Black Ops

As Castillo opened his car door, Colin Leverette, at the wheel of an identical rental Volkswagen, pulled in beside him.

Castillo looked around, wondering where the hell the guys from China Post were—then saw one, a portly, graying black man in his fifties or sixties, come around the corner of the building, a CAR-4 at his side.

When he saw Castillo looking at him, he smiled faintly and gave him a very casual salute. Castillo waved back.

Another black man, this one very small, very black, and with closely cropped white hair, came out the front door of the main house. He was wearing what Castillo thought of as the “Gaucho Costume”—the lower legs of the Bombachas trousers stuffed inside soft black leather boots, a white, open-collared billowing shirt, and a flaming red kerchief tied around the neck.

He also held an enormous parrilla fork in one hand.

“You seem to have gone native, Mr. Ambassador,” Castillo greeted him.

“If you insist on calling me ‘Mr. Ambassador,’ Castillo, not only will I have no choice but to call you ‘Colonel’ but I will see that you get nothing to drink but Coca-Cola,” Ambassador (Retired) Philippe Lorimer said.

“It’s hard for me to call you ‘Philippe,’ sir.”

“Suit yourself, Colonel. Drink Coke.”

“I will call you ‘Mr. Ambassador,’ sir,” Colin Leverette said, “because I am bigger and meaner than you are.”

“Larger, perhaps,” Lorimer said, waving the parrilla fork.

“And I come bearing gifts, sir,” Leverette said.

“Good God, I hope you didn’t bring flowers!”

“No, sir. Bitters. Peychaud’s Bitters.”

He handed him a small bag.

Lorimer opened it and took out three small bottles; the bag obviously held more.

“You will be rewarded in heaven, Colin,” the ambassador said. “I’m out. And they’re not available here.”

“May I respectfully suggest, Mr. Ambassador, sir, that we put the essence of the Crescent City to the ultimate test to see if it has endured the rigors of travel?”

“Making Sazeracs is the best idea I’ve heard this week,” the ambassador said. “But not until I welcome this lovely lady to Shangri-La. How do you do, my dear? Welcome to Shangri-La.”

“Thank you,” Svetlana said.

“I now understand,” Lorimer said.

“Understand?”

“How you captured the heart of the colonel. You’re stunning.”

“You heard about that, did you?” Castillo asked.

“I hear everything, Colonel. I thought you knew that.”

“Okay, Philippe, I surrender.”

“It was inevitable,” Lorimer said. “Corporal Bradley, you are always welcome here.” He gave Bradley his hand and looked at Dick Miller. “And you, sir, are?”

“My name is Miller, Mr. Ambassador.”

“Oh. Charley’s Hudson High classmate. I’m Norwich, but I will not hold West Point against you. You probably didn’t know any better.”

Leverette laughed.

“Why don’t we go into the house—actually, through the house; the parrilla is in the interior garden—while Colin makes us one of his famous Sazeracs?” He looked at Svetlana. “We can watch as your brother, my dear, and my wife ruin some wonderful Uruguayan beef on the parrilla.”

He got the expected chuckles.

Lorimer turned to Castillo. “And then you can tell me what this is all about. I am old but not brain-dead, and therefore suspect that you didn’t just drop in because you were in the neighborhood.”

He switched the parrilla fork to his left hand, offered his right arm to Svetlana, and marched with her through the door. She towered at least a foot over him.

The portly black man who had come around the corner of the house holding the CAR-4 when they had arrived now walked into the interior patio as the ambassador was slicing an entire tenderloin of beef. He laid the weapon on the table, sat down, and reached for a silver cocktail shaker.

“Colin,” he said, “this better be what I think it is.”

“Have I ever failed you, DeWitt?” Leverette replied.

“Yes,” the man said. “I shudder recalling how many times, where, and how.” He picked up the cocktail shaker, poured himself a Sazerac, sipped it appreciatively, then announced, “This will do.”

Castillo chuckled.

The black man looked at Castillo and smiled. “You don’t remember me, do you, Colonel?”

“No,” Castillo confessed.

“All we black folk look alike, DeWitt,” Leverette said. “You know that.”

“Fuck you, Uncle Remus!” Castillo flared.

Leverette knows that was uncalled for.

And bullshit besides.

There are five “black” people here. The ambassador and his wife, Big Mouth Uncle Remus, Dick Miller, and this old guy, who I never saw before, and now that I think about it is older than I first thought. He’s at least sixty.

And the one thing they have in common is that they don’t look alike.

One’s uncommonly small (the ambassador), another’s uncommonly large (Uncle Fucking Remus), one’s trim (Miller), and one’s more than pleasingly plump (the China Post guy).

And the color of their skin ranges from as light as mine (Mrs. Lorimer) to the you-can’t-see-him-when-the-lights-are-out pigmentation of Leverette, who until just now I thought was one of my best friends.

“Easy, Charley,” Dick Miller said. “He didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

“Yeah, I did,” Leverette said.

“Well, then fuck you, too!” Miller said angrily. “You know better than that, Colin. Goddammit!”

Castillo glanced at the ambassador and saw concern on his face; his wife’s face looked even worse.

“Goddamn you, Colin!” Castillo flared. “How many of those Sazeracs have you had?”

“Just this one, Boss Man,” Leverette said in a thick accent, then raised the glass to Castillo.

Castillo, literally speechless, looked at him in shock. His eye caught the fat old man, who was holding his hands in the form of a T, signaling Time-out.

“We got him, Colin,” the black man said. “Enough’s enough.”

“DeWitt, we got both of them,” Leverette said, laughing. “As ye sow, Carlos, so shall ye reap! You might want to write that down.”

Castillo glanced at Dewitt.

DeWitt . . . DeWitt, he thought, then a faint bell tinkled in his memory banks.

“When I saw Colin,” the fat man was saying, “I said, ‘I just saw Hotshot Charley and he looked right through me.’”

“To which I replied,” Leverette picked up, “ ‘DeWitt, I hate to tell you this, but you are no longer the Green Beanie poster boy you were in The Desert.’ ”

“Master Sergeant DeWitt!” Castillo said, suddenly remembering.

“And then,” DeWitt said, “we said—simultaneously—‘Let’s pull his chain.’ Which we then proceeded to do, with what you’ll have to admit was conspicuous success.”

“I will now say something I didn’t have the courage to say in The Desert,” Castillo said. “Go fuck yourself, DeWitt!”

“It’s really good to see you, Charley,” DeWitt said. He spread his arms wide and a moment later they were embracing, pounding each other’s backs.

“Now that the show is over,” Delchamps said drily, “may I infer from that obscene display of affection that you have crossed paths on the road of life?”

“You know General McNab?” DeWitt asked.

Delchamps nodded.

“He was then a colonel,” DeWitt went on, “running special ops in The Desert. I was his intel sergeant. Right after it started, the colonel came to me and said he had a new chopper driver, a twenty-one-year-old, five-months-out-of-Hudson-High who he wanted to keep alive because he already had the DFC and a Purple Heart and somebody like that would probably be useful somewhere down the pike.

“He was bad enough when he got there, but after he grabbed the Russians—”

“ ‘Grabbed the Russians’?” Berezovsky parroted.

DeWitt looked at him for a moment before replying. “This is probably still classified Top Secret, Kill Anybody Who Knows, but what the hell. The Scotchman?”

“This Colonel—General—McNab?” Svetlana asked.

“Yes, ma’am. That’s what we call him—behind his back, of course. Anyway, the Scotchman mounted an operation to grab a Scud. You know what a Scud is?”

“A Russian missile based on the German V-2,” Svetlana said matter-of-factly. “The Iraqis had a number of the R-11/SS-1B Scud-A’s, which had a range of about three hundred kilometers.”

This earned her a very strange look from Master Sergeant P. B. DeWitt, Special Forces, U.S. Army, Retired, but all he said was, “Yes, ma’am. What we wanted to do was grab one, first to see if it was capable of either being nuclear or to put chemicals or biologicals in the head, and then to send it to the States.

“So we mounted an op to go get one. Two UH-60s—”

He looked at Svetlana, who nodded.

“The Black Hawk,” she said.

“—with a reinforced A-Team—”

Svetlana nodded again.

“—with Charley flying the colonel in a Huey.”

Svetlana nodded her understanding one more time. Castillo saw that Leverette and Delchamps were having a hard time keeping a straight face.

“So over the berm we go,” DeWitt went on. “We reach the Scud site. Everything goes as planned, until somebody notices that among the people lying on the ground with their hands tied behind them there’s a lot of heavy brass. First thought, Iraqi brass. Then Hotshot Charley here hears a couple of them whispering to each other in Russian. So he says—in Russian, the first time any of us knew he spoke it—‘All Russians please stand up and start singing “The Internationale. ’ ”

Berezovsky laughed.

“So that was you, Carlos!” Berezovsky said. “When I debriefed them after you sent them home, they said that the Americans had a Russian who sounded as if he was from Saint Petersburg.”

“Why do I think I’m not fully briefed on this situation?” DeWitt asked.

“Sergeant DeWitt,” Delchamps said. “Permit me to introduce Colonel Dmitri Berezovsky and Lieutenant Colonel Alekseeva, formerly of the SVR.”

“No shit?”

“And you thought she was just Charley’s latest redheaded lady friend, right, DeWitt?” Leverette asked.

“They didn’t tell me about you making them sing ‘The Internationale,’” Berezovsky said. “You really made them do that?”

“People tend to do what heavily armed men with black grease all over their faces tell them to do. We even took pictures of the chorus and gave everybody a copy before we put them on the Aeroflot plane to Moscow.”

“I guess the pictures somehow got lost,” Berezovsky said, chuckling.

“Is somebody going to tell me what’s going on around here?” DeWitt asked.

“I want to hear the rest of the story,” Svetlana said. “Including all about Carlos’s previous redheaded girlfriend.”

“The Green-Eyed Monster just raised its ugly head. Actually, it’s ‘rather attractive redheads,’ plural,” Delchamps said.

Svetlana, in Russian, raised questions about the marital and social disease status of Delchamps’s ancestors.

He laughed delightedly.

“There were no women in the desert,” DeWitt said. “Colin was just talking. Anyway, we brought two Scuds back, sling-loaded under the Black Hawks, and the Russians. We took their identification and mug-shotted them, and then the agency sent a plane in and flew them to Vienna. Charley went along with them and saw them take off for home.”

“You know,” Delchamps said conversationally, “I’ve noticed that Vienna has a lot of women, many of them Hungarian, with red hair. Did you go right back to the desert, Carlos, or take a little vacation first?”

“Carlos taught me how to do this, Mr. Edgar Delchamps,” Svetlana said, and gave him the finger. Then she turned to DeWitt. “Why do you call him ‘Hotshot Charley’?”

“There was a character in the comics, a fighter pilot, they called ‘Hotshot Charley,’ ” DeWitt said. “And it fit him like a glove. Here he was, a twenty-one-year-old second lieutenant, and he already had the DFC, and now there was a DP TWX from the President—”

“A what?” Berezovsky asked.

“A message from the President. DP means Direction of the President. It has the highest priority. Former DCI Bush was the President then, and he was so excited that he forgot he wasn’t a sailor anymore. The message read: ‘Pass to all hands Operation SNATCH’—that’s what we called the op—‘Well done. George H. W. Bush, Commander in Chief.’ That’s pretty heady stuff, especially for a second lieutenant. And it went right to his head.”

“Untrue. I have always been the epitome of modesty and self-effacement,” Castillo said.

Leverette laughed out loud.

“I can see him now,” he said, “strutting around in his desert suit, a CAR-4 in one hand, a .45 in a shoulder holster, frag grenades in his shirt pockets, a KA-BAR knife stuck in his boot top, and peering through his aviator sunglasses as master of all he surveyed.”

DeWitt chuckled.

“The cold, honest-to-God truth, ma’am,” DeWitt said, “was that Hotshot Charley here thought he was God’s gift to the Army and that it was necessary for me to sit on him pretty hard from time to time. As a general rule of thumb, second lieutenants don’t like sergeants telling them what to do. And then making them do it.”

He looked at Castillo.

“But it worked, didn’t it? Here you are, two wars later—three if you count the one we’re in with the Muslims—a light colonel doing interesting things for the President himself.”

“Raining on your parade, DeWitt, what I am is a light colonel who is not only in the deep stuff up to my ears, but is getting booted out of the Army at the end of this month.”

DeWitt looked at him for a long moment, then at Leverette, who nodded.

“Are you going to tell me what happened?” DeWitt asked. “Not to mention what the hell is going on around here?”

“It’s liable to cast a pall on our lunch,” Castillo said. “Let’s let fate decide. You ever been to Sub-Saharan Africa, DeWitt?”

“Yeah, and I didn’t like it much.”

“The Congo?”

“Both of ’em. There’s two, you know. And Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, places like that. I was bodyguarding a candy-ass from the agency who was ‘observing’ the UN. He didn’t speak any of the languages—”

“And you do?”

DeWitt nodded.

“Uncle Remus and I spent a wonderful year at the Language School in the Presidio. Just before we went to The Desert.”

“Why don’t we talk about this situation over lunch?” Lorimer said.

“Mr. Ambassador,” Castillo said when he had finished what in effect was a briefing about the chemical factory, “we were hoping you could tell us something of the Congo. We’re really in the dark, and only you and DeWitt have ever been there.”

Ambassador Lorimer looked at him coldly.

Oh, shit, I called him “Mr. Ambassador.”

What he’s doing now is considering how to point out to me how unforgivable that blunder is.

“It’s been some time, of course, since I have been there,” Lorimer finally said. “But on the other hand, I spent a long time in that part of the world, and I have since—akin to someone not being able to stop looking at a run-over dog—kept myself as up to date on it as possible.”

“Please, whatever you could tell us, Philippe,” Castillo said.

“Better,” the ambassador said. “The best way to do what you ask, I think, is to begin at the beginning. But where is the beginning?”

He paused as he considered his own question.

“In 1885,” he began, “the Association Internationale Africaine, chairman and sole stockholder Leopold the Second, King of the Belgians, announced they now owned what today we call the Democratic Republic of Congo. Nobody challenged him. The Germans were doing the same thing—I can’t recall the name of their company—in what is now Burundi, Rwanda, and Tanzania, and the French right next door in what later became known as Congo-Brazzaville.

“They were going to bring Christianity and culture to the savages, and also see about making a little profit from the copper, rubber, other minerals, and from whatever else they could exploit.

“They established the capital in a town they called Leopoldville, now called Kinshasa, and others at the interior navigational end of the Congo River. They called this one, now called Kisangani, the one in which you are interested, Stanleyville, after the famous explorer Henry Morton Stanley, who went looking for a missionary who was bringing Christ to the savages in the bush and had gone missing.

“Stanley found him on the rapids of the river and with great élan said, ‘Doctor Livingstone, I presume,’ as we all heard about in the eighth grade.”

There were the expected chuckles.

“This went on for about twenty years,” the ambassador continued. “Then, somewhere around 1906 or 1907, the King got some bad press, a lot of it American. An English diplomat named Roger Casement toured the Congo and learned that the Belgians had been unkind to the natives; Casement said they had starved to death or murdered large numbers—thousands upon thousands—of them.

“We Americans tend to be a little self-righteous, and there was a predictable hue and cry in the press.

“To which King Leopold replied that he had no idea that anything of the sort was going on and he would put an end to it. The Belgian Government, in the name of His Majesty, Leopold Two, annexed the Congo in 1908, with unspecified compensation to the Association Internationale Africaine.

“The bad press stopped, and now the Belgian parliament was in charge of improving the lot of the natives, who now found honest employment harvesting rubber, extracting copper, etcetera for Belgian firms, many of which had close ties to the Association Internationale Africaine.

“This situation lasted until 1960, and to be honest, what was termed ‘paternalistic colonialism’ wasn’t all bad. They brought schools, religion, and medicine to the Congo. Their hearts were in the right place, but very little of it stuck on the natives. It’s politically incorrect to say this, but the natives of Sub-Saharan Africa weren’t ready to govern themselves.

“I guess the best way to make that point is to quote Doctor Albert Schweitzer, organist, philosopher, and physician, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for his lifelong humanitarian services to Africa. He built a hospital in French Equatorial Africa and did a great deal else for Africans, to whom he referred to his dying day as ‘Les Sauvages.’

“I was in Leopoldville as a junior consular officer in June 1960 when the Belgians gave in to UN pressure—a lot of that generated by the United States—and granted the Congo its independence. It became the Republic of the Congo. So did the former French colony Middle Congo, next door. So we had two new independent countries with the same name. They became Congo-Brazzaville and Congo-Kinshasa, when the new government renamed Leopoldville.

“At that time, there were two—yes, two—university graduates in Congo-Kinshasa. There were some other very bright people, however. Some were friends of mine. I had one particular friend, a fellow named Joseph Désiré Mobutu, who had been a corporal in the Belgian gendarmerie. He loved to hear about the formation of the United States. I used to loan him books. He was really impressed with George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

“As soon as parliamentary elections could be held, they were. Mobutu was at the inauguration. In his new uniform. He was now a colonel in the Congolese Army.

“Things promptly started to come apart. Katanga, where the copper mines are, could see no reason to share its wealth with the rest of the country and announced its secession under a lunatic named Moise Tshombe. The Congo’s second-richest province, Kasai, also announced its independence a couple of weeks later. A military coup broke out in the capital and there was rampant looting.

“The prime minister of the Congo, Patrice Lumumba, turned to the Soviet Union for help. Khrushchev promptly started to send technicians and some really fancy weaponry to the Congo. They denied anything but honorable intentions.

“And we denied, of course, that we were sending weapons and CIA people to ‘advise’ President Joseph Kasavubu, even though that was about as much of a secret as the fact that it will grow dark when the sun goes down tonight.

“In my long government service,” Lorimer said, looking at Castillo, “I never saw a sitting U.S. President or heard from one. But the word going around then was that President Eisenhower was not going to tolerate the Russians in Sub-Saharan Africa and that he had decided that Nikita Khrushchev’s pal Lumumba was a bump on the road to international peace, harmony, and goodwill, and therefore had to be—to use the euphemistic terms I have heard so often since becoming friendly with Charley—whacked, terminated, eliminated.

“What happened was that in December 1960—this is six months after independence, mind you—Kasavubu overthrew the government. To make sure he wouldn’t come back, Lumumba was removed from the scene, it was rumored, by Colonel Joseph Désiré Mobutu.

“When I asked my old friend, the great admirer of Washington and Jefferson, that he tell me the rumors were not true, his response was that it would well behoove me to keep my nose out of Congolese internal affairs, and further that it might be a good idea for me to request a transfer home before something happened that would force President Kasavubu to declare me persona non grata.

“I received the same advice from a co-worker at the embassy who I had reason to believe was getting his orders from Langley, Virginia. Consequently, I remained in the Congo as long as I could, another six months.

“Then, after an assignment to the Philippines, I returned in time for the tragedy at Stanleyville. That was August to November 1964. I left the day we jumped the Belgian Paras on Stanleyville; a large Belgian Army medical officer took one look at me and ordered me onto an airplane. Actually, he carried me onto it.

“I haven’t been back to the Congo since. But in 1965, shortly after by then-Lieutenant General Mobutu had become commander in chief of the Army and had appointed himself president for five years”—he looked at Svetlana a moment—“I was then political counselor in our embassy in Copenhagen; we must exchange opinions of what makes a really good smorgasbord when we can find the time”—he looked back at Castillo—“someone, who I suspect was the agency man who advised me to seek a transfer, apparently remembered that I had once been friendly with the general, and of course that I had been in the bush outside Stanleyville during the tragedy and I was proposed as ambassador to what was by then Zaire. The word quickly came that I was considered not acceptable. I later learned that my report on what had happened there was considered insulting to Congolese national dignity.”

