Black Ops

“You tell me what kind of monitors you want, and I’ll go into town and get them,” Castillo said. “And while I’m doing that, Davidson can tell you who Tom is and otherwise bring you up to speed.”

Casey said, “Go to Radio Shack and get a bunch of precision soldering irons and hand tools, that kind of thing. Mine are in my kitchen. As far as the monitors go, get the best they have. I don’t want to have to fix monitors in addition to everything else I have to do around here.”

He reached for his wallet. “Let me give you a credit card.”

“I have a credit card, thank you. The Lorimer Charitable and Benevolent Fund will pick up the tab.”

Castillo was almost out the front door when he remembered that if he used the Lorimer AmEx, or anything with his name on it, the FBI would quickly learn his whereabouts.

Abuela, Estella, and Svetlana were cleaning up the kitchen after breakfast when he walked in.

“Abuela, I need you to go into town with me to buy some things. And bring your credit card, please. I’ll pay you back later.”

“Carlos, you don’t have a credit card?” she said incredulously, if disapprovingly.

“I do. But if I use it, the FBI will know I’m in Midland, and I don’t want them to know that.”

That announcement didn’t faze her.

“I was just about to ask, Carlos, if it would be safe for Svetlana to go into Midland.”

Castillo looked at her. “Why do you want to, Svet?”

Doña Alicia answered for her. “I promised her I’d show her St. Agnes’s, where you sang in the choir . . .”

“Before you grew up and became a heathen,” Svetlana said.

“. . . and she wants to buy some denims,” Doña Alicia picked up.

“I became neither a heathen nor a Roman Catholic,” Castillo said.

“He doesn’t mean that the way it sounds, dear. He’s a Protestant—”

“He’s not a very good anything now,” Svetlana said. “That I will change.”

“And I was thinking if you could get what you need in Sam’s . . .”

“Sam’s and Radio Shack, probably.”

“. . . Svetlana could get the denims there. And if you’re going to have to go to Radio Shack, that’s right down the street from Western World. They have some very nice ready-to-wear boots, and blouses and things. That’s if it’s safe for her to go into town.”

The odds are pretty slim that the local FBI people would spot this Interpol fugitive in Sam’s or Western World, or riding around in a Yukon with a Double-Bar-C sign on the door.

“Whenever you’re ready, ladies,” Castillo said.

“Svetlana can ride with me. That would attract less attention,” Doña Alicia said.

[EIGHT]

1745 8 January 2006

The Yukons returned to the Double-Bar-C each transporting two fifty-six-inch flat-screen liquid-crystal monitors, one strapped to each roof and one extending four feet out the rear door of each with a little flag flying from the boxes—Lester Bradley had said there was no reason not to avoid a conflict with the cops for having something hanging out the back of the truck.

Doña Alicia and Svetlana, carrying boxes of denim clothing and whatever the big box labeled WESTERN WORLD contained, disappeared into the house.

Ernesto—Estella’s son—and Bradley and Castillo started off-loading the monitors. After they had carried the first one into the library—which was now a sea of electronic devices and parts there for—Davidson came out to help with the others.

“Miller called, Charley.”

“And?”

“Colonel Hamilton and Phineas will arrive at Reagan at oh-nine-something. He’ll take them to the Motel Monica. Tom McGuire has some Secret Service guys who’ll sit on them tonight and tomorrow without asking any questions. He said there’s nothing to connect them with us anyway.

“And Delchamps is on the 2130 Lufthansa flight to Munich, and Darby on the 2150 American flight to Frankfurt, both out of Dulles. Miller gave them $9,900 apiece—a hundred under the law requiring anything over ten grand taken out of the country to be declared.”

Castillo nodded. “What else?”

“He’s got a Beechcraft King Air laid on from noon tomorrow to take Hamilton’s stuff to Bragg. Actually to Fayetteville, where Vic will have somebody meet it. No jet was available, and he said it won’t make any difference anyhow, as Torine can’t leave without that stuff or the shooters, and Uncle Remus is not finished with the paperwork for the shooters.”

“But he has them, right?”

“Uncle Remus said he’s got eighteen coal-blacks, five a little lighter, and one he says they may have to leave in Tanzania he’s so light.”

“Okay. I guess that leaves us with nothing to do now but set up Casey’s toys and wait.”

“I have the feeling we’ll be doing a lot of that, Charley. Waiting.”

“Do they have sophisticated tools like this in Marine Corps communications, Bradley?” Casey asked, holding up a very-fine-pointed soldering iron from Radio Shack.

“I don’t know what they have in Marine Corps communications, sir,” Bradley replied. “I was a designated marksman, not in that. I think they mostly use semaphore flags.”

He mimed waving semaphore flags.

Casey shook his head. “What’s a designated marksman? That anything like a shooter?”

“I really don’t know how well your shooters shoot, Dr. Casey, so I don’t know if they would qualify to be a Marine Corps designated shooter. But if you were asking can I use that soldering iron, then yes, sir, I can. Before I joined the Corps, I was in the AARRL. I made most of my stuff.”

“I was also in the American Amateur Radio Relay League,” Casey said. “That’s how I got suckered into Special Forces; they needed people who knew the difference between an ohm and a watt.”

He pointed to a rat’s nest of twisted-together wires on the table.

“Why don’t you see what you can do with that?” Then he turned to Castillo, Ernesto, and Davidson, who were resting from their monitor-carrying labors. “Why don’t you guys get out of here and leave those of us who know what we’re doing to do it?”

Castillo and Davidson went to the kitchen, carrying an AFC handset with them. Estella offered them coffee. Castillo had just picked up his mug when Svetlana came into the room, almost causing him to drop the mug.

She was wearing her cowboy suit, which included a light gray Stetson hat, a denim jacket worn open over a translucent blouse of Western cut—through which he could see her upper undergarment—a pair of lizard-skin boots, and of course denim trousers.

She spun around.

“No comment?” she asked.

“How the hell did you get those pants on? With a paintbrush?”

“You’re not supposed to ask questions like that of a lady, my heathen,” she said.

“Jesus, Charley!” Davidson said in mock disapproval of his query. “Even I know that.”

Svetlana smiled at Davidson, then went to Castillo, put her arms around him, and whispered in his ear, “If you will be a good boy, later I will show you how I get them off.”

[NINE]

0700 9 January 2006

When Castillo walked into the library he saw that while it was not going to win any prizes for order and cleanliness, it was a great deal cleaner and more in order than it was the last time he had seen it the night before.

He also saw Lester Bradley sound asleep in an armchair, and that Casey, heavy-eyed, was sitting in another.

“He wouldn’t go to bed when we finished about oh-five-hundred,” Casey greeted him. “Said he ‘had the duty.’ He’s been like that since about ten after five.”

Castillo gently shook Bradley’s shoulder and, when he opened his eyes, said, “Wake up and go to bed, Lester.”

Bradley was on his feet a second later.

“Sir, I guess I dropped off for a second.”

“Go to bed, Lester. Say, ‘Yes, sir.’ ”

“Aye-aye, sir.”

Castillo waited until Bradley had walked sleepily out of the room, then asked, “What would you say, Dr. Casey, sir, if I gave you the same order?”

“I would say, ‘Yes, sir, whatever the colonel desires, sir.’ Right after I tell you what Miller had to say and I show you what we’ve done.”

“What did Miller have to say?”

“Delchamps’s and Darby’s planes got off the ground, and so far there has been no report that they dropped into the Atlantic. And he said Doherty and Two-Gun Yung arrived. He said he’s going to install Doherty in the office to keep an eye on the FBI trying to put an eye on you, and that Yung will arrive at the Midland Airport at twelve twenty-five. He said he thought he might be useful here.”

“He will be. Thanks. And now why don’t you get some sleep?”

“You’ll notice that all four monitors are glowing dully,” Casey continued. He pointed at the monitors, one of which was on a table too small for it, and the others sitting on the floor. “But when the proper buttons are pushed, they begin to show us things. For example, the physical location of the AFCs in which I have activated the transponder.”

One of the monitors showed a map of the world. Lightning-bolt symbols showed the locations of the radios in Germany, Argentina, Uruguay, Hungary, and the United States.

“At various scales,” Casey went on, “for example, here in the States.”

A second screen lit up, with a map of the United States, showing lightning bolts in Nevada, Texas, North Carolina, and the District of Columbia.

“Or closer.”

The first screen went blank, then lit up with a map of the Washington area, with lightning bolts at the Nebraska Avenue Complex, the Baltimore airport, and the safe house in Alexandria.

“Or closer.”

The second screen now showed a map of the Baltimore airport, with a lightning bolt coming out of a hangar.

“That’s the one in your Gulfstream. And thanks to the friendly folks at Google, we have this view of that, as well.”

A third screen lit up showing a three-dimensional image of the Signature Flight Support, Inc., hangar.

“God knows that picture wasn’t taken yesterday, or even last month, but it’s better than no picture. And I sure as hell didn’t want to hack into Fort Meade.”

“Could you do that?”

“Who do you think set up their imagery? Whenever we need that, we can. Just didn’t think it wise in the middle of an op.”

Castillo was awed. He smiled. “Go to bed, Aloysius.”

“And so far as people are concerned”—Casey punched more buttons on a keyboard. The world map reappeared with symbols of humans—“this shows the last known location of everybody of interest.”

Casey then repeated the process of demonstration, which this time ended with a three-dimensional view of the ranch house, above which was a line of numbered symbols. A chart to the right identified the numbers. Castillo was represented by the number 1, Casey by the number 2, and so on.

“I’m awed.”

“This is pretty rough, Charley, but it’s up and running.”

“Now, go to bed. We’re going to have to wait for what comes next.”

“I think I will.”

“Thanks, Aloysius.”

Casey yawned, then made a deprecating gesture and walked out of the library.

Castillo sat down in the armchair Lester had vacated, reached for the coffee thermos, poured himself a cup, and began to wait for what would come next.

XVII

[ONE]

Double-Bar-C Ranch

Near Midland, Texas

1725 9 January 2006

The first thing Castillo had to wait for was the arrival of former FBI Special Agent David W. Yung, Jr. Jack Davidson, who had gone into Midland to meet Yung at the airport, called at half past twelve to report that Yung hadn’t been on the plane, had probably missed his connection at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport and might be on the next plane, or planes, one of which was due at two something and the other at four something.

Castillo told him to wait. He didn’t want a record, should the FBI have a “locate but do not detain” out on their former co-worker, that Two-Gun had rented a vehicle and driven himself from the airport to the Double-Bar-C.

That hadn’t happened. Yung walked off the next regional jet that landed at Midland International.

Minutes before Two-Gun and Davidson walked into the ranch’s library, Corporal Bradley had updated the data bank with new information. Colonel Hamilton’s suitcases were now in Fort Bragg. But the 727 had not yet left for Africa. It had been discovered that an Air Tanzania already existed, which made it necessary to remove most of that color scheme and replace it with a scheme identifying the aircraft as part of the fleet of Sub-Saharan Airways, Ltd.

Corporal Bradley was thus able to demonstrate the command post’s new installed technical capabilities to Yung.

