Covert Warriors

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Doing what, that you couldn’t answer?”

  “For most of that time, I was dodging rock-filled clouds in a helicopter flown by a guy who finished flight school six weeks ago in Sevastopol. I don’t take calls under those conditions.”

  He exchanged smiles with Koshkov.

  Lester didn’t think I should have gotten on the phone, either; otherwise he would have handed it to me.

  “Rock-filled clouds where?”

  “The Andes.”

  “What the hell are you doing down there? The locator’s not working.”

  “I turned it off,” Castillo replied, adding, “At the moment, eating lobster.”

  “Why do I suspect you’ve been at the sauce?”

  “You’re perceptive? Would that explain it?”

  “Jesus Christ, Charley, the last thing I need is you smashed.”

  Right now, the last thing Charley needs is Charley smashed.

  Whatever this is, Lammelle is excited about it.

  Why the hell did I drink that goddamn vodka?

  “Frank, calm down. Consider the possibility that I’m pulling your chain.”

  “You sonofabitch! You have a sick sense of humor!”

  “So I have been told,” Castillo said.

  He saw Sweaty making an exaggerated punching motion with her index finger.

  He knew what it meant—turn on the loudspeaker function—and ignored her.

  “So are you going to tell me what’s so important or not?” Castillo asked.

  There was a pause, suggesting Lammelle was getting his temper under control.

  “Forty-five minutes ago, I had a call from General McNab,” he began. “He’s on his way to Afghanistan.”

  “So? Half of SPECOPSCOM is in Afghanistan; he goes there all the time.”

  “I think maybe I should start at the beginning,” Lammelle said.

  “Yeah. Why don’t you?”

  “The people you had at Arlington—and you, too—walked out on the President’s remarks.”

  “Actually, we got in our limos and went to the Mayflower. So what?”

  “You having those Delta and Gray Fox guys at Arlington pissed the President off. And then you walked out on his remarks. That pissed him off even more. And your party at the Mayflower pushed him over the edge.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I told you before, in the last conversation we had, that Clendennen sent the FBI to the Mayflower to take pictures of everybody there. And among those there were Porky Parker and Roscoe Danton, and that really pissed him off.”

  “And do you now know why he did that?”

  “So that he would have proof.”

  “Of what? You sound as if you’ve been at the sauce.”

  “After FBI Director Mark Schmidt had personally identified each and every partygoer for him . . .”

  “It wasn’t a party, for Christ’s sake. In our last conversation, you will recall, I told you it was more like a wake. We stood around drinking, telling Danny Salazar war stories—”

  “I remember,” Lammelle interrupted him, and then went on, “. . . he gave them to Beiderman with orders to give them to Naylor, with orders for Naylor to show them to McNab and tell him that he—the President—knew, quote, what McNab was up to, close quote, but that if McNab applied for immediate retirement it, quote, would be the end of it, close quote.”

  “What does he think McNab was . . . is . . . up to?”

  “He apparently believes McNab is in a conspiracy to get him out of the Oval Office and Montvale into it. If I have to say this, he thinks you’re a coconspirator.”

  “That’s crazy!”

  “Please remember later, if you are asked under oath, that I did not introduce that word into this conversation. You did.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Castillo muttered, then exhaled audibly, and said, “The first thing that comes into my mind—unwilling as I am to accept crazy—is that he’s into the bottle. A secret tippler. Was our beloved Commander in Chief sober when he did all this?”

  “Yes, he was. He’s a teetotaler. The boozers in his family are his mother and mother-in-law.”

  “Where are you getting all this, Frank?”

  “General McNab made the point to me that he has not spoken with you since before Salazar and the others were murdered and Colonel Ferris kidnapped . . .”

  “He hasn’t,” Castillo confirmed.

  “. . . which of course suggested to me that he wanted me to bring you into the loop especially in view of the fact that the other players are not liable to.”

  “The other players being?”