He stopped, looked thoughtful, exhaled audibly, and finished: “Further deponent sayeth not.”

“Sir,” Castillo said after a moment, “please don’t misunderstand this. That background was fascinating, but what I hope you’ll tell us is what we can expect when we get there.”

“ ‘We get there’?” Lorimer parroted.

“Yes, sir,” Castillo replied, not taking his point. “Me and my team.”

The ambassador remained silent and glanced at the others as he considered his reply.

Then he looked at Castillo and said: “First of all, my dear friend, if you were found anywhere near Stanleyville—and found you would be, with that rosy complexion—you would be killed and possibly cannibalized. The liver of a white man is considered good juju against bullets.

“As to what anyone else might find, if they were foolish enough to go to that area, it would be the sad remnants of a European attempt to superimpose their culture on the Congo. The Europeans, if I have to say this, are long gone. The airport—which used to have daily flights of Boeing 707 aircraft to and from Brussels—has been closed for years. There is rampant disease. And little or no electricity because little or no oil makes it up the Congo to power generators small or large. They would find stacks of decomposing bodies in the bush not unlike what the Khmer Rouge scattered around Cambodia. Need I go on?”

Castillo didn’t reply.

“The only way you could destroy that factory would be by air,” Lorimer said.

“We don’t even know where it is, within a hundred miles,” Castillo said.

“Oh, we can find it,” DeWitt said.

“ ‘We,’ DeWitt?” Castillo asked sarcastically.

“I thought this was an employment interview,” DeWitt said straight-faced. “You mean it wasn’t?”

“Charley,” Leverette said, “we could HALO a team, maybe just four, five shooters. Find the sonofabitch, paint it, and call in the Air Force.”

“You’d have to—” Castillo began. He stopped when a bell rang loudly, and then a telephone buzzed.

Lorimer picked up the telephone, listened, said, “Thank you,” and hung up.

“Someone else just happened to be in the neighborhood and is dropping in. Chief Inspector Ordóñez.”

“Oh, shit!” Castillo said.

“May I suggest that Dmitri and Svetlana might be more comfortable if DeWitt took them for a ride around the estancia?”

“How about just putting them in another room?” Castillo asked. “This could just be a coincidence.”

Or . . . he could be waving that Interpol warrant.

“If you’d like to come with me, Svetlana, Dmitri?” Ambassador Lorimer asked politely.

“No rush. It’ll take him five, six minutes to get here from the highway,” DeWitt said professionally.

XIV

[ONE]

Estancia Shangri-La

Tacuarembó Province

República Oriental del Uruguay

1505 4 January 2006

Chief Inspector José Ordóñez of the Interior Police Division of the Uruguayan Policía Nacional—an olive-skinned, dark-eyed man in his late thirties who was well-tailored—walked into the interior patio five minutes later.

“The door was open, Mr. Ambassador,” he greeted Lorimer politely. “I just came in.”

“You’re always welcome here, José. I’d hoped that I had made that clear when you last visited.” He gestured toward the table. “We’re just finishing lunch, but there’s more than enough—”

“That’s very kind, Mr. Ambassador. My day has been extraordinary, and I haven’t had my lunch.” He looked around the table, nodding.

“Good to see you, José,” Munz said. “Extraordinary, you say?”

Ordóñez took an open seat at the table. “Quite. I began the day very early.”

“Is that so?” Castillo said.

“Someone rang my doorbell at an unholy hour,” Ordóñez said. “But when I got out of bed, no one was there. This, however, had been slipped under my door.”

He handed Castillo a plain white letter-size envelope. It was unsealed.

Ordóñez nodded at it. “Please. Have a look.”

Castillo opened the envelope, took out a single sheet of paper, and read it.

Castillo handed it to Alfredo Munz, who read it, then handed it to Edgar Delchamps, who read it, than passed it to Alex Darby, who read it:

REFERENCE INTERPOL WARRANTS EUR/RU 2005-6777 FOR BEREZOVSKY, DMITRI AND EUR/RU 2005-6778 FOR ALEKSEEVA, SVETLANA

RELIABLE SOURCES SUGGEST BEREZOVSKY AND ALEKSEEVA MAY BE IN THE COMPANY OF C.G. CASTILLO. LTCOL CASTILLO IS A US ARMY INTELLIGENCE OFFICER WHO ALSO POSSESSES OTHER IDENTIFICATION, INCLUDING THAT OF A SUPERVISORY SPECIAL AGENT OF THE US SECRET SERVICE. HE WAS SEEN IN BUENOS AIRES 2 JANUARY 2006

IT ALSO HAS BEEN LEARNED THAT THE RUSSIAN OFFICER IN CHARGE OF THE BEREZOVSKY/ALEKSEEVA CASE, COLONEL EVGENY ALEKSEEVA, OF THE SVR, IS EITHER IN BUENOS AIRES OR EN ROUTE. HE IS TRAVELING ON A DIPLOMATIC PASSPORT.

Darby folded it and handed it back to Ordóñez, then said: “If I didn’t know better—no member of the FBI would ever do something like this, as we all know—I’d say that somebody has slipped a confidential FBI backgrounder to a member of the local law-enforcement community.”

Ordóñez did not respond to that. Instead, he said: “So, Colonel, before I had my breakfast, I made a couple of calls—these reports would have been on my desk anyway when I went to work, you understand—and learned both that your beautiful airplane had landed at Punta the previous afternoon and that Mr. Darby had taken the Buquebus to Montevideo.

“I then called the Conrad, thinking maybe you might be there playing a little Vingt et Un or something like that. And, sure enough, they told me you were there, in the company of what the manager told me was a truly striking red-haired lady.

“I asked myself, ‘Since I made it so clear that I personally and the government of Uruguay semi-officially have stated that we would prefer that you take your tourist business elsewhere, why are you unable to resist the temptation to return to Punta?’ ”

Ambassador Lorimer placed a plate heaped with slices of beef tenderloin on the table before him.

Castillo avoided the question. He gestured at Ordóñez’s lomo. “There are some lovely grilled peppers to go with that, José. Won’t you try some? And some really nice Cabernet Sauvignon. I’ll get you a glass. Unless, of course, you’re on duty and not drinking?”

Castillo got up from the table, and returned with a bottle and held it up.

“It’s called Bodegones del Sur, and it’s from the Bodega Juanicó. The label says it has a complex aroma, whatever that means, with notes of mature fruits—which calls to my mind a mental image of a cologne-soaked elderly gentleman of exquisite grace. . . .”

Ordóñez shook his head. “Pour the wine, please, Colonel. But, for the record, I’m always on duty.”

Castillo half-filled the large glass before Ordóñez, then helped himself to one.

“I’ll join you, so there will be two of us always on duty giving in to Demon Rum. Or Demon Cabernet.”

They touched glasses.

Ordóñez put some beef in his mouth and chewed.

When he had finished, he said, “Very nice, Mr. Ambassador,” and then turned to Castillo.

“So I hopped into my car and drove to Punta. I thought I might be able to have breakfast with you, Colonel, to chat about this.

“When I got there, I heard that you had rented a car and gone for an early-morning drive. But, as you can certainly understand, Colonel, my professional curiosity was piqued.”

Ordóñez took a sip of his wine, then went on: “So I showed the picture on the warrant of Miss—or is it Mrs.?—Alekseeva to the manager. He said that it sure looked like the lady who was sharing 1730 with you.

“And then I showed it to the maître d’ of the Restaurant Lo de Tere—which is the sort of place I would take a lovely redhead if I was having a romantic interlude in Punta—and he said a woman who looked very much like the woman in the photo had been in his restaurant last night eating caviar and drinking champagne with a big tipper who looked just like the picture I showed him of you.

“But you weren’t in the Conrad. Or on the beach. Or having coffee in one of our quaint seaside coffeehouses. So I asked myself, ‘If I were in Uruguay and knew that I was not exactly welcome, where would I go?’

“And here I am.”

“And here we are,” Castillo said.

“So it would seem,” Ordóñez said. “On the way here, I wondered if maybe it had occurred to you that Shangri-La might be an ideal place to hide these fugitives from Russian justice.”

“That thought never entered my head,” Castillo said.

“There have been too many foreigners’ bodies here as it is,” Ordóñez said, and when he had, his eye caught Lorimer’s. “Forgive me, Mr. Ambassador, but that had to be said.”

Lorimer made a deprecating gesture.

Ordóñez looked again at Castillo. “And, for that matter, more than enough bodies in the Conrad. Everywhere you go, Colonel, there seem to be bodies.”

Castillo could think of no reply to make.

“That’s not going to happen anymore,” Ordóñez said simply.

“There’s more going on here, José, than you understand,” Munz said.

“Alfredo, whatever it is, I don’t want to know about it.” There was a moment’s silence, then Ordóñez went on: “Something else occurred to me on the drive here. How much easier it would be if you weren’t one of my oldest friends, Alfredo, or if I didn’t like—and admire—Colonel Castillo despite all the trouble he’s caused me. I even thought it would be very nice if I was one of those people who have a picture of Che Guevara on their office wall.”

Ordóñez smiled as he saw that the Che Guevara reference was lost on his audience.

“Why? Because if I were in the Che camp of followers, I would first find the people on the Interpol warrants, arrest them, then turn them over to the Russian embassy and see if the Russians really would pay the two hundred fifty thousand euros they’re offering as a reward.

“I would then escort Colonel Castillo and the rest of his entourage to their airplane, see that their passports were stamped ‘Not Valid for Reentry into Uruguay,’ and watch until the aircraft was in the air.

“That would allow me to go to my superior and report that the situation had been dealt with.”

He took a moment to have some more beef and wine.

“But I can’t do that,” Ordóñez finally said. “So I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. About ten o’clock tomorrow morning, I am going to tell my superior that although I rushed to Punta immediately on learning that Colonel Castillo and possibly the Russian embezzlers might be there, I got there an hour after Colonel Castillo and entourage flew away from Aeropuerto Internacional Capitán de Corbeta Carlos A. Curbelo, having filed a flight plan to Porto Alegre, Brazil.”

There was quiet while the pronouncement was considered.

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

“Thank you, José,” Munz said.

There you go, Alfredo, Castillo thought, once again acting before asking.

But once again you’re right.

“Me, too, José,” Castillo said.

Ordóñez made a gesture that said, Of course. It is nothing.

He said, “And so, having of course never been here, I’m going to have another glass of the perfumed fairy Cabernet and leave.”

[TWO]

Berezovsky and Svetlana came out of the room where they had been waiting.

Castillo handed the FBI backgrounder to Berezovsky, who read it and then gave it to Svetlana.

“I do not know what this is,” Berezovsky said.

“It’s a backgrounder,” Castillo said. “The FBI sends this sort of thing to people they think would be—or should be—interested. It’s unofficial, but of course in effect it is official.”

“The question,” Darby said, “is: Where did it come from? My primary suspect is Montvale.”

“Ye olde knife in Ace’s back?” Delchamps said. “Despite his promise to lay off?”

“Could be Montvale,” Castillo said. “But it could be the FBI itself, never mind the President’s standing order of hands off the OOA. The FBI’s under the Department of Justice, not Montvale. They don’t like him any more than they like me. And by now the story of me having snatched Dmitri and Svet from the agency station chief in Vienna has had plenty of time to get around Washington. They have the capability of locating the Gulfstream; they know it was in Buenos Aires. That’d explain the ‘was seen in Buenos Aires’ line.

“So, thinking that it would be very nice indeed if they could embarrass Montvale and stick it to me and get credit for bagging the Russian defectors, they sent that backgrounder to both Buenos Aires and Montevideo. Shines a different light on their motto, ‘Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity,’ eh?”

Darby, DeWitt, and Davidson chuckled. Delchamps grunted.

“In Buenos Aires,” Castillo went on, “a couple of things might’ve happened. Maybe Artigas got the backgrounder and ‘lost’ it—”

“Who, Charley?” Dick Miller said.

“Julio Artigas. Used to be an FBI agent in Montevideo. He looks like Ordóñez’s brother. Smart. Good guy. He learned—intuited—more about us than was comfortable, so we had him transferred to OOA and moved him to the embassy in Buenos Aires. Inspector Doherty has made it clear to him that if he behaves, Doherty will take care of him in the FBI.”

Miller nodded his understanding.

“So he got the backgrounder and tore it up. Or he didn’t get it. Some other FBI agent did and took it to Ambassador Silvio for permission to tell SIDE or whatever, and Silvio said ‘Not yet’ or even ‘Hell, no.’

“The backgrounder also went to Montevideo, where (a) the FBI guys are still pissed at Two-Gun Yung, who they now know works for us, and (b) the ambassador is still pissed at us generally because of Two-Gun, and me personally. I can see McGrory—”

“Who?” Miller said again.

“The ambassador,” Castillo furnished. “I can see him smiling broadly, saying that he thought the local authorities should be made aware of the contents of the message. But then McGrory also says to slip it under Ordóñez’s door in the middle of the night, thus covering his ass by producing what is called ‘credible deniability.’ I thought it interesting that ‘FBI’ was nowhere to be found on this.”

He tapped the backgrounder with his fingertips.

“Yeah,” Darby said.

“Ol’ Ace really isn’t as dumb as he looks, is he?” Delchamps said, earning him a cold look from Svetlana.

“So, what does it mean?” Berezovsky said.

“Since we don’t know where else that backgrounder may have gone, I just don’t know what it means. But I don’t think it’s a very good idea for you and Svet—for that matter, any of us—to go back to Argentina right now.”

Delchamps said, “One thought that pops into my mind is that you face facts and abandon this wild idea of yours to take out the chemical factory.”

“Is that what you really think I should do?” Castillo said evenly. “That is, not do?”

“It’s an option, Ace.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“It’s obviously the most sensible thing to do,” Delchamps said. “But on the other hand, I still have this romantic, second-childhood notion that I’d like to go out in a blaze of glory.”

Miller grunted. “You’re saying your idea of going out in glory is being boiled in a pot for somebody’s juju supper? You heard what the ambassador said about the chances of a white guy in the Congo.”

“And the ambassador is right, Mr. Delchamps,” DeWitt said.

“If you call me ‘Mr. Delchamps’ one more time, I’m going to start calling you Bee Fu Om—that’s short for Bald Fat Ugly Old Man.”

“Let me think a minute,” Castillo said.

When it seemed to Delchamps the minute had expired, he said, “Well, Ace, since we can’t go to Argentina, and Ordóñez made it pretty clear Porto Alegre is not a viable destination option, wherever shall we go?”

“Washington,” Castillo said.

“That I think is what is known as an off-the-wall thought,” Delchamps said.

“Hear me out,” Castillo said. “We send Alfredo back to Argentina. He can catch a civilian flight, Aerolíneas or something else. Maybe even catch a flight today. The minute he gets there, he calls Pevsner and tells him we’re headed for Cancún, and to set that up for Dmitri and Svet.”

“You’ve lost me,” Delchamps said. “Cancún?”

“Actually, an island just off Cancún. With an airport that will take the Gulfstream. Cozumel. On which is the Grand Cozumel Beach & Golf Resort, featuring sandy beaches, a golf course, deep-sea fishing, and some really nice cuisine. You’ll like it, Svet—”

“I am not going to . . . wherever you said.”

“—and not only because it is owned by your cousin Aleksandr. It also has, for reasons I don’t wish to think about, a security system that is at least as mind-boggling as the ones in Bariloche and Pilar Polo & Golf. Or Golf & Polo. Whatever the hell it is.”

“Where, my Carlos, do you think you would be going without me?”

“To Washington, Svet. You heard what the ambassador said, what DeWitt said. Thinking that we can find the chemical factory, much less take it out, is pissing in the wind. What I can do is go directly to the President.

“According to Montvale, as of the day before yesterday, the President has been shielded from my ‘outrageous behavior’ in Vienna. I can see no reason for him to have told him since then, because that would mean the CIA would have to fess up that they don’t have either of the top SVR agent defectors wanted on an Interpol warrant that they claim they do.

“That means I can get to the President. Just as soon as we drop Svetlana and Dmitri into the arms of luxury on Cozumel and go wheels-up, I get on the AFC and call him. Unless he’s in Nome, Alaska, we can go direct to wherever he is. And with a little luck, get there before Montvale hears what’s going on.

“Even if Montvale’s sitting there with the President when we get there, and has told him his version of the story, the President will hear me out.” He paused and looked at the men seated around Delchamps. “That is, hear us out. You’re going with me, Edgar. And you, too, Alex. And Davidson, Leverette, and DeWitt. Everybody who has heard what Dmitri and Svetlana have told us and believe there’s more in the Congo than a fish farm.”

There was a moment’s silence.

“Either the President will hear us out, or we go directly to jail without passing Go. Going with me will be on a voluntary basis, and I would be neither surprised nor disappointed if everybody elected instead to go trolling for sail-fish with Svet and Dmitri off sun-drenched Cozumel.”

There was another long moment of silence.

“May I speak?” Ambassador Lorimer asked.

“Yes, sir, of course,” Castillo said.

“I was thinking, Colonel, that if you thought it would be useful, I could prepare a short paper on the history of activity in that area of the Congo. For example, its initial use by the then-West Germans as a nuclear facility. That isn’t well-known, and I think it’s possible that he’s unaware of it.”

“Your President wouldn’t know about that?” Berezovsky asked incredulously.

“Washington is a strange place, Dmitri,” Ambassador Lorimer said. “President Truman was informed of the nuclear weapons that the United States was developing only the day after President Roosevelt died. While Truman was Vice President, he was not told one word—he had been kept completely in the dark.”

“So, you are agreeing that my going to the President makes sense?” Castillo said.

“From my vantage point, which I am aware is one of near-total ignorance, it looks to me as if it is your only viable option.”

Castillo nodded thoughtfully. “Then yes, sir, Mr. Ambassador, I would be very grateful if you would prepare a paper like that.”

“Then I shall, even though I am about out of patience with your refusal, my friend, to address me by my Christian name.”

“I’m in, Ace,” Delchamps said.

“Me, too,” Darby said.

Castillo looked at Davidson.

“Jesus Christ, Charley! Do you have to ask? Yes, sir, Colonel, sir, I will go with you to see the President, sir. Not only that, I will bring Uncle Remus and this bald, fat, ugly old man with me, and do my best to keep them sober.”

[THREE]

Cozumel International Airport

Cozumel, Mexico

2005 5 January 2006

Castillo saw that Miller had a hard time getting out of the co-pilot seat—that it was painful for him—but pretended not to notice.

It was understandable. Castillo was a little stiff, too, and during the long flight often had been reminded of his wounded buttocks and leg.

And it had been a long one indeed: Six hours fifteen minutes from Punta del Este across the South American continent to Quito, Ecuador, and then after an hour for fuel and a really bad chicken supper, another three hours and something from Quito to Cozumel.

On both legs he had sent Miller back to the passenger compartment so that he could stretch out on one of the couches with his knee unbent for an hour or so. And on both occasions, Svetlana had come forward and sat in the co-pilot seat. They had tried to hold hands, but the Gulfstream flight deck had not been designed for romance, so they just sat there and watched the fuel gauges drop and the GPS image of the Gulfstream inch its way across the map.

There had been plenty of time to think, and a lot to think about, and a number of decisions to be made, one of which he thought of as Step One of Biting the Bullet.

Castillo started to implement Step One of Biting the Bullet now, after Miller left the cockpit and he heard the whine of the stair-door motor.

As he reached for the AFC handset in its rack beside the co-pilot seat, Svetlana again came into the cockpit. She asked with her eyebrows what he was doing.

To hell with it; she’ll learn what’s going to happen soon enough anyway.