While he was doing that, one of the AFCs went off, the caller identified as Alex Darby. He was in Fulda, in Otto Görner’s office. A conversation followed, during which it was learned that Edgar Delchamps’s going to Vienna had been something of a mistake, as Eric Kocian was in Budapest. God only knew when he’d get to Budapest now. It was also learned that the transmission of the late Herr Friedler’s notes would be begun as soon as they could be scanned.

As Lester was demonstrating how the changed data—Last Known Location of 7-Darby, A—could be entered into the data bank so that it could be shown on one of the monitors, Svetlana came into the library. She wore another new cowgirl suit, one much like the other—just as form-fitting—but the denim was red in color.

She kissed Castillo somewhat less than chastely on the mouth, then whispered something in his ear, and then finally said, “Lester, if you’ll show me how to do that, I can do it.”

“It’s not hard, Colonel,” Bradley replied, at which point Castillo deduced from the look on Two-Gun’s face that he now understood the cowgirl was one of the Russians Castillo had gotten out of Vienna, and also that Miller had not advised him that the relationship between the Russian defector and Colonel Castillo was not one that one would normally expect.

“Close your mouth, Two-Gun,” Davidson advised, “and pay attention to what Lester’s teaching Sweaty. You’re here; you’re going to be on the duty roster.”

[TWO]

0700 10 January 2006

The world map now showed that the Sub-Saharan Airways 727, having refueled in Morocco, was somewhere over the Sahara Desert, en route to Kilimanjaro International Airport, Tanzania.

It also showed Colonel Hamilton and DeWitt in Brussels, Belgium, where they would board an Air France flight to Dar Es Salaam International Airport, Tanzania, at 2300.

They learned from Sándor Tor, via the AFC installed in Eric Kocian’s Hotel Gellert apartment overlooking the Danube in Budapest, that Edgar Delchamps had gotten as far as Vienna. He had telephoned to say he would be along in a day or two, just as soon as he took care of something he had to do in Vienna.

Because Delchamps was not answering his cellular telephone and had not provided an alternate number at which he could be reached, Colonel Castillo could not ask him what the hell that was all about. And Castillo needed Edgar in Budapest to go through Billy Kocian’s files to choose what would be scanned and sent to Midland.

At supper—Doña Alicia and Estella prepared a rack of pork, Svetlana made garlic mashed potatoes, and an enormous salad, and there were several bottles of a very nice Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon—Dmitri Berezovsky confessed to Castillo that he was a little worried about Delchamps. The Russian said that while he really liked Edgar—he thought they had become friends—he struck him as the kind of man who had to be kept on a short leash.

“I think he was kidding when he said he’d like to whack the CIA station chief lady,” Castillo replied.

Svetlana said, “Of course he was, my Carlos. I was the one who wanted to kill her.”

Judging by Doña Alicia’s face, Castillo could not tell whether or not she thought that Svetlana was only making a little joke.

After supper, Dmitri beat Two-Gun at chess six games in a row, one lasting an exhausting two minutes and twenty seconds by the clock.

And they watched television and the monitors and waited.

[THREE]

0700 11 January 2006

The monitor showed the updated data that Colonel Torine had called in: that the Sub-Saharan Airways 727 and its cargo and crew were on the ground at Kilimanjaro International and that Uncle Remus was looking around to see what pickup trucks or similar vehicles were available for purchase in the nearby towns of Arusha and Mosi.

Sándor Tor reported that Edgar Delchamps had called again and said that he would arrive by train from Vienna at 1415.

“I guess he did whatever he had to do in Vienna,” Dmitri observed.

“He spent a lot of time in Vienna,” Castillo said. “So far as we know, he has a Fräulein—more likely a Fräu, I suppose—with whom he passed a little time. He knew there was no rush.”

“Isn’t he a little long in the tooth for that sort of thing?”

“I don’t think so. Sándor Tor told me that Billy Kocian has two very good friends in Vienna. And you know how old he is.”

“An inspiration to all of us,” Berezovsky said.

An Internet inquiry of Air France revealed that flight 434, nonstop Airbus service from Brussels to Dar Es Salaam, had arrived on time.

And they watched the monitors and talked a little about what exactly would be the best format for the data Castillo would lay before the President, and Two-Gun said he’d start making up a dummy to be filled in as the data arrived and was digested.

And they waited.

[FOUR]

1310 11 January 2006

“Colonel Hamilton for Colonel Castillo, Encryption Level One,” the sultry voice of the AFC announced. Castillo looked at the monitors. The one showing Sub-Saharan Africa showed a now-flashing lightning bolt in Bujumbura, Burundi. It also indicated the local date and time beside the flashing lightning bolt: It was now 0110 12 January 2006 in Bujumbura.

Castillo pushed the SPEAKERPHONE button.

“C. G. Castillo.”

“I have Colonel Castillo for you, Colonel Hamilton. Encryption Level One confirmed.”

“Thank you very much,” Hamilton said.

“You don’t have to thank her, sir,” Castillo said. “She’s a computer.”

“I’m aware of that, of course. Force of habit.”

“Yes, sir.”

“It’s ten past one in the morning here, Castillo. I’m in the Hotel du Lac in Bujumbura.”

Castillo looked at another of the monitors. It showed a three-dimensional picture of the Hotel du Lac.

“Yes, sir, I know.”

“In Washington and on our way here, I discussed a number of things with Mr. DeWitt and I must say I was very impressed with him.”

“He’s a very impressive man, sir.”

“Among the things we discussed was our mode of operations. I also discussed this with Colonel Torine when DeWitt and I got to the Kilimanjaro airfield. And a third time, with Mr. Leverette, when we finally arrived here in Bujumbura.”

“Yes, sir?”

“I thought we had resolved, once and for all, the command structure of this operation. I am of course in overall command. Colonel Torine will handle the transportation and logistics outside the Congo. Inside the Congo, Mr. Leverette and Mr. DeWitt will be responsible for transportation and security, and I will be responsible for the investigation.”

“That seems to be a practical solution for your situation, sir.”

“So I would have thought. When I went to bed tonight, I thought it had been agreed between us that we would get some rest tonight. Not only was it a long flight, but we have passed through—I don’t know precisely how many but a number of time zones. . . .”

“Six, sir,” Castillo furnished.

“And the natural clock of the body has been disturbed. Rest obviously was called for. Tomorrow morning, I thought it was agreed, when fresh from our rest, we would plan our incursion of the Congo.”

“I awoke about fifteen minutes ago, Castillo. I had trouble sleeping, and with the thought that perhaps Mr. Leverette and/or Mr. DeWitt were having the same problem, I decided I would see if they did, and if so, we could perhaps get a jump on our morning planning session.”

“Uh-oh,” Jack Davidson said.

“What was that, Castillo?”

“Nothing, sir. One of my men came in the room.”

“So I started out of my room. I was startled by a man dressed in the local clothing—or lack of it—sitting directly in a chair across from my door. He had in his lap an Uzi—the full-size one, not the Mini Uzi Mr. D’Allessando was kind enough to loan me.

“He addressed me in English, by rank. He said, in effect, ‘Is there something I can do for you, Colonel?’ to which I replied, ‘What are you doing outside my door?’ to which he replied, ‘Uncle Remus said we should sit on you, sir.’

“By then I realized the man was one of our shooters, so I asked him to direct me to Mr. Leverette’s room. He replied, ‘I can, Colonel, but Uncle Remus is not in his room.’” Colonel Hamilton paused. “And what is that all about, Castillo? Everyone calls him ‘Uncle Remus.’ Why do they do that?”

“Only his friends, sir, are permitted to call him that.”

“I asked you why they do that. You are aware of the inference, the implication, I presume?”

“Yes, sir. Well, sir, the best answer I’ve ever been able to come up with is that the Uncle Remus character in the books was a kindly old gentleman who was always telling stories, and Mr. Leverette seems to fit that description.”

“Be that as it may, Castillo, permitting your subordinates, particularly your subordinate enlisted men, to call you by the name of a fictional character in a series of children’s books that some think—and here you may take my point—are racist in tone is pretty odd behavior for a chief warrant officer of the highest grade, wouldn’t you agree, Colonel Castillo—”

Castillo caught himself smiling. “I honestly never gave it much thought, sir. I will look into it—”

“It comes perilously close to conduct unbefitting an officer and a gentleman, Castillo, and you know it.”

“I must respectfully disagree, sir. Mr. Leverette is one of the finest officers with whom I have ever served.”

“Well, let me tell you what he’s done.”

Castillo glanced at Davidson, who was grimacing.

“Yes, sir.”

“I asked the shooter with the Uzi,” Hamilton went on, “ ‘If Mr. Leverette isn’t in his room, where is he?’

“To which he replied, ‘He and Phineas went over the fence, Colonel.’ Then he handed me a letter and said, ‘Uncle Remus instructed me to give you this in the morning, Colonel. But I guess it’s okay to give it to you now.’ ”

“A letter, sir? What did it say?”

“I will read it to you,” Colonel Hamilton said. “Quote. Dear Colonel Hamilton. Phineas and I decided it would be a good idea if we conducted a preliminary reconnaissance of the border area prior to the planning of the incursion. Since you were so tired, and we felt sure you would agree this was a wise step, we didn’t wake you. We will return in forty-eight hours. Respectfully, Colin Leverette CWO5 USA. End quote. Well, what about that, Castillo?”

“What about what, sir?”

“If that isn’t direct and willful disobedience of orders, what is it?”

“Sir, did you order Mr. Leverette and Mr. DeWitt not to conduct a reconnaissance of the border area?”

“I thought it was understood. I told you that.”

“Well, to judge from Mr. Leverette’s letter, sir, I’d have to say the understanding wasn’t unequivocally clear. He would never disobey an order, sir”—Unless, at the time, Colin thought it was the right thing to do—“Sir, why don’t you have a word with Mr. Leverette when he and Mr. DeWitt return?”

“You can take that to the bank, Castillo,” Colonel Hamilton said. “I’ll give the both of them a dressing-down they’ll remember the rest of their lives.”

Probably more like two seconds.

Uncle Remus and Phineas DeWitt have been dressed down by Bruce J. McNab, and with all possible respect, Colonel Hamilton, sir, you just ain’t in the same ball club.

“Sir, I realize I shouldn’t say this, but I respectfully suggest you not be too hard on either of them. They mean well.”

“I will contact you on their return, Castillo.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“Colonel J. Porter Hamilton. Please terminate the communication link.”

“Anything else I can do for you, Colonel?” the sultry voice asked suggestively.

“Uh, no,” Hamilton replied somewhat uneasily, then in a stuffy tone added, “That will be all, thank you.”

Castillo looked at Davidson, who said: “Well, Colonel Castillo, sir, I guess we’ll just have to wait and see, but I would not be surprised if Colonel Hamilton ignores you vis-à-vis not being too hard on Uncle Remus and Phineas. He will lecture them both severely and probably reduce them both to tears. But nice try.”

[FIVE]

0200 12 January 2006

“Otto Görner for Colonel Castillo, Data Transmission Not Encrypted,” the sultry voice of the AFC announced.

Davidson pushed the VOICE TRANSMIT button.

“John Davidson. Colonel Castillo available in five minutes.”

“Hold one, Sergeant Davidson,” the voice said, then twenty seconds later added: “Not Encrypted Data Transmission begins. Pass to Colonel Castillo when available.”

