Covert Warriors

by W. E. B Griffin

  “I’m not sure a submarine could be equipped with the necessary equipment in time for this operation.”

  “I’ll tell you this, General,” the President said. “A submarine will be equipped in time for this operation, or we’ll have a new secretary of Defense, a new secretary of the Navy, and a new chief of naval operations.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  XI

  [ONE]

  Hacienda Santa Maria

  Oaxaca Province, Mexico

  2105 20 April 2007

  “With all possible respect, Señor Diputado Procurador General,” Juan Carlos Pena said, with a smile in his voice, “you don’t really want to know what I’m going to do tonight. I’ll meet you in the Diamante at nine, and I promise not to ask what you did tonight.”

  He laughed at the deputy attorney general’s response, and then hung up.

  “What’s the Diamante?” Castillo asked.

  “Will he trace the call here?” Svetlana asked.

  “Oh, she is a professional, isn’t she?” Pena observed. “He might, Sweaty, and I will handle that by walking into the restaurant tomorrow morning with a case of Hacienda Santa Maria’s finest grapefruit for him. He will then conclude that I was here checking your security, which means to pick up the envelope.”

  “What envelope?” Svetlana asked.

  “The envelope containing the small token of Don Armando’s appreciation for my keeping the bad guys away from Hacienda Santa Maria,” Pena said.

  Don Armando Medina, the general manager of Hacienda Santa Maria, chuckled.

  “Don Armando, you’re actually paying protection money to the Federales?” Castillo demanded.

  “Jesus Christ, Carlos!” Pena replied. “I can’t believe you actually asked that.”

  “Does that mean we’re paying you or not?” Castillo pursued.

  “It means, my naïve old buddy, that it’s important that people such as Manuel José Guzmán, Diputado Procurador General de la República, think you’re paying me. Otherwise, Manuel José might suspect that I’m honest, and we certainly couldn’t have that, could we?”

  “Sorry,” Castillo said.

  “Carlos, I knew Doña Alicia, called her Tia Alicia, long before I met you.”

  “I said I was sorry,” Castillo said. “I wasn’t thinking.”

  “That’s a problem for you, isn’t it?”

  “Juan Carlos,” Svetlana said. “He said he was sorry. What did this man have to say?”

  “Unless I’m wrong—and I very seldom am, that’s why I’m still alive—at nine tomorrow morning in the restaurant of the Diamante—full title Camino Real Acapulco Diamante, one of the better hotels in Acapulco—he will explain to me when and how Félix Abrego will manage to escape from the Oaxaca State Prison. And then, because he knows how ashamed I will be because of Señor Abrego’s escape from my custody, he will give me an envelope to assuage my pain.”

  “The deputy attorney general is working for the cartels?” Castillo asked, surprised.

  “With, I would say, not for. Abrego has many friends, Carlos, and most of them have lots of money.”

  “If nobody has anything more to say,” Castillo said, “I think I will have a little grape before we have dinner. It’s been a busy day, and it’s long past my normal wine time.”

  As if on cue, someone had something to say.

  Castillo’s Brick buzzed.

  “Hand me the sonofabitch, please, Lester,” Castillo said. “And we’ll see who is trying to keep me off the sauce.”

  Bradley handed him the handset. Castillo looked at it.

  “It’s your Cousin Aleksandr, Sweaty,” Charley said, then put the handset to his ear. Sweaty stood up and leaned over the Brick and pushed the LOUDSPEAKER button.

  “And how are things on the shores of picturesque Lake Nahuel Huapi, Aleksandr?” Castillo asked in Russian.

  “Speak English,” Sweaty ordered.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Castillo said, glancing at her.

  “Are you alone?” Pevsner asked.

  “Clearly no. And Svetlana wants you to speak English.”

  “What’s that all about?” Pevsner asked, in English.

  “I can only guess that she wants her new buddy to hear what you have to say, and he doesn’t speak Russian.”

  “Who’s her new friend?”

  “Juan Carlos Pena, chief of the Policía Federal for Oaxaca State.”

  “Have you been drinking?”

