Black Ops

by W. E. B Griffin

  “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 consequently 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.

  Svetlana looked at Pevsner for support and, Castillo saw, got none.

  “Before we get into what else may have slipped your mind and you didn’t tell me,” Castillo said, “what are the memorized account numbers?”

  “That’s where most of the money is,” she said. “Most of it in Lichtenstein, but some in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. There are five accounts in all.”

  “And the numbers you gave me?”

  “What we did, Charley, is put a little bit of money in those accounts, so in case we were found out, they would think they had found the money and stop looking. You
understand?”

  “Define ‘a little bit of money.’ ”

  “Usually never more than a quarter of a million dollars.”

  “Looks can be deceiving, Svetlana. I’m not really stupid enough to believe that.”

  “Before God, it is the truth.”

  He did the math in his head before going on. “You expect me to believe that whoever chases after dirty money in Russia is going to come across your lousy eight thousand dollars and say, ‘Eureka, we found it. Call off the search’?”

  “Eight thousand dollars?” she asked in what seemed to be genuine confusion.

  Pevsner laughed.

  “This is not funny, goddamn it, Alek. First she lies to me, and then she insults my intelligence. What happened to the ‘we’re all family and have no secrets’ bullshit?”

  “A moment ago, Friend Charley, you owed her an apology. Now you owe us both one.”

  “How?”

  “First that I consider you family is not bullshit. You have wounded me by thinking that.”

  “And?”

  “What did you do, Charley, divide a quarter of a million dollars by the number of small accounts to come up with eight thousand dollars in each?”

  “That’s exactly what I did.”

  “I think what Svetlana was trying to tell you is that there’s about a quarter of a million in each of those accounts.”

  As one part of his brain began to suspect that he had just made an ass of himself, another part did the math.

  “Christ, that’s almost eight million dollars,” he said. “You were prepared to spend eight million dollars to throw the SVR off the scent?”

  Svetlana nodded. He saw tears in her eyes.

  Oh, Jesus, don’t do that!

  “Before God, it is the truth,” she sobbed. “I can’t stand it when you look at me with hate and suspicion in your eyes!”

  “Oh, baby,” Castillo heard himself say.

  And then she was in his arms, sobbing.

  “I think I will go see how they’re doing with the tree,” Pevsner said. “It might be wise to lock the door after I go.”

  “We have just had our first fight,” Svetlana said. “And our first makeup, and our first you-know-what in my bed. Up to now, all the you-know-whats have been in your beds.”

  “Baby, I’m really sorry.”

  “I know. I can tell,” she said. “Can I say something?”

  “You can say anything you want.”

  “I know what it was, why you disbelieved me.”

  “Because I’m stupid?”

  “Because you are a man,” she said. “Like other men, insecure. When a woman throws herself at you, you are incapable of just accepting your good fortune. You don’t think you are worthy of what you are being given, so the woman has to have some ulterior motive.”

  “What is that, Psychology 101?”

  “It is the truth,” Svetlana said. “And I have something else to say. I am not a foolish woman. I am probably less foolish than any woman you have ever known.

  “And like you, I have been trained to look for the worst scenarios. I thought about the worst scenarios before I put the toothbrush in the lock of your bathroom.”

  “And what are the worst scenarios?”

  “Actually, there were three,” she said, propping herself on her elbow to look down at him, which caused her breast to rest on his chest. “The first was that I was wrong about what I thought I saw in your eyes, and that you felt nothing for me.

  “The second was your professionalism would be so strong that you would reject me no matter how you felt. That really worried me.”

  “And the third?”

  “That’s still viable, my Charley. You know what the chances are of our spending our lives together? You’ve never thought about that?”

  “I’ve thought about it,” Castillo said softly.

  “I don’t think there’s a chance in a thousand that we will be able to do that.”

  “Okay. So what do we do?”

  “I will pray. I have been praying. Do you pray, Charley?”

  “Not in a long time.”

  “That’s between you and God. My father never prayed either. He said that God knew his mind, so it was pointless. God was going to do with his life whatever God wanted to do.”

  “I’m something like that,” Castillo said. “And if God is reading my mind, He knows how I feel about you.”

  “So there is a tentative scenario we can run. We just put all the reasons we shall most likely not grow old together from our minds and pretend that we will be together forever.”

  She raised her eyebrows questioningly.

  “Deal,” he said.

  “You mean that?”

  “I mean that.”

  “Good. Then I will go with you to Buenos Aires and you will give me a computer just like yours.”

  “I’ve just been taken,” Castillo said.

