And then he quickly tried to modestly cover his groin with his hand.
Lieutenant Colonel Svetlana Alekseeva was in his bathroom. She was fully covered by a thick white terry-cloth bathrobe, but for all practical purposes it was transparent above the waist—Castillo’s memory bank had automatically kicked in and he again was looking at her bare bosom and erect nipples in the pool.
A number of thoughts zipped at a dizzying speed through his brain as he tried to think of something to say, how to say it, and then actually say it.
“I checked that door just now. It was locked.” That was what finally came out of his mouth.
She held up something red, about the size of a pencil, and smiled.
What the hell is that?
He looked at the object again.
Oh, shit!
Tradecraft 101: How a Cigarette Lighter Flame Can Turn Ordinary Objects into Other Useful Tools.
In this case, remolding a toothbrush handle into a key for a simple lock.
She opened that door!
“I don’t wish to be alone tonight,” Svetlana said softly if a bit awkwardly. “Do you?”
“Jesus H. Christ!”
She looked into his eyes and then, as if suddenly embarrassed, averted them.
Then, still looking down, she chuckled softly and said: “I’ll take that as ‘No, I don’t wish to be alone either,’ yes?”
“What?”
She nodded toward his groin. He looked.
The father of all erections was standing out from the hands with which he had hoped to conceal the symbol of his gender.
“Jesus H. Christ!” Castillo said when he had regained enough breath to speak.
“I hope that’s an expression of satisfaction,” Svetlana said.
He turned his head to look at her.
She was also sprawled on her back, with her head turned to him.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“I don’t have much to compare it with,” she said.
Oh, for Christ’s sake, don’t try to paint yourself as Little Miss Goody Two-Shoes. You couldn’t do what you just did without a lot of practice.
I don’t know how you feel, but that was the best piece of ass I’ve had in a long, long time.
Ever.
“Really?” Castillo asked.
“You’re the second man I’ve been with.”
“That’s a little hard to believe.”
“And you don’t believe me?”
“Let it go, Svetlana.”
“I can’t.” She sighed. “Will you listen?”
He shrugged. “Why not?”
“Sexual relations can cause a lot of trouble . . .”
No fooling?
Like this one’s going to cause more fucking trouble than I want to think about?
“. . . and in the Oprichina there are rules,” she went on.
“You don’t say?”
What comes next? That the Oprichina is a place where females are virgins until marriage, and faithful ever after?
But he saw the hurt in her eyes and was sorry for his sarcasm.
“A man is, of course, permitted to do what he pleases with women, so long as they are not oprichniki. For women, it is different. If it becomes known that an unmarried woman has taken a lover, that will bar her from a career of her own. She cannot handle her emotions and therefore cannot be trusted.
“Should it come out that the wife of an officer has been unfaithful—”
“She will be shot at dawn?”
“You said you would listen, Charley.”
“Sorry.”
That’s the first time she’s called me that.
And I like the way it sounds.
“If it becomes known that an officer’s wife has been unfaithful to him, it is the end of his career. If he can’t control his own wife, how can he be expected to control other men?”
Christ, I’m starting to believe this!
“He can, one time, and one time only, prove his dependability by killing her.”
“And he gets away with that?”
“One time only,” she said matter-of-factly. “If he marries again, and the second wife is unfaithful, that’s proof that he cannot judge character.”
Castillo suddenly realized he had turned on his side.
And then his hand, as if with a mind of its own, reached out and his fingertips brushed her cheek.
“I have never been with another man, Charley. Only Evgeny. Is true.”
“Well, what did you think?”
“I didn’t know it could be like that,” she said, smiling warmly.
“Either did I.”
Castillo leaned to her and kissed her gently on the lips.
The gentleness didn’t last long.
VIII
[ ONE ]
Nuestra Pequeña Casa
Mayerling Country Club
Pilar, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina
0705 30 December 2005
Max was having trouble waking Castillo, who was sleeping soundly and who had not responded to either a gentle nudge with Max’s muzzle or a paw laid gently on his chest. Finally, Max delicately took the pillow edge in his mouth and, without apparent effort, jerked it out from under Castillo’s head.
That did it.
Castillo opened his eyes, saw the dog, and reached out and scratched his ears.
Then he was suddenly wide awake.
He looked quickly to the other side of the bed. It was empty.
“Where the hell were you last night, Max? Getting an eyeful?”
Castillo sat up and swung his legs out of the bed.
Max gave him his paw.
“Okay, okay,” Castillo said, and walked somewhat awkwardly to the door to the corridor, unlocked it, and stepped into the hall.
“Who’s down there?” he called.
“It is I, the warden,” Sandra Britton cheerfully called back. “Seven bells and all is well in the cell block!”
“Let Max out, will you, please?”
“Your wish is my command,” she called. This was followed by a shrill and surprisingly loud whistle. “Come on, Max, baby!”
Max happily trotted down the corridor toward the stairway.
Castillo went back into his room, closed the door, and walked to the bed. Then he went back to the door and locked it, cleverly deciding that if someone walked in on him while he was concealing the traces of his nocturnal visitor, there would be a certain curiosity aroused.
