Covert Warriors pa-7

by W. E. B Griffin

  Max instantly rolled on his back with his paws in the air, in surrender mode. The pups began to gnaw on his stomach and ears.

  “I shudder to think,” Aleksandr Pevsner said, as he shook Castillo’s hand, “that the children’s animals will eventually reach his size.”

  The kissing ritual began. Anna kissed Castillo. Sweaty kissed Pevsner, and then Anna. Castillo was not surprised when Anna kissed Lester Bradley-her husband was alive because Lester had put a.45 round in the forehead of Pevsner’s would-be assassin, and from then on he was considered a member of the family-but he was surprised when both Blatov and Koshkov got into the line of people waiting to swap kisses with the Laird of Karinhall and his lady.

  “More relatives?” Castillo asked Sweaty.

  She nodded.

  “Kiril and Anatoly,” she replied, “are-let me see-second cousins, once removed. Aleksandr is Kiril’s godfather.”

  “And that would make Kiril’s baby what?” Castillo said. “A third cousin twice removed? Or just a second cousin twice removed?”

  Sweaty considered the question seriously for perhaps thirty seconds before realizing she was being teased.

  “You will pay for that, my love,” she said.

  “Which means they’re Oprichniks in good standing?” he pursued.

  “I’m getting sorry I ever told you about the Oprichnina,” Sweaty said.

  “Yes or no?”

  “Of course,” Sweaty said. “They couldn’t have become Spetsnaz officers otherwise.”

  “Every Spetsnaz officer is an Oprichnik?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Sweaty said.

  “Yes, you did,” Castillo said.

  He sensed Aleksandr Pevsner’s eyes on him.

  “Very impressive, Alek,” Castillo said, indicating the men with the Kalashnikovs. “But where’s the band?”

  “The band?”

  “I sort of expected a brass band to welcome us. Or at least somebody playing ‘The Volga Boatmen’ on a balalaika.”

  Pevsner shook his head resignedly.

  “Let’s go down to the house and have dinner,” he said. “Afterward, we have a lot to talk about.”

  “Would you like to freshen up?” the Laird of Karinhall, the perfect host, asked, “or after a drink?”

  “Give me ten minutes,” Sweaty said.

  There was nothing in her reply, or tone of voice, that suggests she has anything more romantic-or carnal-on her mind than freshening up.

  Damn!

  Oh, I know. It’s because I mocked the family. And the Oprichnina.

  “I’ll have a little of the emergency liquid, please,” Castillo said, smiling at Kiril Koshkov and indicating a bottle of vodka encased in a block of ice.

  “Oh, that’s right, you heard about that, didn’t you?” Koshkov said with a smile.

  “Kiril’s been telling me how undisciplined you Spetsnaz are,” Castillo replied.

  Pevsner was also smiling broadly as he generously poured the literally ice-cold vodka into a chilled glass.

  What the hell are you smiling about, Alek? You never were Spetsnaz, and I don’t think you even know what we’re talking about.

  Epiphany time!

  You’re smiling because you know that even one drink will make me one drink stupider when we have our little chat. With a little luck, I will be two-or more-drinks stupider when we have the chat.

  The thing for me to remember about you, Alek, ol’ buddy, is that you were SVR, and while you can take the boy out of Russia, you can’t take the SVR out of the boy.

  Not a problem. I will have two or more drinks-after that flight through the Andes, I’m entitled. And we will have our little chat in the morning, not tonight.

  It was fifteen minutes-during which time Castillo had two substantial belts of vodka-before Sweaty rejoined the family, and then everyone went into the dining room. Not surprising Castillo at all were both another frosty glass of chilled vodka and a bottle of Saint Felicien Cabernet Sauvignon waiting for him at his place at the enormous table.

  Sweaty was seated beside him.

  “I waited for you,” Sweaty said quietly.

  “Really? What did you want?”

  She said, “It’s not important.” Her eyes told him carnal was off the table for tonight. And maybe for the next day, too.

