Black Ops

by W. E. B Griffin

  Torine stopped and tapped his fingertips together for a good thirty seconds.

  Then he raised his eyes to Castillo’s. “So, you see, Colonel, the dilemma into which you have thrust me?”

  “Jake, you say the word and I’ll get on Montvale’s airplane. If you tell me you think I can’t . . .”

  He stopped when Torine held up his hand.

  “—said dilemma makes me seriously consider that you may have in fact lost your fucking mind.”

  Jack Davidson chuckled.

  “So you think I should get on Montvale’s airplane?”

  “No, that’s not what I said. Or mean. I just think you should keep in mind that you’re not acting rationally.”

  “That’s . . .” Susanna Sieno started and then stopped.

  “Go on, Susanna,” Castillo said, gesturing. “Let’s hear it.”

  She met his eyes for a moment, shrugged, then went on: “What I was about to say, Charley, was that that’s something of an understatement.”

  “Guilty,” Castillo said. “That thought has occurred to me.”

  “And you still think you’re in love?”

  He nodded.

  “In that case, maybe I should just shut up.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t,” Castillo said. “Let’s get it all out.”

  She considered that a moment, shrugged again, then said: “Here’re a couple of things to consider. Charley. . . . Oh, hell, I was about to say that Svetlana is at least as good a spook as I am, maybe even as good as you are. But you’ve considered that, I’m sure. Anyway, given that, if I were in her shoes, snaring somebody like you by whatever means—certainly including spreading my legs—would be a no-brainer.”

  “Jesus Christ, honey!” Paul Sieno exclaimed.

  “Stop thinking like a husband, Paul,” Susanna said.

  “And,” Jack Britton said, “since we’re all running at the mouth, Charley, you were on the rebound after Betty Schneider dumped you, ripe to get plucked by any female, and certainly by a really good-looking, smart one with every reason to have a ‘protect my ass’ agenda.”

  “Betty dumped him?” Sandra Britton asked, surprised. “You never told me about that!”

  “I didn’t think it was any of our business,” Britton said.

  “How’d you hear about that?” Castillo asked.

  “I heard Agnes and Joel Isaacson talking,” Britton said.

  Castillo shrugged. “She did dump me. What she said was that she didn’t want to be married to a guy who instead of coming home for supper would leave a voice mail that he was off to Timbuktu. But what I really think it was is that being with me would interfere with her new Secret Service career; that what she really wanted to do was be more of a hotshot cop than her brother. And I really don’t think I was on the rebound.”

  Britton’s face showed he didn’t believe that at all.

  “The flaw in your argument, Susie,” Alex Darby said, “is that none of the Russians need Charley now. If she had, to use your apt if indelicate phraseology, spread her legs before he brought them here . . .”

  “We don’t know when or where that happened,” Susanna said, and looked at Castillo.

  He was on the verge of telling her that it was none of her goddamn business when he had first been intimate with Svetlana, but then realized that, in fact, it was.

  Castillo made a grand gesture with his right index finger, poking the felt of the table. “Here, the first night.”

  There was a resounding silence.

  “On the pool table?” Sandra Britton blurted. “Charley!”

  “No, I mean in Argentina, not before.”

  “Right after her swimsuit top ‘accidentally’ came off, right?” Susanna said, undeterred.

  Castillo nodded.

  “That was an accident,” Sandra said. “I saw what happened.”

  “Well, she really covered herself up just as fast as she could, I’ll say that for her. Top and bottom,” Susanna said.

  Castillo’s memory bank kicked in, and he had a clear image of Svetlana adjusting her bathing suit back over her exposed buttock.

  “If I didn’t know better, Susie,” Darby said, “I’d suspect you don’t like Podpolkovnik Alekseeva very much.”

  “That’s the point, you asshole,” Susanna snapped. “She is a podpolkovnik of the FSB—”

  “Was a podpolkovnik of the SVR,” Delchamps corrected her without thinking.

  “Et tu, Edgar?” Susanna said, thickly sarcastic. “You’re into this true-love-at-first-sight bullshit?”