Davidson hadn’t even reached the printer when it started to whir and the voice—which, or who, Davidson very privately had begun to think of as “Sexy Susan”—announced: “Not Encrypted Data Transmission complete.”

Three seconds later a hard copy of the data came out of the printer.

Davidson read it, then began to push keys on the printer keyboard.

The printer monitor showed what he’d typed: TRANSLATE GERMAN TO ENGLISH DRAFT.

The translation began to appear on the printer monitor.

Davidson studied it, made a few minor corrections—the AFC translator was good but not perfect—then typed, FILE AS GÖRNER 0203 12 JAN PRINT 3 COPIES.”

The printer began to spit out the three copies.

Davidson stapled the German original and the translation together, then said, “Sorry, Casanova, duty calls,” and walked out of the library.

Svetlana answered his knock in a few seconds.

“He’s asleep,” she said.

Davidson held out the papers.

“Sweaty, I think he’d want to see this.”

She took them from him, stepped into the corridor where there was enough light to read, then scanned both versions, and sighed. “Dmitri was afraid of something like this would happen. I will wake Carlos.”

Davidson went back to the library.

Castillo, wearing his West Point bathrobe, came in almost immediately behind him.

“Goddamn that Edgar Delchamps!”

“You’re not really surprised, are you, Charley?”

“Pissed is the word that comes to mind. At Delchamps, and at me for not seeing this coming.”

Dmitri and Svetlana came into the library. Berezovsky was wrapped in a terry-cloth bathrobe.

“Have a look at social notes from all over,” Castillo said, gesturing to the papers.

“Svetlana told me,” Berezovsky said.

“Read it,” Castillo said, “then give me the benefit of your thinking, please.”

Berezovsky took one of the copies of the translation, and his eyes fell to it.

TAGES ZEITUNG VIENNA

0900 12 Jan

Immediate

For All Tages Zeitung Newspapers

TAG: RUSSIAN DIPLOMAT FOUND

MURDERED OUTSIDE U.S. EMBASSY

By Wilhelm Dusse

Staff Writer/Tages Zeitung Vienna

The body of Kirill Demidov, cultural attaché of the Russian embassy, was found early this morning in the passenger seat of a taxicab near the United States of America embassy at Boltzmanngasse 16. He apparently had been strangled to death.

Mr. Demidov’s body was found by a U.S. Marine guard as he walked to the embassy to begin his duty day.

“I thought it was funny for somebody to be sitting in the back of a cab with no driver, so I took a look, and when I’d seen what it was I went inside the embassy and called the cops,” Staff Sergeant James L. Hanrahan told this reporter before the interview was interrupted by an officer of the embassy, who took Sergeant Hanrahan away and announced the U.S. embassy would have no comment.

Mr. Demidov’s body was still sitting erect in the taxicab when this reporter arrived at the scene shortly before officials of the Russian embassy then arrived and, claiming diplomatic privilege, had the body removed to an undisclosed location by ambulance.

Vienna police officials said that the taxicab had been stolen from its garage earlier last evening, and that the police had been looking for it. They also reported that there had been a “metal noose” around Mr. Demidov’s body, with which he had apparently been strangled.

It is known that Mr. Demidov had earlier been at the Kunsthistorisches Museum at ceremonies marking the closing of the exhibit of the Bartolomeo Rastrelli’s wax statue of Russian Tsar Peter the First, which had been on loan from the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg.

STORY OPEN MORE TO FOLLOW

“Let me make a wild guess, Dmitri,” Castillo said. “Demidov was the Vienna rezident?”

Berezovsky nodded.

“Who sent us this? Darby?” Castillo asked.

“Otto Görner,” Davidson said.

“Well, then let’s see what else Otto knows. For all we know, Edgar may be as pure as the driven snow in this. Demidov may have been done in by his homosexual lover; there’s been a lot of that going on.”

Davidson laughed.

Castillo went to the radio. “C .G. Castillo. Otto Görner. Encryption Level One.”

“Hold one, Colonel. I will attempt to make the connection.”

“Sweaty, she sounds a lot like you. Ever notice?” Davidson asked. “I’ve started to think of her as ‘Sexy Susan.’ ”

Svetlana gave him the finger.

“Well, Karl,” Otto Görner’s voice came over the speakerphone, “what are you doing up in the middle of the night?”

“Reading the newspaper. What else have you got?”

“I just got off the phone with Willi Dusse. Two little tidbits that probably don’t mean anything ”

“What, Otto?”

“An unnamed source in the Vienna police, whose name Willi always spells correctly, with two s’s, said that while they were waiting for the police heavyweights and the Russians to show up, he happened to notice that the victim’s face was not contorted and blue, as is common in strangulations, and that what he described as the ‘metal noose’ was not embedded in the victim’s neck, but just sort of hanging there. He did notice, however, that there was a mark on the neck, below the ear, that could perhaps have been made with a needle.

“Willi thinks it’s possible the victim did not die of strangulation, but of some other cause. But we’ll never know, as any autopsy will be conducted in Moscow.”

“That’s interesting. They have any idea who did this to Mr. Demidov?”

“Not according to Willi. Willi was told, however, that the taxi was wiped clean; no fingerprints. Suggesting, possibly, that this terrible act was done by someone who knew what he was doing.”

“That’s all? What’s the second little tidbit?”

“Well, one little thing, which probably means absolutely nothing. As the police wrecker was hauling the taxicab away, Willi’s friend noticed a calling card at the curbside. It could have simply been dropped there prior to all this, but it also could have been in the taxi and dislodged when the police initially examined the cadaver.”

“What was the name on the calling card?”

“It was an American diplomat’s, a woman named Eleanor Dillworth. She’s the consul.”

“Oh, I do love a man who can really hold a grudge,” Davidson said.

“Goddamn it,” Castillo said.

“That mean something to you, Karl?” Görner asked.

Castillo avoided the question. “Otto, please send me whatever else your man Dusse comes up with, will you?”

“Of course, Karl.”

“Does Darby know about this?”

“I showed it to him when it came in. He’s just about finished here, he said, and is moving to Budapest.”

“Is he there now?”

“No. Alex said he was going to his hotel to pack.”

“If you see him, have him call me, please.”

“I suppose if you knew anything about those two Russian defectors, you’d tell me, right?”

“Absolutely.”

“You don’t suppose somebody stuck needles in their necks, do you? Or hung a garrote around their necks and they just haven’t found the bodies yet? That’s a story I’d love to write myself. And give to Friedler’s widow.”

“I’m going back to bed, Otto,” Castillo said. “End transmission.”

Berezovsky then said, “Carlos, you seem to be genuinely surprised by this.”

’“And you’re not?”

Berezovsky didn’t immediately reply.

“You knew about this?” Castillo asked, then thought: Of course you did! “You knew Edgar was going to whack this guy and you didn’t tell me?”

“Why do you think he did this?” Berezovsky asked.

Castillo said: “He wants to go out in style, be remembered when the other dinosaurs gather as the dinosaur who whacked the Vienna rezident the week before he retired.”

Berezovsky shook his head.

“No?” Castillo snapped. “Then, damn you, why?”

“We talked—” Berezovsky began.

Castillo saw Svetlana nodding in agreement.

“We being who?” Castillo interrupted. “You, Delchamps, and who else? You, Svet?”

“Yes, my Carlos. Me, too,” she said.

“Anybody else?” Castillo flared. “Lester, maybe? Aloysius?”

Davidson raised his hand.

“Oh, Jesus H. Christ!” Castillo exclaimed.

“Don’t blaspheme,” Svetlana said.

“You’re pissed because I am ‘taking the Lord’s name in vain,’ but it’s all right for you and everybody else to sit around planning to whack people? Jesus H. Christ in spades!”

Berezovsky calmly went on: “What we talked about—Darby, too—Carlos, was how to stop the killing.”

Castillo could not believe what he was hearing. “You mean, by whacking this guy in Vienna, then leaving the CIA station chief’s calling card? I’ll bet when that Marine opened the cab door, that calling card was pinned to Demidov’s lapel with a rose.”

“We didn’t get into how anything was to be done, Charley,” Davidson said. “Just agreed that it had to be done.”

“Et tu, Brutus? Jesus Christ, Jack. Nobody was interested in what I might have to say?”

“I told them what you would say, Charley. ‘No.’ Was I right?”

“You know fucking well that’s what I would have said.”

“But Dmitri and Edgar and Sweaty were right, too,” Davidson said.

“How the hell do you figure that?”

“My Carlos, hear out Dmitri,” Svetlana said, then added, “Please, my darling.”

“I’m all ears,” Castillo said after a moment, and gestured impatiently for him to explain.

Berezovsky nodded. “Carlos, it is said that the Germans and the Russians are very much alike; that’s why the wars between us kill so many millions—”

“What I draw from that philosophical observation is: ‘So what?’ ” Castillo interrupted.

“—That we are either on our knees before our enemies when we believe we cannot win a conflict, or tearing at their throats when we think we can triumph. The only time there is peace between us is when both sides realize that the price of hurting the other is being yourself hurt.”

“There is a point to this, right? And you’re going to get to it soon?”

“When it was the U.S. versus the U.S.S.R., this concept was called ‘Mutual Assured Destruction,’” Berezovsky went on. “And thus there was no exchange of nuclear weapons.”

“Where are you going with this?”

You know where he’s going with it, stupid!

Berezovsky started to say something. Castillo silenced him with an upraised hand, and said, “We have to take out some of their people, preferably the ones who whacked some of ours, to teach them there’s a price to pay?”

“Otherwise, this won’t stop,” Davidson said.

“Knowing something of how Putin’s mind works,” Berezovsky picked up, “I can tell you he is going to evaluate the five assassinations we know about—and I’m sure there were more—and decide, depending on the speed and ferocity of the reaction to them, whether he should pull in his horns or see how much more he can get away with before the enemy charges a price he doesn’t wish to pay.”

“Some of this is personal for me, Charley,” Davidson said. “I really don’t want to spend the rest of my life—on whatever sunny beach I find myself in retirement—looking over my shoulder.”

“Nor I,” Berezovsky said.

Svetlana didn’t say anything out loud, but her eyes also said, Nor I.

And neither do I, goddamn it.

Sexy Susan said, “CWO Leverette for Corporal Bradley, Class One Encryption.”

“C. G. Castillo.”

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” Leverette’s voice said, “I’ll talk to him.”

“Go ahead, gentlemen,” Sexy Susan said.

“You’re watching the radio in the middle of the night, are you, Colonel? What did she do, kick you out of bed?”

“I understand you’ve already displeased Colonel Hamilton. You sure you want to do that with me, too, Mr. Leverette?”

“Negative.”

“I didn’t expect to hear from you for another twenty-four hours or so.”

“As I just explained to Colonel Hamilton, sir, I meant that forty-eight-hour period to mean the longest time we might be gone.”

“He’s there with you?”

“Good morning, Colonel Castillo,” Hamilton said.

“Good morning, sir.”

“Mr. Leverette has assured me that our little problem was a communications breakdown.”

“I felt sure it was something like that, sir.”

“Some good news and some bad, Colonel,” Leverette said.

“Good first. I’ve just had some bad.”

