XIII
[ONE]
Pilar Golf & Polo Country Club
Pilar, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina
0850 3 January 2006
“Colonel,” Dick Miller said, “may I have a word with you in private?”
Castillo looked around the room.
They’re a motley bunch, but they’re my motley crew—my team.
“No, Dick. Unless you want to confide in me that you contracted a social disease on the way down here.”
Delchamps and Davidson chuckled.
“I think it’s important,” Miller pursued.
“No. You know Rule One: Everybody on the team knows everything.”
“Go ahead, Carlos,” Svetlana said. “Talk with him. I don’t mind.”
“Whether or not you mind is beside the point, Susan. And Rule Two is that when I speak ex cathedra it’s not open for debate.”
“You are now the Pope?” she snapped.
Castillo raised an eyebrow toward her. “Actually, that means ‘from the chair,’ not ‘from the cathedral,’ if that’s what you were thinking. And Rule Three is never be sarcastic unless you’re sure you know what you’re talking about.”
Berezovsky laughed and applauded. Delchamps joined in.
Svetlana with obvious effort kept her mouth shut.
Castillo looked at Miller. “Okay, Dick, let’s have it.”
Miller hesitated.
“The colonel just used the term ‘terminated,’ ” Leverette then said. “Presuming it means what I think it does, who and why?”
“Is that what you were going to ask, Dick?” Castillo said.
“Among other things,” Miller said.
“Okay,” Castillo said. “What Tom Barlow—not Colonel Berezovsky; no one ever heard of him—wants to do is take out two SVR people. One of them, Lieutenant Colonel Lavrenti Tarasov, is the rezident for Paraguay and Argentina. The other, Colonel Evgeny Alekseeva, works for Directorate S and came here looking for Tom and Susan.”
“What’s the connection?” Leverette asked, and when Castillo didn’t immediately answer, said, “Alekseev, Alekseeva, whoever you said?”
Castillo looked at Svetlana.
“What did you say Rule One was, Carlos?” she said, giving him her okay.
Castillo looked back at Leverette. “Alekseeva was once married to Susan.”
“Davidson, you didn’t happen to mention that,” Leverette said.
Miller rolled his eyes and shook his head.
“Because of that connection . . .” Berezovsky began and stopped. “I don’t know what to call you. ‘Mister Leverette’?”
Leverette looked at Castillo, then back to Berezovsky. “Tell you what, Tom. Against my better judgment, and until I decide you really are the nice guy Charley seems to think you are, you can call me ‘Uncle Remus’ . . .”
“Thank you.”
“Everybody else seems to be crazy, so why not me?” Leverette finished.
Berezovsky said: “As I was saying, Uncle Remus, because of that connection, Colonel Alekseeva has, in addition to a coldly professional interest, a personal interest in our defection. Unless he either can return us to Russia—which is just about an impossible ambition—or terminate us, his career will be finished. An officer who could not prevent the defection of his wife and her brother obviously is unreliable.” He met Castillo’s eyes. “I am suggesting, Carlos, that because Evgeny Alekseeva is highly skilled in this sort of thing, and we know highly motivated, eliminating him is the thing to do.”
“No,” Castillo said.
“Was that also ex cathedra, Carlos?” Berezovsky asked softly, but with a tone that was challenging.
Castillo nodded. “Yes, it was, Tom.”
“Dmitri!” Svetlana said warningly.
“I think I should tell you, Carlos,” Berezovsky said, “that I have several options. One is to smile at you and agree, then pretend to be surprised when we learn that Evgeny is no longer with us. Stepan—the larger of the two men Aleksandr assigned to watch over our Susan—he used to work for me. He would eliminate Evgeny Alekseeva with at least as much enthusiasm as Comandante Duffy would take out Lavrenti Tarasov.”
“Please don’t try that, Tom,” Castillo said.
Berezovsky ignored the comment.
“My second option,” he went on, “is to try to reason with you, one professional to another, to try to show you why eliminating Evgeny now makes more sense than anything else. And if that failed, to go to you as Svetlana’s brother and point out that this very dangerous man is determined to kill the woman we both love and my wife and child.”
“Don’t you think I’ve thought of that?” Castillo said.
“Dmitri,” Svetlana said evenly, “the woman you both love is perfectly capable of taking care of herself. And stop treating Carlos as if he started in this business last week. If he has his reasons—”
“May I continue?” Berezovsky said.
She made a face but motioned for him to go on.
“But, I am sure that Carlos would agree with me that there can be only one man in charge, so I will consider myself at his orders and defer to his judgment.”
Castillo looked him in the eyes a long moment as he considered that, then nodded once. “Thank you.”
Berezovsky looked at Leverette.
“As you so colorfully put it, Uncle Remus, ‘Everybody else seems to be crazy, so why not me?’ ”
“That’s very kind, Tom,” Leverette said. “But let the record show that Uncle Remus would vote, if asked, to whack this guy while we have the opportunity.”
“I second the motion,” Delchamps said. “Ace, if we don’t deal with this guy now, then sooner or later it’s going to come around and viciously bite us on the ass.”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t going to deal with him; I said I didn’t want him whacked,” Castillo said. “Speaking of everybody being crazy, hasn’t it occurred to anyone but me that the enemy you know is less dangerous than the one you don’t?”
“Meaning?”
“That if we take out Evgeny—”
Jesus, I’m talking about the husband of my lover!
That’s one helluva strange feeling—not to mention dangerous ground!
“—they’ll just send someone else, who may be more dangerous than Evgeny.”
“So how are you going to deal with the one we have?” Delchamps said.
“Sic Liam on him for now,” Castillo said, “while hoping I can keep him from whacking him on general purposes.” He turned to Alfredo Munz. “How safe is Aleksandr’s house in Bariloche from somebody like this guy?”
“There’s only one road leading to the house,” Munz said. “It’s patrolled and secure. The only other way to get there is by air, which is impossible to do quietly, and by boat, which you’ve seen yourself.”
Castillo nodded. “Worst-case scenario: How would the Pevsners and the Berezovskys get out if Evgeny showed up with a platoon of Ninjas?”
“Platoon of what?” Berezovsky asked.
“The ex-Stasi or ex-ÁVH—Államvédelmi Hatóság—or whatever the hell they were—the only one we ever identified was the Cuban who eliminated Dr. Jean-Paul Lorimer at his estancia. They were dressed up in black and wearing balaclava masks like characters in a bad movie—or a comic book. We called them ‘the Ninjas.’ ”
“I doubt if anything like that is likely,” Berezovsky argued. “They were sent—they were Hungarian, by the way—to deal with that particular problem. You dealt with them. Sending in another team to replace them just in case they might be needed would be difficult and dangerous. Just keeping a half-dozen people like that around and out of sight . . .”