Black Ops (Presidential Agent)

by W. E. B Griffin

  "Why is there any question at all?" Svetlana began. "We're all--"

  "He was asking me," Castillo interrupted.

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

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

  "I thought that was understood," Svetlana said.

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

  "Well?" Castillo said. "Alek?"

  "Understood and agreed to," Pevsner said.

  "Okay, Alfredo, let's hear your advice."

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

  "In the garage," Pevsner said. "Janos?"

  "It's there. But the battery may be dead."

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

  Janos nodded.

  "If that doesn't work," Munz went on, "Darby can arrange a black embassy car."

  "Delchamps and Darby will go with him?" Castillo asked.

  "Of course."

  "And what about the radio?"

  "Leave the radio with Davidson," Munz said. "If they're watching Nuestra Pequena Casa, a sudden mass exit of people and lack of activity--"

  "What radio?" Svetlana asked.

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

  Pevsner chuckled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "Janos, what has Bradley done with the radio?" Castillo asked.

  Janos pointed to the window.

  "It's up?" Castillo asked, surprised.

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

  "Go get him and it, please," Castillo said.

  Janos left the room.

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

  "So you said," Castillo said.

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

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

  "That is between Charley and me. None of your business."

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

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

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

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

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

  "May I speak?" Munz said.

  "You don't have to ask, Alfredo."

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

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

  Pevsner smiled broadly.

  "Am I being called a giraffe?" Svetlana asked suspiciously.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  "Ambassador Silvio? Oh, shit. What did he want?"

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

  "No. The one who doesn't like you. Montvale. That ambassador."

  "What did that ambassador want?"

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

  "And?"

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

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

  "And his response?"

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

  "Did he say what trouble that was?"

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

  "Did he say what this preposterous notion was?"

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

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

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

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

  "Answer the question, Edgar."

  "Not well. He's one tough sonofabitch, Charley. And we're running out of time."

  "Well, don't break out the ice water and the bright lights just yet. Get him on the radio."

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

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

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

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

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

  "Colonel Berezovsky, can you hear me?" Castillo asked.

  "I can hear you."

  Castillo gestured to Aleksandr Pevsner.

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

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

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

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

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

  "Pity you're not here, Tom Barlow, ol' buddy. You could help us decorate the Novogodnaya Yolka."

  That earned him another icy glare from Svetlana.

  Pevsner found his voice.

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

  "You know this man Castillo?"

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

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

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

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

  Munz then addressed Darby. "Alex?"

  "Here, Alfredo."

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

  "Whose truck?"

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

  "This is Charley's idea?" Darby asked dubiously.

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

  "When will that be, Ace?" Delchamps asked.

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

  "And me," Svetlana said.

  "I'm going to leave Colonel Alekseeva here. And probably move Mrs. Berezovsky and Sof'ya here."

  "Is leaving her there smart, Charley?"

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

  "I don't want all our eggs in one basket," Castillo said.

  "That's right. You trust Pevsner, don't you?" Delchamps asked sarcastically.

  "I'm with Charley, Alex," Munz said. "Leaving her here makes sense."

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

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

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

  It took Berezovsky a long moment to reply.

  "You are sure, Aleksandr?"

  "Of course I'm sure. We can do something about that, Dmitri, through Charley."

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

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

  What the hell is that all about?

  "One quick question, Colonel, now that we're no longer dancing," Castillo said. "And we're no longer dancing, right?"

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

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

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

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

  "Finally."

  "What about her?"

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

  "Yes, I do."

  "She was the problem. She would do nothing without permission."

  "Is that what you meant by she 'finally' made contact with you?"

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

  "Is that why you suddenly decided to approach me?"

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

  "Thank you for your honesty," Castillo said.

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

  "Alekseeva?"

  "Some kind of a relative of Little Red Under Britches?"

  "Yeah. What about him?"

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

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

  "And you don't think he's coming after you, too?" Svetlana said.

  "I can deal with Evgeny. It's you I'm worried about."

  "Pride goeth before a fall," she said.

  "And I'll bet that's in the Bible, too," Castillo said sarcastically.

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

  "I think it might be useful if we knew what everybody's talking about," Delchamps said.

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

  "And don't bother the agency with this, right?"

  "Absolutely don't bother the agency with this."

  "Anything else?"

  "I can't think of anything."

  "You want a call to report we've made the move?"

  "Not unless something goes wrong."

  "Okay. See you the day after tomorrow at Jorge Newbery."

  [FOUR]

  "The possibility exists, Aleksandr," Svetlana said, "that even if they weren't onto us, they are now, and conseque
ntly may have already learned about the money, and we must presume that if they haven't, they soon will. I have the numbers memorized . . ."

  She stopped when a maid came into the library. It was just the three of them. Munz was off somewhere, presumably on the telephone, and Lester had been summoned by Anna to see if he could do something about Max, who was apparently snatching the small pastries off the Novogodnaya Yolka as soon as they could be hung, then growling at any adult who tried to stop him.

  It was the fourth time their conversation had been interrupted by one of the help.

  "Enough," Pevsner declared in Russian, which caused the middle-aged maid to look at him almost in alarm.

  "When you finish whatever it is you have to do in here, please tell Madam Pevsner that we will be in the Green Room, where we do not wish to be disturbed unless it's the Second Coming of our Lord and Savior."

  The maid nodded her understanding.

  She almost prostrated herself before Tsar Aleksandr. It was--Castillo stopped the thought until he came up with the word he was searching for--serflike. Not almost. Serflike. And she's Russian. So how did a Russian serf wind up in Bariloche?

  "There is a study in the Green Room," Pevsner announced. "Large enough. We will continue this there. With the door locked."

  "I want one of those," Svetlana said as Castillo opened the lid of his laptop. "Will you get me one, Charley?"

  "No," he said simply.

  Pevsner chuckled.

  "Then I will buy one myself."

  "I don't think that's very likely," Castillo replied. "But speaking of money, as we were when we were interrupted--"

  "What about it?"

  "Those bank account numbers you told Alek you have memorized--"

  "What about them?"

  "I've got them in here," he said, tapping the laptop. "Why don't I just put them on a CD if Alek needs them?" He was looking into her eyes and hoping he was at least somewhere close to matching the icy looks Pevsner was so good at.

  And I hit home. Her eyes show it.

  "Or are we talking about bank account numbers you somehow forgot to mention when you were telling me everything, Girl Scout's Honor?"

  "Oh, God, Charley, I was going to tell you about them!"

  That look of genuine remorse is either genuine, or she should be on the stage.