“As we speak, Phineas is taking the vehicles and a dozen shooters across the bridge. I found several Congolese officials who became very sympathetic to our desire to collect small fauna for the Fayetteville Zoo after I gave them a great deal of money.”

“Only a dozen shooters?”

“I’ll explain that when I get to the bad news. These same officials were also kind enough to rent me four outboard motorboats—not bad ones, with 150-horsepower Yamahas; they told me they stole them from the UN—at a price I would say is only four or five times what they’re worth, even in this neck of the woods. And further, to show us the place where the boats will be hidden from sight until—and I hope this never happens—it is necessary to launch them as an alternative method of leaving the Congo.

“It is my intention to use four of the shooters as guards on the fleet while the rest of us try to catch parrots—”

“Parrots?”

“—and whatever else we might happen across. Yeah, parrots. Our new friends are in the wild livestock business. They offered us everything up to and including gorillas. We settled on parrots.”

“The Congo African Grey Parrot,” Hamilton furnished, “Psittacus erithacus erithacus, is regarded as the most intelligent of the species. They bring anywhere from a thousand dollars to several times that much in Washington.”

“As I said,” Leverette went on, “our new friends somehow got the idea we’re trying to catch and illegally export African Grey Parrots. They said the birds may be found in large numbers along the Ngayu River, on both sides of National Route 25.

“They also said—I’m not sure if this is bad news or good news—that we should be very careful not to go past kilometer marker 125 on Route 25, because beyond that is where the Arabs and the bad water are.

“I asked them what the Arabs are doing in that area, and they said they didn’t know, possibly poaching elephants for their ivory, or maybe engaged in the slave trade, but the bottom line being that very few people who go deep into that area are ever seen alive again.

“The bodies of those who do venture too far, my new friends told me, are often found on the shoulders of Route 25, as far west as Kilometer 120. And I mean bodies—none are buried. Seems that some missionaries—I didn’t know until they told me that there were Congolese missionaries, black guys, who didn’t take off when the Belgians and Germans and French were mostly run out of this paradise—did try burying the dead, then suddenly came down sick and died very unpleasantly. As did large numbers of various carnivores that thought they’d found free lunch on the roadside.”

“Jesus!” Castillo said.

“Amen, brother. And, to round off this National Geographic lecture on the fascinating Congo, there are no fish in the crystal-clear waters of that stretch of the scenic Ngayu River. Sometimes, in the past, there were fish kills, but no longer. Suggesting, perhaps, one fish kill too many—”

“All of this, as you can well imagine, Castillo,” Colonel Hamilton said, “has rather whetted my curiosity.”

“—So, as soon as I hear from DeWitt that the shooters and the pickups are across the border, Colonel Hamilton and I are going to join them. We will drop four shooters at the boats, with one truck, to ensure our new friends don’t rent them to other parrot hunters.

“The rest of the scientific expedition will then drive up Route 25, which we pick up in Kisangani, to Kilometer 120. There, we’ll split into three groups. Colonel Hamilton said he can learn a lot from the bodies and—presuming, of course, that our new friends have been telling the truth—the water in the Ngayu. The other two will reconnoiter the area beyond Kilometer 125.

“This time, Charley, when I say we’ll be back in seventy-two hours, that’s conservative.”

Castillo said, “Same question: Why are you not taking the other team?”

“I’m going with my gut, Charley. The fewer of us the better. Less chance of detection.”

“Your call, Uncle Remus,” Castillo said.

Hamilton cleared his throat. “I thought you and I had discussed that unfortunate appellation, Colonel Castillo.”

Go fuck yourself, Hamilton.

“Yes, sir, we have. It won’t happen again, sir.”

“Charley, don’t call us. We’ll call you. I don’t want some raghead with an RPG and a Kalashnikov wondering who the broad with the sexy voice is.”

“Isn’t there a way to disable the audio function of the radio?” Colonel Hamilton asked.

“It doesn’t always work, sir. Watch your back, Colin.”

Of course the voice can be shut off.

Uncle Remus is telling me (a) he doesn’t want to have one of the shooters wasting time sitting around the bush with an earpiece waiting for a call, and (b) more important, that he doesn’t want soon-to-be-retired Lieutenant Colonel Castillo looking over his shoulder and offering unsolicited advice.

What Uncle Remus is saying loud and clear: “Butt out, Charley, and let us do our thing.”

“See you when I see you, Charley. Leverette out.”

Castillo turned to Davidson. “Jack, is there a countdown function?”

“Seventy-two hours?”

Castillo nodded. “Put it on all of them.”

Davidson tapped keys.

In the upper left-hand corner of all the monitors, a line of numbers appeared: 72:00:00. Which a second later turned to: 71:59:59.

[SIX]

0615 12 January 2006

When Castillo, in his bathrobe, walked into the library and sat down at the table, the countdown on the monitors read 68:20:25 and continued declining.

“Les, if you can find my—and Jack’s—laptops in all this crap, how about putting the countdown on them?”

“Yes, sir.”

Bradley had come to his room and said Susanna Sieno wanted to talk to him.

“C. G. Castillo.”

“Mrs. Sieno,” Sexy Susan said, “I have Colonel Castillo for you. Encryption Level One.”

“Hey, Susanna. How’s the temperature down there? It’s ten above zero here.”

“Is Svetlana with you?”

“No. You want her?”

“No, I don’t,” Susanna said.

While Castillo was trying to interpret the meaning of that, three seconds later Sexy Susan said, “Not Encrypted Data Transmission complete.”

Castillo went to the printer as it spit out a sheet of paper.

“The morning newspaper was just delivered,” Susanna Sieno said. “Read that. There’s more. Alfredo heard about this around midnight, and has been working on it since. He just came here.”

Castillo glanced at one of the monitors and saw that “here,” according to a flashing lightning bolt and a three-dimensional image, was Nuestra Pequeña Casa in the Mayerling Country Club in Pilar.

The printout he held in his hand was a scan of part of the front page of The Buenos Aires Herald:

RUSSIAN DIPLOMATS MURDERED NEAR EZEIZA AIR TERMINAL

From Staff Reports

Officers of the Gendarmería Nacional discovered shortly before midnight the bodies of two Russian diplomats, later identified as Lavrenti Tarasov and Evgeny Alekseeva, in an automobile of the Russian embassy parked just off the Autopista Ricchieri approximately two kilometers from the airport entrance.

According to a spokesman for the Russian embassy, Tarasov—the commercial attaché in the Russian embassy in Asunción, Paraguay—was apparently taking Alekseeva to the airport, where Alekseeva had reservations on the 10:35 p.m. Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt, Germany. Both had been in Argentina participating in a diplomatic conference.

Comandante Liam Duffy of the gendarmería, the first senior police official on the scene, told The Herald that “at first glance, pending full investigation” it appeared to be a case of mistaken identity, that the diplomats were mistaken for drug dealers.

“From the condition of the cadavers,” Duffy said, “it would appear that they were fatally shot with shotguns, this after both had been wounded several times with a small-caliber weapon, probably a .22, in the knees and groin areas. Inflicting this type of excruciatingly painful, but not immediately lethal, wound is almost a trademark of the [drug criminals] to get their fellow scum to talk.”

The murders recalled the still-unsolved murder of the U.S. diplomat J. Winslow Masterson, who was found shot to death on Avenida Tomas Edison in late July of last year.

Comandante Duffy said that while the most thorough investigation would be conducted, he had “to say in candor” that he doubted very much that it would be any more successful than the investigation into the Masterson murder had been.

“When these faceless, cowardly rats of drug dealers go back into the sewers, only good luck ever sees them get what they so richly deserve,” Duffy said.

Alfredo Munz, despite what Susanna had said, didn’t have much to add to what was in the Herald story, except to put in words what had been pretty obvious as soon as Castillo had read the story: that Duffy had learned that Alekseeva was going back to Europe, which meant that Tarasov was going back to Paraguay, and Duffy just wasn’t going to let that happen.

Castillo told him thanks and broke the connection.

How the hell am I going to handle this?

“Les, print some copies of that story and pass them around, please,” he said, then he pushed himself out of his chair and headed for his bedroom.

“Svetlana, sweetheart.”

She opened her eyes and stretched.

“I’ve got some bad news, baby.”

She sat up.

“Duffy went off the deep—”

“Is that it?” She snatched the story out of his hand before he had a chance to reply.

After a moment, she said softly but matter-of-factly: “And so I am now the Widow Alekseeva.”

Castillo didn’t say anything.

She swung her legs out of bed.

“Pray with me, my darling,” she said as she knelt next to the bed. She saw the look on his face. “Please, my Carlos.”

She bent her head and put her hands together.

Shit!

Castillo, more than a little awkwardly, knelt beside her and put his palms together.

He glanced at Svetlana. Her lips were moving, but no sound was coming out of her mouth. Twice she crossed herself.

So what am I supposed to pray for?

“Thank you, God, for letting Duffy take out my lover’s husband”?

Or, “God, I hope you didn’t make him suffer too long between Duffy shooting .22-rounds in his balls and finishing him off with the shotgun”?

Damn, I am indeed a prick.

Oh, Jesus, why didn’t I think of this before? “Dear God, please make this as easy as possible on Svetlana. She’s really a good woman, a good Christian, and she’s going to blame herself for this. If you want to punish anybody, punish me for not being able to get that cold-blooded Irish bastard to back off.

“Let her really be pissed at me, just so long as she doesn’t blame herself. She’s sure as hell going to get into the sin thing, because we’ve been sharing a bed while she was still married, and will decide that this is her punishment.

“Well, lay that on me, too. She didn’t rape me. It just happened. I take full responsibility. Let her be really pissed at me. I probably deserve it, and after a while, maybe she’ll come around. Just make this easy on her.

“I’ll even take the blame for the other Russian Delchamps whacked in Vienna. I should have seen that coming and stopped it.

“Just be good to Svetlana, Lord. Amen.”

Svetlana stopped praying and got to her feet. More than a little awkwardly, Castillo stood, too. She touched his face and kissed him.

He held her.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Don’t be silly.”

“What did you pray for?”

“Evgeny’s soul,” he lied.

Where the fuck did that come from?

On top of everything else, I’m lying through my teeth.

Add that to my demerits list, God.

“Me, too,” she said. “But mostly I prayed for us.”

“For us?”

“Evgeny knew the rules.”

“Excuse me?”

“He knew them, and I know them, and you know them. I prayed to God to excuse us from them, my Carlos.”

What the hell is she talking about?

“Saint Matthew,” she went on as if reading his mind. “When the Romans came to arrest Jesus Christ, Simon Peter drew his sword to protect him. Our Lord told him to put it away. ‘For all those who take up the sword perish by the sword.’ You never heard that?”

“Now that you mention it . . .”

“I prayed to God that he will excuse you and me from that, my darling. It might not hurt if you did the same thing.”

She kissed him quickly on the lips, then gently pushed away from him. She announced, “I’m going to have a shower. You want to go first, or after? Or . . . ?”

“Or,” he said, and followed her into the bathroom, shedding his West Point bathrobe en route.

[SEVEN]

2130 12 January 2006

“Major Miller for Colonel Castillo,” Sexy Susan announced.

Castillo looked up at the monitors from the playing cards he held. The countdown timer read 53:05:50, and there was a flashing lightning bolt above a picture of the house in Alexandria.

