Black Ops

“If you’re quite through with doing that, may we begin?” Montvale asked.

“I’m waiting for you, Mr. Montvale,” Castillo said.

“All right, where are they?”

“Where are who?”

“Colonel Dmitri Berezovsky and Lieutenant Colonel Svetlana Alekseeva of the SVR.”

Castillo saw interest jump into Ambassador Silvio’s eyes.

“Next question?” Castillo said.

“You’re not going to deny that you have them, for God’s sake?”

“That would depend on what you mean by ‘have,’ Mr. Montvale.”

“I’ll be goddamned! Now he thinks he’s Bill Clinton!”

Again, Ambassador Silvio could not completely restrain a smile.

“What this is about, Ambassador Silvio—and since Lieutenant Colonel Castillo . . .”

Castillo thought his pronunciation of “lieutenant colonel” turned the rank into an obscenity.

“. . . has elected to make you privy to this, I can tell you—is that Lieutenant Colonel Castillo, without any authority whatsoever, took it upon himself to completely ignore the carefully laid plans of the CIA station chief in Vienna to cause these Russians—important Russians; Berezovsky was the rezident in Berlin and the woman the rezident in Copenhagen—to defect and flew them here.”

“Speaking hypothetically, of course,” Castillo put in, “what makes you so sure that the station agent in Vienna shared anything with me? I never laid eyes on her. How could I ignore something I didn’t know?”

“Then what were you doing in Vienna, for Christ’s sake?”

“Carrying out my orders to locate and render harmless those responsible for the assassination of Mr. Masterson.”

“And Berezovsky and Alekseeva just popped into your life?”

“Actually, that’s just about what happened. Hypothetically speaking, of course.”

“You’re going to explain that, of course?”

“If you think you can get your temper and indignation under control—and keep them that way—I’ll give it a shot.”

Montvale made a grand Go to it gesture.

“In a twenty-four-hour period starting the day before Christmas Eve, there were three assassinations. Two of them you called to ask me about: the garroting of the Kuhls in the Stadtpark in Vienna and—”

“You told me you had never heard of the Kuhls,” Montvale interrupted.

“And I hadn’t.”

“Am I permitted to ask questions?” Ambassador Silvio said, then went on without waiting for a reply. “Who are the Kuhls?”

“Were,” Montvale corrected him. “For a very long time, they were deep-cover CIA assets in Vienna. Primarily, they were involved in identifying Russians—and others—who could be influenced by others to defect. They had a number of successes over the years.”

“And they were identified and killed?”

“That’s what it looks like,” Montvale said.

Montvale and Silvio watched while Castillo relit his cigar.

Then, after exhaling a blue cloud of smoke, Castillo went on: “At just about the time the Kuhls were assassinated, a correspondent of the Tages Zeitung, Günther Friedler, was murdered in Marburg an der Lahn. That’s a small city sixty miles or so north of Frankfurt am Main, best known for Philipp’s University. The body was mutilated in an attempt to paint the murder as the result of a homosexual lover’s quarrel. Friedler was investigating the Marburg Group, a collection of German businessmen known to have profited from the Iraqi oil-for-food scam. Specifically, Friedler was looking into the connection between these people and a chemical factory operating on what had been the West German nuclear facility in the former Belgian Congo.”

“May I ask how you know this?” Silvio asked.

“I have an interest in the Tages Zeitung publishing firm,” Castillo said.

Montvale smiled, then while looking at Castillo said: “Actually, Mr. Ambassador, in his alter ego role as Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger, Castillo owns the Tages Zeitung publishing empire.”

Silvio’s eyebrows rose in surprise.

Castillo calmly went on: “I was, when we heard about this, in Washington with a man named Eric Kocian, who is publisher of the Budapest Tages Zeitung. An attempt to murder him in Budapest was made some time ago. Kocian was our man who reopened the Vienna Tages Zeitung after World War Two. And he was an old friend of the Kuhls. And he considered Friedler a close friend. He announced he was going to (a) go to their funerals and (b) find out who had murdered them. There was no way I could stop him, so we got on the Gulfstream and flew to Germany.

“Going off at a tangent, there were, within the twenty-four-hour period I mentioned, two more assassination attempts, both of which failed. One was here—actually in Pilar; that’s about forty-five klicks from here, Mr. Montvale—when Comandante Liam Duffy of the Gendarmería Nacional and his family were leaving a restaurant. . . .”

“I heard about that,” Ambassador Silvio said softly.

“Duffy was in on the operation when we got the DEA agent back from the drug people in Paraguay. The second attempt, in Philadelphia, was on Special Agent Jack Britton of the Secret Service and his wife. They took fire from fully-auto AKs as they drove up to their home. For years, Britton had been a deep-cover Philly cop keeping an eye on an aptly named bunch of African-American Lunatics involved in, among other things, the lunatic idea of crashing that stolen 727 into the Liberty Bell and making mysterious trips to Africa—including the Congo—financed, we found out, with oil-for-food money.

“Britton was on the Vice President’s security detail. When he was informed ‘of course, you’re off that assignment’ and otherwise made to feel he was being punished for having been the target of an assassination attempt, he said some very rude things to various senior Secret Service people, then told them what they could do with the Secret Service and came to see me before we flew to Germany. I sent him and his wife down here—”

“And why did you think you had the authority to do that?” Montvale demanded.

Castillo ignored the interruption and, looking at Silvio, continued: “I was initially thinking Jack would be just the guy to help protect Ambassador Masterson in Uruguay. And since Jack had, so to speak, burned his Secret Service bridge, I didn’t think—and still don’t think—that I had to ask anyone’s permission.”

He met Montvale’s eyes.

“So what happened in Germany?” Montvale said after a moment.

“I was at the Haus im Wald, near Bad Hersfeld—it used to belong to my mother, but now Otto Görner, who runs Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, the holding company, lives there—when there was a call for me—as Castillo—from quote the U.S. embassy in Berlin unquote.

“When I answered it, a guy asked in Berliner German if he had Gossinger—not Castillo—and when I said ‘yes,’ he switched to English—faultless American accent—and said, ‘Sorry to bother you, Colonel Castillo, but I thought you would like to know an attempt will be made on your life and Görner’s and Kocian’s during the Friedler funeral.’ Sometime during the conversation, he said his name was ‘Tom Barlow’ and that I should be careful as the workers were ex-Stasi.

“And then he hung up.

“Friedler’s funeral, the next day, was in Saint Elisabeth’s church in Marburg. We had reserved seats. Two of my guys checked them before the ceremony. They found an envelope addressed to me—Gossinger—in one of the prayer books. It contained a photocopy of Berezovsky’s passport and four cards with the name ‘Tom Barlow’ on one, and ‘Vienna,’ ‘Budapest,’ and ‘Berlin’ on the others. ‘Berlin’ had been crossed out.

“What it looked like was that Berezovsky wanted to meet me in either Vienna or Budapest and would be using the name ‘Tom Barlow.’ ”

“You mean he wanted to defect?” Montvale asked, his tone now somewhat civil.

“It didn’t say that, but we thought that was likely.”

“And it never occurred to you to contact the station agent in either Berlin or Vienna or Budapest?”

“I considered that and decided against it.”

Montvale shook his head in obvious disgust. “So you went to Vienna to see what would happen?”

“Let me tell this through, please,” Castillo said, and after a visibly annoyed Montvale nodded his assent, went on: “Nothing happened at the church, possibly because my people and the local cops were all over it. Afterward, Kocian said he wanted to go to the Kuhl funeral in Vienna and wanted to go there on the train. I sent the airplane ahead to Vienna, and Kocian and I—plus Kocian’s bodyguard and one of my guys—caught the train in Kassel.”

“Which one of your guys?” Montvale said.

“That’s not germane.”

“The one General McNab sent to make sure you didn’t do anything stupid, as you’re so wont to do? The one sitting in there with the gendarmes? Sergeant Major Davidson?”

“We went to lunch on the train,” Castillo said, ignoring the question. “Berezovsky, his wife and daughter, and Alekseeva were having their lunch. I recognized him from the photocopy of his passport picture and spoke to him. He said he would like to talk a little business, so I invited them to my compartment.

“Thirty minutes later, they showed up—just Berezovsky and Alekseeva—told me who they were, and said they were willing to defect for two million dollars. I asked him what he had that was worth two million dollars, and he promised to tell me all about the chemical factory in the Congo once he was where he wanted me to take them in the Gulfstream.”

“Where did he want you to take them?”

“Next question?”

“Okay. And at no time during all this did it occur to you that you were in way over your head with something like this, and what you should do was take these people to the U.S. embassy in Vienna and turn them over to the CIA station chief? Or call me, for Christ’s sake, and ask me what you should do? I thought we had an agreement.”

“That implies that you have some authority over me, and we both know you don’t,” Castillo said. “We do have an agreement, but I came to understand that this did not fit its guidelines. Berezovsky and Alekseeva were antsy, and it came out they knew that the Kuhls had been whacked, and I decided that’s why they had come to me. They were afraid of what they were going to find in Vienna—from anyone who ultimately reports to you. Thus, the loophole in our agreement.”

Montvale didn’t say anything for a moment as he looked across the room in thought. It was clear he was not happy with what he was hearing. He then said: “How did they come to contact you in Germany?”

“My theory at the time was that Berezovsky went to Marburg to see that the ex-Stasi guys did a good job on Kocian and Göerner. Then—in what sequence, I don’t know—they saw my picture—Gossinger’s picture—in the Tages Zeitung—”

“What was that all about?”

“There was a front-page story that announced that the publisher—Gossinger—had returned to Germany from the States for Friedler’s funeral and was offering a reward—a large reward—for information leading to the people who had taken him out.

“I decided that Berezovsky knew who Gossinger is—who I am—and saw in the newspaper photograph that I was traveling in the Gulfstream, and decided I was his safe ticket out of Europe.

“What I guessed then turned out to be pretty much on the money. They told me that they had heard about the Kuhls, which suggested the SVR would be waiting for them in Vienna. And they had very little faith in the CIA station chief in Vienna, fearing that she would leave them hanging in the breeze if the SVR was onto them.

“So I slipped them out of the West Bahnhof in Vienna, onto the Gulfstream, and got them the hell out of Dodge.”

“And brought them here,” Montvale finished for him. “Where are they, Charley? To salvage anything from this mess, we have to get them to Washington and turned over to the agency just as soon as possible.”

“No. That’s out of the question, I’m afraid. They are not going to turn themselves over to the agency.”

Montvale exhaled audibly.

He said: “You’re telling me that you offered to give them two million dollars to tell you all about the chemical factory in the Democratic Republic of the Congo? God, you don’t even know its name!”

I’m not even going to respond to that ridiculous remark.

He’s trying to get a rise out of me.

“I know all about that chemical factory,” Montvale went on. “There’s nothing of interest there.” He grinned. “You have been conned out of two million dollars, my young friend.”

Castillo caught his pulse rising at the condescension.

Let it go. . . .

He counted to ten, then said in a reasonable tone: “Tell you what. Why don’t we call the agency and ask them? If they say there’s nothing of interest to our national security there, then once again you’ve put blind faith in who feeds you your intel. Because they and you are wrong. More egg on their face and more, I’m afraid, on yours. There is a very active chemical laboratory and factory there, funded with oil-for-food money. It has the mission of poisoning the water supplies of our major cities and, they hope, poisoning as many millions of Americans as possible as collateral damage.”

“Berezovsky told you this?”

Castillo nodded.

“And you believe him?”

Castillo nodded again.

“I don’t have to call the agency to verify what I already know.”

“If I were you, I would call,” Castillo said. “If you do, and they tell you they’re on top of the situation, and there’s nothing to worry about, then you’ll be covered, with Ambassador Silvio and I as witnesses, when this comes down. You asked and they assured you everything was hunky-dory.”

For a moment, Castillo thought Montvale would not reach for the thick-corded secure telephone on Ambassador Silvio’s desk, but in the end he did.

“How does this thing work?”

Silvio held out his hand and took the handset from Montvale.

“What we’re going to have to do is get a secure line to the State Department switchboard. They can connect you with the CIA,” Silvio said, then switched on the secure telephone.

“This is Ambassador Silvio. Get a secure line to State, then get a secure line to the director of Central Intelligence. Ambassador Montvale is calling.”

Toward the end of saying “Ambassador Montvale is calling” Silvio had raised his voice questioningly while looking at Montvale, in effect asking, Did Montvale want the DCI or someone else?

Montvale had nodded, signaling that DCI was fine.

“Put it on the speakerphone,” Castillo said. “That way Ambassador Silvio and I can both testify that you asked the DCI personally.”

Montvale gave him a dirty look, then looked at the phone base and pushed the speakerphone button in time for everyone to hear, “Office of the DCI.”

“This is Ambassador Montvale. Get me the DCI, please.”

Moments later, the voice of John Powell, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, inquired cheerfully: “How are you, Mr. Ambassador?”

“I’m well, thank you, Jack.”

“What can I do for you?”

“I’m sitting in Ambassador Silvio’s office in Buenos Aires.”

“Little warm down there, isn’t it?”

“Brutal. Jack, Lieutenant Colonel Castillo is with us.”

“Oh, really?”

“The question has come up—actually, Castillo raised it—about activity in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; specifically, on that experimental farm the West Germans used to operate down there. You know what I mean?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Do you know of anything going on down there?”

“Is that what Castillo suggested?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Where did he get that?”

Castillo clapped his hands, then drew his right hand in a cutting motion across his throat.

“He’d rather not say,” Montvale said.

“I see. Well, as I said, I haven’t heard anything. But if you’ll give me a minute, I’ll check to see if anything has happened that I missed. Hang on a minute, please.”

There came the murmur of unintelligible voices in the background, and then Powell came back on: “It’ll take a couple of minutes. Are you on a speakerphone?”

“Yes, Jack, we are.”

“How are you, Colonel?”

Castillo said: “I’m very well, Mr. Powell. Thank you. And yourself?”

“I understand you’ve been in Vienna.”

“There is a rumor circulating to that effect, sir.”

“Apropos of nothing whatever, Colonel, to kill the time while we’re waiting to hear about Africa, so to speak, a couple of interesting Interpol warrants crossed my desk this morning.”

“Yes, sir?”

“The Russians say that several of their diplomats—Dmitri Berezovsky and Svetlana Alekseeva, known to be SVR officers, one in Copenhagen and the other in Berlin—have absconded with large amounts of money. More than a million dollars from Copenhagen, and twice that from Berlin.”

“Well, I suppose that goes to show we’re not the only ones with crooked diplomats,” Castillo said, and winked at Ambassador Silvio, who smiled and shook his head.

“The Russians seem really upset about these two,” Powell went on. “They’ve offered a large reward for information leading to their arrest. And no one seems to know where they are or how they got there.”

“Well, I’ll keep my eyes peeled for dishonest-looking Russians, Mr. Powell. And you’ll be the first to know if I find any.”

“I don’t like to think what will happen to these people—Lieutenant Colonel Alekseeva is Colonel Berezovsky’s sister, and his wife and little girl are apparently with them—if the SVR catches up with them. As they will eventually.”

“Well, just off the top of my head, Mr. Powell, I’d say if anyone knew how to dodge the SVR it would be a couple of senior SVR officers. Especially if they had a lot of cash. What did you say they’re supposed to have stolen? Three million dollars?”

“And off the top of my head, Colonel Castillo,” Powell said with more than a little impatience in his voice, “if the situation presented itself, I’d think it obviously would be in their self-interest to place themselves under the protection of the CIA.”

“And you’d really like to talk to them, right?”

“Yes, we would really like to talk to them.”

“Well, I’d say that might be possible somewhere down the pike, but not anytime soon.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, if I have heard that the Vienna station chief has a big mouth—I understand she’s been telling wild stories to her old pal, Mrs. Patricia Davies Wilson, who in turn has been running her mouth to C. Harry Whelan, Jr.”—Castillo glanced at Montvale to gauge his reaction to the mention of the journalist who’d tried to crucify Castillo but was outsmarted by Montvale—“I think we have to presume these people have heard it, too. Under those circumstances, I don’t think if I were them I would place a hell of a lot of faith in the agency to protect them. Would you?”

There was a long silence, then Powell asked, “Did you ever hear of Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, Colonel Castillo?”

“Isn’t he one of those talking heads we see on Fox News?”

“Before that, he was a serving Marine officer who was given more authority than he could handle.”

“The story I get, Mr. Powell, is that Colonel North saw what he was doing as his duty as an officer sworn to protect the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to do what he was doing despite a lot of opposition from what he called the ‘LAs.’ ”

“The what?”

“I think it stands for ‘Langley Assholes,’ but I’m not sure.”

Silvio suddenly had the urge to clear his throat. Castillo looked at him, but the ambassador apparently was finding the tips of his shoes fascinating.

Powell shot back: “Can I infer from that that you share North’s opinion of the agency?”

“I don’t know what Ollie thinks of the CIA. But if you’re asking for my opinion?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Some really wonderful people struggling to stay afloat in a sea of politically correct left-wing bureaucrats.”

“Interesting,” Powell said icily.

“This is getting us nowhere,” Montvale said. “How long is it going to take to get the information on the alleged chemical factory in the Congo?”

“I think Mr. Montvale means the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” Castillo offered.

“It was just handed to me,” Powell said. “The latest analysis is dated five days ago. It states that there is no discernible activity there of interest to the United States. They are apparently experimenting with fish farms.”

“ ‘Fish farms’?” Castillo parroted.

“Yes, Colonel. I spell: Foxtrot-India-Sierra-Hotel farms.”

Castillo shook his head. “Are you open to a suggestion, Mr. Powell?”

“I’ll listen to one, Colonel Castillo.”

“You might consider the possibility that whoever filed that, and whoever analyzed and approved the raw data, are cut from the same cloth as Mrs. Davies.”

“Thank you for sharing that with me, Colonel,” Powell replied again with more than a hint of sarcasm. “I will indeed take it under consideration.”

“Nice to talk to you, Mr. Powell,” Castillo said.

“Did you ever hear the old Russian proverb, Colonel, that people who dig their own graves usually are buried in them?”

“I think you just made that up,” Castillo said.

“I’ll get back to you later, Jack,” Montvale said.

“I think that would be a good idea, Mr. Ambassador.”

Montvale’s face showed he didn’t know what to do with the telephone. Ambassador Silvio took it from him and said into the handset, “Break it down, please.”

“Satisfied, Castillo?” Montvale asked.

“Not really. With all the money we spend on the CIA, it seems to me they ought to be able to find their ass with only one hand, let alone both.”

“As a matter of curiosity, why did you go out of your way to insult the DCI?”

“What’s chiseled there in stone on the wall of the lobby at Langley? ‘You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free’? If hearing the truth insults the DCI, maybe he should look for other work.”

“Okay. I’ve had enough. I am now going to tell you what’s happened, and what’s going to happen.”

“Correction: What you would like to think is going to happen,” Castillo said. “Unless I hear from the President to the contrary, I’m not subject to your orders.”

“Do me the courtesy of hearing me out,” Montvale said.

Castillo met his eyes, then shrugged, then leaned back in his armchair and relit his cigar. “I’m listening.”

“A board of medical officers convened at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center has examined your case and determined that the stress of your duties has rendered you psychologically unfit for active service, and therefore decided that you will be medically retired as of 1 February—”

“What the hell!” Castillo said, sitting upright.

Montvale held out his hand, palm out, as a Wait sign.

“Hear me out,” he repeated, then went on: “The degree of psychological damage you have suffered in the line of duty has been determined to be twenty-five percent. You will thus receive a disability pension of twenty-five percent of your base pay. There has been some talk that at your retirement ceremony you will be awarded the Distinguished Service Medal.

“Turning to the retirement ceremony—at which Major Miller will also be medically retired and may be decorated with the Legion of Merit—it will be the regular monthly retirement ceremony at the Army Aviation Center, Fort Rucker, Alabama. At this time, it is currently planned that General Allan Naylor will preside.

