Is that Cuban sonofabitch capable of that? Taking all the cars with him, so that I have to ride around town like a fish in a can? "Secret Service, Claudeen."
"This is the State Department switchboard. I have Ambassador Montvale on a secure line for the senior agent on duty."
"Hold one, please, for Supervisory Special Agent McGuire."
"It will be a moment, Ambassador Montvale."
"Not a problem."
Montvale knew Supervisory Special Agent Thomas McGuire. He had once been in charge of the presidential protection detail.
A good man.
More important, he knows who I am.
"McGuire."
"Tom, this is Charles M. Montvale."
"Good afternoon, Mr. Ambassador. How are you, sir?"
"Much better now that I've got you on the phone, Tom. I need someone with a grasp of the situation."
"What situation is that, sir?"
"There are two facets of it, Tom. I'm sure you know what happened to the Office of Organizational Analysis?"
"That's not much of a secret, sir."
"And you've heard, I'm sure, about what's been going on in the last few days at Fort Detrick?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, I'm in Buenos Aires. The President sent Mr. Ellsworth and me down here to locate Colonel Castillo to make sure he understands that he is not to go anywhere near that problem. I am to personally relay that presidential order to Castillo, once I find him."
"Castillo's in Argentina, sir?"
"I don't know where he is. But I've come across a lead. One of the members of the now-disbanded OOA was an agency officer named Alexander W. Darby. He retired when Castillo got the boot. Now, I can't find him. But I have reason to believe his wife… Got a pencil…?"
"Yes, sir."
"… is in a house at seventy-two hundred West Boulevard Drive in Alexandria."
"Isn't that the place we used to protect?"
"Yes, it is. That's what I meant by your having a grasp of the situation. Now, what I want you to do is send a couple of your best men out there-better yet, go yourself-and see if Darby is there, and if he's not, ask his wife if she knows where he is. I'm sure Darby knows where Castillo is."
"Have you got a first name on the wife, sir?"
Call her "Mrs. Darby," you Irish moron!
"No, I'm afraid not."
"Well, then I'll just call her Mrs. Darby."
"That'll work. Now, Tom, there is a possibility that she might deny he is there, and another possibility, slight but real, that Castillo himself might be there, and even a remote possibility that two Russians we're looking for-former SVR Colonel Dmitri Berezovsky and former SVR Lieutenant Colonel Svetlana Alekseeva-may also be in that house. Castillo is just arrogant enough, wouldn't you agree, to try to hide himself, and the Russians, in plain sight, so to speak."
"Would you spell those Russian names for me, please?"
Montvale did so. Then added: "So, do a really thorough job of searching the place."
"Yes, sir. And what do I do if I find these people?"
"If you find Darby"-you Irish moron-"you find out from him where Castillo and the Russians are. If you find Castillo or the Russians, you detain them, and immediately notify the President, or his chief of staff."
"Yes, sir. And whom do I see at Justice for the warrants, sir?"
"What warrants?"
"The search warrant for the premises, and the arrest warrants for Castillo and these Russians."
"You don't need a warrant"-you cretin-"you're acting on the authority of the President."
"Yes, sir. I understand. And from whom do I get that, sir?"
"Get what?"
"The presidential authority."
"I just gave it to you."
"Sir, it has to be in writing. I would suppose if I'm to act on the authority of the President, President Clendennen would have to sign it himself."
Well, what did I expect? McGuire is part of the Washington bureaucratic establishment.
You don't rise in that-for that matter, stay in that-unless you have mastered the fine art of covering your ass.
"Tom, I'm not sure if President Clendennen would be available to do that at this time. So here's what I want you to do. Just go out there with enough of your people to place the premises under around-the-clock surveillance-discreet surveillance. This situation requires, as I'm sure you understand, the greatest discretion."
"Yes, sir. I understand."
"Do you happen to know either Darby or his wife, Tom?"
"I've met them, sir."
"Then could you just knock at the door, unofficially, and tell Mrs. Darby you were in the neighborhood and took a chance to see if Darby was at home?"
