"Disappeared?" Castillo asked. "Weren't they sitting on him?"
"Not tight enough, apparently," Sieno said.
"Perhaps," Kocian said, "on hearing that his dear friend Vladimir was about to become president of Russia, he was overcome with nostalgia for Mother Russia and simply had to go home."
"He knew Putin?" Castillo asked.
Kocian nodded. "They were stationed in Dresden in the KGB together. And Putin was sworn in on 7 May 2000."
"What else do you know about this guy, Billy?" Castillo asked.
"Know? I don't know enough to print anything. But I do know that Colonel Sunev-not under that name, of course-was in Paris, Vienna, Budapest, and Baghdad, and some other places, starting right after Mr. Sieno tells us he disappeared, and as recently as six months ago. And that he knew Mr. Lorimer of the UN, which I find fascinating. And is a good friend-I told you-of Pevsner."
"What was he doing in the States, testifying before a congressional committee?"
"I'm only a simple journalist, not an intelligence officer," Kocian said, "but I think they call that 'disinformation.'"
"To what end, Billy?" Castillo asked.
"You will recall, Karlchen, that at that time there was a great deal of concern about Soviet nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands? That they would be stolen from depots because there was no more money to pay the guards?"
"I remember that," Torine said. "It scared me."
"Nothing personal, of course, Colonel, but if it wasn't so dangerous, I would be amused by American naivete," Kocian said.
"Watch it, Billy!" Castillo snapped.
Kocian shook his head and went on: "This loss of ex-Soviet, now Russian Federation, nuclear weapons could be prevented if the United States came up with the money-this is a simplification, of course-to bring the guards back on the payroll. I think you actually gave them several billions of dollars to do just that.
"To convince your Congress of the danger, Russian 'defectors'-Sunev was one of maybe two dozen-'escaped' to the United States and 'told all.' Russia was no longer the enemy. Russia was now a friend. The Muslims were the enemy. They were liable to detonate nuclear weapons stolen-"
"Or bought with drug money," Sieno said, sarcastically.
"Right," Kocian said.
"What?" Castillo asked.
Sieno said, "There were stories-widely circulated-that the Russian Mafia bought a bunch of nukes from former KGB guys in Chechnya. Or at least bought KGB connivance, depending on which story you were listening to, so the Mafia could steal them themselves and then sold them to bin Laden for thirty million U.S., cash, and two tons of high-grade heroin from his laboratories in Afghanistan…worth seven hundred million on the street."
"Did you believe this story, Mr. Sieno?" Kocian asked.
"I had a lot of trouble with it," Sieno said, carefully, after a moment.
"Why?" Kocian asked.
Sieno almost visibly formed his thoughts before he replied, "You know that George Tenet said that the purge of the KGB when the Soviet Union came apart was, quote, pure window dressing, unquote?"
"I didn't know that," Kocian said. "Well, I suppose the former head of your CIA had to be right about something."
Castillo glared at him. Sieno ignored him.
"All they did was change the name from Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti to Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti," Sieno said, bitterly.
Castillo thought, His Russian pronunciation of that was perfect.
"And put Mr. Putin in charge?" Kocian asked, innocently. "So things could go on as before?"
In Russian, Castillo asked, "How good is your Russian, Paul?"
"Not quite as good as yours, Colonel, but not bad," Sieno replied, in Russian.
"And what is a nice Italian boy like you who speaks Russian like a Muscovite doing eavesdropping on the Cubans in Argentina?"
"Counting the days until I get my pension," Sieno said.
"You were a bad boy in Moscow?" Castillo asked.
Sieno hesitated for a moment before he answered.
"Not exactly a bad boy," he said. "But I was one of the major reasons Tenet said what he did. And there were a lot of people between me and the DCI who didn't want him to hear any more of that from me. So they brought me back to Langley from Moscow and told me-I should say, implied with credible deniability-that I had two choices. Option one, I could go to Buenos Aires as deputy station chief and they would arrange for Susanna to be here and we could double-dip and, as long as I kept my mouth shut, I could look forward to saving a lot of money for my retirement. Or, option two, I could stay in Washington and leak what I knew and they would guarantee that I'd be fired for cause. And, of course, lose my pension and my reputation."
"Jesus!" Torine said.
"And being the moral coward that I am, I took option one," Sieno said.
"So why are you telling us this now?"
"You won't like the answer," Sieno said.
"Try me," Castillo said.
"You shamed me, Colonel," Sieno said. He pointed at Munz. "And so did you, mi Coronel."
"What do you mean 'shamed'?" Castillo asked.
"When this whole thing started-the night Masterson got away from Munz and me…"
"You're losing me, Paul," Torine said. "Masterson 'got away from you'?"
"When these bastards snatched Mr. Masterson, Alex Darby assigned me to sit on him and the kids at their house. So Alfredo and I did just that. We sat in a car outside his house. And Masterson went over the fence in the backyard, walked to the train station, took a train downtown to meet the bad guys, and they blew him away. He's dead because I fucked up, in other words…"
"I don't believe that, Paul, and neither does the ambassador or Alex Darby," Castillo said.
"Let me finish, please, Colonel," Sieno said. "Bottom line is, if I'd done my job right Masterson would not have climbed the fence and gotten on that train. I took this personally. I was going to find out who did it and get back at them. Then you showed up, Colonel, and you were in charge and I didn't like that at all. At one time, I'd been a pretty good clandestine service field officer and Alex Darby knew that, and here is some Army major with friends in high places about to call all the shots. It wouldn't have been the first time I'd seen that happen.
"So I went to Darby-who is one of the really good guys-and asked him what the hell was going on. He told me that you were the best special operator he'd ever known, that he'd seen you operate in Iraq and Afghanistan and knew what you had done about getting that stolen 727 back. And that since my ego was involved, and this was very important, he was going to keep me out of whatever you were going to do. He didn't want me getting in your way."
He took a breath, then went on: "I wouldn't have taken that from anybody but Alex Darby. But I've seen him operate. So I went along. And sure enough, he was right. You found that bastard Lorimer when nobody else could. You set up and pulled off that snatch operation in Uruguay in less time than I could believe, and-"
"That was not a complete success," Castillo said. "Lorimer and one of my guys died. Alfredo took a bullet…"
"And you took out a Spetsnaz assault team to the last man. That doesn't happen often. They're good."
"You're sure they were Spetsnaz?" Castillo asked.
"Either Spetsnaz or Stasi or somebody else, maybe even Cubans, trained by-more important, controlled and financed by-the Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti. Who else but the FSB, Colonel? It's time you started calling a spade a spade. You can't talk about missing or stolen Russian nukes and leave them out of the discussion."
"You said I shamed you. That Alfredo and I shamed you. What's that all about?"
"Colonel, you did what you thought was the right thing to do-and so did you, Alfredo-without thinking of the consequences to yourself. I used to be that way before the bastards at Langley finally ground me down. That was shaming. So I decided to get off the sidelines."
"Well," Kocian said, "that makes it two of us in this room who know the KSB is behind all of this. It's nice not to be alone anymore."