  “Thus far, Naylor and Beiderman. So, after speaking with General McNab, I spoke—separately—with both General Naylor and Secretary Beiderman.”

  “They agree with your crazy theory?”

  “I don’t have a crazy theory, Charley. Write that down. In blood. On your forehead.”

  “They agree with the ‘he’s out of his mind’ theory?”

  “They talked around it. But, yeah, they’re worried.”

  “What happened when Beiderman or Naylor told McNab the President wanted him to retire?”

  “It didn’t get that far. Beiderman told McNab to get out of Dodge before he had to show him the pictures. He did.”

  “For McNab to retire would be an admission that he was involved in this nutty coup d’état scenario. He wouldn’t—couldn’t—do that. He’d demand a court-martial.”

  “That’s precisely what McNab told them just before Beiderman told him to go to Afghanistan before he could show him the pictures and deliver the ‘retire now’ ultimatum. Both Beiderman and Naylor are hoping the whole thing will pass when Clendennen has a couple of days to cool off.”

  “That looks to me like pissing into the wind, Frank.”

  “Yeah. Agreed.”

  “Did my name come up when you talked with Naylor and Beiderman?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Either one of them think I’m involved in this conspiracy?”

  “No. But when your name came up, the phrase Beiderman used was ‘loose cannon,’ in the phrase ‘the one thing we don’t need in these circumstances is a loose cannon like Castillo.’ ”

  “And Naylor didn’t rush to my defense?”

  “No. He didn’t.”

  “So what happens now?”

  “We wait to see if this coup d’état theory of the President goes away when he’s had a few days to cool off.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  Lammelle was silent a long moment. Then he said, “I don’t know, Charley.”

  Then, when Castillo didn’t reply for maybe thirty seconds, Lammelle asked, “Any questions?”

  “Just one. Where’s my helicopter?”

  “I’m not sure I should tell you.”

  “Come on, Frank.”

  Lammelle took another long moment of silence before he said: “Okay, Charley. In a move I regretted before I finished hanging up the phone, I ordered it loaded onto a truck and taken to Martindale Army Airfield at Fort Sam for indefinite storage.”

  “Despite what everybody says about you, Frank, on certain occasions, you can be a good guy.”

  “I’m not asking what you’re going to do with it, because I don’t want to know.”

  The green LED on Castillo’s handset went out.

  “So long, Frank,” he said to the dead headset. “It’s always a pleasure to hear from you.”

  He handed the headset to Lester, picked up his lobster fork, then glanced around the table. All eyes were on him.

  “Anything wrong, Charley?” Aleksandr Pevsner asked with a smile. “You looked very unhappy while you were talking.”

  “Nothing I can’t handle in the morning, Alek, when time will have taken the emergency liquid out of my system.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I thought you knew that I never discuss serious things when I’ve been drinking.”

  “Not even with family?”

 
“Especially not with this family,” Castillo said.

  That earned him smiling lips and icy eyes from Pevsner.

  When he looked at Sweaty, he knew she wouldn’t be smiling, and he expected to get the same icy glare from her blue eyes.

  Instead, he got a faint smile—of approval, he realized with some surprise after a moment—and then, as he moved a chunk of lobster from a bowl of melted butter to his mouth, she groped him tenderly under the tablecloth.

  The feeling of euphoria—or at least carnal anticipation—lasted until they were in their room. Castillo had waited maybe a second after Sweaty had gone into the bathroom before getting naked and under the sheets. He had been lying on his back with his fingers laced behind his head, waiting for her to join him, when his world crashed around him.

  Epiphany!

  Stop thinking with your dick, James Bond.

  What you thought about good ol’ Alek is also true of Sweaty.

  You can take the girl out of Russia, but only a fool thinking with his little head would believe you could take the SVR out of former Podpolkovnik Svetlana Alekseeva.

  The most important thing to any of them is family. And/or the Oprichnina.

