Black Ops

by W. E. B Griffin

  “None of the above, Jack.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  Castillo shrugged. “I’m in love.”

  “Well, then I guess it’s a good thing that I’m going to retire. When McNab hears about this, the most I could hope for would be to spend the rest of my days in the Army counting tent pegs in a quartermaster warehouse in Alaska.”

  “I’ll make sure he knows that you did everything possible short of shooting me in the knees with a hollow-point .22 to dissuade me from my insanity.”

  Davidson shook his head in resignation. “If I thought that would do any good, that’s just what I would do.”

  “I would resign today, Jack, if it wasn’t for this chemical operation in the Congo.”

  Davidson met his eyes again.

  “When Berezovsky started talking,” Davidson said, “it looked like Delchamps was on the money when he said that was heavy.”

  “It is. Very heavy.”

  “Okay. You and Delchamps believe him. I’ll grant you that; I’m not going to say both of you are wrong. So I’ll give you that. But what the hell do you think you can do about it? Delchamps says the CIA knows about the plant and doesn’t think it’s a threat. And I don’t think they’ll listen to you or Delchamps that it is. They probably wouldn’t believe Berezovsky and/or your lady friend if they had them. Which they don’t. Which opens that can of worms.”

  “Can I wave duty in your face, Jack?”

  Davidson shook his head. After a moment, he softly said: “Yeah. For Christ’s sake, you know you can, Charley.”

  “I think it’s my duty to take out that chemical factory, even if the CIA doesn’t think it’s a threat.”

  Davidson nodded his understanding. “And how are you going to do that?”

  “I haven’t quite figured that out yet.”

  After a moment, Davidson said, “Are you willing to listen to some unpleasant facts?”

  “I’ll be surprised if you can think of any I haven’t thought of myself—that’s not a crack at you, Jack; I’ve really given this a lot of thought—but go ahead.”

  “The CIA is already pissed that you have the Russians.”

  Castillo nodded his acceptance of that statement.

  “And I don’t think you’re going to turn either of them over to the agency.”

  “I’m not, Jack.”

  Davidson shook his head again. “Which is really going to piss them off. And Montvale, too.”

  Castillo nodded again.

  “Your authority, Charley, comes from the Presidential Finding, which is to ‘locate and render harmless’ the people who whacked Jack ‘The Stack’ Masterson. Period. Nothing else. It says nothing about turning Russian spooks and nothing about going into the Congo and taking out a chemical factory—one the agency knows about and doesn’t think is a threat.”

  He paused for a long time, a period that Charley took to mean that Jack was letting that counsel sink in.

  Then Davidson shook his head again and went on: “So where do you think we’re going to get what we need to take out the factory? That’s got to be a helluva long laundry list—”

  He said, “What we need.”

  He’s in.

  And he doesn’t care what that may cost him.

  Castillo felt his throat tighten.

  When he trusted himself to speak, Castillo admitted: “I haven’t figured that out yet either.”

  “So what happens now, Chief?”

  Castillo intoned solemnly: “ ‘The longest journey begins with the smallest step.’ You may wish to write that down.”

  Davidson chuckled.

  “What happens now is that I go in there”—Castillo nodded toward the embassy building?—“and, while trying very hard to keep Ambassador Silvio out of the line of fire, deal with Ambassador Montvale. And while I’m doing that, you go to Rio Alba, taking the gendarmería with you, and wait for me.”

  “For how long?”

  “I don’t know. Get some lunch. If I don’t call you in thirty minutes, call me. If I answer in Pashtu, hang up and head for the safe house.”

  “And?”

  Castillo was silent a moment, then shrugged and shook his head again, and said, “I just don’t know, Jack.”

  “Okay. We’ll wing it.”

  Castillo glanced at the Mercedes-Benz parked beside them. Then he looked over his shoulder and said, “Max, you stay.”

  Castillo opened his door. When he did so, one of the gendarmes got out of the Mercedes and stood by the open door.

  When Castillo headed for what he thought of as the embassy employee’s gate in the fence, the gendarme closed the vehicle’s door and walked after him.

