The Outlaws: a Presidential Agent novel

by W. E. B. Griffin; William E. Butterworth; IV

  “You mean he runs them for Mr. Putin?”

  “President Putin has nothing to do with either the FSB or the SVR.”

  “You keep telling me that.”

  Not because you believe it, or expect me to believe it, but because the cameras are rolling.

  Murov met Lammelle’s eyes for a moment, but did not reply directly, instead saying, “Podpolkovnik Kiril Demidov.”

  “Is Podpolkovnik Demidov somebody else Podpolkovnik Castillo is supposed to have killed?”

  Murov smiled and shook his head.

  “All right, Frank, Lieutenant Colonel Demidov was a lifelong friend of mine.”

  “Another member of the oprichniki?”

  Murov nodded. “More important, his family and that of General Sirinov were close—more than close, distant cousins, that sort of thing—and even more important than that, close to other powerful people.”

  “Like he whose name we’re not mentioning, who wants Castillo eliminated?”

  Murov nodded.

  “Vienna is not nearly as important a post as it once was, but when Kiril was named rezident there, there were those who said he was too young and did not have the experience he should have.”

  “But they didn’t complain, right, because that might annoy he whose name we are not mentioning who arranged his appointment?”

  Murov shrugged in admission.

  “Well, I hate to tell you this, Sergei, but I happen to know that Lieutenant Colonel Castillo was nowhere near Vienna when someone strangled your friend and left him in a taxi in front of our embassy.”

  “We’re back to my analogy about who controls the brandy bottle,” Murov said. “And the other bodies had names, too: Lieutenant Colonel Yevgeny Komogorov, for one.”

  Lammelle said, “There was a story going around that he was the FSB man for Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. The story I heard about what happened to him was that he made the mistake of trying to assassinate Aleksandr Pevsner.”

  “And then there was Lavrenti Tarasov and Evgeny Alekseev, whose bodies were found near the airport in Buenos Aires. Evgeny was another old friend of mine. I’m sure you know that he was Podpolkovnik Svetlana Alekseeva’s husband.”

  “Why would you think I would know that?”

  “Because you’re the deputy director of the CIA,” Murov said coldly.

  “Do I detect a subtle tone of disapproval in your voice, Sergei?” Lammelle said.

  “How about disappointment? I really hoped we could have a serious discussion and resolve our problem. As professionals.”

  “As a professional, Sergei, I find it hard to believe that you thought we could have a serious discussion when what I’m hearing from you strikes me as nonsense.”

  “Nonsense?”

  “Right now I don’t have a clear picture of the long-term implications of Congo-X turning up at Fort Detrick and on the U.S.-Mexico border. If you wanted to hurt someone with it, you would have. If you had hurt someone, that could have led anywhere, right up to a nuclear exchange. If you do hurt something that hurts us badly, for example, killing as many people as the rag-heads taking down the World Trade Center towers killed, then the missiles will fly. We didn’t know whom to nuke after 9/11. But if something happens involving Congo-X, we know just where to go: Lubyanka Square, Moscow, and you damned well know it.

  “And what you’re suggesting here is that you’re willing to risk a nuclear exchange unless we turn over to you three people, a colonel and two lieutenant colonels! You’re right, Sergei, that’s not nonsense. It’s not even a clumsy attempt at blackmail. What it is, is pure bullshit!”

  Murov looked at him for a moment, then reached for the bottle of Rémy Martin cognac. He poured two inches of it into one of the snifters, and then looked at Lammelle.

  “Why not?” Lammelle said. “Not only are the gloves off, but I’m about to walk out of here.”

  Murov poured cognac into another snifter, then handed it to Lammelle.

  They touched glasses.

  “Mud in your eye,” Murov said.

  “Up yours, Sergei,” Lammelle said unpleasantly.

  “I used the word ‘disappointed’ a moment ago, Frank. And I am. I’m disappointed that you don’t really understand power.”

  “And what don’t I understand about it?”

