“Indeed, for he whose name is only rarely, and then very carefully, spoken,” Lee-Watson said.
“Cedric built this place—the club—for our friend,” Munz said.
Lester Bradley caught Castillo’s attention. “Colonel, can I see you for a minute, please?”
“What’s up, Lester?”
“Privately, sir?”
“Won’t that wait until after I show him the house?” Svetlana protested.
Castillo took Bradley’s arm and led him farther into the house, to one side of a wide stairway at the end of a foyer.
“Okay, what, Lester?”
“As soon as I got the AFC set up, there was a call for you from Mr. D’Allessando.”
“What did he want?” Castillo asked, surprised.
On his retirement from twenty-four years of service—twenty-two of it in Special Forces—Chief Warrant Officer Five Victor D’Allessando had gone to work for the Special Operations Command as a Department of the Army civilian. Theoretically, he was a technical advisor to the commanding general of the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg. What he actually did for the Special Operations Command was not talked about.
“He said a friend wants to talk to you, sir.”
“Well, get on the horn and get him back, Les.”
“Yes, sir.”
Bradley walked to the foot of the stairs, then ran up them, taking them two at a time.
Svetlana, trailed by Delchamps, Davidson, and Lee-Watson, crossed the foyer to Castillo.
“Vic D’Allessando was on the horn,” Castillo reported. “He said a friend wants to talk to me.”
Delchamps and Davidson both shrugged, indicating they had no idea what D’Allessando might have on his mind.
Everybody started up the stairs to the second floor.
[THREE]
Ten minutes later, as Svetlana and Lee-Watson had just about finished showing all the comforts the master suite offered, Bradley walked in and announced, “I’ve got Mr. D’Allessando for you, sir. The AFC is just down the hall.”
Delchamps read Castillo’s mind.
“You want us to wait here, Ace?”
Castillo exhaled audibly.
“The wheezing, I suspect, reveals a certain indecision,” Delchamps said.
“I was thinking that Svetlana probably should hear this,” Castillo said.
“Or wondering how you could keep her from hearing it?” Delchamps said.
Svetlana flashed him an icy look.
“I was about to say, ‘What the hell, the barn door’s open; there’s no way to get the cow back in,’” Delchamps went on, which earned him an ever more frigid glare, “but I was afraid she might take it the wrong way.”
Davidson chuckled.
“Mr. Lee-Watson, will you excuse us for a few minutes? There’s an important call I—we—have to take.”
“Of course.”
The AFC radio was set up on a small escritoire in a small room off the corridor. There was an interior door. Castillo opened it and saw that it opened on the bedroom of the master suite.
He closed the door, and noticed that Bradley was about to leave the room. “Stay, Lester,” Castillo said, and sat down carefully on an elegantly styled and obviously fragile chair.
“Thank you so much, my ever thoughtful Charley,” Svetlana said sarcastically.
He started to get up to give her the chair, then changed his mind.
“You’re welcome,” he said, and checked the LEDs on the AFC. They were all green. One of them indicated the conversation would be conducted with the protection of AFC Class One encryption, which Aloysius Francis Casey had personally informed him that even the master National Security Agency eaves-droppers at Fort Meade, Maryland, could not penetrate.
Castillo pushed the SPEAKERPHONE button.
“How they hanging, Vic? What’s up?”
There was no immediate reply, and when a reply did come, it was not in D’Allessando’s familiar Brooklynese but rather in the crisp diction that immediately and unequivocally identified the other party to Castillo as Lieutenant General Bruce J. McNab, Commanding General of the United States Special Operations Command: “Colonel Castillo.”
“Good evening, sir.”
“I wasn’t sure Vic could get through to you, Colonel. I didn’t think they would permit you to take one of Aloysius’s radios on your terminal leave.”
“General, I’m not on terminal leave.”
There was a pause.
“But now that I have you, Coloneclass="underline" Although you have caused me a lot of grief during our long relationship, on balance you were far more useful than I ever thought you would be. Given that, I wanted to tell you personally that I did my best to dissuade General Naylor from going along with Ambassador Montvale. I failed. I’m sorry, and I wanted to tell you that myself.”
“Sir, I am not on terminal leave.”
“Well, if you’re not, you soon will be. Colonel Remley, my G-1, is on his way down there with the appropriate papers for you to sign.” He paused. “That presumes, of course, that he can find you. He’s not one of us, so that’s quite possible. Where are you?”
“Sir, I met briefly with Colonel Remley. And Ambassador Montvale. Several hours ago. They are both by now on their way back to the States. I declined to sign whatever it was he wanted me to sign.”
“Did Colonel Remley inform you that I had sent him down there at General Naylor’s direction to have you sign your acceptance of the medical board’s conclusions?”
“No, sir. Neither your name nor General Naylor’s was mentioned. Ambassador Montvale made it quite clear he wanted me to sign whatever Colonel Remley had for me to sign. I declined to do so.”
“Charley, if the President has decided it’s time for you to go, it’s your duty to go. You should know that.”
“Sir, the President is unaware of what Ambassador Montvale had planned for me.”
This time the pause was longer before McNab spoke again.
“Forgive me, Charley. I am ashamed to say I was sitting here trying to decide who would be more likely to lie to me, you or that lying sonofabitch Montvale.”
“No apology required, sir.”
“How much truth is there to the tale Montvale tells that you—for reasons he can’t imagine—snatched two Russian defectors from the CIA station chief in Vienna and flew them to Argentina?”
“They were never in the hands of the CIA, sir.”
“But you did fly them from Vienna to Argentina?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Off the top of my head, Charley, that sounds as stupid as . . . well, for example, as borrowing a Black Hawk. Why the hell did you do that?”
“You mean borrowing the Black Hawk? Or flying the Russians here?” Castillo asked innocently.
“You know goddamn well what I mean, Charley,” McNab said. But he chuckled.
“Sir, at the time I thought it—both things—was the thing to do.”
“And now that you’ve had time to reflect?”
“Now I know, sir, that I did the right thing. Both times.”
“Why?” McNab asked simply. “Skip the part about Dick Miller and his people still being among the living.”
“Sir, I had good reason to believe the SVR was onto them, and unless I got them off the train and out of the Westbahnhof in Vienna, they’d be grabbed.”
There was another long pause before McNab went on: “That raises the questions ‘What train?’ ‘What were you doing on the train?’ and ‘How did you get together with the Russians in the first place, since getting the bastards to turn is none of your goddamn business?’ But I will not ask them, because that is what is known as water under the dam. Pick it up where you got them out of the Westbahnhof and to Gaucho Land instead of turning them over to the agency in Vienna.”
“Sir, the Russians suspected that the CIA station chief also knew the SVR was onto them and was going to let them hang in the breeze. I think they were right.”