“Major Miller has been placed on terminal leave. You are also on terminal leave—or will be, as soon as you sign the papers Colonel Remley has brought with him.

“I will be present at your retirement ceremony, as will Mr. C. Harry Whelan of The Washington Post, and DCI Powell. On the flight down, Mr. Powell will tell Mr. Whelan, in the strictest confidence, that there is absolutely nothing to the story Mrs. Davies has told him that you interfered with the CIA operation to turn Colonel Berezovsky and Lieutenant Colonel Alekseeva. And that the Russian defectors are—and always have been—in CIA hands.

“If it seems to DCI Powell to be the appropriate thing to do—and as a proof of the high regard the CIA holds for Mr. Whelan, as a patriotic American—he will ask my permission to take Mr. Whelan, immediately on our return to Washington, to the CIA safe house in Maryland where Berezovsky and Alekseeva are being interrogated. I will, as proof of my own regard for Mr. Whelan’s patriotism and high standing in journalism, grant my permission.

“Mr. Whelan will thus have proof of what I told him the first time you got us in a mess like this, that Mrs. Davies is a disgruntled former CIA employee who doesn’t know what she’s talking about. You, rather than running some super-secret operation of the President, are in fact a distinguished warrior who has been pushed beyond his limits and were assigned to an innocuous little agency in the Department of Homeland Security while the psychiatrists and psychologists at Walter Reed tried to help you regain your mental stability. Lamentably, they failed, and Mr. Whelan will see you retired with flags flying, bands playing, and a new medal to add to your already impressive display.”

He paused and met Castillo’s eyes as all that sank in.

“Getting the picture, Castillo?”

Castillo leaned back in his chair and puffed his cigar. “I’ve got it.”

“All you have to do now is sign the papers Colonel Remley has for you and get the Russians to the airport, and we can put this all behind us.”

Castillo pointed with his cigar to the secure telephone. “There’s the phone. Call the President.”

“Why should I do that?”

“Because he doesn’t know about this. Does he?”

Montvale shrugged, then confessed: “No. I want to protect him as much as possible from the mess you have caused.”

“You’re going to present him with a fait accompli?”

“That’s the idea.”

“Bad idea,” Castillo said. “Now, is it my turn to tell you what’s not going to happen and what is—”

“You don’t have any choice here, Castillo, for Christ’s sake!”

“Wrong again.”

Montvale glowered at him but said nothing. He started to stand.

“You want to hear me out?” Castillo asked.

Montvale looked at him, then took his seat. “If you insist.”

Castillo puffed his cigar as he gathered his thoughts.

He exhaled, then said: “First of all, the Russians are not going to get on your airplane to be flown to a CIA safe house in Maryland. I don’t think I could talk them into that if I wanted to, and I don’t. Second, I have no intention of signing anything Colonel Remley may have in his briefcase. That’s the ‘what’s not going to happen’ part of my scenario.

“The second part, ‘what is going to happen,’ is that—with or without your help—I’m going to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to verify what I’ve been told is going on there.”

“You’re out of your mind!”

“And when I have proof of that, I’m going to take that factory out myself, and if I can’t do that, lay the proof on the President’s desk and tell him I did what I did because the CIA refused—again—to believe what I told them.”

“You know I can’t permit you to do anything like that,” Montvale said.

“And you know you can’t stop me,” Castillo said. “So here is a possible compromise that should cover most of the bases:

“First, we get Dick Miller on the first plane down here. I need somebody to help me fly the Gulfstream, as Colonel Torine and Captain Sparkman are going to return to Washington with you. Another proof for you to show your pal the journalist that I was not running OOA—Torine is a full-bird colonel; I’m a lowly lieutenant colonel.

“Jack Doherty of the FBI is now in Vienna with Dave Yung. They are no longer needed there, as I have turned up another very reliable source of information vis-à-vis who assassinated the Kuhls and Friedler . . .”

“Your new Russian friends, obviously,” Montvale said sarcastically.

“. . . and tried to kill Duffy and the Brittons. When all the t’s are crossed and all the i’s dotted, I will turn that information over to you.

“I spoke with Doherty and Yung last night. Yung’s resignation from the FBI will be in the mail this morning. So he will not be available to anyone, like Whelan, to be questioned.

“Doherty, on the other hand, wants to return to the J. Edgar Hoover Building. So he’s on his way to Washington, where, if Whelan finds him, he can tell Whelan that he was on temporary duty with the OOA, analyzing the operations of Homeland Security, had always worked for Torine, and knows almost nothing about me except that he heard I wasn’t playing with a full deck.

“Alex Darby and Edgar Delchamps are going to retire from the agency and won’t be available. Jack Britton will resign from the Secret Service, as will Tony Santini; Whelan won’t be able to find them, I don’t think, and even if he does, will learn nothing from them.”

“Ambassador Silvio,” Montvale said, “I put it to you that you’ve heard enough of this to fairly conclude that Lieutenant Colonel Castillo is not only as unstable as the doctors in Walter Reed have concluded but that he is threatening to do a number of things—which he is entirely capable of undertaking in his delusional state—that are not only illegal but which will almost certainly cause great embarrassment not only to the President personally but to the country, and that under these circumstances, it is your clear duty to help me get him on my airplane and to the United States, despite any promises you made to him not knowing the seriousness of his mental condition.”

“You sonofabitch!” Castillo said. “If I am held here against my will, much less forced to—”

Ambassador Silvio made a gentle gesture with his hand, silencing Castillo. “Ambassador Montvale,” Silvio began in a measured tone, “first let me say that I don’t need you to point out my ‘clear duty’ to me. As ambassador, by law I am the senior American officer in Argentina. And let me be frank: As I’ve listened to the exchange between you and Colonel Castillo, and between Colonel Castillo and Mr. Powell, I wondered about my responsibilities in that regard in this matter.

“When Colonel Castillo first came to Argentina, the President told me personally that Colonel Castillo was acting on his behalf and with his authority, and directed me to provide him with any assistance he required. Given that—”

“You’ve heard this insanity!”

“Pray let me continue,” Silvio said. “Given that, Mr. Ambassador, I don’t think you have the authority to force Colonel Castillo to go anywhere or do anything he doesn’t want to do, absent a specific order from the President placing him under your authority. Quite the opposite, actually, I see it as my ‘clear duty’ to do whatever I can to assist him in carrying out his orders from the President and to prevent anyone from interfering with him.”

“His orders say nothing about abducting Russian defectors from the CIA,” Montvale argued, “and certainly nothing about conducting any kind of an operation in the Congo.”

“Since what exactly his orders actually entail seems to be in question, it seems obvious that the only person who can clarify them is the President himself. Absent that clarification, I am not going to challenge Colonel Castillo.”

Montvale met his eyes for a long moment.

He then said: “May I use your secure telephone again, Mr. Ambassador?”

“To call the President?”

“To call the President.”

“Certainly. But if that is your intention, I think I should tell you that when I speak with the President—and I will do so—I will tell him that Colonel Castillo is, in my judgment, in full possession of his extraordinary mental faculties, and that it seems to me that, motivated by your desire to spare the CIA and yourself embarrassment for losing the Russian defectors, what you and the DCI are trying to do—please forgive the colorful speech—is to throw Colonel Castillo under the bus.”

Montvale looked at him in angry disbelief.

“I shall also tell him,” Silvio went on, “that it is my judgment that if he goes along with you and orders Castillo to Washington, it will be some time—probably years—before the CIA will be able to locate the Russian defectors, much less get them to the United States. I will point out to the President that it took decades for Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, as you know, to find Adolf Eichmann, who they knew was in Argentina, and wasn’t until a couple of years ago that Erich Priebke, who gained infamy for his role in the Ardeatine Caves massacre outside Rome, could be brought to justice, even though he had been in Argentina since 1948 and owned a hotel in Bariloche.”

Montvale’s face was white. Castillo wondered if the director of National Intelligence was going to lose control.

He didn’t.

“Well, it seems our little chat is over, doesn’t it, Castillo?” Montvale said.

“Not quite, Mr. Montvale. I would like to know whether you are going to obstruct my operation in Africa, or provide what assistance I’ll need to carry it out under my existing authority.”

Montvale contorted his face. “Why in hell would I do that?”

“Because, if you give me the help I need, I give you my word that I will go along with your charade about my medical retirement, and even show up for my retirement parade.”

Montvale looked as if he didn’t believe his ears.

“You’ll go along with that?” Montvale asked after he’d taken a moment to consider the ramifications. “Why?”

“I’m as interested in protecting the President as you are. And after this the President would have to choose between us—and, self-evidently, you’re far more valuable an asset than I am. I know when it’s time to fold my tent.”

Montvale considered that, then nodded once. “I’ll give you what you think you need.”

“I don’t want the CIA, or anybody else, to know what I’m going to do. Understood?”

“You have my word.”

“Before a witness,” Ambassador Silvio put in.

“It will take me a couple of hours to explain the situation to Colonel Torine and get him and Captain Sparkman to Jorge Newbery.”

“To where? Oh, the airport.” He looked at his watch. “Okay. We’ll be there.”

Without thinking about it, when Montvale looked at his watch, Castillo looked at his. Montvale saw it.

“That looks like a brand-new stainless steel Rolex,” the director of National Intelligence said.

“Actually, it’s white gold. A gift from a friend.”

Castillo, using his eyes, then asked for permission to use the secure telephone from Ambassador Silvio, who responded by handing him the handset.

“Get State on here, please,” Castillo said into it, “and get them to give me a secure line to Major Richard Miller at OOA in the Nebraska Avenue Complex.”

In the silence of the room, with Montvale’s and Silvio’s eyes on him, Castillo took a puff on his cigar while the telephone operator put the call through.

“Dick? I’ll call you back in an hour or so. But right now make plans to get yourself on a plane down here tonight. If there’s any trouble with that, call the Presidential Flight and have them fly you down in one of their Gulfstreams. If there’s any trouble about that, tell them Ambassador Montvale authorized it.”

Montvale rose from the couch and, without saying a word or looking at either Ambassador Silvio or Castillo, walked out of the ambassador’s office.

Castillo heard Montvale say, “Okay, Remley, we’re through here.”

After Castillo broke off his call with Miller, he looked at Silvio.

“Mr. Ambassador, I didn’t realize that you’d wind up in the middle of that. I am indeed sorry. And of course very grateful, sir.”

“No reason for you to be sorry, Charley. Or grateful. I did what I thought it was my duty to do.”

XI

[ONE]

Nuestra Pequeña Casa

Mayerling Country Club

Pilar, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina

1605 2 January 2006

When Jack Davidson turned the embassy’s BMW into Mayerling, the gendarmería Mercedes-Benz SUV following them made a U-turn, then stopped and backed off the road into a position from which it could easily follow the BMW when it left the country club, no matter which way it turned when it came out.

Seeing what the gendarmería vehicle had done, Castillo realized that he was going to have to somehow dump his protective tail. As soon as he could, he wanted to join Svetlana at the Pilar Golf & Polo Country Club, and he didn’t want the gendarmes to follow him there. They would attract unwanted attention.

When they got to the safe house, Jack Britton, holding an Uzi along his leg, opened Castillo’s car door and told them that “everybody” was out back by the quincho.

“Everybody” turned out to be more than Castillo expected.

When he walked up to the shaded verandah of the quincho, “everybody” was comfortably sprawled like passengers on a cruise ship in lines of teak deck chairs on the verandah and in teak chaise lounge chairs along one side of the pool.

Susanna and Paul Sieno, Sandra Britton, Bob Kensington, and Dick Sparkman, all in bathing suits, were at the pool. Castillo knew that Paul Sieno had come from Asunción while he had been in Bariloche. Jake Torine, Tony Santini, and Jack Britton, wearing slacks and polo shirts, were in deck chairs in the shade of the verandah. A garbage can full of iced-down beer was helping them deal with the heat, and a mound of jumbo-sized packages of pretzels and potato chips on a table was giving them sustenance.

Castillo had not expected to see either Edgar Delchamps or Alex Darby, who were also on the verandah. They were wearing somewhat sweat-soaked dress shirts, and their suit jackets and the shoulder holsters they had worn under them were lying on the tiled floor beside their deck chairs.

They’re supposed to be with Berezovsky and his family at Pevsner’s second safe house way the hell the other side of Pilar!

Castillo’s mouth went on automatic: “What the hell are you two doing here? Who’s sitting on the Berezovskys?”

Delchamps didn’t like Castillo’s tone, and his voice showed it when he replied.

“In reply to the first question, Ace, we’re sucking on a cerveza while waiting for you to tell us all about your chat with Montvale.” He took a long pull on his Quilmes beer bottle to illustrate. “As for the second question, Polkovnik Berezovsky and his family are being sat upon by half a dozen heavily armed men working for our own Alfredo Munz, four of them Argentines and the other two former associates of the colonel.”

He paused, and when he saw by Castillo’s expression that that information had registered, then went on: “And when you have finished telling us what the ambassador had to say, Ace, we need to have a little chat ourselves.”

Max interrupted the exchange by making a quick run to a table between two of the deck chairs, delicately snatching a jumbo-sized package of potato chips in his mouth, then effortlessly jumping the fence around the swimming pool and trotting to the far side of the pool, away from the deck chairs, where he lay down with the bag between his paws. He tore the bag fully open, took a mouthful of chips, then more or less casually looked up at the humans to see if there was any objection to his action.

“Max, you sonofabitch!” Castillo called.

Max took this as permission to proceed—with haste—and dug his nose back into the bag.

Castillo shook his head but couldn’t help but smile.

“To err on the side of caution, I think I had better deliver the bad news inside,” Castillo said as he signaled the swimmers to join him.

Everybody hoisted themselves out of the deck chairs and filed inside the quincho.

“Gather ’round me, children,” Castillo said after “everybody” had entered and he had hoisted himself to sit on the pool table. Everybody shifted chairs so that they formed a half circle facing him.

“How did you know I was with Montvale?” Castillo asked, looking at Delchamps.

“I called here right after Davidson had called saying you were on the way here, had just left Montvale, and wanted everybody here. Alex and I decided we could consider ourselves ‘everybody.’ ”

“And that it would be all right to leave the Berezovskys with those people?”

“The only question in my mind, Ace, was whether the sitters would let us go. There were six of them and two of us. It finally took a call to Alfredo before they would.”

“You think they’re still going to be there when you go back?”

“You’re not listening, Ace. There were six of them. Alex and I were outnumbered and outgunned. If Berezovsky wanted to leave, he would have left.”

“Interesting.”

“He told me what he wants to do is to have a little chat, mano a mano, with you.”

“About what?”

“Why don’t we get into that when you’ve finished telling us about the ambassador? Starting at the beginning and leaving nothing out.”

“Fair enough,” Castillo said, and began: “When I parked at Jorge Newbery, there was a Presidential Flight Gulfstream on the tarmac. The pilot told me not only that it had carried Montvale down here, but that Montvale had blown his stack when Ambassador Silvio told him he had no idea where I was.

“So I went looking for him. I found him in the Río Alba and then we went to the embassy for a little chat. . . .”

It took Castillo about five minutes to bring everybody up to speed.

“Okay. That’s about it. Anybody?”

Colonel Jake Torine shook his head in wonder. He—and everyone else— had just heard that he was being sent to the Nebraska Avenue Complex, where—aided and abetted by Mrs. Agnes Forbison, their very own expert on all things bureaucratic—he was to be prepared to convince Mr. C. Harry Whelan of The Washington Post that the Office of Organizational Analysis was in fact what its name suggested, just one more small governmental agency charged with analyzing government organization, in this case that of the Department of Homeland Security.

Castillo looked at Torine. “Jake?”

“Why do I think you have a hidden agenda here, Charley?”

“Because by nature you are simply unable to trust your fellow man?”

“How about because I have been around the block with you too many times, ol’ buddy.”

“Did I forget to mention that I hope you and Sparkman will be able to tear yourself away from your analytic duties for a few hours so that you might consider the problems of getting whatever matériel and men into the Democratic Republic of the Congo in complete secrecy so they can take out a chemical laboratory/factory?”

“No, I guess that slipped your mind,” Torine said.

“And of course once they have accomplished that little task, to get them out of the Democratic Republic of the Congo as unobtrusively as they entered?”

“That presumes that you will be allowed to use the Delta Force 727.”

Castillo nodded. “And some people from Delta Force. Uncle Remus comes to mind.”

Chief Warrant Officer Five Colin Leverette, a legendary Delta Force special operator, was an enormous, very black man who was called “Uncle Remus” by his close friends—and only by his close friends—in the special operations community.

“From what you have told us of your little chat with Ambassador Montvale, are you sure that’s going to happen?”

“No,” Castillo said simply.

“Then what, Charley?”

“I haven’t quite figured that out.”

“Wonderful!”

“If you’re uncomfortable with this, Jake, don’t do it. Just con C. Harry Whelan and leave it at that.”

“Every time you lead me around the block, I’m uncomfortable,” Torine said. “But I always go, and you know that.”

“That was before,” Castillo said, “when you were able to con yourself into thinking I wasn’t really crazy.”

“Not without difficulty,” Torine said, chuckling.

“I’ve got something to tell you that will probably make you conclude I have finally really gone over the edge.”

“Frankly, Charley, that wouldn’t be hard.”

“I’m emotionally involved with Svetlana Alekseeva,” Castillo said.

Torine looked at him intensely, his eyes wary, but otherwise there was no expression on his face at all.

“To prevent any possible misinterpretation of that, Jake, let me rephrase: I am in love with her, and that emotion, I believe, is reciprocated.”

“I’m really glad to hear you say that, Ace,” Delchamps said.

Castillo instantly decided he had not correctly heard what Delchamps had said.

“Excuse me?”

“If you had said anything but almost exactly that, we would have had, added to our other burdens, the problem of protecting you from the lady’s big brother. In my brief association with him, I have learned he is one smart, tough sonofabitch, and protecting you from him might not have been possible.”

Castillo thought he saw a look of disbelief in Susanna Sieno’s eyes, then wondered if it was disbelief or contempt.

Paul Sieno and Sparkman had their eyes fixed on the floor.

“Charley,” Torine said finally, “I hope you weren’t crazy enough to tell Montvale about this.”

Castillo shook his head.

There was another long pause before Torine went on: “Insofar as reciprocity is concerned, would this explain Colonel Berezovsky’s otherwise baffling sudden change of attitude?”

Castillo first noticed the near-stilted formality of Torine’s question, then realized: He’s thinking out loud. Not as good ol’ Jake, but as Colonel Jacob D. Torine, USAF, a senior officer subconsciously doing a staff study of a serious problem and, specifically, right now, doing the Factors Bearing on the Problem part of the study.

“Pevsner told him that I was almost family. . . .”

“Supported,” Torine went on, “by Lieutenant Colonel Alekseeva’s statement, which I thought was odd: ‘So far as I am concerned, before God and the world, he is family.’ ”

“That’s what she said,” Castillo agreed.

Delchamps put in: “If I’m to believe Polkovnik Berezovsky—and truth being stranger than fiction, I do—the whole family, including the infamous Aleksandr Pevsner, is deeply religious folk with quote family values unquote that would satisfy the most pious Southern Baptist. Make that Presbyterian; they do like their booze.”

He looked at Alex Darby.

“That’s my take,” Darby said, nodding gently.

Susanna Sieno looked like she was going to say something but changed her mind.

“Following which,” Torine went on almost as if he was in a daze and hadn’t heard Delchamps, “Colonel Berezovsky began not only to answer questions he had previously answered evasively and ambiguously—if at all—and began not only to answer such questions fully, but also to volunteer intelligence bearing on the questions.”

“One explanation for the change in attitude,” Susanna Sieno said more than a little sarcastically, “might be Charley repeating his offer of two million dollars for the information.”

Delchamps looked at her coldly but didn’t challenge her.

He respects her, Castillo thought.

Susanna may look like a sweet young housewife in a laundry detergent advertisement, but she’s a good spook who has more than paid her dues in the agency’s Clandestine Services.