  Davidson backed out of the parking spot and drove toward the restaurant Rio Alba, which was a block from the embassy in the shadow of—at fifty stories—Argentina’s tallest building. The gendarmería Mercedes followed him.

  The fence surrounding the embassy had three gates, a large one to pass vehicular traffic and two smaller ones for people. The employees’ gate was a simple affair, a turnstile guarded by two uniformed, armed guards of an Argentine security firm.

  Castillo was absolutely certain that a couple of Argentine rent-a-cops wouldn’t deny entrance to the embassy grounds to a United States federal law-enforcement officer who presented the proper identification.

  He was wrong.

  The rent-a-cops were not at all impressed with the credentials identifying C. G. Castillo as a supervisory special agent of the United States Secret Service.

  The rent-a-cops advised him that if he wished to enter the embassy grounds, he would have to use the Main Visitors’ Gate, which was some three hundred yards distant, down a sunbaked sidewalk.

  Castillo bit his tongue and started for the other gate, with the gendarme on his heels.

  The last hundred yards of the sidewalk was lined with people—clearly not many of them, if any, U.S. citizens—patiently baking in the sun as they awaited their turn to pass through the Main Visitors’ Gate to apply for visas and other services.

  There has to be a gate for U.S. citizens.

  For Christ’s sake, this is the American embassy!

  He did not see anything that looked helpful until he was almost at the single-story Main Visitors’ Gate building. Then he came across a ridiculously small sign that had an arrow and the legend: U.S CITIZENS.

  He pushed open the door and was promptly stopped by another Argentine rent-a-cop who—not very charmingly—asked to see Castillo’s passport.

  After examining it carefully, the rent-a-cop motioned that Castillo was now permitted to join one of two lines of people waiting their turn to deal with embassy staff seated comfortably behind thick plateglass windows. The scene reminded Castillo of the cashier windows in Las Vegas casinos.

  He got in line and awaited his turn. Ten minutes later, it came.

  “I’d like to see the ambassador, please.”

  “Passport, please.”

  The not-unattractive female behind the thick plate glass examined it, then carefully examined Castillo, and then said, “What time is your appointment?”

  “I don’t have an appointment. But if you will get the ambassador on the phone, I’m sure he’ll see me.”

  The lady scribbled a number on a small pad and slid it through a tray at the bottom of the plate glass.

  “You can call this number and ask for an appointment.”

  “Is there an American officer around here somewhere?”

  Three minutes later, a pleasant-looking young man appeared behind the woman, looked at Castillo, and said, “Yes?”

  Castillo remembered Edgar Delchamps telling him that new graduates of the CIA’s Clandestine Services How-to-Be-a-Spy School were often given as their first assignment duties as an assistant consul at an embassy where their inexperience would not get them in trouble.

  If I were into profiling, I’d bet my last dime I’m facing one now.

  “Good afternoon,” Castillo said politely, and slid h
is Army identification through the slot under the plate glass. “I’d like to see the ambassador. Would you be good enough to call his office and tell him I’m here?”

  The fledgling spook examined the ID card and slid it back through the slot.

  “Let me give you a number you can call, Colonel,” the pleasant-looking young man said.

  Castillo slid his Secret Service credentials through the slot.

  “Listen to me carefully, please,” Castillo began, keeping his voice low but his tone that of one not to be questioned. “If you don’t get on the phone right now, I will personally tell the DCI that you wouldn’t call the ambassador for me. And the result of that will be that you’ll be sitting in one of the parking lot guard shacks at Langley this time next week.”

  They locked eyes.

  The assistant consul picked up the telephone handset, then spoke into it.

  A moment later, he slid the handset through the slot.

  “I don’t know where he is, Colonel,” Ambassador Silvio’s secretary said. “He went to Jorge Newbery to meet a VIP and hasn’t checked in. Would you like to wait for him here?”

  Sonofabitch, they’re on the way to Nuestra Pequeña Casa!

  “No, thank you,” Castillo replied. “When you’re in touch, tell him I’ll call him later.”

