Black Ops

by W. E. B Griffin

  “No, we’re not.”

  “Where is the fuel stop?”

  “Dakar, Senegal. From there we’ll go to São Paulo, Brazil, then down to Buenos Aires. If we’re lucky we should be in B.A. about five in the afternoon, which is noon in B.A. And since December is the middle of winter in Vienna, it will be the middle of summer in B.A. In other words, hot, very hot, and humid.”

  There’s always a silver cloud. I’ll very probably get to see Little Red Under Britches in a swimsuit at the safe house pool.

  “We’ll be flying through most of the night and most of what would be the day in Vienna. You might consider getting some sleep. That seat goes down almost flat.”

  “I think I will,” she said with a smile.

  “It might be easier to sleep if you took off your pistol.”

  She looked at him with what could have been surprise or indignation—or both.

  “That holster must be uncomfortable,” Castillo went on. “And you’re really not going to have to shoot anybody anytime soon.”

  I’ll be damned; she’s actually blushing!

  “Or would you rather I took the holster off?” Castillo added.

  Svetlana’s eyes turned to ice.

  She unfastened her seat belt, stood, then marched down the aisle to the lavatory. Ninety seconds later, she was back. Without looking at him, she dropped the holstered pistol in his lap, got back in her seat, adjusted it almost flat, then turned on her side, facing away from him, and closed her eyes.

  When Castillo took the pistol from the holster he saw that Davidson had been right: It was a 1908 Colt Vest Pocket. But chambered for .32 ACP, not .25 as Jack had guessed. He carefully ejected the magazine and worked the action. A cartridge flew out. He tried but failed to catch the live round, so he went looking for it. He found it under the seat, put it into the magazine, then put the magazine back in the pistol and the pistol back in its holster.

  The elastic straps were still warm from her body, and he had a quick mental image of her leaping onto the platform at the Westbahnhof.

  Careful, Charley.

  Little Red Under Britches is a professional. One proof of that being she carries her pistol with a round in the chamber, just like big boys do.

  He put the pistol into his briefcase, lowered his seat, and promptly fell asleep.

  When they landed at Yoff-Léopold Sédar Senghor International Airport in Senegal, and Max made his routine visit to the nose gear, both pups and the girl followed him. Delchamps followed the pups. Castillo had thought that the only words to really describe the pups bouncing happily after Poppa, and then trying—and failing—to emulate his raised high leg, were cute as hell.

  Castillo had glanced at Svetlana. She was smiling at the scene warmly, maternally, causing Castillo to think, She sure don’t look like no SVR rezident who goes around with a pistol next to her crotch.

  Svetlana didn’t volunteer any information about her family when they had a mostly unsatisfactory French breakfast—bitter coffee and stale, too sweet croissants—making Castillo wonder if that was something she had invented to explain why they wanted to go to Argentina, and that there was, in fact, no family to help them disappear.

  He didn’t press her.

  [TWO]

  Aeropuerto Internacional Jorge Newbery

  Buenos Aires, Argentina

  1240 29 December 2005

  Castillo had taken his turn at the controls on the Vienna-Dakar leg and again on the last, short leg from São Paulo, Brazil, to Buenos Aires. On the latter—having relieved Jake Torine, which put him in the left seat—he had, without thinking about it, made the approach and landing.

  At the end of the landing roll, he glanced at Dick Sparkman in the right seat and saw the look on his face.

  “I hope you were paying attention, Captain,” Castillo said straight-faced. “If after much practice and study you can make a landing like that, then there may be hope that one day you can sit in the captain’s seat yourself.”

  Sparkman shook his head, started to say something, and stopped.

  “You may speak, Captain Sparkman.”

  “I don’t know how to say this. . . .”

  “Give it a shot.”

  “Colonel Torine told me . . .” He paused again, then said, “How many landings have you made in a Gulfstream?”

  “Not many. Torine usually takes it away from me whenever we get within fifty miles of our destination.”

  “How many?”

  “You could count them on my fingers. With a thumb, maybe both thumbs, left over.”