“No, Susanna, that wasn’t his motivation,” Castillo said. “They asked me for two million on the train to establish a credible motive for their defection. But they don’t need money. They brought out with them—it’s in various banks around the world—far more than two million. So much money I have trouble believing how much.”

Torine, deep in thought, looked out the quincho’s doors.

“That is the belief of their interrogator,” he went on in the military bureaucrat cant of the staff study, which sounded even more stilted when spoken. “Inevitably raising the question of the soundness of the interrogator’s judgment, inasmuch as the interrogator in his admission of romantic involvement has also admitted he has abandoned the professional code he has followed throughout his adult life.”

Torine stopped and tapped his fingertips together for a good thirty seconds.

Then he raised his eyes to Castillo’s. “So, you see, Colonel, the dilemma into which you have thrust me?”

“Jake, you say the word and I’ll get on Montvale’s airplane. If you tell me you think I can’t . . .”

He stopped when Torine held up his hand.

“—said dilemma makes me seriously consider that you may have in fact lost your fucking mind.”

Jack Davidson chuckled.

“So you think I should get on Montvale’s airplane?”

“No, that’s not what I said. Or mean. I just think you should keep in mind that you’re not acting rationally.”

“That’s . . .” Susanna Sieno started and then stopped.

“Go on, Susanna,” Castillo said, gesturing. “Let’s hear it.”

She met his eyes for a moment, shrugged, then went on: “What I was about to say, Charley, was that that’s something of an understatement.”

“Guilty,” Castillo said. “That thought has occurred to me.”

“And you still think you’re in love?”

He nodded.

“In that case, maybe I should just shut up.”

“I wish you wouldn’t,” Castillo said. “Let’s get it all out.”

She considered that a moment, shrugged again, then said: “Here’re a couple of things to consider. Charley. . . . Oh, hell, I was about to say that Svetlana is at least as good a spook as I am, maybe even as good as you are. But you’ve considered that, I’m sure. Anyway, given that, if I were in her shoes, snaring somebody like you by whatever means—certainly including spreading my legs—would be a no-brainer.”

“Jesus Christ, honey!” Paul Sieno exclaimed.

“Stop thinking like a husband, Paul,” Susanna said.

“And,” Jack Britton said, “since we’re all running at the mouth, Charley, you were on the rebound after Betty Schneider dumped you, ripe to get plucked by any female, and certainly by a really good-looking, smart one with every reason to have a ‘protect my ass’ agenda.”

“Betty dumped him?” Sandra Britton asked, surprised. “You never told me about that!”

“I didn’t think it was any of our business,” Britton said.

“How’d you hear about that?” Castillo asked.

“I heard Agnes and Joel Isaacson talking,” Britton said.

Castillo shrugged. “She did dump me. What she said was that she didn’t want to be married to a guy who instead of coming home for supper would leave a voice mail that he was off to Timbuktu. But what I really think it was is that being with me would interfere with her new Secret Service career; that what she really wanted to do was be more of a hotshot cop than her brother. And I really don’t think I was on the rebound.”

Britton’s face showed he didn’t believe that at all.

“The flaw in your argument, Susie,” Alex Darby said, “is that none of the Russians need Charley now. If she had, to use your apt if indelicate phraseology, spread her legs before he brought them here . . .”

“We don’t know when or where that happened,” Susanna said, and looked at Castillo.

He was on the verge of telling her that it was none of her goddamn business when he had first been intimate with Svetlana, but then realized that, in fact, it was.

Castillo made a grand gesture with his right index finger, poking the felt of the table. “Here, the first night.”

There was a resounding silence.

“On the pool table?” Sandra Britton blurted. “Charley!”

“No, I mean in Argentina, not before.”

“Right after her swimsuit top ‘accidentally’ came off, right?” Susanna said, undeterred.

Castillo nodded.

“That was an accident,” Sandra said. “I saw what happened.”

“Well, she really covered herself up just as fast as she could, I’ll say that for her. Top and bottom,” Susanna said.

Castillo’s memory bank kicked in, and he had a clear image of Svetlana adjusting her bathing suit back over her exposed buttock.

“If I didn’t know better, Susie,” Darby said, “I’d suspect you don’t like Podpolkovnik Alekseeva very much.”

“That’s the point, you asshole,” Susanna snapped. “She is a podpolkovnik of the FSB—”

“Was a podpolkovnik of the SVR,” Delchamps corrected her without thinking.

“Et tu, Edgar?” Susanna said, thickly sarcastic. “You’re into this true-love-at-first-sight bullshit?”

“Well, what the hell’s wrong with that?” Sandra challenged. “It happens.”

“Bullshit!” Susanna said.

“I don’t know about you people,” Sandra snapped back. “But it does happen to certain cops and schoolteachers. Tell her, Jack.”

“Guilty,” Britton said.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Susanna said disgustedly.

Darby said: “What I started to say, Susie, what seems an hour or so ago, before we got into the romantic aspects of all this, is the flaw in your argument is that the Russians don’t need Charley anymore.”

“Meaning what?” Susanna challenged.

“Well, for example, we weren’t at the second safe house thirty minutes when the Russians came in, bearing gifts.”

“Like what?”

“Passports and national identity cards for everybody—Argentine, Uruguayan, Paraguayan, South African, Mexican.”

“All good forgeries, I’m sure,” Susanna said, her tone making clear her contempt for counterfeit passports, which everybody knew were good only until immigration authorities could run them through a computer database.

Darby took two passports and two national identity cards from a zip-top plastic bag and handed one set to Susanna and the other to Castillo. “These are genuine. I have an asset in Argentine immigration and he checked them for me.”

Castillo found himself looking at photographs of Svetlana looking at him through the sealed thick plastic of a Uruguayan national identity card and passport identifying her as Susanna Barlow, born in Warsaw, Poland, and now a naturalized citizen living in Maldonado, Uruguay. He remembered from somewhere that Maldonado was just north of the seaside resort town of Punta del Este.

“What’s the name on yours, Susanna?” Castillo asked as he extended the documents to her.

She didn’t reply. She simply handed him the set of documents Darby had given to her. When Castillo examined them, Svetlana’s photo—the same one as on the Uruguayan documents—was on both an Argentine passport and a national identity card identifying her as Susanna Barlow, born in Warsaw, Poland, and now a naturalized citizen living in Rosario.

Delchamps said: “The Paraguayan, South African, and Mexican documents may be fake, but I don’t think so. As soon as I can, I’ll check them.”

Susanna looked at him but didn’t say anything.

“What’s interesting here, Susanna,” Delchamps went on, “aside from Svetlana’s new first name, I mean, is that when I told Berezovsky I was going to meet Charley here and I thought Svetlana would be with him—” He stopped and turned to Castillo. “Where is she, by the way?”

“At yet another of Pevsner’s safe houses, in the Pilar Golf and Polo Club. Munz and Lester are with her,” Castillo furnished.

Delchamps nodded, then turned his attention back to Susanna: “Berezovsky just handed me this stuff and asked me to give it to her. I don’t think he would have done that if he planned to take off.”

“Who is Berezovsky now?” Castillo asked.

“‘Thomas Barlow,’ who else? Born in Manchester, England,” Delchamps answered.

“The Russians also showed up with a little walking around money,” Darby said. “One hundred thousand dollars of it, fresh from the Federal Reserve. Still in the plastic wrapping. It makes up a package about this big.” He demonstrated with his left hand, fingers and thumb extended in what could have been the mimicking of a bear claw. “And it was the real thing, too, Susie. Nice, crisp, spendable hundred-dollar bills.”

He waited until she reacted. All he got was a sort of so what shrug, but it was enough for him to go on.

“All of which leads Edgar and me to believe that if all they—especially she—wanted out of Charley was getting them here from Vienna and a little help until they got settled—or disappeared—that that time has passed. Berezovsky is still singing like a canary and—”

“And Charley is still alive,” Delchamps said. “Taking Charley out when he was in Bariloche would have been the smart thing for them to do, covering their tracks, and it is a given that both Pevsner and Berezovsky are very good at doing that sort of thing and lose no sleep whatever when they do it.”

“So what are you saying?” Tony Santini asked.

“I can’t wait to see the look on Susanna’s face when I say this,” Delchamps said. “I believe, and so does Brother Darby, that (a) Polkovnik Berezovsky and Podpolkovnik Alekseeva risked all to get out of Russia because—subpara lowercase i—they came to believe that Vladimir Putin was about to resurrect the bad old days of the Soviet Union and they wanted nothing to do with that . . .”

“I don’t believe I’m hearing this,” Susanna Sieno said.

“. . . and—(a) subpara lowercase ii—they suspected that because Brother Putin, himself a member in good standing of the Oprichina—you’ll recall his father was Stalin’s cook—knows all about what a threat heavy-duty oprichniki would pose to his regime, they stood a very good chance of spending the rest of their lives in a mental hospital with their veins full of happy juice, said mental hospitals having replaced the gulag in the new and wonderful Russian Federation as depositories for potential troublemakers.”

“You’re telling me that you and Alex”—she looked between them—“believe those ludicrous yarns about a state within a state?”

“With all my innocent trusting heart, Susie,” Darby said, putting his right hand to his chest. “But then again, you have to remember that throughout my long career in the Clandestine Services I earned the reputation of always being the guy who believed everything he was told.”

“If I may go on?” Delchamps said. “Darby and I also believe that (b) the Berezovskys, the Pevsners, and at least Charley’s new friend Svetlana are Christians who take it seriously—we’re not so sure of the lady’s husband, he’s one mean sonofabitch who may well be a godless Communist. . . .”

“She’s married?” Susanna asked, shaking her head.

“To Polkovnik Evgeny Alekseeva of the SVR,” Delchamps confirmed, “who at last report was scouring the streets of Vienna in high hopes of finding his wife, who he no doubt then hopes to kill in the most painful way he can think of.”

“Oh, Charley!” Sandra Britton said.

“Once again, if I may go on?” Delchamps said. “Now, where was I? Oh, yes! (b): are Christians who take it seriously, and for that reason—subpara lowercase i—regard the poisoning of a couple of million innocent women and children as un-Christian and are therefore willing to help Charley take out whatever the hell those bastards have in the Congo, about which Berezovsky apparently knows a hell of a lot.

“Subpara lowercase ii, would be deeply offended if Our Leader—known to the Secret Service as ‘Don Juan’—as I really expected to hear just now when he returned to our little nest—had been pleasuring Podpolkovnik Alekseeva simply to get her to talk—or simply for fun—rather than as a manifestation of his intention to marry the lady when that is possible, and thereafter to walk hand in hand and in the fear of God in the bonds of holy matrimony until death do them part. Amen.” He paused. “Getting the picture, Susanna?”

“If I heard all that from anybody but you two . . .”

“That wasn’t the question.”

She nodded. “I got it, Edgar.”

“Now tell our leader you’re sorry, baby,” Paul Sieno said.

Susanna looked at Castillo.

“Is the wedding going to be simple, Don Juan, or are you both going to wear your uniforms?”

“Uniforms, I think. But only if you’re going to precede us down the aisle scattering rose petals while singing ‘I Love You Truly.’ ”

[TWO]

Pilar Golf & Polo Country Club

Pilar, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina

1740 2 January 2006

After thinking about it, Castillo decided there was more to be lost than gained by eluding the gendarmería SUV that was waiting for them outside the gate of the Mayerling Country Club.

Comandante Liam Duffy would be annoyed, Castillo understood, and now was not the time to annoy the Latin-tempered (his mother was Argentine) gendarmería officer. That was, annoy him any more than he already was annoyed.

Castillo knew that Duffy remained furious about the assassination attempt on Christmas Eve on Duffy and his family, and while Castillo had almost identified the SVR officer who had organized and probably participated in that, he would have to check with Berezovsky before he was sure. And as soon as Duffy learned that name, he was going to do his very best to find him and then kill him and his close associates in the most imaginatively painful ways he could think of.

While Castillo fully sympathized with Duffy, he didn’t want that to happen until the Congo operation was over. Taking out the SVR officer who had replaced Lieutenant Colonel Viktor Zhdankov in South America would tell the SVR more than Castillo wanted them to know about the extent of his knowledge of SVR operations.

Replacing Zhdankov had become necessary after Corporal Lester Bradley, USMC, using his Colt Model 1911 .45-caliber semiautomatic, had taken Zhdankov out with a well-placed head shot in the basement garage of the Pilar Sheraton Hotel and Convention Center when Zhdankov had been engaged in trying to take out Aleksandr Pevsner.

The initial order, according to both Aleksandr Pevsner and Svetlana, had come from Lieutenant General Yakov Sirinov, who was the man in charge of that sort of thing for the Sluzhba Vnezhney Razvedki. He ran either Directorate S, the oddly brazenly named Illegal Intelligence arm of the SVR, or Service A, which was the arm of the SVR charged with planning and implementing “active measures,” which meant such things as assassinations.

Or General Sirinov ran both Directorate S and Service A.

Or Directorate S and Service A were really one and the same entity.

Svetlana and Pevsner had told Castillo the order from General Sirinov had probably been rather vague in nature, stating only that the individuals on a list had been determined to be posing a threat to the Russian Federation and were to be eliminated as soon as the local rezidents could arrange to have it done, preferably within the same twenty-four-hour period.

That, Svetlana had matter-of-factly told Castillo, would serve both to keep the others on the list from suspecting they were in danger because one of their number had been eliminated, and would also make a statement, when the assassinations had been successfully carried out, that the SVR was back and dealing with its enemies as the KGB, the NKVD, and the Cheka had done in the past.

The names certainly listed were Frau und Herr Kuhl in Vienna, Herr Friedler in Marburg, Mr. Britton in Philadelphia, and Comandante Duffy in Buenos Aires. Both Svetlana and Pevsner felt that some people on General Sirinov’s list who would be eliminated, if possible, as a second priority included Otto Görner, Eric Kocian, and Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger, aka C. G. Castillo.

Neither Svetlana nor Pevsner had mentioned that the Berlin rezident ordered to implement the successful termination of Herr Friedler and, if possible, as a second priority, Otto Görner, Eric Kocian, and Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger aka C. G. Castillo, was one Dmitri Berezovsky—and, although this thought had run through Castillo’s mind more than once, neither had he.

When Jack Davidson had driven the BMW out of the Mayerling gate, Castillo had signaled cheerfully for the gendarmes in their Mercedes SUV to follow them.

When finally he had to deal with Liam Duffy’s impatience—angry impatience—to learn the name of the man who had tried to kill Duffy and his family, at least the Argentine cop wouldn’t have his Irish temper already inflamed by Castillo having eluded his protectors. Read: tail.

Several miles past the end of the Autopista del Sol, where the six-lane toll road had turned into a two-lane macadam highway, Castillo saw a sign reading PILAR GOLF & POLO COUNTRY CLUB, and moments later saw the gatehouse of the place itself.

Unlike either the Mayerling or Buena Vista country clubs, where a combination of high fences, closely packed trees, and thick shrubbery hid everything inside from anyone on the roadway, the Pilar Golf & Polo Country Club presented an unobstructed view of immaculate fairways and greens as far as the eye could see. A dozen electric golf carts were on narrow, concrete paths that picturesquely wound near the fairways and the greens.

At least a mile from the gatehouse, sitting on a gentle hill, were a dozen houses—maybe more—all of which seemed to Castillo to be larger than Nuestra Pequeña Casa.

There might have been a fence around them, but Castillo didn’t get a good enough look at them before Davidson had to stop at the gatehouse, which itself was a substantial two-story building. Castillo saw that there were two barrier gates in series, each a substantial affair that opened by rolling to the side; the interior gate was two car lengths distant from the exterior one.

From behind thick glass windows in the gatehouse, three uniformed, armed guards examined the BMW and its occupants. Castillo could see on an interior wall a row of video monitors mounted over a rack of shotguns. The monitors gave the guards a clear view of what the surveillance cameras were recording—at the moment, six views of the BMW, including its undercarriage.

At this point, Castillo had a somewhat unnerving and embarrassing thought: He knew Svetlana, Munz, and Lester were inside the Pilar Golf & Polo Country Club, but not exactly where.

Nothing beyond “in another of Pevsner’s safe houses.”

You should have asked how to get in here, stupid!

It didn’t turn out to be a problem.

First, a black KIA sport utility vehicle with darkened windows appeared from the side of the gatehouse in the area between the barriers and stopped its nose against the interior barrier. A large and sturdy man in a business suit got out of the KIA, in the process unintentionally revealing that he carried a large semiautomatic pistol in a shoulder holster.

Next, the red light in a traffic signal mounted on the side of the gatehouse went off and the signal’s green light came on. The exterior barrier then rolled slowly to one side. When there was room, Davidson drove up to the KIA as the barrier now behind him closed.

The man who had gotten out of the KIA walked to the BMW, smiled, and bent down beside it.

When Davidson rolled down his window, Max erupted from the backseat, where he had been sitting beside Edgar Delchamps, put his head between Davidson and the lowered window, then growled deep in his chest and showed the man his teeth.

The man jumped three feet backward—moving so quickly that Castillo thought he was going to lose his balance.

The man quickly regained his composure.

“El Coronel Munz has been expecting you, gentlemen,” he announced. “If you’ll be so kind as to follow me?”

The interior barrier rolled away, and they followed the KIA down a serpentine macadam road that skirted the golf course—as they did, Castillo concluded that the club had two eighteen-hole courses—then past four polo fields, two of which were in use, and then an enormous building with half a dozen tennis courts that suggested it was the Club House.

Finally, they approached the sort of compound of houses he had seen from the road.

There was no road in front of the houses, just a line of six-foot-high fencing, nearly invisible from even a short distance away. A second look showed that inside the fencing there was an even less visible line of wire suspended between insulators two or three feet above the grass.

That’s motion sensing, Castillo decided. The outer fence is designed to keep the golfers, and their golf balls, off that last expanse of grass. The motion-sensing wire inside goes off if something larger than a golf ball gets close to the houses.

Whoever designed this knew what he was doing, and was not constrained by financial considerations.

Proof came as they approached the houses from the rear. He now saw that the houses were lined up in a gentle curve, their front doors facing away from the road and toward yet another guard shack and barrier. Two other KIAs, identical to the one they were following, sat facing out just inside the barrier.

The barrier here was different. It consisted of four five-foot-tall painted steel cylinders about eighteen inches in diameter in the center of the road. They could be raised and lowered hydraulically. They sank into the road as the lead KIA approached.

Inside the compound, the KIA stopped before the third house, and the man got out and nodded toward the house.

The house, of timbered brick, looked as if it belonged in the Scottish Highlands as the ancestral hunting lodge of at least a duke.

Offering his unsolicited observation that “these fucking Krautmobiles weren’t designed for full-size people,” Edgar Delchamps opened the rear door of the BMW and started to haul himself out.

He had one leg out the car’s door when Max saw not only that the door of the house had opened but who had come through it.

He exited the car in a leap, using Delchamps’s crotch as the springing point for both rear legs, which served to push Delchamps back in his seat. Delchamps said unkind things about Max and his mother.

Max bounded to Svetlana, yapping happily and dancing around her. She bent and scratched his ears.

Then she saw Castillo and waved to him.

Max lapped her face and then ran to Castillo, who was by then out of the front seat. Max yapped at him as if saying, “Hey, boss! Guess who I found here?” before returning to Svetlana, where he stood on his rear legs and draped his paws over her shoulders.

A very large man rushed out the front door, looking as if he was in the act of drawing a lethal weapon from a shoulder holster.

“Nyet!” Svetlana ordered in a voice befitting a podpolkovnik of the Sluzhba Vnezhney Razvedki on a Moscow parade ground. The man stopped as if frozen.

Svetlana’s voice softened as she pushed Max off her shoulders, then dropped to wrap her arms around his neck. “It’s okay, Stepan. Max is our dog, isn’t he, my Charley?”

Castillo nodded.

He walked up to her. She kissed him chastely and not very possessively on the cheek.

