“I guess I should have seen that coming. Where’s the Pride of the Marine Corps when I need him?”
“Lester will be here tomorrow morning. But you will not delegate that responsibility to him. A lot of that stuff’s likely to be very important later on, not just now. I don’t want any of it lost.”
Kensington nodded his understanding. He scanned two pages of Svetlana’s passport, then using a flash memory thumb-sized chip, put the chip into a slot and transferred the file to the AFC device. It beeped. Before he could open the scanner to rearrange the passport and repeat the process, the AFC beeped again—and a sultry female voice announced, “All done, baby. Slip it to me again! I never get enough!”
Castillo raised an eyebrow. “I presume that means the file has been received and verified, and the AFC is ready to accept another file?”
“That’s about it, sir,” Kensington said, a little—but only a little—embarrassed.
“Where’d you get the voice?”
“I played around with the voice-recognition circuits.” Kensington now smiled. “I can make anybody say almost anything.”
Castillo turned to see what, if anything, Sof’ya thought of the sultry female voice. He saw that she was shyly and politely trying to tell the maid, in English, that she would please like to wait until Mama came back before accepting the bathing suit.
The maid spoke very little English.
Castillo wondered what the child had been told about what was happening, and what rules Mama had told her that now governed her behavior.
He came to her rescue.
“Sof’ya, you can wait for your mother, but why don’t you come out and watch Max and the pups?”
“He goes in the pool?” she asked.
“Watch.”
Castillo retrieved a soccer ball from the top of a refrigerator. It was the only place where the ball could be kept out of the dog’s reach.
Max jumped to his feet, having instantly decided that playing with the ball would be more fun than having his offspring gnaw on his ears.
Castillo went to the quincho door and drop-kicked the ball into the pool. Max raced after it, not even pausing before jumping into the water. He swam to the ball and took it in his mouth.
Then Max saw that the pups had not only followed him to the pool but jumped in it after him.
Sof’ya screamed. “They’ll drown!”
Castillo didn’t think so, but Max was suddenly overcome by paternal emotions. He dropped the soccer ball, swam to one of the pups, and picked it up gently in his mouth.
The pup howled.
Sof’ya screamed again as she ran to the side of the pool.
Max looked confused. There were two pups, but he could get only one in his mouth at a time. He began to paddle in a circle. The pup that had not been rescued paddled desperately after him.
Castillo slipped out of his sandals and ran, laughing, to the pool and dove in.
He swam to the circling dogs and caught in his hand the one that was free. The pup struggled to regain its freedom, but Castillo managed to get it to the decking of the pool, where he set it at Sof’ya’s feet.
“The other one, the other one!” she screamed. “He’s going to eat it!”
“Max!” Castillo called. “Come!”
But Max kept circling.
With some difficulty—he was now almost helpless with laughter—Castillo went after Max. Max saw him coming and swam away from him to the wrong—the deep—end of the pool.
There he tried to climb out and failed. All he could do was get his paws on the edge of the pool—and slide back in.
Before Castillo could reach him, Sof’ya ran to the pool’s edge there and tried to convince Max to give up the puppy. When that failed, she reached over and grabbed a handful of Max’s fur, trying to pull him out.
Max’s paws again slipped on the poolside tiles. This time he slid backward into the water with two results: He took Sof’ya with him and, when his head went underwater, he let go of the puppy.
Castillo was by then at the scene. He grabbed the now-yapping puppy and put it on the pool deck. Max reached the surface, saw the puppy, and tried again to climb out of the pool.
The puppy ran to pool edge and started yapping indignantly at its father.
Castillo knew Max would not hurt the pup. Sof’ya did not know Max as well as Castillo did.
“He’s going to eat him! Oh, God! He’s going to eat him!”
Castillo grabbed Sof’ya so that he could hoist her out of the pool. He didn’t know how well she could swim—if at all—and she was still wearing her heavy European winter clothing.
She struggled.
At that point, reinforcements arrived. Or, more accurately, erupted from the water next to Castillo.
“What are you doing to her, you sonofabitch?” Lieutenant Colonel Svetlana Alekseeva of the Sluzhba Vnezhney Razvedki demanded, furiously indignant.
Lieutenant Colonel C. G. Castillo of the Office of Organizational Analysis instantly took his hands off Miss Sof’ya Berezovsky, which caused her to go under the water again, which frightened her, and caused her to struggle rather violently when she felt her aunt’s hands on her.
Castillo climbed agilely out of the pool, then got to his feet and surveyed the pool.
Max, apparently having finally realized that he was not going to be able to get out of the pool at the deep end, now was swimming furiously to the shallow end of the pool, where he could walk out using the wide steps there.
Svetlana, without much success, was trying to calm Sof’ya, who was still concerned about Max eating one or both of the pups, which now yapped a chorus. Finally, Svetlana succeeded to the point where she could move Sof’ya close enough to poolside so that Castillo could bend over, or kneel, and give Sof’ya his hand and haul her out and safely onto the deck.
But when Castillo bent over to offer his hand, he became distracted—and nearly fell back into the pool.
There was, of course, a very good reason for his losing his balance. And it was a sight he would not soon forget:
Although Colonel Alekseeva at the moment was wholly unaware of her problem, the fact was that when she had been struggling with Sof’ya, the strap of the top to her two-piece swimsuit had snapped, and said strap had slipped from her neck, and the top itself had fallen from her breasts.
This caused the exposure to Castillo’s instantly bedazzled eyes of the most perfect naked bosom—in every respect, including erect nipples—he had ever seen, and the number of those he had seen at one time or another over the course of his life was legion.
He was frozen for a moment, but somehow—miraculously—then reached down and coolly hauled Sof’ya from the pool. He turned her over to the housekeeper, who was hovering with concern nearby.
Then he returned his attention to the pool.
With a little bit of luck, she’ll want me to give her a hand out of the pool.
Luck, alas, was no longer to be with him.
Colonel Alekseeva saw Colonel Castillo standing above her, saw where he was looking, looked herself, and in one swift motion, modestly clapped her hands over her bosom and slipped under the water, there to attempt reaffixing her garment.
Castillo heard footsteps approaching.
“You’re going to have to teach me how to do that, Ace,” Edgar Delchamps said behind him, a laugh in his tone. “Talk about absolutely destroying the self-confidence of the prisoner about to be interrogated!”
Castillo turned to glare at him but found Delchamps walking quickly to Sof’ya, who was sitting on the grass crying and clutching both of the soaking-wet pups to her.
“You know what that means, don’t you, Sof’ya?” Delchamps asked her in a kind and gentle voice that Castillo had never heard from him.
She shook her head, not understanding the question.
“In the United States, we have a rule. When a puppy is in danger and someone rescues him, that person then owns him.”