He pointed to the handset. She handed it to him, then slid into the seat and listened to his side of the conversation.

“C. G. Castillo,” he said to the handset.

“Yes, Colonel Castillo?”

The voice-recognition circuit reacted more quickly, he thought, than a human operator would have answered.

And it doesn’t sound at all like a computer-generated voice.

“General Bruce J. McNab. Encrypted Level One.”

“One moment, please.”

Then McNab’s voice: “Thank you ever so much for checking in, Colonel. I was beginning to wonder if you had decided to retire earlier than scheduled.”

“Good evening, sir.”

“Or if you were in the arms of the Argentine cops in Gaucho Land. I presume you’re aware of the FBI backgrounder?”

“Yes, sir. You’ve seen it?”

“Oh, yes. And the ‘locate but do not detain’ message.”

“I didn’t hear about that one, sir.”

“Well, if you ever try to come to the United States, you’ll know why the Border Patrol is so fascinated with your passport.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where the hell are you?”

“Sitting in the airplane—we just landed—in Cozumel.”

“A fuel stop? Or are you planning to rest from your trip overnight?”

“Both, sir.”

“I’ve given some thought on how to get together—”

“Sir . . .”

“—since your coming to Fort Bragg would be ill-advised. What I’ve been thinking—”

“Sir . . .”

“—is that I would fly to Rucker, which wouldn’t attract any attention, then chopper down to Hurlburt. No one would even know I’d done that. And—I presume you have your German passport—if you went through immigration at Lauderdale—”

“Sir . . .”

“Goddamn it, Charley, stop interrupting me! If you went through immigration at Fort Lauderdale, which makes even more sense now that you’ll be coming from Cozumel, since they’re both vacation spots, you could fly on to Pensacola—”

“Sir, I’m not coming to see you.”

There was a short pause before McNab replied, “Say again?”

“I’m not going to come see you, sir, at least—”

“Your coming to me was not in the nature of a suggestion, Colonel. More like an order. You remember, from your time in the Army, what an order is, right?”

“I’m going to see the President, sir.”

There was a long pause.

“He sent for you?”

“No, sir. I’m going to call him and ask to see him just as soon as I get off the horn with you, sir.”

There was another long pause before McNab said, “Charley, I don’t think the President is going to buy ‘I’m sorry, and it won’t happen again, sir.’”

“What I’m hoping he will buy, sir, is that there is a chemical laboratory and factory in the Congo.”

“You’re aware, of course, that the CIA thinks what that is is a fish farm.”

“I’m taking Mr. Delchamps with me, sir.”

“Ol’ Lethal Injection in the Neck Delchamps? You know what the agency thinks about him.”

“And Mr. Darby.”

“He who sees a Mad Russian bent on world domination behind every tree?”

“And Jack Davidson and Uncle Remus and P. B. DeWitt. They all have—”

“P. B. DeWitt? My P. B. DeWitt? Master Sergeant Phineas Bartholomew DeWitt, Retired?”

“Yes, sir. He’s one of the China Post guys I hired to sit on Ambassador Lorimer.”

“I haven’t seen him since his wife’s funeral,” McNab thought aloud.

“They all have talked to the Russian defectors and believe them, sir. And so does Ambassador Lorimer. And the ambassador has prepared a background paper for the President, sir, outlining the history of the factory site, when the Germans—”

“And it is your intention to march all these people into the Oval Office—he’s not there, by the way, he’s in Saint Louis, giving a speech—and then what?”

“Try to convince him there is a chemical lab and factory, sir. And get his permission to take it out. There’s no way I can do that myself.”

“I recall suggesting something like that to you, Colonel,” McNab said sarcastically. “Now listen to me carefully, Colonel. This is what they call a direct order. You are not to get on the horn to the President. You are not going to see the President.”

Castillo did not reply.

“What you are going to do, Colonel, and again this is a direct order, you are tomorrow morning going to enter the United States as Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger at Fort Lauderdale. You then are going to fly to Pensacola, Florida. When you have procured suitable accommodations in some luxury beachside hotel, you will then contact me on the AFC—I will most likely already be in Fort Rucker—and I will give you my ETA at Hurlburt, to which you will send Jack Davidson to pick me up. No. Make that P. B. I want to have a word with him.”

Castillo didn’t reply.

“I hope that silence I hear,” McNab said a long moment later, “is not one of the finest officers I have ever known contemplating willful disobedience of a lawful order.”

Yes, sir.

That’s exactly what it was, General.

Key word “was,” as I consider you one of the finest officers I have ever known.

And without question you’re thinking a helluva lot smarter than I am right now.

Case in point: Me even considering disobeying your order. . . .

“Sir, I’ll get on the horn just as soon as we’re in the hotel in Pensacola.”

After another long moment, McNab said, “Get some rest, Charley. It’s a long flight from Gaucho Land and tomorrow’s probably going to be pretty busy. Out.”

“Break it down,” Castillo said, and turned to Svetlana.

She met his eyes for a long moment and then turned away to put the handset back in its holder. And then she got out of the co-pilot seat and went into the passenger compartment.

Castillo had the feeling she had wanted to say something but had changed her mind.

He looked out the cockpit window and saw that Mexican customs and immigration officials were examining passports and aircraft documents. Behind their truck were two white GMC Yukon XLs with the Grand Cozumel Beach & Golf Resort logotype on their doors.

Four gorillas—these looked Mexican—stood by the GMCs, waiting to make themselves useful.

[FOUR]

The Tahitian Suite

Grand Cozumel Beach & Golf Resort

Cozumel, Mexico

2125 5 January 2006

“So that’s it,” Castillo said. “For a number of reasons, instead of going to see the President tomorrow, we’re all going—except, of course, Svet and Dmitri, who will stay here and watch the waves go up and down—to see General McNab tomorrow. Maybe, after he hears what all of us have to say, he’ll say, ‘Okay, go see the President.’ And maybe not.”

“Well, I know McNab well enough to know he’s not doing this to cover his ass,” Leverette said. “So what’s he thinking?”

Castillo shrugged. “We’ll just have to wait and find out. Without him, we’re dead in the water. And I have had, since I had our little chat, another unpleasant thought. Even if I went to the President and he believed me, he would want a second opinion about staging an op to blow the place up, and the man he’d go to for that second opinion would be Lieutenant General Bruce J. McNab.”

“May I speak, Colonel?” Berezovsky said.

“Colonel”? That sounds pretty serious.

“Of course,” Castillo said.

“And does that ‘what anyone knows, everyone knows’ rule of yours apply to me and Svetlana, or would you rather hear what I have to say in private?”

“Let’s hear it, Dmitri.”

“Does the name Colonel Pietr Sunev mean anything to you?”

“Ol’ Suitcase Nukes himself,” Delchamps said. “Talk about egg on the agency’s face!”

Castillo chuckled. “Yes, we have heard of him, Dmitri. Friend of yours?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. Or he was.”

“I’m in the dark,” DeWitt said.

“Dmitri’s former associates,” Delchamps furnished, “let the agency find out that about a hundred briefcase-size nuclear weapons had been cleverly smuggled into the States, and were scattered all over the States waiting to be detonated at the appropriate moment—”

“And,” Darby picked up, “this was confirmed by a Russian KGB defector named Pietr Sunev—”

“Who then led the boys in Langley on a merry chase all over the country,” Delchamps resumed, “during which they found no bombs, because there were none.”

“But,” Darby interjected, smiling, “Colonel Sunev was such a nice guy and a convincing liar—and knew how to work a polygraph—that the agency believed him so much that—”

“They never used more efficient—if less pleasant—truth detectors on him,” Delchamps said.

“—believed him so much,” Darby went on, “that they gave him not only a very substantial tax-free payment for his services but also put him in the CIA’s version of the Witness Protection Program, which gave him a new identity—”

“As a professor of political science!” Delchamps interjected. “I always loved that little nuance.”

“At a prestigious left-wing college—”

“Grinnell. In Iowa,” Delchamps furnished.

“—from which one day the professor disappeared—with, of course, the money he had been paid. To turn up a week or so later in Moscow.”

“That’s the man,” Berezovsky said.

“You guys done good with that operation, Dmitri,” Delchamps said.

“That operation did go well,” Berezovsky said. “And I would rather suspect that General McNab is aware of it.”

“What you’re suggesting now is that he thinks you’re Sunev Two?” Castillo asked, now quite serious.

“The United States would be excoriated in world opinion,” Svetlana said, “if a team of your Spetsnaz was killed or captured trying to destroy a fish farm in a country whose population is starving. It would be worse if your aircraft was successful in destroying it.”

“Where are you going with this?” Castillo asked.

“I think it would be much smarter, my Carlos, for Dmitri and me to go with you tomorrow than for us to stay here and watch the waves go up and down.”

“To do what?”

“To convince General McNab of the truth,” Berezovsky said. “And to make ourselves available, if that should become necessary, to the appropriate authorities.”

Delchamps grunted. “Let me give you a scenario, Dmitri. You go through agency debriefing, which means this time the use of the less pleasant methods of truth detecting, and they believe what you have to say. Which isn’t much. What you have told us is hearsay. We believe you, but that won’t count with the agency. What they are going to think is that here is the guy—”

“And his sister,” Darby interjected.

“—who humiliated the station chief in Vienna, and thus the agency. They conveniently will conclude that you are the embezzlers the Russians say you are, and have concocted this fantastic story, à la Sunev, to cover your ass, and the thing for them to do is turn you over to Interpol for return to Russia.”

“Neither of you is going to turn yourselves in to the agency,” Castillo said.

“If you think that through, Colonel,” Berezovsky said, “that is not your decision to make. How would you stop us?”

Castillo met his eyes. “How about reminding you of your wife and daughter in Argentina?”

“Did you notice how well my wife and Susanna Sieno got along? Even better than you and I, Carlos. Both women know of the roles their husbands play in the world in which people like you and I live. From time to time, when God wills it, unpleasant things happen.

“We are back, Carlos, to what we have talked about before. The sin of omission. If I went back to Argentina without seeing this through, that would be a sin. What happens now is in the hands of God.”

No, it fucking well isn’t.

It’s in the hands of C. G. Castillo—but I don’t have a fucking clue how to handle it.

When you don’t know what the hell you’re doing, stall.

“Dmitri, if I allowed you and Svetlana to come with us to Florida, would you give me your word, swear to God on the lives of your family, you wouldn’t turn yourself in to the agency without talking to me first?”

Berezovsky considered that a moment.

“I so swear,” he said, and crossed himself.

And I swear that you’re going back to your wife and little girl if I have to drug you, roll you in a carpet, and ship you as FedEx freight.

Or carry you on my back.

And I’ll die before I see Svetlana in the hands of the agency, who would—Delchamps is right on the money about that—send her back to Russia and then congratulate themselves for “dealing with the situation in a way that reflected credit upon the agency.”

[FIVE]

Svetlana was wrapped in a white terry-cloth robe—under which Castillo happened to notice she wore the lacey red underpants he had first happened to see in Vienna’s Westbahnhof—and leaning on the jamb of the bathroom door as she watched him conduct business on the telephone.

She asked with her eyes what was going on. He signaled for her to wait.

“I appreciate your understanding,” he said into the phone. “The animal is a symbol of the strength and devotion of the Lorimer Fund, and I can’t imagine Max not being at a board of directors meeting.”

Svetlana raised her eyebrows even higher in question, as whoever Castillo was talking to said something else.

“Thank you very much,” Castillo said politely, “but I think we can make do with the space in the larger suite for our meeting.”

The door chime sounded and Svetlana, in bare feet, ran quickly to answer it.

Castillo saw that it was a room-service waiter pushing a cart on which sat a champagne cooler and something else he couldn’t see.

“I’m afraid we won’t have time for offshore fishing,” Castillo went on, “but I must admit it certainly sounds like fun.”

The room-service waiter opened the champagne and Svetlana attacked whatever else was on the table by jabbing at it with a fork.

“A cocktail party at the pool is something we’ll have to consider when we get there,” Castillo said. “But that, too, is certainly an interesting option.”

Svetlana signed the room-service check and showed the waiter out the door, carefully fastening the lock after he’d gone.

She returned to the room-service cart, picked up two champagne stems with the thumb and two fingers of her right hand, then picked up something with her left hand and walked to Castillo.

“We look forward to seeing you, too, and will do so tomorrow,” Castillo said, his tone suggesting he was past ready to finish the business conversation. “Thank you so much for your courtesy.”

He hung up the telephone and said to it, “Sonofabitch wouldn’t stop selling!”

Then he looked up at Svetlana.

He started to say something else but could not, because she had thrust something into his mouth.

“Beluga,” she said, and showed him the label on the small jar.

Great . . . more goddamn fish eggs.

“Wonderful,” he said a moment later.

“And Pommery extra brut,” she said, offering him one of the glasses. “That Uruguayan champagne was not bad, but it was not French, and we’re celebrating.”

What the hell are we celebrating?

Dmitri volunteering that the both of you commit suicide?

She saw something in his eyes.

“Not to worry, my Carlos, I am rich. I will pay for it.”

He touched his glass to hers.

“Exactly what is it that we’re celebrating?”

“Us. You and me. Being in love.”

“Sweetheart, what would I have to do to get you to stay here?”

She ignored him. “And after you finish the caviar and the champagne, I have a small present for you.”

“Did you hear what I asked?”

“It is something I know you like. . . .”

“Jesus Christ, honey. Listen to me, please.”

“No,” she said flatly. “There is nothing you can say, my Carlos.”

He looked at her for a long moment.

She flipped the robe open and then closed it. “What sort of a present, my darling, do you think Little Miss Red Under Britches has in mind for you?”

He smiled—So, she’s heard her codename, he thought—then reached for her and wrapped his arms around her. Even through the thick terry cloth, he could feel the softness and warmth of her belly against his cheek.

He felt a tightness in his throat, and then his chest heaved.

Jesus Christ, I’m crying!

[SIX]

Portofino Island Resort & Spa

Pensacola Beach, Florida

1530 6 January 2006

“Welcome to the Portofino, Mr. Castillo,” the manager on duty said.

Castillo recognized his voice.

This is the sonofabitch from the phone call yesterday.

The same sonofabitch who tried selling me everything in the place as a “surprisingly inexpensive option to enhance your visit.”

“Before we get going here,” Castillo said pointing to a signboard standing beside the reception desk, “can you please get rid of that? Our donors might not understand.”

The signboard had movable white letters on a black background that announced:

THE PORTOFINO ISLAND RESORT & SPA

WELCOMES

THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF THE LORIMER CHARITABLE &

BENEVOLENT FUND

C.G. CASTILLO, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

“I understand completely, Mr. Castillo,” the man announced with an unctuous tone. “Consider it gone!”

He snapped his fingers to attract the attention of a bellman, and when a languid youth appeared, the two of them carried the sign somewhere out of sight.

“Until just now,” Delchamps offered, “I had no idea you were our executive director. Just what does that entail?”

Castillo gave him the finger.

“I just had a very discomfiting thought,” Delchamps said seriously. “If there’s a ‘locate but do not detain’ out on you, our friends in the FBI are going to know where you are as soon as your sales manager buddy runs your credit card.”

“Jesus! I didn’t think of that.”

“Well, you’re in love. That tends to make people forgetful.”

The manager returned.

Delchamps handed him an LC&BF platinum American Express card. “Put everything on this, please.”

“Mr. Castillo won’t be using his card?”

“Oh, no. Our executive director never pays for anything. That’s my job. I’m director for corporate gifts. And while we’re here, perhaps you’ll be able to give me a few minutes of your valuable time?”

[SEVEN]

They were in a large suite on what looked like the top floor of the high-rise resort on the beach.

Lester Bradley checked the AFC, which he had installed on a wide balcony overlooking the beach and the Gulf of Mexico, then gave Castillo a thumbs-up signal.

Castillo picked up the handset and told the computer to connect him with General McNab with Level One encryption.

When he heard McNab’s voice, Castillo said, “Advance party reporting, sir. We hold the high ground. No unfriendlies have been sighted.”

“As strange as this may sound, I’m really glad to hear from you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What was the meaning of what you just said?”

“I’m in a very nice room on the top floor of the Portofino Island Resort & Spa, which is on Pensacola Beach about half an hour from the Pensacola Airport and about thirty miles from Hurlburt.”

“It must be nice not to have to worry about living on per diem.”

“Yes, sir. It is.”

“You have wheels?”

“A small fleet, sir.”

“I’m in the Hurlburt O Club. On the beach?”

“Yes, sir. I know where it is.”

“The question would then be: Does Phineas know where it is?”

“I’m sure he can find it, sir.”

“What kind of wheels?”

“Two Suburbans and a Mustang convertible, sir. A red one.”

“The Mustang sounds nice, but I have with me my aide, an old friend of yours and Miller’s, and the co-pilot. And, of course, the AFC. I don’t think we’d all fit in a Mustang. Send Phineas in one of the Suburbans.”

“Old friend”?

Probably Vic D’Allessando.

But more likely somebody from the Aviation School, maybe somebody from the 160th.

“Is putting everybody up going to cause any problems?”

“No, sir. I’m sure they’ll be happy to accommodate everybody.”

Especially since this place doesn’t seem to be turning away people rushing to pay them two hundred and fifty bucks a night minimum.

“Well, make sure.”

“Yes, sir. I will. Sir, if DeWitt leaves now, he can be there in, say, thirty-five, forty minutes.”

“Does this Porto Whatever Resort & Spa have a restaurant? One I can afford?”

“Sir, you will be an honored guest of the Lorimer Fund.”

“We didn’t have any lunch, and until seventeen hundred, all the O Club has to offer is stale peanuts and even more stale popcorn.”

A wild hair popped into Castillo’s mind. He considered it briefly.

Well, why the hell not?

He’s a general officer and a gentleman.

He’s not going to throw one of his celebrated tantrums in McGuire’s.

“General, there’s a great steak house in Pensacola called McGuire’s. We need to eat, too. May I suggest you have DeWitt take you there directly? And then we can come to the hotel.”

“I know McGuire’s,” General McNab said. “Every once in a great while, Colonel, you have a decent idea. This one, however, is an excellent one. We’ll see you at McGuire’s when we get there. McNab out.”

[EIGHT]

Ruprecht O’Tolf Wine Cellar

McGuire’s Irish Pub

Pensacola, Florida

1750 6 January 2006

The only thing the obliging management and staff of McGuire’s would not do to accommodate the Lorimer Charitable & Benevolent Fund’s board of directors dinner was permit its executive director to smoke a cigar. They had even sneaked Max in through a fire exit door.

The management had made available to them the Wine Cellar, which was both a bona fide wine cellar—with, so the menu said, more than seven thousand bottles of wine—and a private dining room with a long banquet table in a sunken room within sight of the wine.

By the time DeWitt opened the door for Lieutenant General Bruce J. McNab’s spectacular appearance on the passageway between the door and the wine cellar—McNab was in uniform, which was adorned not only with an impressive display of multicolored ribbons representing the wars he had been in and the decorations he had been awarded but seven sets of parachutist’s wings and two aiguillettes—Lieutenant Colonel C. G. Castillo had had ample time to consider that coming to a festive Irish pub (with, for example, some two hundred thousand dollars in one-dollar bills stapled by “honorary Irishmen and lasses” to its ceiling and walls) might not be, after all, one of his brightest ideas.

To say that the general was going to be surprised when he found everyone—Castillo, Dick Miller, Colin Leverette, Jack Davidson, Alex Darby, Edgar Delchamps, Lester Bradley, Jack and Sandra Britton, plus, of course, Dmitri Berezovsky and Svetlana Alekseeva—gathered around a table covered with an impressive display of hors d’oeuvres and numerous bottles of wine from the cellar was something of an understatement.