  What was on the table for tonight was a feast of Chilean seafood-absolutely marvelous oysters and enormous lobsters.

  About half a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon later, Castillo was watching when former Gunnery Sergeant Lester Bradley, USMC, stopped cracking the claw of an enormous lobster, pushed his chair away from the table, picked something up from the floor, and discreetly put it on his lap.

  Castillo knew what had happened: When Lester rose in the morning, he stuffed a theoretically invisible flesh-colored speaker into his ear canal. When a call came to his closed Brick and there was no answer, it spoke a number into the earpiece, identifying the person who was having trouble getting through.

  Castillo naturally wondered who was calling. He learned who it was only after Lester pushed back from the table, took a handset from the Brick, walked over to Castillo, and handed it to him.

  The illuminated LEDs on the handset told Castillo that the Brick was in Category I encryption status and showed him the number 6.

  Castillo put the handset to his ear.

  “Castillo,” he said.

  There was a very brief period during which the system compared the digital interpretation of his voice with its database, found a 99.9 percent match, and illuminated the number 1 on the calling party’s handset, telling A. Franklin Lammelle, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, that he was now connected with Lieutenant Colonel C. G. Castillo, U.S. Army, Retired.

  “Where the hell have you been, Charley?” Lammelle began the conversation. “I’ve been calling every five minutes for the past half hour.”

  “I was occupied.”

  “Doing what, that you couldn’t answer?”

  “For most of that time, I was dodging rock-filled clouds in a helicopter flown by a guy who finished flight school six weeks ago in Sevastopol. I don’t take calls under those conditions.”

  He exchanged smiles with Koshkov.

  Lester didn’t think I should have gotten on the phone, either; otherwise he would have handed it to me.

  “Rock-filled clouds where?”

  “The Andes.”

  “What the hell are you doing down there? The locator’s not working.”

  “I turned it off,” Castillo replied, adding, “At the moment, eating lobster.”

  “Why do I suspect you’ve been at the sauce?”

  “You’re perceptive? Would that explain it?”

  “Jesus Christ, Charley, the last thing I need is you smashed.”

  Right now, the last thing Charley needs is Charley smashed.

  Whatever this is, Lammelle is excited about it.

  Why the hell did I drink that goddamn vodka?

  “Frank, calm down. Consider the possibility that I’m pulling your chain.”

  “You sonofabitch! You have a sick sense of humor!”

  “So I have been told,” Castillo said.

  He saw Sweaty making an exaggerated punching motion with her index finger.

  He knew what it meant-turn on the loudspeaker function-and ignored her.

  “So are you going to tell me what’s so important or not?” Castillo asked.

  There was a pause, suggesting Lammelle was getting his temper under control.

  “Forty-five minutes ago, I had a call from General McNab,” he began. “He’s on his way to Afghanistan.”

  “So? Half of SPECOPSCOM is in Afghanistan; he goes there all the time.”

  “I think maybe I should start at the beginning,” Lammelle said.

  “Yeah. Why don’t you?”

  “The people you had at Arlington-and you, too-walked out on the President’s remarks.”

  “Actually, we got in our limos and went
to the Mayflower. So what?”

  “You having those Delta and Gray Fox guys at Arlington pissed the President off. And then you walked out on his remarks. That pissed him off even more. And your party at the Mayflower pushed him over the edge.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I told you before, in the last conversation we had, that Clendennen sent the FBI to the Mayflower to take pictures of everybody there. And among those there were Porky Parker and Roscoe Danton, and that really pissed him off.”

  “And do you now know why he did that?”

  “So that he would have proof.”

  “Of what? You sound as if you’ve been at the sauce.”

  “After FBI Director Mark Schmidt had personally identified each and every partygoer for him. .”