  “Not yet. But make whatever this is quick, will you please? I’m about to start.”

  “I gave you my word that I wouldn’t take any of several actions until I first told you.”

  “Without my permission is the way I remember that.”

  “I’m not in the habit, as you are well aware, of asking anyone for permission to do anything.”

  “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on down there on the shores of Lake Nahuel Huapi?”

  “I’m in Cozumel. How soon can you get here?”

  “If you can convince me this is important and nothing happens between now and, say, nine tomorrow morning, I can be there in time for lunch.”

  “I mean tonight.”

  “Tonight’s out of the question. I can’t take off from here without letting the local airport—and this means the Policía Federal—know my airfield is capable of night operation. And I don’t want to throw away that tactical advantage.”

  “I thought that you were friends with the local police?”

  “Stand by a moment, Aleksandr,” Svetlana said. She motioned for Castillo to give her the handset, and when he had, she held it against her breast to muffle the microphone.

  “You understand Carlito’s concern, Juan Carlos?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  “Who besides you would learn the field is capable of night flight if Charley were to take off right now?”

  “Nobody,” Juan Carlos replied.

  “And you can keep it that way?”

  Pena nodded.

  She moved the handset from her breast to her ear.

  “If I have your word that you’ll do nothing until Carlito approves,” Svetlana said, “we can take off from here in about fifteen minutes.”

  “You have my word that I will take no action until I tell him what I am going to do, and why,” Pevsner said. “And, Svetlana, remember who you are. How dare you talk to me that way.”

  “I’ll tell you who I am, Aleksandr,” Svetlana said. “The woman who will tell my Carlito to fly over there. Or to stay here. And if we stay here, you will be free to do whatever you wish, and I can only hope that you will realize that you will be doing it alone.”

  There was a long silence.

  “What’s his name?” Juan Carlos asked.

  “Aleksandr,” Castillo furnished.

  “Can you hear me, Aleksandr?” Pena asked, raising his voice.

  “I can hear you,” Pevsner said. “The policeman?”

  “Actually, I’m a little more than a policeman,” Pena said. “But I used to be, and when I was, I learned that there are some women you just don’t fuck with, and your Cousin Sweaty is one of them. I wouldn’t cross her if I was you.”

  “Pay attention, Aleksandr,” Castillo said, laughing.

  There was a twenty-second pause.

  “Then I will expect to see you in a little over three hours,” Pevsner said. “During which time you have my word that I will take no action that could possibly displease either my friend Charley or you, my dear Svetlana.”

  The LEDs on the Brick went out; Pevsner had ended the call.

  “Why do I think Aleksandr is annoyed with us?” Castillo asked rhetorically, then said, “You going to Acapulco tonight, Juan Carlos? Or do you want to spend the night here?”

  “Neither. I’m going with you,” Juan Carlos said. “I’ve been hearing about that sonofabitch for years. Not only do I want to hear what he’s got planned, and for who, I want a look at him.”

  “I can assure you, Juan Carlos
,” Svetlana said, dead serious, “that Aleksandr’s parents were married. You are speaking of my mother’s sister, and she was not a bitch.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind, Sweaty,” Pena said. “No offense intended.”

  “Watch your mouth in the future.”

  “Sí, señorita,” Juan Carlos said, contritely.

  [TWO]

  The Tahitian Suite

  Grand Cozumel Beach & Golf Resort

  Cozumel, Mexico

  0005 21 April 2007

  When they had landed at Cozumel International, Castillo had seen “the other” Cessna Mustang, the one used to fly high rollers to the Grand Cozumel casino, and drug money to be laundered out of Mexico. So he was not surprised to find former SVR Colonel Nicolai Tarasov sitting on the balcony of the twenty-third-floor penthouse suite beside former SVR Colonel Aleksandr Pevsner.

  Max, delighted to see Pevsner, ran out onto the balcony, reared on his hind legs, draped his paws over Pevsner’s shoulders, and affectionately lapped his face.

  “Can’t you control your goddamn animal?” Pevsner demanded.

  “He likes you,” Castillo said. “Be grateful. His other mode is ‘rip your throat out.’”