"That would work, sir. And if he is?"
"Then you tell him that you're looking for Colonel Castillo; that you have a message for Castillo from me that has to be personally delivered."
"Yes, sir. And if he directs me to Colonel Castillo-I mean, if I find him-then what do I do?"
"You don't actually have to talk to him, Tom. Just locate him. Put him under really tight surveillance. Then call my office and tell them to get word to me that you've found Colonel Castillo. I'll take it from there."
"Yes, sir. I'll get right on it."
"Good man! I can't tell you how pleased I am that you were on duty, Tom. I know I can rely on you."
"Thank you, sir. I'll do my best."
There may be just about a dime's worth of silver in this black cloud. Darby might be at the house in Alexandria. He might know where Castillo is. And he might tell McGuire.
Montvale found I. Ronald Spears waiting for him outside the communications room.
"Get in touch with that Air Force colonel, Spears. Tell him to keep the pilots off the booze. Something has come up that might require my immediate return to Washington."
"Yes, sir."
"Do that immediately after you drop me off at the hotel."
"Yes, sir." [FOUR] 7200 West Boulevard Drive Alexandria, Virginia 1525 6 February 2007 Dianne Sanders, a grandmotherly type in her early fifties, was wearing an apron over her dress when she answered the chimes.
"Well, hello, Mr. McGuire. What brings you to our door?"
"I'm hoping Mrs. Darby is here," Tom McGuire said.
"Can I wonder why you might hope that? Or would that be impolite?"
"Come on, Dianne," McGuire said.
"I'll see if Mrs. Darby is at home. If you'll please wait?"
"Lock up the liquor," Mrs. Julia Darby said thirty seconds later. "The Secret Service is here."
She walked up to McGuire, and said, "I'm not sure if I'm glad to see you or not. But I'll give you a kiss anyway."
She stood on her toes and kissed his cheek.
"Are you here socially or otherwise, Tom?" she asked.
"Otherwise, I'm afraid."
"Uh-oh."
"Why did I suspect that?" Dianne Sanders asked.
"I have been ordered here by Ambassador Montvale to see if Alex is here, and if not, to ask you to tell me where he is."
"Did he say why he was curious?"
"He hopes Alex will point him to Charley Castillo. He says he has a message for him."
"Why didn't he come himself?"
"He called me from Buenos Aires."
"Ah-ha! The plot deepens," Julia Darby said.
"Is Alex here?"
She shook her head.
"Can you point me either to him or Charley?"
"The question is not whether I can, but whether I will. If I pointed at somebody, you would feel duty-bound to tell Montvale, right?"
"Yes, I would."
"I cannot tell a lie, especially to a senior officer of the United States Secret Service," she said. She then took a moment to orient herself and pointed in the general direction of South America. "To the best of my knowledge and belief, both of them are somewhere down there."
"Your cooperation is deeply appreciated. You were pointing at South Americ
a, right?"
"In that general direction, yes."
"Can you… will you be more specific?"
She shook her head.
"Not even if I told you that Ambassador Montvale told me he's acting for President Clendennen?"
"Especially if you told me that."
"One final question, Julia. You're not concealing two ex-SVR officers on the premises, are you?"
"I will answer that question. No, I am not."
"And you wouldn't know where such people would be, either, right?"
Julia Darby again pointed toward South America.
"They could be down that way," she said. "But on the other hand, maybe not. Those SVR people are slippery, you know."
He chuckled.
"Is my interrogation over, or is there anything else you'd like to know?" Julia Darby asked.
"This interview is concluded, Mrs. Darby. Thank you for your cooperation."
"I'm always willing to cooperate with the Secret Service, Mr. McGuire. It's my duty as a patriotic citizen." Julia smiled warmly, then said: "Dianne and I were about to have a Bloody Mary. Would you like one?"
He hesitated.
"Come on, Tom. The interrogation is over. I swear Montvale will never know."
He smiled. "Why not?"