But what proved to be the real surprise, which caused Castillo’s mouth literally to momentarily gape, was that one of the three officers—also in full uniform, trailing the general, “the old friend” who McNab had mentioned—was not Chief Warrant Officer Five (Retired) Victor D’Allessando. Nor was it some old crony from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment with whom Charley and Dick could swap war stories.

It was, instead, Lieutenant Colonel Randolph Richardson III, of the Army Aviation School.

Corporal Bradley broke the silence as he shot to his feet, sending his heavy chair loudly screeching five feet backward across the hardwood flooring.

“Attention on deck!” he bellowed as loud as he could. “Flag officer on deck!”

“As you were,” McNab said. “Good evening, gentlemen.” He then saw Svetlana and Sandra. He looked at Castillo. “And ladies.”

McNab came regally down the stairs and headed for Svetlana and Sandra, who were standing at the table, washing oysters down with Chardonnay.

“Bruce McNab, ladies. May I ask what two beautiful women are doing with all these ugly men?”

“I’m Sandra Britton, and I’m waiting for the good time that ugly man promised if we came along with him,” Sandra said, pointing at her husband. “All he’s produced so far is a couple of lousy oysters.”

Svetlana laughed, and McNab turned to her.

“And you, my dear. What did the ugly man promise you?”

“I thought it would probably be more than oysters. But I have to admit these are very good.”

“And you are?”

“Susan Barlow, General, and this man is my brother, Tom.”

McNab’s eyes said, Like hell. I know who you and Brother Tom are.

“An honor, General,” Berezovsky said. “I’ve heard a lot about you from Carlos.”

“I’ll bet you have,” McNab said.

“I’m Edgar Delchamps, General. Ditto.”

“Ditto?”

“I’ve heard a lot about you, General.”

“Ditto. From some mutual acquaintances in Virginia.”

“Alex Darby, General.” Darby offered his hand, chuckled, and added, “Ditto, ditto, ditto.”

“Meaning?” McNab said.

“I’ve heard a lot about you, and I’ll bet you’ve heard a lot about me. From the same mutual acquaintances in Virginia.”

“True,” McNab said, and turned to Lester Bradley.

“Why do I suspect you’re the Marine Corps representative?”

“Sir, Corporal Bradley, Lester, sir.”

“And I have heard a lot about you, son,” McNab said. “All of it from people I respect, and all of it good.”

Corporal Bradley’s face turned red.

McNab looked at Miller. “How’s your knee, Dick?”

“Coming along just fine, sir.”

McNab wordlessly shook hands with Davidson and Leverette, then turned to the others in his party. They still stood on the passageway. He pointed them out, left to right, and said: “Lieutenant Colonel Peter Woods, the second-worst aide-de-camp I’ve ever had; the worst by far was Colonel Castillo. Next is Major Homer Foster, who kept Colonel Richardson from making fatal flying errors on the way down here. On the end is Colonel Richardson, who was a classmate of Castillo and Miller at West Point. Make your own introductions, please, gentlemen.”

Max padded up to McNab, sat before him, and offered his paw.

“General McNab, Max,” Castillo said. “Max, General McNab.”

McNab squatted and shook Max’s paw.

“I met one of your progeny today, Max. He was soiling General Crenshaw’s office carpet at Fort Rucker at the time.”

“And my son Randy has his brother,” Colonel Richardson said.

Svetlana caught that and looked at Castillo. He nodded.

“Are we about finished making nice?” McNab asked. “Those appetizers look like a great starter, but I really could eat a horse.”

“Oh, I would say you’ll fare better than that in here, General,” Berezovsky said. “May we offer you a glass of wine?”

“A man after my own heart,” McNab said. “Is there some Malbec?”

“Sir?” Colonel Richardson said.

McNab looked at him.

“Sir, while I hate to pass up what looks to be a wonderful—”

“You have the name of the place we’re staying?” McNab cut him off.

“The Portofino Island Resort & Spa on Pensacola Beach, sir.”

“Check in with Woods at 0700,” McNab said.

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

Richardson made his apologies around the room and quickly left.

McNab looked at Castillo. “Mrs. Richardson is chaperoning a bunch of kids from Rucker. Including their boy. They’re at a motel near the Naval Air Station; the kids are visiting the Naval Aviation Museum.”

“That’s one hell of a museum.”

“General Crenshaw told me you taught the boy to fly.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, perhaps you’ll have a chance to say ‘hello’ tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If there’s time. Since we are not going to talk business at dinner and our time later tonight will be short, I suspect we’ll really be busy tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And maybe by then you’ll have come up with some suitable explanation, Colonel.”

Explanation? Castillo thought. For what exactly?

That damn list is long—and complicated.

“I’m not sure I follow, sir. An explanation for what?”

McNab helped himself to some of the seared-rare ahi tuna appetizer. He chewed slowly, clearly enjoying the delicacy, then swallowed. “I told you on the phone that I was starving.”

And here we are. Eating.

“Yes, sir?”

“Then why the hell did you send the Suburban all the way to Hurlburt to then haul us back here to Pensacola?”

“But, sir—”

“We right now could be finished with our meals at the McGuire’s in Destin.”

Damn!

There’s a McGuire’s in Destin?

“There’s a McGuire’s in Destin, sir?”

“Not ten miles east of the O Club,” McNab said, shaking his head, “I was so informed by the lovely hostesses here. And you have the nerve to call yourself a seasoned world traveler.”

He looked past Castillo and suddenly grinned.

“Ah, there we are,” McNab said as Berezovsky handed him a glass of wine. “Now, where the hell’s the big menu I remember so fondly?”

[NINE]

The Malaga Suite

Portofino Island Resort & Spa

Pensacola Beach, Florida

2125 6 January 2006

“Get on the horn, Peter, and have room service bring us coffee,” General McNab ordered as he slumped onto a rattan couch. “Lots of coffee. I ate so much I’m half asleep, and this may go on for some time.”

“Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Colonel Peter Woods said.

“And then, if you’d like, you can hit the sack,” McNab said.

“Sir?”

“If you leave now, Peter, you will thereafter be able to swear under oath that you have no idea what was said in this room, or even who was in here.”

“I’m in, sir,” Colonel Woods said.

“Say ‘Hoo-rah,’ Peter.”

Woods laughed, said, “Hoo-rah,” and reached for the telephone.

“Lady and alleged gentlemen,” McNab said, making a grand gesture around the room. “If I may have your attention?”

He waited until he had it.

“If this didn’t come up before,” McNab then said, “Major Homer Foster is from the 160th. He’s one of us, and he’s in on this.”

The insignia on Major Foster’s uniform indicated he was a senior Army Aviator assigned to the Army Aviation School and Center; there had been nothing to identify him as a special operator.

Castillo couldn’t remember Foster having said a word during dinner, but he had caught Foster examining everybody very carefully.

“Reverend Castillo will now give the invocation, which begins: ‘You are hereby advised that anything and everything’—”

He gestured for Castillo to pick it up, and Castillo did so: “—discussed in this meeting is classified Top Secret Presidential and is not to be disclosed in any manner to anyone without the express permission of the President or myself.”

“And since we’re not going to bother the President with any of the details at this time, that means only Colonel Castillo. I would like to add my own little caveat, and that is that every serving officer here, me included, is putting his career at risk by participation in the very discussion we’re going to have. By that I mean that if we get caught doing what we are going to do, we will all be standing beside Colonel Castillo at his retirement ceremony the end of the month. This is your last chance to get out of here, Pete and Homer. My advice is go.”

“I’m in, sir,” Colonel Woods said.

“I’m in, General,” Major Foster said.

“Okay. Next item: opening remarks. When you get to be as old as I am, and have been around the block as many times as I have, you flatter yourself to think that you wouldn’t have all these stars, or, for that matter, have come back so often from around the block, unless you are a pretty good judge of character.

“And you have learned to trust the judgment of those who have been around the block with you, or those individuals you know have been around the block many times by themselves. So if there is anybody here who thinks that Colonel Bere . . . Mister Barlow and his charming sister have not told us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth with no mental reservations whatsoever, raise your right hand and speak now, or else forever after keep your mouth shut.”

He ran his eyes around the room, looking intently for a moment at everybody. No one said a word.

“Okay. That’s it. It is now established that there is a chemical laboratory slash factory in the Congo established by the Iranians, the Russians, or both, with the intent of waging chemical slash biological warfare against the United States, despite the fish farm opinion of the intelligence community, specifically the CIA, and that we see it as our duty to take it out before they can bring the aforementioned chemical slash biological weapon into play.”

He looked around the room again.

“Hearing no objections, the motion carries.

“Facts bearing on the problem: Colonel Castillo has concluded that the way to deal with the problem is to go to the President, lay what he believes—and I believe—are the facts before him, whereupon the President will take the necessary action.

“Colonel Castillo is wrong. The President would not take—with an exception I will get into in a minute—the necessary action without running it past the secretary of State, the secretary of Defense, and the DCI. They would all object. The DCI would insist all it is is a fish farm and the whole idea is nothing more than from the fevered imagination of a loose cannon who has, among other outrages, snatched two high-level defectors from the CIA and now refuses to turn them over for interrogation by those who know how to do that sort of thing.

“The DCI, if I have to say this, would be wrong. The secretary of State and the secretary of Defense, when the President asked them for their opinion of his intended dispatch of the military might of the United States into a poor African country, would both say, ‘Mr. President, there simply is no proof.’

“And they would be right. All we have is the word of these two, plus some circumstantial stuff, and nobody believes circumstantial.

“And then there is the problem of the Russians making fools of us with Colonel Sunev, which no one wants to see happen again.”

“General—” Berezovsky began.

“Let me guess, Colonel. You’re here because you are willing to go to the CIA and let them interrogate you using any means they think will work, including chemical. I admire that. I truly do. But it wouldn’t work. You want to know why? Because as people believe what they want to believe, they disbelieve what they don’t want to believe. If the agency had you in one of their Maryland rest homes and they couldn’t prove you were lying, they would blame the sodium pentothal, or whatever else they had been sticking in your veins, and keep trying something else until you were dead, dead, dead. Getting the picture, Colonel?”

“What you’re leading up to,” Svetlana said, “is that Carlos has to lay proof—not just what we offer as ‘facts’—on the President’s desk. Am I correct?”

“Precisely,” McNab said. “Without proof, we’re pis . . .”

“Pissing in the wind?” Svetlana asked innocently.

McNab couldn’t repress a smile. “If you’re so smart, why is it you keep looking at Charley like he’s the man of your dreams?”

“I suppose that’s because he is. Now, how do we get the proof?”

“First, we have to define proof,” McNab said.

“How do we do that?” Svetlana asked.

“We get us an expert,” McNab said.

“Fort Dietrich,” Delchamps said.

“Fort Dietrich,” McNab confirmed. “Corporal Bradley, I presume you have the AFC up and running?”

“Yes, sir,” Bradley said. He walked to General McNab and gave him the handset.

“Pay attention, please,” McNab said. “We are about to take the irreversible step. Cross the Rubicon, so to speak. This is everybody’s absolutely final last chance to bail out. And I have to say that I really wish I wasn’t running this circus, because I would be the first one out the door.”

He looked around the room one final time, then picked up the handset.

“Bruce J. McNab. Encryption Level One. Get me the White House switchboard.”

“White House. Good evening, General McNab. How can we help you?”

“Get me the commanding general of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute at Fort Dietrich, Maryland, on a secure line, please.”

“The what?” Berezovsky asked, confused.

McNab put his hand over the mouthpiece. “They used to call it the Chemical Warfare Lab. That was before political correctness took over.”

XV

[ONE]

The Malaga Suite

Portofino Island Resort & Spa

Pensacola Beach, Florida

2359:30 6 January 2006

One of the many things then—Second Lieutenant Castillo had learned during his tenure as aide-de-camp to then-Brigadier General McNab was that McNab believed that no matter how noble one’s intentions, working when fatigued usually produced little that was useful and too often what was produced was sloppy or in error—or both.

He began a meeting like this one by judging the participants and himself and deciding how long it could profitably last.

Castillo, therefore, was not surprised when Lieutenant Colonel Peter Woods interrupted McNab in the middle of a sentence to announce, “Midnight in thirty seconds, General.”

When they had walked into the suite after their dinner at McGuire’s, McNab had caught Woods’s eye and said, “Midnight.” Colonel Woods had nodded his understanding.

One thing all the participants had learned tonight was that General McNab did not like to be interrupted. Everybody but Woods and Castillo therefore waited for the explosion when Woods announced the time.

Instead, McNab turned to Svetlana and smiled. “As your boyfriend—I would say ‘gentleman friend,’ Susan, but that would not be accurate—may have told you, at the stroke of midnight I change from being a kindly friend of man and mentor to the world into an ogre.”

“Oh, I can’t believe that,” Svetlana said.

This earned her another smile.

She had become one of the four people in the room who could talk back to McNab—even interrupt him—without triggering a scathing response, the others being her brother and Phineas DeWitt.

“We’ll resume at oh-nine-hundred,” McNab then announced. “Brief recapitulation: As is often the case, our major problem is ignorance. We don’t know exactly what the evil Iranians and their Russian mentors are cooking up for us in the Congo—only that they’re doing it.

“We won’t even know precisely what to look for until Colonel . . .” He stopped and looked at Woods.

“Hamilton, sir. Colonel J. Porter Hamilton,” Woods furnished.

“. . . J. Porter Hamilton of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute at Fort Dietrich arrives . . .” He looked at Woods again.

“At oh-eight-fifteen. Delta flight 616 from Atlanta,” Woods furnished.

“. . . and having been met by . . .”

“Colonel Richardson, sir.”

“. . . comes here to share with us what the CG of Fort Dietrich says is Colonel Hamilton’s encyclopedic knowledge of the subject.

“Meanwhile, rushing ahead blindly in our overwhelming ignorance, it is tentatively planned for our people to enter the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the ground via Rwanda, as Phineas tells us that’s our only option except by HALO insertion, and that’s not much of an option, because we wouldn’t know where to drop them, which would leave us with between twelve and twenty-four of our people in the middle of we-know-not-where and without wheels.

“Our people being defined as ‘as black as possible’ Delta Force operators to be selected by Mr. Leverette, who will go to Bragg as quickly and as quietly as possible to do so.

“And, speaking of black people, inasmuch as Brother Britton feels that (a) those he insists on calling the Afro-American Lunatics may be in possession of useful information and (b) that he may able to obtain it from them, we have to get him—”

“And his lovely wife,” Sandra interjected.

McNab looked irritated at the interruption but did not flare up.

“—and his lovely wife to Philadelphia as soon as possible, and quietly, which may be difficult, as he is what is known as a ‘person of interest’ to the Secret Service.

“Presuming all this can somehow be accomplished, our people will be transported to . . .” He looked to Castillo.

“Gregoire Kayibanda International in Rwanda, or Bujumbura International in Burundi,” Castillo furnished.

“Depending on which looks like the better place to Phineas, who will reconnoiter both on the ground, having entered both countries surreptitiously from Uganda, presuming he can persuade the Ugandan embassy in Washington to give him a visa. A little cash may help in this regard.

“Phineas, equipped with large amounts of currency, will also purchase a fleet of vehicles that will be waiting for our people at either . . .”

“Bujumbura International or Gregoire Kayibanda,” Castillo furnished again.

“. . . when they arrive aboard our 727 . . .”

“Or are HALO’d in,” Leverette said.

“Thank you, Uncle Remus. May I continue?”

“Sorry, sir.”

“The vehicles will be waiting for our people when we somehow get them in, either in our 727—dressed in the color scheme of some ragtag African freight hauler, to be determined by Colonel Jake Torine—or, as Uncle Remus was so kind to point out, are HALO’d in.

“Once they have the vehicles, Phineas will bribe their way across the bridge at the southern end of Lake Kivu, from which they will proceed up Congo National Route Three.

“How far they proceed up Route Three depends on our finding out just where the laboratory is. It is to be hoped that Brother Britton, after eluding his former associates in the Secret Service, will be able to get from the AALs at least a hint about the location of the lab.

“Once that little detail is out of the way and we can tell them where to go, they will infiltrate the plant area in search of whatever . . .” He looked at Colonel Woods.

“Colonel J. Porter Hamilton.”

“. . . Colonel J. Porter Hamilton—why does someone ashamed of his first name worry me?—tells them to look for. Once they have done that, they will bring whatever it is they have found—and themselves—out of the Congo to a yet-to-be-determined location by means yet to be determined.

“Once the matériel and our people are safely aboard our Tanzanian Air Freight and Gorilla Transport 727 and en route to the U.S. of A., Colonel Castillo will have to abandon his search for interesting seashells on the sandy beaches of Cozumel, Mexico, or whatever else he’s doing with Tom and Susan down there, and return to the United States to lay evidence before the President of what the evil Iranians and the Russians are really doing on what CIA intel heretofore labeled a fish farm.”

“Sir,” Castillo said, “there is really no reason I couldn’t go as far as Uganda with DeWitt, and run the op from there.”

“I don’t recall asking for your opinion, Colonel, but since you insist on muddying the waters: Yes, there is. The primary reason, of course, is that I say you can’t.”

“Ex cathedra?” Svetlana said.

“I’ll just bet among the many other secrets our Carlos has shared with you, my dear young woman, is that I don’t like to be interrupted.”

“No, he never said a word.”

McNab looked at Delchamps. “Tell me, Edgar, why do I think those two deserve each other?”

“Because at the stroke of midnight, you change from being a kindly friend of man and mentor of the world into an ogre, and it’s already five past the witching hour?”

“True,” McNab said. “Charley, if that ‘locate but do not detain’ that the FBI has out on you changes, as I suspect it might, to ‘put him in the bag,’ this whole op goes out the window. I’m surprised you can’t figure that out all by yourself.

“Second, or thirdly, or whatever, you are going to have to keep in touch with Edgar and Darby so that the guy who runs your newspapers and that Hungarian character really give them—us—everything they’ve got on the Germans sending matériel down there. The more of that you can lay before the President, the better.”

“Yes, sir.”

“The more astute of you may have noticed we have a few little problems as yet to be resolved. One of these is how do we get Charley and Susan—and, of course, her brother as chaperone—down to sunny Cozumel, since I am offering ten-to-one that some FBI agent is at this minute at the Pensacola airport watching the Gulfstream to see if he shows up. And I don’t think we can count on them not knowing who Karl Gossinger is, either.”

He exhaled audibly.

“But . . . this is enough for tonight. Try to have some useful suggestions in the morning.”

He banged his fist on the table.

“Meeting adjourned. Go in peace.”

[TWO]

The Malaga Suite

Portofino Island Resort & Spa

Pensacola Beach, Florida

0620 7 January 2006

Castillo, carrying fresh linen and his toilet kit, quietly closed the door of the second, unused bedroom of the suite, then turned to head for its bathroom. He immediately saw that the bedroom in fact was in use.

Max was stretched out—not curled up—on the bed.

“Don’t let me disturb you, buddy. I am in my kindly don’t-wake-the-weary-sleepers mood.”

Charley had not disturbed Svetlana, who was soundly asleep in the master bedroom. He had thought—but of course did not tell her—that the way she slept was like Max slept: completely limp, sort of melting into the sheets and mattress.

Max took him at his word, closed his eyes—the only part of him that had moved when Castillo came into the room—and went back to sleep.

Castillo moved to the bathroom, where on the sink he found a coffeemaker beside a hair dryer. He got the coffeemaker going, then performed his morning ablutions, which included shaving under the running water of the shower.

The coffee was ready when he was finished, and tasted as bad as he had been afraid it would.

The options were calling room service, or drinking it. Calling room service would mean a waiter would eventually appear and make enough noise to wake Svet. Perhaps worse, there was no guarantee the room-service coffee would taste any better than what he had.