  “It wasn’t a party, for Christ’s sake. In our last conversation, you will recall, I told you it was more like a wake. We stood around drinking, telling Danny Salazar war stories-”

  “I remember,” Lammelle interrupted him, and then went on, “. . he gave them to Beiderman with orders to give them to Naylor, with orders for Naylor to show them to McNab and tell him that he-the President-knew, quote, what McNab was up to, close quote, but that if McNab applied for immediate retirement it, quote, would be the end of it, close quote.”

  “What does he think McNab was. . is. . up to?”

  “He apparently believes McNab is in a conspiracy to get him out of the Oval Office and Montvale into it. If I have to say this, he thinks you’re a coconspirator.”

  “That’s crazy!”

  “Please remember later, if you are asked under oath, that I did not introduce that word into this conversation. You did.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Castillo muttered, then exhaled audibly, and said, “The first thing that comes into my mind-unwilling as I am to accept crazy-is that he’s into the bottle. A secret tippler. Was our beloved Commander in Chief sober when he did all this?”

  “Yes, he was. He’s a teetotaler. The boozers in his family are his mother and mother-in-law.”

  “Where are you getting all this, Frank?”

  “General McNab made the point to me that he has not spoken with you since before Salazar and the others were murdered and Colonel Ferris kidnapped. .”

  “He hasn’t,” Castillo confirmed.

  “. . which of course suggested to me that he wanted me to bring you into the loop especially in view of the fact that the other players are not liable to.”

  “The other players being?”

  “Thus far, Naylor and Beiderman. So, after speaking with General McNab, I spoke-separately-with both General Naylor and Secretary Beiderman.”

  “They agree with your crazy theory?”

  “I don’t have a crazy theory, Charley. Write that down. In blood. On your forehead.”

  “They agree with the ‘he’s out of his mind’ theory?”

  “They talked around it. But, yeah, they’re worried.”

  “What happened when Beiderman or Naylor told McNab the President wanted him to retire?”

  “It didn’t get that far. Beiderman told McNab to get out of Dodge before he had to show him the pictures. He did.”

  “For McNab to retire would be an admission that he was involved in this nutty coup d’etat scenario. He wouldn’t-couldn’t-do that. He’d demand a court-martial.”

  “That’s precisely what McNab told them just before Beiderman told him to go to Afghanistan before he could show him the pictures and deliver the ‘retire now’ ultimatum. Both Beiderman and Naylor are hoping the whole thing will pass when Clendennen has a couple of days to cool off.”

  “That looks to me like pissing into the wind, Frank.”

  “Yeah. Agreed.”

  “Did my name come up when you talked with Naylor and Beiderman?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Either one of them think I’m involved in this conspiracy?”

  “No. But when your name came up, the phrase Beiderman used was ‘loose cannon,’ in the phrase ‘the one thing we don’t need in these circumstances is a loose cannon like Castillo.’ ”

  “And Naylor didn’t rush to my defense?”

  “No. He didn’t.”

  “So what happens now?”

  “We wait to see if this coup d’etat theory of the President goes away when he’s had a few days to cool off.”

  “And if it doesn’t?”

  Lammelle was silent a long moment. Then he said, “I don’t know, Charley.”

  Then, when Castillo didn’t reply for maybe thirty seconds, Lammelle asked, “Any questions?”

  “Just one. Where’s my helicopter?”

  “I’m not sure I should tell you.”

  “Come on, Frank.”

  Lammelle took another long moment of silence before he said: “Okay, Charley. In a move I regretted before I finished hanging up the phone, I ordered it loaded onto a truck and taken to Martindale Army Airfield at Fort Sam for indefinite storage.”

  “Despite what everybody says about you, Frank, on certain occasions, you can be a good guy.”

  “I’m not asking what you’re going to do with it, because I don’t want to know.”

  The green LED on Castillo’s handset went out.

  “So long, Frank,” he said to the dead headset. “It’s always a pleasure to hear from you.”

  He handed the headset to Lester, picked up his lobster fork, then glanced around the table. All eyes were on him.