He looked across the table at Dmitri Berezovsky and Aloysius Casey, then back at his hand: two aces, two sevens, and a nine.

“I think you’re bluffing, Aloysius,” he said, picking up chips and tossing them in the pile at the center of the table. “Your two dollars and two more.” Then a little more loudly and officially he said, “C. G. Castillo.”

Sexy Susan said, “I have Colonel Castillo for you, Major Miller.”

“How they hanging, Gimpy?”

“Montvale’s looking for you, Charley.”

“So, what else is new?”

“He just called here on the White House secure phone. He asked me if I knew where you were.”

“To which you responded?”

“That you were at the moment out of touch. And then he said, ‘Where is he, and don’t tell me you don’t know,’ to which I cleverly responded, ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to say exactly that, Mr. Ambassador, sir.’ ”

“Why do I think that didn’t end your little chat?”

“He said it was urgent that he speak to you, and please have you call him; he has to talk to you about Vienna.”

“If I call him, since the sonofabitch owns the wiretappers in Fort Meade, he will know where I am. Let me think about it, Dick. I’ll call you back.”

“Figure something out, Charley. Or he will change that ‘locate but do not detain’ on you to ‘put the bastard in chains.’”

“How do we know he already hasn’t?”

“As of three minutes ago—according to Inspector Doherty; I called him before I called you—they haven’t. Doherty said this was probably because they need something called a warrant before they can throw you on the ground and slap on the handcuffs.”

“At the risk of repeating myself, let me think about it. I’ll call you back. Castillo out.”

Aloysius Casey put down his cards, faceup. “All I have is three jacks and a pair of fours,” he said, mock innocently. “What do they call that, a full house?”

As he pulled the money in the center of the table to him, he said, “You want to talk to this Montvale guy, Charley?”

“I don’t want to, but I would if I could figure out how to do it without having him find out where I am.”

“Ask and you shall receive.” He turned toward the AFC radio. “White House, via the Venetian.”

“Right away, Dr. Casey,” Sexy Susan said.

“What this does is activate a cellular in a suite we keep at the Venetian,” Casey said. “Not encrypted—I’m working on that—but what it does is tell the phone company—and Meade, Langley, anyone who’s curious—that the call is being made on a cellular in Vegas. That’s all. I don’t know how many rooms there are in the Venetian, a couple of thousand, anyway . . .”

“You are a genius, sir.”

“White House.”

“Colonel Castillo for Ambassador Montvale.”

“On a regular line?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Ambassador Montvale’s line.”

“Lieutenant Colonel Castillo for Ambassador Montvale,” Sexy Susan announced. “The line is not secure.”

“It’s Castillo,” they heard Truman C. Ellsworth, Montvale’s deputy, say.

“On the White House line?” Montvale then said, and then the director of National Intelligence came on the line. “Good evening, Colonel Castillo.”

“Burning the late-night oil, are you, Mr. Ambassador?”

“Where are you, Charley? We’ve been looking all over for you.”

“So I have been led to believe by Major Miller.”

“He told me he didn’t know where you are.”

“Did he? Well, I don’t always tell him where I am.”

“Are you aware of what happened in Vienna this morning?”

“What?”

“The Austrian foreign minister called the American ambassador and asked him if, in the spirit of international mutual cooperation, he would be willing to have Miss Eleanor Dillworth, his consul, answer a few questions the police had for her.”

“That’s the same lady who accused me of stealing some Russians from her? What did she do, go further off the deep end? What did the Viennese cops think she did?”

“You’re not going to make me lose my temper, Castillo, so you can knock it off.”

“Yes, sir. I’m deeply sorry, sir.”

Castillo saw Casey shaking his head, but he was smiling.

“What the police wanted to know was if she could shed some light on why her business card was found on the chest of a man by the name of Kirill Demidov. He was found sitting with a garrote around his neck in a taxi just down the street from the American embassy.”

“I just can’t believe that Miss Dillworth could have anything to do with anything like that, even if the bastard was the Russian rezident who ordered the garroting of the Kuhls.”

“Who told you that?” Montvale snapped.

“I have some Russian friends, you know. They tell me all kinds of interesting things.”

They heard Ellsworth trying to mask his voice in the background, then Montvale said into the phone, “What the hell are you doing in Las Vegas?”

Casey smiled again and gave Castillo a thumbs-up.

“Who told you I was in Las Vegas?”

“I’m beginning to think Miss Dillworth and a growing number of other people, including General McNab, are right.”

“About what?”

“That you really have lost it.”

“No. That’s just a story you cooked up to convince C. Harry Whelan, Jr., of The Washington Post that a fruitcake like me could not possibly have stolen two Russian defectors from her, as Miss Dillworth alleges. Remember?”

“I think I should tell you that Miss Dillworth has told the Vienna police, the State Department, and of course Mr. Whelan, that if they are looking for the persons responsible for the Demidov murder, they should start with you and your crony Mr. Edgar Delchamps.”

“Is that what they call loyalty to your co-workers? I thought agency types never ratted on one another.”

“I don’t suppose you know where that dinosaur is, do you?”

“He could be in Budapest, I suppose—”

“Budapest?”

“—Or Buenos Aires. Or just about any place in between.”

“He’s not with you in Las Vegas?”

“I never said I was in Vegas. You did.”

“Wherever you are, the FBI will inevitably find you.”

“I’ll bet there’ll be a lot of volunteers to look for me in Las Vegas. Who did you say told you I was here—I mean, there?”

Casey and Berezovsky grinned widely.

“All right, Castillo, enough. I have told the DCI I want a separate investigation of the allegations your Russian friends have made about a secret factory in the Congo. You have accomplished that much, if they are not making a fool of you. And now, it seems to me, it’s time for you to put up or shut up.”

“Meaning what?”

“Berezovsky and Alekseeva should step forward and tell the agency what they know.”

“That’s unlikely. They trust the agency a little less than even I do.”

“Charley, I don’t care where in the world you have them hidden. You tell me where, and I’ll have a plane there in a matter of hours.”

“Which will transport them to one of those nice houses the agency has in Maryland? I don’t think so, Mr. Ambassador. But I’ll tell you what I will do: In a couple of days, when I get it all together, I will send you everything they have told me about what the agency thinks is a harmless fish farm. Plus what I’ve managed to dig up myself.”

Montvale didn’t reply for a long moment.

“I’m surprised. I thought there was nothing you could do that would surprise me. But I should have thought that you would be doing something like this.”

“Something like what?”

“You still want to go over there yourself, don’t you, John Wayne? Jump on your goddamn horse and gallop off to fight the fucking Indians. You think if you can put before the President enough of your bullshit, mixed with the bullshit your fucking Russian friends are feeding you, the President will say, ‘Sure, hotshot. Go over there and show up the agency. Have Montvale set it up.’ All the while ignoring whatever damage you can do to the President if you fuck it up—when you fuck it up.”

“I thought you weren’t going to lose your temper.”

“Mark my fucking words, Castillo, you will go to Africa and embarrass the President and the country and me over my dead body. You will not have access to any assets over which I have control—”

“Well, it’s always a pleasure to talk to you, Mr. Ambassador,” Castillo said. “Break it down, White House.” When he heard the click, he said, “Castillo out.”

“In about a minute,” Casey said, “I suspect a cell phone will start to ring in the Venetian. No one will hear it, because the ringer’s been muted. And I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if, shortly thereafter, lots of gun-toting guys in bad suits with emission detectors in their ears will start prowling the miles of Venetian corridors. That won’t work, as I thought of that and came up with a fix. But was that smart, Charley?”

Castillo looked at him but said nothing.

“Thank you, Carlos,” Berezovsky said.

“For what? I told you I’d never turn you over to the agency, and that was before—”

“Before Cupid’s arrow struck? No. Thank you for not backing down from that assault. You reminded me of David and Goliath.”

Castillo pointed his finger at him. “You shut up.” Then he pointed at Casey. “And you deal.”

Doña Alicia and Svetlana came into the library fifteen minutes later. They had been watching an old Paul Newman movie on television in the ranch house’s main living room. They joined the game.

When they quit playing—just before midnight, when Lester Bradley came in for his watch duty with the AFC—Doña Alicia had won almost twenty dollars and Sweaty had shown that she was a lousy loser by twice throwing her cards angrily on the table and uttering thirty-second recitations of Russian expletives that Castillo was glad Doña Alicia didn’t understand. As Castillo stood, he noted on the monitors that the countdown read 50:45:15.

[EIGHT]

0900 13 January 2006

Castillo walked into the library carrying a mug of coffee.

Davidson shook his head and said, “Not a fucking peep, Charley.”

Castillo sat at the table.

“I think what you were supposed to say was, ‘Good morning, sir. I hope the colonel slept well. I beg to report there have been no reports from any of the reconnaissance parties, sir.’ ”

Davidson gave him the finger. “Uncle Remus said seventy-two hours, Colonel, sir.”

He pointed at the countdown. Castillo saw that it read 41:40:40.

“I think we have a surfeit of precision. Why the hell are we counting in seconds?”

“I don’t know. Because we can?”

“Let’s wake up the Air Force and see what they’re doing to earn all the money the taxpayers are throwing at them,” Castillo said. “C. G. Castillo for Colonel Torine. Encryption Level One.”

Sexy Susan said: “One moment, please, Colonel.”

Davidson’s fingers attacked his keyboard.

The monitor Castillo was watching changed its data display. It now showed a three-dimensional picture of the terminal building at Kilimanjaro International Airport, Tanzania. A lightning bolt at the top of the screen began to flash, then the screen showed the local date and time at the airport: 1701 13 JAN 06.

“Back that up, Jack,” Castillo said. “Let’s have a look at the Congo.”

Sexy Susan said: “I have Colonel Torine for you, Colonel. Encryption Level One.”

“What’s up, Charley?” Jake Torine asked.

“Hold one, Jake,” Castillo said.

The screen showed the last known positions of 5-Leverette, C and 6-DeWitt, P. They were now inside the Congo, eighty-some kilometers northeast of Kisangani. Their symbols were nearly superimposed on each another, which could have meant that they were together, or in the same area just a klick or two apart.

“Speaking of precision,” Castillo said.

“That’s it, Charley,” Davidson replied. “It won’t go any closer. What they did was turn on the AFC just long enough for the computer to get a GPS position.”

Castillo’s fingers flew over the keyboard of his laptop.

“Jake, I’ve got a last-known position on Uncle Remus. He’s in the Congo.”

“He told me that’s where he was going. Anything a little closer than that? The Congo is a great big place, Charley.”

“You have a pencil or something to write this down?”

“The Lorimer Fund bought me the latest and greatest laptop computer just before I came over here. I thought maybe it would come in handy.”

Castillo read from his laptop screen: “One point zero six north latitude; twenty-five point nine east latitude. That’s eighty-odd klicks northeast of Kisangani.”

“Let me have those coordinates again. Slowly.”

Castillo read them again slowly.

“Got it. Where the hell did you get that?”

“We Army special operators try to stay on top of things,” Castillo said. “I think this place we’re interested in is another fifty or sixty klicks farther northeast of Uncle Remus’s LKP.”

“That would fit,” Torine said thoughtfully.

“It’s possible, repeat possible, that we’ll get position updates, and I thought that while we’re waiting maybe we might consider what we could do if this place turns out to be what it is, and where we think it is.”