He left the bathroom, carrying both the coffeepot and a plastic mug, and headed for the balcony that overlooked the beach.

Max followed.

It was a beautiful day. A little chilly, but going back in their bedroom for one of the terry-cloth robes probably would wake Svet. And there were no robes in the second bathroom; he had looked.

He took another sip of the coffee, grimaced as he swallowed, set down the cup, and then, resting his hands on the balcony railing, looked down at the beach.

A group of sturdy souls in T-shirts and shorts were double-timing down the beach, headed by Lieutenant General Bruce J. McNab.

Immediately, memories came to him of Second Lieutenant Castillo jogging after Brigadier General McNab all over picturesque Fort Bragg. General McNab was a devotee of physical conditioning in general and early-morning jogging in particular.

“I wonder how I got excused from this morning’s jaunt?” he asked Max, who didn’t reply.

He had just acquired the answer—If the general thinks the FBI is watching the airplane, to locate if not detain me, the general thinks there is a strong possibility they might be watching the Portofino Island Resort & Spa for the same purpose— when a bonging announced that someone was at the door.

“That, Max, is either the FBI or, more than likely, someone McNab sent to summon me for the morning run.”

Castillo worried more than a little about the former possibility—particularly as it might apply to Svetlana—while he rushed to open the door before the chimes bonged again and awoke her.

He pulled it open.

“Good morning, sir,” a trim, dark-haired young man of fourteen said. He wore khaki pants and an obviously brand-new T-shirt bearing Naval Aviator wings and the legend U.S. NAVAL AVIATION MUSEUM.

“Did I wake you, sir?” Randolph J. Richardson IV said politely.

“No, Randy. I had to get up to answer the doorbell. Come on in.”

They somewhat formally shook hands.

“Thank you, sir.”

Max put his front paws on Randy’s shoulders and enthusiastically lapped his face.

“You’re with your dad?” Castillo asked.

“He had to come here to get wheels to meet some guy at the airport.”

“Yes, that’s right. I’d forgotten.”

Colonel J. Porter Hamilton of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute is due in at 0815.

McNab sent Righteous Randolph to meet him.

“I told him that you had called and said you wanted to introduce me to General McNab.”

What the hell?

“Why did you do that, Randy?”

“Otherwise, he wouldn’t have brought me over here.”

“Why did you want to come over here?”

“I have a couple of questions, sir.”

Castillo waved the boy onto a couch.

“Have you had your breakfast?”

“No, sir.”

“Neither have I. There’s a room-service menu on the table there.” Castillo gestured to it. “Order up.”

“Thank you, sir.”

He took the menu from the coffee table and began to study its possibilities.

“See anything you like?” Castillo asked after a moment.

“Yes, sir. They have buckwheat pancakes with genuine Vermont maple syrup, not that usual molasses crap they call pancake syrup.”

“Well, that sounds good. Then that’s what we’ll have.” He paused. “What kind of questions, Randy?”

“Like, what’s going on here, sir?”

“I don’t understand.”

Randy shrugged. “The last thing I heard was that you were getting kicked out of the Army.”

Jesus H. Christ!

“Where did you hear that?”

“Last week my father came home . . .”

He’s not your father.

I am.

“. . . and told Mom that you were getting kicked out of the Army. Some guy he used to work for in the Pentagon . . . Colonel Remley? . . .”

“I know Colonel Remley,” Castillo said evenly.

“. . . told him General McNab was sending him to Argentina to get you to sign the papers.”

Castillo didn’t answer.

“And here you are,” Randy finished, “with General McNab.”

“Randy, what you got, what your father got, is called ‘a garbled message.’ I’m retiring from the service.”

“And when he came to the motel last night, I was in the bathroom. I heard him tell Mom that she wouldn’t believe it, but you were having a party with General McNab in McGuire’s restaurant.”

“And so we were. Your father was invited, of course, but he wanted to be with you and your mother.”

“How are you going to retire? You don’t have enough service to retire; you’re a classmate of my father’s.”

I will be goddamned if I’ll lie to my son and tell him I’m “psychologically unfit to remain on active service.”

Damn that paper-pushing, straight-leg-chair-warming sonofabitch Remley!

“Medically,” Castillo said. “I’m being medically retired.”

“What’s wrong with you?”

Sonofabitch!

There was the sound of a door opening, and both automatically looked toward it.

“Good morning,” Svetlana said from the doorway to the master bedroom.

She was wrapped in a terry-cloth robe, running a heavy wooden-handled brush through her lustrous hair.

Randy politely got to his feet.

“Randy, this is Miss Barlow,” Castillo said. “Svet, this is—”

“I know who he is,” she said, smiling warmly and looking between them. “One look at those eyes and I’d know him anywhere!”

Oh, shit!

Svetlana saw something on both their faces but didn’t know what it was. Her smile disappeared.

“Oh? You are not Carlos’s son, his son who lives with his mother and her husband?”

Where the hell did she get that?

From me, of course—that’s where the hell she got that, stupid.

I told her—and Pevsner and damn near everybody else—that I had a son who lived with his mother.

“Well, I guess that answers most of my other questions,” Randy said.

“What?” Castillo asked.

Randy looked him in the eyes. “Like why I look just like the pictures of your father, Colonel Castillo, sir. And why Abuela wanted me to call her Abuela. And—”

“He didn’t know?” Svetlana suddenly exclaimed. “Oh, Carlos!”

“No, ma’am. I didn’t know. I think everybody else knew. My Grandfather Wilson has known all the time. And, of course, I think it’s safe to assume Mom knows—”

“Randy!” Castillo said.

“Why the hell didn’t anybody tell me?” Randy asked.

Castillo saw that the boy was on the edge of tears.

“I don’t think your father knows,” Castillo said gently.

Which is true.

I don’t think Righteous Randolph would be able to believe his wife ever had been to bed with me.

Much less believe that their honeymoon child was mine.

“Is that an admission, Colonel Castillo, sir, that I am in fact your bastard son?”

“Oh, Randy!” Svetlana said.

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” Randy demanded, his voice cracking. “What kind of a man would—”

“Shut up!” Castillo ordered.

Both Svetlana and Randy looked at him in shock.

“I have a habit of saying—and, of course, thinking I’m clever when I say it—that when you don’t know what to say, try telling the truth. Are you able to handle the truth, Randy?”

The boy nodded.

“Okay, let’s start with being a bastard.”

“Carlos!” Svetlana said warningly.

“My parents were not married. That makes me a bastard. You learn to live with it. My mother loved me deeply and I deeply loved her. I am sure that my father would have—but he never knew about me. He was killed before I was born.”

Charley looked at Svetlana.

“He was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, Svet. And Randy’s grandfather was his co-pilot.”

“At Fort Rucker,” Randy said, “there’s a picture of them in a building they named for Colonel Castillo’s father—or should I say ‘my other grandfather’? He won the Medal of Honor. I look just like him. Did you really think nobody would ever know?”

“Well, I didn’t know until we flew down to see the Mastersons and the Lorimers—yeah, Svet, our Ambassador Lorimer—right after Hurricane Katrina.”

He met Randy’s eyes.

“I honest to God didn’t know about you, Randy. Worse, in Mississippi, after Ambassador Lorimer told me, ‘Your son has eyes just like yours,’ I told him I didn’t have a son.”

“My God!” Svetlana said. “You really didn’t know!”

“So he says,” Randy said more than a little sarcastically.

“I’m getting off the track here,” Castillo said. “One point I was trying to make, Randy, is that I can’t work up a hell of a lot of sympathy for you. You have a loving mother, and she’s still around. Mine died when I was twelve. I never knew my father, and you’ve had a good man all of your life who thinks he’s your father and who loves you.”

“You sonofabitch!”

“No,” Castillo replied more calmly than he expected. “I am not a sonofabitch, and neither are you. My mother was the antithesis of a bitch, and so is yours. Think what you like of me, but never ever apply that term to me. And never allow anyone to apply it to you.”

The boy glared at him but didn’t reply.

“Clear, Randy? Say, ‘Yes, sir.’”

After a long moment, the boy nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“This is not to suggest that I am a man of principle and sterling character,” Castillo went on. “The opposite is true, as a great many people, including your mother, have learned from painful experience.

“And that’s the reason that your mother, when she found out that you were on the way . . .”

Castillo paused. He made a face as he visibly gathered his thoughts.

“Did I lie to your mother? Yes, I did. Did I feed her martinis knowing full well how they would affect her? You bet your ass I did. Did I take advantage of her naïve notion that because I was a West Pointer I had the same moral attributes as her father and Lieutenant Randolph Richardson III—and that I would not lie, cheat, or steal to get what I wanted from her? You can bet your naïve little ass I did.

“Getting the picture?”

Randy stood stone-faced.

“Your mother had a tough call to make. She had to decide between who would be the better father to the child she was carrying—a thoroughly decent man who loved her or . . .”

“You,” Randy said.

“. . . or a man who would lie, cheat, and steal to get whatever he wanted, and never lose a moment’s sleep over it. And it is now self-evident that she made the right decision.”

The boy just looked at him.

“So now you have a decision to make, Randy. You can wallow in self-pity—‘poor little me’—and tell everybody how everyone—your mother, your grandfather, me, Abuela, the man you call Uncle Fernando—has abused you. And if you do, the result of that will be that you will hurt, deeply hurt, not only all of them but also the only man who’s absolutely innocent in all of this—the man who has been de facto your father all of your life. You owe him better than that.”

Castillo let that sink in a moment.

“Or . . . you can keep this secret a secret.”

After looking at Castillo for a full ten seconds, Randolph J. Richardson IV’s face contorted. He blurted, “I have to piss.”

Castillo pointed toward the bathroom door, and the boy ran to it.

They heard the door close, then the unmistakable sound of him being nauseated.

Castillo looked at Svet.

“Jesus H. Christ,” he said softly.

“How much of what you said to him was true?” she replied as softly.

“I don’t know, baby. I don’t even know what I said, or where it came from; my mouth was on autopilot.”

She ran the balls of her fingers down his cheek.

They heard the sound of water running for a long time, and when Randy came out, his new T-shirt was almost soaking wet.

He didn’t make it to the john before he threw up; he fouled himself.

Then washed the shirt.

What have I done?

“Want to borrow a shirt?” Castillo asked.

“If I did that, my father would ask what happened to this one,” the boy replied logically. “If I keep it on, it will dry pretty quick.”

“Makes sense. Your call.”

The boy met his eyes.

“If you’re really such an all-around sonof—bastard, as you say you are, why should I believe anything you said?”

“I guess that’s your call, too, Randy,” Castillo said evenly.

Randy considered that, then nodded once.

“I guess, even after everything, I don’t think you’re a liar.”

“Well, counting Abuela, Max, and Svetlana, that’s three of you against the rest of the world.”

“Is that your real name? Svetlana?”

“Yes, it is.”

He looked back at Castillo. “You going to tell me what’s going on around here?”

“No.”

“I should have known that the story of you getting kicked out of the Army was bullshit.”

“Why?”

“Grandfather Wilson, when you started showing up at Abuela’s house when I was there, said I should never ask you what you do in the Army. He said you couldn’t talk about it, that you were an intelligence officer. He said that General McNab told him you were the best one he’d ever known.”

It took Castillo a good fifteen seconds to find his voice.

Finally, he said, “Well, Randy, your grandfather and General McNab, between you and me, are a little too fond of the bottle. When they’ve been at it, you just can’t believe anything they say.”

The boy smiled at him.

Castillo turned to Svetlana.

“Randy and I are about to have our breakfast. Following which, I will locate the ogre in his den and introduce Randy to him. Would you care to join us for either or both?”

“Ogre? Is that what you call General McNab?” Randy asked.

“Only behind his back,” Castillo said.

“Do they have those flat little round cakes with that sauce they bleed from the tree?” Svetlana asked.

Randy looked at her in confusion a moment, then understood. “If you’re talking about buckwheat pancakes with genuine Vermont maple syrup, yes, ma’am, they do.”

“Can you handle calling room service, Randy?” Castillo asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“And while he’s doing that, my Carlos, you can put on your pants.”

[THREE]

It was not necessary to locate the ogre in his den.

As they were finishing their breakfast, there came a knock at the door. Castillo opened it, and through it marched Lieutenant General Bruce J. McNab, now in camouflage BDUs, trailed by Lieutenant Colonel Peter Woods and Major Homer Foster, similarly attired.

“I see I’m wrong,” McNab greeted them. “That does happen from time to time, despite what you’ve probably heard.”

“Sir?”

“You’re out of bed. I gave Foster ten-to-one we’d have to throw you out of bed and then watch you eat.”

McNab walked into the living room.

“You look like you’re about to attack Baghdad,” Svetlana said.

“Good morning,” McNab said to her. “And I’ve already done that twice.” He turned to Woods. “Get the others up here.”

“Yes, sir,” Woods said, and headed for the telephone.

McNab spotted Randy.

“I thought it was the young females of the species who wore wet T-shirts,” he said.

“General,” Castillo said, “this is Randolph Richardson the Fourth.”

“Really?” McNab said. He looked at Castillo. “I know your father.”

Jesus H. Christ!

Did everybody know but me?

McNab redirected his attention to the boy. “And, of course, your grandfather. If you will give me your word to give General Wilson my best regards, I will give you my word that I will keep that cross-dresser’s wet T-shirt between us.”

Randy grinned as McNab shook his hand.

“Yes, sir. Will do.”

“And while we are waiting for the others, yes, I will, thank you, have a cup of coffee, if that meets with your approval, Colonel Castillo.”

“Yes, sir, it does. And I will even order up some fresh for you, sir.”

“Why don’t we let Woods do that?” He turned to his aide. “Coffee and pastry, Peter, please. Lots of sugar on the doughnuts.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sugar does all sorts of terrible things to your body, Randolph—they don’t really call you Randolph, do they?”

“Randy, sir.”

“So, Randy, you should avoid it if at all possible. However, sugar does provide a sudden burst of energy. And a sudden burst of energy is just what the motley crew that’s soon to drift in here is going to need.”

He looked at Castillo.

“As Colonel Castillo knows, a morning jog feeds blood to the brain. Feeding it greater amounts of blood causes the brain to function with more efficiency. And while some people, Randy—nothing personal—have been sitting around a hotel room, stuffing their faces, some others of us have been out on the beach jogging.”

By 0850, everybody who had been at the last meeting had shown up, and all were drinking coffee and eating pastries.

At 0855, the door chimes sounded once again. Major Foster opened the door. Two officers wearing Class A uniforms—heavily starched shirt, trousers, tunic, and tie—marched in.

One of them was Lieutenant Colonel Randolph J. Richardson III. The other was a very slim, very tall, ascetic-looking officer who was even blacker than Uncle Remus. His stiffly pressed, immaculate, perfectly tailored uniform bore the silver eagles of a full colonel, the caduceus of the U.S. Army Medical Corps, a shoulder insignia Castillo could not remember ever having seen, two—but only two—rows of I Was There ribbons, and, somewhat incongruously, a set of parachutist wings. Basic wings, which meant he had jumped fewer than thirty times.

The colonel, who appeared to be in search of a suitably senior officer to whom to report, looked around at the coffee drinkers and doughnut munchers slumped in chairs—or sitting on the floor—and only then finally found the senior officer present. This luminary was on his hands and knees, holding one end of a web strap between his teeth, and exchanging growls with Max, who had the other end in his mouth.

“Sir!” the colonel barked as he raised his hand to his brow in a crisp salute, “Colonel J. Porter Hamilton reporting to the commanding general, Special Operations Command, as ordered, sir!”

McNab let loose the web strap, leapt rather nimbly to his feet, and returned the salute with something less than parade-ground precision. Max went to inspect the newcomer.

“At ease, Colonel,” McNab said, then turned to Charley. “Invocation time, Colonel.”

“Yes, sir.” Castillo looked at Hamilton. “You are hereby advised—”

“Pay attention, please, Colonel Richardson,” McNab interrupted. “This now applies to you.”

He signaled for Castillo to continue. Randy watched raptly.

Castillo noticed that Righteous Randolph seemed delighted that he was about to be included in whatever was going on around here.

Castillo recited: “You are hereby advised that anything and everything discussed in this meeting is classified Top Secret Presidential and is not to be disclosed in any manner to anyone without the express permission of myself or the President.”

“Got that, the both of you?” McNab asked.

“Yes, sir,” they chorused.

Colonel Hamilton looked askance at Castillo, who had added khaki trousers to his clothing but still was barefoot.

“Richardson,” General McNab ordered, “this is what you’re going to do. Go see the commanding general at Hurlburt. Him only. Tell him I sent you to get the maps.”

“Yes, sir.”

“See that they are securely packaged, then go to Base Ops and wait for us; we’ll be along shortly.”

“Yes, sir. Transportation, sir?”

McNab considered that for a full two seconds.

“Any reason they can’t take the Mustang, Charley? Randy would like a ride in a ragtop.”

“No, sir,” Castillo said, and tossed Richardson the keys to the convertible.

“See you at Hurlburt, Richardson,” McNab said. He turned to Randy. “It was a pleasure meeting you, son. Give my best to your grandfather.”

They shook hands.

“It was nice to see you, Colonel Castillo,” Randy said as he walked to Castillo with his hand extended.

I have never wanted to put my arms around anyone, Svetlana included, more than I want to put them around Randy.

But that’s obviously out of the question.

He swallowed hard and said, “Good to see you, too, Randy. Give my regards to your mother. And see if you can get your granddad to bring you out to the ranch. Between Fernando and me, we’ll get you some more PT-22 stick time.”

“I’d like that, sir,” Randy replied a little roughly as they shook hands.

Svetlana felt no restrictions on her conduct. “You get a kiss and a hug from me, Randy.” And she proceeded to give him a long one of each.

Thirty seconds later, Richardson and Randy were gone.

“Make sure that door’s locked, Peter,” McNab ordered.

He turned to Colonel Hamilton.

“Colonel, you have been represented to me as the Army’s—maybe the country’s—preeminent expert on toxins, that sort of thing. True?”

“Sir, that is my area of knowledge and some expertise.”

“I don’t suppose you know much about Africa, do you, Colonel? Specifically, what used to be called the Belgian Congo?”

“Sir, I don’t know much about the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but I do know something—far more than I would prefer to know, frankly—about Rwanda and Burundi, which, as I’m sure you know, both abut the Congo.”

“Colonel, please run that past me—past all of us—again, if you don’t mind.”

“Sir, what I said was that I know something about Rwanda and Burundi. I was there—”

“You were there?”

“Yes, sir. I was there in ’94 during the worst of the Rwandan genocide of the Tutsis—hundreds of thousands massacred.”

“What were you doing there?”

“Observing, sir.”

“Observing for whom?”

“Sir, with respect, I am not at liberty to say.”

McNab raised one of his bushy red eyebrows. “Colonel, do you know who I am?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you can’t tell me?”

“No, sir. With respect, I cannot.”

“Who would it take to get you released from that?”

“Sir, what I could do is contact certain people and ask for permission to tell you what I know about the genocide. I’m sure they would take into consideration who you are, General McNab.”

“We’re not talking about the CIA, are we, Colonel?”

“No, sir. We are not. Or any of the alphabet agencies, so called.”

“I will be damned,” McNab said.

Castillo was surprised McNab had not lost his temper.

“Sir, the way it works: I call a certain number in New York City and tell them I need to talk. They call back, often immediately, always within an hour or so, and direct me to a secure telephone. Would you like me to commence that process, sir?”

McNab gave the subject twenty seconds of thought.

“You are a serving officer, correct?”

“Yes, sir, I am. Actually, I’m Class of ’83 at the Academy, General.”