  “Anything wrong, Charley?” Aleksandr Pevsner asked with a smile. “You looked very unhappy while you were talking.”

  “Nothing I can’t handle in the morning, Alek, when time will have taken the emergency liquid out of my system.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I thought you knew that I never discuss serious things when I’ve been drinking.”

  “Not even with family?”

  “Especially not with this family,” Castillo said.

  That earned him smiling lips and icy eyes from Pevsner.

  When he looked at Sweaty, he knew she wouldn’t be smiling, and he expected to get the same icy glare from her blue eyes.

  Instead, he got a faint smile-of approval, he realized with some surprise after a moment-and then, as he moved a chunk of lobster from a bowl of melted butter to his mouth, she groped him tenderly under the tablecloth.

  The feeling of euphoria-or at least carnal anticipation-lasted until they were in their room. Castillo had waited maybe a second after Sweaty had gone into the bathroom before getting naked and under the sheets. He had been lying on his back with his fingers laced behind his head, waiting for her to join him, when his world crashed around him.

  Epiphany!

  Stop thinking with your dick, James Bond.

  What you thought about good ol’ Alek is also true of Sweaty.

  You can take the girl out of Russia, but only a fool thinking with his little head would believe you could take the SVR out of former Podpolkovnik Svetlana Alekseeva.

  The most important thing to any of them is family. And/or the Oprichnina.

  And you are not family. And certainly not an Oprichnik.

  They told me-and I believe it-that the way they’ve survived since Ivan the Terrible is by doing whatever was necessary. The translation of that is being as ruthless as necessary.

  And she’s smart. God, is she smart! When Juan Carlos Pena wanted my nonexistent address in Uruguay, she came up with the Golf and Polo Club in the next breath.

  Which means she had no trouble at all figuring out that I’m likely to pose problems in their current battle with their former comrades in the SVR. I told her I was going to make it clear to Pevsner that I wasn’t going to let him whack anybody without my permission. And when I got into it with Pevsner just now. .

  “I never discuss serious things when I’ve been drinking.”

  “Not even with family?”

  “Especially not with this family.”

  . . it had to be obvious to her that I was
not going to be a good little boy and do whatever Wise ol’ Uncle Alek thinks I should do.

  So what to do about that? They can’t whack me-although that remains a possibility for the future-because right now they need me.

  She knew that I was talking to Lammelle on the phone, even from the one side of the conversation I let her hear.

  So, just as fast as she came up with the address for Juan Carlos, when she saw that I was already challenging Pevsner’s authority, she decided the way to deal with the situation was in bed. She could control me there.

  And why shouldn’t she think so?

  Less than twenty-four hours after we first met, she was in my bed-and has been leading me around by the wang ever since.

  So she grabbed hold of it under the table here.

  And I can’t even get really pissed off at her. She is what she is, and what she is is a fourth-hell, maybe sixth-generation Soviet spook.

  Can I be pissed at me-James Bond Junior?

  Sure.

  Because James Bond Junior is acting not like even a junior spook-one six months out of Fort Huachuca or the Farm-but like some seventeen-year-old with raging hormones who just got laid for the first time and is convinced there has never been love like this since Adam screwed Eve in the Garden of Eden.

  And because it’s humiliating having to face proof of my gross stupidity.

  Sweaty came out of the bathroom, holding a towel by its edges.

  “Showtime!” she said, and dropped the towel.

  That has to be the most beautiful woman in the world.

  She walked on her toes to the bed quickly and with exquisite grace and got in beside him.

  She laid her body half across Castillo, making him think that she had the most wonderful breasts he had ever encountered by any standard he could think of.

  “You play the fool so well,” she said, “that sometimes I forget that you’re not a fool at all.”

  He could feel her breath against his ear.

  “Flattery will get you everywhere,” he said. “But what specifically do you have in mind?”

  “Aleksandr’s face, when you told him you never discuss business when you’re drinking, especially with this family, was priceless.”