  Castillo slid the handset back through the slot, then without a word turned from the window and took out his cellular telephone.

  A rent-a-cop laid his hand on Castillo’s arm and pointed to a sign on the wall. It forbade the use of cellular telephones.

  Castillo left the building and went back into the one-hundred-degree, one-hundred-percent-humidity Buenos Aires summer afternoon. He saw that the gendarme was waiting for him.

  Castillo punched one of the cell phone’s autodial buttons. Davidson answered on the second ring.

  “He’s here with Montvale,” Davidson said by way of answering.

  “Keep them there if you have to break Montvale’s legs,” Castillo said, and then began to walk on the sunbaked sidewalk toward the fine steak house called Río Alba, the gendarme on his heels.

  [TWO]

  Jack Davidson and his gendarme were sitting at a table just inside the restaurant door. Both looked to be halfway through with eating their luncheon of steaks.

  Davidson caught Castillo’s eye and indicated with a nod toward the rear of the restaurant.

  “You wait here with them,” Castillo said to his gendarme, motioning to the table with Davidson and the other gendarme. Their table had a clear view of a round table at the rear of the establishment.

  Castillo walked toward the round table, seated at which were the Honorable Charles W. Montvale, the United States Director of National Intelligence who liked to be called “Ambassador”—in his long career of public service he had been deputy secretary of State, secretary of the Treasury, and ambassador to the European Union—the United States Ambassador to Argentina Juan Manuel Silvio, and a man in his late fifties, tall and trim with closely cropped hair.

  Castillo decided unkindly that the tall, trim man’s suit indeed looked, as Davidson had said, as if it had come off a chromed rack at Sears, Roebuck & Co.

  At a table against the wall were two neatly dressed, muscular men who Castillo decided were almost certainly from the agency or were Montvale’s Secret Service bodyguards. Montvale spotted Castillo, paused momentarily in the act of forking a piece of steak to his mouth, then completed the motion.

  “Well, what a pleasant surprise!” Castillo announced as he approached. “I was just at the embassy to make my manners, Ambassador Silvio, but they didn’t seem to know where you were. And Mr. Montvale! What brings you down this way?”

  “I think you’ve got a very good idea, Colonel,” Montvale said sharply, chewing as he spoke.

  Castillo glanced around the room, then looked back at Montvale. “Aside from thinking you’ve heard the reputation of the Río Alba as the world’s best steak house, I haven’t a clue.”

  Montvale swallowed, then sipped at his glass of red wine. “Why don’t you sit down, Colonel.”

  “Thank you very much.”

  Castillo took his seat, looked around for a waiter, and motioned for him to come over.

  “I’m starved. I had breakfast very early,” he said in English to Montvale, and then switched to Spanish to address the waiter: “Would you bring me a Roquefort empanada, please, and then a bife de chorizo punto, papas fritas, and a tomato and onion salad?”

  He picked up the bottle of wine on the table, read the label, made a face, returned the bottle to the table, and added, “And a bottle of Saint Felicien Cabernet Sauvignon, please.”

  “Something wrong with that wine, Colonel?” Montvale said, an edge of sarcasm rising in his tone.

  “Well, according to the label, it’s Malbec.”

  “Yes. And?”

  “And, Mr. Montvale, I thought you knew. ‘Malbec’ is French for ‘bad taste.’ I don’t know about you, sir, but that’s enough to warn me off.”

  Ambassador Silvio chuckled.

  The man in the Sears, Roebuck suit stared icily at Castillo.

  Castillo reached across the table and offered him his hand.

  “My name is Castillo, sir. Any friend of Mr. Montvale—”

  “Lieutenant Colonel Castillo,” Montvale interrupted, “this is Colonel Remley.”

  “How do you do, sir?” Castillo said politely.

  “Of Special Operations Command,” Montvale added.

  “Oh, really? Well, if we can find the time, sir, maybe we can play ‘Do You Know?’ I know some people there.”

  Colonel Remley neither smiled nor replied.

