W. E. B. Griffin - Presidential Agent 07 (16 page)

Castillo took a moment to frame his reply.

While he was doing so, Doña Alicia asked, “Have you noticed, Svetlana dear, that ‘who me?’ look on Carlos’s face when you catch him with his hand in the cookie jar?”

“Abuela,” Castillo began carefully, “think of the security guys as me just being extra-careful.”

“About what?”

“Do you want me to tell her, Carlito?” Sweaty said.

“I wish you would, dear,” Doña Alicia said. “I don’t think you’re nearly as good at getting around the truth as he is.”

Castillo gestured for Sweaty to go ahead.

“We have good reason, Abuela,” Sweaty said matter-of-factly, “to believe that the SVR is behind the kidnapping of Colonel Ferris and the assassinations of the other Americans. That it is a diversion in their plans to get at Carlito, my brother, our cousin Aleksandr, and me.”

“And you’re worried that this might involve me?” Doña Alicia asked calmly.

“Yes, ma’am,” Castillo said.

“What about Billy Kocian and Otto Görner? I’d think if I were at risk, so would they be.”

“We think that whatever the SVR tries,” Castillo said, “it will be in Mexico. Or here. But just to be sure, Abuela, I gave Sándor Tor a call and told him what we think is going on.”

“Not Otto?”

He shook his head.

“Why not?” she asked.

It was not an idle question but rather more on the order of a rebuke.

“Two reasons,” Castillo replied. “After the SVR murdered that
Tages Zeitung
reporter—I forget his name—”

“His name was Günther Friedler,” Doña Alicia said evenly, “and you should be ashamed of yourself for not knowing his name. He was one of your employees!”

Castillo looked at her a long moment, then nodded.

“Yes, ma’am, you’re right. What I started to say, Abuela, was that after Herr Friedler was murdered, Billy arranged for Sándor Tor to take over all security for Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H. He told Otto that if Otto’s security people had done their job, Herr Friedler would still be alive. So Otto went along.

“Anyway, I called Sándor—Billy and Sándor—and told them what we thought. Both agreed, by the way, with what we think. It probably took no more than half an hour before Sándor’s people were sitting on Otto and his family.”

“You didn’t call Otto? Why not?”

“That’s the second reason,” Castillo said, pointing to a leather attaché case sitting on a sideboard. “Otto doesn’t answer his Brick. He thinks the CIA listens to everything he says over it.”

“Does it?”

Castillo shook his head.

“And what do you think Otto’s going to do when he notices his extra security?” Doña Alicia asked. “And you know he will.”

“Since Otto also believes that both the Germans and the Russians listen to his telephone calls,” Castillo said sarcastically, “and since he doesn’t want to use the Brick because the CIA will be listening, what he probably will do is hop in his new Mustang and fly to Budapest for a goulash lunch. Or, if the Mustang is in Budapest, invite Billy to Fulda for
Knackwurst mit Kraut
.”

“Otto has a Mustang? Like yours?”

“
They
have a Mustang. Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H., has had a very good year, but not good enough to be able to afford buying both of them a two-point-seven-million-dollar toy.”

“I’m surprised Otto would permit something like that,” she said. “He’s usually very frugal.”

“Oh, he protested bitterly,” Castillo said. “It was as hard for me to talk him into it as it would have been for me to talk someone who’s been wandering around the Sahara Desert for a month into having a glass of ice water.”

She smiled.

“And how do you justify
your
two-point-seven-million-dollar toy?”

“I’d rather not tell you. You might decide that Sweaty’s profligate.”

“My Uncle Nicolai has one, Abuela,” Sweaty explained. “He uses it to fly—‘high rollers,’ right, Carlito?—back and forth to the Grand Cozumel from Mexico City and Miami . . .”

Castillo thought:
And for other purposes, such as hauling suitcases full of hundred-dollar bills out of Drug Cartel International to someplace where they can be laundered.

“. . . and when I saw the way Carlito looked at it, like a little boy watching an electric train in a store window . . .”

She mimed this by opening her eyes very wide and letting her tongue hang out the side of her mouth.