  She nodded happily in agreement.

  “Can I ask a question?”

  “Anything, just so long as it’s not about money.”

  “Actually, it is. How much money is in the accounts, the ones you memorized?”

  “So that’s it. You’re a gigolo? After my money?”

  “A lot more, I would guess, than the eight million you were willing to spend to throw the dogs a bad scent.”

  “If I told you forty, fifty times that, would that make you happy? You want me to give you money, my Charley? Just ask.”

  “I’m not in that league, but I’m not going to have to sell Max anytime soon to pay the rent. What I’ve been wondering about is that two million you asked for on the train.”

  “Two reasons. You needed to hear a reason—right then—why we were willing to defect, a reason you would believe. And if you thought we needed money, you probably wouldn’t start looking for any that we might have.”

  “One more question?”

  “One.”

  “Do you have any idea what it does to me when you rub your breast on my chest that way?”

  She blushed, but then confessed: “Oh, I was hoping that would work!”

  [FIVE]

  The Great Room

  La Casa en Bosque

  San Carlos de Bariloche

  Río Negro Province, Argentina

  0915 1 January 2006

  Charley had learned the night before that there were two celebrations marking the New Year. First was the family celebration, an enormous meal—there had been two roast geese on the enormous table, plus a suckling pig—starting at half past ten.

  The meal itself had been preceded by Pevsner giving a lengthy prayer/ speech—not unlike Grace—in which he offered thanks to not only the Divinity but also to a long list of saints, only a few of whom Charley had ever heard of, for God’s munificence to the family—including the reuniting “now, of Svetlana, and soon, very soon, of Dmitri and Lora and Sof’ya to the bosom of those who love them” and for the “presence at our table and in our lives of Charley and Lester and Alfredo and János, who have lived the words of our Lord and Savior that there is no greater love than being willing to lay down one’s life for another.”

  At that point, Svetlana had grasped his hand—not groped him—under the table, and he had looked at her and seen tears running down her cheeks.

  Then they had moved into the Great Room where the Novogodnaya Yolka had been set up. Servants dressed as Father Frost and his granddaughter, Snegurochka the Snow Girl, danced to the music of a balalaika quartet. The balalaikas were of different sizes, the largest as big as a cello.

  Charley was a little ashamed that his first reaction to this was to decide that Father Frost’s costume was designed for Santa Claus, the Snow Girl’s for Mrs. Santa Claus, and both had probably been made in China by Buddhists.

  He was touched, and finally admitted it.

  The children—Elena clutching Ivan the Terrible to her—sang several Christmas songs, following which Father Frost and Snegurochka danced out of the room, to danc
e back in a few moments later heading a column of servants, who deposited gaily wrapped boxes under the tree.

  The children, Svetlana told him, would get their presents in the morning.

  Charley at this point, possibly assisted by the champagne that had been flowing since they sat down for dinner, came to the philosophical conclusion that maybe the Russians had the better idea, passing out the presents at New Year’s rather than at Christmas, which was, after all, supposed to be a Christian holiday—meaning Holy Day—not one of gluttony under Santa Claus’s benevolent eye.

  He shared this observation with Svetlana, who laid her hand on his cheek and kissed him.

  At five minutes to midnight, everybody was out on the pier, trailed by servants carrying an enormous grandfather clock and pushing a cart holding half a dozen bottles of champagne.

  The clock was set up, the hands adjusted, and at midnight began to bong its chimes.

  Pevsner counted loudly downward from twelve.

  As the last bong was fading, there was a dull explosion, which startled Castillo, followed by another and another and another.

  He had been enormously relieved when the first of what turned out to be a fifteen-minute display of fireworks went off.

  And enormously pleased when Svetlana had kissed him, as Anna was kissing her husband.

  The celebration today was for what Pevsner described as “the people.”

  It was held in the Great Room, which Castillo, perhaps because too much champagne always gave him debilitating hangovers, decided had been converted into a throne room for Tsar Aleksandr I, Empress Anna, Grand Duchess Svetlana, the Imperial Children, and visiting nobility, such as himself, Corporal Bradley, and Colonel Munz.

  There were no actual thrones, but the chair in which Pevsner sat had a higher back than that of his wife, which in turn was higher than those of everybody else. János was not around, and Castillo wondered where he was.

  Father Frost and Snegurochka were back, as was the balalaika quartet. This time Father Frost and Snegurochka were standing by an enormous stack of packages. The quartet began to play. János appeared, ushered into the room perhaps eighty people, ranging from bearded elders to children, and then walked up to Father Frost.