W. E. B. Griffin - Presidential Agent 07 (28 page)

 

 

Sweaty came out of the bathroom, holding a towel by its edges.

“Showtime!” she said, and dropped the towel.

She walked on her toes to the bed quickly and with exquisite grace and got in beside him.

She laid her body half across Castillo, making him think that she had the most wonderful breasts he had ever encountered by any standard he could think of.

“You play the fool so well,” she said, “that sometimes I forget that you’re not a fool at all.”

He could feel her breath against his ear.

“Flattery will get you everywhere,” he said. “But what specifically do you have in mind?”

“Aleksandr’s face, when you told him you never discuss business when you’re drinking, especially with
this
family, was priceless.”

“Beware of Russians bearing booze is my motto, baby.”

“And why didn’t you tell me you’re a legend?”

“Who said I was?”

“Kiril. When I said, ‘Thank you for letting Carlos fly as your co-pilot,’ he said, ‘I was glad to have him. I don’t think anyone knows more about flying in the mountains than he does. He even wrote a book about it. He’s a legend in the American army.’ Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Modesty.”

She pinched his nipple.

“Can I ask you a personal question?” he said.

“No.”

“What kind of don’t-get-pregnant medicine do you take?” he pursued, then thought:
Where the hell did that come from? Did Alek put a little sodium pentothal in that vodka?

“I should have known . . .” she said with a sigh.

“You’re not answering the question.”

“You really want to know?”

“I really want to know.”

“When I stopped living with Evgeny, I stopped taking those once-a-day pills.”

“You were on that stuff when you were married to Evgeny? Why?”

“I didn’t want his baby, obviously.”

Charley thought:
And since you certainly don’t want mine . . .

He said: “And now?”

“When I knew Dmitri and I were going to try to get out, I went to a Danish gynecologist and she gave me a shot.”

“What kind of a shot?”

“I don’t know what it was called, but she said it would keep me from getting with child for a year . . .”

“. . . which was enough. I didn’t mind dying, but I didn’t want the bastard child of an SVR interrogator . . .”

“What?”

“The first step when breaking down a senior female traitor is to rape her,” Sweaty said matter-of-factly. “Multiple times, different men, over a forty-eight-hour period. I could handle that, but I didn’t want a child coming into the world that way. If they shot me, it wouldn’t have been a problem, but they could have—probably would have—just kept me in prison, where I would wind up giving birth to the bastard child. So I got the shot from the Danish doctor.”

“Two weeks later I met you,” Sweaty went on. “And sure enough, the shot kept me from being with child for a year. Actually for fourteen months.”

“So what are you going to do now?”

She met his eyes, and after a moment said: “In seven months, we’re going to have a baby. I told you I was going to give you a son.
Sons.
Didn’t you believe me?”

He stared into her ice blue eyes, now genuinely warm, and thought:
Calling Charley Castillo a miserable lowlife sickly suspicious sonofabitch is the monumental understatement of all time.

Then, taking him absolutely by surprise, his chest started to heave and his eyes teared.

“Oh, God!” he said in anguish. “Oh, Sweaty!”

“I thought you’d be happy?” she said, confused.

“Sweetheart, I am so happy I think I’m going to have a heart attack.”

 

 

Aleksandr Pevsner, Tom Barlow, Nicolai Tarasov, Stefan Koussevitzky, Kiril Koshkov, and Anatoly Blatov were sitting around the long table when Castillo and Svetlana walked in, holding hands, trailed by Lester Bradley, his arms full with two laptops and a Brick. Janos was in his usual place, sitting in a chair against the wall.

A maid and one of Pevsner’s ex-Spetsnaz waiters were clearing away the breakfast dishes.

“Sweaty, I don’t think the
Reichsmarschall
plans to feed us,” Castillo said in English. “Do you think we could possibly have annoyed him in some way?”

“The
Reichsmarschall
,” Pevsner replied sarcastically, “didn’t know how long it would be before—or even if—Romeo and Juliet could bear to be torn apart. So we decided we’d better start without you.”

Castillo looked around the table. Tom Barlow was smiling. The others were stone-faced.

“Nice try, Hermann, but no brass ring,” Castillo said. “Starting without me would be what Kiril, Anatoly, and I would call really flying blind, and you know it. Or you should.”

Pevsner stared at him icily but didn’t reply.

Castillo turned to the waiter and, switching to Russian, ordered: “Set places for us. Put me at the head of the table, where Mr. Pevsner is now sitting. Podpolkovnik Alekseeva will sit to my right, and Mr. Bradley to my left.”

The waiter looked at Pevsner for direction. He got none.

“Your house, Alek, your call,” Castillo said. “You either stop behaving like you think you’re Ivan the Terrible and I’m a second lieutenant of your household cavalry, or we’re out of here.”

“
We’re
out of here?” Pevsner parroted sarcastically.

“ETA of Jake Torine and the Gulfstream at San Carlos de Bariloche International is twelve fifteen,” Castillo said. “Unless you agree that I’m the best man to deal with our mutual problem, I’ll just get on it and leave you here to deal with your problem by yourself.”

“Then get on your goddamn airplane and go,” Pevsner said.

“Where Carlos goes, I go,” Svetlana said.

Pevsner shot back: “Then
both
of you get on the goddamn airplane and go. I will deal with the problem this family faces.”

“Aleksandr,” Nicolai Tarasov said, “I think you should listen to what Podpolkovnik Castillo has to say.”

Pevsner looked at him in disbelief.

“I’ll go further than that,” Tom Barlow said. “You
have
to listen to what Carlos has to say.”

“Or what?” Pevsner snapped.

“Or when Carlos’s airplane leaves, Lora, Sof’ya, and I also will be on it. Presuming of course Carlos will take us.”

