Black Ops (Presidential Agent)

by W. E. B Griffin

  "Is there?"

  "You know the Bible verse 'Whither thou goest . . .' ?"

  "Yes, of course." She looked at Charley again. "It's in Ruth. 'For whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people . . .' "

  "That's it," Davidson said.

  Castillo, who knew what was coming next, looked uncomfortable.

  "Well, Simply Susan, so far as Charley goes, our version says, 'For whither Charley goest, Lester and I goest, and where Charley lodgest, Lester and I lodge, etcetera.'"

  "You are mocking Holy Scripture!" she snapped, and looked to Castillo for help.

  Castillo held up his hands in a gesture of helplessness.

  "What is this all about?" Susan demanded angrily.

  "Simply Susan, you're a formidable female," Davidson said. "Maybe the most formidable female I've ever met. But you're not in the same league as General Scotty McNab. And my orders from him are not to let Charley out of my sight. Amen."

  "There's an exception in there for closed bedroom doors," Castillo said.

  "Right," Davidson agreed. "I guess McNab would go along with that."

  "And how long is that going to last?" Susan asked.

  "Until, Simply Susan," Castillo began, then looked at Barlow--"Forgive me, Tom, I know I promised not to talk business"--he turned back to Susan--"until we come back from Africa. Then Jack can go back to his usual duties of pulling the wings off flies and teasing beautiful women."

  "Susan," she said. "Not Simply Susan."

  "Whatever you prefer," Castillo said magnanimously.

  Susan mentally gathered her arguments, then earnestly began: "There is absolutely no reason for them to be here. You have seen the security. . . ."

  "I think," Barlow said, smiling, "that we are about to see the irresistible force meet the unmovable object."

  "I'm not going to get in the middle of this," Munz said. "Tom, slide that phone to me, please? I'll call my wife and tell her I'm coming home."

  Barlow did, and Munz reached for the telephone. His hand was almost on it when it rang. He was so startled that he pulled back his hand for a moment before picking up the handset.

  "Yes?" Munz said into it. He nodded at the reply, as if he expected it. He met Castillo's curious eyes and said, "Please escort Comandante Duffy here," and hung up.

  Castillo was reminded once again that Munz was not in the habit of asking for his permission--or even advice--before taking what he thought was the appropriate action.

  "Jesus Christ, Alfredo. Couldn't you have stalled him until we figure out how to deal with him?"

  "Karl, I've given how to deal with him some thought. And we might as well find out here and now if what I intend to do is going to work."

  "That's the policeman who was at the airfield?" Susan asked.

  "The gendarmeria comandante," Munz corrected her. He smiled at Davidson and added, "A formidable man. If he's so inclined, he can cause us a great deal of trouble. He is smart, honest, and a patriot. For people in our business, that combination often spells trouble."

  "Before you just do it," Castillo said more than a little sarcastically, "you're going to tell us how we're to deal with him, right?"

  Munz nodded, the sarcasm apparently lost on him. "As best I can, Karl. Basically, what I'm going to do is follow your advice: 'When all else fails, tell the truth.' "

  Castillo bit off the reply that came to his lips. Now was not the time to get in a scrap with Munz.

  The cold truth is I don't have any better idea how to deal with the problem of Comandante Liam Duffy than telling him the truth and seeing what happens.

  "Okay, Alfredo," he said. "Tell us how we should handle Duffy. And make it quick; in a couple of minutes, he'll be coming through the door."

  "Should we be here?" Susan asked.

  Munz answered: "I think it would be best if it were only Charley, Colonel Berezovsky, Senor Lee-Watson, and me. In the study upstairs?"

  Berezovsky and Lee-Watson nodded their agreement. Charley was surprised that neither Delchamps nor Svetlana--especially Svetlana--objected.

  [TWO]

  The study--which actually was more of a library, the room lined with bookshelves--had not been on Svetlana's tour of the house. Four red leather armchairs were arranged around a large, low table on which sat a telephone and an ashtray designed for cigars. Next to the ashtray was a large, silver-plated lighter.

