“‘Us’ including Charley, Liam?” Torine asked.
“Of course. He’s the one burning to get married. I wouldn’t do what I’m doing for anyone else. Get in the helicopter. We’ll take care of the luggage.”
“Who’s driving?” Miller asked.
“I am,” a pleasant-appearing man about Miller’s age said. “Colonel Castillo said that you would probably ask. Former Major Kiril Koshkov, onetime chief instructor pilot, Spetsnaz Aviation School, at your service, Colonel Junior Miller.”
Torine laughed and put out his hand.
“Jake Torine, Major. Pleased to meet you.”
“An honor, Colonel,” Koshkov said. “Would you like to ride in the left seat?”
“Thank you,” Torine said. “Junior, why don’t you get in the back with Vic and the other Junior?”
Two minutes later, they were airborne, and flying up the east shore of Lake Nahuel Huapi.
As a young officer, Torine had read a book—Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler, by two Englishmen, Simon Dunstan and Gerrard Williams—that posited that Adolf and Eva Braun had not committed suicide in the Führerbunker but rather had made it to Argentina, where they had lived on Estancia San Ramon, east of Bariloche, until the early 1960s.
That was right about where they were now.
He had dismissed the book as bullshit then and continued to do so until his first visit to Aleksandr Pevsner’s La Casa en Bosque—where they were headed now—several years before. The house was well named. It had been built on 1,500 hectares of heavily wooded land on the western shore of Lake Nahuel Huapi.
The moment he walked into the mansion, Torine had had the feeling he’d either been there before, or seen photographs of the foyer. This was damned unlikely, as Aleksandr Pevsner’s desire for privacy was legendary, and there was no chance he would have allowed a photographer from Better Homes and Gardens or Country Living or Architectural Digest anywhere near the place.
But the “I know this place” feeling didn’t go away, and the next day Torine mentioned it to Charley Castillo.
“Really?” Castillo had asked, smiling, and then he went into the false top of his laptop where he kept various things he didn’t want people to see and came out with a somewhat battered photograph.
It showed two men, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring and a Wehrmacht colonel, standing with their hands folded in front of them in the foyer of La Casa en Bosque.
“The man with Göring is Oberst Hermann Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger,” Castillo said. “My grandfather.”
Confused, Torine had blurted, “But how could that have been taken here?”
“That was taken at Göring’s Karin Hall estate in Prussia,” Castillo said. “Shortly after Grandpa managed to get on the last plane out of Stalingrad.”
“What is this place, Charley? A clone of Karin Hall?”
“It certainly looks like it. All I know is that Pevsner bought this place from an American woman when he got out of Russia. After I showed him this photo, he told Howard Kennedy—”
“The ex–FBI agent who worked for Pevsner?” Torine interrupted. “The one someone slowly beat to death with an angle iron in the Conrad Hotel and gambling joint in Punta del Este? That Howard Kennedy?”
Castillo had nodded.
“Aleksandr explained to me that both Mr. Kennedy’s death and the painful manner thereof was necessary pour l’encouragement des autres not to think they could get away with setting the boss up to be whacked.
“Anyway, Kennedy couldn’t find the American woman who sold him this place and he looked very hard. As you well know, when Aleksandr tells somebody to do something and they don’t do it, or screw it up, his tantrums make the famous tantrums of General McNab in such circumstances look like a small, disappointed frown.
“But Aleksandr did manage to get the plans for Karin Hall from a dishonest German civil servant, and they looked like a Xerox copy of the plans from which this place was built. Or vice versa.”
“You think Göring was going to try to come here?” Torine asked.
“I don’t know, Jake,” Castillo had said, “and I don’t think anyone ever will.”
The Bell 429 made a sudden turn to the left, still close to the water, and both Jake Torine and Dick Miller decided it was some kind of evasive maneuver, and both wondered what they were evading.
Three minutes after that, Koshkov turned on the landing lights, and ten seconds after that floodlights came on in what a moment before had been total blackness, and a moment after that a sign illuminated, giving the wind direction and speed.