He remembered that at some time during the night, she had gone and gotten her cigarettes and an ashtray. And when he had seen her coming back into the bedroom from the bath, starkers, he had decided on the spot that she had to be the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
Yet there was absolutely no trace of Svetlana.
Nothing in the bed, nothing around the bed, nothing—surprisingly, remarkably—in the bathroom.
That may be, of course, because Lieutenant Colonel Alekseeva of the SVR, as a highly trained intelligence officer, knows how to remove all traces of a clandestine visit to someone’s room.
He tried the interior door of the bathroom. It was locked.
Or it may be that it never happened at all, that it was an incredibly realistic wet dream—courtesy of my active imagination and that wine I chug-a-lugged.
That could very well be it: I haven’t had one of those since West Point. The sight of those erect nipples really got to me, and I haven’t had my ashes hauled in a long time.
You are pissing in the wind, Charley.
It happened.
The proof of that came immediately when he looked in the mirrored wall over the sink. There was an angry, curved, bluish bruise on the soft skin between his right shoulder and armpit.
He remembered when she had bit him.
“Why the hell did you bite me?” he had asked some minutes later.
“I didn’t want everybody rushing in here to see who was screaming. I knew I couldn’t scream if I h
ad my mouth full of you.”
He gently rubbed the teeth marks with his index finger.
I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to do about that, except maybe swim wearing a T-shirt.
And I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to do about Lieutenant Colonel Svetlana Alekseeva.
With whom, I think, as incredible as it sounds, and as fucking insane as I know it is, I think I’m in love.
No, lust.
No, love.
“I couldn’t scream if I had my mouth full of you.”
Wow!
He stripped off his underwear as he had the last time he had taken a shower, and this time got both the shorts and the T-shirt into the wicker laundry basket, the latter with a rim shot.
And then he stepped under the showerhead. This time he didn’t even turn on the hot water. He just closed his eyes and let the cold water stream on him until he heard his teeth chatter.
Edgar Delchamps, Alex Darby, Jack Britton, and Tony Santini were waiting for Castillo, when he came down the stairs dressed in a polo shirt and swimming trunks, five minutes later.
“We need to talk, Ace,” Delchamps said seriously. “Okay?”
Oh, shit! They know!
Castillo nodded, gestured toward the door of the library, and raised a questioning eyebrow.
“Fine,” Delchamps said.
What the hell am I going to say?
“Sorry, guys, it won’t happen again”?
“Excuse the stupidity”?
Or maybe “Well, you guys know how it is. When was the last time you turned down a piece of tail?”
No, that one I won’t use.
That wasn’t a piece of tail. I don’t know what it was, but it was a hell of a lot more than a wham, bam, thank you, ma’am quickie.
The words “a meeting of souls” just popped into my feverish brain.
Castillo was somewhat surprised—But not really; the help here is incredibly efficient, and thank God for that . . . I need a jolt of caffeine—to find an insulated carafe of coffee and a half-dozen china mugs on a tray in the center of the library table. There was a red leather-upholstered captain’s chair at the head of a library table. Castillo poured a cup, sat in the captain’s chair, and made a two-handed gesture signifying Let’s have it.
“Charley, we’ve been talking,” Delchamps began.
I’ll bet you have. And have decided the appropriate course of action for me to take is resign my commission and check into one of the better mental health facilities.
“We think there’s something to the chemical factory in the Congo,” Delchamps said.
What did he say?
“Something really heavy, Charley,” Darby added.
“You ever wonder, Charley, why the ragheads didn’t hit us again after 9/11?” Santini asked.
“Other than us good guys are doing a helluva job shutting them down? Last I looked, the Liberty Bell was still intact.”
“There is that,” Delchamps said. “But there’s something more.”
“What ‘more’?” Castillo said.
They don’t know about me and Svetlana?
“You think maybe they’re sorry, have gone to confession, received absolution, and ain’t gonna do nothing like that never no more?” Santini pursued.
“Where’re you headed, Tony?” Castillo asked.
“Hold that thought, Ace,” Delchamps said, and gestured to Britton.
“Colonel,” Britton asked, “did you ever wonder who was really behind the stolen 727 headed for your beloved Liberty Bell, and why whoever it was had involved the African-American Lunatics in Philadelphia, only a very few of whom can walk and chew gum at the same time?”
Castillo held up both hands in a helpless gesture.
“Same question,” Castillo said. “Where’re—”
“Same response,” Delchamps said. “Hold that thought.”
“Okay.” Castillo leaned back and slowly sipped his coffee.
“Have you considered the possibility that our Russian friends were already en route to Vienna to defect when you were dumped in their lap?” Delchamps asked.
“Yeah, I have,” Castillo said. “What’s been bothering me is how they knew that I’m Gossinger—”
“They know who you are, Ace, because Berezovsky is very good and because he runs their show in Germany.”
“—and how they knew I was going to be at the Friedler funeral.”