“Of course we will,” Svetlana said. “You’re family.”

“Family? Family? What it looks like to me is that my family is betraying me and taking the side of this goddamn American.”

Svetlana snapped: “You goddamn fool! You are alive because of this ‘goddamn American.’ ”

Castillo thought
: She sounds like an SVR lieutenant colonel.

“And if not for Carlos,” Tom Barlow added, “Svetlana, Lora, Sof’ya, and I would never have gotten out of Vienna. And you really would be handling this family problem by yourself.”

“Before this family starts doing to each other what Vladimir Vladimirovich wants to do to us,” Tarasov said, “can we at least listen to what Podpolkovnik Castillo has to say?”

Pevsner glared at each of them.

“I’ll listen,” he said after a moment.

“How gracious of you,” Castillo said, his tone dripping sarcasm. “May I presume that I have the floor?”

“I should have killed you on the Cobenzl,” Pevsner said evenly.

“I guess I don’t,” Castillo said.

“Yes, you do,” Tom Barlow said. “Aleksandr, I just figured your odd behavior out. You just can’t face the fact that Carlos can deal with this problem better than you can. Carlos was right—again—to say that you think you’re Ivan the Terrible and we’re in Russia. You’re not, and we’re not. I say, thank God for Carlos.”

“So do I,” Anna Pevsner put in.

Castillo snapped his head around. He had been unaware she’d come into the room.

“What?” Pevsner snapped.

“Will anyone join me in giving thanks to the Lord for bringing Carlos into the family?” Anna said as she bent her head and put her hands, fingertips touching, together in prayer.

Castillo thought that Svetlana would be agreeable to involving the Deity, but he was genuinely surprised when Nicolai Tarasov and Stefan Koussevitzky got to their feet, bowed their heads, crossed themselves, put their hands together, and waited for Anna to continue.

And really surprised when Aleksandr Pevsner did the same thing.

 

 

Ninety seconds later, after everyone had joined Anna in saying “Amen,” Castillo suddenly found himself facing an expectant audience.

“The way I’m going to do this is with what the U.S. Army calls a staff study,” he began. “If we can get laptops in here for everybody, Lester has my staff study on a thumb drive . . .”

“You heard Podpolkovnik Castillo,” Aleksandr Pevsner barked at the waiter. “What are you waiting for? Bring the goddamn laptops! And immediately serve their breakfast, as was ordered.”

 

 

“Go see who’s out there, Douglas,” President Clendennen ordered. “I called this meeting for half past eight, and that’s what time it is.”

“Yes, Mr. President,” replied Secret Service Special Agent Mark Douglas, who now saw himself as the guardian of the President’s door. He went through the door into the outer office.

The President pointed at Clemens McCarthy, the presidential press secretary, and at Supervisory Secret Service Agent Robert J. Mulligan—both seated on simple chairs against the wall—and motioned them toward the armchairs and couches to which senior officials felt entitled.

“We don’t want these disloyal bastards to feel too comfortable in here, do we?” the President asked rhetorically.

Douglas came back into the office and announced, “The secretary of State, the attorney general, and the FBI director are out there, Mr. President.”

“Look at your watch, and in precisely five minutes let them in,” the President ordered.

“Yes, sir. And the secretary of Defense, Mr. President, and General Naylor are out there.”

“I didn’t send for them,” Clendennen said.

“Secretary Beiderman said he is aware he doesn’t have an appointment, Mr. President,” Douglas said. “He said he will await your pleasure.”

Clendennen considered that a moment, and then said, “Let them in with the others.”

“Yes, sir.”

 

 

Five minutes later, Secretary of State Natalie Cohen led Attorney General Stanley Crenshaw, FBI Director Mark Schmidt, Defense Secretary Frederick K. Beiderman, and CENTCOM Commander in Chief General Allan Naylor into the room.

“Since I didn’t send for you, Secretary Beiderman,” the President said, “what’s on your mind? Let’s get that out of the way first.”

“Mr. President, I regret to have to tell you that General Naylor was unable to speak with General McNab as you requested.”

“Why not?”

“General McNab was on his way to—by now is in—Afghanistan,” Beiderman said, and waited for the explosion.

It didn’t come.

Clendennen didn’t say anything at all.

Beiderman went on: “It was our intention, Mr. President—General Naylor’s and mine—to speak with General McNab together. But when General Naylor called, General O’Toole, the deputy SPECOPSCOM commander, reported that General McNab was on his way to Afghanistan.”

The President considered that for a moment, and then said, “Well, we’ll just have to deal with that issue at a later time, won’t we?”

“Yes, sir,” Beiderman said.

“And the photographs?”

“I have them right here, Mr. President.”

“Give them to Mulligan,” the President said. “We wouldn’t want them to disappear, would we?”

“Yes, sir,” Beiderman said. “I mean, no, sir, we wouldn’t.”

Still standing, and thus somewhat awkwardly, he opened his attaché case, took out the manila envelope that held the photographs, and handed it to Supervisory Special Agent Mulligan.

“Will that be all, Mr. President?” Beiderman asked.

“No. Stick around. I think you should hear what we’re going to do about Colonel Ferris. You, too, General Naylor.”

“Yes, sir,” they replied, speaking on top of each other.

Natalie Cohen, although she had not been invited to do so, sat down in one of the armchairs. After a moment, Attorney General Crenshaw sat on one of the couches, and a moment later FBI Director Schmidt sat beside him. Beiderman and Naylor remained standing.

“So where do I start?” the President asked rhetorically, and then answered his own question. “With you, Schmidt.”

“Yes, sir?”

“How are things going in El Paso? Has that classified advertisement our Mexican friends have asked for been published yet?”