"Right now," Castillo said, "if Sweaty tries to turn the both of you heathens into sopranos, I'd be inclined to help her. Now, who turned Frank loose, and why, and what the hell is he doing in here?"
"Frank is now on our side," McNab said. "Get used to it."
"Let me try to explain this in heathen terms," Allan Naylor, Jr., said. "One heathen to another. Like another acquaintance of ours, whose name Satan himself could not tear from my lips, Brother Frank saw the error of his ways, 'fessed up, and is now allied with the forces of goodness and purity."
"And you believe him?" Castillo asked incredulously. "All of you believe it? And you expect me to believe it?"
"It's true, Charley," Lammelle said.
"Charley, Frank obeyed an order without thinking it through," General Naylor said. "That's easy to do. You're supposed to follow orders. What's hard is admitting that you know the order is wrong, and then doing something to make it right. In Frank's case, that was doubly difficult for him. Not only did it constitute disobeying the President, but he knew he could have just kept his mouth shut and done nothing. He knew us all well enough to know we weren't going to harm him…"
"Harming him did run through my mind. Vic D'Allessando said we should castrate him with a dull knife."
He looked at D'Allessando.
"I'm with McNab, Charley," D'Allessando said. "Sorry."
Castillo said nothing.
"… but instead, he is putting his career on the line," General Naylor finished.
Castillo thought: That shoe fits your foot, too, doesn't it?
"Is that what happened to you, Uncle Allan?" he asked softly.
Naylor met his eyes, but said nothing.
Colonel Jack Brewer broke the silence.
"The general's question, Colonel Castillo," he said, "was whether the freezing process has been satisfactorily completed."
Castillo hesitated.
"Well, has it?" Sweaty demanded.
Castillo looked at her for a long moment, then at Lammelle, and then back at Sweaty.
What choice do I have?
"The answer to that is we don't really know," he said. "What Master Sergeant Dennis told me…" "So, what do you want to do?" General Naylor asked, when Castillo had related what had happened just before he'd come to the war room.
"In two hours, I want to put Sergeant Dennis and the beer keg that's thawing in the sun in Aloysius's G-Five and fly it to Fort Detrick. We have to know if the helium has really killed it and the only way to do that is in Colonel Hamilton's lab."
"Fly it to Baltimore/Washington, right?" Lammelle asked.
Eyes jumped to Castillo to see how he was going to react to Lammelle having asked a question.
Castillo nodded.
"In for a penny, in for a pound, Charley," Lammelle said. "If I went with it, I could have an agency vehicle… It'll fit in a Yukon, right?"
Castillo nodded again, but didn't speak.
"… meet the airplane and personally make sure it gets to Fort Detrick. The only one who could interfere with that, or ask me questions I don't want to answer, would be Jack Powell, and I don't think Jack would actually go out to the airport even if he heard I was coming. Worst scenario there, I think, would be Powell sending Stan Waters-"
"Who?"
"J. Stanley Waters, deputy director for operations. Who wants my job, and therefore does everything Jack tells him to. I trust him a little less than you trust me."
"Okay. We get the stuff to the lab at Detrick. Sergeant Dennis tells me Hamilton can find out in half an hour whether the Congo-X is really dead. And what would you do after you dropped off the Congo-X? Wait for Hamilton to run his tests?"
"That would be information I'd like to have."
"And with which you could head straight for the White House, right?"
"Yeah, Charley, if I were so inclined, I could head straight for the White House. But what I plan to do is head straight for Langley to see what I can learn there."
"And if Jack Powell does go out to the airport? Or sends your buddy Waters?"
"Can I have my dart gun back?"
After a perceptible pause, during which he wondered again, What choice do I have? Castillo said, "You know what they say, Frank: 'In for a penny, in for a pound.' Lester, give Mr. Lammelle his dart gun."
"There will be room for me on that plane, right?" Roscoe J. Danton said. And then he quickly added: "Colonel, I've got pictures of that stuff on the Tu-934A on the island. And what you and Uncle Remus and the Sergeant did to it here. I'd like to follow it all the way to the lab at Fort Detrick."
Castillo didn't immediately reply.
"And before I go, I'd like to get pictures of you and Jake getting on that airplane," Roscoe went on.
"Which raises the question, Charley," McNab said, "of flying that airplane across the border and to Washington without getting it shot down."
"What General McNab and I talked about, Colonel," Naylor said, "and what we recommend, is that he and I go on the Russian aircraft to Washington. I can call MacDill, inform them that we're coming, and get us an Air Force escort."
"Which means the White House will know," Castillo thought aloud.
"But not the circumstances," McNab said.
"And I'll have time to get from Baltimore/Washington so that I can get pictures of the Tu-934A landing at Andrews," Roscoe J. Danton said.
"And that raises the question of Roscoe J. Danton," Castillo said. "What captions will he put under all those pictures he's been taking?"
"Frankly, Colonel, I don't know," Danton replied. "But I'm sort of like Frank. I've learned to tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys."
"I see we're back to a choice between trusting Roscoe and killing him," Castillo said.
"You may think that's funny," Sweaty snapped, "but I don't."
"And that unsolicited and unwelcome opinion raises yet another question," Castillo said. "What do I do with Big Mouth here and her big brother?"
Sweaty said unkind things to him in Russian.
Castillo went on: "I think the best thing to do is have Miller and Sparkman take them-and the Spetsnaz that Cousin Aleksandr was so kind to loan us, plus whichever of Sirinov's Spetsnaz want to go to Argentina-to Cozumel to meet the Peruaire freighter."
"You're out of your mind!" Sweaty said in English.
"I think not, Charley," Dmitri Berezovsky said.
"You mean you don't think I'm out of my mind, or you don't want to go to Argentina?"
"I can't wait to get back to Argentina. You remember that my wife and daughter are there? But before this is over, we will certainly be talking with the Washington rezident, Sergei Murov, and perhaps even dealing with Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin himself. Svetlana and I know them both well. I think you need our counsel."
"What kind of passports do you have?" Lammelle asked.
"You mean besides our Russian Federation diplomatic passports?"
"Right."
"Argentine and Uruguayan."
"Are they in your names?"
Berezovsky shook his head.
"How much inspection will they stand?"
"My cousin assures me they were issued by the respective foreign ministries," Berezovsky said.
"And would your cousin know?"
"I think he would."
"Who is your cousin?"
"If he tells you, Frank, I'd have to kill you," Castillo said.
"His name is Aleksandr Pevsner," Sweaty said. "And if your knowing that in any way ever endangers him or his family, I will kill you."
"On a threat credibility scale of one to ten, I think I'd rate that as a ten," Lammelle said. And then added, "Well, knowing that name explains a lot of things I didn't really understand. Pevsner is really your cousin?"
"Our mothers are sisters," Berezovsky said.
"Charley, if they're determined to go…" Lammelle began.
"We are," Berezovsky said.
"… and I agree they could be very useful," Lammelle went on. "Hide them in plain sight."
"Where?" Castillo asked.
"The Monica Lewinsky Motel," Lammelle said.