“You remember Edgar, of course, honey?”

“Certainly,” she said. “He’s the one who took the stitches out of my good purse.”

She looked at Delchamps and then at Castillo. Then she pulled Castillo’s face to hers and kissed him on the mouth—passionately, possessively, and at length.

“Please come in the house, Mr. Delchamps,” she said a moment later. “We’ll have a cocktail, and then I will show you and Mr. Davidson around our house.”

She tucked her hand under Castillo’s arm, leaned her head against his shoulder, and led him into the house.

“What’s this ‘our house’ business?” Castillo asked.

“I love it,” she said. “And so will you when you see it. I’m going to buy it. And this is Mr. Lee-Watson, who’s going to sell it to me.”

Three people were standing in the high-ceilinged foyer: El Coronel Alfredo Munz, Corporal Lester Bradley, USMC, and a very tall, elegantly tailored man in his forties.

“Delighted to make your acquaintance, sir. Cedric Lee-Watson.”

His accent suggested he was the duke who owned this Scottish Highlands castle.

Castillo took the proffered hand and looked at Munz, asking with his eyes, Who the hell is this guy, and what’s he doing in Pevsner’s safe house?

“Mr. Lee-Watson handles real estate for our mutual friend in Bariloche,” Munz explained.

“Indeed, for he whose name is only rarely, and then very carefully, spoken,” Lee-Watson said.

“Cedric built this place—the club—for our friend,” Munz said.

Lester Bradley caught Castillo’s attention. “Colonel, can I see you for a minute, please?”

“What’s up, Lester?”

“Privately, sir?”

“Won’t that wait until after I show him the house?” Svetlana protested.

Castillo took Bradley’s arm and led him farther into the house, to one side of a wide stairway at the end of a foyer.

“Okay, what, Lester?”

“As soon as I got the AFC set up, there was a call for you from Mr. D’Allessando.”

“What did he want?” Castillo asked, surprised.

On his retirement from twenty-four years of service—twenty-two of it in Special Forces—Chief Warrant Officer Five Victor D’Allessando had gone to work for the Special Operations Command as a Department of the Army civilian. Theoretically, he was a technical advisor to the commanding general of the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg. What he actually did for the Special Operations Command was not talked about.

“He said a friend wants to talk to you, sir.”

“Well, get on the horn and get him back, Les.”

“Yes, sir.”

Bradley walked to the foot of the stairs, then ran up them, taking them two at a time.

Svetlana, trailed by Delchamps, Davidson, and Lee-Watson, crossed the foyer to Castillo.

“Vic D’Allessando was on the horn,” Castillo reported. “He said a friend wants to talk to me.”

Delchamps and Davidson both shrugged, indicating they had no idea what D’Allessando might have on his mind.

Everybody started up the stairs to the second floor.

[THREE]

Ten minutes later, as Svetlana and Lee-Watson had just about finished showing all the comforts the master suite offered, Bradley walked in and announced, “I’ve got Mr. D’Allessando for you, sir. The AFC is just down the hall.”

Delchamps read Castillo’s mind.

“You want us to wait here, Ace?”

Castillo exhaled audibly.

“The wheezing, I suspect, reveals a certain indecision,” Delchamps said.

“I was thinking that Svetlana probably should hear this,” Castillo said.

“Or wondering how you could keep her from hearing it?” Delchamps said.

Svetlana flashed him an icy look.

“I was about to say, ‘What the hell, the barn door’s open; there’s no way to get the cow back in,’” Delchamps went on, which earned him an ever more frigid glare, “but I was afraid she might take it the wrong way.”

Davidson chuckled.

“Mr. Lee-Watson, will you excuse us for a few minutes? There’s an important call I—we—have to take.”

“Of course.”

The AFC radio was set up on a small escritoire in a small room off the corridor. There was an interior door. Castillo opened it and saw that it opened on the bedroom of the master suite.

He closed the door, and noticed that Bradley was about to leave the room. “Stay, Lester,” Castillo said, and sat down carefully on an elegantly styled and obviously fragile chair.

“Thank you so much, my ever thoughtful Charley,” Svetlana said sarcastically.

He started to get up to give her the chair, then changed his mind.

“You’re welcome,” he said, and checked the LEDs on the AFC. They were all green. One of them indicated the conversation would be conducted with the protection of AFC Class One encryption, which Aloysius Francis Casey had personally informed him that even the master National Security Agency eaves-droppers at Fort Meade, Maryland, could not penetrate.

Castillo pushed the SPEAKERPHONE button.

“How they hanging, Vic? What’s up?”

There was no immediate reply, and when a reply did come, it was not in D’Allessando’s familiar Brooklynese but rather in the crisp diction that immediately and unequivocally identified the other party to Castillo as Lieutenant General Bruce J. McNab, Commanding General of the United States Special Operations Command: “Colonel Castillo.”

“Good evening, sir.”

“I wasn’t sure Vic could get through to you, Colonel. I didn’t think they would permit you to take one of Aloysius’s radios on your terminal leave.”

“General, I’m not on terminal leave.”

There was a pause.

“But now that I have you, Colonel: Although you have caused me a lot of grief during our long relationship, on balance you were far more useful than I ever thought you would be. Given that, I wanted to tell you personally that I did my best to dissuade General Naylor from going along with Ambassador Montvale. I failed. I’m sorry, and I wanted to tell you that myself.”

“Sir, I am not on terminal leave.”

“Well, if you’re not, you soon will be. Colonel Remley, my G-1, is on his way down there with the appropriate papers for you to sign.” He paused. “That presumes, of course, that he can find you. He’s not one of us, so that’s quite possible. Where are you?”

“Sir, I met briefly with Colonel Remley. And Ambassador Montvale. Several hours ago. They are both by now on their way back to the States. I declined to sign whatever it was he wanted me to sign.”

“Did Colonel Remley inform you that I had sent him down there at General Naylor’s direction to have you sign your acceptance of the medical board’s conclusions?”

“No, sir. Neither your name nor General Naylor’s was mentioned. Ambassador Montvale made it quite clear he wanted me to sign whatever Colonel Remley had for me to sign. I declined to do so.”

“Charley, if the President has decided it’s time for you to go, it’s your duty to go. You should know that.”

“Sir, the President is unaware of what Ambassador Montvale had planned for me.”

This time the pause was longer before McNab spoke again.

“Forgive me, Charley. I am ashamed to say I was sitting here trying to decide who would be more likely to lie to me, you or that lying sonofabitch Montvale.”

“No apology required, sir.”

“How much truth is there to the tale Montvale tells that you—for reasons he can’t imagine—snatched two Russian defectors from the CIA station chief in Vienna and flew them to Argentina?”

“They were never in the hands of the CIA, sir.”

“But you did fly them from Vienna to Argentina?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Off the top of my head, Charley, that sounds as stupid as . . . well, for example, as borrowing a Black Hawk. Why the hell did you do that?”

“You mean borrowing the Black Hawk? Or flying the Russians here?” Castillo asked innocently.

“You know goddamn well what I mean, Charley,” McNab said. But he chuckled.

“Sir, at the time I thought it—both things—was the thing to do.”

“And now that you’ve had time to reflect?”

“Now I know, sir, that I did the right thing. Both times.”

“Why?” McNab asked simply. “Skip the part about Dick Miller and his people still being among the living.”

“Sir, I had good reason to believe the SVR was onto them, and unless I got them off the train and out of the Westbahnhof in Vienna, they’d be grabbed.”

There was another long pause before McNab went on: “That raises the questions ‘What train?’ ‘What were you doing on the train?’ and ‘How did you get together with the Russians in the first place, since getting the bastards to turn is none of your goddamn business?’ But I will not ask them, because that is what is known as water under the dam. Pick it up where you got them out of the Westbahnhof and to Gaucho Land instead of turning them over to the agency in Vienna.”

“Sir, the Russians suspected that the CIA station chief also knew the SVR was onto them and was going to let them hang in the breeze. I think they were right.”

“Montvale’s version is that you rode into town like Jesse James and blew up the carefully laid plans of the CIA to arrange their defection.”

“Yes, sir. I’m aware of his story.”

“You don’t sound very repentant about all this, Charley. Even though it’s going to end your colorful military career on something of a sour note.”

“Sir, what I got from the Russians is worth more than my career.”

“Their heartfelt gratitude for helping them dodge the SVR?”

“Sir, they’ve put me onto an operation in the ex-Belgian Congo—run by Iranians with other raghead cooperation and funded by oil-for-food money—that’s going after our water supplies.”

“And you don’t think the agency, as incompetent as we both know it sometimes can be, doesn’t know the bad guys would love to poison our water supply? And if they’re seriously working on an operation would know just a little bit about it?”

“As of a couple of hours ago, the agency believes—sir, this is just about verbatim—that, quote, there is no discernible activity there of interest to the United States. They are apparently experimenting with fish farms, unquote.”

“How the hell could you possibly know that?”

“I heard the DCI tell Montvale that. We were in the embassy in Buenos Aires, and Montvale called him.”

“And you think the agency is wrong?”

“Yes, sir. I believe they are.”

“One of the defectors told you that?”

“Both of them did, sir.”

“And you believe them?” McNab asked incredulously. “Two whys, Charley: Why would they tell you, and why do you believe them?”

“I can give you a long answer, sir, or—”

“Short one first.”

“They happen to be Christians who take it seriously and don’t want several million innocent people poisoned.”

“Jesus Christ! And you believe that?”

“I do, and so does Edgar Delchamps.”

“The guy who stuck a needle in the traitor’s neck in the Langley parking lot?”

“That has been alleged, sir. He and Alex Darby, the station chief here, both believe what the Russians have told us.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but what I’m hearing here is that a brand-new lieutenant colonel with a well-deserved reputation for being a world-class loose cannon, an agency dinosaur who takes out people he doesn’t like in the CIA’s parking lot, and another agency type who got himself banished to Gaucho Land because he still thinks the Russians are a threat all have decided, based upon what a couple of Russian defectors—who the Russians say took off because they stole three million dollars, not because they’re born-again Christians—told them that there is a bona fide terrorist threat that the agency, having looked into it, says is nonsense. Does that sum it up fairly accurately, Colonel Castillo?”

“Yes, sir. That’s about it.”

“And what do these three lunatics plan to do about it?”

“This lunatic, sir, is going to go over there and find out for himself what’s going on.”

“And then?”

“Either take it out myself or lay proof on the President’s desk of what’s going on.”

“All by yourself, John Wayne?” McNab asked, bitterly sarcastic.

There was a moment’s pause before Castillo responded.

“Well, sir, now that you’ve brought it up, I was hoping I could borrow Uncle Remus for a couple of weeks. He has the right complexion and he speaks Swahili.”

“If you are referring, Colonel Castillo, to Chief Warrant Officer Five Colin Leverette of this command, he not only speaks Swahili, but Lingala and Tshiluba as well. And not only is Mr. Leverette far too valuable to be put at risk in a dangerous—not to mention unsanctioned—operation such as you propose, but he is far too wise and experienced to even momentarily consider volunteering for anything like it.”

“Yes, sir.”

There was a very long pause.

“Lieutenant generals, as you should know, Lieutenant Colonel Castillo, do not bargain with lieutenant colonels.”

“Yes, sir.”

“But if I should suddenly lose my mind and discuss this situation with Mr. Leverette and he similarly suffers a temporary loss of his good judgment and agrees to talk with you about it, it will be with the understanding that if I do not approve—personally, here in the States—every detail of your proposed operation to snoop around this chemical factory in the Congolese jungle, you will not undertake it. Agreed?”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“When and where do you want Uncle Remus, Charley?”

“Here, as soon as possible, sir.”

“I can’t get him on a plane today.”

“Sir, Major Miller will probably be coming down here in a Presidential Gulfstream. It could stop at Bragg . . .”

“And you don’t think Montvale will hear about that?”

“Montvale knows about it, sir. I made a deal with him, too.”

There was a pause.

“What kind of a deal, Charley?”

“No matter what happens in Africa, sir, I will retire at the end of this month.”

“Even if you’re right and everybody else is wrong?”

“Yes, sir. That was the deal I made.”

There was another long pause.

“I’ll get back to you—or Vic D’Allessando will—with the details of Mr. Leverette’s travel,” McNab said finally. “And now I’m going to have a word with General Naylor.”

“I wish you wouldn’t do that, sir.”

“Why not?”

“General Naylor decided that he was doing the right thing when Montvale went to him with this. I’m sure it wasn’t easy for him. He saw it as his duty.”

Another long pause.

“That’s the problem a good officer has to face every once in a while, isn’t it, Charley? Knowing just what doing your duty really calls for?”

Castillo didn’t reply, and a moment later one of the green LEDs went dark, signaling the call had been broken.

Castillo shook his head, then looked around at the others.

“Who was that, my Charley?” Svetlana asked.

“The man who heads our version of Spetsnaz,” Castillo said softly. “Lieutenant General Bruce J. McNab. Who just decided to help me deal with the chemical factory, even though he’s fully aware that may very likely see him standing beside me in the Thank You for Your Service and Don’t Let the Door-knob Hit You in the Ass on Your Way Out retirement parade.”

“I do not understand,” she said.

“I’m getting kicked out of the Army,” Castillo said, and stopped. “Correction: For what I like to think is ‘for the good of the service,’ I will go along with being medically retired as psychologically unfit for active service.”

She looked at him thoughtfully but didn’t say anything.

“Not to worry, Svetlana. I will receive a pension of twenty-five percent of my base pay. You may have to flip burgers in McDonald’s to help out with our bills, but we can probably get by.”

She ignored the comment.

“You work for this man? You are American Spetsnaz?”

“Not anymore. I used to be. I used to work for General McNab.”

“And now who do you work for? This Ambassador Montvale?”

“You and your brother were right to be worried about the CIA station chief in Vienna,” Castillo said, ignoring the question. “She probably would have left you swinging in the breeze, since she probably knew the SVR was onto you. What happened is that when she figured out that I had gotten you out of Vienna safely, instead of saying ‘thank you’ or keeping her mouth shut, which also would have been nice, she told the director of Central Intelligence—and also told a friend of hers who she knew would promptly tell an important journalist—that I had swooped in out of nowhere and snatched you and the colonel and family away just as she was about to put you in the bag and send you to Washington.”

“So you are in trouble because of what you did for us? I will kill this woman!”

“Hold that thought, Svetlana,” Delchamps said.

Castillo looked between them and thought: The truth is both of them are more than likely dead serious.

“Both of you drop that thought,” Castillo said.

“And this Ambassador Montvale, who you do work for, believed this woman?” Svetlana asked.

“I don’t work for Montvale. But yeah, sure, he believed her. Right now his priority, which is one I agree with, is to protect the man I work for.”

“Who is? And this man you work for will believe this bitch in Vienna?”

“Two profound thoughts, Ace,” Delchamps said. “ ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman protecting her man.’ ”

Davidson and Castillo chuckled.

“You said two,” Castillo said.

“ ‘The cow is already out of the barn,’ ” Delchamps said. “If you won’t tell her, Ace, I will. Svetlana, Charley works for the President.”

If she was surprised by this announcement, it didn’t show on her face.

“And your President will take the word of the bitch in Vienna over yours?”

“That’s not the point,” Castillo explained. “But no, I think he’d accept whatever I told him as the truth. The point is that he’d be deeply hurt politically if it came out that—”

“That he has been running his own private CIA-FBI-American Spetsnaz rolled into one,” Delchamps interrupted, “in contravention of American law and—maybe even worse—without taking the Congress into his confidence. He would be crucified, unless they could think of something more painful.”

Svetlana looked at Castillo, who nodded to confirm what Delchamps had said.

Castillo said: “So far, the President doesn’t know anything about this?”

“Wrong, I think,” Delchamps interrupted again. “I think the DCI probably got carried away and told the President that—to use Svetlana’s delightful terminology—the bitch in Vienna was about to put—after long, brilliant, and expensive CIA labor—Svetlana and her brother into the bag. He probably thinks they’re in a safe house in Maryland right now.”

Castillo didn’t reply.

“He came down here to get them, Ace. I rest my case.”

“Could very well be,” Castillo admitted.

“This man, the ambassador, came down here to get us and take us to the United States?” Svetlana asked.

Castillo nodded. “That was one of the things on his agenda. Understandable.”

“What did you say to him?”

“I told him that two hundred dollars, a bottle of scotch, and a mule wasn’t even in the ballpark pricewise, but if he wanted to reconsider and up his offer, I’d listen.”

It was obvious on Svetlana’s face that Castillo’s remark made no sense to her.

Davidson took pity on her.

“Svet,” he said in Russian, “I don’t know how to translate this into Russian, but the essence of Charley’s reply to Montvale’s suggestion that he turn you over to the agency was that the ambassador”—he switched to English—“should try a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut.”

After a long moment, Svetlana said seriously: “I think I understand. But what is a ‘doughnut’?”

“Think of a Berliner,” Delchamps said, “but round. And with a thumb-sized hole in the middle.” He held up his thumb, then mimed rolling the pastry across the floor.

She smiled as the mental picture formed.

“My Charley, you are very naughty. But I love you anyway!”

She demonstrated this by leaning over and kissing him.

“Edgar,” Davidson asked, “do you think there’s any chance that when Romeo and Juliet are finished we can get that drink we were promised when we got here?”

[FOUR]

“Oh, Charley, look! Isn’t that sweet?” Svetlana exclaimed as they walked into a basement room of the house.

Marina was across the room, tugging as hard as she could on a woven twine rope, the other end of which was in her father’s mouth.

Castillo took a quick double-take around the room. It held a rack of golf club bags. Next to that was a rack of cues for the billiards table that was in the center of the room. One side of the room was given over to a bar, at which stood Cedric Lee-Watson and ex-Polkovnik Dmitri Berezovsky of the SVR. They had drinks in their hands. Lora and Sof’ya Berezovsky were sitting on bar stools, drinking what looked like Coca-Cola.

Castillo snapped his head to look at Svetlana.

“Oh, I didn’t tell you, did I, my Charley? We’re going to have dinner with my brother Tom and his family at the Club House,” Svetlana said as she crossed to the bar to kiss first Sof’ya and then her sister-in-law.

Castillo looked at her and then at Munz.

Munz smiled knowingly, which pushed Castillo even closer to losing his temper.

“Is this smart, for Christ’s sake?” Castillo snapped.

“Sooner or later, Karl,” Munz said in German, “Mr. Barlow and his family, including of course Susanna, are going to have to start living their new identities. Why wait? For what?”

Castillo didn’t reply.

“And you did notice, didn’t you, the security measures around here?” Munz went on.

“I did,” Edgar Delchamps said. “This place is tighter than a drum.”

He saw the look on Castillo’s face and went on: “Smile, Ace, you’ve been had,” and then he walked to the bar, with Davidson on his heels.

“I thought I’d find you near the liquor, Tom, old buddy,” he said in Russian.

“My Russian is not so good,” Berezovsky/Barlow said in English. “Would you mind if we speak English?”

“Not at all.”

Castillo walked to the bar.

Tom Barlow set his drink on it and took two steps toward Castillo. He grabbed Castillo’s upper arms.

“I can call you Charley, right?” he asked in accentless American English.

“Why not?”

“One of the reasons I accepted my sister’s kind invitation to break bread with you tonight was that I’d hoped to have a private word with you about her.”

“Really?”

“She’s my little sister, Charley. You understand. I wanted to make sure I understood your intentions.”

The Russian words for Go fuck yourself, Dmitri leapt to Castillo’s lips.

At the last possible split instant, he bit them off.

“But when I saw how you looked at each other when you walked in, I realized that wouldn’t be necessary.”

“Good,” Castillo said in English.

Barlow looked intently into Castillo’s eyes, reminding Castillo of the first time Aleksandr Pevsner had done that to him.

“So I think we should both be very grateful to God that things in Marburg turned out the way they have, don’t you?” Barlow said. “They could—so easily—have gone differently.”