  And you are not family. And certainly not an Oprichnik.

  They told me—and I believe it—that the way they’ve survived since Ivan the Terrible is by doing whatever was necessary. The translation of that is being as ruthless as necessary.

  And she’s smart. God, is she smart! When Juan Carlos Pena wanted my nonexistent address in Uruguay, she came up with the Golf and Polo Club in the next breath.

  Which means she had no trouble at all figuring out that I’m likely to pose problems in their current battle with their former comrades in the SVR. I told her I was going to make it clear to Pevsner that I wasn’t going to let him whack anybody without my permission. And when I got into it with Pevsner just now . . .

  “I never discuss serious things when I’ve been drinking.”

  “Not even with family?”

  “Especially not with this family.”

  . . . it had to be obvious to her that I was not going to be a good little boy and do whatever Wise ol’ Uncle Alek thinks I should do.

  So what to do about that? They can’t whack me—although that remains a possibility for the future—because right now they need me.

  She knew that I was talking to Lammelle on the phone, even from the one side of the conversation I let her hear.

  So, just as fast as she came up with the address for Juan Carlos, when she saw that I was already challenging Pevsner’s authority, she decided the way to deal with the situation was in bed. She could control me there.

  And why shouldn’t she think so?

  Less than twenty-four hours after we first met, she was in my bed—and has been leading me around by the wang ever since.

  So she grabbed hold of it under the table here.

  And I can’t even get really pissed off at her. She is what she is, and what she is is a fourth—hell, maybe sixth—generation Soviet spook.

  Can I be pissed at me—James Bond Junior?

  Sure.

  Because James Bond Junior is acting not like even a junior spook—one six months out of Fort Huachuca or the Farm—but like some seventeen-year-old with raging hormones who just got laid for the first time and is convinced there has never been love like this since Adam screwed Eve in the Garden of Eden.

  And because it’s humiliating having to face proof of my gross stupidity.

  Sweaty came out of the bathroom, holding a towel by its edges.

  “Showtime!” she said, and dropped the towel.

  That has to be the most beautiful woman in the world.

  She walked on her toes to the bed quickly and with exquisite grace and got in beside him.

  She laid her body half across Castillo, making him think that she had the most wonderful breasts he had ever encountered by any standard he could think of.

  “You play the fool so well,” she said, “that sometimes I forget that you’re not a fool at all.”

  He could feel her breath against his ear.

  “Flattery will get you everywhere,” he said. “But what specifically do you have in mind?”

  “Aleksandr’s face, when you told him you never discuss business when you’re drinking, especially with this family, was priceless.”

  Well, here it is. The schmooze starts.

  “Beware of Russians bearing booze is my motto, baby.”

  “And why didn’t you tell me you’re a legend?”

  “Who said I was?”

  “Kiril. When I said, ‘Thank you for letting Carlos fly as your co-pilot,’ he said, ‘I was glad to have him. I don’t think anyone knows more about flying in the mountains than he does. He even wrote a book about it. He’s a legend in the American army.’ Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Modesty.”

  She pinched his nipple.

  Well, she’s a good schmoozer. I almost believe her.

  “Can I ask you a personal question?” he said.

  “No.”

  “What kind of don’t-get-pregnant medicine do you take?” he pursued, then thought: Where the hell did that come from? Did Alek put a little sodium pentothal in that vodka?

  “I should have known . . .” she said with a sigh.

  “You’re not answering the question.”

  “You really want to know?”

  “I really want to know.”

  Why not? Like it says on the CIA’s wall in Langley, “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”

  “When I stopped living with Evgeny, I stopped taking those once-a-day pills.”

  “You were on that stuff when you were married to Evgeny? Why?”

  “I didn’t want his baby, obviously.”

  Charley thought: And since you certainly don’t want mine . . .

  He said: “And now?”

  “When I knew Dmitri and I were going to try to get out, I went to a Danish gynecologist and she gave me a shot.”