“The Air Force, as usual, is way ahead of you. There’s a number of options, ranging from nuking it from a B-1 through having Uncle Remus sneak up and throw a spear at it.”

“And you’ve been thinking about them?”

“If you had to make an educated guess, Charley, would you say the target would be within a fifty- or sixty-klick radius of Uncle Remus’s LKP?”

“I’d be happier with seventy-five klicks, but you could probably narrow it down some from a radius. I have an educated guesstimate that it’s not farther than ten klicks either side of National Route 25, and no more than that from the Ngayu River.”

“That will narrow it down a lot. I’ll work on it. Give me an hour or so, Charley, and I’ll send you my thoughts.”

[NINE]

1150 13 January 2006

Two hours and thirty-two minutes passed before Sexy Susan announced that Colonel Torine wanted to speak with Colonel Castillo, and when Castillo went on the AFC, she announced, “Commencing data transmission, Encryption Level One-D.”

Moments later, the printer began to spit out sheets of paper—and then kept spitting them out. After four minutes, it stopped suddenly and Sexy Susan announced: “Partial failure of data transmission to file and printer. Printer paper supply, or printer toner supply, possibly exhausted. Transmission to file will resume momentarily. Check printer paper supply and or printer toner supply, replenish as necessary, and enter RESUME PRINT FILE.”

Doing that consumed another seven minutes.

And it was another five minutes before Sexy Susan announced, “Transmission of data, Encryption Level One-D, to file and printer verified complete.”

As Svetlana helped Castillo stack the printer’s output, he noticed the countdown, no longer reflecting seconds, was down to 37:16.

When he had finished glancing at the information Torine had sent, he was surprised at how little time Torine had spent detailing the options, not how long.

There were eight separate “Proposed Operational Order: Congo Chemical Complex” papers. A quick glance showed they called for the use of aerial weaponry ranging from missiles, through the B-1 Stealth bomber, to the F-15E fighter bomber, and the aerial tankers needed to refuel them, and two involved U.S. Navy F/A-18C fighter bombers operating from carriers in the South Atlantic and Indian oceans.

And there was a ninth paper: “Proposed Operational Order: Bomb Damage Assessment, Congo Chemical Complex.” It suggested this could be done by satellite overfly; a U-2 high-altitude photoreconnaissance aircraft; Predator Unmanned Aerial Vehicle; return to the bombing site by bomber or low-flying fighter aircraft, or by “clandestine entry into the Congo of U.S. Air Force or U.S. Army Special Operations personnel to make such evaluation on the ground.”

The ninth was the only one Lieutenant Colonel Castillo, himself a military aviator with a good deal of experience, felt he more or less understood.

But he was going to have to try to understand the strengths and limitations of the various things Torine was proposing. He was going to have to show them to the President, and he didn’t want to look or sound like a goddamn fool when inevitably the President asked him a question and he didn’t have the answer.

He collected everything that Torine had sent him, plus the draft of the report Two-Gun Yung had prepared from his own notes and from what had come from Fulda and what he’d gotten from Dmitri and Svetlana. And he went to his old desk in his old bedroom, where he hoped he would have a little privacy.

Yung’s draft would have to be modified when Yung had a chance to review what had just started coming in from Budapest—Delchamps had finally shown up there—but Yung had put it to him that now was the time to have “a quick look” to make sure it was what he wanted, rather than have him continue “to break his ass on what might well be a waste of everybody’s time.”

He had just made himself comfortable at his old desk and poured himself a cup of coffee when Svetlana came into the room. He was convinced he’d pissed her off by telling her that he didn’t need help or company right now, thank you very much.

She simply replied, “Joel Isaacson is on the radio.”

[TEN]

1150 13 January 2006

The countdown on his laptop read 36:58 when Castillo sat down at the desk and reached for the AFC handset.

“C. G. Castillo.”

Sexy Susan said: “I have Colonel Castillo for you, Mr. Isaacson.”

I don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out this has something to do with the President, Joel having been in charge of his Security Detail.

Confirmation of that came immediately when Isaacson began the conversation by announcing, “Charley, I had a call five minutes ago from the President.”

Castillo waited for him to go on.

“He wanted to know if I knew where you were,” Isaacson said. “When I told him I honestly didn’t know, he asked if I could find you. I said—I don’t lie to the President, Charley—‘I think I can, Mr. President.’

“To which he replied, ‘Do so, Joel. If you can, tell him to call me. If you can’t, call me back within ten minutes.’

“To which I replied, ‘Yes, Mr. President.’ He hung up. I then called Jack Doherty, who said to get on the AFC. Jack is not capable of lying to the President, either, even secondhand.”

“I understand, Joel. I’m sorry you got in the middle of this.”

“So am I, Charley. What do I tell him?”

“You won’t have to tell him anything. I’ll call right now.”

“White House.”

“C. G. Castillo for the President on a secure line, please.”

“Hold one, Colonel, please. I have special instructions . . .”

What “special instructions”?

“The President’s private line,” an executive secretary to the President answered.

Private line?

The one in what he calls his working office?

“Colonel Castillo for the President, please.”

“Colonel, the President is in a do-not-disturb conference in the Oval Office. If you will kindly give me a second—”

“Can you tell me with whom?”

There was a long pause, then:

“The secretary of State, Ambassador Montvale, and the directors of the CIA and the FBI. However, the President’s given special instructions should someone call about you, sir.”

There was another long pause, then Castillo heard the President’s voice snap, “Yes, what is it?”

“Are you free to speak with Colonel Castillo, Mr. President?”

“Oh, am I ever. Are you on here, Castillo?”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“Hang on a minute. I’m going to the little office.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

Castillo quickly formed a mental picture of what was happening. The President of the United States was rising from his desk in the Oval Office—or from an armchair or a couch—and marching into the smaller office just off the Oval Office, officially known as “the President’s working office,” leaving behind him Secretary of State Natalie Cohen, FBI Director Mark Schmidt, Director of Central Intelligence John Powell, and Director of National Intelligence Charles W. Montvale, all of whom had just come to the same conclusion: that the President didn’t want any one of them to hear what he was going to say to a lowly lieutenant colonel, and that they were going to be furious to varying degrees, none of them minor.

“Okay, Charley, I’m in here.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“I think you’d agree that Mark Schmidt is not given to colorful speech,” the President said.

“Sir?”

“He just came up with something very colorful. He said, ‘As far as out-of-control loose-cannons rolling around are concerned, Castillo by comparison makes Oliver North look like the Rock of Gibraltar.’ ”

The President let that sink in.

“Of course, that may be because he is just a little humiliated that the FBI can’t find you or those two Russians you stole from the CIA.”

Castillo didn’t reply.

“Why did you steal those defectors from the CIA, Charley?”

“Sir, the CIA never had them.”

“Then there is another side to this horror story I have just heard?”

“Yes, sir, there is.”

“Did you tell the DCI that you refused to turn over the stolen Russians to him?”

“Sir, they were not stolen. I told him that the Russians did not wish to turn themselves over to the CIA.”

“And also that the CIA was nothing more than a very few very good people, or words to that effect, trying to stay afloat in a sea of left-wing bureaucrats?”

“Yes, sir. I’m afraid I did.”

“What are you doing in Las Vegas?”

“Sir, I’m not in Las Vegas.”

“Charles Montvale says you are.”

“Ambassador Montvale has been wrong before, too, sir.”

“Right now, Charley, you are not in a position where you can afford sarcasm.”

“Yes, sir. No offense intended. I actually meant it as a statement of fact. Sorry, sir.”

The President sighed. “Charley, I have to ask this: Did you personally assassinate or did you set up the assassination of a Russian in Vienna in circumstances designed to make it appear the CIA station chief was the villain?”

“I learned of that, sir, only after it happened.”

“Frankly, I didn’t believe that one.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay, Charley, here it is. You’ve earned the right to tell me your side of the incredible things I have been hearing that you have been doing. The question is how to do that? Where are you?”

“In Texas, sir.”

“In about an hour, I’m going to Philadelphia. Two speeches, one tonight and one tomorrow at lunch. If you can give me a more precise location than ‘Texas,’ I’ll send a plane to pick you up. I can give you half an hour tomorrow morning. Say, at nine. The Four Seasons Hotel.”

“Sir, I’m in Midland, Texas. On my ranch.”

“Is that where you’ll go after you retire?”

“Possibly, sir. Sir, you don’t have to send a plane. I have one.”

“I have to ask this, too: You’re not thinking of getting on your plane and flying off to, say, Argentina, are you?”

“No, Mr. President, I’m not. I’ll see you in Philadelphia tomorrow morning.”

“And once more, probably proving that there is such a thing as too much loyalty downward, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.”

There was a click.

Castillo, in deep thought, stared wordlessly at the handset.

“Colonel?” Sexy Susan said. “Colonel . . . ?”

“Disaster time,” Castillo announced five minutes later. “I just promised the President I would report to him at nine tomorrow morning in Philadelphia. I also told him where I am.

“Priority one is keeping Sweaty and Dmitri out of the hands of the CIA.”

He looked at Casey. “I need a really big favor, Aloysius.”

“I’ll take care of them, Charley.”

“I’ll need you to fly them to Cozumel . . .”

“I’ll take care of them, Charley,” Casey repeated.

“ . . . as soon as possible.”

Casey turned to the AFC. “Casey. Ellwood Doudt.”

“Good afternoon, sir,” Doudt answered almost immediately.

“Pick me up an hour ago.”

“Roger that. On our way, sir.”

“Casey out.” He looked at Castillo. “Soon enough, Charley?”

“Thank you.”

“Why don’t I go with you, Carlos?” Dmitri Berezovsky asked.

“I am going with you,” Svetlana announced.

“Thanks, but no thanks,” Castillo said. “For one thing, they wouldn’t let either of you get near the President. For another, even if I could get you in to see him, you’d be Russian embezzlers facing Montvale and the DCI, and they both are convinced you’re liars.

“Jack will go with you,” Castillo went on. “Les, I’d like you to go with me, if you’re willing. And you, too, Two-Gun. Les to work the radios, Two-Gun to explain the money trail in his report if I can get the President to listen.”

“Sure,” Yung said.

“Yes, sir,” Bradley said.

“Jack, as soon as you can,” Castillo went on, “get on the horn to the Pilar safe house. Have someone there get in touch with Aleksandr, give him a heads-up that Dmitri and Svetlana are headed back to his Cozumel resort. He’ll have an idea or two on how best to get them from there back to Argentina quietly and safely.”

“Done,” Davidson said. “When are you going to leave?”

“Just as soon as I can wind it up, I’ve got to stop at Midland for fuel and to file a flight plan. Keep an eye on my pal Max, okay?”

Dmitri repeated his offer to go with them as they shook hands at the house, and Castillo repeated his reasons why that wouldn’t make any sense.

Svetlana and Doña Alicia went as far as the plane. Bradley and Two-Gun boarded the Lear, and Doña Alicia waited in the Yukon while Castillo and Svetlana said their good-byes.

“I have this terrible feeling I will never see you again, my Carlos,” Svetlana said.