“That one’s even easier to explain, Ace. It was in the Tages Zeitung newspapers, on the front page. ‘Tages Zeitung Publisher to Attend Final Rites’ or something to that effect.”
“Are you going to give me a scenario, or keep me guessing?”
“Berezovsky is in Marburg to supervise the taking out of Otto Görner, following which he will go to Vienna to meet the people with the wax statue of Whatsisname?”
“Peter the First,” Castillo furnished.
“Following which, he and Little Red Riding Hood will defect. Hold that thought, too.”
“Get on with the scenario, Edgar,” Castillo ordered.
“The day before, maybe still in Berlin, maybe in Marburg, he hears that the Kuhls got eliminated. That scares the hell out of him. He didn’t know about that.
“Conjecture: Kuhl didn’t go to him to try to turn him. Berezovsky went to Kuhl; they knew who he was. Who they were.
“Are they onto them? What to do?”
“Keep doing what he was supposed to do, take out Otto Görner. And then he hears that you and Kocian are going to be at Friedler’s funeral. . . .
“Now, going off at a tangent: Why was Friedler terminated? Because he was getting too close to what? German involvement in this African chemical factory maybe?
“Then, after Berezovsky orders that you and Billy get taken out, he has a second thought. Or maybe—even probably—Little Red Riding Hood does. She’s as smart—”
“Little Red Under Britches,” Castillo corrected him without thinking, then had a mental flash of her coming out of the bath sans any britches.
“What the hell is your fascination with her underwear all about?”
“Not now,” Castillo said. “Keep going.”
“Little Miss Red Underpants is as smart as Big Bad Wolf is. She says, ‘If they’re onto us, maybe Gossinger/Castillo can be useful. If he’s alive, of course. He has an airplane. If SVR is onto us, they’re onto Kuhl and the CIA station chief in Vienna, but not onto him.’
“So Berezovsky warns you that you’re going to be hit. That makes him a good guy in your eyes. And then he’ll find you in Vienna. . . .”
“Instead, we get on the same train,” Castillo said.
“Right,” Delchamps said. “By that time, he’s really scared. When he called off the hit on you, he called it off on Görner, too. Which he was supposed to ensure. And he doesn’t know what the hell he’s going to find in Vienna. With no other options, short of swallowing his own bullet, now he really has to use you. So he offers you the most important thing he has to barter, the chemical factory in Congo-Kinshasa.”
And, very probably, since sex is what makes the world go ’round, he offers up his baby sister, too.
It took you a long time to figure that out, didn’t it, Romeo?
“You think that’s important?” Castillo said.
“Charley, do you know what’s there, what was there?” Darby asked.
Castillo shook his head.
“In the bad old days, the West Germans had a nuclear laboratory there,” Delchamps said matter-of-factly. “That area was German East Africa before Versailles. We pretended not to know, but when the wall came down, we made them shut it down. It’s another of the reasons the Krauts don’t like us much anymore; the Israelis have nukes and they don’t.”
“You’re saying there’s a nuclear laboratory there?”
“I’m saying there’s a chemical laboratory there, Ace, and a factory.”
“Making what?”
“Maybe something as simple as Francisella tu
larensis,” Darby said. “Or . . . you know what I’m talking about, Charley?”
“I think I probably read the same bio-warfare stuff that you did,” Castillo said. “It causes rabbit fever, right?”
Darby nodded. “Or something else: anthrax, botulinum toxin, plague . . .”
“I’m not trying to be argumentative, Alex, but what I’ve read says that, as scary as all that stuff sounds, it’s not all that dangerous. Only anthrax and the rabbit fever virus can survive in water, and the ordinary chlorination of water in a water system kills both.”
“And both can be filtered out by a zero-point-one-micron or smaller filter, right?” Delchamps asked, paused, and then said, “You want to take a chance that these bastards haven’t developed a chlorine-proof bacterium, or something that’ll get around or through that point-one filter?”
“You think this is the real thing, don’t you?”
Delchamps did not answer directly. Instead, he held up his index finger in a gesture of Hold that thought, then said, “Now, throw this into your reasoning.”
He nodded at Jack Britton.
“This is conjecture again, Colonel,” Britton said. “But it fits. I’ve been wondering why they tried to whack Sandra and me in Philly. First, they had to go to a lot of trouble to find out who Ali Abid ar-Raziq was—I just disappeared from the mosque, you’ll remember; no busts, no questioning by me, nothing that would tell them I was a cop—and then for them to set up the hit. They’re just not smart enough to do that, period. Somebody smart found me.”
“And why was that so important?” Castillo asked.
“I knew which of the mullahs had gone to Africa, including the Congo, on somebody else’s dime,” Britton said, “and one of the things I did for Allah was take pictures of the water supply so it could be poisoned. When I turned that in, both to the Department and to Homeland Security, the response was not to worry, chlorine and filters, etcetera.”
“Moments ago, Jack, you asked me if I ever wondered why the people responsible for—”
“Stealing the 727 bothered with a bunch of morons?”
“Essentially.”
“I have my own theory, which nobody agrees with, except sometimes Sandra.”
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