  “What kind of a shot?”

  “I don’t know what it was called, but she said it would keep me from getting with child for a year . . .”

  In case you just happened to meet somebody who could be useful if you let him into your pants, right? Like me?

  “. . . which was enough. I didn’t mind dying, but I didn’t want the bastard child of an SVR interrogator . . .”

  “What?”

  “The first step when breaking down a senior female traitor is to rape her,” Sweaty said matter-of-factly. “Multiple times, different men, over a forty-eight-hour period. I could handle that, but I didn’t want a child coming into the world that way. If they shot me, it wouldn’t have been a problem, but they could have—probably would have—just kept me in prison, where I would wind up giving birth to the bastard child. So I got the shot from the Danish doctor.”

  Update on the epiphany: She’s not making this up.

  Jesus H. Christ!

  “Two weeks later I met you,” Sweaty went on. “And sure enough, the shot kept me from being with child for a year. Actually for fourteen months.”

  “So what are you going to do now?”

  She met his eyes, and after a moment said: “In seven months, we’re going to have a baby. I told you I was going to give you a son. Sons. Didn’t you believe me?”

  He stared into her ice blue eyes, now genuinely warm, and thought: Calling Charley Castillo a miserable lowlife sickly suspicious sonofabitch is the monumental understatement of all time.

  Then, taking him absolutely by surprise, his chest started to heave and his eyes teared.

  “Oh, God!” he said in anguish. “Oh, Sweaty!”

  “I thought you’d be happy?” she said, confused.

  “Sweetheart, I am so happy I think I’m going to have a heart attack.”

  [TWO]

  The Breakfast Room

  Casa en el Bosque

  San Carlos de Bariloche

/>   Río Negro Province, Argentina

  0815 18 April 2007

  Aleksandr Pevsner, Tom Barlow, Nicolai Tarasov, Stefan Koussevitzky, Kiril Koshkov, and Anatoly Blatov were sitting around the long table when Castillo and Svetlana walked in, holding hands, trailed by Lester Bradley, his arms full with two laptops and a Brick. Janos was in his usual place, sitting in a chair against the wall.

  A maid and one of Pevsner’s ex-Spetsnaz waiters were clearing away the breakfast dishes.

  I knew Alek was going to play King of the Hill sooner or later, and that just won’t work. Better settle it once and for all right now.

  “Sweaty, I don’t think the Reichsmarschall plans to feed us,” Castillo said in English. “Do you think we could possibly have annoyed him in some way?”

  “The Reichsmarschall,” Pevsner replied sarcastically, “didn’t know how long it would be before—or even if—Romeo and Juliet could bear to be torn apart. So we decided we’d better start without you.”

  Castillo looked around the table. Tom Barlow was smiling. The others were stone-faced.

  “Nice try, Hermann, but no brass ring,” Castillo said. “Starting without me would be what Kiril, Anatoly, and I would call really flying blind, and you know it. Or you should.”

  Pevsner stared at him icily but didn’t reply.

  Castillo turned to the waiter and, switching to Russian, ordered: “Set places for us. Put me at the head of the table, where Mr. Pevsner is now sitting. Podpolkovnik Alekseeva will sit to my right, and Mr. Bradley to my left.”

  The waiter looked at Pevsner for direction. He got none.

  “Your house, Alek, your call,” Castillo said. “You either stop behaving like you think you’re Ivan the Terrible and I’m a second lieutenant of your household cavalry, or we’re out of here.”

  “We’re out of here?” Pevsner parroted sarcastically.

  “ETA of Jake Torine and the Gulfstream at San Carlos de Bariloche International is twelve fifteen,” Castillo said. “Unless you agree that I’m the best man to deal with our mutual problem, I’ll just get on it and leave you here to deal with your problem by yourself.”

  “Then get on your goddamn airplane and go,” Pevsner said.

  “Where Carlos goes, I go,” Svetlana said.