“Guilty,” Castillo said. “That thought has occurred to me.”
“And you still think you’re in love?”
He nodded.
“In that case, maybe I should just shut up.”
“I wish you wouldn’t,” Castillo said. “Let’s get it all out.”
She considered that a moment, shrugged again, then said: “Here’re a couple of things to consider. Charley. . . . Oh, hell, I was about to say that Svetlana is at least as good a spook as I am, maybe even as good as you are. But you’ve considered that, I’m sure. Anyway, given that, if I were in her shoes, snaring somebody like you by whatever means—certainly including spreading my legs—would be a no-brainer.”
“Jesus Christ, honey!” Paul Sieno exclaimed.
“Stop thinking like a husband, Paul,” Susanna said.
“And,” Jack Britton said, “since we’re all running at the mouth, Charley, you were on the rebound after Betty Schneider dumped you, ripe to get plucked by any female, and certainly by a really good-looking, smart one with every reason to have a ‘protect my ass’ agenda.”
“Betty dumped him?” Sandra Britton asked, surprised. “You never told me about that!”
“I didn’t think it was any of our business,” Britton said.
“How’d you hear about that?” Castillo asked.
“I heard Agnes and Joel Isaacson talking,” Britton said.
Castillo shrugged. “She did dump me. What she said was that she didn’t want to be married to a guy who instead of coming home for supper would leave a voice mail that he was off to Timbuktu. But what I really think it was is that being with me would interfere with her new Secret Service career; that what she really wanted to do was be more of a hotshot cop than her brother. And I really don’t think I was on the rebound.”
Britton’s face showed he didn’t believe that at all.
“The flaw in your argument, Susie,” Alex Darby said, “is that none of the Russians need Charley now. If she had, to use your apt if indelicate phraseology, spread her legs before he brought them here . . .”
“We don’t know when or where that happened,” Susanna said, and looked at Castillo.
He was on the verge of telling her that it was none of her goddamn business when he had first been intimate with Svetlana, but then realized that, in fact, it was.
Castillo made a grand gesture with his right index finger, poking the felt of the table. “Here, the first night.”
There was a resounding silence.
“On the pool table?” Sandra Britton blurted. “Charley!”
“No, I mean in Argentina, not before.”
“Right after her swimsuit top ‘accidentally’ came off, right?” Susanna said, undeterred.
Castillo nodded.
“That was an accident,” Sandra said. “I saw what happened.”
“Well, she really covered herself up just as fast as she could, I’ll say that for her. Top and bottom,” Susanna said.
Castillo’s memory bank kicked in, and he had a clear image of Svetlana adjusting her bathing suit back over her exposed buttock.
“If I didn’t know better, Susie,” Darby said, “I’d suspect you don’t like Podpolkovnik Alekseeva very much.”
“That’s the point, you asshole,” Susanna snapped. “She is a podpolkovnik of the FSB—”
“Was a podpolkovnik of the SVR,” Delchamps corrected her without thinking.
“Et tu, Edgar?” Susanna said, thickly sarcastic. “You’re into this true-love-at-first-sight bullshit?”
“Well, what the hell’s wrong with that?” Sandra challenged. “It happens.”
“Bullshit!” Susanna said.
“I don’t know about you people,” Sandra snapped back. “But it does happen to certain cops and schoolteachers. Tell her, Jack.”
“Guilty,” Britton said.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Susanna said disgustedly.
Darby said: “What I started to say, Susie, what seems an hour or so ago, before we got into the romantic aspects of all this, is the flaw in your argument is that the Russians don’t need Charley anymore.”
“Meaning what?” Susanna challenged.
“Well, for example, we weren’t at the second safe house thirty minutes when the Russians came in, bearing gifts.”
“Like what?”
“Passports and national identity cards for everybody—Argentine, Uruguayan, Paraguayan, South African, Mexican.”
“All good forgeries, I’m sure,” Susanna said, her tone making clear her contempt for counterfeit passports, which everybody knew were good only until immigration authorities could run them through a computer database.
Darby took two passports and two national identity cards from a zip-top plastic bag and handed one set to Susanna and the other to Castillo. “These are genuine. I have an asset in Argentine immigration and he checked them for me.”
Castillo found himself looking at photographs of Svetlana looking at him through the sealed thick plastic of a Uruguayan national identity card and passport identifying her as Susanna Barlow, born in Warsaw, Poland, and now a naturalized citizen living in Maldonado, Uruguay. He remembered from somewhere that Maldonado was just north of the seaside resort town of Punta del Este.
“What’s the name on yours, Susanna?” Castillo asked as he extended the documents to her.
She didn’t reply. She simply handed him the set of documents Darby had given to her. When Castillo examined them, Svetlana’s photo—the same one as on the Uruguayan documents—was on both an Argentine passport and a national identity card identifying her as Susanna Barlow, born in Warsaw, Poland, and now a naturalized citizen living in Rosario.
Delchamps said: “The Paraguayan, South African, and Mexican documents may be fake, but I don’t think so. As soon as I can, I’ll check them.”
Susanna looked at him but didn’t say anything.
“What’s interesting here, Susanna,” Delchamps went on, “aside from Svetlana’s new first name, I mean, is that when I told Berezovsky I was going to meet Charley here and I thought Svetlana would be with him—” He stopped and turned to Castillo. “Where is she, by the way?”
“At yet another of Pevsner’s safe houses, in the Pilar Golf and Polo Club. Munz and Lester are with her,” Castillo furnished.
Delchamps nodded, then turned his attention back to Susanna: “Berezovsky just handed me this stuff and asked me to give it to her. I don’t think he would have done that if he planned to take off.”
“Who is Berezovsky now?” Castillo asked.
“‘Thomas Barlow,’ who else? Born in Manchester, England,” Delchamps answered.
“The Russians also showed up with a little walking around money,” Darby said. “One hundred thousand dollars of it, fresh from the Federal Reserve. Still in the plastic wrapping. It makes up a package about this big.” He demonstrated with his left hand, fingers and thumb extended in what could have been the mimicking of a bear claw. “And it was the real thing, too, Susie. Nice, crisp, spendable hundred-dollar bills.”
He waited until she reacted. All he got was a sort of so what shrug, but it was enough for him to go on.
“All of which leads Edgar and me to believe that if all they—especially she—wanted out of Charley was getting them here from Vienna and a little help until they got settled—or disappeared—that that time has passed. Berezovsky is still singing like a canary and—”
“And Charley is still alive,” Delchamps said. “Taking Charley out when he was in Bariloche would have been the smart thing for them to do, covering their tracks, and it is a given that both Pevsner and Berezovsky are very good at doing that sort of thing and lose no sleep whatever when they do it.”