  “Very interesting,” Juan Carlos said. “Maybe you’re not the all-around son . . . bas . . . evil person everybody says you are.”

  Castillo laughed when he saw that Juan Carlos was applying his “when meeting someone cutthroat, attack to put them on the defense” theory of how best to deal with dangerous people who expect to be treated differentially.

  Sweaty said, “You’re learning, Juan Carlos.”

  “You’re the policeman, obviously,” Pevsner said.

  “Carlos has been telling me that Max is an infallible judge of character,” Juan Carlos said. “I tend to agree. We hadn’t known each other ninety seconds when he was begging me to scratch his ears.”

  “And if I may be permitted to say so, Señor Pena,” Pevsner said, “I am not at all surprised that you and Karl are friends. You share not only a very odd sense of humor but a complete inability to take things seriously.”

  “That’s it!” Svetlana snapped. “Stop.”

  She walked to her Uncle Nicolai and allowed him to kiss her cheek.

  “Introduce me to your friend, Svetlana.”

  “Juan Carlos, this is my Uncle Nicolai,” Sweaty said. “Nicolai Tarasov, Juan Carlos Pena. I’d forgotten. You know Lester, don’t you?”

  “How could I forget Mr. Bradley?” Tarasov said, and patted Lester on the back.

  Tarasov and Pena shamelessly examined each other as they shook hands.

  “And tell me what brings the chief of the Policía Federal for Oaxaca State so far from home?” Tarasov said.

  “Well, not much was happening at Hacienda Santa Maria,” Pena said, “so I thought I might as well come over here and arrest somebody.”

  Castillo chuckled.

  “I said stop that and I meant it!” Svetlana said. “All right, Aleksandr, what’s so important that you couldn’t tell us on the Brick?”

  “Before we get into that, do you suppose I could have a glass of wine?” Castillo said.

  “It would be better if you were sober when I tell you what I have to tell you.”

  “I said a glass, Aleksandr, not a damn bottle. Humor me.”

  That’s unusual. He usually tries to feed people he’s dealing with all the booze he can get into them.

  What the hell is this all about?

  A waiter—whose starched white jacket did not entirely conceal the mini Uzi on his hip—appeared.

  “Bring wine, some of that Cabernet Sauvignon, for my guests,” Pevsner ordered. Then he turned to Castillo. “The reason I didn’t open this subject on the Brick is I didn’t think you’d believe me.”

  “What makes you think I’ll believe you now?”

  “Get to it, Aleksandr,” Svetlana ordered.

  He looked at her and nodded.

  “Vladimir Vladimirovich doesn’t want to exterminate us,” he said. “Unless of course that should prove to be convenient while he’s doing what he set out to do in the first place. It took me a long time to figure that out.”

  “Of course he wants to exterminate us!” Svetlana said. “For all the reasons you know.”

  “Listen to me carefully, Svetlana,” Pevsner said. “If he can eliminate us while he’s doing what he set out to do in the first place, he’d be pleased. But eliminating us is not his highest priority.”

  Castillo looked at Pevsner. Where the hell is he going with this?

  “Then what is?” he said.

  “We misjudged him. We thought of him as what we think he is, rather than what he believes he is.”

  “Which is?” Castillo asked.

  “Tsar of all the Russias. Vladimir the Terrible. Cast in the mold of Ivan the Terrible. Chosen by God to restore Russia to its former magnificence.”

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?” Castillo asked.

  There was not a hint of sarcasm in his voice.

  “Perfectly. Absolutely,” Pevsner said.

  “Where did this come from, Aleksandr?” Castillo asked. “Your notion that Putin thinks of himself as . . . Ivan the Terrible reincarnate?”

  “The first time I thought of it—and dismissed it—was during the funeral.”

  “The imperial family’s funeral?”

  Pevsner nodded.

  The waiter pulled the cork from a wine bottle with a popping sound, and poured a little for Castillo to taste.

  I probably shouldn’t take this.

  But what the hell?

  “You know Saint Petersburg?” Pevsner asked.