  “Colonel, you had a gusting crosswind, thermals, everything that usually adds up to a bumpy landing—and you greased it in. Colonel Torine said you were a natural pilot. I didn’t know what he meant. Now I do.”

  “Flattery will get you everywhere, Sparkman.”

  “That was more surprise, maybe even awe, than flattery, Colonel.”

  As Castillo taxied to the private aircraft tarmac, his pleasure at the compliment was more than a little tempered by some reflection. If all the threats to a smooth landing that Sparkman mentioned had indeed existed—and Castillo had no doubts about Sparkman’s judgment as an aviator—he hadn’t seen them.

  Which means I hadn’t been paying attention as I damned well should’ve been.

  That sobering thought left his mind as he approached the general aviation complex. He could see their welcoming party. In addition to immigration and customs officials, and their vehicles, he saw Alfredo Munz, Alex Darby, and Tony Santini standing in front of the wheels he had asked them to bring.

  All I have to do now is get everybody through customs and immigration, off the airport, and to the house in Pilar without calling to us the attention of anybody really important—say, the Buenos Aires SVR rezident or Comandante Duffy of the Gendarméria Nacional.

  How he was going to deal with Duffy—when he inevitably had to—was one of the things he had been thinking about when he had not been thinking about gusting crosswinds and thermals rising from the runway baking in the noonday sun.

  “Shut it down, Sparkman. And keep everybody on the plane until I see what the hell’s going on outside.”

  When Castillo opened the stair door, and the decreasing whine of the engines filled the cabin, he called out, “Everybody stay on the plane until I give the okay.”

  He went down the stair door and then across the tarmac. He saw Alex Darby, Tony Santini, and Alfredo Munz start walking on the heels of the Argentine officials who were already headed for him and the Gulfstream.

  At the top of the stairs, Max shouldered Sparkman out of the way. He made his way down the stairs for his ritual visit to the nose wheel. One of his pups followed him, and then the other. Sof’ya Berezovsky went after the pups. Former Lieutenant Colonel Svetlana Alekseeva of the SVR, in her role as aunt, went after Sof’ya. Edgar Delchamps went after Colonel Alekseeva.

  One of the Argentine officials, not smiling, put out his hand. “Documents, please.”

  “I’ll have to get them,” Castillo said in Spanish with a smile. He hoped that if he sounded like a Porteño he might get a smile in return.

  He turned and saw for the first time that Delchamps, Svetlana, Sof’ya, and the dogs were off the airplane.

  He walked back to Svetlana, who was standing at the foot of the step door.

  “Get back on the airplane,” he ordered. “Get everybody’s passports.” He looked up and into the airplane and saw Davidson. “Jack, get the airplane’s papers and the Americans’ passports.”

  Svetlana went up the stairs.

  A moment later, Davidson and Sparkman came down the stairs with all the passports and the aircraft’s documents.

  They formed a fire-bucket line, and their luggage began to come off the plane. Castillo saw that Svetlana had taken her place in the line.

  And then he saw that Svetlana’s skirt was either Loden cloth or something heavy like it.

  Jesus, that’s about the worst thing she could be wearing here.


  This is the hottest part of the summer.

  The customs officer began a perfunctory inspection of the luggage. A man from Jet Aviation Service began to deal with Torine about landing fees, parking fees, and fuel.

  “Very nice, Charley,” Santini said to Castillo, vis-à-vis Lieutenant Colonel Alekseeva. “I have always been partial to redheads.”

  Redhead?

  Castillo looked. What had looked like dark brown hair now indeed, in the bright sunlight, looked red. Dark red, but red.

  “My relationship with the lady is purely professional, Tony,” Castillo said.

  “Sure it is.”

  “She is—they are—people I want to get to our house in Pilar safely and without attracting attention. When that’s done, I’ll tell you all about them.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Later, Tony.”

  Santini heard the tone in his voice and didn’t push.

  “Wheels?” Castillo asked.

  “I have my car and an embassy Suburban,” Darby said, offering his hand. “Welcome back, Charley.”

