Santini, a somewhat swarthy, balding, short, heavyset man in his forties, until recently had been listed in the telephone book of the U.S. embassy in Buenos Aires as an assistant financial attache. He had been, in fact, a Secret Service agent dispatched to Buenos Aires to, as he put it, "look for funny money." Before that, he had been a member of the vice presidential protection detail. He had been relieved of that assignment when he fell off the ice-covered running board of the vice-presidential limousine. He had been recruited for the OOA shortly after it had been established, to "locate and eliminate" the parties responsible for the murder of J. Winslow Masterson.
"Second the motion," Susanna Sieno said.
She was a trim, pale-freckled-skin redhead in a white blouse and blue jeans. She looked like she and the man sitting beside her-her husband, Paul-should be in a television commercial, where the handsome young husband comes home from the office and chastely kisses his charming young bride after she shows how easy it had been for her to polish their kitchen floor with Miracle Glow.
Actually, between the Sienos, they had more than four decades in the Clandestine Service of the CIA-Paul having served twenty-two years and Susanna just over twenty-which had been more than enough for the both of them to have elected to retire, which they had done ten days before.
"The motion having been made and seconded," Castillo said mock-formally, "the chair calls the question: 'Do we disband and split the money?' All in favor raise your hand and hold it up until Two-Gun counts."
"Okay," Castillo said a moment later, "now those opposed, raise your hands."
Yung again looked around the table.
"I make it unanimously opposed," Yung said. "OOA lives!"
"OOA's dead," Castillo said. "The question now is, what do we do with the corpse?"
Delchamps said, "Sweaty, Dmitri-excuse me, Tom-and Alfredo didn't vote."
"I didn't think I had the right," Alfredo Munz, a stocky blond man in his forties, said.
Munz, at the time of Masterson's kidnapping, had been an Argentine Army colonel in command of SIDE, an organization combining the Argentine versions of the FBI and CIA. Embarrassed by the incident and needing a scapegoat, the interior ministry had, as a disgusted Charley Castillo had put it, "thrown Munz under the bus." Munz had been relieved of his command of SIDE and forced to retire. Castillo had immediately put him on the OOA payroll.
"Don't be silly," Castillo said. "You took a bullet for us. You're as much a part of us as anyone else."
Munz had been wounded during the Estancia Shangri-La operation.
"Hear, hear," Yung said.
"I didn't say the Argentine Kraut didn't have every right to vote," Delchamps said. "I simply stated that he, Sweaty, and Tom didn't vote."
"If I have a vote," Sweaty said, "I will vote however my Carlos votes."
"Sweaty," also in tennis whites, sat next to Castillo. She was a tall, dark-red-haired, stunningly beautiful woman, who had been christened Svetlana. Once associated with this group of Americans, "Svetlana" had quickly morphed to "Svet" then to "Sweaty."
Susanna's eyebrows rose in contempt, or perhaps contemptuous disbelief. In her long professional career, she had known many intelligence officers, and just about the best one she had ever encountered was Castillo.
The most incredibly stupid thing any spook had ever done was become genuinely emotionally involved with an enemy intelligence officer. Within twenty-four hours of Lieutenant Colonel C. G. Castillo having laid eyes on Lieutenant Colonel Svetlana Alekseeva of the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki-the SVR, the Russian Service for the Protection of the Constitutional System, renamed from "KGB"-on a Vienna-bound railroad train in Germany, she had walked out of his bedroom in a safe house outside Buenos Aires wearing his bathrobe and a smug smile, and calling him "my Carlos."
Dr. Britton smiled fondly at Sweaty when she referred to Castillo now as "my Carlos." She thought it was sweet. Sandra Britton knew there really was such a thing as Love at First Sight. She had married her husband two weeks after she had met him and now could not imagine life without him.
Their meeting had occurred shortly after midnight eight years before on North Broad Street in Philly when Jack had appeared out of nowhere to foil a miscreant bent on relieving her of her purse, watch, jewelry-and very possibly her virtue. In the process, the miscreant had suffered a broken arm, a dislocated shoulder, testicular trauma, and three lost teeth.