  “Well, what the hell’s wrong with that?” Sandra challenged. “It happens.”

  “Bullshit!” Susanna said.

  “I don’t know about you people,” Sandra snapped back. “But it does happen to certain cops and schoolteachers. Tell her, Jack.”

  “Guilty,” Britton said.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Susanna said disgustedly.

  Darby said: “What I started to say, Susie, what seems an hour or so ago, before we got into the romantic aspects of all this, is the flaw in your argument is that the Russians don’t need Charley anymore.”

  “Meaning what?” Susanna challenged.

  “Well, for example, we weren’t at the second safe house thirty minutes when the Russians came in, bearing gifts.”

  “Like what?”

  “Passports and national identity cards for everybody—Argentine, Uruguayan, Paraguayan, South African, Mexican.”

  “All good forgeries, I’m sure,” Susanna said, her tone making clear her contempt for counterfeit passports, which everybody knew were good only until immigration authorities could run them through a computer database.

  Darby took two passports and two national identity cards from a zip-top plastic bag and handed one set to Susanna and the other to Castillo. “These are genuine. I have an asset in Argentine immigration and he checked them for me.”

  Castillo found himself looking at photographs of Svetlana looking at him through the sealed thick plastic of a Uruguayan national identity card and passport identifying her as Susanna Barlow, born in Warsaw, Poland, and now a naturalized citizen living in Maldonado, Uruguay. He remembered from somewhere that Maldonado was just north of the seaside resort town of Punta del Este.

  “What’s the name on yours, Susanna?” Castillo asked as he extended the documents to her.

  She didn’t reply. She simply handed him the set of documents Darby had given to her. When Castillo examined them, Svetlana’s photo—the same one as on the Uruguayan documents—was on both an Argentine passport and a national identity card identifying her as Susanna Barlow, born in Warsaw, Poland, and now a naturalized citizen living in Rosario.

  Delchamps said: “The Paraguayan, South African, and Mexican documents may be fake, but I don’t think so. As soon as I can, I’ll check them.”

  Susanna looked at him but didn’t say anything.

  “What’s interesting here, Susanna,” Delchamps went on, “aside from Svetlana’s new first name, I mean, is that when I told Berezovsky I was going to meet Charley here and I thought Svetlana would be with him—” He stopped and turned to Castillo. “Where is she, by the way?”

  “At yet another of Pevsner’s safe houses, in the Pilar Golf and Polo Club. Munz and Lester are with her,” Castillo furnished.

  Delchamps nodded, then turned his attention back to Susanna: “Berezovsky just handed me this stuff and asked me to give it to her. I don’t think he would have done that if he planned to take off.”

  “Who is Berezovsky now?” Castillo asked.

  “‘Thomas Barlow,’ who else? Born in Manchester, England,” Delchamps answered.

  “The Russians also showed up with a little walking around money,” Darby said. “One hundred thousand dollars of it, fresh from the Federal Reserve. Still in the plastic wrapping. It makes up a package about this big.” He demonstrated with his left hand, fingers and thumb extended in what could have been the mimicking of a bear claw. “And it was the real
thing, too, Susie. Nice, crisp, spendable hundred-dollar bills.”

  He waited until she reacted. All he got was a sort of so what shrug, but it was enough for him to go on.

  “All of which leads Edgar and me to believe that if all they—especially she—wanted out of Charley was getting them here from Vienna and a little help until they got settled—or disappeared—that that time has passed. Berezovsky is still singing like a canary and—”

  “And Charley is still alive,” Delchamps said. “Taking Charley out when he was in Bariloche would have been the smart thing for them to do, covering their tracks, and it is a given that both Pevsner and Berezovsky are very good at doing that sort of thing and lose no sleep whatever when they do it.”

  “So what are you saying?” Tony Santini asked.

  “I can’t wait to see the look on Susanna’s face when I say this,” Delchamps said. “I believe, and so does Brother Darby, that (a) Polkovnik Berezovsky and Podpolkovnik Alekseeva risked all to get out of Russia because—subpara lowercase i—they came to believe that Vladimir Putin was about to resurrect the bad old days of the Soviet Union and they wanted nothing to do with that . . .”

