“Your Spanish is getting better,” Castillo said.
“Better than what?” Pevsner asked suspiciously.
“Better than it was,” Castillo replied.
“What does he eat?” Anna asked.
“Puppy chow,” Castillo said, and took a plastic zip-top bag from his jacket pocket and laid it on a small table. “I have more in the hotel. And I am assured it can be found in any supermarket in the country. This is Royal Canine Puppy Chow For Very Large Dogs. Max loves it.”
“I’ll have to write that down,” Anna said, and went to an escritoire that looked as if it belonged in the Louvre and did so.
“I have a little trouble picturing you, Friend Charley, traveling the globe and caring for a puppy,” Pevsner said.
“He brings out the paternal instinct in me,” Castillo said piously.
“What were you doing in Germany. Visiting home?”
“Actually, I had to go to a funeral.”
“How sad,” Anna said. “Family?”
“Employee,” Castillo said. He met Pevsner’s eyes. “He died suddenly.”
Three adolescents entered the room and politely, shyly, made their manners to Castillo. The girl kissed his cheek and the older boy shook his hand.
“Oh, where did that puppy come from?” Elena Pevsner said. She took him from her mother, matter-of-factly held him up to examine his belly, and finished. “He’s adorable. What’s his name?”
“That’s up to you, sweetheart,” Castillo said.
It took her a moment to take his meaning. “Really?”
Castillo nodded.
“Oh, Charley, thank you ever so much!”
“Honey,” Castillo said, picking up the bag of puppy chow. “Why don’t you take him someplace, get two bowls, put the bowls on newspaper, put water in one, and this in the other?”
“How much do I give him?”
“Honey, you’re lucky. Dogs are like people. Some are pigs and eat whatever is put in front of them—then get sick and throw it up. The others, like Max and Nameless here, are gentlemen. They take only what they need, when they need it.”
My God, her eyes are shining!
Like Randy’s eyes.
I just did a good thing,
But if no good deed goes unpunished . . . ?
The maid appeared with a bottle of vodka encased in ice.
“Can Max come?” Aleksandr, the oldest boy, asked.
“If I can have him back,” Castillo said.
The children left the room. Max trotted after them.
“That was a very nice thing for you to do, Charley,” Pevsner said as he handed Castillo a small glass of the vodka. “Thank you.”
“My son has his brother,” Castillo said. “I thought Elena would like one.”
“You saw your son?” Anna asked.
“His grandfather brought him to our ranch for quail hunting. I hunted with him, and then I started to teach him how to fly.”
“And he doesn’t know?” Anna asked softly.
Castillo shook his head.
“Oh, Charley!” Anna said, and went to him and laid her hand on his cheek and kissed him. “I am so sorry.”
Castillo shrugged.
“Me, too, but that’s how it is.”
“Would you think me terribly cynical if I suspected there’s more to your visit than bringing the children a puppy?” Pevsner asked.
“Alek!” Anna said warningly.
“I don’t know about cynical. I guess it’s to be expected of an oprichniki. I know you guys have to be careful, even of your friends. Or maybe especially of your friends.”
If looks could freeze, I would now be colder than that ice-encased bottle.
He raised his vodka glass to Pevsner and drained it.
“Mud in your eye, Alek!”
Anna’s face had gone almost white.
“What did you say?” Pevsner asked coldly.
“About what?”
“Goddamn you to hell, Charley!”
“You’re not supposed to have secrets from your friends,” Castillo said. “I remember you telling me that. Several times.”
“You are on very thin ice, Friend Charley.”
“Speaking of ice,” Castillo said, raising his glass. “That was just what I needed. May I have another?”
He went to the ice-encased bottle of vodka and refilled his glass.
“Can I pour you one? You look like you could use it,” Castillo said, and then asked, “How come you never told me you are a card-carrying member of the Oprichina?”
“Was a member,” Anna said very softly.
Pevsner glared at her, then moved the glare back to Castillo, who went on: “Okay. Was an oprichniki. Did you formally resign? Or just not show up for work one day as the Kremlin walls were falling down?”
“What do you want, Charley?” Pevsner asked very softly.
“I want you to tell me everything you know about Colonel Dmitri Berezovsky.”
Anna sucked in her breath. Her lips looked bloodless.
God, I hope she’s not about to pass out!
“Berezovsky, Dmitri, Colonel. The Berlin rezident,” Castillo pursued. “A high muckety-muck of the Oprichina. Tell me about him, Alek, please.”
“Why are you interested in Berezovsky?”
“Fair question. He had a man who worked for me at the Tages Zeitung killed. And he tried to take out two people very close to me. Oh, and me. I’m always curious about people who want to kill me.”
“If Berezovsky wanted you . . . eliminated . . . you wouldn’t be standing here,” Pevsner said.
“Well, you’re wrong. He did, and here I am. You should not believe your own press releases, Alek. The SVR isn’t really that good.”
“Why did he try to kill you, Charley?” Anna asked.
He saw that some of the color had returned to her face.
And there was something about her carriage that told him that she had abandoned her just-a-wife-who-doesn’t-have-any-idea-what’s-going-on role.
And Pevsner has seen that, too. He’s not trying to shut her up.
“I don’t really know. I think he was trying to send a message for the SVR. Maybe make a statement. ‘We’re back, and we’re going to kill everybody who gets in our way.’ ”
He gave that a moment to register and then went on. “I know why he took out the reporter for the Tages Zeitung. He was getting too close to the connection between the Marburg Group who made all that money sending medicine and food to Iraq, and what’s going on in the African chemical factory. I want you to tell me everything you know about that, too.”
That was a shot in the dark.
But his eyes—and especially the tongue quickly wetting his lips—show I hit him hard with it.
The proof came immediately.
“In exchange for what?” Pevsner asked.
“Well, for one thing, it will keep our professional relationship where it is. The agency and the FBI will leave you alone . . . presuming you don’t break any U.S. laws.”
That’s bullshit.
The agency and the FBI will no more obey the President’s order to leave him alone than they obeyed Montvale’s order to leave me alone. They will do whatever they can to silence him. The agency’s skirts are the opposite of clean.
“How cynical are you, Friend Charley?”
“Well, probably not as much as I should be. But I can learn, I guess.”
“I have personal reasons for not telling you all I know about Dmitri Berezovsky. I won’t tell you what they are, and that’s not negotiable. I will tell you what I know—which isn’t much—about the chemical laboratory in the ex- Belgian Congo, and my price there is very cheap. You don’t tell anyone—anyone including the agency—where you got it.”