Britton had then firmly attached the miscreant to a fire hydrant with plastic handcuffs, loaded the nearly hysterical Dr. Britton in her car, and set off to find a pay telephone.
There were not many working pay telephones in that section of Philadelphia at that hour, and to call the police it had been necessary to go to Dr. Britton's apartment.
After Britton had called Police Emergency to report that the victim of an assault by unknown parties could be found at North Broad and Cecil B. Moore Avenue hugging a fire hydrant, one thing had led to another. Sandra made Jack breakfast the next morning, and they were married two weeks later.
"I don't think I have a vote," Tom Barlow said. "But if I do, I'll go along with however Sweaty's Carlos votes."
Barlow, a trim man of about Castillo's age and build, whose hair was nearly blond, and who bore a familial resemblance to Sweaty-he was in fact her brother-until very recently had been Colonel Dmitri Berezovsky, the SVR rezident in Berlin.
Castillo and Sweaty gave Barlow the finger.
"I would say the motion has been defeated," Yung said. "I didn't see any hands. And I have the proxies of Jake, Peg-Leg, the Gunnery Sergeant, Sparky, and Miller. They all like the idea of keeping OOA going."
Jake and Sparky were, respectively, Colonel Jacob S. Torine, USAF (Retired), and former Captain Richard Sparkman, USAF. Torine had been in on OOA since the beginning, when he had flown a Globemaster to Argentina to bring home the body of Jack the Stack Masterson, and his family. Torine had been quietly retired with all the other military members of OOA who had more than twenty years' service when OOA had shut down.
Sparkman, who on active duty had served under Torine on a number of black missions of the Air Force Special Operations Command, had been flying Washington political VIPs around in a Gulfstream and hating it when he heard (a) of OOA and (b) that Colonel Torine was involved. He made his way through the maze designed to keep OOA hidden in the bushes, found Torine, and volunteered to do whatever was asked, in whatever Torine was involved.
He had been accepted as much for having gotten through the maze as for being able to fill the near-desperate need OOA had for another pilot who (a) knew how to keep his mouth shut and (b) had a lot of Gulfstream time as pilot in command.
When OOA was shut down, Sparky didn't have the option of retiring, because he didn't have enough time in the service. He also realized that he really couldn't go back to the Air Force after having been tainted by his association with OOA. He knew the rest of his career in the Air Force would have been something along the lines of Assistant Procurement Officer, Hand-Held Fire-Extinguishing Devices.
He had resigned. There was an unspoken agreement that Sparky would go on the payroll as a Gulfstream pilot, details to be worked out later, presuming everybody was still out of jail.
Gunnery Sergeant Lester Bradley was in a similar situation. Another gunny, one in charge of the Marine guard detachment at the American embassy in Buenos Aires, had sent then-corporal Lester Bradley-a slight, five-foot-three, twenty-year-old Marine who could be spared most easily from more important duties-to drive an embassy GMC Yukon XL carrying two barrels of aviation fuel across the border to Uruguay.
Thirty-six hours later, the Yukon had been torched with a thermite grenade. Bradley, who had been left to "watch" the Yukon, had taken out-with head-shots firing offhand from a hundred meters-two mercenaries who had just killed Jean-Paul Lorimer, Ph.D., and then started shooting their Kalashnikovs at Castillo.
Inasmuch as Castillo thought it would be unwise to return Corporal Bradley to his embassy duties-where h
is gunnery sergeant would naturally be curious to learn under what circumstances the Yukon had been torched-he was impressed into the OOA on the spot.
The day that OOA ceased to exist, the President of the United States had asked Castillo, "Is there anything else I can do for you before you and your people start vanishing from the face of the earth?"
Castillo told him there were three things. First was that Corporal Bradley be promoted to gunnery sergeant before being honorably discharged "for the good of the service."
The second thing Castillo had asked of the President was that Colonel Berezovsky and Lieutenant Colonel Alekseeva be taken off the Interpol warrants outstanding for them. When they had disappeared from their posts in Berlin and Copenhagen with the obvious intention of defecting, the Russian government had said their motive had been to escape arrest and punishment for embezzlement.