Doña Alicia laughed.

“I know the look,” Doña Alicia said. “When he and Fernando were about twelve, their grandfather showed them a pair of Winchester .30-30 Model 1894 lever-actions that he said he was sending down to Hacienda Santa Maria . . .”

Doña Alicia paused when Sweaty’s face showed a lack of understanding.

“The grapefruit farm,” Castillo explained.

Doña Alicia went on: “The rifles were for keeping the deer from eating our grapefruit. They were to be a Christmas present for them, but they didn’t know that. And both of them . . .”

She opened her eyes wide and let her tongue hang out of the side of her mouth.

Sweaty laughed, then finished: “So I bought him a Mustang.”

“Grandpa told me that it was just as easy to fall in love with a rich girl as it was a poor one,” Castillo said. “And I took his advice.”

“I don’t know how you put up with him, Svetlana dear. But, on the other hand, his grandfather was just about as bad, and I put up with him for forty-eight years before the Lord took him.”

And then her face grew serious.

“Do you think the people at Hacienda Santa Maria are safe?” she asked.

“Fernando’s down there right now, Abuela, making sure they are.”

“And how is he going to do that?”

“He took some security people with him,” Castillo said.

“From Gladiator Security? Was that necessary? The police chief in Oaxaca is an old, old friend of ours. And, for that matter, so is the chief of police in Acapulco. Between them, I’m sure . . .”

“Abuela, Colonel Ferris was kidnapped fifty miles from Acapulco,” Castillo said.

“So you decided that people from Gladiator Security were needed?”

“Not Gladiator Security. The people Fernando took to the hacienda are Spetsnaz.
Ex-Spetsnaz.
”

“Russian Green Berets?”

“More or less. They’ve been protecting Sweaty’s cousin Aleksandr and his family in Argentina.”

“And Fernando took them there?”

Castillo nodded.

“Then he must take this threat very seriously,” she said.

“He does. You seem surprised.”

“He knows it will insult our people at Hacienda Santa Maria,” she said.

“Abuela, we’re trying to protect them. Why should they be insulted?”

“Fernando knows—and you should—that Hacienda Santa Maria has been in the family for centuries. It was a land grant from the king of Spain. For all that time, our people there have been fighting off people who wanted to do the hacienda harm. Indians, all sorts of banditos, even French soldiers when Mexico had a French emperor. And lately these despicable drug people. They won’t think they need any help.”

“Well, they’re wrong,” Castillo said.

“And getting back to where this conversation began,” she said. “Neither do I. I’ve been taking care of myself for a long time. I don’t need more people from Gladiator than are already here.”

“Wrong again, Abuela,” Castillo said. “From now on, you don’t go anywhere without people from Gladiator. One of them will drive your car.” He paused, and then added, “Which will probably cause your insurance company to heave a huge sigh of relief.”

She frowned at him and looked as if she were going to reply. But then her expression changed to a smile as Lester Bradley walked into the breakfast room. He was carrying a Brick.

“Good morning, Lester,” Doña Alicia said. “Did you sleep well?”

“Good morning,” Bradley replied.

“Of course he slept well,” Castillo said. “Nobody was snoring in his room.”

This triggered a thirty-second explosion in Russian from Sweaty, which Doña Alicia could not translate but obviously understood.

Castillo put up his hands in a gesture of surrender, but did not really look very remorseful.

“Sit down, dear,” Doña Alicia said, “and have some breakfast.”

“Yes, ma’am, thank you,” Lester said, then turned to Castillo. “Colonel, can I see you a moment?”

“Lester, we’re both retired. That means I don’t call you sergeant anymore, and you don’t call me colonel.”

“Yes, sir,” Lester replied.

“Try ‘Your Majesty’ on for size. If that doesn’t work, how about ‘Charley’?”

Bradley smiled.

“I . . . uh . . .” Bradley said, and looked at Doña Alicia.

“What’s up, Les?” Castillo said.

“Mr. Casey called a couple of minutes ago,” Bradley said, “to tell me Net Two is up and running. If you want to use it, punch two forward slashes and then the other numbers.”