“Don’t be silly. The worst that can happen to me is that they’ll have somebody sit on me until I go through that retirement charade. As soon as that’s over, I’ll get on a plane and fly to Gaucho Land, where you’ll have my golf clubs all waiting for me.”

“I wish I was with child. At least I would have that.”

“I already have one of those, and from what I have seen, one is enough.”

“It is all right, my Carlos. We had what we had, and we both know the rules of the game we’re in. I will pray for you.”

If I thought it’d work, I’d pray myself.

“I have to go, sweetheart.”

They kissed.

The kiss was unlike any he could remember. That frightened him.

The last thing he saw as the Lear broke ground was Doña Alicia and Svetlana standing in front of the Yukon. Doña Alicia had a comforting arm around Svetlana, who was weeping.

Castillo caught himself thinking that it looked funny.

Sweaty’s so much taller and larger than Abuela.

Jesus Christ, that’s tremendously touching, not funny.

I really am a callous bastard!

[ELEVEN]

Atlantic Aviation Services, Inc.

Philadelphia International Airport

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

0810 14 January 2006

Getting to Philadelphia should have been as simple as Castillo had hoped: fuel the Lear, file the flight plan, get in the bird, and three and a half hours later give or take, land in the City of Brotherly Love.

It wasn’t. There was really bad weather all up and down the eastern seaboard—which he learned when he tried to file his flight plan—and it was not much better most of the way between Midland and the eastern seaboard.

Arriving in Philadelphia at 1800 for a long conversation with Jack Britton over a nice lobster dinner somewhere and then getting a good night’s rest before facing the President the next morning at 0900 proved impossible.

He hadn’t been able to get off the ground at Midland until almost eight at night, and then only because he was going to fly first south-southeast from Midland to Houston, then due east to pass over Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, then north-northeast over Georgia and on to Norfolk, Virginia, the closest airport to Philadelphia that was not experiencing weather-interrupted operations.

At 0720, he finally received clearance to fly ORF-PHL direct, which was fortunate inasmuch as a good deal of research had revealed there was no ground transportation that could carry them there from Norfolk rapidly—if at all—as the roads were covered with snow and ice.

En route, Corporal Bradley managed to contact Jack Britton, who said he would do his best to meet them on arrival, but the roads were icy and he would be personally surprised if the airport didn’t shut down again before they got there.

Britton was waiting for them when they landed.

The Lear had forty-five minutes’ remaining fuel.

Waiting with Britton was Chief Inspector F. W. Kramer, who commanded the Counterterrorism Bureau of the Philadelphia Police Department. Perhaps equally important, Kramer had done much of his military service with the Tenth Special Forces Group.

“How they hanging, Charley?” Kramer greeted Castillo. “Getting much? What can we do for you?”

“I need to be at the Four Seasons Hotel at five minutes to nine, and Corporal Bradley and Two-Gun Yung have to be there ten minutes before that.”

“I can get you there by then, but maybe not in. The President’s in town, and that’s where he stays.”

“I know,” Castillo said.

“Why don’t we send them in that?” Kramer said, pointing to a fully equipped patrol car. “And I’ll take you in mine.”

“Can they use your room to set up the AFC, Jack?”

“Hell, no,” Britton said. He tossed Bradley a door-opening plastic key. “Show that to the doorman if you get there before we do. He’s a retired cop.”

[TWELVE]

The Four Seasons Hotel

130 North 18th Street

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

0855 14 January 2006

There was no sign of the patrol car or of Bradley or Yung when Chief Inspector Kramer’s unmarked car pulled up before the door of the Four Seasons.

“I’ll put the arm out for them, Charley,” Kramer said. “You go on in. You don’t want to keep the President waiting.”

“Let him in,” the President of the United States said when the Secret Service man announced there was a Lieutenant Colonel Castillo seeking an audience.

“Good morning, Mr. President,” Castillo said. His eyes scanned the room, and he added, “Madame Secretary, Gentlemen,” to the secretary of State, the DCI, the secretary of Defense, and Ambassador Charles Montvale.

“And you didn’t think he would show, did you, Charles?” the President said, then looked at Castillo, and added, “I don’t think I’ve seen you needing a shave before, Charley.”

“I apologize for my appearance, Mr. President.”

“Don’t worry about it. Needing a shave pales to insignificance beside the manifold other sins Mr. Powell and the ambassador are alleging you have committed.” He paused, then turned to a steward. “Get the colonel a cup of coffee. He looks as if he desperately needs one.”

“Thank you, sir. I do.”

“Good morning, Charley,” Secretary of State Natalie Cohen said.

None of the others said a word.

“Okay, let’s get to it,” the President said once the steward had delivered Castillo’s coffee and left the room. “In as few words as possible, Charley, take it from the beginning. You have five minutes.”

It wasn’t hard for Castillo to start. He had expected the question and had spent all of his time in the air mentally rehearsing what he would say.

It took him longer than five minutes, however, and he wasn’t quite finished when the door opened and a Secret Service agent put his head in.

“Excuse me, Mr. President. There’s a kid being held at the elevator who says he’s Colonel Castillo’s bodyguard. He also says he’s a Marine corporal. He says he has something Colonel Castillo absolutely has to have.”

Montvale looked at the agent and blurted: “Jesus Christ! You actually came in here with something like that for me?”

“I think he was talking to me, Charles,” the President said, and looked at Castillo.

“Corporal Lester Bradley, sir,” Castillo confirmed.

“Get him in here. I can’t pass up the opportunity to see the colonel’s bodyguard.”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

Bradley came into the room two minutes later. He carried Castillo’s laptop, Yung’s report, Torine’s Proposed Operational Orders, and the AFC handset.

He popped to attention and saluted the President, who crisply returned it.

“You’re Colonel Castillo’s bodyguard, are you, son?” the President asked.

“Sir, yes, Mr. President, I am, sir.”

“For God’s sake, he’s not old enough to vote,” Montvale said disgustedly.

“Sir, no sir, I’m not old enough to vote, but I am Colonel Castillo’s bodyguard, sir.”

“Who has twice saved my life, so lay off him, Montvale,” Castillo snapped, then heard himself. “I’m sorry, Mr. President.”

“If he’s your bodyguard, I would presume he already knows what we’re talking about here?”

“Yes, Mr. President, he does.”

“Stick around, son. I want a word or two with you when this is finished.”

“Aye-aye, Mr. President, sir.”

“Okay, Charley, wrap it up. We’re running out of time.”

It took Castillo another three minutes.

“That’s about it, sir.”

“It’s about time,” Ambassador Montvale said.

“Shut up, please, Charles. I’m thinking,” the President said.

That took a full twenty seconds.

“Bottom line, Charley,” the President said. “Even if I believed everything you have told me, there’s just not enough there for me to authorize a clandestine mission—or even an overflight, except by satellite—to look into it.”

“Mr. President, may I say how relieved I am to hear you say that?” Secretary Cohen said. “The ramifications of a black operation going wrong—”

“Right now,” the President interrupted, “the answer is no, Colonel Castillo. But I will give you one more chance to turn your Russians over to the agency. If they are able to convince the DCI there is even a remote chance that what they’re selling is true, I will authorize a mission to the Congo.”

“Mr. President, I have people in the Congo,” Castillo said.

“What the hell did you just say?” the DCI barked.

“I find that hard to believe, Charley,” the President said. “Why should I?”

Castillo turned on the AFC handset, and his speakerphone.

“C. G. Castillo. Colin Leverette. Encryption Level One.”

I know Colin’s twenty-four hours are far from up, but, please, Lord, let him answer.

“What is that thing?” the President asked. “Some kind of telephone?”

Sexy Susan’s voice said: “Colonel Castillo, I have Mr. Leverette. Encryption Level One.”

“Hey, Charley! You bastard—I haven’t been here an hour.”

“Where are you, Uncle Remus?”

“Kisangani. You want to buy a parrot?”

“What is that, some sort of a code?” the secretary of State muttered.

“What are you doing in Kisangani?” Castillo asked.

“Well, the colonel needed someplace to set up his laboratory, so we rented a house. He’s using the kitchen for his lab, and I’m buying parrots in the living room. I have fifty of them and have promised to buy another hundred.”

“Uncle Remus, I’m with the President and some very important people—”

“Oh, God! I have a sick feeling that you’re not pulling my chain.”

“Do you think the colonel has come up with anything the President should hear?”

“Yes, sir. He has.”

“Can you get him on here, please?”

“Hold on.”

“What colonel is that?” Montvale asked.

“Colonel J. Porter Hamilton of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute at Fort Dietrich,” Castillo said. “Ring a bell?”

“Not with me it doesn’t,” the President said. “Who is he?”

“The preeminent expert on biological and chemical warfare,” the DCI said.

“And you sent him into the Congo?” Montvale said. “You really are crazy, Castillo.”

“Charles, go get yourself a cup of coffee,” the President said.

“Excuse me, Mr. President?”

“Come back in ten minutes—if you have your mouth under control by then.”

Montvale didn’t know what to do. He hesitated, and then decided he’d wait when he heard the speakerphone come alive with a new voice.

“Colonel Castillo?” Colonel Hamilton asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“If this, your being with the President, is one more manifestation of that odd sense of humor of yours . . .”

“This is POTUS speaking, Colonel. I have just been told that you are our preeminent expert regarding biological and chemical warfare.” It was a statement but sounded more like a question.

“Good day, Mr. President. Yes, sir. There are some who have said that, sir.”

“Colonel, have you come across anything that suggests there is a laboratory or factory—”

“Mr. President,” Hamilton interrupted, his officious voice hitting a deadly serious tone, “it indeed is a far more dangerous situation than even Colonel Berezovsky suggested.”

“Colonel Berz—you don’t mean the Russian?”

“Yes, sir. What I have found here is far worse than Colonel Berezovsky suggested, Mr. President. I am not a religious man, but what I have seen here in the most elementary of investigations is an abomination before God.”

“You have proof of this, Colonel?” the President asked softly.

“Yes, sir. The first samples will be sent out via Tanzania just as soon as the natives finish construction of the parrot cages.”

“Excuse me?”

“We—I should say Mr. Leverette, sir, who is known as Uncle Remus and who is a genius of ingenuity—are covering our incursion by posing as dealers in African grey parrots. He feels sure, and I have every confidence he’s right, that when we truck out the first fifty parrots later today no one will look in their cages as they cross the border.”

“And what will happen to them in Tanzania?”

“Well, Mr. President, I was going to suggest to Colonel Castillo, who is running the tactical end of Operation Fish Farm for me, to see if he can’t have another aircraft sent into Kilimanjaro to pick them up, either an Air Force fighter or perhaps something from an aircraft carrier. That way, the samples could get to Fort Dietrich much more quickly than they could aboard our aircraft, and doing so would leave our aircraft there. I am trying to think of some way to get some of the human bodies to Fort Dietrich so that thorough autopsies can be performed. The first problem there is to get them to Tanzania without them contaminating human and plant life along the way. And, of course, we can’t hide them in the parrot cages.”

The President flashed a concerned look at everyone in the room, particularly the DCI and DNI. When no one had anything to offer, Castillo thought that the look changed to a simmering anger.

“Colonel, please think your answer over before replying. In your judgment, should the laboratory—this factory, fish farm, whatever you want to call it—should it be destroyed?”

Colonel Hamilton did not think his answer over long.