“Well, then as soon as we can find the time, you and me and Barefoot Boy there can get together and sing ‘Army Blue.’ But right now what you’re going to do, Colonel, is listen to what I have to say to these people.

“Understand, this is simply to bring you up to speed on what’s going on here. You are specifically forbidden to relay any of this to these mysterious people you seem to be associated with. I want you to have what you hear in your mind when you get them on the horn. Clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then please sit down, have a doughnut and a cup of coffee, and pay close attention.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Surprising me not at all, ladies and gentlemen,” McNab then announced, “as the increased flood of blood to my brain derived from my morning jog caused that organ to shift out of low gear, I realized that there were certain solutions to our problems that had not occurred to me last night.

“The problem of getting Colonel Castillo and the Barlows to the sandy beaches of Cozumel past the vigilant eyes of the FBI and the Border Patrol no longer exists, as there is no good reason, thanks to the blessed Aloysius Francis Casey’s generosity, for them to go there. Colonel Castillo, if I’m wrong thinking that you can control this operation from anywhere—say, your farm in Midland—please be good enough to explain why I err.”

“I could control it from there, sir. I’d prefer, though—”

“I didn’t ask what you would prefer,” McNab cut him off. “Now, since Major Porter has confirmed that your Gulfstream is in fact being surveilled by what we strongly suspect are minions of the FBI, the question then becomes: ‘How do we get Barefoot and his Friends to the farm in Texas without the FBI knowing?’ as they would if we used the Gulfstream or commercial aircraft.

“And again, as I jogged happily down the beach while others unnamed enjoyed a leisurely morning repast, the answer came to me. Then, the moment I came out of the shower, I communicated—using the AFC, of course—with Colonel Jacob Torine.”

McNab looked at Colonel Hamilton. “We consider Colonel Torine, although he is USAF, as one of us.”

Hamilton nodded.

McNab went on: “Colonel Torine, as he frequently does, agreed with both my analysis of a problem and the solution thereof. As we speak, Colonel Torine is either at, or will soon be at, Baltimore/Washington International Airport, where he will sign the dry lease for a month of a Learjet aircraft from Signature Flight Support, Inc., to the Lorimer Charitable and Benevolent Fund, of which he is a director.

“As soon as that is done, the Lear will be flown here to the Pensacola Regional Airport by Captain Richard M. Sparkman, USAF—and parked. While, technically, two pilots are required to fly the Lear, it can be flown by one good pilot.

“Captain Sparkman, if I had to say this, will be in civilian clothing and flying as a civilian pilot. He will go to the passenger lounge, where he will be met by Major Dick Miller, who will also be in civilian clothing, and Mr. and Mrs. Jack Britton. Sparkman will file a flight plan to the Northeast Airport in the City of Brotherly Love for the Gulfstream. The Gulfstream requires two pilots, hence Miller.

“It is possible that this may elude the attention of the FBI. But in the event it does not, their investigation will cleverly learn that shortly after a pilot appeared with an authorization from the Lorimer Charitable and Benevolent Fund to take possession of their G-III aircraft, three black people, one of them a pilot, having earlier arrived by taxicab from the Hilton Garden Inn—which is right down the beach from here—then got in the G-III and took off on a flight plan to Philadelphia.

“Having cleverly deduced that the object of their ‘locate but do not detain’ order was not among the trio who boarded the G-III—Colonel Castillo would’ve had to acquire one helluva dark tan during his short visit to the beach—they then will theorize that he either sneaked aboard the airplane while they weren’t looking, or that he left the area by other means, such as an automobile.

“They will probably cover all their bases by having co-workers waiting at the airport in Philly. What those people will see will be Mr. and Mrs. Britton getting off the airplane and being met by Philadelphia police officers. Mr. and Mrs. Britton then will be taken to the Four Seasons Hotel—their home is hors de combat, Colonel Harrison; and so their accommodations will be benevolently covered as long as necessary by the Lorimer Fund—but the FBI won’t notice this, as Mr. Britton will have told his former law-enforcement buddies ‘lose the Feds,’ or words to the effect, a suggestion with which, there being little love lost between the Philadelphia police and the FBI, they will happily comply.

“The Gulfstream will then fly to BWI, where it will be turned over to Signature Flight Support, Inc., for necessary maintenance.

“The more astute among you will have noticed that this series of events leaves Mr. Britton in Philadelphia, where he will see what he can learn from the African-American Lunatics about the chemical laboratory in the Congo. And it leaves Captain Sparkman and Major Miller in Washington, where Miller can take over for Colonel Torine, who will be traveling.”

McNab stopped and looked at Miller.

“Surely, Major, after you went and got yourself shot up in The Desert, you didn’t think you were going to be running around the Congo bush with Phineas and Uncle Remus, did you?”

He turned to Colonel Hamilton.

“The big one is Uncle Remus, Colonel, and the ugly one Phineas DeWitt.” He pointed. “Counting them, that’s two of us who know anything about that part of Africa or have ever been there. Now you make it three.”

“As a matter of fact, sir,” Hamilton said, “I remember seeing Mr. DeWitt. At the Hotel du Lac in Bujumbura, Mr. DeWitt?”

“Yes, sir,” DeWitt said. “I stayed there a lot. But I don’t remember you.”

“I was trying very hard to pass myself off as a Tutsi,” Hamilton said.

“That made two of us, sir. I didn’t speak Kinyarwanda, so I tried to keep my mouth shut.”

“General,” Hamilton said, “I’m sure that Mr. DeWitt knows as much about that area as I do, and I am therefore . . .”

“Wondering why I need you? Indulge me a little longer, please, Colonel.”

“Yes, sir. You said something about a chemical—”

“What I politely asked you to do, Colonel, was to indulge me a little longer.”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, General.”

“So we have Britton in Philadelphia, Miller in Washington, and Colonel Castillo—and the Lear—here in Pensacola. By nightfall, I suspect the FBI will have more important things to do than hang around the Pensacola airport hoping for a glance at you. The Gulfstream, they will probably have learned, is in Baltimore. But, as I have been wont to say, people in our business can never have too much in the way of dark nights. So, Charley, wait until dark before you and go out to the airport with the Barlows, Corporal Bradley, and Jack Davidson.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Two questions. Are you going to have enough security? And can you land at your farm in the dark?”

Castillo glanced at Davidson. “As you know, sir, I’ve always had to worry a little about Jack, but as long as I have Corporal Bradley, we’ll be all right.”

Castillo got chuckles from a few. Davidson gave him the finger.

“I’ll call somebody—my cousin Fernando, most likely—and have him have somebody light the strip. Worst scenario, I’d have to go into Midland. Lears in Midland go as unnoticed as Hatteras and Bertrams in Lauderdale. Not a problem.”

“That brings us to these two,” McNab said, nodding at Edgar Delchamps and Alex Darby. “Your call, Charley; who goes where?”

“I think that’s Edgar’s call,” Castillo said.

“Alex to Fulda-slash-Marburg to deal with your guy there,” Delchamps said immediately. “Me to Vienna or Budapest or wherever the hell Uncle Billy is. Okay, Alex?”

Darby nodded.

It occurred to Castillo that it was the first time Delchamps had opened his mouth since the session began.

It’s not that he’s shy—nor is Darby.

For that matter, nobody’s shy; more the opposite.

It means they’ve agreed with everything McNab has said.

God, what a man!

“Communications?” McNab said.

“There’s an AFC in Görner’s office,” Castillo replied, “and I gave one to Sándor Tor.”

“We’re going to have to do something for Aloysius.” He looked at Woods. “Peter, send Mr. Casey a new green hat.”

Lieutenant Colonel Peter Woods smiled. “Yes, sir.”

“The one he has is a little ratty,” Castillo said.

“All communications to me go through D’Allessando,” McNab said. “From the moment I walk out that door, I don’t know where you are, or what you’re doing, or anything about you except that I agree you’re not playing with a full deck.”

“Yes, sir,” Castillo said.

“I presume you two are not going to need any help to get to Germany and wherever Kocian is.”

Delchamps and Darby nodded.

“And, Ace, I presume that the Benevolent Fund is going to benevolently provide these two dinosaurs with first-class tickets over there.”

“Absolutely, Edgar. How are you fixed for money?”

“Your credit’s good,” Delchamps said.

McNab looked at Castillo. “If you will be so good as to indulge me a moment longer, Colonel, a few loose ends to tie up. DeWitt and Uncle Remus and you will go back to Bragg with me. At Bragg—” He paused and turned to Hamilton. “How long since you’ve given a pecker-check, Colonel?”

“It’s, uh, been some time, General.”

Castillo couldn’t tell if Hamilton was pissed, amused, or had thought it was a straight question.

“Well, while we’re waiting for the pieces to come together, we’ll see if we can’t give you some practice. The pieces that have to come together are—this is yours, Uncle Remus—picking the Delta Force shooters.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And making sure Air Tanzania gets painted.”

“Yes, sir.”

“All that military crap, Uncle Remus. Shots, last wills and testaments, insurance, all of it. Phineas and Colonel Hamilton will be tied up teaching everybody all about Africa.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’d better work out of the Stockade.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I can’t think of anything else. Can anybody?”

No one said a word.

“Now, Colonel Hamilton, thank you for your patience. Do you have any questions?”

“Oh, yes. Do I correctly infer you are planning an operation of some sort in the Democratic Republic of the Congo?”

“Yes, we are.”

“May I ask what type of operation?”

“We have reason to believe the Iranians, assisted by the Russians, have a chemical-slash-biological-warfare laboratory-slash-factory there, and we wish to get proof of that to show to the President before the bastards can do us any harm.”

“Frankly, sir, I’m delighted to hear that someone agrees with me.”

“Excuse me?”

“I passed that—the distinct likelihood of a bio-chem facility in the Congo—to the CIA some time ago. They looked into it and concluded that I was wrong; I thought they were.”

“Would you be good enough to amplify that, Colonel?” McNab asked.

“Well—” he began, then stopped. “How much do you know of the subject?”

“Virtually nothing,” McNab said.

“Well, as I said before, that’s my area of knowledge, in which I have some expertise. I try to keep an eye on it, so to speak. Some time ago, I noticed an anomaly in the production of certain chemicals, especially in Germany, suggesting to me that they were being either consumed in testing or stockpiled, or both.”

“What chemicals?” McNab asked softly.

“Would the names be of any use to you, sir?”

“What kind of chemicals?”

“In layman’s terms, those used in chemical and/or biological warfare. Forbidden under international treaties. Such as sarin. What really caught my attention was the increased production of DIC—diisopropylcarbodiimide.”

“Which is what?”

“In layman’s terms, it permits, to varying degrees, the storage of sarin in aluminum.”

“Such as a missile head?”

“Or a coffeepot. The point is: If the possession of sarin is against the law, why does one need anything aluminum in which to store it?”

“I take your point.”

“There were other areas which attracted my attention: unusual production, again in Germany and India, of the chemical precursors of the polypeptide family, the doxycyclines, trichothecenes, mycotoxins, and so on.”

“All poisonous substances?”

“Oh, yes.”

“And you informed the CIA?”

“I even suggested to them that if there was activity we should look into, it was taking place at the former German nuclear facilities on the Nava and Aruwimi rivers in the Congo, which is not far from Kisangani, which was formerly Stanleyville. You know, Henry Morton Stanley? ‘Doctor Livingstone, I presume?’ Stanleyville is where Stanley found Livingstone.”

“So I had heard,” McNab said. “Why did you think this?”

“Because both types of laboratory operations, nuclear and chemical, require large amounts of water, for cooling and other purposes. I think this is perhaps where the CIA got the idea the old German facilities are now a fish farm; the cooling tanks, etcetera, I suppose could be used for that purpose.”

“Who did you deal with at the CIA, Colonel? Do you remember his—or her—name?”

“I didn’t deal with anyone at the CIA. I just wrote it up, paper-clipped to it an inter-office memorandum saying it should be sent to the CIA, and put it in my out-box. I’m a scientist, not someone in the intelligence community.”

“So you don’t know if your reports ever got to the CIA?”

“I simply assume they did. I heard back—I forget how—of the CIA fish-farm theory.”

“Colonel,” McNab said, “just now you said you were a scientist. You’re wearing the caduceus of the Medical Corps . . .”

“I’m a physician.”

“And you’re wearing the eagles of a colonel, and you said you were West Point ’84, which would suggest you’re a soldier. Which is it, Colonel?”

“I am a serving officer, a West Pointer, a colonel, who also is a physician. And a bio-chemist, Ph.D. Oxford ’86. And a physicist, Ph.D., MIT ’93.”

McNab nodded. “I’m awed, and there is nothing that should be interpreted as sarcasm in that statement.”

“General, with respect, I think I had better call those people now,” Hamilton said.

“I was about to suggest that very thing. But on my terms, Colonel, not yours. Unless you want to tell me who they are and have me call them myself?”

“Sir, again, with res—”

“Yeah. I know. But before I have Phineas and Uncle Remus throw you on the floor and hold you down while Barefoot Boy pulls out your fingernails to get you to tell me who ‘those people’ are, why don’t we try this: You get on the telephone to ‘those people’ and you say you’re with me and I have the idea that the Iranians and the Russians are up to something nasty in the Congo. Then ask ‘those people’ how much you are allowed to cooperate with me, up to and including telling me just who ‘those people’ are. How about that?”

“Yes, sir,” Hamilton said. “But what about the secure telephone, sir?”

“Tell them you don’t have time to go to a secure telephone. Tell them if they have a number at which you can call them, we’ll put it through the White House switchboard, which is about as secure as it gets.”

“That sounds logical, sir.”

“There’s the telephone,” McNab said, pointing.

“With your permission, sir, I’d prefer to use this,” Colonel Hamilton said.

He took a cellular telephone from his trousers pocket and walked out onto the balcony, closing the sliding door after him. They saw him punch a long number into the phone.

“Memorized,” Dmitri Berezovsky said. “Not autodial.”

“I noticed,” McNab said.

“You were joking about the fingernails, right?” Sandra Britton asked.

McNab looked at her. “If I thought that would work, he would now look as if he was wearing Red Passion nail polish.”

“That is a very interesting man,” Svetlana said.

“That has just earned you the award for Understatement of the Week, Sweaty.”

“ ‘Sweaty’?” she repeated with some obvious displeasure.

“Isn’t that what our Carlos calls you?”

“He calls me ‘Svet.’ That is short for—”

“He got you, Sweaty!” Delchamps said.

“I’m good at that,” McNab said, smiling. “Didn’t our Carlos tell you?”

“He’s spending longer on that telephone than setting up a callback,” Berezovsky said.

“Yeah,” Darby said.

Colonel Hamilton put his cellular telephone back in his pants, slid the door open, and came back into the room.

“They will call me back,” he announced. “But I’m afraid they are going to insist on a secure telephone.”

“While we’re waiting,” McNab said, “why don’t you tell us how you got all those degrees, Colonel?”

Hamilton nodded. “Yes, sir. Well, right after I graduated from the Point, I was a Rhodes Scholar. I went to Oxford—Mansfield College—with the idea of taking the equivalent of an American master’s degree in biochemistry. It was supposed to be for a year.

“It all came surprisingly easy to me, and when they told me I could probably earn a doctorate if I spent another year, I asked the Army for another year.

“And when that was over, I went through the Officer Basic Course at Benning, then applied for and was accepted for jump training. I went through that and was given command of a chemical platoon in the 82nd Airborne at Bragg.”

Castillo met Uncle Remus’s eyes. Both had the same mental image of the faces of the platoon when they learned their new commander was a tall, skinny, black guy with a Ph.D. who spoke with an English accent and who had graduated from jump school just last week.

“While I was at Bragg,” Hamilton went on, “I took some correspondence courses from MIT—”

He stopped when his telephone buzzed.

“Yes?” he said into it, and then, a little surprised, “Very well.”

He handed the telephone to McNab, who—causing a momentary look of shock to appear on Hamilton’s face—pushed the SPEAKERPHONE button.

“General McNab?” a voice said.

“Yes. Who is this?”

“Under the circumstances, General, I think we can dispense with a secure line.”

“Your call.”

“I have just instructed Colonel Hamilton to cooperate in every way but one in your current project.”

“Thank you.”

“He is not authorized to tell you anything about us.”

“Okay.”

“We really wish you well in this project, General.”

McNab held the telephone at arm’s length and looked at it.

“Sonofabitch hung up on me!” He then looked around the room and asked, “Anybody recognize that voice? I’ve heard it before. Goddamn it!”

He slowly walked back and forth in front of the sliding glass doors for thirty seconds or so, obviously searching his audio memory.

Then he turned, put his hands on his hips, and said, “Okay, children. Fun-and-games time is over. Let’s get this show on the road! Hubba hubba!”

“Hoo-rah!” Castillo called.

Lieutenant Colonel Woods laughed.

“You’ll pay for that, Peter!” McNab said, and without another word marched out of the room.

XVI

[ONE]

Double-Bar-C Ranch

Near Midland, Texas

2305 7 January 2006

The runway lights at the Double-Bar-C were lit as the result of a somewhat less-than-loving, not to mention less-than-civil, conversation between cousins—one Lieutenant Colonel Charley Castillo and one Mr. Fernando Manuel Lopez—some thirty minutes previously:

“Hello?”

“Mr. Fernando Lopez, please. The White House is calling.”

“Yeah, sure it is.”

“Are you Mr. Lopez?”

“Guilty.”

“I have Mr. Lopez for you, Colonel.”

“Fernando?”

“Damn it, Gringo. I just this moment fell asleep.”

“Thank you for sharing that with me.”

“What won’t wait until the morning? Or is it already morning?”

“I need the runway lights turned on at the Double-Bar-C.”

“Then what you should do is call the ranch and say, ‘Turn on the runway lights.’ ”

“I don’t have the number handy.”

“You’re on your way to the ranch?”

“No. But I thought it would be fun to wake you up and have you turn on the lights to scare hell out of the rattlesnakes keeping warm on it.”

“You’re not only a wiseass, Gringo, you’re a pain in the ass, you know that?”

“I’m thirty minutes out, Fat Boy. Now call the fucking ranch and have the fucking lights lit. And don’t let anybody know I’m there.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

“If the lights aren’t on when I get there, I will tell María you have been chasing blond cocktail waitresses again.”

“And you would, you miserable prick. So hang up so I can call.”

“It’s never a pleasure to talk to you, Lard Ass. Break it down.”

When the conversation had been concluded, Svetlana Alekseeva, who was sitting in the co-pilot seat of the Learjet, inquired, “Carlos! Who were you talking to?”

“My cousin, Fernando. He’s actually more like my brother. He’s a really good guy.”

And then he had activated his microphone and politely requested permission from the air traffic controller to close out his flight plan to Midland and instead land at a private field in the vicinity.

Two GMC Yukons were waiting at the hangar for them.

Castillo was the last person off the airplane. When he had closed the stair door, put chocks under the wheels, and slid the heavy hangar doors shut, a short, massive, swarthy woman got out from behind the wheel of one of the Yukons and rushed up to him. She called him “Carlos,” took his face in her hands, and kissed him affectionately.

“Svet,” Castillo said, “this is Estella. She has been running this place since . . . forever. Estella, these are my friends Susan Barlow and her brother, Tom.” He motioned at Davidson and Bradley. “You know Jack and Lester. They’ll all be staying with us for a couple of weeks, and we don’t want anyone to know.”

She didn’t seem surprised at the announcement. She wordlessly and formally shook everybody’s hands.

“Well,” she then said, “come on up to the house, and I’ll get you something to eat. Ernesto will get your luggage.”

“I’m sorry there wasn’t more,” Estella, hands on her hips and surveying the table, said after the group had gorged themselves on ham steaks, eggs, and Caesar salad. “But Fernando only called a little while ago.”