And forty-five seconds after that the 429 touched down. As soon as it had, the floodlights and the sign went off, replaced by less intense lighting illuminating the helipad.
Janos Kodály, Aleksandr Pevsner’s hulking Hungarian bodyguard, was standing at the front fender of a Land Rover. Behind the Land Rover was a Mercedes SUV, beside which stood four men with Uzi submachine guns hanging from their shoulders.
It was a five-minute ride through the hardwood forest to the mansion, where Janos led them through the huge foyer to the library. There the females of the family were waiting for them.
One was the mistress of the manor, Aleksandr Pevsner’s wife, Anna. The second was their fifteen-year-old daughter, Elena, who, like her mother, was a fair-skinned blonde. The third was Laura Berezovsky, now Laura Barlow, wife of Tom Barlow, formerly SVR Polkovnik Dmitri Berezovsky. The fourth was their fourteen-year-old daughter, Sof’ya, now Sophie Barlow. The fifth was former SVR Podpolkovnik Svetlana Alekseeva, now in possession of Argentine documents identifying her as Susanna Barlow. Susanna and Tom Barlow were brother and sister. The Barlows and the Pevsners were cousins, through Aleksandr Pevsner’s mother.
They were all wearing black dresses, buttoned to the neck and reaching nearly to their ankles. The dresses concealed the curvatures of their bodies. Each had a golden cross hanging from her neck. Simple gold wedding rings on Anna’s and Laura’s hands were the only jewelry visible on any of them.
On the flight from Panama City, Lieutenant Colonel Naylor, who had never met either, asked Vic D’Alessandro what Mesdames Pevsner and Berezovsky looked like.
“Typical Russian females. You know, a hundred and sixty pounds, shoulders like a football player, stainless steel teeth…” D’Alessandro had replied, and then when he got the shocked look he was seeking from Colonel Naylor, said, “Think Lauren Bacall in her youth, dressed by Lord and Taylor, and bejeweled by the private customer service of Cartier. Truly elegant ladies. And the girls, their daughters, Elena and Sophie, look like what their mothers must have looked like when they were fourteen. Four attractive, very nice females.”
Lieutenant Colonel Naylor knew what former Lieutenant Colonel Svetlana Alekseeva looked like. Sweaty—her Christian name had quickly morphed into this once she became associated with Lieutenant Colonel Castillo and his associates—was a striking redheaded beauty given to colorful clothing that did the opposite of concealing the lithe curvature and other attractive aspects of her body.
Today, the women’s hair, which usually hung below their shoulders, was drawn tightly against their skulls and into buns. They wore no detectable makeup, not even lipstick.
“Hey, Sweaty, where’s your otxokee mecto nanara?” Vic D’Alessandro asked, as he kissed her cheek.
She waited until he had exchanged kisses with Laura, Sophie, and Anna before saying, “You will find out soon enough, if, when you get in the dining room, you—any of you—do or say anything at all that offends His Eminence the Archbishop or His Grace the Archimandrite in any way.”
“Not a problem, Sweaty. Liam Duffy told us about the archbishop and Mandrake the Magician. So we will just stay away from them until Charley’s free.”
“Archimandrite, you idiot!” she flared. “He’s the next thing to a bishop. A holy man.”
“As I was saying, Sweaty, where can we hide until these holy men are finished with Charley, or vice versa?”
“If the archbishop did not wish to talk to you, you wouldn’t be here,” she again flared. “Or Janos and I would have greeted you with swinging otxokee mecto nanaras when you tried to get off your airplane.”
“What do these fellows want to talk to us about?” Torine asked.
“Not ‘these fellows,’ Jake,” Sweaty said. “I expected better from you. They are an archbishop and an archimandrite and deserve your respect.”
“Jake,” Anna said, “His Grace and the archimandrite are here in connection with Charley and Svetlana’s marriage problem. This is serious.”
“Okay,” Torine said.
“Now, when Janos takes you into the dining room, what you do is bow and reach down and touch the floor with your right hand…”
Sweaty demonstrated.