  Castillo nodded, and Pevsner went on: “Renamed Petrograd from Saint Petersburg in 1914, then renamed Leningrad in 1924, and then back to Saint Petersburg in 1991, after the Soviet Union became the Russian Federation.”

  Castillo vaguely remembered seeing photographs of the funeral. He hadn’t paid much attention to it.

  “On July 17, 1998, eighty years to the day after the Tsar and his family were executed by the Bolsheviks, they were interred—as ‘The Royal Martyrs Tsar Nicholas II and his beloved family’—in the Royal Vault of the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul.

  “His Holiness Patriarch Alexis came from Moscow to preside, and President Boris Yeltsin represented the government of the Russian Federation.

  “The arrangements—moving what was left of the bodies from where they had been tossed down a well in Yekaterinburg, some nine hundred miles east of Moscow, and DNA examination of the remains to prove it was indeed the Tsar and his family, were handled by one Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, then the KGB’s man in Saint Petersburg . . .”

  “Now, that’s interesting,” Castillo interrupted.

  “. . . who was very visible during the interment,” Pevsner finished.

  “Yeah,” Svetlana said. “That caught my attention, too. I thought he was being blasphemous.”

  “And that was my initial reaction, too,” Pevsner said. “But then, as I said, I dismissed it, deciding that either possibility was improbable.”

  “Either possibility?”

  “That he was being blasphemous, as Svetlana thought, or that he had gone back to the Lord.”

  “But?”

  “I began to think of it again a few days ago in San Carlos de Bariloche,” Pevsner said. “When I was trying very hard, and failing, to see how Vladimir Vladimirovich’s intention to eliminate us tied in with the kidnapping of Colonel Ferris. When I finally realized it had nothing to do with that—the kidnapping had nothing to do, except possibly as a diversion, with eliminating us—everything suddenly began to be clear.”

  “Tell me how,” Castillo said.

  “Who is Vladimir’s greatest enemy? I don’t think anyone would argue it’s not the United States. Can he engage in a war against the United States? No. If he could, he would. Can he, at virtually no cost to himself, cause the United States trouble? Weaken it? Yes, he can. And is.”

&nb
sp; “And that’s what he’s up to?” Castillo asked.

  Pevsner nodded. “Mexico is the battlefield. For one thing, the Mexicans hate the United States. The United States took most of the Southwest away from Mexico in the war of 1848, and the Mexicans have never forgiven them for that. Mexicans by the millions illegally enter the United States while the Mexican government not only looks the other way but actively encourages them. If those people aren’t in Mexico, not only don’t they have to be fed and hospitalized and educated but they send money—billions and billions of dollars—to their families in Mexico.”

  “That seems a little far-fetched, Aleksandr,” Castillo argued.

  “It won’t if you give it some thought,” Pevsner said. “But illegal immigration isn’t the point here, and neither is the drug traffic—both of which weaken the U.S., which is fine with Vladimir Vladimirovich, but what he’s really after is the destruction of the United States government.”

  “And how does he plan to do that?”

  “Off the top of your head, friend Charley, tell me what were the greatest threats to the stability of the United States government in your lifetime?”

  “I don’t know,” Castillo admitted. And then after a moment, asked, “You’re talking about Nixon?”

  “Before Nixon resigned, there was rioting in the streets. You needed armed troops to protect the Pentagon.”

  “And later the impeachment of Clinton,” Castillo added thoughtfully.

  “And now you have a President who should be in a room with rubber walls,” Pevsner said.

  “Who told you about that?” Castillo asked. “And what makes you think Putin even knows about it?”

  “Oh, he knows,” Pevsner said, and issued an order in Russian: “Put two chairs there,” he said, pointing. “And bring them out.”

  Two folding chairs were set up and then two men—stark naked, showing signs of having been severely beaten—shuffled onto the patio, their hands and their ankles bound together with plastic ties. Janos, Pevsner’s Hungarian bodyguard, brought up the rear of the procession.

  I wondered where Janos was.

  The waiter offered Castillo more of the Cabernet Sauvignon.

  “No, thank you,” Castillo said, politely. “I’ve had quite enough for the time being.”