  Castillo sat in one of the chairs, then took out and trimmed a cigar. The silver-plated lighter didn't work. He then produced what he called his "terrorist tool"--a butane cigar lighter, a replacement for one that had been seized by the ever-vigilant Transportation Safety Administration inspectors at Washington National Airport as enthusiastically as if it had been an Uzi--and lit the cigar.

  He looked at the door to see if Duffy had arrived. His eyes fell on one wall of books. There was something wrong, something odd about them. He got up and went to the shelf. He tugged at one book spine--and suddenly a flimsy shelf-long sheet of something designed to look like book spines fell from the shelf.

  "What this is, old boy," Lee-Watson said, laughing, "is what I think you Americans call a model house. Designed, don't you know, to show potential customers how nice-looking these very expensive houses can be when furnished."

  "No wonder the toilet wouldn't flush," Castillo said.

  Lee-Watson looked horrified.

  "Gotcha!" Castillo said.

  Lee-Watson sighed. "Quite."

  Liam Duffy walked confidently into the study a minute later. He was in civilian clothing. His unbuttoned double-breasted suit jacket revealed a large semiautomatic pistol carried in a high-rise cross-draw holster.

  He looked quickly around the room until his eyes fell on Berezovsky.

  "Well, I see that everybody's here," he said, mockingly jovial. He looked at Tom Barlow. "Including Colonel Dmitri Berezovsky."

  Castillo said: "This is Senor Barlow, Liam. Senor Thomas Barlow, may I introduce Comandante Liam Duffy?"

  "Mucho gusto, Senor Barlow," Duffy said. "But I have to tell you that you look just like the man in the photograph on an Interpol warrant that just crossed my desk--for one Colonel Dmitri Berezovsky."

  "You're mistaken, Comandante," Lee-Watson said.

  "Like hell I am!" Duffy snapped, then looked at Lee-Watson.

  "Do you have the pleasure of Senor Cedric Lee-Watson's acquaintance, Liam?" Munz asked.

  The question got to Duffy.

  "I know who you are, senor," he said. "I must say I'm surprised to see you in this company."

  "How are you, Comandante?" Lee-Watson said.

  "Liam, listen to me carefully," Munz said. "Are you going to take his word that this is Senor Barlow, or will it be necessary for Senor Lee-Watson to call the foreign minister and have him tell you that you're wrong?"

  Duffy didn't immediately reply. After a moment, he said, "Alfredo, we seem to have a problem here."

  "One that can be worked around, I'm sure," Munz said.

  "One way to do that, Alfredo, is for you to give me the name of the bastard who tried to kill my wife and children. If I had that, I would just leave and forget I had even seen . . . Senor Barlow."

  "Unfortunately, it's not quite that simple."

  "I will have that name, Alfredo. That's not negotiable."

  "Liam, I know a good deal about you. You're not only a good policeman but an honest one, and we both know that's not always the case in Argentina. I sincerely admire you."

  Duffy looked at him a long moment. "But?"

  "But there are forces in play here that you don't understand."

  "Such as?"

  "I had two reactions when I heard of the attack on you and your family," Munz explained. "The first was personal--that it was a despicable act, beneath contempt."

  "And the second?" Duffy asked softly.

  "That your quite natural reaction to it was going to cause Carlos and me trouble."

  "I don't need any help fr
om you or Carlos to kill the bastards--"

  "We know that, Liam," Castillo interrupted. "But why don't you let us tell you why we don't want you to go out and eliminate the bastards right now?"

  Duffy looked at him angrily.

  "Pay close attention to me, Liam," Castillo said, his tone of voice now suddenly the opposite of mockingly amused. "We can do this nice, between friends, or we can do it the other way."

  "You're not actually threatening me, Carlos?"

  "That was a statement of fact, not a threat," Castillo said. "You ready to listen?"

  They locked eyes for twenty seconds, then Duffy nodded.

  "The same day that you and your family were attacked, Liam," Castillo then said, "a German journalist was assassinated in Germany, an Austrian couple was murdered--garroted--in Vienna, and an attempt was made to murder an American policeman and his wife in Philadelphia."

  Duffy considered that for a moment, then asked softly, "There was a connection?"

  "And General Sirinov also ordered the elimination," Berezovsky added, "when they were to attend the journalist's funeral several days later, of two other journalists, and, if possible, of Colonel Castillo."