"Let's go in the kitchen," Julia said. "Dianne is baking brownies for the boys. I was never much in the kitchen department, but I do make great Bloody Marys." In the kitchen, McGuire asked Dianne Sanders, "Where's Harold?"
"My husband is shopping. He shops. I cook. Should be back anytime now."
Dianne Sanders had spent most of her working career as a cryptographer and later as a highly respected cryptographic analyst. Harold, her husband, had been a Delta Force special operator until he developed heart disease and had been medically retired.
For a while he had been what he described as a "camp follower," taking care of their house while Dianne stayed on active duty. That hadn't worked, and eventually-Hell, with both our retirements we can live pretty damned well-Dianne had retired, too.
That hadn't worked either.
They both had been climbing the walls of their garden apartment in Fayetteville, North Carolina, when CWO5 Colin Leverette, aka Uncle Remus, who had been around the block many times with Harold, asked them if they would be interested in running a safe house for Charley Castillo outside Washington. Harold had been around just as many blocks with Castillo as he had with Uncle Remus, and the Sanderses had jumped at the chance to get out of the garden apartment.
Julia Darby made Bloody Marys and handed them to Tom and Dianne.
"Take a sip of that, and then go back on duty," she said.
He did so, and said, "Okay."
"Ask me how Alex is," Julia said.
"Okay. How's Alex?"
"I hope that miserable sonofabitch and his hot-pants, large-breasted, twenty-year-old Argentine girlfriend freeze together in Ushuaia," she said.
"Where or what is Ushuaia?"
"It's the southernmost city in Argentina, way at the end. Coldest place I've ever been, including the personnel office at Langley."
"You don't expect me to believe that about Alex, do you?"
"I don't care if you believe it or not, but I hope Charles M. Montvale does. I'd love to hear that he's running around down there freezing his ass looking for Alex."
Tom McGuire grinned.
"You have always been an evil woman, Julia," he said admiringly, and tapped his Bloody Mary against hers. "How do you spell 'Ushuaia'?" [FIVE] Penthouse B The Grand Cozumel Beach amp; Golf Resort Cozumel Quintana Roo, Mexico 1805 6 February 2007 En route to Cozumel-somewhere over Peru-a dozing Castillo woke to find Sweaty's head resting on his neck. Upon smelling her perfume, he realized with more than a little pleasure that there was going to be enough time between their arrival in Cozumel and dinner for what the French-who sometimes do things with a certain style-called a cinq a sept.
He dozed off again considering this pleasant possibility, to be wakened perhaps an hour after that by one of the pilots of the Boeing 777 offering him a very nice luncheon plate fresh from the microwave.
Sweaty already had hers.
Castillo waited until the pilot had moved away, then asked her in French: "Ma chere, what does 'a five-to-seven' mean to you?"
"Five to seven means what it sounds like," she replied in Russian. "I have no idea what a five-to-seven means."
"Just as soon as we get to our room in the hotel, I'll show you a"-he pronounced the term phonetically-"sank-ah-set."
She kissed his cheek. "But I have other plans for you just as soon as we get to our room in the hotel, my darling."
Svetlana then removed any doubt he might have had that there was a certain sexual overtone to her remark by quickly groping him. It was not to be.
When they got to Penthouse B, they were not alone. Everybody who had been on the plane was with them.
"We had to move some guests," Alek Pevsner explained. "That shouldn't take long. I always like to know who's in the room next to mine."
"How long is 'long'?" Castillo asked. "As in 'shouldn't take long'?"
Pevsner ignored him and went to the bar and reached for a bottle of bourbon.
Alex Darby opened a sliding glass door and inhaled appreciatively.
"The final death blow to my marriage will come when my wife hears I'm in a penthouse in Cozumel by the Sea," he announced, "while she is in the snow and slush of Washington, trying to find some roof over her and our abused children."
"Is that good or bad?" Delchamps asked.
Max pushed Darby out of his way, having seen Penthouse B's swimming pool, which had obviously been put there for his use. He immediately decided that a quick dip after the long flight was just what he needed.
A Bouvier des Flandres is a large animal and can cause a substantial splash when diving into a pool.