“What’s ‘Net Two’?” Castillo asked.

“Mr. Casey said when you asked, I was to tell you to call Mr. D’Alessandro.”

He laid the Brick in front of Castillo and opened it.

Castillo took out the handset.

“Two forward slashes, and then the number,” Bradley repeated.

Castillo did so.

“What’s up, Vic?”

“Put it on loudspeaker,” Sweaty ordered.

Castillo either didn’t hear her or chose to ignore her.

Their conservation was brief, essentially one-sided, with Castillo doing most of the listening and replying with short answers. Finally, he said, “We’ll be in touch,” and replaced the handset in the Brick.

“What is ‘Net Two’?” Sweaty demanded immediately.

It took him a moment to frame his reply.

“The reason we now have two Casey networks is because we have to cut Natalie Cohen out of the original net, and we don’t want her to know that she’s been cut.”

“That requires an explanation,” Sweaty said.

“Let me tell you what she told Frank Lammelle,” Castillo said. “Natalie Cohen said that President Clendennen thinks we tried, we’re trying, to stage a coup d’état. First we get him to appoint Montvale as Vice President, then we get rid of Clendennen.”

“My God!” Doña Alicia said.

“That never entered my mind,” Castillo said. “Maybe it should have. But that’s moot. Montvale and Natalie and Frank no longer have the threat of impeachment to hold Clendennen in line. So now it’s his turn to get rid of people. That circus at Langley—Clendennen’s press conference—was his first move. He not only got rid of Porky Parker, but he made the point to the others that he was coming after them just as soon as he could find a reason.

“Once they get the message, he hopes they will resign. They can leave his service with their reputations intact, instead of getting fired for incompetence, as Parker was. It’s clear to both Lammelle and Cohen that he plans to use this mess in Mexico as the way to do it.

“So Natalie told Frank their only defense against this is to not give him any excuse at all to accuse them of either incompetence or disloyalty.

“Making matters worse, Lammelle says that Cohen—keep in mind that it was her idea to send Ferris, Danny Salazar, and the other Special Forces people down there in the first place—will go ballistic if she even suspects what Aleksandr Pevsner plans to do in Mexico.”

“Which is?” Doña Alicia asked softly.

“Pevsner has decided that the best defense against what Putin has in mind for us is a good offense.”

“And you, Carlos?” she asked. “How do you feel about that?”

Castillo hesitated just perceptibly before replying, “Abuela, taking into consideration both that Putin has proved—Herr Friedler was not the only man he had assassinated—that he’s willing and capable of murdering everybody he thinks is in his way, I’m afraid Pevsner is right.”

“You said, ‘taking into consideration both.’”

“Abuela, Putin’s already tried, several times, to assassinate me. There’s no question that he’s coming after Svetlana, and I can’t let that happen. I won’t let that happen.”

Doña Alicia sighed. “Oh, my. We have a very bad situation on our hands, don’t we?”

Castillo didn’t reply for a long moment. Then he said, “We thought—naïvely thought—that we had bloodied his nose when we grabbed the Tupelov and turned General Sirinov over to the CIA. We offered him an armistice; he didn’t accept it. So what we have to do now is bloody it again, hard enough this time so that he gets the message.”

She considered that for a moment.

“And so what do we do now?”

“‘So what do
we
do now’?” Castillo parroted, lightly sarcastic.

His grandmother stared at him icily.

“Until you lower me into my grave, Carlos, I will continue to run this family. Never forget that!”

“Sorry,” he said.

He saw Sweaty looking at her with a smile of approval.

“And what
I
am going to do now is have a word with Señor Medina,” Doña Alicia said.

She turned to Sweaty.

“Señor Medina has been running Hacienda Santa Maria for us for thirty years. And before that, his father ran it. And before him, his father.”

She paused, then looked at Lester. She pointed at the Brick on the side table.

“That device, you told me, Lester, prohibits people from eavesdropping on conversations?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And Fernando has one?”

Lester nodded.

“And you told me, Carlos, that Fernando is at the hacienda?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Lester, would you bring that to me and show me again how to use it?”