“I decided that Berezovsky knew who Gossinger is—who I am—and saw in the newspaper photograph that I was traveling in the Gulfstream, and decided I was his safe ticket out of Europe.
“What I guessed then turned out to be pretty much on the money. They told me that they had heard about the Kuhls, which suggested the SVR would be waiting for them in Vienna. And they had very little faith in the CIA station chief in Vienna, fearing that she would leave them hanging in the breeze if the SVR was onto them.
“So I slipped them out of the West Bahnhof in Vienna, onto the Gulfstream, and got them the hell out of Dodge.”
“And brought them here,” Montvale finished for him. “Where are they, Charley? To salvage anything from this mess, we have to get them to Washington and turned over to the agency just as soon as possible.”
“No. That’s out of the question, I’m afraid. They are not going to turn themselves over to the agency.”
Montvale exhaled audibly.
He said: “You’re telling me that you offered to give them two million dollars to tell you all about the chemical factory in the Democratic Republic of the Congo? God, you don’t even know its name!”
I’m not even going to respond to that ridiculous remark.
He’s trying to get a rise out of me.
“I know all about that chemical factory,” Montvale went on. “There’s nothing of interest there.” He grinned. “You have been conned out of two million dollars, my young friend.”
Castillo caught his pulse rising at the condescension.
Let it go. . . .
He counted to ten, then said in a reasonable tone: “Tell you what. Why don’t we call the agency and ask them? If they say there’s nothing of interest to our national security there, then once again you’ve put blind faith in who feeds you your intel. Because they and you are wrong. More egg on their face and more, I’m afraid, on yours. There is a very active chemical laboratory and factory there, funded with oil-for-food money. It has the mission of poisoning the water supplies of our major cities and, they hope, poisoning as many millions of Americans as possible as collateral damage.”
“Berezovsky told you this?”
Castillo nodded.
“And you believe him?”
Castillo nodded again.
“I don’t have to call the agency to verify what I already know.”
“If I were you, I would call,” Castillo said. “If you do, and they tell you they’re on top of the situation, and there’s nothing to worry about, then you’ll be covered, with Ambassador Silvio and I as witnesses, when this comes down. You asked and they assured you everything was hunky-dory.”
For a moment, Castillo thought Montvale would not reach for the thick-corded secure telephone on Ambassador Silvio’s desk, but in the end he did.
“How does this thing work?”
Silvio held out his hand and took the handset from Montvale.
“What we’re going to have to do is get a secure line to the State Department switchboard. They can connect you with the CIA,” Silvio said, then switched on the secure telephone.
“This is Ambassador Silvio. Get a secure line to State, then get a secure line to the director of Central Intelligence. Ambassador Montvale is calling.”
Toward the end of saying “Ambassador Montvale is calling” Silvio had raised his voice questioningly while looking at Montvale, in effect asking, Did Montvale want the DCI or someone else?
Montvale had nodded, signaling that DCI was fine.
“Put it on the speakerphone,” Castillo said. “That way Ambassador Silvio and I can both testify that you asked the DCI personally.”
Montvale gave him a dirty look, then looked at the phone base and pushed the speakerphone button in time for everyone to hear, “Office of the DCI.”
“This is Ambassador Montvale. Get me the DCI, please.”
Moments later, the voice of John Powell, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, inquired cheerfully: “How are you, Mr. Ambassador?”
“I’m well, thank you, Jack.”
“What can I do for you?”
“I’m sitting in Ambassador Silvio’s office in Buenos Aires.”
“Little warm down there, isn’t it?”
“Brutal. Jack, Lieutenant Colonel Castillo is with us.”
“Oh, really?”
“The question has come up—actually, Castillo raised it—about activity in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; specifically, on that experimental farm the West Germans used to operate down there. You know what I mean?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Do you know of anything going on down there?”
“Is that what Castillo suggested?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Where did he get that?”
Castillo clapped his hands, then drew his right hand in a cutting motion across his throat.
“He’d rather not say,” Montvale said.
“I see. Well, as I said, I haven’t heard anything. But if you’ll give me a minute, I’ll check to see if anything has happened that I missed. Hang on a minute, please.”
There came the murmur of unintelligible voices in the background, and then Powell came back on: “It’ll take a couple of minutes. Are you on a speakerphone?”
“Yes, Jack, we are.”
“How are you, Colonel?”
Castillo said: “I’m very well, Mr. Powell. Thank you. And yourself?”
“I understand you’ve been in Vienna.”
“There is a rumor circulating to that effect, sir.”
“Apropos of nothing whatever, Colonel, to kill the time while we’re waiting to hear about Africa, so to speak, a couple of interesting Interpol warrants crossed my desk this morning.”
“Yes, sir?”
“The Russians say that several of their diplomats—Dmitri Berezovsky and Svetlana Alekseeva, known to be SVR officers, one in Copenhagen and the other in Berlin—have absconded with large amounts of money. More than a million dollars from Copenhagen, and twice that from Berlin.”
“Well, I suppose that goes to show we’re not the only ones with crooked diplomats,” Castillo said, and winked at Ambassador Silvio, who smiled and shook his head.
“The Russians seem really upset about these two,” Powell went on. “They’ve offered a large reward for information leading to their arrest. And no one seems to know where they are or how they got there.”
“Well, I’ll keep my eyes peeled for dishonest-looking Russians, Mr. Powell. And you’ll be the first to know if I find any.”
“I don’t like to think what will happen to these people—Lieutenant Colonel Alekseeva is Colonel Berezovsky’s sister, and his wife and little girl are apparently with them—if the SVR catches up with them. As they will eventually.”
“Well, just off the top of my head, Mr. Powell, I’d say if anyone knew how to dodge the SVR it would be a couple of senior SVR officers. Especially if they had a lot of cash. What did you say they’re supposed to have stolen? Three million dollars?”
“And off the top of my head, Colonel Castillo,” Powell said with more than a little impatience in his voice, “if the situation presented itself, I’d think it obviously would be in their self-interest to place themselves under the protection of the CIA.”
“And you’d really like to talk to them, right?”
“Yes, we would really like to talk to them.”
“Well, I’d say that might be possible somewhere down the pike, but not anytime soon.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, if I have heard that the Vienna station chief has a big mouth—I understand she’s been telling wild stories to her old pal, Mrs. Patricia Davies Wilson, who in turn has been running her mouth to C. Harry Whelan, Jr.”—Castillo glanced at Montvale to gauge his reaction to the mention of the journalist who’d tried to crucify Castillo but was outsmarted by Montvale—“I think we have to presume these people have heard it, too. Under those circumstances, I don’t think if I were them I would place a hell of a lot of faith in the agency to protect them. Would you?”