Danton pointed to Berezovsky and asked with his eyebrows: Him?
Castillo nodded.
"It was to be Colonel Berezovsky's final assignment. When he was finished whacking me and went-with his sister, Lieutenant Colonel Svetlana Alekseeva, the SVR rezident in Copenhagen-to an SVR meeting in Vienna, they were going to be charged with embezzlement and flown off to Moscow. Berezovsky was a threat to Putin's control of the SVR, and had to go. And so did his sister.
"The mistake Putin made-the stupidity he demonstrated-was to underestimate Colonel Berezovsky. Berezovsky knew all about Putin's plans for him and Sweaty-"
Danton pointed at Svetlana and asked, "'Sweaty'?"
"Only to her friends," Castillo said. "Anyway, Berezovsky had gotten in touch with the CIA station chief in Vienna, Miss Eleanor Dillworth, and told her he and his sister were willing to defect.
"Miss Dillworth lost no time in telling Jack Powell, and Jack Powell lost no time in telling our late President of the genius of his Vienna station chief, implying that Miss Dillworth had brilliantly entrapped Dmitri and Sweaty when, in fact, they had walked in her door.
"Colonel Berezovsky was not very impressed with Miss Dillworth. He was in fact very nervous about what was going to happen in Vienna. He thought she was entirely capable of throwing him and Sweaty under the bus if anything-any little thing-went wrong.
"And then Dmitri saw in the Frankfurter Rundschau a picture of me getting off my Gulfstream on the way to the funeral. He knew that Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger was also a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army with alleged intelligence and Special Operations connections. And who had his own airplane.
"Brilliant fellow that my future brother-in-law is, he reasoned-"
"Did you say 'future brother-in-law'?" Danton asked incredulously.
General Naylor thought: That's exactly what he said. My God!
"I thought everybody knew," Castillo said. "Love is where you find it, Mr. Danton."
"Jesus Christ!"
"My fiancee is offended when someone takes the Lord's name in vain, Mr. Danton."
"Sorry."
"As I was saying… Dmitri, clever fellow that he is, reasoned that if he called off the Allamvedelmi Hatosag and I was not whacked, maybe I would show my gratitude to him by flying him and Sweaty out of Europe. Which is what happened."
"Is it?" General Naylor asked. "Is that what actually happened, Charley?"
"Yes, sir."
"I never understood why you would steal the defectors from the CIA," Naylor admitted.
"I didn't know about Miss Dillworth until later, General. What Dmitri told me at the time was that the SVR was going to be waiting for him and Svetlana in the Sudbahnhof in Vienna."
"So you flew them to Argentina? Why Argentina?"
"They have family there, sir," Castillo said.
"Well, why didn't you turn them over to the CIA in Argentina?" Naylor asked.
"Well, just about as soon as we got to Vienna, sir, Dmitri, as an expression of his gratitude, told me about the Fish Farm in the Congo. When Ambassador Montvale came down there, I tried to tell him about the Fish Farm, but he gave me the CIA answer: It was nothing but a fish farm."
"You still should have turned these people over to the CIA."
"Two reasons I didn't, sir. The first being that I believed Dmitri about the Fish Farm, and knew that if I turned them over to the CIA, they would not believe him, and that would be the end of it. I knew I had to follow that path."
"And the second reason?"
Castillo exhaled audibly.
"Maybe I… no… certainly I should have given this as my first reason, sir: By the time Montvale showed up in Buenos Aires, certain things had happened between Svetlana and me. I knew there was no way I was ever going to turn her or her brother over to the CIA, the Argentine SIDE, the Rotary Club of East Orange, New Jersey, or anyone else."
Naylor shook his head, but said nothing.
"In the end," Castillo went on, "that turned out, for several reasons, to be the right decision. I decided that my duty required I take action on my own. And that turned out to be the right decision, too. And is why I decided to take action on my own in that situation."
"What action was that, Colonel?" Danton asked.
"The question obviously was: 'What's really going on in the Congo?' There was only one way to find out. I arranged to send people in there to find out."
"On your own authority," General Naylor said. "You had no right to do that, and you knew it."
"I saw it as my duty to do just that," Castillo said.
"What exactly did you do?" Danton asked.
"I sent Colonel J. Porter Hamilton, the man who runs our bio-warfare laboratory at Fort Detrick, to the Congo with a team of special operators. He found out it was even worse than we suspected, told-more importantly, convinced-our late President of this, and the President ordered it destroyed."
"And what happened to you for doing what you did without authorization?"
"Well, for a couple of minutes the President wanted to make me director of National Intelligence… I'm kidding. What the President did was tell me to take everybody in OOA to the end of the earth, fall off, and never be seen again. And I've tried-we've all tried-to do just that."
"And?" Danton pursued.
"The curtain went up on Act Two. Two barrels of Congo-X appeared, one FedExed from Miami to Colonel Hamilton at Fort Detrick, the second left for the Border Patrol to find on the Texas-Mexico border."
"Where did it come from?"
"Almost certainly from the Congo. We know that a Russian Special Operations airplane-a Tupolev Tu-934A-landed at El Obeid Airport, in North Kurdufan, Sudan-which is within driving range of the Fish Farm-and took off shortly afterward, leaving seventeen bodies behind.
"We suspect it flew first to Cuba for refueling, and then it flew here, where two barrels of Congo-X were given to the Mexico City rezident of the SVR, who then drove off with them, presumably to get them across the border into the United States."
"How do you know that?" General Naylor challenged.
"We have it all on surveillance tape, sir. I'll show the tapes to you, if you'd like. There's a very clear picture of General Yakov Sirinov, who is apparently in charge of the operation. The Tupolev Tu-934A then left here, and is presently on the ground at La Orchila airfield. That's on an island off the coast of Venezuela."
"How could you possibly know that?" General Naylor demanded.
"I'd show you the satellite imagery, sir, but if I did, you'd know where I got them."
"I don't think I'd have to look very far, would I, General McNab?" Naylor asked unpleasantly.
Castillo said, "You have my word that I did not get them from General McNab. And, sir, with respect, your parole does not give you the right to question me, or anyone else. Please keep that in mind."
He let that sink in, and then went on: "Now, for Facts Bearing on the Problem, Scene Two. The Russian rezident in Washington, Sergei Murov, had Frank Lammelle-speaking of whom, Vic: Should we have someone take a look at him?"
"He has two of your Spetsnaz watching him, Charley. I think they'll be able to tell if the SOB croaks."
Castillo nodded, then went on: "The Russians had Lammelle over to their dacha on Maryland's Eastern Shore, where Murov, the rezident, admitted they sent the Congo-X to Colonel Hamilton, and then offered to turn over all Congo-X in their control and give us their assurance that no more will ever turn up. All they want in return is Dmitri, Sweaty, and me.
"The President thinks the price is fair. He sent General Naylor to arrest me, and Frank Lammelle to arrest Sweaty and Dmitri…"
"Is that true, General Naylor?" Danton asked.
"Any conversations I may or may not have had with the President, Mr. Danton," Naylor said, "are both privileged and classified."