“Fine with me,” Castillo said. “If Mr. Montvale feels up to it.”

Montvale glared at him, nodded at Colonel Remley to follow, and set off down the sidewalk.

“The embassy’s this way, Mr. Montvale,” Castillo said, pointing his thumb in the opposite direction.

Montvale stopped in his tracks, then turned. He walked past Castillo without looking at him and with Remley following suit.

They all walked single file the one block to the employees’ gate in the embassy fence with the Secret Service following them, and the gendarmería SUV following everyone.

The rent-a-cops passed everybody through the turnstile. Then one of the rent-a-cops went to the sidewalk to more than a little arrogantly wave the Mercedes away from what was a no-parking zone. One of the gendarmes got out of the vehicle and took up a position near the turnstile. The driver held up his credentials. The rent-a-cop immediately lost his arrogance and slinked back to his station.

Castillo saw that this had not gone unnoticed and said, “Did you ever wonder, Mr. Montvale, what diplomats, members of the gendarmería, and six-hundred-pound gorillas have in common?”

Montvale looked at Castillo in disgust mingled with a little confusion.

“What did you say?” the director of National Intelligence asked.

“They can park wherever they want to,” Castillo explained.

“Good God!” Montvale said in disgust.

Montvale followed the ambassador into the building. When Castillo followed him, the ambassador turned to them both.

“May I suggest you use my office for your conversation?” he asked.

“That’s very kind of you, Mr. Ambassador,” Castillo said. “And, sir, would you clear it with the switchboard in case we have to have a secure telephone?”

“Of course.”

They passed through a metal detector guarded by a Marine. Its alarm went off, but a nod of Ambassador Silvio saw them passed through anyway.

They rode an elevator to the second floor and entered the ambassador’s outer office.

“Unplug that, please,” Castillo said, pointing to the intercom box on the desk of the ambassador’s secretary. “And the telephone, too, if it’s capable of eavesdropping on the ambassador’s office.”

Ambassador Silvio’s secretary looked at her boss in genuine surprise. And again Silvio signaled with a nod of his head to do what Castillo had requested.

“Mr. Ambassador,” Castillo said, “with the caveat that what will be discussed in your office will be classified Top Secret Presidential and is not to be disclosed to anyone, including the secretary of State, you’re quite welcome to come with us.”

Montvale answered for him: “Please do, Mr. Ambassador. I really would like a witness.”

“Very well,” Ambassador Silvio agreed, with obvious reluctance.

Castillo turned to Colonel Remley.

“With respect, sir, I don’t believe you have the Need to Know.”

“And what if I insist that Colonel Remley participate, Castillo?” Montvale said coldly.

“Then we will not have our chat,” Castillo said evenly. “And, Colonel, with Ambassador Silvio as witness, I now inform Mr. Montvale that he is not to tell you what is said or what may transpire in the ambassador’s office.”

“I find it hard to believe that you have the authority to order Ambassador Montvale to do anything,” Remley said.

“With respect, sir, in this instance I do.”

“Wait here, Remley,” Montvale ordered. “I have the feeling that shortly I will be able to point out to Colonel Castillo how far out of line he is.”

Ambassador Silvio waved them into his office, followed them in, and closed the door.

“Is there anything I can get for anyone?” Silvio asked.

“I’d like a minute or two in there, Mr. Ambassador,” Castillo said, pointing to the ambassador’s private restroom. “The waiter in Río Alba kept pouring the soda water, and I kept drinking it, and my back teeth are awash.”

“Jesus Christ, Castillo!” Montvale said in disgust.

“Help yourself,” Ambassador Silvio said, not quite able to restrain a smile.

When Castillo came out of the restroom, Silvio was sitting behind his desk and Montvale was on a couch. Castillo sat in an armchair upholstered in what appeared to be some type of silk fabric, took a leather cigar case from his trousers pocket, and went through the ritual of trimming and lighting a long thin black cigar.