“The embassy’s this way, Mr. Montvale,” Castillo said, pointing his thumb in the opposite direction.
Montvale stopped in his tracks, then turned. He walked past Castillo without looking at him and with Remley following suit.
They all walked single file the one block to the employees’ gate in the embassy fence with the Secret Service following them, and the gendarmería SUV following everyone.
The rent-a-cops passed everybody through the turnstile. Then one of the rent-a-cops went to the sidewalk to more than a little arrogantly wave the Mercedes away from what was a no-parking zone. One of the gendarmes got out of the vehicle and took up a position near the turnstile. The driver held up his credentials. The rent-a-cop immediately lost his arrogance and slinked back to his station.
Castillo saw that this had not gone unnoticed and said, “Did you ever wonder, Mr. Montvale, what diplomats, members of the gendarmería, and six-hundred-pound gorillas have in common?”
Montvale looked at Castillo in disgust mingled with a little confusion.
“What did you say?” the director of National Intelligence asked.
“They can park wherever they want to,” Castillo explained.
“Good God!” Montvale said in disgust.
Montvale followed the ambassador into the building. When Castillo followed him, the ambassador turned to them both.
“May I suggest you use my office for your conversation?” he asked.
“That’s very kind of you, Mr. Ambassador,” Castillo said. “And, sir, would you clear it with the switchboard in case we have to have a secure telephone?”
“Of course.”
They passed through a metal detector guarded by a Marine. Its alarm went off, but a nod of Ambassador Silvio saw them passed through anyway.
They rode an elevator to the second floor and entered the ambassador’s outer office.
“Unplug that, please,” Castillo said, pointing to the intercom box on the desk of the ambassador’s secretary. “And the telephone, too, if it’s capable of eavesdropping on the ambassador’s office.”
Ambassador Silvio’s secretary looked at her boss in genuine surprise. And again Silvio signaled with a nod of his head to do what Castillo had requested.
“Mr. Ambassador,” Castillo said, “with the caveat that what will be discussed in your office will be classified Top Secret Presidential and is not to be disclosed to anyone, including the secretary of State, you’re quite welcome to come with us.”
Montvale answered for him: “Please do, Mr. Ambassador. I really would like a witness.”
“Very well,” Ambassador Silvio agreed, with obvious reluctance.
Castillo turned to Colonel Remley.
“With respect, sir, I don’t believe you have the Need to Know.”
“And what if I insist that Colonel Remley participate, Castillo?” Montvale said coldly.
“Then we will not have our chat,” Castillo said evenly. “And, Colonel, with Ambassador Silvio as witness, I now inform Mr. Montvale that he is not to tell you what is said or what may transpire in the ambassador’s office.”
“I find it hard to believe that you have the authority to order Ambassador Montvale to do anything,” Remley said.
“With respect, sir, in this instance I do.”
“Wait here, Remley,” Montvale ordered. “I have the feeling that shortly I will be able to point out to Colonel Castillo how far out of line he is.”
Ambassador Silvio waved them into his office, followed them in, and closed the door.
“Is there anything I can get for anyone?” Silvio asked.
“I’d like a minute or two in there, Mr. Ambassador,” Castillo said, pointing to the ambassador’s private restroom. “The waiter in Río Alba kept pouring the soda water, and I kept drinking it, and my back teeth are awash.”
“Jesus Christ, Castillo!” Montvale said in disgust.
“Help yourself,” Ambassador Silvio said, not quite able to restrain a smile.
When Castillo came out of the restroom, Silvio was sitting behind his desk and Montvale was on a couch. Castillo sat in an armchair upholstered in what appeared to be some type of silk fabric, took a leather cigar case from his trousers pocket, and went through the ritual of trimming and lighting a long thin black cigar.
“If you’re quite through with doing that, may we begin?” Montvale asked.
“I’m waiting for you, Mr. Montvale,” Castillo said.
“All right, where are they?”
“Where are who?”
“Colonel Dmitri Berezovsky and Lieutenant Colonel Svetlana Alekseeva of the SVR.”
Castillo saw interest jump into Ambassador Silvio’s eyes.
“Next question?” Castillo said.
“You’re not going to deny that you have them, for God’s sake?”
“That would depend on what you mean by ‘have,’ Mr. Montvale.”
“I’ll be goddamned! Now he thinks he’s Bill Clinton!”
Again, Ambassador Silvio could not completely restrain a smile.
“What this is about, Ambassador Silvio—and since Lieutenant Colonel Castillo . . .”
Castillo thought his pronunciation of “lieutenant colonel” turned the rank into an obscenity.
“. . . has elected to make you privy to this, I can tell you—is that Lieutenant Colonel Castillo, without any authority whatsoever, took it upon himself to completely ignore the carefully laid plans of the CIA station chief in Vienna to cause these Russians—important Russians; Berezovsky was the rezident in Berlin and the woman the rezident in Copenhagen—to defect and flew them here.”
“Speaking hypothetically, of course,” Castillo put in, “what makes you so sure that the station agent in Vienna shared anything with me? I never laid eyes on her. How could I ignore something I didn’t know?”
“Then what were you doing in Vienna, for Christ’s sake?”
“Carrying out my orders to locate and render harmless those responsible for the assassination of Mr. Masterson.”
“And Berezovsky and Alekseeva just popped into your life?”
“Actually, that’s just about what happened. Hypothetically speaking, of course.”
“You’re going to explain that, of course?”
“If you think you can get your temper and indignation under control—and keep them that way—I’ll give it a shot.”
Montvale made a grand Go to it gesture.
“In a twenty-four-hour period starting the day before Christmas Eve, there were three assassinations. Two of them you called to ask me about: the garroting of the Kuhls in the Stadtpark in Vienna and—”
“You told me you had never heard of the Kuhls,” Montvale interrupted.
“And I hadn’t.”
“Am I permitted to ask questions?” Ambassador Silvio said, then went on without waiting for a reply. “Who are the Kuhls?”
“Were,” Montvale corrected him. “For a very long time, they were deep-cover CIA assets in Vienna. Primarily, they were involved in identifying Russians—and others—who could be influenced by others to defect. They had a number of successes over the years.”
“And they were identified and killed?”
“That’s what it looks like,” Montvale said.
Montvale and Silvio watched while Castillo relit his cigar.
Then, after exhaling a blue cloud of smoke, Castillo went on: “At just about the time the Kuhls were assassinated, a correspondent of the Tages Zeitung, Günther Friedler, was murdered in Marburg an der Lahn. That’s a small city sixty miles or so north of Frankfurt am Main, best known for Philipp’s University. The body was mutilated in an attempt to paint the murder as the result of a homosexual lover’s quarrel. Friedler was investigating the Marburg Group, a collection of German businessmen known to have profited from the Iraqi oil-for-food scam. Specifically, Friedler was looking into the connection between these people and a chemical factory operating on what had been the West German nuclear facility in the former Belgian Congo.”