Castillo neither replied nor blinked.

But finally Barlow let go of his arms, and Castillo looked away.

Svetlana was squatting beside Max and Marina.

“Hey, Susie,” he called. “Do want something to drink?”

She looked at him and smiled uncertainly. “Susie” hadn’t registered.

“That’s you, baby. ‘Susie.’ You’d better get used to it.”

She got up and walked to him. He put his arm around her shoulder.

XII

[ONE]

Pilar Golf & Polo Country Club

Pilar, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina

1910 2 January 2006

“Then it is agreed, is it not,” Tom Barlow said, “that tonight what we have is friends having dinner together, and we do not talk—or even think about—the business we will deal with tomorrow?”

I didn’t hear any proposal to agree to, Castillo thought, but what the hell, why not?

“Fine with me,” he said.

“You know a little about our family, Charley, but Susanna tells me she knows nothing of yours,” Barlow said.

“There are nine of us,” Castillo said. “There were ten, but my brother Fritz was hung a couple of years ago for cattle rustling in the Texas Panhandle.”

Barlow shook his head.

“Aleksandr told me you have an . . . interesting sense of humor,” Barlow said.

“If it’s all right with you, Charley,” Alfredo Munz said, “I’ll pass on dinner. My wife has the odd notion that I should have dinner with her and the girls once in a while.”

The translation of that is: Will I feel safe to be left here alone?

“Go ahead, Alfredo. The Marine is here and the situation is well in hand.”

Davidson and Lester understood and both smiled. Lester looked pleased at what he took as at least some small recognition of his self-appointed role as Castillo’s bodyguard.

Davidson also saw the look on Svetlana/Susanna’s face.

“Susie . . .” he said.

“Susanna,” she corrected him.

“We already have a Susanna. How about simply Susan?”

She looked at Castillo.

“Hello, there, Simply Susan,” Castillo said, smiling.

“I was about to say there’s something you don’t know about Charley,” Davidson said.

“Is there?”

“You know the Bible verse ‘Whither thou goest . . .’ ?”

“Yes, of course.” She looked at Charley again. “It’s in Ruth. ‘For whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people . . .’ ”

“That’s it,” Davidson said.

Castillo, who knew what was coming next, looked uncomfortable.

“Well, Simply Susan, so far as Charley goes, our version says, ‘For whither Charley goest, Lester and I goest, and where Charley lodgest, Lester and I lodge, etcetera.’”

“You are mocking Holy Scripture!” she snapped, and looked to Castillo for help.

Castillo held up his hands in a gesture of helplessness.

“What is this all about?” Susan demanded angrily.

“Simply Susan, you’re a formidable female,” Davidson said. “Maybe the most formidable female I’ve ever met. But you’re not in the same league as General Scotty McNab. And my orders from him are not to let Charley out of my sight. Amen.”

“There’s an exception in there for closed bedroom doors,” Castillo said.

“Right,” Davidson agreed. “I guess McNab would go along with that.”

“And how long is that going to last?” Susan asked.

“Until, Simply Susan,” Castillo began, then looked at Barlow—“Forgive me, Tom, I know I promised not to talk business”—he turned back to Susan—“until we come back from Africa. Then Jack can go back to his usual duties of pulling the wings off flies and teasing beautiful women.”

“Susan,” she said. “Not Simply Susan.”

“Whatever you prefer,” Castillo said magnanimously.

Susan mentally gathered her arguments, then earnestly began: “There is absolutely no reason for them to be here. You have seen the security. . . .”

“I think,” Barlow said, smiling, “that we are about to see the irresistible force meet the unmovable object.”

“I’m not going to get in the middle of this,” Munz said. “Tom, slide that phone to me, please? I’ll call my wife and tell her I’m coming home.”

Barlow did, and Munz reached for the telephone. His hand was almost on it when it rang. He was so startled that he pulled back his hand for a moment before picking up the handset.

“Yes?” Munz said into it. He nodded at the reply, as if he expected it. He met Castillo’s curious eyes and said, “Please escort Comandante Duffy here,” and hung up.

Castillo was reminded once again that Munz was not in the habit of asking for his permission—or even advice—before taking what he thought was the appropriate action.

“Jesus Christ, Alfredo. Couldn’t you have stalled him until we figure out how to deal with him?”

“Karl, I’ve given how to deal with him some thought. And we might as well find out here and now if what I intend to do is going to work.”

“That’s the policeman who was at the airfield?” Susan asked.

“The gendarmería comandante,” Munz corrected her. He smiled at Davidson and added, “A formidable man. If he’s so inclined, he can cause us a great deal of trouble. He is smart, honest, and a patriot. For people in our business, that combination often spells trouble.”

“Before you just do it,” Castillo said more than a little sarcastically, “you’re going to tell us how we’re to deal with him, right?”

Munz nodded, the sarcasm apparently lost on him. “As best I can, Karl. Basically, what I’m going to do is follow your advice: ‘When all else fails, tell the truth.’ ”

Castillo bit off the reply that came to his lips. Now was not the time to get in a scrap with Munz.

The cold truth is I don’t have any better idea how to deal with the problem of Comandante Liam Duffy than telling him the truth and seeing what happens.

“Okay, Alfredo,” he said. “Tell us how we should handle Duffy. And make it quick; in a couple of minutes, he’ll be coming through the door.”

“Should we be here?” Susan asked.

Munz answered: “I think it would be best if it were only Charley, Colonel Berezovsky, Señor Lee-Watson, and me. In the study upstairs?”

Berezovsky and Lee-Watson nodded their agreement. Charley was surprised that neither Delchamps nor Svetlana—especially Svetlana—objected.

[TWO]

The study—which actually was more of a library, the room lined with bookshelves—had not been on Svetlana’s tour of the house. Four red leather armchairs were arranged around a large, low table on which sat a telephone and an ashtray designed for cigars. Next to the ashtray was a large, silver-plated lighter.

Castillo sat in one of the chairs, then took out and trimmed a cigar. The silver-plated lighter didn’t work. He then produced what he called his “terrorist tool”—a butane cigar lighter, a replacement for one that had been seized by the ever-vigilant Transportation Safety Administration inspectors at Washington National Airport as enthusiastically as if it had been an Uzi—and lit the cigar.

He looked at the door to see if Duffy had arrived. His eyes fell on one wall of books. There was something wrong, something odd about them. He got up and went to the shelf. He tugged at one book spine—and suddenly a flimsy shelf-long sheet of something designed to look like book spines fell from the shelf.

“What this is, old boy,” Lee-Watson said, laughing, “is what I think you Americans call a model house. Designed, don’t you know, to show potential customers how nice-looking these very expensive houses can be when furnished.”

“No wonder the toilet wouldn’t flush,” Castillo said.

Lee-Watson looked horrified.

“Gotcha!” Castillo said.

Lee-Watson sighed. “Quite.”

Liam Duffy walked confidently into the study a minute later. He was in civilian clothing. His unbuttoned double-breasted suit jacket revealed a large semiautomatic pistol carried in a high-rise cross-draw holster.

He looked quickly around the room until his eyes fell on Berezovsky.

“Well, I see that everybody’s here,” he said, mockingly jovial. He looked at Tom Barlow. “Including Colonel Dmitri Berezovsky.”

Castillo said: “This is Señor Barlow, Liam. Señor Thomas Barlow, may I introduce Comandante Liam Duffy?”

“Mucho gusto, Señor Barlow,” Duffy said. “But I have to tell you that you look just like the man in the photograph on an Interpol warrant that just crossed my desk—for one Colonel Dmitri Berezovsky.”

“You’re mistaken, Comandante,” Lee-Watson said.

“Like hell I am!” Duffy snapped, then looked at Lee-Watson.

“Do you have the pleasure of Señor Cedric Lee-Watson’s acquaintance, Liam?” Munz asked.

The question got to Duffy.

“I know who you are, señor,” he said. “I must say I’m surprised to see you in this company.”

“How are you, Comandante?” Lee-Watson said.

“Liam, listen to me carefully,” Munz said. “Are you going to take his word that this is Señor Barlow, or will it be necessary for Señor Lee-Watson to call the foreign minister and have him tell you that you’re wrong?”

Duffy didn’t immediately reply. After a moment, he said, “Alfredo, we seem to have a problem here.”

“One that can be worked around, I’m sure,” Munz said.

“One way to do that, Alfredo, is for you to give me the name of the bastard who tried to kill my wife and children. If I had that, I would just leave and forget I had even seen . . . Señor Barlow.”

“Unfortunately, it’s not quite that simple.”

“I will have that name, Alfredo. That’s not negotiable.”

“Liam, I know a good deal about you. You’re not only a good policeman but an honest one, and we both know that’s not always the case in Argentina. I sincerely admire you.”

Duffy looked at him a long moment. “But?”

“But there are forces in play here that you don’t understand.”

“Such as?”

“I had two reactions when I heard of the attack on you and your family,” Munz explained. “The first was personal—that it was a despicable act, beneath contempt.”

“And the second?” Duffy asked softly.

“That your quite natural reaction to it was going to cause Carlos and me trouble.”

“I don’t need any help from you or Carlos to kill the bastards—”

“We know that, Liam,” Castillo interrupted. “But why don’t you let us tell you why we don’t want you to go out and eliminate the bastards right now?”

Duffy looked at him angrily.

“Pay close attention to me, Liam,” Castillo said, his tone of voice now suddenly the opposite of mockingly amused. “We can do this nice, between friends, or we can do it the other way.”

“You’re not actually threatening me, Carlos?”

“That was a statement of fact, not a threat,” Castillo said. “You ready to listen?”

They locked eyes for twenty seconds, then Duffy nodded.

“The same day that you and your family were attacked, Liam,” Castillo then said, “a German journalist was assassinated in Germany, an Austrian couple was murdered—garroted—in Vienna, and an attempt was made to murder an American policeman and his wife in Philadelphia.”

Duffy considered that for a moment, then asked softly, “There was a connection?”

“And General Sirinov also ordered the elimination,” Berezovsky added, “when they were to attend the journalist’s funeral several days later, of two other journalists, and, if possible, of Colonel Castillo.”

“How could you know this?” Duffy said, and without waiting for an answer went on: “General who? They tried to kill you, too, Carlos?”

Castillo nodded.

Berezovsky went on: “Lieutenant General Yakov Sirinov runs Directorate S of the Sluzhba Vnezhney Razvedki, SVR. He ordered the appropriate SVR rezidents—those in Berlin, Vienna, New York, and Buenos Aires—to carry out the eliminations.”

“How is it that you know this?” Duffy demanded.

“Because, Comandante, I was at the time the Berlin rezident. Something that I doubt one might find noted on anything from Interpol.”

Duffy took a moment to consider that.

“You’re telling me this man,” he then said, “this General Sirinov . . . is that right?”

“Lieutenant General Yakov Sirinov,” he furnished.

“. . . ordered the murder of my wife and children?”

“Of you, certainly,” Berezovsky said. “I don’t think your family was on the order. But, on the other hand, I don’t think his order said, ‘Make sure this man’s family is not hurt while you are eliminating the comandante.’ ” He paused while that sank in, then went on: “On the other hand, considering what we believe to be his second purpose, he very well may have ordered the elimination of your family.”

“What do you mean, ‘second purpose’?” Duffy asked.

Castillo answered: “The primary connection between all these assassinations, Liam, both successful and failed, with the possible exception of yours, is that everybody either knew or soon would uncover more details about an Islamic terrorist operation than the SVR wanted them to know.”

“What kind of a terrorist operation?” Duffy asked.

Castillo ignored the question, and instead replied: “The assassination of the German journalist—his name was Friedler—was because he was getting too close to the Germans who were involved in the oil-for-food cesspool.”

“Did you ever hear, Comandante,” Berezovsky said, “that ‘it is impossible to cheat an honest man’?”

“What?” Duffy asked.

“The corollary of that is that you can cheat—or otherwise steal from—a dishonest man.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Duffy said, as much indignantly as in confusion.

“When the Iraq oil-for-food program was in operation,” Berezovsky went on, “there were many people who grew rich from it. One of the ways to turn a nice profit was to raise the price of the food and medicine and medical supplies being sold to Iraq. Hands were washed . . .”

“Greased, Tom,” Castillo corrected him.

“. . . greased,” Berezovsky went on, his face and tone making it clear he was unaccustomed to being corrected and certainly not grateful for the clarification now, “and the appropriate authorities found nothing wrong with, for example, a microscope of the type used in elementary schools to examine the wings of a fly and available in a store for, say, fifty dollars being shipped to Iraq as the latest item in medical microscopy and valued at a thousand times the fifty dollars it had actually cost.

“The man—the example here is a member of what we’re calling the Marburg Group—took the fifty-thousand-dollar check, cashed it, made a small gift—say, five thousand dollars—to the invoice examiner, and pocketed the difference, not mentioning it to the tax people, of course, and went away patting himself on the back for being a very clever businessman.

“It wasn’t all medical equipment, of course. A great deal of food was in fact shipped to Iraq and fed to the hungry. Possibly as much as ten percent of that was purchased at shamelessly inflated prices. One hundred cases of canned chicken became a thousand cases by the ‘mistaken’ adding of a zero to the invoice. The invoice examiner, of course, missed the mistake. You getting the picture, Comandante?”

Duffy nodded.

Castillo said: “All of this stopped, Liam, when we deposed Saddam Hussein. What these thieves then found to be necessary was to clean things up to make sure none of the very important people who profited—the name of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan’s son has been mentioned—would be caught. One man who we know not only profited—to the extent of sixteen million dollars—but also knew who had been paid off and for what was a UN official. His name was Dr. Jean-Paul Lorimer and he had then been living in Paris. But Lorimer saw what was coming and fled to Uruguay, where he had bought an estancia, changed his name, and set himself up in business as an antiquities dealer.

“Lorimer’s sister was married to the number-two man at the American embassy in Buenos Aires, J. Winslow Masterson. When what we have come to call ‘the cleaners’ couldn’t find Lorimer, they decided his sister probably knew where he was. So they kidnapped her from the parking lot of the Kansas Restaurant in San Isidro. That’s when I became involved, Liam.”

“How? Why?”

Well, if nothing else, I have his attention.

Let’s see how he reacts to this:

“I work for the President of the United States, Liam, dealing with matters like these. Surely, you must have suspected?”

“When you had those helicopters flown off your aircraft carrier . . .”

“The USS Ronald Reagan,” Castillo furnished.

“. . . I suspected you were more than a simple lieutenant colonel.”

“Well, until now, Liam, I was not in a position to explain more.”

“I understand, Carlos,” Duffy said.

“Just about as soon as I got down here,” Castillo went on, “ ‘the cleaners’ tricked Jack Masterson into going to the riverside in downtown Buenos Aires, where they killed him in cold blood before his wife to make the point that unless she told them where her brother was they were perfectly capable of killing her children, too.

“The problem was that Mrs. Masterson had no idea where her brother was. Fortunately, I had a pretty good suspicion. My people and I got to the estancia in Uruguay—”

“How did you find him, Carlos?”

Castillo looked at Duffy without speaking.

The cold truth is, Liam, it was dumb luck.

God takes care of fools and drunks—and I qualify on both counts.

But I can’t tell you that, because we are trying to dazzle you into believing I am a combination of 007 and Bruce Willis with a shave.

“If I could tell you, Liam, I would,” he said finally. “You understand?”

Duffy held up both hands.

“Carlos!” he said emotionally. “I understand your position. Forgive me for asking.”

Castillo went on: “We got to Lorimer’s estancia about ten minutes before ‘the cleaners’ did. There were six of them, probably ex-Stasi—East German Secret Police—commanded by Major Alejandro Vincenzo of the Cuban Dirección General de Inteligencia.”

“I know that name,” Duffy said, and then really remembered, adding excitedly: “He was Fidel Castro’s chief of security when Castro was here. You remember, Alfredo?”

Munz nodded.

“We of course were prepared for them,” Castillo continued, “and it was unfortunately necessary to terminate Major Vincenzo and his people. In the fire-fight, Dr. Lorimer lost his life.”

What actually happened, Liam, is that we didn’t have a clue that anyone else was around, much less pros working for the fucking Russians.

The first we knew anything was when the bastards put their first round into Lorimer’s head. Their second round would have gone into my head if not for Lester taking the bastard out with a head shot.

And because of my incompetence and stupidity, Seymour Krantz is now pushing up daisies in Arlington National Cemetery.

We didn’t have a clue as to who the guys who had damned near killed us were. Or even, then, why they had whacked Lorimer.

But that’s not the picture of Charley Castillo that Munz said we have to paint for you.

And you seem to be swallowing everything whole.

So let’s see how this goes down:

“The trail has led us many places since then, Liam,” Castillo said. “And frankly, it took us a long time to put it all together. We couldn’t have done that without Colonel Ber—Mr. Barlow and his sister. They confirmed what we had only suspected.”

“What?”

“That there’s a monstrous plan to bring down—if not outright kill, then to terrorize—millions of Americans by poisoning the water supplies of major U.S. cities.”

Now, why did that sound phony?

It’s the only thing I’ve told him that’s the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Because it’s so monstrous—and that’s the only word that fits—that the mind simply does not accept it.

Cannot accept it any more than we can accept a bearded character in a bathrobe telling us he wants to kill every last infidel—Christian, Jew, Buddhist, whatever—and is perfectly willing to blow himself up if that’s what it takes to do it.

“In a remote area of the Democratic Republic of the Congo . . .” Berezovsky began, then stopped when he saw by Duffy’s expression that he had little or no knowledge of what that was.

“They keeping changing the name,” Berezovsky explained. “It was once the Belgian Congo, and then Zaire—”

“I understand,” Duffy interrupted.

Berezovsky nodded. “Between Stanleyville—now called Kisangani—and the borders of Sudan and Uganda, there is a chemical laboratory—a very good one—dedicated to developing water-poisoning materials that will either get through any known filtering systems or overwhelm them, then remain chemically active for a very long time and, to the extent possible, resist any chemical attempt to neutralize them. Once this has been accomplished, the factory will produce these materials in whatever quantities are required to attack the water systems of all major American cities.”

Duffy considered that, then said: “Colonel, forgive me, but that”—the door opened and Svetlana walked in—“is incredible.”

As she walked toward Castillo, all eyes on her, he thought: I should have known that she was not going to be a good little girl and stay in the bar.

“Don’t let me interrupt,” she said, sitting on the arm of Castillo’s chair. “What’s incredible?”

Duffy was visibly surprised but quickly recovered.

“You must be Lieutenant Colonel Alekseeva,” he said, then asked in heavy macho-laden sarcasm, “Are there many female officers of your rank in the Russian secret police?”

“My name is Susan Barlow, Comandante. I’m Tom’s sister. I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Screw it, Castillo thought. I can play, too.

“Now I’m curious, Liam,” Castillo said. “How many senior female officers are there in the gendarmería? I didn’t know you had any.”

“Carlos,” Duffy said. “You’re not going to deny that this woman is the Russian defector?”

“Carlos?” Svetlana asked. “Why did you call Colonel Castillo ‘Carlos,’ Comandante?”

He looked at her incredulously, then sarcastically snapped: “Because that’s his name, Colonel.”

“I didn’t know that,” she said in what was almost a purr. “Carlos is much nicer than Charley. Hello, there, Carlos!”

Castillo could not resist smiling at Svet. This visibly confused Duffy and visibly annoyed Munz.

“Please go on, Alfredo,” Svetlana said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. You were saying something was incredible. No. The comandante was saying that.”

Yes, you did mean to interrupt, baby.

You decided to confuse Duffy.

Knock him off balance, knock some of that self-righteous confidence out of him, make the point that he’s not as important as he would like to think he is.

“If everyone is through being clever,” Munz said, quietly furious, “may I get on with this?”

“Susan,” Castillo said, “Comandante Duffy finds incredible the notion of a chemical laboratory in the Congo and the whole idea of poisoning the water supplies of major American cities.”

“Yes, I do,” Duffy said firmly.