  “In your government, your leader, your President, doesn’t really have absolute power. There are things he simply cannot do because he wants to. In other governments—Cuba, for example, North Korea, Venezuela, and one or two others—the leader can do anything that pleases him. Anything.”

  Lammelle felt a chill at the base of his neck.

  “Russia wouldn’t be one of those other countries, would it?”

  “Of course not. We are a democracy now. Our president and other officials must—and always do—follow the law and the will of the people.”

  Lammelle took a healthy swallow—half of the cognac in the glass—and felt the warmth move through his body.

  “That’s utter bullshit, too,” he said.

  “I’ll tell you what’s going to happen now, Frank,” Murov said. “You’re going to go back to Langley and report this conversation to Jack Powell. And he will be as unbelieving as you were. This will evolve into anger. And then you’ll go to the President. And he will be as unbelieving as you were and Jack Powell will be. And then he will become angry. Fortunately—for all of us—President Clendennen is not nearly as impulsive as his predecessor. He will think things over carefully, and in the end he will tell you to call me back and say that you will do whatever you can to resolve this problem. As you yourself pointed out, in the balance, the lives of a colonel and two lieutenant colonels aren’t really worth all that much.”

  “Fuck you, Sergei.”

  “I’ll have the car brought around,” Murov said, and reached for a telephone.

  “Let me call first,” Lammelle said, and Murov slid the telephone to him.

  Lammelle punched in a number from memory.

  “It’s time to pick up the dry cleaning,” he said a moment later, and then hung up.

  He slid the telephone back to Murov.

  “Don’t bother to make note of the number,” he said. “In ten minutes, it will be out of service.”

  “You didn’t have to tell me that, Frank,” Murov said, and then punched in a number and said, in Russian, “My guest will be leaving.”

  Murov walked him to the Caravan.

  When Lammelle was in the front passenger seat, Murov motioned for him to roll down the window. Lammelle found the switch, but the window remained up.

  “Unlock his fucking window,” Murov called nastily in Russian.

  Lammelle tried the switch again, and this time the window went down.

  “Well?” Lammelle asked.

  “Frank, the problem people like you and me have is that sometimes we have to do things we don’t like at all. I took no pleasure in what happened between us today. There was no feeling of ‘Score one for our side.’”

  Lammelle met his eyes, but said nothing. He found the switch, put the window up, and then in English said, “Okay, let’s go.”

  [TWO]

  The President’s Study

  The White House

  1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.

  Washington, D.C.

  1225 7 February 2007

  “Fascinating,” President Joshua Ezekiel Clendennen said when Deputy DCI Frank Lammelle had delivered his report on what had happened that morning in the Russian dacha. “How much are we supposed to believe?”

  He turned in his high-backed blue leather judge’s chair and pointed at Secretary of State Natalie Cohen.

  “I think Frank can answer that better than I can, Mr. President,” Cohen said. “He was there.”

  “I’ll rephrase, Madam Secretary,” Clendennen said, a long way from pleasantly. “Presuming Mr. Lammelle told us the truth and nothing but, how much of what this Russian told him can we believe? Make that two questions: How much of what
the Russian told Lammelle are we expected to believe, and, two, how much can we believe?”

  If she felt insulted, it didn’t show on her face or in her tone of voice.

  “Mr. President, I always like to start with what we do know. In this case, we know the Russians were involved with the bio-chem laboratory in the Congo. And since they know we call this substance Congo-X, and that some of it was delivered to Fort Detrick and some left for us to find on the Mexican border, I suggest that it is safe to presume they have more of it. The threat, therefore, is real.”

  “Natalie, we don’t know that,” DCI Jack Powell said. “For all we know, the stuff they sent us may be all they have. This whole thing may be a bluff.”

  “I asked her, Jack,” the President said. “You’ll get your chance.”

  “I think, Mr. President,” Cohen said, “to respond to your questions directly, that they expect us to believe everything they told Frank, and I think we should.”

  Clendennen grunted, then looked at Powell.

  “Okay, Jack, your chance,” the President said. “Do these bastards have more of this stuff, or not?”

