Castillo's temper flared.
But when he spoke, his voice was low and soft. Those who knew him knew that meant he was really angry.
"I don't even know what the Federal'naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti and the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki are," he said, speaking Russian with a Saint Petersburg accent. "Perhaps before we go any further, someone will be kind enough to tell me."
"I hate to tell you this, Alek," Delchamps said in Russian, "but I think you just pissed Ace off."
After a moment, during which Pevsner looked carefully at Castillo, he said, "More important, Edgar, I once again underestimated my friend Charley. I tend to do that. It probably has something to do with his sophomoric sense of humor. No offense was intended, Charley."
"Offense taken, Polkovnik Pevsner," Castillo said. "In other words, screw you, friend Alek."
Pevsner shook his head, and smiled.
"Let me continue," Pevsner said. "Not long ago, all was right in the world of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. He had both finally taken over the KGB and its successor organizations and was president of the Russian Federation.
"He could start to restore the Russian Empire. With a good deal of help from me, he had managed to keep most of the KGB's money out of the hands of those misguided souls who thought it belonged to the people of Russia.
"He would have to deal with me, eventually, of course. I knew too much, and I had too much of what he considered the KGB's money. But that could wait-what does Charley say?-could 'sit on the back burner' until the right time came.
"He was so happy with the way things were going that when General Sirinov came to him with an idea to tweak the American lion's tail at little cost and with minimum risk-using a group of converts to Islam; there would be minimal Russian involvement-he told him to go ahead.
"What he was going to do was have the Muslims crash an airliner into the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. There was an old American airplane sitting deserted on a runway in Angola. This plane would be stolen, equipped with additional fuel tanks, flown to Philadelphia, and…"
He made a diving gesture with his hand.
"I always thought he came up with that idea himself," Tom Barlow said.
"He could have," Pevsner said. "But Sirinov has the better imagination. It doesn't matter. I think of the both of them as one, as Putin-slash-Sirinov."
"Point taken," Barlow said.
"Enter friend Charley," Pevsner said, waving a hand in Castillo's direction. "A lowly U.S. Army major who, not having a clue about what was going on, jumped to the conclusion that the evil arms dealer Vasily Respin or the smuggler Alex Dondiemo or even the more mysterious and wicked Aleksandr Pevsner had stolen the 727 from the field at Luanda, Angola, for their criminal purposes and set out to reclaim it."
Everyone was aware that "Dondiemo" and "Respin" were two of the identities Pevsner used when he thought it was necessary.
"When this came to my attention through a man I had working for me and at that point trusted-Howard Kennedy-"
"That's the ex-FBI agent who was beaten to death by parties unknown in the Conrad Casino in Punta del Este?" Darby asked.
"That's the fellow. Kennedy looked into Major Castillo and reported what he had learned to me. Some of this-for example, that Major Charley Castillo was also Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger, majority shareholder of the Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H., empire and that he was working directly for the American President-made me rethink my original solution to the problem."
"Which was?" Delchamps asked.
"An Indian beauty mark," Pevsner replied matter-of-factly, tapping the center of his forehead with his index finger.
"That sometimes takes care of problems like that," Delchamps said.
"God wouldn't let you kill my Charley," Sweaty said seriously.
"Possibly. I never underestimate the power of divine intervention," Pevsner said. "But at the time, I thought it was just common sense. My primary motive was to avoid drawing attention to myself. But, now that I think about it, at the time, I was asking God's help to avoid taking anyone's life unnecessarily, so perhaps, Svetlana, you're right, and God was involved."
Charley smiled when he saw Alex Darby's face. It showed that he was having difficulty with Sweaty's and Pevsner's matter-of-fact references to the Almighty.
They don't sound much like godless Communists, do they, Alex? Maybe more like members of the Flaming Bush Church of Christ in Porter's Crossroads, Georgia?
"So," Pevsner went on, "I arranged to meet Charley in Vienna, to see if I could reason with him, come to some kind of understanding-"
"What you did, Alek," Castillo interrupted, "was have that sonofabitch Kennedy blindside me while I was taking a leak in the men's room of the Sacher Hotel bar. Then he dragged me, at gunpoint, up to the Cobenzl."
"Lovely spot," Delchamps said. "I know it well. Just hearing 'Cobenzl' makes me think of fair-haired madchen and hear the romantic tinkle of the zither."
This earned him a look of mingled disbelief and annoyance from Pevsner.
After a moment, Pevsner said, "The moment I first saw Charley, I realized that it would be painful for me to have to give him a beauty spot. And, Svet, now that I think about, I did ask God to help me spare his life."
Darby was now really confused. He kept looking at Delchamps and Duffy to get their reaction to Pevsner's continued references to the Deity. But knowing of the genuine-if more than a little unusual-deep faith of Pevsner and the other Russians, their faces showed neither surprise or confusion.
"And that's the way it worked out," Pevsner went on. "Charley and I had a cigar and a little cognac watching night fall in Vienna, and then we went to dinner."
"At the Drei Hussars," Charley furnished. "Around the corner from the Opera House. By the time it was over, Alek and I were buddies."
Pevsner gave him an annoyed look.
"Charley," Pevsner continued, "said that he would do what he could with the President to call off the CIA and the FBI-they were then trying very hard to find me-if I would help him find the missing aircraft. I took a chance and trusted him.
"I admit that finding the missing 727 wasn't difficult for me. I operate a number of airplanes in sub-Saharan Africa, and all of my crews always keep their eyes open for things in which they think I might be interested.
"Cutting a long story short, Charley was able to take the 727 back from the Muslims before they could do any damage with it. And, as he said he would, he got the President to call off the FBI and the CIA.
"I did not know of General Sirinov's plan to tweak the American lion's tail, and Sirinov had no reason to suspect that I even knew Charley, much less that I was the one who had been instrumental in upsetting it.
"He did learn, of course, that Charley had flown the aircraft into MacDill Air Force Base in Florida. Charley was thus added to Sirinov's list of people to be dealt with when the opportunity presented itself.
"Next, friend Charley messed up another SVR operation. Sirinov sent a team-under Cuban Direccion General de Inteligencia Major Alejandro Vincenzo-to Lieutenant Colonel Yevgeny Komogorov, his FSB man in charge of operations in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, to eliminate a man who knew too much and had also made off with sixteen million dollars of the SVR's money. When that escapade was over, Vincenzo and his men were dead, and Charley had the sixteen million dollars.
"Since Komogorov needed somebody to blame for that disaster, he decided to blame it on me, reasoning that if I were dead, I couldn't protest my innocence. So he paid a large sum of money to my trusted assistant, the late Mr. Howard Kennedy, to arrange for me to be assassinated in the garage of the Sheraton Hotel in Pilar, outside Buenos Aires.
"When that was over, I was alive and Komogorov wasn't. Corporal Lester Bradley had put an Indian beauty spot on his right eye. The others on his team were taken out by others working for friend Charley. And Mr. Kennedy went to meet his maker shortly thereafter.