  “And I’ve got my car,” Tony Santini said. “And Munz has his.”

  Munz saw there was some problem with the customs or immigration officers and went to deal with it.

  “The Sienos?” Castillo asked.

  “He’s not coming,” Darby said, “and she couldn’t get on the morning plane. She may not be able to get a seat on the afternoon plane, either.”

  “Shit!”

  “Kensington said that Miller called and said Bradley would be on the Aerolíneas Argentinas flight out of Miami tonight.”

  “What’s going on, Charley?” Darby asked.

  “It’ll have to wait until we’re in Nuestra Pequeña Casa,” Castillo said, nodding toward Munz, who was walking back to them, his left fist balled with the thumb extended, signaling that all was okay.

  [THREE]

  Nuestra Pequeña Casa

  Mayerling Country Club

  Pilar, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina

  1545 29 December 2005

  “Our Little House” in the exclusive Mayerling Country Club in the Buenos Aires suburb of Pilar had been rented on a two-year lease for four thousand U.S. dollars a month by Señor Paul Sieno and his wife, Susanna. The owner believed them to be fellow Argentines, an affluent young couple from Mendoza.

  That the attractive pair was affluent seemed to the owner to be proven when they didn’t try to bargain about the monthly rent or his demand that he be paid the first and last months’ rent plus a security deposit equal to another two months’ rent before they moved in. He had the money in hand—sixteen thousand dollars, in U.S. currency—the day after he had asked for it.

  Nuestra Pequeña Casa—the owner had named it—could fairly be described as a mansion in a neighborhood of mansions. Mayerling was several kilometers off the Panamericana, a toll superhighway, and fifty-odd kilometers from Plaza del Congreso, the monolith in front of the Congress in central Buenos Aires, from which all distances in Argentina are measured.

  Argentine law defined “country club” as a gated community in which at least thirty percent of the land was given over to such things as polo fields, golf courses, and other green areas. Further, a “gated community” in Argentina meant a private neighborhood enclosed by ten-foot-tall fences topped with razor wire, equipped with motion-sensing devices, and patrolled by private security guards armed with pistols, shotguns, and in some cases Uzis.

  Mayerling far exceeded the minimum green-space requirements of the law. There were five polo fields and two Jack Nicklaus-designed golf courses. The smallest lot within its ten-foot walls was one hectare, or 2.45 acres.

  “Mayerling,” Castillo had noted when the Sienos first rented the property, was also the name of the Royal and Imperial hunting lodge outside Vienna where—depending on which version one chose to believe—Crown Prince Rudolph had shot his sixteen-year-old mistress and then himself, or Crown Prince Rudolph had been shot at the orders of his father, Emperor Franz Josef, who believed young Rudy was planning to split the Austro-Hungarian Empire by becoming King of Hungary.

  Many of the homes in Mayerling were built on two or more lots. Nuestra Pequeña Casa was built on two, and had six bedrooms, all with bath and dressing room, three other toilets with bidets, a library, a sitting room, a dining room, a kitchen, servants’ quarters (for four), a swimming pool, and, in the backyard near the pool, a quincho.

  A quincho was something like an American pool house, except that it was primarily intended as a place to eat, more or less outdoors, and had a wood-fired grill for this purpose.

  Our Little House’s quincho was solidly built of masonry and had a rugged roof of mottled red Spanish tiles. It had a deep verandah, which also was covered by the tile roof, and a wall of sliding glass doors that overlooked the pool.

  Like most of the houses in Mayerling, Nuestra Pequeña Casa was individually fenced on three sides, the fences concealed in closely packed pine trees. They, too, had motion-sensing devices. Motion-sensing devices also protected the unfenced front of the house.

  The house—indeed all of Mayerling—had been constructed on a cost-be-damned basis to provide its residents with luxury, privacy, and, above all, security, as kidnapping of the rich was one of the more profitable cottage industries in Argentina.

  And all of this, of course, made Nuestra Pequeña Casa ideal for the Office of Organizational Analysis, which needed a safe house. Within the intelligence community, a safe house was defined as a place the bad guys didn’t know about, a place where one may hide things and people.