Svetlana smiled. “So did I, Comandante, when I first heard about it. You do have to expand your mind even to begin accepting it.”

“ ‘Expand your mind’?” Duffy parroted.

“Consider this, Comandante,” Svetlana said. “The day before Hiroshima, how many people could have accepted that the Americans had developed an incredible bomb with the explosive power of thousands of tons of dynamite? Or, on the tenth of September, how incredible would it have been to hear that the next day two one-hundred-story buildings would be taken down by religious zealots flying passenger airliners into them?”

Duffy thought about that a moment. “I take your point, Colonel. Which is not to say that I suddenly believe this Congo thing.”

Castillo met Munz’s eyes, then Berezovsky’s.

They heard it, too.

Duffy called her “Colonel”—and without a hint of sarcasm or condescension.

What comes next is the truth. . . .

“Then,” Svetlana went on, “you have to ask yourself why we would make up something such as this.”

Duffy began to argue: “If there was anything to this at all, certainly the CIA must have some idea—”

“As of a few hours ago, Liam,” Castillo interrupted, “the CIA sees no threat in the Congo operation. Specifically, the CIA believes that what’s there is nothing more than a fish farm.”

“How do we know they’re wrong?” Duffy asked reasonably.

Operative words, “How do we know?”

We’ve got him.

Except, of course, when he asks, “What has this to do with Argentina? It’s none of Argentina’s business.”

“We know, Comandante,” Berezovsky offered, “because of the Marburg Group. Those businessmen—ones who can be cheated and manipulated because of their dishonesty—were my responsibility when I was the Berlin rezident.”

Duffy looked at him, waiting for him to go on.

“The laboratory in the Congo,” Berezovsky explained, “requires not only chemicals unavailable in Iran—or anywhere else in the Arab world—but, of course, the laboratory equipment, centrifuges, that sort of thing, with which to manipulate these chemicals. Also unavailable anywhere else in the Arab world. It has been credibly suggested that one of the reasons why the Muslims hate the West is that they are scientifically four hundred years behind the West.

“What the laboratory in the Congo needs is available only in three places— six if you include Russia, China, and India and refer in the latter countries only to the raw chemicals.

“Conversely, everything is available in the United States, Great Britain, and Germany. The United States and Great Britain, especially after both rejected chemical and biological warfare, pay very close attention to their stocks of chemicals and to the allied processing equipment.

“They don’t want anyone else developing stocks of chemical and biological weapons now that they have destroyed their own stocks.

“Germany’s chemical and biological warfare capability died when they lost the Great War, but the chemicals and processing equipment are available in Germany and used for medical purposes.”

He paused, then asked, “Can you see where I’m going with this, Comandante?”

Duffy nodded. “I think so.”

“Enter the SVR,” Berezovsky went on. “The Foreign Intelligence Service knew which German businessmen had profited handsomely from the sale of medicine, medical chemicals, and medical equipment at grossly inflated prices when the oil-for-food program was in full swing—”

“You knew?” Duffy interrupted. “How?”

“It was our business to know. We had assets at every step.” Berezovsky paused, then went on: “It became in our interest to see that the Congo operation had what it needed. So we went—in the case of the Marburg Group, I went—to see these dishonest businessmen. I told them there was more money to be made by acquiring certain chemicals and laboratory equipment—in some cases, manufacturing the equipment themselves—and shipping it quietly to a transfer point, often in Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon, but in other places as well.”

“And they were willing to do this?”

“Of course they were. They saw another golden opportunity to make a great deal of money without a tax liability. But then, when they were not paid, they of course came to realize, in that charming American phrase, that ‘there is no such thing as a free lunch.’ ”

“You didn’t pay them?” Duffy asked.

“Of course not,” Berezovsky said. “All we had to do was tell them that if they made any trouble, the German government would learn not only of their involvement in the oil-for-food business but also of their involvement in shipping chemicals and equipment without the proper licenses. And, of course, evading taxes. The SVR decided it needed the money the Iranians paid for all this matériel more than these already-rich-by-dishonest-means German businessmen.”

“And none of them went to their government?”

“Of course, we considered that scenario,” Berezovsky said. “We fed a journalist from the Tages Zeitung newspaper chain enough information to attract his interest toward one of the smaller players. We knew they would learn of his interest.”

“ ‘We’ being defined here as General Sirinov,” Susan said. “He prides himself in taking a personal hand in the more interesting operations. Feeding that information to Herr Freidler was the general’s idea. We didn’t think it was necessary and told him so. He didn’t pay any attention to our recommendation, and ordered that it be done. And it turned out badly. Friedler was getting too close to the heart of the operation—not just to the man we’d pointed him to.”

“And he had to be eliminated?” Castillo asked, but it was a statement.

Susan met his eyes. “Yes, and that, too, was General Sirinov’s decision.”

“Now that I’ve had time to think about it,” Berezovsky said, “what I think happened was that Sirinov—possibly, probably, we have to consider this, Susan—at the recommendation of Evgeny, who has always been prone to think of termination as the best solution to any problem—”

Castillo’s mouth ran away with him. He blurted in Russian: “You’re talking about her Evgeny?”

Berezovsky nodded.

“He hasn’t been my anything for years, Carlos,” Svetlana replied, also in Russian. “I thought I had made that quite clear.”

“I was talking about Colonel Evgeny Alekseeva,” Berezovsky continued in Russian, smiling, “who belongs to Directorate S. What I was suggesting was that General Sirinov concluded—possibly on the advice of Colonel Alekseeva—that Herr Friedler had become a threat and had to be terminated. Then, with that decision made—and here is where it sounds like Evgeny—it was decided that it would also make sense to eliminate the policeman in Philadelphia.”

“Why?” Castillo asked.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw that Duffy was uncomfortable not understanding the conversation.

“Because Sirinov knows—”

“I don’t want to leave Comandante Duffy out of this,” Castillo interrupted Berezovsky. “Can we speak English?”

“You’re the one, Carlos, who started speaking Russian,” Susan said in English.

“Sorry,” Castillo said.

“I didn’t understand a word, of course,” Lee-Watson said. “But it’s a melodic language, isn’t it? I thought it would be more guttural, like German.”

“What we were talking about, Comandante,” Berezovsky said in his American English, “was the possibility that when he prepared the list of people who were ultimately attacked, General Sirinov was very likely getting advice from an SVR colonel attached to Directorate S, which General Sirinov runs. A man named Evgeny Alekseeva, whom both my sister and I know well.

“What I was suggesting was that once the decision to eliminate Herr Friedler had been made, Alekseeva encouraged him to also eliminate the policeman in Philadelphia.”

“I heard that much,” Duffy said.

“Why?” Castillo asked again.

“Because he knows that those black people in Philadelphia are being funded by oil-for-food money. And Sirinov probably heard that the policeman now works for you. That could also explain your presence on his list.”

“I dunno, Tom,” Castillo said dubiously. “That seems stretching. And when they tried to whack Britton, he wasn’t working for me; he was on the Vice President’s Protection Detail.”

“I could be wrong, of course, but let me run the scenario out. We’re working pretty much in the dark. I’m trying to put things together. My theory is that the decision to eliminate two people opened the door to eliminating the others. We don’t know that Sirinov knew that we—Svetlana and I—had been in touch with the Kuhls. There were only two meetings with them, and I’d be surprised if we were detected.

“But the SVR has known about them for a long time. I can see Evgeny reasoning that this would be a good time to terminate them on general principles.”

“Nice guy, Susan,” Castillo said.

Berezovsky said: “Colonel—or may I also call you ‘Carlos’?—he is ambitious and quite ruthless, something I strongly suggest you keep in mind. And he has an agenda.”

“An agenda?”

“Do we have to get into this?” Susan asked.

“I think we should,” Berezovsky said simply. He met her eyes for a moment, waited until, just perceptibly, she nodded, and then went on: “Evgeny was shamed by the breakup of the Soviet Union. By the near dissolution of the KGB. By what he regarded as the shameful behavior of Aleksandr—and there were others like Aleksandr—who not only left their successful careers in the KGB but left Russia to become very rich.

“He was determined to stay; to be faithful to the Motherland; to do what he could to restore the Soviet Union—he never really accepted the words ‘Russian Federation’—to what he thought of as its former greatness. And, of course, the KGB to its former, now greatly diminished, power.

“He was not alone. There were thousands like him, ranging from privates in the border patrol to highly placed KGB officers. Colonel Vladimir Putin, for example. They flocked to the ‘new’ SVR. It wasn’t what it once was—many of the brightest officers had left—but it could form the nucleus of what Putin and the others were determined would be an even better, stronger organization than the KGB had ever been.

“And they immediately set out to do so.

“Just about everyone who had remained loyal and was not a certified moron was promoted. I was reminded of Hitler after France fell, when he made field marshals of all those generals. Among those promoted before his time was Evgeny Alekseeva, first to lieutenant colonel and then, after his wife was promoted to lieutenant colonel, to colonel.

“I was not promoted, and as I was not certifiably stupid, I suspected that this was because Putin didn’t like me very much. I had once been his commanding officer, and my reports on him were not flattering. But I had too many friends for Vladimir to ship me off for psychological evaluation, as happened to others. I think he was hinting that I might do well to join Aleksandr wherever he might be.

“I therefore resisted as well as I could any foreign assignments when they were proposed to me. The result of that, of course, was I was given the assignment—one I think I would have killed for, literally—as rezident in Berlin.

“Meanwhile, Evgeny was having domestic problems. His wife wanted a divorce. In the new SVR as well as in the old KGB, an officer is supposed to control his wife. Divorce was and is frowned upon. If she left him—much less divorced him—his career would have been severely hurt.”

“And he didn’t have any proof that she had ever been unfaithful to him,” Svetlana said. “Because she had never been unfaithful. If he had been able to even credibly allege that she had been in someone else’s bed, that would have solved the problem. He just would have killed her, and that would have been the end of the problem.”

Castillo looked up at her on the arm of his chair and thought: If you think that speaking in the third person, Simply Susan, my love, is going to disabuse Duffy of his suspicion that Dmitri is talking about you, have another think.

That cow was out of the barn a long time ago.

“So,” Berezovsky went on, “they acted as if nothing was wrong, continued to live together. Then Evgeny, who has always disliked me, had one of his inspirations. Who better to watch the Berlin rezident than the rezident’s sister—who happened to be Evgeny’s own wife?”

Did I mention the cow being out of the barn?

“It was no secret that I could not stand him, and that I had told my sister that she would be a fool to marry him. So far as they knew, she was Evgeny’s loyal, faithful wife, who hadn’t spoken to me or my family since we failed to show up for their wedding.”

“Causing her great embarrassment,” Svetlana chimed in. “Women don’t forget insults like that.”

“So Evgeny’s wife was appointed the rezident in Copenhagen,” Berezovsky said. “Which of course gave us the opportunity to defect that we took. I detect the hand of God in that.”

“Excuse me?” Duffy blurted.

Castillo saw the look on Duffy’s face.

Write this down, Liam, because there will be a quiz:

All Communists are godless, but not all Russians—not even all senior SVR officers—are Communists. Some of the latter are almost as devout as the Pope.

“There had to be divine intervention,” Berezovsky said. “It was all too much for coincidence, a series of coincidences. There was my assignment to Berlin, which placed me in contact with the Marburg Group. Then Svetlana being sent to watch me, and her seeing Charley’s photograph in the Tages Zeitung and”—he stopped and looked at Castillo—“her convincing me that eliminating you would be counterproductive. And, finally, you being on the ‘Bartok Bela.’ ”

“The what?” Duffy asked.

“The train to Vienna from Marburg,” Berezovsky explained. “My sister and I were on our way to Vienna to defect. Charley . . .”

“Carlos,” Svetlana corrected.

“ . . . was on the train. He had his airplane; he could have flown to Vienna—he should have flown to Vienna. But he was on the train. If he hadn’t been on the train, to save us from that incompetent CIA station chief in Vienna, Svetlana and I would have been arrested in Vienna. Our Lord and Savior put Carlos on that train.”

Castillo looked between Duffy and Berezovsky, and thought:

Actually, Billy Kocian put me on that train—“The dogs have suffered enough from the miracle of travel by air,” he said.

If you want to chalk it up to divine intervention, Dmitri . . .

But why the hell not?

He’s right. There were a lot of odd coincidences.

I expected to meet him in either Vienna or Budapest. If we had flown to Schwechat, the SVR would’ve bagged both of them in the West Bahnhof.

And I never would have seen him or Svetlana again.

She wouldn’t be sitting here on the arm of my chair, her fingers playing with the hair on my neck.

Was there more to Jack and me being on the train than Billy’s concern for the puppies? To this entire sequence of events?

Jesus Christ! Am I starting to believe him?

“Are you a Christian, Comandante?” Berezovsky asked.

“I’m Roman Catholic,” Duffy replied.

“My father’s brother was a priest,” Berezovsky said. “He taught me there were only two kinds of sins. One commits a sin. Or one fails to do what he knows he is called upon to do—the sin of omission. In this case, I know what the Lord is calling upon me to do: help Carlos deal with the chemical factory. I am going to resist the temptation of sin, as I had planned to do.”

“Excuse me?” Duffy asked.

Uh-oh!

Has the Reverend Berezovsky gone too far?

Duffy sounds like he smells a rat.

“On the long flight here, I decided that what I was going to do was tell Carlos what I knew of the chemical factory. That would be payment enough for getting us safely out of Vienna. Then I would simply disappear to begin a new life with my family. But then, and I see the Lord’s hand in this, too—”

Now what has the Lord been up to?

“—I didn’t have to look for our cousin Aleksandr. Carlos took Svetlana to him. And Aleksandr told her that he owed Carlos his life. Like you, Comandante, I am a man of both strength and experience. I would not have believed a word Carlos told me had not Aleksandr told Svetlana he thought of him as family, as a brother.”

Oh, shit! I think our little morality play is over.

Duffy’s not going to swallow that whole. Not even a little piece of it.

“As it says in Scripture,” Duffy said, and interrupted himself. “I don’t want to call you ‘Colonel.’ May I call you by your Christian name?”

“Of course. Dmitri.”

“I know,” Duffy said.

Of course you know, Liam.

It’s on the fucking Interpol warrant—probably next to a picture of a cow having left a barn.

“But for your safety,” Duffy said, and glanced at Svetlana, “and for your family’s, I will honor you as ‘Thomas.’”

Out of the barn and the door locked tight.

Duffy is no fool. . . .

“So, Thomas, in Scripture it says, ‘Greater love hath no man than to lay down his life for another,’ ” Duffy said.

Berezovsky nodded.

“My friend, my brother, Carlos,” Duffy went on, his voice quivering with emotion, “has already shown that he is willing to do that for me. I could not deny him anything he asked of me.”

I’ll be damned!

“His name is Lavrenti Tarasov,” Svetlana said matter-of-factly, if not coldly.

“What?” Duffy said.

“Lavrenti Tarasov,” Svetlana repeated, then looked at her brother. “I trust this man. I can see in his eyes that he is a good, Christian man.”

“Thank you,” Duffy said.

“Tarasov is a lieutenant colonel of the SVR,” Berezovsky furnished, “and rezident for Paraguay and Argentina. His cover is commercial attaché in the Russian embassy in Asunción.”

“For Paraguay and Argentina?” Munz asked.

“Alfredo,” Berezovsky said, smiling, “as I understand it, your SIDE spends a good deal of time and effort keeping an eye on the man you have been allowed to think is the rezident in Buenos Aires.”

“Who never does anything out of line?” Munz said.

Berezovsky nodded.

Munz shook his head.

“Liam,” Castillo said, “just so that we’re still clear on this: I don’t want a damn thing to happen to this Lavrenti Tarasov until I get back from Africa.”

Duffy met his eyes.

“Clear?” Castillo pursued.

“I hope you’re not going to be in Africa long, Carlos.”

“Not ten seconds longer than absolutely necessary.”

“I can wait that long,” Duffy said.

[THREE]

Pilar Golf & Polo Country Club

Pilar, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina

0725 3 January 2006

Very carefully—so as not to wake Svetlana—Castillo got out of bed, walked across the tile floor to the bathroom, and closed its door behind him. The door was substantial; he didn’t think Svetlana would hear the sound of the shower through it.

He had seen the bathroom during Svetlana’s quick tour of the house, and again just before they had gone to bed, but he hadn’t paid much attention to it. Now, taking a good look, he decided that this bathroom made the all-marble bath in the Presidente de la Rua Suite of the Four Seasons Hotel, which at the time he had thought was pushing opulence to new heights, look like the plywood-holed-planking honey bucket sanitary facilities he had known so well in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other exotic locales.

The Club House—where everyone, including Max and Marina, had gone for dinner in a convoy of electric golf carts—had been similarly mind-boggling. It looked more like one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces in Baghdad than, for example, the Southern Hills Country Club in Tulsa. And the furnishings and service made the Petroleum Club in Dallas look like a Motel 6.

He remembered Abuela telling him that before World War II, when people wanted to describe someone as stinking rich and needed a more elegant phrase, they said, “Rich as an Argentine.” Abuela had also told him that Juan Domingo Peron had managed to squander, during his tenure as dictator, what in 1938 had been the largest gold reserves in the world.

But some of that enormous wealth, to judge by the miles of high-rise luxury apartments in Buenos Aires and those lining the beaches of Punta del Este, had somehow managed to elude Peron’s grasp.

Then another part of his brain kicked in. He remembered documents he’d read—ones still classified sixty years after the war’s end—about the movement to Argentina of vast sums of money by senior members of the about-to-crumple Nazi structure. That, in turn, triggered memories of Aleksandr Pevsner’s Bariloche copy of Göring’s hunting estate mansion, Karinhall. The odds that that had been built by a successful cattle breeder were pretty damn slim.

That was his final profound philosophical thought before he stepped away from a sanitary facility mounted on the marble wall of its own softly lit cubicle. A red light flickered in a gold-plated box and the urinal flushed.

“Oh, God, how did I ever get through life having to flush my own pissoir?” he asked aloud, then left the cubicle and headed for the shower.

He looked at his new wristwatch. He would have just about an hour until Delchamps and Davidson—who had gone to Nuestra Pequeña Casa after dinner—would bring just about everybody—which, it was to be hoped, would include Uncle Remus and Dick Miller, who should have arrived sometime during the night and been taken to the safe house—for the first meeting on what would happen in Africa and—more important—how in hell they would make it happen.

“Oh, God,” he again asked aloud, “how did I tell time all those years without a Rolex?”

He pulled open one of the two doors to the shower, stripped, and stepped inside. He picked up a bar of soap and started to bathe. Then he smelled himself, decided the bar of soap was the causative factor, and sniffed it.

“Oh, God,” he once more asked aloud, “how did I ever get through life without soap like this?”

He soaped his body and then closed his eyes and soaped his hair and face.

“Jesus Christ!” he exclaimed as he suddenly felt hands on his body that weren’t his.

“If you let me wash yours, I’ll let you wash mine,” Svetlana said, and stuck her tongue in his ear.

[FOUR]

0840 3 January 2006

The bar had been turned into a meeting room.

Everyone—including Dick Miller and Uncle Remus—was there when Castillo and Svetlana walked in.

“Overslept, did you, Ace?” Delchamps greeted them.

“Sorry,” Castillo said. “Everybody met?”

There were nods and a chorus of “Uh-huhs.”

“This is Svetlana, aka Susan,” Castillo said. “Honey, these two are really old friends, Colin Leverette and Dick Miller.”

Miller and Leverette stood up and took her extended hand. Both mumbled, “How are you?”

Then they sat down.

Svetlana took her hand back, looked at both of them, and shrugged. “Okay, to clear the air: Yes, I’m the diabolic Russian who has taken your innocent friend to my boudoir and done all sorts of wicked things with him. But since that has nothing to do with taking out the chemical factory in the Congo, may I suggest we turn our attention to that?”

“You tell ’em, Susie!” Delchamps said, laughing.