  "How could you know this?" Duffy said, and without waiting for an answer went on: "General who? They tried to kill you, too, Carlos?"

  Castillo nodded.

  Berezovsky went on: "Lieutenant General Yakov Sirinov runs Directorate S of the Sluzhba Vnezhney Razvedki, SVR. He ordered the appropriate SVR rezidents--those in Berlin, Vienna, New York, and Buenos Aires--to carry out the eliminations."

  "How is it that you know this?" Duffy demanded.

  "Because, Comandante, I was at the time the Berlin rezident. Something that I doubt one might find noted on anything from Interpol."

  Duffy took a moment to consider that.

  "You're telling me this man," he then said, "this General Sirinov . . . is that right?"

  "Lieutenant General Yakov Sirinov," he furnished.

  ". . . ordered the murder of my wife and children?"

  "Of you, certainly," Berezovsky said. "I don't think your family was on the order. But, on the other hand, I don't think his order said, 'Make sure this man's family is not hurt while you are eliminating the comandante.' " He paused while that sank in, then went on: "On the other hand, considering what we believe to be his second purpose, he very well may have ordered the elimination of your family."

  "What do you mean, 'second purpose'?" Duffy asked.

  Castillo answered: "The primary connection between all these assassinations, Liam, both successful and failed, with the possible exception of yours, is that everybody either knew or soon would uncover more details about an Islamic terrorist operation than the SVR wanted them to know."

  "What kind of a terrorist operation?" Duffy asked.

  Castillo ignored the question, and instead replied: "The assassination of the German journalist--his name was Friedler--was because he was getting too close to the Germans who were involved in the oil-for-food cesspool."

  "Did you ever hear, Comandante," Berezovsky said, "that 'it is impossible to cheat an honest man'?"

  "What?" Duffy asked.

  "The corollary of that is that you can cheat--or otherwise steal from--a dishonest man."

  "I have no idea what you're talking about," Duffy said, as much indignantly as in confusion.

  "When the Iraq oil-for-food program was in operation," Berezovsky went on, "there were many people who grew rich from it. One of the ways to turn a nice profit was to raise the price of the food and medicine and medical supplies being sold to Iraq. Hands were washed . . ."

  "Greased, Tom," Castillo corrected him.

  ". . . greased," Berezovsky went on, his face and tone making it clear he was unaccustomed to being corrected and certainly not grateful for the clarification now, "and the appropriate authorities found nothing wrong with, for example, a microscope of the type used in elementary schools to examine the wings of a fly and available in a store for, say, fifty dollars being shipped to Iraq as the latest item in medical microscopy and valued at a thousand times the fifty dollars it had actually cost.

  "The man--the example here is a member of what we're calling the Marburg Group--took the fifty-thousand-dollar check, cashed it, made a small gift--say, five thousand dollars--to the invoice examiner, and pocketed the difference, not mentioning it to the tax people, of course, and went away patting himself on the back for being a very clever businessman.

  "It wasn't all medical equipment, of course. A great deal of food was in fact shipped to Iraq and fed to the hungry. Possibly as much as ten percent of that was purchased at shamelessly inflated prices. One hundred cases of canned chicken became a thousand cases by the 'mistaken' adding of a zero to the invoice. The invoice examiner, of course, missed the mistake. You getting the picture, Comandante?"

  Duffy nodded.

  Castillo said: "All of this stopped, Liam, when we deposed Saddam Hussein. What these thieves then found to be necessary was to clean things up to make sure none of the very important people who profited--the name of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's son has been mentioned--would be caught. One man who we know not only profited--to the extent of sixteen million dollars--but also knew who had been paid off and for what was a UN official. His name was Dr. Jean-Paul Lorimer and he had then been living in Paris. But Lorimer saw what was coming and fled to Uruguay, where he had bought an estancia, changed his name, and set himself up in business as an antiquities dealer.

  "Lorimer's sister was married to the number-two man at the American embassy in Buenos Aires, J. Winslow Masterson. When what we have come to call 'the cleaners' couldn't find Lorimer, they decided his sister probably knew where he was. So they kidnapped her from the parking lot of the Kansas Restaurant in San Isidro. That's when I became involved, Liam."

