"I know who you are, Mr. Lammelle," Sirinov said in English.
"Are you going to answer my questions, General? Or should I-for the time being-simply have you confined?"
Castillo wondered: How did Lammelle get in the act?
What the hell's going on with him?
"Under the circumstances, Mr. Lammelle, answering whatever questions you have for me seems to be the obvious best option of those pointed out to me by our mutual friend Svetlana."
"Can you make it to the elevator?" Lammelle asked, pointing to it.
Sirinov nodded.
"Do you want to go with them, Colonel?" Castillo asked Sweaty.
"Of course," she said.
"Stick with them, Lester," Castillo ordered.
"Yes, sir."
There came the sound of a diesel engine starting, and a moment later Uncle Remus drove the forklift down the ramp.
"With your permission, Colonel?" Master Sergeant Dennis said, and when Castillo nodded, walked up the ramp into the Tu-934A. [FOUR] With great skill-and very carefully-Uncle Remus lowered one of the blue beer barrels onto a layer of insulated blankets in the bottom of a pit dug in the floor of the cave.
When Master Sergeant Dennis unfastened the web straps around the barrel and gave Uncle Remus the "up" signal, Uncle Remus raised the arms of the forklift, and then backed away from the pit.
Then he stood up and took a bow.
"What would we do without you?" Castillo asked.
"I shudder at the thought," Uncle Remus said, and then turned to Master Sergeant Dennis. "What do you want me to do, Sergeant? Get another barrel, or help you load the helium on top of this one?"
Dennis thought it over before replying.
"It would be better if we got all the barrels in the ground first," he said. "And then put the helium packages, the bags, on top. If one of the bags got ripped, and the helium contacted the arms of the forklift, they would shatter. Helium makes a witch's teat look like the sun."
"You got it, Sarge," Uncle Remus said, and steered the forklift back to the ramp of the Tu-934A. [FIVE] "What we did in the lab, Colonel," Master Sergeant Dennis explained in the dining room of the house, after taking a swallow from a bottle of Dos Equis beer, "that killed that shit, was to expose it to the helium-at minus two-seventy Celsius for fifteen minutes."
"And that killed it?" Castillo asked.
"Dead as a fucking doornail, Colonel," Dennis confirmed, then drained his bottle. "Do you suppose I could have another one of these?"
"Give the nice man another beer, Uncle Remus," Castillo ordered.
"And then we let it thaw," Dennis went on. "It took eight hours and twelve minutes at seventy degrees Fahrenheit."
"And it was then really dead?" Castillo said.
"Dead fucking dead," Dennis confirmed. "But what we don't know, Colonel, is how cold the helium we used just now was. It was way the fuck down there, but it may not have been all the way down to minus two-seventy Celsius. So what Colonel Hamilton told me to do was give it a thirty-minute bath. We did that. And more. The helium is still on the barrels."
"Makes sense. What are you going to do about thawing it?"
"We also don't know about the thawing. If we took the helium off now, it's seventy-four Fahrenheit in the cave-probably seventy-six or -seven by now-so it would thaw faster. But it might not be all the way dead, if you take my meaning, when it's thawed faster."
Castillo had a sinking feeling in his stomach.
"So, then what do we do?"
"It's ninety-two Fahrenheit in the sun outside," Dennis said. "Or was, just before you landed. It's probably a little hotter now."
"What are you suggesting-that we thaw it in the sun?" Castillo asked, confused. "Wouldn't that increase the risk that it wouldn't be 'all the way dead'?"
"It may be dead now, and we're just wasting time thawing it."
"What are you suggesting, Sergeant Dennis?" Castillo demanded.
Dennis looked very uncomfortable.
Castillo had an epiphany, and softly asked, "What does Colonel Hamilton think will happen if Congo-X is thawed rapidly?"
Dennis didn't immediately reply.
"Goddamn it, Sergeant! What did Colonel Hamilton say?"
"He said that when magicians freeze goldfish with dry ice and then bring them back to life, they can do that because they were never completely dead. He said that he thinks when you get something down to minus two-seventy Celsius, it's completely dead, and you couldn't bring it back even by thawing it in a microwave."
"Did he tell you not to tell me this?"
Dennis nodded.
"Did he say why?"
"He said if you heard he said it, you would treat it like he was talking in a cathedral-I don't know what the hell he meant by that-and base your decisions on that."
"Speaking 'ex cathedra,' Sergeant?"
"Right."
"If we put one of those kegs in the sun for as long as it takes to thaw it, could you determine if the Congo-X was dead here?"
"I've got stuff with me that'll let me test it so I'll know with ninety-percent certainty whether or not that shit is still alive or not. To be absolutely sure, we'd have to test it in the lab at Fort Detrick."
"How did you get here, Sergeant?"
"Mr. Casey picked me up in his airplane at Baltimore/Washington. Nice airplane!"
"And Colonel Hamilton didn't come. Why?"
"We don't trust the people in the lab. They would tell somebody-probably those fuckers in Las Vegas-that he was gone. So I went to the PX, called the lab, and asked for the day off. Then I got on the bus and went out to Baltimore/ Washington."
"If we put one of those beer kegs in the sun, how long would it take to thaw?" Castillo asked. "Let me put that another way: How long would we have to leave one of those kegs in the sun before loading it on Mr. Casey's G-Five to fly it to Fort Detrick, so that it would be thawed, or damned near thawed, when it got there?"
"I been thinking about that, Colonel. It's about seventy Fahrenheit in the airplane. I suppose you could up that some, if you wanted to?"
"Probably to eighty, maybe a little higher," Castillo said.
"We'd have to leave the keg in the sun for two hours fifteen. Better yet two hours thirty. I think it would be pretty well thawed by the time we got it into the lab."
Castillo looked at Leverette, and said, "Uncle Remus, will you please help Sergeant Dennis move one of those beer barrels into the sun-somewhere no one will see it? And then you two sit on it." He heard what he had said, and added, "Correction. You don't have to actually sit on it, but I want eyes on it all the time."
"You know what you're doing, Charley?"
"Hoping that I'm right, that Colonel Hamilton is right, and that Master Sergeant Dennis is right. Is that enough for you?"
"I always like you better when you admit you don't really know what the fuck you're doing," Uncle Remus said. "Let's go, Dennis." [SIX] "The freezing process, I gather, is over, or nearly so?" General Naylor asked when Castillo walked into the war room.
"Sir, with respect, I have no intention of discussing anything about this operation in the presence of Mr. Lammelle."
General McNab's bushy eyebrows went up. "You never learned in Sunday school what Saint Luke said, Charley? 'There is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents…' Et cetera?"
"I don't believe this!" Castillo said. "The sonofabitch wanted to load Sweaty, Dmitri, and me on an Aeroflot-"
Dmitri Berezovsky laughed.
Castillo looked at him in disbelief.
"Actually, General," Roscoe J. Danton-whose smile showed he was enjoying the situation-said, "I believe what Saint Luke actually said was, 'There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.'"
"I think I like that better," McNab said. "I never thought of it before, but I could get used to thinking of myself as an 'angel of God.'"
Berezovsky laughed again.
"How dare any of you think of yourselves as angels of God!" Sweaty flared.
"But, I'll concede, it's a stretch," McNab said.
"I used to wonder where Carlitos learned his blasphemous irreverence and childish sense of humor. Now it's perfectly clear. I hope God will forgive you, General McNab. I won't."