“It was wonderful,” Svetlana said.

“I put Lester and Sergeant Davidson in their usual rooms,” Estella announced, “and the gentleman in the last room on the right, and the lady in the room next to him.”

To hell with it, Castillo thought. Bite the bullet.

I am not going to sneak around my own house.

Besides, Abuela’s not here.

He said, “Estella, the lady will be staying with me.”

Estella looked at him in disbelief, then crossed herself.

“Estella,” Dmitri Berezovsky offered, “I am her brother and, like you, a Christian. I know what that might look like. But I have found some comfort in the Scripture that enjoins us to judge not, lest we be judged.”

Estella looked between them.

“We will make sure Doña Alicia does not find out,” she said somewhat anxiously. “Or Fernando. Or, God forbid, María!”

“Okay,” Castillo said twenty minutes later. “The AFC is up and running. Starting first thing in the morning, it gets monitored twenty-four/seven. And that means we will have to teach Dmitri and Svet how to use it.”

“Just Dmitri, my Carlos. Sweaty already knows how to operate it.”

“Dmitri, then, will require instruction,” Castillo said. “And we’ll have to come up, Sergeant Major, with a duty roster.”

Davidson nodded.

“And after breakfast tomorrow, having come up with a necessary equipment list—printers, scanners, tape recorders, etcetera—and having submitted same to Corporal Bradley for his approval, either Davidson or Bradley or both will drive into Midland and find an office supply or something similar to acquire what’s needed.

“We’ll then set up a CP in the library. That being accomplished, we can then all sit around with our thumbs in our . . . ears, waiting for the AFC to go off reporting how others are doing what I’d really prefer to be doing myself.”

“Come on, Charley,” Davidson said. “You heard what Phineas said. If we went over there we’d wind up in some cannibal’s pot.”

“You can really be stupid sometimes, my Carlos,” Svetlana said.

Castillo raised an eyebrow at her. After a moment, he said, “And on that romantic note, I’m going to bed.”

“Is this the place where I am not supposed to sleep?” Svetlana asked five minutes later.

Castillo didn’t reply. He went into the bathroom. When he came out ten minutes later, Svetlana walked wordlessly past him into the bathroom.

When she hadn’t returned ten minutes later, Castillo considered the pros and cons of going in after her.

He had just about decided that that would not be a very good idea when she suddenly appeared nude—then rushed across the room and jumped in beside him in the bed.

“This place is like Siberia. I am freezing. If you were a gentleman, you would make me warm.”

That, Romeo, is as close to a peace offering as I’m going to get. . . .

He hugged her.

“Don’t let this go to your head,” she said a moment later, “but you were an adorable little boy.”

“I know.”

“That’s not what you were supposed to say.” She momentarily laid an icy hand on his crotch.

He squirmed. “Jesus!”

“You’re going to have to learn not to blaspheme,” she said.

“What was I supposed to say?”

“ ‘How do you know?’ And then I would say, ‘I was looking at your pictures on the wall.’ ”

“What is this leading up to?”

“Does it always shrink when it is cold?”

“Why don’t you try putting a warm hand on it and see what happens?”

Svetlana vigorously rubbed her hands together, then did so.

After a moment, she declared, “Ah. Is much better.”

“Yeah.”

“When you were a little boy, did you ever think you would lie here one day with a beautiful woman putting her warmed hand on your you-know-what?”

“Every night from the time I was thirteen.”

She squeezed. “When I was thirteen, I wanted to be a nun. I wanted to marry Christ.”

“And then you turned fourteen, and that didn’t seem like such a good idea?”

She made a soft grunt and after a long moment said, “Why is your farm in the middle of an oil field?”

“It’s a ranch, not a farm. You raise cattle on ranch. And things like corn on a farm. Unless you have milk cows; then it’s a dairy farm.”

“And then they found oil on it?”

“Actually, my great-grandfather found the oil. It was there all the time, but he didn’t know about it until he put down the first hole. They call it the Permian Basin. You really want to talk about this?”

“You have some income from this oil?”

“Sure.”

“Then it is your oil? Not the government’s?”

“They call that the concept of private property. It goes hand in hand with capitalism. And speaking of hand in hand . . .”

“Stop that! What do you think you’re doing?”

“At least I warmed my hands first.”

“And what I heard about those newspapers in Europe—somebody said you own them?”

“Did they?”

“Oh, God, don’t do that! They’ll hear us all over the house.”

“Let jealousy eat their hearts out.”

“You’re rich, my Carlos?”

“We say ‘comfortable.’ ”

“Oh, I am glad!”

“And I’m pleased you’re glad.”

“Now I’ll never have to worry that you say you love me only because of my money.”

“Actually, you have certain other attributes that attract me.”

“Oh, God, when you do that, I go crazy!”

“I’ve noticed.”

[TWO]

Double-Bar-C Ranch

Near Midland, Texas

0715 8 January 2006

Svetlana decided to let her Carlos sleep. She knew that he was exhausted both emotionally and physically, maybe especially physically. And not only because he’d done all that flying all over in such a short period of time.

My God, I love that man!

After their last romp—whenever that had been; three, three-thirty, four in the morning—he had rolled onto his back, closed his eyes, and not moved since.

He hadn’t even stirred when the airplane landed, making enough noise to wake her from her sound sleep.

Svetlana did not know what time it was. She had been confused by the one-hour time difference between Fort Lauderdale and Pensacola, which were both in the same state. And then, when they had flown west in the Lear—which Carlos had said was even faster than his bigger Gulfstream—she had been confused again, because they had covered far more distance than inside Florida—and logically that would indicate several time zones—yet Midland and Pensacola shared the same time.

The only thing she knew for sure was that she desperately needed a cup of tea and maybe a piece of toast or something. Then she would come back to bed and go to sleep again, curled up against her Carlos.

Carefully curled up, so as not to wake him.

In this situation, not only would taking a shower be unnecessary, but the noise it would make would almost certainly wake him. When the water closet flushed, it sounded like a fire hydrant exploding.

That then raised the question of dress. It simply made no sense to get dressed to sneak quietly into the kitchen and make a cup of tea and maybe some toast, then come back to the bedroom only to get undressed again.

She went snooping, and the solution she found pleased her.

In the first closet she came to, she found a bathrobe hanging from a hook. It was old, well-worn and frayed, but it was wonderfully soft to the touch, and when she held it up and examined it she saw that it was clean, too. And then she was even more pleased to finally recognize it for what it was—from Carlos’s military college. It read “USMA” in large letters on the back, and there was an insignia, sort of a coat of arms, on the breast.

She put it on, and smiled warmly at the thought of wearing Carlos’s military college bathrobe.

Is nice.

Intimate. . . .

She did not put on any underwear. She disliked putting on underwear once she’d taken it off, and it really didn’t make much sense to put on fresh linen without showering first, only to have to take it off ten minutes later.

She opened the bedroom door and looked and listened before finally going into the corridor. Then, barefoot, she ran down it until she reached the kitchen.

She listened at the door to make sure no one was inside, then quickly stepped inside, quietly clicking the door closed behind her.

Then she turned—and came face-to-face with three unfamiliar people who were sitting at the kitchen table.

One was a very large, swarthy man. The other two were women—a dark, attractive Latina a little younger than the man and an erect, silver-haired lady who appeared to be in her late sixties, maybe a little older.

Svetlana smiled awkwardly and nodded.

The older lady stood and smiled back. “Well, my dear. I see that Randy was right on the money. He said you were ‘a real looker.’ ”

Svetlana said nothing.

“I’m Alicia Castillo, my dear. Carlos’s grandmother.”

Svetlana said nothing.

Doña Alicia gestured. “And this is my other grandson, Fernando, and his wife, María.”

“You talked to Randy?” Svetlana suddenly said.

“As soon as he got back to Fort Rucker, he called me. He was quite excited to report that Carlos ‘has a girlfriend. A real looker.’ ”

Svetlana said nothing.

“He said your name was Svetlana—what a pretty name!—and he told me that my grandson was no longer alone, and wasn’t that great?”

“Randy is a nice boy, a very nice boy,” Svetlana said. “And you’re his great-grandmother?”

“He calls me Abuela.”

Svetlana sighed. “The bull is out of the pen, or whatever Carlos is always saying. I stupidly let it out when I met Randy. But now that I think about it, I am glad that I did.”

“The cow is out of the barn?” Fernando said.

“Yes,” Svetlana said.

“Randy knows?” Fernando pursued.

Svetlana nodded.

“Oh, my,” Doña Alicia said. “How did that go?”

“Very well. They had a long talk, and agreed to keep the secret.”

Fernando grunted. “It was bound to come out. It’s hardly going to be a ‘secret’ long.”

“Goddamn you, Fernando,” María said furiously. “I knew it all along, and you kept saying I had a dirty, suspicious mind.”

“Where is the Gringo?” Fernando asked.

“Fernando!” Doña Alicia said warningly.

“Who?” Svetlana asked.

“Carlos Guillermo Castillo, or Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger, or whatever name he’s using today.”

“I let him sleep; he was exhausted.”

“I can imagine,” María said with a knowing look, then sipped her coffee.

Svetlana shrugged. “I guess that bull is out of the barn, too.”

“Is Estella aware of the sleeping arrangements?” Fernando asked.

Svetlana nodded.

He looked at Doña Alicia and grinned. “Well, that explains the missing housekeeper, doesn’t it, Abuela? She heard us land, saw you get off the plane, and decided that anywhere else would be the safest place to be.”

The kitchen door opened again. Corporal Lester Bradley, USMC, walked in. “Well, the Marines have landed,” Fernando said, “but I don’t think the situation is well in hand.”

“Be quiet, Fernando,” Doña Alicia said. “Hello, Lester.”

“Ma’am,” Bradley said politely.

“Semper Fi, Les,” Fernando said.

“I told you to be quiet,” Doña Alicia said. “What can we do for you, Lester?”

Bradley turned to Svetlana.

“Colonel, do you know where the colonel is?”

“What did he call her? ‘Colonel’?” María said.

“The colonel is looking for his goddamn bathrobe, that’s where he is,” Castillo called from the corridor, and then came into the kitchen, buttoning the shirt he’d worn the previous day. Its tail covered—mostly—his undershorts.

Svetland pulled the robe tighter around her as she crossed her arms. “Oops!”

“Surprise, surprise, Casanova,” Fernando said.

Bradley said, “Sir, Mr. D’Allessando’s on the AFC. He says it’s important.”

“Stall him for a couple of minutes, Les.”

“Yes, sir.”

Lester quickly disappeared from the room.

“I didn’t know you were here, Abuela,” Castillo said.

“We sort of guessed that,” María said.

“Or you,” Castillo added.

“We were just having a nice chat with Svetlana, Carlos dear,” Doña Alicia said. “Fernando and María were nice enough to fly me up here, and now they’re about to leave.”

“And you’re not?” Fernando asked.

“I need to talk to Carlos,” Doña Alicia said. “Privately.”

Fernando, to no one in particular, said, “That’s what she used to say in the old days when the Gringo was caught, so to speak, with his hand in the cookie jar. It means she’s about to drag him to the stable and have at him with a quirt.”

“I’ll have someone drive me home,” Doña Alicia said. “You and María want to get back to the children, I’m sure.”

“I wouldn’t think of leaving until I hear how the two colonels met,” María said. “You’re old Army buddies, is that it?”

“Something like that,” Castillo said. “I’ve got a plane here; I’ll take Abuela home.”

“I saw the Lear in the hangar,” Fernando said. “What happened to your G-III?”

“I’ve got to take that call,” Castillo said, avoiding the question. “You’re going to have to excuse me.”

“May I stay, Carlos?” Doña Alicia asked.

He looked at her for a moment.

“You know you don’t have to ask, Abuela,” he said finally.

[THREE]

0735 8 January 2006

“Sorry to keep you waiting, Vic,” Castillo said. “I was in bed.”

“I heard about that,” D’Allessando said. “When do I get to meet her?”

“Soon enough. Look, Lester’s rounding up the others; it’ll take a minute.”

“Everybody knows everything, right?”

“Right.”

“You were just a wee slip of a lad when I taught you that,” D’Allessando said.

“And you still had hair, Vic. It was a long time ago.”

“Actually, I thought about those days this morning, while jogging around Smoke Bomb Hill with Colonel Hamilton.”

“And the general?”

“I have no idea who you’re talking about, Colonel,” D’Allessando said.

Castillo waved for Bradley to bring the crowd into the room.

“Everybody’s here, Vic,” Castillo said.

Including my grandmother, whom I’m not going to run off; she’s not a Russian spy. I’m sleeping with the Russian spy. Who is here with her brother, also a Russian spy, who just shook hands with my grandmother.

“Hello, one and all,” D’Allessando said. “Our problem is Colonel Hamilton, with whom, as I just told Charley, I took a jog down memory lane around Smoke Bomb Hill. He was crushed to learn that the barrack in which he once commanded a platoon was long ago torn down.

“He also told me, ‘Of course I’m going into the Congo.’ ”

Castillo said, “Absolutely out of the question. He can go as far as Bujumbura, and even that makes me uncomfortable.”

“Well, you’re going to have to tell him that, Charley.”

“I’m a lowly lieutenant colonel. He’s a more than a little starchy full bird. Get McNab to tell him.”

“Get who?”

“General McNab.”

“I thought he told you . . .”

“Told me what?”

“The general doesn’t know you anymore,” D’Allessando said. “He hasn’t seen you since you went off to Washington a long time ago, where he hears you went off the deep end. He knows you snatched two Russian spies away from the CIA and won’t give them back. He thinks you’re a disgrace to the uniform and has already taken steps to see that you’re booted out of the Army. He wouldn’t talk to you even if, by some wild stretch of the imagination, you had the effrontery to try calling him.”

Castillo saw the look on Svetlana’s face and then on Abuela’s.

“I’d forgotten,” Castillo said.

I remember him telling me, “From the moment I walk out that door, I don’t know where you are, or what you’re doing, or anything about you except that I agree you’re not playing with a full deck.”

But, until just now, what it meant just didn’t sink in.

“Keep it in mind, Charley,” D’Allessando said.

“Where is Colonel Hamilton?”

“I choppered him out to Camp Mackall. I thought maybe seeing what the guys in the last stages of training have to go through might discourage him. I’m not holding my breath, Charley.”

“Get him back. Get him on the horn. How long will that take?”

“An hour, give or take.”

“Do it. Anything else?”

“Air Tanzania is all painted and ready to go. Uncle Remus is in the process of picking shooters; he’s almost finished, he said. The maps we got from the Air Force at Hurlburt have been digitalized and sent to you. Lester didn’t tell you?”

“Not yet. I’m going to have to go buy printers—”

“And/or some external drives. Those things do eat up the bytes.”

“I remember. That it?”

“I’ll call you when I get Hamilton back to civilization. D’Allessando off.”

“Russian spies?” Doña Alicia asked. “General Naylor said something about that.”

“General Naylor said something?”

“He came to see me. Very upset.”

“Well, Abuela, I’m as anxious to hear about that as you are to hear about the Russian spies. But for right now, as I go to take my morning shower, you’ll have to be satisfied with me pointing them out to you.”

He pointed.

“Oh, my!” Doña Alicia said.

“One of them is not only a Russian spy, but steals people’s personal robes.”

“I’ll go find Estella and get some breakfast started,” Doña Alicia said.

[FOUR]

0840 8 January 2006

“Actually, Carlos,” Doña Alicia said as she poured tea into Svetlana’s cup, “General Naylor got quite emotional toward the end. He said he felt responsible for so much that’s happened to you in the Army.”

“I would love to have seen that,” Castillo said. “ ‘Old Stone Face’ emotional?”

“He said that he should have known the Army would do something—because of your father and the Medal of Honor—like send you to the Desert War before you were prepared, and done something to stop it.”

Castillo shook his head. “Fernando was over there, and he was even less prepared for that war than I was. I knew more about flying helicopters than he did about commanding a platoon of tanks.”

“And then he said—and this surprised me, because I always thought they were great friends—that his greatest regret was in sending you to General McNab after you were shot down and they gave you the medal. He said that once you were ‘corrupted’ by General McNab, everything followed. I thought ‘corrupted’ was a very strong term.”

“Just to keep the record straight, Abuela, they gave me the medal for not getting shot down. And Naylor sent me to McNab to keep them from putting me in another Apache, which he correctly suspected they would do. I really wasn’t qualified to fly Apaches, and if I had kept it up, which I would have been stupid enough to do, I probably would have killed myself. General Naylor’s conscience should be clear on that score.”

She looked at him but didn’t say anything.

Castillo went on: “And General McNab didn’t corrupt me, Jack Davidson corrupted me—”

“Go to hell, Charley,” Davidson said, laughing.

“—because every second lieutenant is taught to find a good senior NCO, then do what he says and follow his example. And what this corrupter of young officers did was teach me how to blow safes and steal whiskey.”

Davidson laughed again.

Doña Alicia shook her head. “Carlos, I’m being serious here.”

“So am I, Abuela. Go on, Jack, fess up. Tell Doña Alicia that you talked me into sling-loading a dune buggy under McNab’s Huey so we could ‘reconnoiter the American embassy in Kuwait by air and land before the Marines could get there.’ And that when we got to the embassy, you blew the safe and stole all the diplomats’ whiskey.”

“Really?” Svetlana said. She did not seem disapproving.

“He’s an evil man, Sweaty,” Castillo said. “Rotten to the core.”

“Sweaty?” Doña Alicia repeated.

“Was that before or after you made the Russian colonels sing ‘The Internationale’?” Dmitri Berezovsky asked.

“What?” Doña Alicia asked.

“A couple of days after, Colonel,” Davidson said. “We needed a little something to drink to celebrate the Well Done message we got from Bush One.”

“What Russian colonels singing?” Doña Alicia asked.

Berezovsky and Davidson related the Russian and American versions of the story.

“I should be ashamed of myself,” Doña Alicia then said. “My curiosity always seems to get out of control. We were talking about how bad General Naylor feels about your . . . retirement.”

“He shouldn’t,” Castillo said seriously. “He went along with Montvale because that’s what he thought his duty called for him to do. I did the same thing; I did what I thought was my duty. I’m not angry with Naylor, Abuela. Really. He’s always been one of the good guys.”

“What are you going to do when this is over and . . .”

“When I am ‘Lieutenant Colonel Castillo (Retired)’? Right now what I’m thinking is that I’ll move into Sweaty’s new house in the Pilar Golf and Polo Country Club and maybe even learn how to play golf. Or polo. Or both.”

My post-retirement plans are a little vague, probably because I don’t want to even think about them.

What the hell am I going to do?

I can’t imagine playing golf or polo. . . .

“What about coming back here?” Doña Alicia asked.

Lester came into the kitchen, saving him from having to answer the question.

“Mr. D’Allessando’s got Colonel Hamilton on the AFC for you, Colonel.”

And what happens to you, Lester, when this merry little band folds its tent and steals off into the night?

“Thanks, Lester.”

He motioned for everybody to follow him into the library, where Bradley had the AFC set up.

[FIVE]

0855 8 January 2006

When Castillo walked into the library, he saw that the first steps to convert it into the Command Post for what he was now thinking of as Operation Fish Farm had been taken by Corporal Bradley. The AFC had been set up on a table near a window. A bed for the 24/7 posting had been dragged in from somewhere and there was a coffeemaker on another table against the wall.

Chairs had been arranged around the table, and there were lined pads and several ballpoint pens on each pad. Aside from that, there was nothing on the table but Castillo’s and Davidson’s notebook computers and the AFC handset. The rest of what they were going to need was going to have to wait until Lester or Jack went shopping.