“. . . then you place your right hand over your left hand, palms upward…”
Sweaty demonstrated this.
“. . . then you say, ‘Bless, Your Eminence.’ In Russian.”
“I don’t speak Russian,” Naylor said.
“Repeat after me. , ,” Sweaty ordered.
“, ,” Naylor repeated.
“Again,” Sweaty ordered.
“, ,” Naylor said again.
“Now you know how to say ‘Bless, Your Eminence’ in Russian,” Sweaty said. “When you say it in the dining room, the archbishop will reply, ‘May the Lord bless you,’ and make the Sign of the Cross, and place his right hand on your hands. Then you kiss his hand. That’s it, unless His Eminence decides to introduce you to the archimandrite. If he does, then you go through the routine for him.”
“Got it,” Naylor said.
“You better have it. If you fuc— don’t get it right and His Eminence or His Grace is offended, I’ll chop you into small pieces with my otxokee mecto nanara.”
“I don’t suppose there’s any way I can opt out of this charming ritual?” Dick Miller asked.
“Not and live, there isn’t,” Sweaty said. Then she ordered, “Janos, take them to His Eminence.”
Janos opened the door to the dining room and announced, in Russian, “Your Eminence, Your Grace, the Americans are here.”
“Please ask them to come in,” a voice replied in Russian.
Janos signaled for the Americans and Liam Duffy to enter the dining room.
There were six men in the room, all dressed in black. One of them was Aleksandr Pevsner, a tall, dark-haired man who appeared to be in his late thirties; his eyes were large, and blue, and extraordinarily bright. Another was Lieutenant Colonel Carlos G. Castillo, who was a shade over six feet tall, weighed 190 pounds, and also was in his late thirties. The third was Tom Barlow, who looked so much like Castillo they could pass for brothers. The fourth was Nicolai Tarasov, a forty-odd-year-old short, stocky, and bald Russian. His mother and Aleksandr Pevsner’s mother were sisters. These four wore dark blue, nearly black, single-breasted suits, white shirts, and red-striped neckties. They were all cleanly shaven and looked (at least everyone but bald cousin Nicolai did) to be freshly barbered.
The fifth and sixth men in the room looked as if they hadn’t been close to a barber in a decade or more. Their black beards dropped down over their chests. They, too, were dressed in black, but it was not a single-breasted business suit.
The material of the archimandrite’s garment, the hem of which nearly touched the floor, was velvet, heavily embroidered with white-gold thread. Near the bottom were two representations of winged cherubs surrounded by a leafless tree, also embroidered in gold or white-gold, or maybe platinum, thread.
Draped over his shoulders was a foot-wide—for lack of a better term—black velvet shawl with a white-gold fringe at its ends. Running all the way around it was a white-gold-embroidered border an inch and a half wide into which had been sewn at six-inch intervals gemstones, most of which seemed to be emeralds. The shawl also had representations of cherubs, various versions of the Holy Cross, and some other decorative features. A large golden crucifix hung from a golden chain around his neck, and on his head was a foot-tall white-silk-covered headdress with a tail—like that of French Foreign Legionaires in the desert, D’Alessandro thought—reaching down past his shoulders.
The archbishop was similarly attired, except that he had even more white-gold embroidery and a larger golden crucifix.
Taking a chance that the latter might be His Eminence Archbishop Valentin, Vic D’Alessandro dropped to his knees, touched the floor, put his right hand over his left hand, palms upward, and said, “, .”
“May God bless you, my son,” His Grace the archbishop said, in American English.
When Archimandrite Boris saw the surprised look on Vic’s face, and as he waited for Torine, Miller, and Naylor to play their parts in the ritual as Sweaty had taught them to do, he smiled and said, “Both His Eminence and I were born and raised in Chicago.”
III
[ONE]
La Casa en el Bosque
San Carlos de Bariloche
Río Negro Province, Argentina
0115 6 June 2007
Colonel Jacob Torine was accustomed to being around very senior people, some of whom had worn exotic clothing—among other assignments, he had served as the senior aircraft commander of Air Force One—so while he was impressed with Archbishop Valentin, he wasn’t dazzled.