  Jack and Sandra Britton and Bob Kensington, all in bathing suits, were standing on the verandah of Nuestra Pequeña Casa when the little convoy rolled up. The housekeeper and a maid stood behind them.

  The moment Castillo opened the door of the embassy Suburban, the heat and humidity of an Argentine summer afternoon hit him. He stood there and again thought of the Russian women in clothing intended for winter in Northern Europe.

  Castillo slammed the door shut and walked up to the house.

  “Well, we didn’t expect to see you so soon,” Britton greeted him, putting out his hand.

  “Unexpected things happen,” Castillo said lightly, then changed his tone. “From this moment, we’re going to run this place tight. First thing: We get everybody out of the vehicles and into the foyer. Kensington, get a weapon.”

  Sergeant Kensington took one step backward into the house, reached down, and came up holding an Uzi at his side.

  “I should have known better, Bob. Sorry.”

  Castillo saw Sandra Britton looked like she was about to say something. “Sandra, please go inside and save your lip for later.”

  She gave him a dirty look, glanced at her husband, but went into the house.

  The expression on Jack Britton’s face showed he didn’t like Castillo’s curtness to his wife, though he didn’t say anything.

  “Bob,” Castillo went on, “stay where you are. Jack, go to the Suburban and open the rear door. Tell the people in there to get out and into the house.”

  “Who are they?” Britton asked.

  “Indulge me, Jack. Just do it.”

  Max erupted from the Suburban the moment the rear door was opened and ran into the house. Then Sof’ya, holding one of the pups, slid off the seat and to the ground.

  “Bring him into the house, sweetheart, please,” Castillo called to her in Russian.

  The smile on Sof’ya’s face vanished when she saw Kensington and the submachine gun. She looked back at the Suburban, then at Castillo.

  “It’s okay, sweetheart,” Castillo called as Sof’ya’s mother, holding the other puppy, slid awkwardly off the Suburban’s high seat and onto the ground.

  “Right this way, please, Mrs. Berezovsky,” Castillo said, and then, switching to English, called, “Now the Mercedes, Jack. Watch this one!”

  Kensington went to the second vehicle, Alfredo Munz’s Mercedes 230 SUV. He op
ened the front passenger door, then, seeing no one in the front passenger seat, closed it and opened the rear door.

  Lieutenant Colonel Alekseeva got out, with a show of leg, and looked around.

  “Over here, please, Colonel,” Castillo ordered in Russian, gesturing toward the open door.

  She walked quickly to the house and went inside without looking directly at Castillo.

  “And now Santini’s car,” Castillo called in English. “And really watch this one.”

  Britton opened the passenger door of Santini’s Peugeot sedan. Colonel Berezovsky got out and looked around. Santini came quickly around the front of the car as Edgar Delchamps got out of the backseat.

  Delchamps gestured for Berezovsky to go into the house. After a moment—long enough to demonstrate that he wasn’t going to jump at anybody’s command—Berezovsky walked to the house and went inside.

  Castillo followed Berezovsky into the foyer.

  “We’re now going to move to the quincho,” Castillo announced in Russian. “Before we go out there, I want to tell you the area is fenced. You are forbidden to get closer than two meters to the fence. If you do, you will be shot.”

  He turned to Jack Davidson. “Get a weapon . . .”

  “Behind you in the closet,” Kensington offered.

  “. . . and take them out there. I’ll have something cold sent out for them to drink. And while you’re doing that, and the luggage is being brought in from the cars, I’ll bring everybody up to speed.”

  [FOUR]

  “Okay,” Castillo said, winding up his briefing of Alex Darby, Tony Santini, and the Brittons in the main house. “That’s about it.”

  “It’s hard to believe that woman is a Russian spy,” Sandra said.

  Castillo flashed her a cold look, and then, seeing her face, immediately recognized he was wrong. Sandra wasn’t being clever; she was stating the obvious.

  “Well, she is, Sandra,” he said. “And what is it they say about ‘the female being the deadlier of any species’?”