  “Off the top of my head, Mr. President, I would say they have at least a little more, enough of it so they can leave us a couple more samples.”

  “And that’s all they have?”

  “Mr. President, we leveled and then burned everything in a twenty-mile radius of the Fish Farm. Either we somehow missed this, or they had some of it in a laboratory in Russia. Or someplace else. My gut tells me there’s not much of Congo-X anywhere.”

  “But we don’t know that, do we?” Clendennen asked.

  “No, sir, we don’t.”

  “Why would Putin do something like this?” Clendennen wondered aloud.

  “Was that a question, Mr. President?” Mark Schmidt, the director of the FBI, asked.

  “Does that mean you have an answer?”

  “No, sir. Just that I’ve been thinking about motive.”

  “Well, out with it.”

  “For one thing, we humiliated the Russians when we took out the Fish Farm,” Schmidt said. “For another, Castillo and his people—”

  “My predecessors’ loose cannon and his merry band of outlaws humiliated the Russians?” the President interrupted, sarcastically incredulous.

  “Yes, sir. Castillo and his people have not only humiliated the Russians—which is to say Putin—all over Europe and South America but—according to what the Russian told Frank—has killed a lot of them. I think it’s credible that Putin did know some of them personally, and wants revenge.”

  “Madam Secretary?” the President asked.

  Natalie Cohen nodded her agreement with Schmidt’s theory.

  “And he could well be reasoning that we really don’t want a confrontation when that could be avoided by returning their two defectors. We can’t give him Castillo, of course—”

  “Why can’t we?” the President asked.

  “Jesus Christ!” Lammelle exclaimed.

  “Let’s go down that road,” Clendennen said. “No. Of course we can’t give him Colonel Castillo or any of his people. As much as I might want to. But we can go along with that notion ...”

  “Let me go on the record here,” Natalie Cohen said. “I will not be part of any agreement which will turn over the two defectors, much less Colonel Castillo or any of his people, to the Russians.”

  “Duly noted,” President Clendennen said. “Let me finish, please. I said we can let the Russians think we’re willing to give them all three of them. So far as the Russians are concerned, we weren’t responsible for their defection.”

  “Castillo flew them out of Vienna on his plane, Mr. President,” Powell said. “And if he hadn’t, we had a plane waiting at Schwechat to do the same thing.”

  “If they had gotten on a plane sent by the CIA, Mr. Powell,” the President said coldly, “we would have some sort of moral obligation to protect them. They didn’t. Castillo was not acting on behalf of the U.S. government when he flew them to South America. Therefore, we have no such moral obligation.”

  “I don’t agree with that at all, Mr. President,” Powell said.

  “I don’t care, Mr. Powell, if you agree with it or not. I’m telling you that’s the way it is.”

  He let that sink in for a moment, and then went on: “Madam Secretary, I want you to call in the Argentine ambassador and tell him that it has come to our attention that there are two people in his country illegally ... what are their names?”

  “Presumably, Mr. President, you are referring to Dmitri Berezovsky and Svetlana Alekseeva,” she said.

  “... for whom Interpol has issued warrants alleging the embezzlement of several millions of dollars.”

  “Excuse me, Mr. President,” Mark Schmidt said. “Interpol has canceled those warrants at the request of the Russian Federation. Three days ago. Berezovsky and Alekseeva are no longer fugitives.”

  “You’re sure?” the President said.

  “Yes, sir. I’m sure.”

  “Well, so much for that idea,” the President said. “That would have been easier. We’ll have to come up with something else. So here’s what we’re going to do: Lammelle, get in touch with your Russian and tell him he has a deal.”

  “Am I to tell him the deal includes Colonel Castillo?”

  “Yes. I told you I was not about to turn over an American to those Russian bastards, but if they think I am, so much the better for us.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  That sonofabitch is lying through his teeth. He’d happily turn Castillo over to the Russians, or anyone else, if it would get him out of this mess.

  “The next step is to locate the Russians. You think they’re in Argentina?”