As soon as the introductions had been made, he said, “It is very gracious of Your Eminence to hold dinner for us.”
“Not at all,” the archbishop replied. “While we were waiting, we’ve been at these magnificent hors d’oeuvres and heeding the advice of Saint Timothy, who admonished us, you may recall…”
“‘Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach’s sake,’” Torine picked up. “In the King James Bible, First Timothy, chapter five, verse twenty-three. One of my favorite bits of Holy Scripture.”
“That would suggest you’re a Christian, Colonel,” Archbishop Valentin said, “which is one of the questions I planned to pose.”
“I think I am, Your Grace,” Torine replied. “My wife is not so sure. Which brings us, of course, to the First Epistle to the Corinthians… .”
“‘Let Your Women Keep Silent,’” the Archbishop quoted, chuckling. “On the basis of your knowledge of Holy Scripture, Colonel, I will regard you as a Christian. I’ll get to the other gentlemen in a moment, but right now, why don’t we all have a glass of the very excellent Saint Felicien Cabernet Sauvignon that Aleksandr has so graciously provided.”
He raised his hand and a man in a starched white jacket appeared with a tray holding bottles of wine and glasses.
When the wine had been poured, Archimandrite Boris raised his glass.
“I would like to thank you all for coming here to help His Eminence and myself, even understanding that wasn’t your primary purpose in coming.”
When there was no response to that, the archimandrite went on: “Will someone tell us what that primary purpose is?”
When there was no response to that, the archimandrite nodded toward Naylor.
“Perhaps you would be willing, my son, to do so.”
Naylor opened his mouth. But before a word came out, the archimandrite asked, “Are you a Christian, my son?”
“When I was a kid, I was confirmed—Colonel Castillo and I were—in the Evangelische Church in Germany. Saint Johan’s, in Hersfeld. And then I became an Episcopalian when I was at West Point. My parents are Episcopalian.”
“That’s very interesting, but my question was ‘Are you a Christian?’”
“Yes, sir.”
“And what is it that brings you here, that so infuriates Mrs. Alekseeva?”
Naylor looked at Castil
lo, obviously asking for his permission to answer. Castillo nodded.
“I am to relay to Colonel Castillo the request of the President of the United States that he enter upon extended hazardous active duty in connection with the Mexican drug and Somali pirates problems.”
“And why would you say this so infuriates Mrs. Alekseeva?”
Naylor again wordlessly asked for—and got—Castillo’s permission to reply.
“Probably because the last time Colonel Castillo worked for the President, the President tried very hard to kidnap Colonel Castillo—and Mrs. Alekseeva and her brother—with the intention to load them on a plane and ship them off to the SVR in Russia.”
“So they’ve told me. So why are you in effect doing so?”
“Obeying orders, Your Grace.”
“Obeying orders from whom?”
“My father.”
“Heeding the scriptural admonition to ‘Honor thy father and mother…’ et cetera?”
“It’s more that my father is a general and I’m a lieutenant colonel, Your Grace.”
“And do you think the President will again try to turn Colonel Castillo over to the kind ministrations of the SVR?”
“It wouldn’t surprise me, Your Grace.”
Castillo snorted.
The archimandrite asked, “Yet you’re here to tell him what President Clendennen wants him to do?”
“And to tell him I think he’d be a damned fool to do it.”
The archbishop joined in: “Your father is aware of what might happen to Colonel Castillo if Colonel Castillo accedes to President Clendennen’s request?”
“Yes, Your Eminence, he is.”
“Then why… ?”
“Because he’s a soldier, sir. Soldiers do what they are ordered to do.”
“Soldiers, I would suggest,” the archbishop said, “like priests, are expected to do what they have been ordered to do. Sometimes, a priest—and, I would suggest, a soldier—gets an order he knows it would be wrong to execute.”
“Yes, sir. That’s true, Your Eminence.”
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