“Mr. President, what we have here is a fairly large and well-supplied laboratory and an even bigger manufacturing plant. I would recommend the immediate destruction of both—I repeat, both—sir. I am amazed that the processes involved have not already gotten out of control. If that happens, Mr. President, it will be a hundred times, perhaps a thousand times, more of a disaster than Chernobyl. Living organisms are far more dangerous than radiation.”

“Colonel, I’ll be talking to you soon. Thank you very much.”

“Mr. President, it has been an honor to speak with you.”

“Uncle Remus,” Castillo said, “get the colonel’s samples in Jake’s hands as quickly as you can.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Castillo out.”

“Colonel Castillo,” the President said. “From your . . . I guess ‘tone of command, ’ one would suppose that you consider yourself still in charge of this . . . what did Hamilton call it? ‘Operation Fish Farm’?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Sadly, that is not to be the case. You’re just too dangerous a man to have around. Too many people have their knives out for you, and some of them have involved the press. I can’t involve the press in this. You understand me, Colonel?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You are relieved as chief, Office of Organizational Analysis. You will go someplace where no one can find you, and you will not surface until your retirement parade. Understood?”

Loud and clear, sir.

And so the other shoe finally fucking drops. . . .

It took Castillo a moment to find his voice. “Yes, sir.”

“After your retirement, I hope that you will fall off the face of the earth and no one will ever see you or hear from you again. Understood?”

“Yes, sir. I’ve been thinking of learning how to play polo. Or golf.”

“The same applies to everyone in the Office of Organizational Analysis. Understood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I don’t know how much of that sixty million dollars you had is left, but it should be enough to provide reasonably adequate severance pay to everyone. If it isn’t, get word to me and we’ll work something out.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Since we understand each other, Colonel, before you disappear, I think you have the right to hear this.”

“Hear what, sir?”

“Mr. Secretary of Defense, you are ordered to take whatever steps are necessary to get Colonel Hamilton’s samples from where Colonel Castillo will tell you they are to the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute at Fort Dietrich as quickly as possible.”

“Mr. President,” Cohen interjected, “you can’t just fly warplanes—”

“I’ll get to you in a moment, Madame Secretary. Right now I’m giving orders, not seeking advice.”

She started to say something but didn’t.

“I think we are in this mess because I’ve listened to too much well-meaning advice,” the President went on. “In addition, Mr. Secretary of Defense, you will immediately prepare plans to utterly destroy this hellhole in the jungle.”

“Sir, Colonel Torine has prepared some proposed op orders,” Castillo said.

“Give them to the secretary, please,” the President said. “I’m sure he will find them valuable in preparing the plan, or plans, I want presented to me yesterday.”

Cohen again tried to reason: “Mr. President, you’re not thinking of actually—”

“And what you are going to do, Madame Secretary,” the President interrupted her, “is return to Washington, where you will summon the ambassador of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to your office. You will tell him (a) that you are sorry to have to tell him that without the knowledge or permission of his government this—what did Hamilton call it?”

“ ‘An abomination before God,’ sir,” Castillo offered, earning him dirty looks from the others.

“That this abomination before God has been erected on his soil, but (b) not to worry, because his friend the United States of America is about to destroy it and no one will be the wiser.

“If he gives you any trouble about our airplanes overflying his country—or anything else—tell him his option is that we will destroy this abomination and then take it to the goddamned United Nations.

“Natalie, say, ‘Yes, Mr. President,’ or I will with great reluctance have to accept your resignation, then have the bastard appear in the Oval Office tomorrow and tell him myself. They knew goddamn well it was there. Palms were greased.”

After a long moment, the secretary of State said, “Yes, Mr. President.”

The President turned to Castillo.

“I hope this eases the pain of getting the boot a little, Charley.”

“It eases it a great deal, sir. Thank you.”

“For what? For defending the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic? That’s what I was hired to do.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is there anything else I can do for you before you start vanishing from the face of the earth?”

Castillo had seen this question coming, too, and was prepared for it.

“Yes, sir. Three things.”

The President made a Let’s have it gesture with both hands.

“First, sir, I would like to see Corporal Bradley here promoted to gunnery sergeant in the Marine Corps. He loves the Corps, but obviously, tainted with this, and knowing what he knows, he could never go back. He’ll have to take a discharge.”

The President pointed to the secretary of Defense.

“Do it,” he ordered, then turned back to Castillo. “And?”

“I’d like to see Berezovsky and Alekseeva taken off the Interpol warrants. They didn’t embezzle any money. And three, I would like myself, and anybody else connected to me, to be taken off the FBI’s ‘locate but do not detain’ list—and any other list we may be on.”

The President pointed at the DCI. “You can take care of that. And since the Russians have not defected to the CIA, I want the CIA to take no action to encourage them to do so. Understood?”

The DCI did not appear the epitome of happy. “Yes. Mr. President.”

The President looked at Castillo.

“I’m sorry it turned out like this, Charley. But bad things happen to good people.”

He put out his hand.

Castillo shook it, then he and Bradley walked out of the room.

[THIRTEEN]

McCarran International Airport

Las Vegas, Nevada

1530 14 January 2006

Castillo had made two calls on the AFC from Jack and Sandra Britton’s suite in the Four Seasons.

The first was to Dr. Aloysius Francis Casey. Casey told Castillo that while he’d said no problem to Charley’s request to get Dmitri and Svetlana to Cozumel, he admitted now that he’d instead brought them to Vegas, and what he suggested was that Castillo come, too, until he could straighten things out.

The second call was to Major Dick Miller in the Office of Organizational Analysis. He lied to Miller. He said he would explain the whole thing when he had the chance, but right now the President wanted them both out of sight, and he was going to go out of sight in Vegas, and the way they were going to do that was that Miller was going to meet him at BWI, where they would turn in the Lear, pick up the Gulfstream, and fly out to Nevada.

That had a secondary reaction. Castillo decided that there was no reason Jack and Sandra Britton should not enjoy the cultural advantages of Las Vegas. For that matter, Two-Gun Yung either.

The G-III went wheels-up out of Baltimore and four hours and forty minutes later touched down at McCarran. Somewhere over Pennsylvania, Castillo had called Aloysius again, told him who was now aboard the Gulfstream, and asked that rooms for one and all be arranged.

“Our last excursion, so to speak, on the tab of the Lorimer Charitable and Benevolent Fund.”

“I’ll send somebody to meet you,” Casey said.

What met them at the AFC hangar was a gleaming black Lincoln stretch limousine with THE VENETIAN lettered in gold on the doors.

Sandra was thrilled.

“I’ve always wanted to be mistaken for a rock star with five lovers,” she said.

When they were off-loaded at the Venetian’s grand entrance, there was one assistant manager in gray frock coat and striped pants for each of them.

“May we show you to your suites?” each asked.

Castillo, who still had not shaved, felt a little uncomfortable in the elegance of the lobby, but he reasoned he would soon be alone with Svetlana and right now that was all that mattered.

“The center door, sir. You are expected. Just go right in,” his assistant manager ordered.

Castillo pushed open the door.

“Sweaty?”

“In here, Charley,” Aloysius Francis Casey called.

Shit!

Swapping war stories with Aloysius is not what I had in mind.

He found himself at the head of a set of sweeping glass stairs leading down a floor to a dimly lit sunken living room. Aloysius Francis Casey and half a dozen men he could not remember ever having seen before sat on a circular couch that appeared to be upholstered with gold lamé.

Castillo started down the stairs, then realized he knew two of the men. Tom Barlow and Jack Davidson were sitting with their feet on a piece of furniture in front of the circular couch. And then he heard a familiar whine—Davidson was barely holding back Max.

What the hell is going on? he thought as Max broke loose and ran to him. Then Castillo realized that he did recognize some of the others. One was a legendary character who owned four—maybe five?—of the more glitzy Las Vegas hotels.

But not this one, a voice from the memory bank told him.

Another was a well-known, perhaps even famous, investment banker.

And another had made an enormous fortune in data processing. Castillo remembered him because he was a Naval Academy graduate.

The others he couldn’t place.

“Need a little taste, Charley?” Aloysius asked. “You look like you could use one.”

“Yes, thank you. I do.” He petted Max. “How are you, buddy?”

A butler in striped pants and a gray jacket took his order, and delivered it in a nearly miraculous short time.

“Gentlemen, now that the colonel has his drink,” Casey said, “I propose a toast to Colonel Hamilton, Phineas DeWitt, and the incomparable Uncle Remus. They did the job of getting Operation Fish Farm off the ground better than anyone in this room thought they could.”

Glasses were raised and clinked and there was a chorus of overlapping voices.

“Charley, word has come back-channel that a scrambled sortie comprised of F-16A, F-15E, and F-15C attack aircraft—on a black op devised by one Colonel Torine—has turned a so-called ‘fish farm’ into a flaming crater.”

All these people know about Op Fish Farm?

I can’t believe Aloysius has been running at the mouth.

Or Dmitri or Jack—and what the hell are they doing here?

“Everybody pay attention,” Casey said. “You don’t often get a chance to see Charley with a baffled look on his face.”

“Okay, Aloysius, you have pulled my chain—more than it’s ever probably been pulled. What the hell is going on around here?”

“How many times since you made the acquaintance of Colonel Hamilton have you said dirty words when he told you of ‘his people’?”

“Every damn time. So what?”

“Here we are, Charley. We’re Hamilton’s people. And now that you’re soon to be unemployed, we’d like to be yours.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Colonel,” the Naval Academy graduate said with a Texas twang, “what we are is a group of people who realize there are a number of things that the intelligence community doesn’t do well, doesn’t want to do, or for one reason or another can’t do. We try to help. And we’re all agreed that you’re just the man to administer the program.”

“You’ve got the wrong guy. The intel community hates me, and that’s a nice way of describing it.”

“Well, telling the DCI that his agency ‘is a few very good people trying to stay afloat in a sea of left-wing bureaucrats’ may not have been the best way to charm the director, even if I happen to know he agrees with you.”

“Colonel,” the man who owned the glitzy hotels said, “this is our proposal, in a few words: you keep your people together, keep them doing what they do so well, and on our side we’ll decide how to get the information to where it will do the most good, and in a manner that will not rub the nose of the intelligence community in their own incompetence.” He paused. “And the pay’s pretty good.”

“Carlos,” Dmitri said, “you don’t want to learn to play golf any more than I do. And maybe we can do some good on another occasion.”

“Think it over, Charley,” Davidson said. “I’m in.”

“Fair enough,” Castillo said. “I will.”

I am being dishonest again.

This sounds almost too good to be true.

“Where’s Sweaty?” Castillo asked.

“Freddy put her in the Tsar Nicholas II Suite,” Casey said. “He thought she’d like it. It’s even got one of those big copper teapots.”

“Samovars,” Castillo corrected him without thinking. “Where is it?”

“You go up the stairs into the foyer. There’s three doors. This is the center. You and Svetlana are in the right one. I’ll give you a call in a couple of hours, and maybe we’ll have dinner and hoist a couple.”

Max was already waiting at the top of the stairs.

Svetlana kissed Charley and held him and told him he needed a shave.

“I usually shave while I’m in the shower, Sweaty.”

“Is that so? How interesting. Can I watch?”