The splash reached Darby.
Everyone laughed.
Pevsner went to a bathroom and returned with a towel for Darby.
By then Max, having enough aquatic activity, had climbed out of the pool and was now standing on the edge of the pool shaking the water from his body. The fur of a Bouvier des Flandres can hold an astonishing amount of water. Pevsner's shirt and trousers had received a good deal of flying water, and there were drops all over his face, which was now pale with anger and tight-lipped.
Everyone waited for Pevsner's explosion. When it didn't come, Castillo poured gasoline on the smoldering embers.
"Well, it was high time you had a bath," Castillo offered. "And Max was just being helpful."
Pevsner looked at him and then said, "I have just had a horrible thought."
"I can't wait to hear what that is," Castillo replied.
"Those adorable puppies you gave my Elena and Dmitri's Sof'ya are going to turn into uncontrollable beasts like that."
Pevsner took another look at his drenched trousers, and announced, "Believe it or not, this place makes it clear on all the advertising that it is not a pet-friendly hotel."
"I hear that they make exceptions for friends of the owner," Castillo said.
"Sometimes the owner is sorry he has certain friends," Pevsner said as he patted his clothing with a towel.
"Sweaty, I think he means me," Castillo said. "Say something rude to him."
"Why doesn't everybody get out of here so that I can have a shower?" Sweaty said.
"Methinks the lady has carnal desires on our leader's body," Delchamps said.
Throwing water on that topic, Pevsner said, "Colonel Torine and the others are on their way from the airport."
"They just got here?" Castillo asked.
"The manager just told me. I told him to send them here when they arrive," Pevsner said, and glanced at Svetlana. "While we're waiting for rooms."
"Further delaying Svet's bath and the satisfaction of her other desires," Tom Barlow said. "Now she will say something rude."
"Very probably," Pevsner said, and smiled warmly at h
er and Castillo.
Castillo thought: My God! Aleksandr Pevsner, you're good!
I've known you long and well enough to know when you're really pissed off, and the last time I saw you this pissed was when you learned that Howard Kennedy had betrayed you.
If you could, you'd happily throw Max off the balcony, a la Ivan the Terrible, who Svetlana told me threw dogs off the Kremlin walls so he could watch them try to walk on broken legs.
But right now, you need all the help you can get to protect you and your family from Putin and the SVR-which means you think that's a real threat, which is nice to know-and you can't afford to piss me off-which means you think I have what you don't have and can't do without, which is also nice to know-so you smile warmly at the uncontrollable beast's owner and his girlfriend as if you agree that he's an adorable puppy and you didn't mind getting soaked at all.
They call that professional control, and it's one facet of character I don't have and really wish I did. Ten minutes later, the doorbell chimed, and when Alex Darby answered it, seven former members of the now-defunct Office of Organizational Analysis-two more than Castillo expected-walked in.
They were Colonel Jake Torine, USAF (Retired); former USAF Captain Richard Sparkman; former USMC Gunnery Sergeant Lester Bradley; Major H. Richard Miller, Jr., USA (Retired); First Lieutenant Edmund Lorimer, MI (Retired); Chief Warrant Officer (Five) Colin Leverette (Retired); and former FBI Special Agent David William Yung, Jr.
"I knew in my bones that there would be no rest for the weary," Leverette greeted him. "How they hanging, Charley?"
Colin Leverette was an enormous black man, a legendary Special Operations man, known to his close friends-and only his close friends-as Uncle Remus.
"You and Two-Gun got yourselves kicked out of Uruguay, did you?" Castillo said, and turned to Torine. "You actually went to Uruguay to pick them up? Wasn't that a little out of your way?"
"It was a supply run, Charley," Torine said, and then, seeing the confusion on Castillo's face, added, "about which, I gather, you didn't know?"
"I'm always the last to know anything, Jake. You know that."
"We went down there with a planeload of the newest Casey radios," Torine said. "That's not precise. We went down there with a bunch of the newest Casey radios. You won't believe how small the new ones are. And they don't need the DirecTV dish antenna."
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