Black Ops (Presidential Agent)

by W. E. B Griffin

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

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

  "So what am I supposed to do?" Castillo said.

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

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

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

  Delchamps shook his head.

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

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

  "What's he going to worry about?" Castillo said.

  "Where his sister is and what she is telling us."

  What the hell is he thinking?

  "And where is the sister going to be?"

  "Same place as you, Ace."

  What did he say?

  "What?"

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

  "And I should take her with me? Is that what you're saying?"

  For a romantic interlude in Bariloche?

  Jesus, maybe they do know!

  Is that what this is?

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

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

  Well, sanity has returned.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "Jesus Christ!" Darby said.

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

  "Let's have it," Castillo ordered.

  Darby threw up his hands in resignation. "Tell him."

  "You're not going to like this, Ace."

  "Come on, come on."

  "Our egos are involved," Delchamps said.

  "What?"

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

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

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

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

  "I keep saying this, but I don't know what the hell you're talking about."

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

  "You didn't say anything."

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

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

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

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

  "I'll be a son of a bitch," Castillo said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Castillo shook his head. "And why did you think you couldn't, or shouldn't, tell me this?"

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

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

  "All of you? Two-Gun, for example?"

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

  He stopped.

  "Finish what you were going to say," Castillo said.

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

  "Yeah," Castillo agreed.

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

  "What makes you think I'd want a walk?"

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

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

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

  "You're all determined to quit, right?"

  They all nodded.

  "Charley, there's no other option," Darby said, and chuckled. " 'No good deed ever goes unpunished.' You never heard that?"

  "Is Duffy here?" Castillo asked.

  Delchamps shook his head.

  "If I'm going to go to Bariloche, I'm going to need his friend's Aero Commander."

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

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

  "Davidson was. He's also a mutineer, Ace."

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

  "Don't take it to heart, Charley," Britton said. "He probably didn't mean it."

  "And what do we do with Lester?" Castillo asked.

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

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

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

  [TWO]

  KM 28.5, Panamericana, Southbound

  Buenos Aires Province, Argentina

  0820 30 December 2005

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

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

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

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

  "I have no idea what you're talking about," Svetlana said, somewhat plaintively.

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

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

  "Your call, Colonel Alekseeva," Darby said.

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

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

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

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

  She's wrong.

  Stupid here finally woke up.

  [THREE]

  Jet-Stream Aviation

  Aeropuerto Internacional Jorge Newbery

  Buenos Aires, Argentina

  0845 30 December 2005

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

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

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

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

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

  They usually stand around practicing how to look dour.

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

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

  What the hell is this all about?

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

  "There's nothing to be concerned about, Liam."

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

  "I understand,
Liam."

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

  He grabbed Castillo's arms with both hands.

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

  He got control of himself.

  "You remember Segundo Comandante Martinez and Sargento Primero Perez, of course?" Duffy said, indicating the two gendarmes who'd opened the gate for Castillo and taken care of the sodden newspaper.

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

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

  "You have luggage, mi coronel?" the younger one--Probably the sergeant, Castillo thought--asked.

  "There's a couple of bags in the trunk," Castillo said.

  "And is the Russian woman in the car?" Duffy asked.

  Castillo nodded.

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

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

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

  "She's one of them," Duffy said simply.

  "She and her brother have information I need."

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

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

  "You find out who he is--or she is--and I'll get him," Duffy said.

  "I'll do my best, Liam."

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

  "Nice flight, Lester?"

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