“Where the hell is Coney Island?” Cosada asked.
“In New York City. You know the place where they have — or had — the parachute tower? For ten dollars, you got to make sort of a parachute jump?”
“Oh, yeah,” Cosada said. “I think the parachute tower is gone, but I know where you mean.”
“Don’t take offense, Sergei,” Raúl said, “but I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”
“Aleksandr Pevsner’s La Casa en Bosque in Bariloche is big, but not big enough for all those Oprichnik wedding guests. And there’s only a few hotels there. And Aeropuerto Internacional Teniente Luis Candelaria couldn’t handle one 747, much less a bunch of them. So what are they going to do? A cruise ship — maybe two cruise ships — is what they’re going to do. A cruise ship is sort of a floating hotel.”
“Where are they going to get a cruise ship?”
“The last I heard, Pevsner owned twelve of them,” Murov said. “Most of them are like floating prisons, but a couple of them, I understand, are very nice.”
“I’m an old man, Sergei,” Raúl said. “Not as swift as I used to be. You want to explain this to me in simple terms?”
“Aleksandr Pevsner owns the Grand Cozumel Beach and Golf Resort. Which — Cozumel — is also a stop for cruise ships. So they hold the wedding in the resort and put up the guests who won’t fit in the resort in one of his cruise ships. Or two of them. That’s what Castillo and Svetlana are going there for, to set this up.
“Dmitri Berezovsky didn’t go along with them to Cozumel now, but he’ll be there for the wedding. He’ll probably give the bride away; he’s her brother. So we go there now, and get set up ourselves. And when everybody is jamming the place, there’s all the wedding excitement, we snatch the three of them, load them onto an Aeroflot airplane conveniently parked at Cozumel International—”
“For a nonstop flight to Moscow,” Raúl finished.
“Where your boss will tie the Yankee sonofabitch who stole our sixteen million in bearer bonds to a chair in Lubyanka,” Cosada furnished.
“And spray him with ice water,” Raúl picked up.
“Until he is an ice sculpture,” Cosada said.
“How many men are you asking for, Sergei?” Raúl asked.
“Ten or twelve should do it.”
“General Cosada,” Raúl said, “make twenty-four of your best men available to General Murov immediately.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. President.”
“As a matter of fact, Jesus, I think you better go with him,” Raúl added.
[THREE]
Castillo’s CaseyBerry vibrated and rang — the ringtone actually a recording of a bugler playing “Charge!”
“And how may I help the comandante on this beautiful spring morning?” he answered it.
There was a reply from Comandante Juan Carlos Pena, el Jefe of the Policía Federal for the Province of Oaxaca, to which Castillo answered, “Your wish is my command, my Comandante,” and then broke the connection.
Castillo then turned to the women taking the sun in lounge chairs beside the swimming pool. There were three of them: Svetlana Alekseeva; Susanna Sieno, a trim, pale-freckled-skin redhead; and Sandra Britton, a slim, tall, sharp-featured black-skinned woman.
“I’m afraid it’s back to the village for you, ladies,” Castillo said.
“What did you say?” Sweaty asked.
“El Comandante just told me to put my pants on and send the girls back to the village.”
Sweaty threw a large, economy-size bottle of suntan lotion at him and said some very rude and obscene things in Russian.
Max leapt to his feet and caught the suntan lotion bottle in midair. But to do so he had to go airborne himself, which resulted in him dropping from about eight feet in the air into the pool. This caused the ladies to be twice drenched, first when he entered the water — a 120-pound Bouvier des Flandres makes quite a splash — and again when Max, triumphantly clutching the bottle in his teeth, climbed out of the pool and shook himself dry.
With a massive and barely successful effort, the men attached to the ladies — Castillo; Paul Sieno, an olive-skinned, dark-haired man in his early forties; and John M. “Jack” Britton, a trim thirty-eight-year-old black-skinned man — managed to control what would have been hysterical laughter.
“Over here, girls,” Castillo said, as he went to the side of the penthouse and pointed downward, “you really should see this.”
Curiosity overwhelmed feminine indignation and they went and looked twenty-four floors down. So did Jack Britton, Roscoe J. Danton, and Paul Sieno.
They saw four identical brown Suburbans, each roof festooned with a rack of what is known in the law enforcement community as “Bubble Gum Machines,” approaching and then disappearing beneath the canopied entrance to the Grand Cozumel Beach & Golf Resort.
“American Express is here,” Castillo said.
“What the hell does that mean?” Roscoe asked.
“Juan Carlos calls them that because he never leaves home without them,” Castillo explained.
“Your friend has a CaseyBerry?” Britton asked.
“I could do no less for the only honest police officer in Mexico,” Castillo said. He turned to former Marine Gunnery Sergeant Lester Bradley.
“Lester, stand by the door. Our guests are about to arrive. The rest of you are cautioned not to make any sudden moves when they arrive.”
Three minutes later the doorbell chimes bonged pleasantly. Lester pulled the door open. Three burly police officers came through the door, each armed with an Uzi submachine gun. They quickly surveilled the room, and then one of them gestured for whoever was still outside that it was safe to enter.
Jack Britton was impressed. During his career with the Philadelphia Police Department, he had once served on the SWAT team. His professional assessment of these people was that they really knew “how to take a door.”
A short, stocky, unkempt olive-skinned man in a baggy suit and two more uniformed officers carrying Uzis came through the door.
Max dropped the suntan lotion bottle, rushed toward the man, put his paws on his shoulders — which pinned him to the wall — and then enthusiastically lapped at his face.
“Carlitos, you sonofabitch, you taught him to do that to me!” Juan Carlos Pena said.
“No, it’s the remnants of your breakfast on your unshaven face,” Castillo said.
Pena pushed Max off him, and then he and Castillo approached each other and embraced.
When they broke apart, Pena asked, pointing to the Sienos, the Brittons, and Roscoe J. Danton, “Who are these people? Excuse me for asking, but I have learned to be very careful when I’m around you.”
“Dr. Britton, Sandra, is a philologist,” Castillo said. “Her husband, Jack, is not nearly so respectable. He used to be a cop. The Sienos, Susanna and Paul, have an even less respectable history, and Mr. Danton is a practitioner of a profession held in even lower prestige than being a congressman. He’s a journalist.”
Pena smiled.
“Well, he must like you. Carlito only insults his friends,” he said. “Which means I can move on to Question Two: What brings you to beautiful Cozumel? White-sand beaches and the sun setting over the sparkling Caribbean will not be a satisfactory answer.”
“We come to offer you a unique opportunity,” Castillo said.
“I’m afraid to ask what that might be, but I suppose I don’t have a choice, do I? Tell me about my unique opportunity.”