"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 Pequena 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 had 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," Delcha
mps 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 Gorner, 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 Gorner. 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 Gorner, 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 tularensis," 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."
"And, since last night, me," Santini offered.
"And me and Darby," Delchamps added. "This is what really pushed us over the edge, Charley. Listen to him. Go on, Jack."
"The people behind this, Charley, don't really expect to wipe out half the population of Philadelphia by poisoning the water any more than they expected the morons to be able to find the Liberty Bell, much less fly into it with an airliner."
"Then what?"
"To cause trouble in several ways. First, exactly as the greatest damage done by the lunatics who flew into the Twin Towers was not the towers themselves, but the cost, the disrupted economy.
"There would be mass hysteria, panic, chaos--call it what you will--if it came o
ut that any of those things had been dumped into the water supply. And if they caught one of the AALs pouring stuff into the water supply, it would do the same thing for we colored folks as 9/11 did for the Arabs. You'll recall that every time we saw a guy who looked like he might be an Arab, we wondered if he was about to blow something up. So if a black guy got caught--and those AAL morons are expendable; they might arrange for the whole mosque to get bagged with anthrax spores and the photos I took of the water supply--every time someone who wasn't black looked at someone who was, it'd be, 'Watch out for the nigger; he's going to try to poison you.' "
"Ouch," Castillo said.
"Jack's right, Ace. Nobody will talk about it, but that's the way it is."
"Okay," Castillo said. "I'm convinced that this thing should be looked into, and we're not equipped to do it. So, what you're suggesting is that I get on the horn and call Langley and say I have two defectors?"
"No. That's exactly what we're going to try to talk you out of doing, at least until we have looked into it and have something Langley--and Homeland Security and the FBI--can't look at, then laugh in our face and condescendingly say, 'Oh, we know all about that, and there's nothing to it.'"
"I don't think I follow you," Castillo said.
"Okay. Let's suppose that I'm right, and Berezovsky and the redhead were headed for Vienna, having arranged to defect. Who was going to help them do that?"
"My friend Miss Moneypenny," Castillo said.
"Right, Ace. And they never showed; they have disappeared. So Miss Moneypenny--that's not her name; why do I let you get away with that?--Miss Eleanor Dillworth, the station chief, who is about to become famous at Langley for being the one who turned in the Berlin rezident and the Copenhagen rezident in one fell swoop of spook genius, is more than a little worried.
"She would have kept Langley posted on what's going on. So they probably sent somebody over there to help her carry this off. For sure, they have assets in place--an airplane standing by, and someone turning the mattresses and polishing the silver in one of those houses on Chesapeake Bay. Wouldn't surprise me if the DCI already is practicing his modest little speech in which he lets slip, 'Oh, by the way, Mister President, my station chief in Vienna just brought in the SVR Berlin rezident,' etcetera, etcetera. . . .
"But suddenly no Berezovsky. Anywhere. He's vanished. So the DCI asks Station Chief Dillworth, 'What has happened? Has anything unusual happened around here lately?' And Dillworth replies, 'Not that I can think of,' but does think to herself, Except that good ol' Charley Castillo was in town, very briefly."
Black Ops (Presidential Agent) Page 22