The third thing Castillo asked was that he and everybody connected with him and OOA be taken off the FBI's "locate but do not detain" list.
The President had granted all three requests: "You have my word."
The first thing Castillo thought when he heard that the President had dropped dead was that his word had died with him. The chances that President Clendennen-especially with Director of National Intelligence Montvale whispering in his ear-would honor his predecessor's promises ranged from zero to zilch.
The retirements of Major H. Richard Miller, Jr., Avn, USA, who had been the OOA's chief of staff, and First Lieutenant Edmund "Peg-Leg" Lorimer, MI, USA, had posed no problem, although neither had twenty years of service.
Miller, a United States Military Academy classmate of Castillo's, had suffered grievous damage to his leg when his helicopter had been shot down in Afghanistan. Lorimer had lost a leg to an improvised explosive device in the same country. They would receive pensions for the rest of their lives.
As Castillo amp; Co. had begun to fulfill their part of the agreement with POTUS-disappearing from the face of the earth-they had made their way to Las Vegas, where they were the guests of Aloysius Francis Casey-president, chief executive officer, and chairman of the board of the AFC Corporation.
Castillo had first met Casey when Castillo had been a second lieutenant, freshly returned from the First Desert War working as aide-de-camp to just-promoted Brigadier General Bruce J. McNab at Fort Bragg when Casey showed up there. Casey announced that he had been the communications sergeant on a Special Forces A-Team in the Vietnam War and, further, told McNab and his aide-de-camp that he had done well after being discharged. Not only had Casey earned a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but he had started up-and still owned more than ninety percent of-the AFC Corporation, which had become the world's leading developer and manufacturer of data transmission and encryption systems.
Aloysius Casey, Second Lieutenant Castillo had immediately seen, was not troubled with excessive modesty.
Casey said that he attributed his great success to Special Forces-specifically what he had learned about self-reliance and that there was no such thing as impossible.
And he said he had decided it was payback time. He was prepared to furnish Delta Force, free of charge, with his state-of-the-art communications and encryption equipment.
"It's three, four years ahead of anything anybody else has," Casey had announced. McNab had sent Castillo with Casey to Las Vegas-on AFC's Learjet-that same day to select what AFC equipment Delta Force could use immediately, and to brainstorm with Casey and his senior engineers on what advanced commo equipment Delta could use if somebody waved a magic wand and created it for them.
The latter devices had begun to arrive at Delta Force's stockade at Fort Bragg about two months later.
When OOA had been set up, Castillo had naturally turned to Casey-who now called him "Charley" rather than, as he had at first, "The Boy Wonder"-for communications and cryptographic equipment, and Casey had happily produced it.
When Charley had bought the Gulfstream, Casey had seemed a little annoyed that Charley had asked if Casey would equip it with the same equipment. Charley at the time had thought that maybe he had squeezed the golden goose a little too hard and vowed he would not be so greedy the next time.
When they got the Gulfstream back from the AFC hangar at Las Vegas's McCarran International Airport, it had not only the latest communications and encryption equipment installed, but an entirely new avionics configuration.
"I figured you needed it more than Boeing," Casey said.
His annoyance with Charley was because Castillo had been reluctant to ask for his support.
"For Christ's sake, Charley, you should have known better," Casey said.
The Gulfstream was again in Las Vegas, not for the installation of equipment, but to get it out of sight until a decision could be made about what to do with it.
Charley had flown the Gulfstream to Las Vegas the same day he had received his last order from the President: "You will go someplace where no one can find you, and you will not surface until your retirement parade. And after your retirement, I hope that you will fall off the face of the earth and no one will ever see you or hear from you again. Understood?"
Charley had said, "Yes, sir," and walked out of the room. After a quick stop at Baltimore/Washington International to pick up Major Dick Miller, he had flown to Las Vegas with newly promoted (verbal order, POTUS) and about to be discharged Gunnery Sergeant Lester Bradley and Mr. and Mrs. Jack Britton.