Leverette stood up. “Colonel, my friends call me Uncle Remus. And any friend of Charley’s . . .”

“Thank you,” Svetlana said. “It used to be Colonel, Uncle Remus. Now it is Susan.”

“Susan it is,” Leverette said, and sat down again. He shoved his elbow into Miller’s midsection. “Gimpy, that’s your cue to stand up and make nice to the lady. Otherwise, I’ll break your good knee.”

“And just off the top of my head,” Delchamps said, “I’d say Uncle Remus is big enough to do that without a hell of a lot of effort.”

Miller stood.

“If an apology is in order, herewith offered.”

“Accepted,” Svetlana said.

“When I met him,” Miller then blurted, nodding at Castillo, “we were both kids, about to become plebes at the Academy. I’ve been trying to keep him out of trouble ever since. He’s done some wild things, and I didn’t think he could surprise me anymore. But I didn’t know about . . . about this situation until twenty minutes ago.”

“You were surprised? Nobody is more surprised than Carlos . . . except perhaps me. Okay? Dramatic confrontation concluded?”

Miller nodded and sat down.

Delchamps slid a sheet of paper across the table to Castillo.

“I think it would save some time if you took a look at these before we get started,” he said. “Everybody else has seen them.”

“Okay,” Castillo said, and started to read:

TRAVEL PERMITS: US NATIONALS REQUIRE A VALID PASSPORT AND A VISA TO ENTER THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO.

AIRPORTS: KINSHASA (N’DJILI) (FIH) IS 25KM (15 MILES) EAST OF THE CITY. BUSES RUN TO AND FROM THE CITY. TAXIS ARE AVAILABLE.

FACILITIES: 24-HOUR BANK/BUREAU DE CHANGE, POST OFFICE, RESTAURANT AND CAR HIRE, BUT ALL SERVICES ARE ERRATIC AND UNRELIABLE.

HEALTH: YELLOW FEVER VACCINATION IS A REQUIREMENT. VACCINATIONS AGAINST CHOLERA, TYPHOID, AND POLIO ARE HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. THERE IS A SIGNIFICANT MALARIA RISK THROUGHOUT THE COUNTRY, AND ADVICE SHOULD BE SOUGHT IN ADVANCE ABOUT PREVENTIVE MEASURES. HIV/AIDS IS PREVALENT. RABIES IS ENDEMIC TO THE DRC. REGULAR OUTBREAKS OF PNEUMONIC PLAGUE ALSO OCCUR, PARTICULARLY IN THE DISTRICT OF ITURI, AND IS FATAL IF UNTREATED. AN OUTBREAK OF THE DEADLY EBOLA VIRUS OCCURRED IN SEPTEMBER 2007. THE CENTER PRIVÉ D’URGENCE (CPU) CLINIC IN KINSHASA IS ABLE TO COPE WITH BASIC HEALTH PROBLEMS AND TO STABILIZE A PATIENT AFTER MOST SERIOUS ACCIDENTS. HOWEVER, MEDICAL EVACUATION TO SOUTH AFRICA (OR ELSEWHERE) WOULD BE ADVISED AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. OUTSIDE KINSHASA, WESTERN STANDARD MEDICAL FACILITIES ARE PRACTICALLY NON-EXISTENT. VISITORS ARE ADVISED TO TAKE THEIR OWN BASIC MEDICAL SUPPLIES WITH THEM, AS MEDICINES ARE IN SHORT SUPPLY. MEDICAL INSURANCE WITH PROVISION FOR EMERGENCY AIR EVACUATION IS ESSENTIAL FOR VISITORS. ALL WATER SHOULD BE REGARDED AS CONTAMINATED, AND MILK IS UNPASTEURIZED; THEREFORE CONSUME ONLY IMPORTED BOTTLED WATER AND AVOID DAIRY PRODUCTS.

SECURITY: THE EAST AND NORTHEAST OF THE COUNTRY ARE INSECURE AND TRAVELERS SHOULD BE CAUTIOUS IF TRAVEL TO THE REGION IS NECESSARY, PARTICULARLY NEAR THE BORDERS WITH UGANDA AND RWANDA. THERE ARE FREQUENT ARMED CLASHES IN THE DISTRICT OF ITURI NEAR THE UGANDAN BORDER, AS WELL AS KIVU PROVINCE AND NORTHERN KATANGA. THERE IS A HIGH LEVEL OF STREET CRIME AND ARMED ROBBERY, PARTICULARLY IN KINSHASA, WHERE ARMED GANGS OR CRIMINALS POSING AS PLAIN-CLOTHES POLICEMEN REGULARLY ATTACK FOREIGNERS. SECURITY OFFICIALS HAVE ALSO BEEN KNOWN TO ARREST FOREIGNERS AND DEMAND PAYMENT FOR THEIR RELEASE. DO NOT DISPLAY VALUABLES ON YOUR PERSON, WALK THE STREETS ALONE, OR CARRY LARGE AMOUNTS OF MONEY. KEEP CAR DOORS AND WINDOWS LOCKED. DEMONSTRATIONS AND POLITICAL GATHERINGS SHOULD BE AVOIDED. BOATS AND FERRIES ARE POORLY MAINTAINED AND HAVE LOW SAFETY STANDARDS; ON 16 JANUARY 2004 AN OVERCROWDED FERRY ON THE KASAI RIVER SANK, KILLING 35 PEOPLE. DUE TO VIOLENT ATTACKS, THE BORDER BETWEEN ANGOLA AND THE DRC IS NOW CLOSED.

When he had finished, he slid the printout to Svetlana.

“Where’d you get that?” he asked.

“Courtesy of our friends in the CIA,” Delchamps said.

“Jesus, you asked them?”

“ ‘Hi, there! We’re about to blow up a chemical factory in the Congo that you say doesn’t exist, and need a little help.’ ”

“Then what the hell are you talking about?”

“Gotcha, Ace.” Delchamps smirked. “I did a quick Internet search. The CIA has data like that on the Web for anyplace you can think of. So does your State Department page boy pal’s Web site—maps, data, even the address of your favorite home away from home, the U.S. embassy.”

“And the odd thing, Charley,” Uncle Remus said, “is that what Edgar got off the Web is just about the same thing as this.”

Leverette slid a manila envelope to Castillo. He opened it. The document, on official CIA stationery, was classified SECRET and its heading read: “CONGO, DR of, Basic Conditions as of 1 Jan 2005.”

“See? Says just about the same thing,” Leverette said. “D’Allessando gave me that. I don’t know where he got it, but there’s no tie to you.”

Castillo took a quick look, then slid it to Svetlana.

“Only one airport? That’s hard to believe,” Castillo said.

“The whole Democratic Republic of the Congo is hard to believe,” Leverette said.

Castillo’s cellular vibrated in his shirt pocket.

“Hola?” he said, and then listened.

“Jesus. Thanks, Liam. I’ll get back to you.”

He put the cellular back in his shirt pocket and looked at Svetlana.

“That was interesting,” he said. “Comandante Duffy just told me that the Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt this morning had aboard a Russian diplomat by the name of Evgeny Alekseeva, who was met by a Russian diplomat from Paraguay by the name of Lavrenti Tarasov.”

“He will have to be terminated, Carlos,” Berezovsky said evenly.

“No,” Castillo said firmly. “What we’re going to have to do is get out of here, out of Argentina.”

XIII

[ONE]

Pilar Golf & Polo Country Club

Pilar, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina

0850 3 January 2006

“Colonel,” Dick Miller said, “may I have a word with you in private?”

Castillo looked around the room.

They’re a motley bunch, but they’re my motley crew—my team.

“No, Dick. Unless you want to confide in me that you contracted a social disease on the way down here.”

Delchamps and Davidson chuckled.

“I think it’s important,” Miller pursued.

“No. You know Rule One: Everybody on the team knows everything.”

“Go ahead, Carlos,” Svetlana said. “Talk with him. I don’t mind.”

“Whether or not you mind is beside the point, Susan. And Rule Two is that when I speak ex cathedra it’s not open for debate.”

“You are now the Pope?” she snapped.

Castillo raised an eyebrow toward her. “Actually, that means ‘from the chair,’ not ‘from the cathedral,’ if that’s what you were thinking. And Rule Three is never be sarcastic unless you’re sure you know what you’re talking about.”

Berezovsky laughed and applauded. Delchamps joined in.

Svetlana with obvious effort kept her mouth shut.

Castillo looked at Miller. “Okay, Dick, let’s have it.”

Miller hesitated.

“The colonel just used the term ‘terminated,’ ” Leverette then said. “Presuming it means what I think it does, who and why?”

“Is that what you were going to ask, Dick?” Castillo said.

“Among other things,” Miller said.

“Okay,” Castillo said. “What Tom Barlow—not Colonel Berezovsky; no one ever heard of him—wants to do is take out two SVR people. One of them, Lieutenant Colonel Lavrenti Tarasov, is the rezident for Paraguay and Argentina. The other, Colonel Evgeny Alekseeva, works for Directorate S and came here looking for Tom and Susan.”

“What’s the connection?” Leverette asked, and when Castillo didn’t immediately answer, said, “Alekseev, Alekseeva, whoever you said?”

Castillo looked at Svetlana.

“What did you say Rule One was, Carlos?” she said, giving him her okay.

Castillo looked back at Leverette. “Alekseeva was once married to Susan.”

“Davidson, you didn’t happen to mention that,” Leverette said.

Miller rolled his eyes and shook his head.

“Because of that connection . . .” Berezovsky began and stopped. “I don’t know what to call you. ‘Mister Leverette’?”

Leverette looked at Castillo, then back to Berezovsky. “Tell you what, Tom. Against my better judgment, and until I decide you really are the nice guy Charley seems to think you are, you can call me ‘Uncle Remus’ . . .”

“Thank you.”

“Everybody else seems to be crazy, so why not me?” Leverette finished.

Berezovsky said: “As I was saying, Uncle Remus, because of that connection, Colonel Alekseeva has, in addition to a coldly professional interest, a personal interest in our defection. Unless he either can return us to Russia—which is just about an impossible ambition—or terminate us, his career will be finished. An officer who could not prevent the defection of his wife and her brother obviously is unreliable.” He met Castillo’s eyes. “I am suggesting, Carlos, that because Evgeny Alekseeva is highly skilled in this sort of thing, and we know highly motivated, eliminating him is the thing to do.”

“No,” Castillo said.

“Was that also ex cathedra, Carlos?” Berezovsky asked softly, but with a tone that was challenging.

Castillo nodded. “Yes, it was, Tom.”

“Dmitri!” Svetlana said warningly.

“I think I should tell you, Carlos,” Berezovsky said, “that I have several options. One is to smile at you and agree, then pretend to be surprised when we learn that Evgeny is no longer with us. Stepan—the larger of the two men Aleksandr assigned to watch over our Susan—he used to work for me. He would eliminate Evgeny Alekseeva with at least as much enthusiasm as Comandante Duffy would take out Lavrenti Tarasov.”

“Please don’t try that, Tom,” Castillo said.

Berezovsky ignored the comment.

“My second option,” he went on, “is to try to reason with you, one professional to another, to try to show you why eliminating Evgeny now makes more sense than anything else. And if that failed, to go to you as Svetlana’s brother and point out that this very dangerous man is determined to kill the woman we both love and my wife and child.”

“Don’t you think I’ve thought of that?” Castillo said.

“Dmitri,” Svetlana said evenly, “the woman you both love is perfectly capable of taking care of herself. And stop treating Carlos as if he started in this business last week. If he has his reasons—”

“May I continue?” Berezovsky said.

She made a face but motioned for him to go on.

“But, I am sure that Carlos would agree with me that there can be only one man in charge, so I will consider myself at his orders and defer to his judgment.”

Castillo looked him in the eyes a long moment as he considered that, then nodded once. “Thank you.”

Berezovsky looked at Leverette.

“As you so colorfully put it, Uncle Remus, ‘Everybody else seems to be crazy, so why not me?’ ”

“That’s very kind, Tom,” Leverette said. “But let the record show that Uncle Remus would vote, if asked, to whack this guy while we have the opportunity.”

“I second the motion,” Delchamps said. “Ace, if we don’t deal with this guy now, then sooner or later it’s going to come around and viciously bite us on the ass.”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t going to deal with him; I said I didn’t want him whacked,” Castillo said. “Speaking of everybody being crazy, hasn’t it occurred to anyone but me that the enemy you know is less dangerous than the one you don’t?”

“Meaning?”

“That if we take out Evgeny—”

Jesus, I’m talking about the husband of my lover!

That’s one helluva strange feeling—not to mention dangerous ground!

“—they’ll just send someone else, who may be more dangerous than Evgeny.”

“So how are you going to deal with the one we have?” Delchamps said.

“Sic Liam on him for now,” Castillo said, “while hoping I can keep him from whacking him on general purposes.” He turned to Alfredo Munz. “How safe is Aleksandr’s house in Bariloche from somebody like this guy?”

“There’s only one road leading to the house,” Munz said. “It’s patrolled and secure. The only other way to get there is by air, which is impossible to do quietly, and by boat, which you’ve seen yourself.”

Castillo nodded. “Worst-case scenario: How would the Pevsners and the Berezovskys get out if Evgeny showed up with a platoon of Ninjas?”

“Platoon of what?” Berezovsky asked.

“The ex-Stasi or ex-ÁVH—Államvédelmi Hatóság—or whatever the hell they were—the only one we ever identified was the Cuban who eliminated Dr. Jean-Paul Lorimer at his estancia. They were dressed up in black and wearing balaclava masks like characters in a bad movie—or a comic book. We called them ‘the Ninjas.’ ”

“I doubt if anything like that is likely,” Berezovsky argued. “They were sent—they were Hungarian, by the way—to deal with that particular problem. You dealt with them. Sending in another team to replace them just in case they might be needed would be difficult and dangerous. Just keeping a half-dozen people like that around and out of sight . . .”

“With respect, Dmitri, it would appear that Evgeny’s been sent, as you say, ‘to deal with this particular problem,’ ” Castillo said. “So indulge me.” He turned to Munz. “Alfredo?”

“There is Alek’s Bell helicopter. If anything like you suggest did happen, they could quickly leave on it and go anywhere, including Chile, on short notice.”

Castillo looked at Berezovsky.

“Then you would say, Alfredo, that Mrs. Berezovsky and Sof’ya would be safe in Bariloche? Maybe even safer than where they are now? While we’re off to I-don’t-know-where or for how long?”

“Yes, I would.”

“You’re talking about Africa?” Berezovsky said.

“No. Or at least not yet. I have the gut feeling we should get out of the Buenos Aires area. I just haven’t figured out where to go.”

“That’s a no-brainer, Ace,” Delchamps said. “Shangri-La.”

Uncle Remus made a thumbs-up gesture.

Svetlana asked, “Where?”

“All any of us really know about the Congo is to keep your hand on your wallet and don’t drink the water,” Delchamps said. “But Ambassador Lorimer was stationed there. He was running through the bush around Stanleyville with a couple of ASA guys when the cannibals were eating missionaries in the town square.”

“They didn’t eat all of them, Edgar,” Leverette said. “I mean, they ate only their livers. That kept them from being hurt by bullets.”

“I stand corrected,” Delchamps said.

“When we jumped the Belgian paratroops on Stanleyville to save the missionaries,” Castillo said, “it was called Operation Rouge; I read the after-actions. They jumped them onto the airfield. So there’s an airport there.”

“Maybe was,” Jack Davidson said. “According to GoogleMaps and the CIA, there’s no airport now.”

“Supplies to the laboratory would have to be flown in,” Svetlana offered. “So there has to be an airport. What is this ‘Shangri-La’?”

“Charley, McNab wasn’t kidding about wanting to know everything,” Dick Miller said. “If you don’t have your oral Ph.D. thesis in African studies ready to recite when we go to see him, he’ll pull the plug on you. And we’re going to need that 727.”

“Carlos, my darling,” Svetlana said. “What about Rule One?”

He looked at her until he took her meaning.

“Shangri-La is a mythical city of splendor somewhere in Asia,” he said solemnly, then added: “It’s also the name of the estancia Lorimer bought in Uruguay. His father—a retired ambassador—and mother inherited it and moved there when they lost their home in New Orleans to Hurricane Katrina.”

“And,” Davidson added, “where they have a half-dozen guys from China Post keeping them company. Odds are one or more of them will know more about the Congo than any of us do.”

“ ‘China Post’?” Berezovsky asked, smiling.

“Shanghai China Post Number One of the American Legion in Exile, Tom,” Leverette said. “Surely you’ve heard of it?”

“Of course,” Berezovsky said.

“Okay,” Castillo said, chuckling. “Shangri-La it is. Chief of Staff, let’s hear your plan.”

Miller looked at him in disbelief.

“Charley, I wouldn’t know where to begin . . .” he protested before he realized his chain was being pulled.

“He got you, Gimpy, didn’t he?” Delchamps said.

Miller shook his head in mock disgust. “My experience with him, over long years, is that he’s most dangerous when he thinks he’s being funny.”

“And that evens the score, doesn’t it, Ace?”

Castillo said: “Okay, let me have a shot at it, then, since our crippled friend here has owned up to his inadequacy. First question: Are you all right to fly, Dick?”

Miller nodded.

“I don’t think Paul or Susanna needs to go to Shangri-La, because they’re not going to Africa. We can bring them up to speed after we find out what we can find out at the estancia. That will leave Paul free to deal with Duffy.”

He looked at the others. With the exception of Berezovsky and Svetlana, who showed no reaction, everyone either nodded or gave a thumbs-up.

“You all right, Tom, with sending your wife and Sof’ya to Bariloche?” Castillo asked.

Berezovsky nodded.

“Two ways to do that,” Castillo went on, “three, if they fly there commercial, and commercial means that Sof’ya would have to leave Marina here with Susanna. The other two options are to drive them there—which would attract the least attention, but it’s a hell of a long ride—or for Dick and me to fly them there in the Gulfstream. Comments?”

“No-brainer, Charley,” Leverette said. “The Gulfstream.”

The others showed their agreement, except Berezovsky, whose face was inscrutable.

Castillo went on. “All right, then. Alfredo, get on the horn to Aleksandr and let’s hear what he thinks. When we know that, Paul, you call Duffy and see what he has to say about how to get the women to Jorge Newbery without attracting any attention.”

“I’m sure you are considering that the comandante will then know where my wife and daughter will be,” Berezovsky said.

“He’s a smart cop, Tom,” Castillo said. “He already knows where they are now, and I think he’ll suspect they’re going to Aleksandr’s place; he knows that I took Susan there. And with that in mind, Paul, tell Duffy we’re moving the women to Bariloche.”

Munz stood, walked to a corner of the room, and took out his cell phone.

“And while he’s doing that,” Castillo said, “we can begin to contemplate the interesting problem of getting everybody else from here to Shangri-La. Alex, you’re confident about Tom’s and Susan’s new documents?”

“They’re good,” Darby said.

“Which should they use? Uruguayan or Argentine?”

“Argentines can travel back and forth to Uruguay on their national identity cards. I say use the Argentine.”

“Done,” Castillo said.

“Charley, it might be a good idea to get them U.S. visas,” Darby said.

“I see a couple of problems with that,” Castillo said after a moment.

“Such as? All I have to do is hand them to a consular officer I know and tell him to stamp them.” He paused, then explained himself: “He’s a spook-in-training, and knows what I really do for a living.”

“I think I met him yesterday,” Castillo said. “My problem is Ambassador Silvio. I don’t like going around him, and he was there when I had my little chat with Montvale.”

“Your call,” Darby said. “But visas may come in handy somewhere down the pike.”

Castillo considered that a moment.