  "How? Why?"

  Well, if nothing else, I have his attention.

  Let's see how he reacts to this:

  "I work for the President of the United States, Liam, dealing with matters like these. Surely, you must have suspected?"

  "When you had those helicopters flown off your aircraft carrier . . ."

  "The USS Ronald Reagan," Castillo furnished.

  ". . . I suspected you were more than a simple lieutenant colonel."

  "Well, until now, Liam, I was not in a position to explain more."

  "I understand, Carlos," Duffy said.

  "Just about as soon as I got down here," Castillo went on, " 'the cleaners' tricked Jack Masterson into going to the riverside in downtown Buenos Aires, where they killed him in cold blood before his wife to make the point that unless she told them where her brother was they were perfectly capable of killing her children, too.

  "The problem was that Mrs. Masterson had no idea where her brother was. Fortunately, I had a pretty good suspicion. My people and I got to the estancia in Uruguay--"

  "How did you find him, Carlos?"

  Castillo looked at Duffy without speaking.

  The cold truth is, Liam, it was dumb luck.

  God takes care of fools and drunks--and I qualify on both counts.

  But I can't tell you that, because we are trying to dazzle you into believing I am a combination of 007 and Bruce Willis with a shave.

  "If I could tell you, Liam, I would," he said finally. "You understand?"

  Duffy held up both hands.

  "Carlos!" he said emotionally. "I understand your position. Forgive me for asking."

  Castillo went on: "We got to Lorimer's estancia about ten minutes before 'the cleaners' did. There were six of them, probably ex-Stasi--East German Secret Police--commanded by Major Alejandro Vincenzo of the Cuban Direccion General de Inteligencia."

  "I know that name," Duffy said, and then really remembered, adding excitedly: "He was Fidel Castro's chief of security when Castro was here. You remember, Alfredo?"

  Munz nodded.

  "We of course were prepared for them," Castillo continued, "and it was unfortunately n
ecessary to terminate Major Vincenzo and his people. In the fire-fight, Dr. Lorimer lost his life."

  What actually happened, Liam, is that we didn't have a clue that anyone else was around, much less pros working for the fucking Russians.

  The first we knew anything was when the bastards put their first round into Lorimer's head. Their second round would have gone into my head if not for Lester taking the bastard out with a head shot.

  And because of my incompetence and stupidity, Seymour Krantz is now pushing up daisies in Arlington National Cemetery.

  We didn't have a clue as to who the guys who had damned near killed us were. Or even, then, why they had whacked Lorimer.

  But that's not the picture of Charley Castillo that Munz said we have to paint for you.

  And you seem to be swallowing everything whole.

  So let's see how this goes down:

  "The trail has led us many places since then, Liam," Castillo said. "And frankly, it took us a long time to put it all together. We couldn't have done that without Colonel Ber--Mr. Barlow and his sister. They confirmed what we had only suspected."

  "What?"

  "That there's a monstrous plan to bring down--if not outright kill, then to terrorize--millions of Americans by poisoning the water supplies of major U.S. cities."

  Now, why did that sound phony?

  It's the only thing I've told him that's the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

  Because it's so monstrous--and that's the only word that fits--that the mind simply does not accept it.

  Cannot accept it any more than we can accept a bearded character in a bathrobe telling us he wants to kill every last infidel--Christian, Jew, Buddhist, whatever--and is perfectly willing to blow himself up if that's what it takes to do it.

  "In a remote area of the Democratic Republic of the Congo . . ." Berezovsky began, then stopped when he saw by Duffy's expression that he had little or no knowledge of what that was.

  "They keeping changing the name," Berezovsky explained. "It was once the Belgian Congo, and then Zaire--"

  "I understand," Duffy interrupted.

  Berezovsky nodded. "Between Stanleyville--now called Kisangani--and the borders of Sudan and Uganda, there is a chemical laboratory--a very good one--dedicated to developing water-poisoning materials that will either get through any known filtering systems or overwhelm them, then remain chemically active for a very long time and, to the extent possible, resist any chemical attempt to neutralize them. Once this has been accomplished, the factory will produce these materials in whatever quantities are required to attack the water systems of all major American cities."