As Davidson waited in the compartment, Castillo looked up and down the platform but couldn’t see anyone he wanted to see.
It would have been helpful, 007, if you had asked the nice people which car they were in!
Then he saw something he didn’t want to see.
A departing passenger, a well-dressed stout gentleman of about forty, was suddenly hit in the stomach by an eight-inch-thick bound stack of the newest edition of the Tages Zeitung. The mass of newsprint knocked him onto his rather ample gluteus maximus and caused him to say very unkind things in a very loud voice to and about the cretins in the newspaper truck.
Castillo moved quickly back into the compartment. Davidson pointed.
Berezovsky was hoisting his wife onto the adjacent platform by her hips as Sándor Tor did the same for the girl. Svetlana was throwing their luggage onto the platform. A man in a gray smock took the luggage and threw it into the Tages Zeitung truck there.
Almost simultaneously, Berezovsky and Tor hoisted themselves onto the platform. Tor directed Berezovsky to the truck, then extended his hand to assist Svetlana onto the platform.
She was well ahead of him. She had hoisted her skirt to her waist, which revealed that she was wearing both red lacey underpants and, on her inner thigh, some sort of small semiautomatic pistol in a holster.
She then leapt to the platform with the agility of a gazelle, and, adjusting her skirt in the process, ran quickly to the truck and got in.
“I have always been partial to women in red panties,” Davidson said.
“Being a professional, I was of course more interested in the pistol.”
“You didn’t notice the red panties, right?”
“In passing, of course.”
“I noticed the pistol in passing. I have no trouble walking and chewing gum at the same time. It was more than likely a Model 1908 Colt Vest Pocket, in more than likely .25 ACP, although they made some in .32 ACP.”
“It was my in-passing snap judgment that the garment in question was Victoria’s Secret Model 17B, which comes with a label warning that there is not enough material in the garment for it to be used to safely blow one’s nose.”
“You don’t think she gets cold, do you?”
“Russian women have a reputation for being warm-blooded.”
“You better keep that in mind, Charley. I think that dame is trouble.”
Castillo grunted. “That would appear to be the understatement of the day.”
He picked up his briefcase and waved Davidson ahead of him out of the compartment.
There were three burly men in the corridor. Two of them were carrying the travel kennel. It now had Mädchen inside with her pups.
That was a good idea, Charley thought. If Mädchen and Max had gotten into a fight, that would’ve been a real diversion.
The third burly man blocked their way until Billy Kocian came out of the compartment and vouched for them.
As they walked down the platform and then down the stairs to cars waiting for them on the street, Castillo saw four different groups of men—two pairs, one trio, and one quartet—who could have been waiting for Berezovsky and the others. Or who could be waiting for anyone else.
The trio seemed unusually interested in Billy Kocian and the procession following him. Which of course could be attributed to Max and Mädchen, who were growling at each other.
A silver Mercedes S600 with Budapest tags was waiting at the curb. Kocian opened the kennel, motioned Mädchen inside the automobile’s backseat, took a pup in each hand, and followed. A burly man closed the door, and the car immediately drove off.
A much smaller and older Mercedes pulled up. The burly man opened the front and rear right-side doors and motioned for Davidson and Castillo to get in. Max did so first, taking his place in back.
“Where are we going?” Davidson asked as the vehicle lurched forward.
“The Sacher,” Castillo said.
“As in Sachertorte? The cake of many layers?”
Castillo nodded. “It was invented there. Billy has an apartment there.”
“Room enough for us?”
“Room enough for us and half a dozen other people.”
[SIX]
The Bar
The Hotel Sacher
Philharmonikerstrasse 4
Vienna, Austria
1925 28 December 2005
Colonel Jacob Torine was surprised to find Castillo feeding Max potato chips in the bar when he walked in, so surprised that he opened the conversation with the question: “They let dogs in here?”
“Only if they like you,” Castillo said.
Sparkman and Delchamps chuckled; Torine shook his head.
“Let’s get a table,” Castillo said, nodding to a table in the corner of the red-velvet-walled and -draped room.
“When did you get here?” Castillo asked. “More important: Have you got something for me?”
Delchamps handed him a padded envelope sized to ship compact discs.
Castillo took his laptop computer from his briefcase, laid it on the table, and booted it up. He then pulled an unmarked recordable CD from the envelope and fed it to the computer.
“We were here—over in the Bristol—at eleven,” Torine said. “Did you have a nice train ride down here?”
“A very interesting one,” Castillo said.
Delchamps moved so he could see the laptop screen.
“I was about to mention that that disc is classified,” Delchamps said. “But I see I won’t have to. It’s not working. What the hell happened?”
“ ‘United States Central Intelligence Agency,’ ” Castillo read off the screen. “ ‘Foreign Intelligence Evaluation Division. Top Secret. This material may not be removed from the FIED file-review room or copied by any means without the specific written permission of the Chief, FIED.’ ”
“How come I can’t see that?”
“You’re getting a little long in the tooth, Edgar. When was the last time you had your eyes checked?”
“Come on, Charley!”
“It’s got a filter over the screen,” Castillo said. “Unless you hold your head in exactly the right position—dead straight on—you can’t read the screen. More important, other people can’t read your screen.”
“Where’d you get it?”
“Radio Shack,” Castillo said. Then: “Really. I think it cost four ninety-five.” Then he said, “Oh, good, this has got Lieutenant Colonel Alekseeva’s dossier on it.”
“You know about her?” Delchamps asked, surprised.
“Charley and I can even tell you the color of her underwear,” Davidson said. “Professionally, of course.”
Delchamps looked at him, shook his head, but didn’t respond exactly.
“We had some trouble getting that disc, Charley,” he said.
“Tell me,” Castillo said, not taking his eyes from the laptop screen.
“Well, we got on the horn the minute we took off from Frankfurt. I told Miller what you wanted, and he said, ‘No problem. I’ll put Lester in a Yukon and send him over there. He’s feeling underutilized anyway.’”
“And then?” Castillo asked.
“Dick called me back as we were about to land here, and said Langley was giving Lester trouble and the best way he could think to handle it was to go over there himself. That raised the question of how we were going to get the data without taking one of the AFC portables to the hotel and going through all the trouble of setting it up.
“Then Sparkman volunteered . . .”