  “I don’t believe I’m hearing this,” Susanna Sieno said.

  “. . . and—(a) subpara lowercase ii—they suspected that because Brother Putin, himself a member in good standing of the Oprichina—you’ll recall his father was Stalin’s cook—knows all about what a threat heavy-duty oprichniki would pose to his regime, they stood a very good chance of spending the rest of their lives in a mental hospital with their veins full of happy juice, said mental hospitals having replaced the gulag in the new and wonderful Russian Federation as depositories for potential troublemakers.”

  “You’re telling me that you and Alex”—she looked between them—“believe those ludicrous yarns about a state within a state?”

  “With all my innocent trusting heart, Susie,” Darby said, putting his right hand to his chest. “But then again, you have to remember that throughout my long career in the Clandestine Services I earned the reputation of always being the guy who believed everything he was told.”

  “If I may go on?” Delchamps said. “Darby and I also believe that (b) the Berezovskys, the Pevsners, and at least Charley’s new friend Svetlana are Christians who take it seriously—we’re not so sure of the lady’s husband, he’s one mean sonofabitch who may well be a godless Communist. . . .”

  “She’s married?” Susanna asked, shaking her head.

  “To Polkovnik Evgeny Alekseeva of the SVR,” Delchamps confirmed, “who at last report was scouring the streets of Vienna in high hopes of finding his wife, who he no doubt then hopes to kill in the most painful way he can think of.”

  “Oh, Charley!” Sandra Britton said.

  “Once again, if I may go on?” Delchamps said. “Now, where was I? Oh, yes! (b): are Christians who take it seriously, and for that reason—subpara lowercase i—regard the poisoning of a couple of million innocent women and children as un-Christian and are therefore willing to help Charley take out whatever the hell those bastards have in the Congo, about which Berezovsky apparently knows a hell of a lot.

  “Subpara lowercase ii, would be deeply offended if Our Leader—known to the Secret Service as ‘Don Juan’—as I really expected to hear just now when he returned to our little nest—had been pleasuring Podpolkovnik Alekseeva simply to get her to talk—or simply for fun—rather than as a manifestation of his intention to marry the lady when that is possible, and thereafter to walk hand in hand and in the fear of God in the bonds of holy matrimony until death do them part. Amen.” He paused. “Getting the picture, Susanna?”

  “If I heard all that from anybody but you two . . .”

  “That wasn’t the question.”

  She nodded. “I got it, Edgar.”

  “Now tell our leader you’re sorry, baby,” Paul Sieno said.

  Susanna looked at Castillo.

  “Is the wedding going to be simple, Don Juan, or are you both going to wear your uniforms?”

  “Uniforms, I think. But only if you’re going to precede us down the aisle scattering rose petals while singing ‘I Love You Truly.’ ”

  [TWO]

  Pilar Golf & Polo Country Club

  Pilar, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina

  1740 2 January 2006

  After thinking about it, Castillo decided there was more to be lost than gained by eluding the gendarmería SUV that was waiting for them outside the gate of the Mayerling Country Club.

  Comandante Liam Duffy would be annoyed, Castillo understood, and now was not the time to annoy the Latin-tempered (his mother was Argentine) gendarmería officer. That was, annoy him any more than he already was annoyed.

  Castillo knew that Duffy remained furious about the assassination attempt on Christmas Eve on Duffy and his family, and while Castillo had almost identified the SVR officer who had organized and probably participated in that, he would have to check with Berezovsky before he was sure. And as soon as Duffy learned that name, he was going to do his very best to find him and then kill him and his close associates in the most imaginatively painful ways he could think of.

  While Castillo fully sympathized with Duffy, he didn’t want that to happen until the Congo operation was over. Taking out the SVR officer who had replaced Lieutenant Colonel Viktor Zhdankov in South America would tell the SVR more than Castillo wanted them to know about the extent of his knowledge of SVR operations.