“Alex, when this can be worked in, go see the ambassador. When all else fails, tell the truth. Hand him the passports. Say, ‘Mr. Ambassador, Castillo would like to see these fine Argentines get multiple entry visas, but only if it doesn’t put your ass in a crack.’ Or diplomatic words to that effect. If he seems to be thinking hard about it, tell him I said, ‘It’s okay. Thanks anyway.’ ”

“Done,” Darby said. “Another thing, Charley. Maybe me driving to Uruguay—I mean, taking a vehicle on the Buquebus to Montevideo—would be a good idea. I’m accredited in both places, so no luggage searches. In case you want to take weapons. . . .”

“There’re weapons in the Gulfstream,” Castillo said.

“Getting them out of the airplane in Uruguay might be a problem, and I have all we’ll need at the embassy.” He stopped and smiled. “Last week, I permitted the consular officer I mentioned to come in at night and clean and inspect them for me. He was thrilled.”

There were chuckles.

“And one more thought, Charley: I take either Tom or Susan with me. There would be less chance that some zealous immigration guy who may have seen the Interpol warrants would have his attention heightened by seeing just one or the other. They’ll be presumed to be traveling together.”

“And if you drove, we’d have at least one set of wheels in Uruguay, wouldn’t we? Okay, you drive. Next question: Where do you drive? Where do Dick and I take the plane?”

Alfredo Munz walked back to the table. “Aleksandr suggests flying into San Martín de los Andes . . .” he began.

Castillo’s face and shrug showed he didn’t understand.

“. . . a small town several hours’ drive from Bariloche.”

“Can we get the Gulfstream in there?”

“Aerolíneas Argentinas flies a 737 in there once a day, weather permitting. When they’re not expecting that flight, the control tower shuts down. What Aleksandr suggests—this is what he often does in the Lear—is file a flight plan to Bariloche, then land at San Martín, unload most of the passengers there, then go on to Bariloche. If any questions are asked, the pilot made a precautionary landing. Aleksandr will have people waiting in both places. Then they will drive to the house, instead of going to Llao-Llao and taking a boat from the hotel dock.”

“Okay, done. Still-open question: How do we get from where we’re going—where are we going?”

“Alek suggests Punta del Este,” Munz said.

“Why?” Castillo asked. “That has to be a couple of hundred miles from the estancia.”

Munz smiled.

“Maybe he thinks you’d have some trouble landing the Gulfstream at Tacuarembó International,” he said.

“Stupid question,” Castillo said, chagrined.

“And it’s the busy season in Punta,” Munz said. “One more private jet won’t attract much attention—certainly less than at Carrasco in Montevideo.”

“After deep and profound consideration, I have decided that we’ll go to Punta del Este,” Castillo said.

He took his cellular telephone from his pocket and slid it across the table to Miller.

“Autodial five will get you the weather at Ezeiza, Dick. Get us the weather to Bariloche and Punta del Este.”

Miller opened his laptop, waited until it awoke from its sleep mode, then picked up the cell phone.

“Alek also suggests we take Lee-Watson with us,” Munz said.

“If I ask why, would my stupidity show again?”

“He has a connection with the Conrad,” Munz said. “Alek thinks you should stay there. Keep the apartments in case we need them.”

“What apartments?”

“He owns half a dozen, maybe more, luxury apartments in those high-rises along the beach. Lee-Watson manages them for him; people rent them for a week, two weeks. They’re not safe houses but could be used for that purpose. No questions would be asked if strangers show up, rent cars, etcetera.”

Castillo nodded his understanding, then asked, “So, stay at the Conrad and then drive to Shangri-La in the morning?”

Munz nodded.

“Where is Lee-Watson?”

“Having a cup of tea in the breakfast room. I didn’t think you’d want him here for this.”

“Ask him to join us, please.”

[TWO]

Aeropuerto Internacional Capitán de Corbeta Carlos A. Curbelo

Maldonado Province

República Oriental del Uruguay

1705 3 January 2006

The wheels hardly chirped when the Lorimer Charitable & Benevolent Fund Gulfstream III touched down on the runway.

“You must have been practicing, Charley,” First Officer Miller said to Captain Castillo over the intercom. “That wasn’t your usual let’s-bounce-three-times-down-the-runway-and-see-if-we-can-blow-a-tire landing.”

“With all the time you’ve spent flying right seat with me, First Officer, I would’ve thought by now you’d have learned that landings come to me naturally, as a by-product of my superb reflexes and, of course, genius.”

A grunt came through Castillo’s headset.

“You ain’t no genius when you’re thinking with your dick, Captain. In fact, you ain’t never been too smart in that department.”

Castillo turned to look at Miller. “If you have something to say, Gimpy, say it,” he said unpleasantly.

Miller held up both hands, suggesting it had been only an idle, general comment.

Bullshit, Dick!

You’re just waiting to offer your heartfelt, well-meaning philosophical wisdom vis-à-vis my outrageous relationship with Svet.

Well, I should’ve expected it.

Everything so far today has gone well, almost perfectly, far better than one could reasonably expect.

Berezovsky’s wife and little girl and Marina, their Bouvier des Flandres pup had arrived quietly at Jorge Newbery at exactly the right time. The Gulfstream had gone wheels-up five minutes later. The odds were strong that no one had seen them.

Forty minutes into the flight, Sergeant Kensington had called over the secure AFC radio and reported: “Mr. Darby said to tell you that Ambassador Silvio says ambassadors can’t do visas—but that he asked the consul, who does, and who was delighted to authorize multiple-entry visas for any friends of Colonsel Castillo.”

Thirty-five minutes after that, they landed at the San Martín de los Andes airport. Max had barely begun his nose gear ritual when three Mercedes-Benz SUVs pulled up beside the Gulfstream.

There had been a brief but intensely emotional moment as everybody, tears running shamelessly down their cheeks, embraced everyone else. Castillo had been a little wet-eyed himself.

Then everyone—including Ivan the Terrible and Marina—loaded into the SUVs and took off.

Max looked at Castillo with his head cocked, as if asking, Where the hell are those people going with my children? But when he heard the whine as Miller began to restart the engines, he trotted quickly up the stairs into the fuselage without waiting to be told.

Five minutes later, they broke ground.

The fuel stop at Bariloche posed no problems whatever, and when Miller checked the weather he learned it would be perfect all the way to Punta del Este.

And they found that the immigration authorities had the same immigration setup at Bariloche as the Buquebus had in Buenos Aires. Which was: An Argentine immigration officer put the DEPARTED ARGENTINA stamp in their passports, officially stating that they had left Argentina. Then he slid the passports to a Uruguayan immigration officer sitting next to him, who put the ENTERED URUGUAY stamp in the passport. There would be no immigration formalities when they got to Punta del Este.

An hour into what would be the final leg, Sergeant Kensington called again to report that Alfredo, Darby, and “their friend” were aboard the Buquebus about to leave for Montevideo. That meant there had been no questions asked about Berezovsky’s new national identity card.

And the flight to Aeropuerto Internacional Capitán de Corbeta Carlos A. Curbelo had been smooth, uneventful, and had ended in what Castillo with all modesty considered to be one of his better landings.

And what that means, as stated clearly in Castillo Rule Seven, is:

“That inasmuch as everything has gone perfectly so far, something will surely fuck up big-time in the next couple of minutes.”

“The last time I landed here, we were the only airplane on the field,” Castillo said as they turned off the runway to trail a FOLLOW ME pickup truck to where they would be parked. “Now look at it!”

There were too many airplanes on the field to count, but the bigger aircraft among them were four glistening Boeing 737s. Two bore the logotypes of LAN-CHILE and Aerolíneas Argentinas. The other two—GOL and OceanAir—Castillo had never heard of, but to judge by the flag on their vertical stabilizers, both were Brazilian.

The FOLLOW ME pickup truck led them between lines of private aircraft—mostly Beechcraft turboprops, but there were two Gulfstreams, one with Brazilian tail numbers and the other with American.

“What is this place, anyhow?” Miller asked.

“Where the rich of South America come in the summer to rest up from counting their money. In the winter, it’s just about deserted. The last time I was here, it was winter and it looked like a science fiction movie. Lots of plush apartment houses, multimillion-dollar beachfront houses—and just about no people.”

“What were you doing here?”

“Trying to grab Howard Kennedy.” He paused and made a question of the statement: “The renegade FBI agent who went to work for Pevsner?”

Miller nodded his understanding.

“Well, Kennedy sold Pevsner out. He tried to have him whacked, and in the process damned near got me. Would have gotten me if Lester hadn’t been there. My payback plan was to take Mr. Kennedy home so the FBI could arrange for him to be sent to the Federal ADMAX prison in Florence, Colorado, thereby earning me the profound gratitude of the FBI. For some reason, the FBI doesn’t seem to like me very much.”

“I’ve heard that,” Miller said. “Jesus, look at all these airplanes!”

“The last time I was here, it was just little ol’ me.”

“Somebody had already whacked Kennedy when you got here, right?”

“Yeah, unfortunately. Pevsner decided that being raped on a regularly scheduled basis was not sufficient punishment for Howard having taken Pevsner’s money and then betrayed him. When we got to the Conrad, which essentially is the Caesars Palace of Punta del Este, it looked like every cop in Uruguay was there.

“There’s a Uruguayan cop—the chief inspector of the Uruguayan Policía Nacional, one José Ordóñez—who also doesn’t like me, by the way. I hope not to see him—”

“Charley, I’ve never been able to understand why so few people actually do like you.”

Miller then pointed out the cockpit window.

The FOLLOW ME truck had stopped, and the driver and another man were getting out.

“Finally,” Castillo said. “I thought he was taxiing us back to Montevideo.”

They were wanded into a parking space, and they shut down the aircraft. Miller unfastened his harness.

“Hold it a second. Let me finish,” Castillo said.

“Okay.”

“Ordóñez was in the lobby of the Conrad when we walked in. He took us to one of the better suites, where taped to two chairs were the bodies of Howard Kennedy and a guy who Delchamps recognized as Lieutenant Colonel Viktor Zhdankov of Putin’s Service for the Protection of the Constitutional System and the Fight Against Terrorism. Taped because they had been beaten to death. Slowly, with what in Chief Inspector Ordóñez’s professional opinion was an angle iron. They started by smashing fingers and toes, then worked up to the larger parts. It was pretty gruesome.”

“I wonder what your good buddy Pevsner would do to some guy who didn’t do right by his cousin?” Miller asked lightly.

Castillo shook his head. “Not a problem, my friend, because that’s not going to happen.”

“I remember you telling me something in those exact words before. Actually, on several occasions. The first was years ago in that motel in Daleville, when you were contemplating nailing the deputy post commander’s daughter. . . .”

Where the hell did that come from? Castillo thought.

He said: “That’s a long time ago. This is now.”

Miller shrugged.

“Cutting this short,” Castillo went on, “Ordóñez has twice told me I’m not welcome in Uruguay. The day we found Kennedy and Zhdankov, he told me to get out and stay out. And he told me again the time I used Shangri-La as a refueling point when we flew those black choppers off the Gipper. He sees me causing trouble for Uruguay.”

“But he took the helicopters, right, when you were through with them?”

“Not the way you make it sound, Dick. He’s a good guy, ethical, but not bribable.”

“Really?” Miller replied sarcastically.

“Yeah, really,” Castillo said angrily. “The point of this little lecture is that I want to pass through Punta del Este as quietly as possible. I do not want to have Ordóñez adding to our problems.”

“As quietly and inconspicuously as possible, right?”

“Right.”

“That may be just a little difficult, the inconspicuous part.”

He pointed out the cockpit window again.

A glistening white Lincoln stretch limousine had driven up beside the Gulfstream.

“That’s a mistake; that can’t be for us,” Castillo said. “What that looks like is the Conrad Resort & Casino meeting a Brazilian high-roller.”

Miller chuckled.

The liveried chauffeur got from behind the limousine wheel and opened the passenger door. An elegantly dressed man got out and with a welcoming smile waved at the airplane.

There was the electrical whine as the stair door unfolded.

“I hope Edgar has got Max on the leash,” Castillo said.

Edgar did not.

Max came down the stairs, trotted to the limousine—causing the smiling man to lose his smile—stuck his big furry head into the open rear door of the limousine, and then, curiosity satisfied, headed for the nose gear.

Castillo unstrapped himself and went into the passenger compartment.

“Terribly sorry, my fault, old chap,” Cedric Lee-Watson greeted him. “I should have known something like this would happen.”

“What the hell is going on?” Castillo demanded angrily.

“The thing is, you see, is that I have something of a vice.”

“No!” Miller said in mock horror.

Castillo could not restrain a smile.

Lee-Watson mimed throwing dice.

“You’re a crapshooter?” Miller asked. “Shame on you!”

“The car is from the Conrad,” Lee-Watson said. “When I called to ask about accommodations for all of us, they must have assumed I was bringing friends.”

“High-rolling friends?” Miller asked.

Lee-Watson nodded.

“And so you have,” Miller went on. “Sometimes, when I’ve known that Lady Luck was smiling at me, I have been known to wager as much as two dollars on the turn of a card.”

Castillo chuckled. Then he said, “Well, what the hell do we do?”

“One option, Ace,” Edgar Delchamps called, “would be to get in the limousine and go to the hotel. It’s getting hot as hell in here.”

Castillo saw a Chrysler Town & Country van pull up behind the limousine, then a Chrysler Stratus behind the van. Two large men wearing wide-brimmed straw hats, sunglasses, and flowered Hawaiian-style shirts—which failed to conceal the outline of holstered pistols under them—got out of the front passenger seat of each and stood looking at the airplane.

“Let me deal with this,” Lee-Watson said, and went down the stair door.

Max appeared at the foot of the steps and started barking.

Castillo turned to look at Svetlana.

“Didn’t you hear Max, Cinderella? Your pumpkin is here.”

[THREE]

Restaurant Lo de Tere

Rambla Artigas and Calle 8

Punta del Este, Maldonado Province

República Oriental del Uruguay

2025 3 January 2006

Charley held Svetlana’s hand as they waited for her to judge if the Uruguayan caviar—as the waiter had promised them with a straight face—was really as good as that from the Caspian Sea.

Castillo sensed eyes on them and saw that an elderly, nice-looking couple a few tables away was smiling at them.

Romeo and Juliet are holding hands, sipping a very nice Chardonnay, waiting for their caviar, while an elderly couple, probably remembering their youth, smile kindly at them.

And Romeo and Juliet are also under the watchful eyes of two Russian gorillas and Corporal Lester Bradley, USMC—all of whom are prepared to deal with however many bad guys, having miraculously located us, might at any moment crash through the door with Uzis blazing.

“What are you thinking?” Svetlana asked.

He lied.

“I was wondering if you’re going to be honest enough to admit that the Uruguayan fish eggs are as good as Russian.”

“I will be polite and say ‘very nice’ if they are at all edible, which I rather doubt.”

Everything else was still going so smoothly that he could not get Castillo Rule Seven out of his mind.

They had attracted much less attention than he expected when the limousine rolled up to the door of the Conrad. He thought there would be at least some people gaping at the limo to see the bride of the rock star or the rock star himself or a combination thereof emerge.

There were no gapers.

Their accommodations were first class, suggesting that Cedric Lee-Watson was not only a heavy roller, indeed, but a very unlucky one as well. They were all on an upper floor of the hotel, in suites with balconies that had provided Lester with an easy place to set up the AFC radio and Svetlana with a view of the swimming pool.

“I’ve got my bathing suit,” Svetlana had announced, instantly triggering memories in Castillo’s mind of the last time he had seen her in—actually mostly out of—it.

He had restrained his carnal urges until they returned from their swim, but had been on the verge of unleashing them when she entered the shower.

The telephone had dashed that hope. It was Alex Darby calling from Montevideo to announce that he and the others were in Montevideo and what he suggested was that they stay there overnight and drive to Shangri-La in the morning, rather than meet in Punta del Este and drive to the estancia together.

Castillo immediately decided that that was a sound proposition, based on a careful analysis of the tactical situation, which would also provide the opportunity for him to have a romantic dinner with Svetlana in some restaurant overlooking the blue South Atlantic.

With Svetlana and no one else.

“That’s fine with me, Alex,” he had pronounced solemnly. “We’ll see you at the estancia, say, about eleven, maybe a little later.”

Why jump out of bed in the morning?

All sorts of interesting things could likely happen if we don’t rise with the roosters.

Those plans hadn’t gone off perfectly. No sooner had he hung up the telephone and gone into the bedroom than Svetlana had come out of the shower and stood in her unmentionables while aiming a roaring hair-dryer at her hair.

When she saw him looking at her, she flicked off the dryer. “What do we do now?”

He gallantly put aside the first thought that occurred to him and suggested instead that when she had finished dressing—“No hurry, sweetheart”—that they walk along the beach until they came to a nice restaurant.

She’d smiled and flicked the dryer back on.

But that hadn’t gone off exactly as planned, either. They were perhaps a quarter-mile down the beach when he noticed that walking along the roadside, with a car trailing, were Corporal Lester Bradley and two of the Russian gorillas who had met the plane. The former wore a black fanny pack, which hung heavily, as if it possibly held, for example, a Model 1911A1 Colt .45 ACP semiautomatic and three or four full magazines, while the latter wore coats and ties and who knew what weaponry concealed.

The headwaiter of the Restaurant Lo de Tere discovered a last-minute reservation cancellation a remarkable thirty seconds after Castillo had slipped him the equivalent of twenty-five U.S. dollars.

“I’m in a generous mood,” Castillo then had told the headwaiter, holding up another twenty-five dollars’ worth of Uruguayan currency. “There’s a hungry-looking young man, looks like a college student, hovering near the door, probably wondering if he can afford your excellent restaurant. You tell him you have special prices for students and put the difference on mine.”

The extended Uruguayan currency had been snatched from his hand.

Let the gorillas bribe the maître d’ themselves.

Five minutes later, as Bradley was shown to a table near the door, he saw the gorillas in conversation with the maître d’, and a minute or so later another canceled reservation was apparently discovered, for they were shown to a table near Lester.

The Uruguayan caviar was delivered in an iced silver tub, with toast triangles and a suggestion that it really would go nicely with champagne, and they just happened to have several bottles of Taittinger Comtes de Champagne Blanc de Blancs 1992 on ice.

“Bring us a bottle of your finest Uruguayan sparkling wine,” Castillo said. “I’m told that, like your caviar, your sparkling wine is much better than what’s available in Europe.”

The wine steward was visibly torn between national pride and selling expensive French champagne, but smiled.

He returned shortly—as Svetlana dubiously eyed the caviar—with a bottle of Bodegas y Viñedos Santa Ana Chef de Cave ’94.

Finally, as Castillo sipped at the wine, she steeled herself and used a tiny spoon to extract from the tub enough Uruguayan caviar that would partially cover a fingernail, then put it—with what Castillo thought was exquisite grace—into her mouth.

Her face contorted.

“Bad, huh?”

“It has to be Russian! It is marvelous!”

Using the tiny spoon, she thickly covered a toast triangle with caviar and put it into his mouth. And immediately began to do the same thing for herself.

This is not the time to confess I’m not too fond of fish eggs.

“Well?” Svetlana asked.

“Marvelous,” Castillo said, forcing a smile and a swallow.

They found themselves looking into each other’s eyes.

Svetlana put her hand to his face and slowly ran her fingers down his cheek.

“Oh, Carlos, my Carlos, I am so happy!”

“Me, too, Svet.”

And I mean it.

And the evening is still young.

And I am not going to remind myself of Rule Seven.

[FOUR]

Estancia Shangri-La

Tacuarembó Province

República Oriental del Uruguay

1215 4 January 2006

When Castillo stopped the Hertz rental Volkswagen in front of the main house, there were already five vehicles parked there. All were nosed-in at the hitching rail, to which were tied three magnificent horses.

One of the vehicles was a Chevy Suburban with Argentine diplomatic license plates. That told Castillo that Alex Darby and Dmitri Berezovsky had arrived. There were two identical Ford pickup trucks, which Castillo guessed belonged to the hired hands from China Post Number One. And there were a smaller, older Ford pickup and a Chrysler Town & Country minivan. The older truck, he reasoned, was being driven by Ambassador Lorimer; the minivan by his wife.