Immediately on arrival, Castillo had learned that providing equipment to Special Operations people free of charge had not been Aloysius Casey's only contribution to the national security of the nation.
Limousines met them at McCarran, and drove them to the Venetian Hotel and Casino, where they were shown to a private elevator which carried them to a duplex penthouse.
At the foot of a curving glass-stepped staircase which led to the lower floor, Castillo saw Dmitri Berezovsky-now equipped with a bona fide Uruguayan passport in the name of Tom Barlow-Sergeant Major Jack Davidson, Aloysius Francis Casey, and about a half-dozen men Castillo could not remember having seen before sitting on a circular couch that appeared to be upholstered with gold lame.
Casey waved him down. Max, Castillo's hundred-plus-pound Bouvier des Flandres, immediately accepted the invitation, flew down the stairs four at a time, barked hello at the people he knew, and then began to help himself from one of the trays of hors d'oeuvres.
Not understanding what was going on, Castillo had gone down the stairs slowly. As he did, he realized that he did in fact recognize a few of the men. One of them was a legendary character who owned four-Maybe five?-of the more glitzy Las Vegas hotels.
But not this one, came a flash from Castillo's memory bank.
Another was a well-known, perhaps even famous, investment banker. And another had made an enormous fortune in data processing. Castillo had remembered him because he was a Naval Academy graduate.
"Everybody pay attention," Casey had said, laughing. "You don't often get a chance to see Charley with a baffled look on his face."
"Okay, Aloysius, you have pulled my chain. What the hell is going on around here?"
"Colonel," the Naval Academy graduate said with a distinctive Southern accent, "what we are is a group of people who realize there are a number of things that the intelligence community doesn't do well, doesn't want to do, or for one reason or another can't do. We try to help, and we've got the assets-not only cash-to do so. We've been doing this for some time. And we're all agreed that now that you and your OOA associates are-how do I put this?-no longer gainfully employed-"
"How did you hear about that?" Castillo interrupted.
The Naval Academy graduate ignored the question.
"-you might want to come work for us."
"You've got the wrong guy," Castillo said simply. "The intel community hates me, and that's a nice way of describing it."
"Well, telling the DCI that his agency 'is a few very good people trying to stay afloat in a sea of left-wing b
ureaucrats' may not have been the best way to charm the director, even if I happen to know he agrees with you."
"Colonel," the man who owned the glitzy hotels said, "this is our proposal, in a few words: You keep your people together, keep them doing what they do so well, and on our side we'll decide how to get the information to where it will do the most good, and in a manner that will not rub the nose of the intelligence community in their own incompetence." He paused. "And the pay's pretty good."
"Right off the top of my head, no," Castillo said. "My orders from the President are-"
"To go someplace where no one can find you," the investment banker interrupted him, "until your retirement parade. And after that fall off the face of the earth. Something like that?"
How could he-they-possibly know about that?
Nobody had been in that room except the secretaries of State and Defense and the director of the CIA-the President had told Montvale to take a walk until he got his temper under control.
Does that mean these people have an in with any of them?
Or with all of them?
Of course it does.
Jesus H. Christ!
"I think we would have all been disappointed, Colonel," the Naval Academy graduate said, "if, right off the top of your head, you had jumped at the proposition. So how about this? Think it over. Talk to the others. In the meantime, stay here-no one can find you here, I can personally guarantee that-until your retirement parade. And then, after you fall off the face of the earth, call Aloysius from wherever that finds you, and tell him what you've all decided." In compliance with his orders, Castillo had stayed out of sight at the Venetian-it could not be called a hardship; Sweaty had been with him, and there is no finer room service in the world than that offered by the Venetian-until very early in the morning of his retirement parade.
Then he and Dick Miller had flown Sergeant Major Jack Davidson and CWO5 Colin Leverette in the Gulfstream to Fort Rucker. After some initial difficulty, they had been given permission to land. They had changed into Class A uniforms in the plane.
There was some discussion among them about the wisdom under the circumstances of removing from their uniforms those items of insignia and qualification which suggested they had some connection with Special Operations. But that had been resolved by Mr. Leverette.
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