  “I have no idea where they are, Mr. President,” DCI Powell said.

  “Well, I want them found and I want them found quickly. Do whatever has to be done. Send as many people down there—or to anywhere else you think they might be—and find them. Run down the people who used to work for Castillo. See if they know where the Russians are. And Castillo is.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “This is a no-brainer, Mr. Powell. If we can get these Russian bastards to keep that stuff out of the country, and all it costs us is giving them back two traitors, that’s a price I can live with. I’ve always thought that people who change sides are despicable.”

  “Even if the side they change from is despicable, Mr. President?” Natalie Cohen asked.

  “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear you say that, Madam Secretary,” the President of the United States said.

  [THREE]

  Penthouse B

  The Grand Cozumel Beach & Golf Resort

  Cozumel

  Quintana Roo, Mexico

  1310 7 February 2007

  A good deal of conversation and thought had not shot many holes in the scenario of what was probably going on, but on the other hand it also hadn’t done much to confirm it.

  Neither had “all the agency intel” that Casey had furnished. The CIA’s analysts also seemed to feel the Congo-X sent to Fort Detrick and left for the Border Patrol to find on the Mexican border had most probably come from the Fish Farm in the Congo. But they had no idea how it had been moved from Africa to the United States, and apparently had not considered that the Tupolev Tu-934A might have been involved.

  Castillo had called Casey and asked him to see if his source could find anything about Tupolevs moving anywhere, and again asked him to send any intel, no matter how unimportant or unrelated it might seem.

  The only thing to do was wait for something to happen. Everybody was frustrated, but everybody also knew that sitting around with your finger in your ear—or other body orifice—waiting for something to happen was what intelligence gathering was really all about.

  So everybody but Castillo, Svetlana, Pevsner, and Tom Barlow had gone deep-sea fishing on a forty-two-foot Bertram owned by the Grand Cozumel Beach & Golf Resort.

  Castillo had seen e
verybody’s departure as an opportunity. But Tom Barlow had come to the penthouse and asked if he wanted to play chess before he could take advantage of the opportunity. Castillo no more wanted to play chess than he wanted to lunch on raw iguana, but the alternative was saying, “No, thanks, as I’m planning to spend the morning increasing my carnal knowledge of your sister.”

  When the door chime went off, they were playing chess, and Svetlana—in a bikini—was taking in the sun on a chaise longue by the pool, with Max lying beside her.

  The latter went to answer the door.

  Aleksandr Pevsner, János, and another man were standing there.

  Before Pevsner knew what was happening, Max put his paws on Pevsner’s shoulders and licked his face.

  “Look at that!” Tom Barlow called happily. “Max loves you, Alek.”

  And then he recognized the man with Pevsner and exclaimed, “I’ll be damned!”

  The man with Pevsner was plump, ruddy-faced, and in his early fifties. His short-sleeved blue shirt had wings and epaulets with the four stripes of a captain on it.

  “Well, my God, look who’s all grown up and wearing lipstick! And not much else,” the man said, and spread his arms.

  “Uncle Nicolai!” Svetlana cried happily and ran into his arms.

  Castillo watched, then thought: Well, that explains that. Another relative.

  But what is Uncle Nicolai doing here?

  Tom Barlow was now waiting patiently for his chance to exchange hugs with Uncle Nicolai. When it came, the two embraced and enthusiastically pounded each other’s back.

  “Aleksandr said you were in Johannesburg,” Svetlana said.

  “I spend a good deal of time there,” Uncle Nicolai said. He looked at Charley and offered his hand. In fluent, just slightly accented English, he said, “I’m Nicolai Tarasov.”

  “Charley Castillo.”

  “Who has captured Svetlana’s heart. Alek told me.”

  “So what brings you to Cozumel by the Sea, Uncle Nicolai?” Castillo asked.

  Tarasov avoided the question.

  “Alek and I go back to our days with Aeroflot,” Tarasov said. “When I tried without much success to teach him to fly Ilyushin Il-96s.”