Castillo took the seat at the head of the table, with his back to the fireplace, which held a crackling fire. Dmitri Berezovsky took the seat on the left side of the table. Davidson slipped into the seat across from him. Svetlana and Doña Alicia sat together on the left at the other end of the table, and Bradley sat across from them.

A Winchester lever-action .44-40 rifle was mounted on pegs above the fireplace. Large, accurate-scale models of a U.S. Army AH-64 Apache attack helicopter and an M1A1 Abrams tank sat on the mantelpiece under it. Castillo had bought the Apache model in the bookstore at Fort Rucker shortly after having been rated in that aircraft and had it shipped home. Fernando had done about the same thing with the Abrams model: bought it at the Fort Knox bookstore and sent it home just before shipping out for the Desert War.

The Winchester was a family treasure, having been used on many dozen occasions to protect the Double-Bar-C and its cattle from marauding Apache Indians.

The M1A1 Abrams was named for one of the Army’s most distinguished Armor generals, Creighton W. Abrams. Among his great achievements, Abrams, as a lieutenant colonel, had broken through the German ring surrounding Bastogne to rescue the 101st Airborne.

The AH-64, an instructor at Rucker had told Castillo before he’d even been allowed to get close to one of them, was named after the Apache Indians in tribute to their characteristics as warriors. Castillo had had trouble believing his ears—and even more keeping his mouth shut.

He had thought of that instructor every time he had climbed into an AH- 64 Apache thereafter, wondering again and again if the Pentagon chair-warmer—or chair-warmers, plural—who had given it that name because of the warrior characteristics of the Apache Indians had done enough research. For example, to learn, as Castillo well knew, that the Apaches had expressed their contempt for settlers against whom they waged war by capturing settlers and hanging them alive upside-down over a small fire and slowly roasting their brains. Or, for example, leaving their captors spread-eagle in the desert sun with eyelids hacked off and enough small bloodletting incisions made in the genital area to attract ants and other desert fauna.

And now Castillo thought of chair-warmer types again as he reached for the SPEAKERPHONE button on the AFC.

“Good morning, sir. Castillo here.”

“So it says on this amazing device,” Colonel Hamilton replied. “I am taking Mr. D’Allessando’s word for it that we are now in Class One encryption.”

“Yes, sir, we are.”

“I have been hoping you would get in contact, Colonel Castillo, inasmuch as General McNab has informed me the press of his other duties forces him to leave this operation in your hands, so to speak.”

“Yes, sir. That is my understanding.”

“Are you alone, Colonel? Mr. D’Allessando suggested you might wish him to be privy to this, and he’s with me.”

“I have my people with me, sir, and we’re on speakerphone.”

“Specifically, our new Russian friends?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Colonel Berezovsky, I regret I didn’t have more time to talk with you and your charming sister when we were in Florida,” Hamilton said. “But if you will continue to be available while we’re doing this, no real harm done.”

“Good morning, Colonel,” Berezovsky said. “We will be here.”

“There are some things that have to be done in the immediate future, Castillo, before Mr. DeWitt and I go into the Congo.”

“Sir, I wanted to talk to you about that,” Castillo said.

“About what?”

“Sir, what I’m thinking is that it would better if you didn’t actually go into the Congo.”

“That’s absurd. Wherever did you come up with that?”

“What I was thinking would make more sense, sir, would be if you remained outside the Congo—say, in Tanzania or Chad. . . .”

“I repeat, that’s absurd.”

“Colonel, you’re too valuable an asset to be put at risk.”

“I will make that judgment, Colonel. I have made that judgment. Now, as I was saying—”

“Sir, with respect, I must insist.”

“Colonel, you are in no position to insist on anything.”

“Sir, as you told me, General McNab has been forced to place this operation in my hands.”

“What General McNab said to me, Colonel, was that in the inevitable event we should find ourselves in disagreement, we could not look to him for resolution; we would have to do that ourselves.”

“Yes, sir, I understand that. Sir, may I say that I regard myself as the operation commander and you, sir, as very likely our most important asset, and that it is therefore my responsibility to protect you to the best of my ability.”

“What did you say your class was? At the Academy?”

“ ’Ninety, sir.”

“Then I can’t believe you said what you just said. You’re a West Pointer.”

“Yes, sir. I am.”

“Well, Colonel, unless the course of instruction at our alma mater has dramatically changed since you and I last marched across our beloved plain above the Hudson, they are still teaching that he who is senior is in command.”

No shit, Hamilton!

And no one is more senior than the commander in chief.

And the President is my senior—but I damn well can’t say that.

I’ve got to somehow beat this sonofabitch at his own game . . . but how?

“Sir, with respect, I don’t think that applies when one of the officers is of the combat arms and the other in the medical corps. In that situation, the senior combat arms officer is in command.”

“Good God, Castillo! You didn’t think I was going to go into the Congo wearing a Red Cross and caduceus—caduci? Is that the plural? I never seem to remember—and claiming the protection of the Geneva and other applicable conventions, did you? I’m not out of my mind. I’m going in armed as heavily as I can arrange. Mr. D’Allessando is taking me out and teaching me to fire the Mini Uzi as soon as we finish this conversation.”

Berezovsky saw the look on Castillo’s face.

He first laid a gentle hand on Castillo’s wrist, and when Castillo looked at him, Berezovsky signaled Slow down, calm down, take it easy all with one motion of his hand and a gentle, understanding smile.

“That’s very good of Mr. D’Allessando, sir.”

D’Allessando’s voice, his tone very serious, came over the speaker: “I always try to be helpful, Colonel Castillo. You know that.”

Hamilton went on: “So let’s clear the air between us, Castillo. My view of our relationship is this: When my people . . .”

You can stick “your people” up your ass, Hamilton!

I’ve had enough of your secret “protectors”!

“. . . authorized my participation in this operation, it was understood between us that General McNab was in command. Now that the other calls upon his time have taken him out of the picture, command thus falls to the next senior officer, which happens to be me. I will, of course, defer to your judgment in those areas of your expertise and seek your counsel. Now, Colonel, do you have any trouble with that?”

Berezovsky touched Castillo’s wrist again and shook his head.

“No, sir, I do not.”

Berezovsky gave Charley a thumbs-up.

Charley looked at Svetlana. He couldn’t tell if she felt sorry for him or thought what was going on was just short of hilarious.

“Fine, Colonel Castillo. On reflection, I’m glad this came up when it did, rather than later. Now, as to what has to be done.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Mr. DeWitt and I have to go to Washington. My people have arranged for visas for us—it usually takes weeks, I was told—for not only Tanzania but for Rwanda and Burundi, and—this should please you, Castillo—for the Democratic Republic of the Congo as well. But they cannot get around the requirement that the passport must be presented by the holder—or is that the holdee?—personally.

“Then I have to go to Fort Dietrich to pick up my equipment.”

“Your equipment, sir?”

“Yes. It will be taken, Mr. D’Allessando assures me, to Africa aboard your airplane with the ‘shooters.’ I had never heard that term before, but, especially after what I saw at Camp Mackall just now, I’m rather assured by what it connotes.”

“Sir, what sort of equipment are we talking about?”

“My testing equipment. There are three rather large soft-sided suitcases. Getting them through customs would have posed a major problem, but your shooter’s airplane has solved that. Getting them from Fort Dietrich here is the instant problem.”

“Sir, I can—”

“Mr. D’Allessando suggests that Mr. DeWitt and I leave Bragg and fly to Washington today. There is a Delta flight at 1620 to Washington, via Atlanta.”

Castillo thought quickly, then said, “As usual, Colonel, Mr. D’Allessando knows what should be done. And I’ll have Major Miller—you remember him, sir?”

“Yes. The officer with the injured knee.”

“I’ll have Major Miller meet your plane, sir.”

“That’s very kind of you, Colonel, but I can make it from Reagan to my home without assistance, and I’ll be happy to have Mr. DeWitt’s company. It’ll give us a chance to get to know one another, so to speak, before our trip.”

“Sir, with respect, this is my area of expertise.”

Hamilton was silent a moment, and apparently remembered his offer to listen to suggestions. “Go on, Colonel.”

“I will have Major Miller meet you, sir. We have a house in Alexandria—for that matter, we keep a suite at the Mayflower Hotel—where I’m sure you would be comfortable. It’s central—”

“I know where it is, Colonel,” Hamilton interrupted. “In some circles, it’s known as the Motel Monica Lewinsky.”

“Yes, sir, I’d heard that. Major Miller can take you to the various embassies, and then out to Fort Dietrich for your equipment.”

“How are we going to get that back here to Fort Bragg, Castillo? Have you given that any thought?”

“If you’ll bear with me a moment, sir?”

“Go ahead.”

“Major Miller will then take the equipment to Baltimore, where a plane will be waiting to bring you and Mr. DeWitt—and, of course, your equipment—back to Bragg.”

“Is there some reason that I don’t know why Mr. DeWitt and I should come back to Fort Bragg?”

Shit.

“No, sir. I didn’t think that through.”

“Obviously.” He paused dramatically. “Now, once we have our visas, we can be on our way.”

“Yes, sir. Major Miller will also arrange your transportation to Africa.”

“That would be helpful.”

“Mr. D’Allessando will inform Miller of your ETA at Reagan,” Castillo said.

There was a long pause as both men thought. Finally, Colonel Hamilton broke it: “That would seem to be it, wouldn’t you say, Castillo?”

“I can’t think of anything else, sir.”

“We’ll be in touch, of course.”

“Yes, sir.”

“How does one hang this thing up, Mr. D’Allessando?”

[SIX]

0940 8 January 2006

“I know what you’re thinking, Carlos,” Dmitri Berezovsky said after Castillo had set things up with Miller. “But that could have gone wrong and it didn’t.”

“I thought you done good, Charley,” Davidson said, then added admiringly: “He is one starchy sonofabitch, ain’t he?”

“Starch melts in hot water. Like in a cannibal’s pot?”

Berezovsky chuckled but said: “I have the feeling the colonel knows how to handle the cannibals.”

Castillo looked at him and shook his head. “Well, now that your boundless optimism has removed that weight from my shoulders, we can turn to Bradley’s shopping list.” He looked at him. “What did you come up with, Les?”

“Sir, while I know what we should have in terms of equipment capability, I’m afraid I haven’t been able to convert that into what we need in terms of specific equipment that might—or might not—be available in an Office Depot or Radio Shack store.”

“Which, off the top of my head, Les, means that you don’t get to go to bed until after you’ve gone shopping. Sorry about that. Let me see what you have.”

Bradley handed him a sheet of paper. Castillo looked at it a moment, then tossed it onto the table.

“I don’t know what I’m looking at, and it just occurred to me—some of you may have noticed that I am not functioning too well in the I’m-on-top-of-everything department—that when you don’t know something it usually helps to ask somebody who does.”

He leaned forward and touched a button on the AFC handset.

“C. G. Castillo. Dr. Casey. Encryption Level One.”

“One moment, please, Colonel,” a sultry, electronically generated voice replied. “I will attempt to connect you.”

The voice of Aloysius Francis Casey, Ph.D.—in an interesting mixture of the accents of a Boston Irish “Southie” and a Southwesterner—came over the speaker ten seconds later.

“Hey, Charley. What the hell are you doing twenty-two-point-five miles outside of Midland, Texas?”

How the hell does he know that?

“Good morning, Dr. Casey.”

“You call me that one more time, and I’ll not only hang up but will make the handset blow up in your ear.”

“Sorry.”

“You’re forgiven. I know you can’t handle the booze. I can’t detonate the handset—but that’s a thought; I may work on that—but that GPS function works all right, doesn’t it? Providing you are twenty-two-point-five miles from Midland, Texas.”

“That’s where I am.”

“I can whittle down that tenth-of-a-mile indicator some—probably to within a couple of meters—when I have more time to fiddle with it. What can I do for you, Charley?”

“I’m about to send Lester shopping in Radio Shack or someplace—”

“The Boy Jarhead is there? Semper Fi, Les!”

“Good morning, Dr. Casey,” Bradley said.

“You can call me that. You Gyrenes should always show a little respect for people like me.”

Bradley grinned at the term Marines normally took some offense at. “Yes, sir.”

“Charley, you’re sending Les shopping for what?”

“We need storage devices to receive a lot of data from a long way away from one AFC to another—maybe multiple more AFCs. So they’ll have to be high speed.”

“And portable? Self-powered and/or uninterruptible battery powered for at least a couple of hours?”

“All of the above.”

“And what else?”

“High-speed printers with lots of resolution for photos and maps. And a similar scanner or three, ditto. I need to keep in contact with one—or two—teams of shooters and a couple of people maybe running around by themselves.”

“Charley, the limiting factor is the speed of the relay in the satellites. I have to run them a lot slower than their capacity because of the equipment on the ground—equipment I didn’t make. I’m getting the idea you’re about to run an op?”

“Yes, we are. Operation Fish Farm.”

“I think I know what you need, Charley. No problem.”

There was a long silence. Then Castillo said, “You are going to tell me what it is, right, Aloysius?”

“You’ll see what it is when I get there. If it doesn’t work, we’ll work on it until we get it right.”

“I called to ask you to tell me what we need, not with my hand out.”

“Is there an airport any closer to where you are than Midland? Where do I tell the pilot to go?”

“Home. You go home after you tell me what we need. Then Les will go buy it.”

“Like hell he will. Now, where do I tell the pilot to go?”

Castillo shook his head, but he was smiling. “You have my coordinates?”

“Yeah. Like I told you, within a tenth of a mile and maybe five hundred feet altitude.”

“There’s a strip three-tenths of a mile to the south.”

“Will it take a Gulfstream V, or should I bring something smaller?”

“It’ll take a G-Five, but I can’t get something that big in my hangar, and if you park it here, people might get curious.”

“That kind of an op, huh? No problem. I’ll just have them drop me off—not to worry, they won’t remember where—and worry about getting back to Vegas later. It’s seven hundred nautical miles. Figure an hour to get to the airport and off the ground and an hour and three-quarters in the air. Add all that up, Charley, and I’ll see you then. Casey out.”

Castillo pushed a button, turning off the AFC speakerphone function.

“You really have such interesting friends, Carlos,” Svetlana said. “That was the Casey of the AFC Corporation?”

“You know about him, huh, Svet? What that was was a very lonely man—his wife just died—who I think I just made very happy. He’s sitting all alone in a house about twice the size of the one in Golf and Polo, or vice versa, that you like so much, on several hundred hectares of very expensive real estate overlooking Las Vegas and of course the AFC labs and plants.”

“I don’t understand,” Berezovsky said.

“When Aloysius was a kid, Colonel,” Davidson offered, “he was in the Vietnam War, the commo—communications—sergeant on a Special Forces A-Team operating black in Cambodia and other places. When he gets here, you will learn how he almost won that war all by himself. He never really took off the suit.”

“What does that mean?” Svetlana asked.

“He still thinks of himself as a special operator,” Castillo said.

“And Charley just told him he could come out and play. No, not play. This is for real, and that makes it better; he can tell us young guys how to do an operation the right way. For Aloysius, that’s better than Christmas, his birthday, and Saint Patrick’s Day all rolled into one.”

“He’s stopped talking to Billy Waugh,” Castillo said. “Did you hear that?”

Davidson nodded. “Uh-huh.”

“Isn’t that the fellow who caught Carlos the Jackal?” Berezovsky asked.

“One and the same,” Davidson said. “Aloysius and Billy were young green beanies together, and Billy’s still out there—the last I heard he was in Afghanistan again—going after the bad guys. Meanwhile, Aloysius is behind a desk—and can’t stand that Billy isn’t pushing a walker rather than making HALO jumps.”

“How old are they?” Castillo mused. “Seventy-five, anyway. Pushing eighty.”

“Then they ought to have enough sense to stand down,” Svetlana said. “If they’re that old.”

“And do what?” Berezovsky said. “The American general Patton said it, Svet. The only good death for a soldier is to die from the last bullet fired in the last battle.”

Castillo said, “How about me having a heart attack on the ninth green, or whatever they call it, of Golf and Polo, and then you having one trying to load me into the golf cart? That way, we could go out together and wouldn’t have to look for a job. Or play golf.”

“I think I’d rather take that last bullet,” Berezovsky said. “Even though it no longer seems we have that option.”

“Or we could go fishing in that lake with Aleksandr, fall out of the boat and drown,” Castillo said.

“Your William Colby went out that way,” Berezovsky said.

“Who?” Svetlana said.

“He was a director of Central Intelligence,” Berezovsky said.

“And he fell out of his canoe,” Castillo said. “And drowned.”

“I think I’d prefer the bullet,” Berezovsky said.

“Me, too,” Castillo said. “All things considered. God knows I can’t see myself on a golf course.”

“The both of you make me sick!” Svetlana said furiously. “May God forgive you both!”

She stormed out of the library.

“What the hell’s the matter with her?” Castillo asked.

“She’s a woman,” Berezovsky said. “I suspect your learning about women is going to be an interesting experience for you. Painful, but interesting.”

[SEVEN]

1250 8 January 2006

Casey’s Gulfstream V—which Castillo thought was both beautiful and probably carried the most advanced avionics in the world—touched smoothly down, turned at the end of the strip, and taxied back to the hangar.

The stair door opened and Aloysius Francis Casey, Ph.D., came down the steps carrying an open laptop computer. He was wearing clothing not often seen in South Boston: a Stetson hat, Western World ostrich-skin boots, a sheepskin-lined denim jacket, and matching trousers.

He saluted. Castillo returned it.

“We cheated death again,” Casey announced triumphantly, then nodded at the computer. “This little sonofabitch was right on the money.”

He handed the laptop to Lester Bradley.

“You can carry this. I wouldn’t want a Marine to rupture himself trying to carry anything heavier.”

“Yes, sir,” Bradley said. He looked at the screen. “Dr. Casey, why does this show we’re in Dallas?”

Casey took a quick, shocked look at the screen.

“You little sonofabitch, you got me!” Casey said approvingly.

A man wearing the shoulder boards of a first officer came down the stairs carrying a large cardboard box, followed by a man wearing the four-stripe shoulder boards of a captain and also carrying a large cardboard box.

“That’s the delicate stuff,” Casey barked. “Be careful with it.”

“Yes, sir,” they said in unison as they headed for one of the Yukons. Bradley went to the nearest and opened the rear door.

“Where’d you get the cowboy suit?” Castillo asked.

“Weren’t you paying attention in the Q course when they said you should always try to blend into the native population? And this is Texas, right? At least Dallas, if one were to believe the Boy Marine.”

Castillo chuckled.

“Well, hello,” Casey said, having spotted Svetlana.

“I like your cowboy suit,” Svetlana said. “Carlos, I want one just like that.”

“Aloysius, this is Susan Barlow,” Castillo said. “And her brother, Tom.”

“You don’t sound like a Texan,” Casey said. “But as pretty as you are, you can sound like anything you want.”

“My grandmother’s in the house, setting up lunch,” Castillo said.

“Your grandmother?”

“We need all the help we can get,” Castillo said.

“And here I am,” Casey said. “Let’s get this crap off the airplane.”

The “crap off the airplane” nearly filled both Yukons.

Less than an hour after it touched down, Casey’s Gulfstream went wheels-up.

“What we’re going to need before too long are a couple of large, very large, monitors,” Casey announced. “Better, three. Better yet, four. That’s presuming the Marine Corps doesn’t smash everything taking it out of the boxes.”

He nodded toward Bradley, who was half inside one of Casey’s large cardboard boxes that crowded the library.

“Not to worry, sir. I know how delicate vacuum tubes are.”

“Vacuum tubes?” Casey asked incredulously, then said, “The Boy Marine got me again!”

“So it would appear,” Berezovsky said.

“I may decide not to like you, Tom. And I don’t even know who you are.”