  “Speaking of time, Castillo,” Montvale said. “I’d like to get back to Washington as soon as possible. How long is it going to take for you to get your ‘guests’ to the airport?”

  “I have no idea who you’re talking about.”

  Montvale, looking over the top of his wineglass, stared down Castillo. “You know goddamn well who I’m talking about.”

  The waiter arrived with Castillo’s wine. Castillo took his time going through the ritual of approving the bottle, finally taking a long sip, swirling it in his mouth, then shrugging to the waiter as if signifying that it’d have to do.

  After the waiter poured the large glass half full and left, Castillo picked up the glass, looked at Montvale, and said, “Even if I did know about whatever it is you suggest that I do, a public restaurant wouldn’t be the place to talk about it, would it?”

  Montvale glowered.

  “Or in front of these gentlemen?” Castillo pursued.

  “Then let’s go to the embassy!” Montvale said angrily under his breath.

  “After I’ve had my lunch, that would probably be a good idea.”

  “Castillo,” Colonel Remley snapped, “you know who the ambassador is. How dare you speak to him in that manner?”

  “Colonel, no disrespect to either ambassador was intended, sir. It’s just that I suspect Mr. Montvale was alluding to something that is highly classified, and I know that neither you nor Ambassador Silvio is authorized access to that material.”

  “Ambassador Montvale briefed me fully on this situation on the way down here, Colonel!”

  “With respect, sir, I doubt that.”

  “You arrogant little sonofabitch!” Remley said sharply, almost knocking over his water glass. “Just who the hell do you think you are?”

  “Sir,” Castillo replied evenly, “the reason I doubt that Ambassador Montvale would make you or anyone else privy to what I think he’s referring to is that only two people have been authorized to decide who has the Need to Know. And as I haven’t done so and I have not been informed by the other person so authorized that you have been briefed, I’m reasonably certain that you have not been made privy and thus do not have the Need to Know, sir.”

  “Goddamn you, Charley!” Montvale said.

  Castillo raised his eyebrows in mock shock. “If everybody is going to
swear at me, I’m just going to have to be rude and change tables. I’m very sensitive, and I don’t want to have indigestion when I’m eating my lunch.”

  “One of my options, Castillo,” Montvale said, ignoring him, “is to ask Colonel Remley to place you under arrest, then have those gentlemen escort you to my airplane.”

  He nodded toward the two neatly dressed men.

  Castillo looked at them, then at Ambassador Silvio, who now looked more than a little uncomfortable, then back at Montvale. “What are they, Secret Service?”

  “Yes, they are,” Montvale said.

  “And I’ll bet they’re armed, right?”

  “Yes, they are.”

  “Do you see those three men at the table in the other room looking this way, Mr. Ambassador?”

  Montvale looked. “What about them?”

  “Two of them are officers—commissioned officers—of the Gendarmería Nacional. If either of your Secret Service agents even looks like he’s going to do anything to me, the gendarmes will come over, ask them for their identification, and then pat them down. If they are armed—the Secret Service has no authority in Argentina—they will be arrested, their weapons confiscated, and then Ambassador Silvio will be forced to see what he can do about getting them out of the slam. With a little quiet encouragement from your table guest here, they might even detain you and the colonel for questioning.”

  “I’ll see you before a general court-martial, Colonel!” Colonel Remley exploded.

  Castillo met Remley’s eyes.

  “With respect, sir, on what charge?” he said calmly. “I have always been taught that an officer is required to obey his last lawful order unless that order is changed by an officer senior to the officer who issued the initial order. You are not, sir, senior to the officer whose orders I am obeying. And both Ambassador Silvio and Mr. Montvale know that.”

  “Gentlemen,” Ambassador Silvio said with some awkwardness, “this is getting out of hand.”

  “Mr. Ambassador, with respect, I suggest that I’m trying to keep it from really getting out of hand. And with that in mind, vis-à-vis my going to the embassy to have a private chat with Mr. Montvale, I’m going to have to ask for your word that I will be allowed to leave the embassy whenever I choose to do so.”