  Replacing Zhdankov had become necessary after Corporal Lester Bradley, USMC, using his Colt Model 1911 .45-caliber semiautomatic, had taken Zhdankov out with a well-placed head shot in the basement garage of the Pilar Sheraton Hotel and Convention Center when Zhdankov had been engaged in trying to take out Aleksandr Pevsner.

  The initial order, according to both Aleksandr Pevsner and Svetlana, had come from Lieutenant General Yakov Sirinov, who was the man in charge of that sort of thing for the Sluzhba Vnezhney Razvedki. He ran either Directorate S, the oddly brazenly named Illegal Intelligence arm of the SVR, or Service A, which was the arm of the SVR charged with planning and implementing “active measures,” which meant such things as assassinations.

  Or General Sirinov ran both Directorate S and Service A.

  Or Directorate S and Service A were really one and the same entity.

  Svetlana and Pevsner had told Castillo the order from General Sirinov had probably been rather vague in nature, stating only that the individuals on a list had been determined to be posing a threat to the Russian Federation and were to be eliminated as soon as the local rezidents could arrange to have it done, preferably within the same twenty-four-hour period.

  That, Svetlana had matter-of-factly told Castillo, would serve both to keep the others on the list from suspecting they were in danger because one of their number had been eliminated, and would also make a statement, when the assassinations had been successfully carried out, that the SVR was back and dealing with its enemies as the KGB, the NKVD, and the Cheka had done in the past.

  The names certainly listed were Frau und Herr Kuhl in Vienna, Herr Friedler in Marburg, Mr. Britton in Philadelphia, and Comandante Duffy in Buenos Aires. Both Svetlana and Pevsner felt that some people on General Sirinov’s list who would be eliminated, if possible, as a second priority included Otto Görner, Eric Kocian, and Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger, aka C. G. Castillo.

  Neither Svetlana nor Pevsner had mentioned that the Berlin rezident ordered to implement the successful termination of Herr Friedler and, if possible, as a second priority, Otto Görner, Eric Kocian, and Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger aka C. G. Castillo, was one Dmitri Berezovsky—and, although this thought had run through Castillo’s mind more than once, neither had he.

  When Jack Davidson had driven the BMW out of the Mayerling gate, Castillo had signaled cheerfully for the gendarmes in their Mercedes SUV to follow them.

  When finally he had to deal with Liam Duffy’s impatience—angry impatience—to learn the name o
f the man who had tried to kill Duffy and his family, at least the Argentine cop wouldn’t have his Irish temper already inflamed by Castillo having eluded his protectors. Read: tail.

  Several miles past the end of the Autopista del Sol, where the six-lane toll road had turned into a two-lane macadam highway, Castillo saw a sign reading PILAR GOLF & POLO COUNTRY CLUB, and moments later saw the gatehouse of the place itself.

  Unlike either the Mayerling or Buena Vista country clubs, where a combination of high fences, closely packed trees, and thick shrubbery hid everything inside from anyone on the roadway, the Pilar Golf & Polo Country Club presented an unobstructed view of immaculate fairways and greens as far as the eye could see. A dozen electric golf carts were on narrow, concrete paths that picturesquely wound near the fairways and the greens.

  At least a mile from the gatehouse, sitting on a gentle hill, were a dozen houses—maybe more—all of which seemed to Castillo to be larger than Nuestra Pequeña Casa.

  There might have been a fence around them, but Castillo didn’t get a good enough look at them before Davidson had to stop at the gatehouse, which itself was a substantial two-story building. Castillo saw that there were two barrier gates in series, each a substantial affair that opened by rolling to the side; the interior gate was two car lengths distant from the exterior one.

  From behind thick glass windows in the gatehouse, three uniformed, armed guards examined the BMW and its occupants. Castillo could see on an interior wall a row of video monitors mounted over a rack of shotguns. The monitors gave the guards a clear view of what the surveillance cameras were recording—at the moment, six views of the BMW, including its undercarriage.

  At this point, Castillo had a somewhat unnerving and embarrassing thought: He knew Svetlana, Munz, and Lester were inside the Pilar Golf & Polo Country Club, but not exactly where.