W. Griffin - Covert Warriors

“What does that mean?”

“I told you before, in the last conversation we had, that Clendennen sent the FBI to the Mayflower to take pictures of everybody there. And among those there were Porky Parker and Roscoe Danton, and that really pissed him off.”

“And do you now know why he did that?”

“So that he would have proof.”

“Of what? You sound as if you’ve been at the sauce.”

“After FBI Director Mark Schmidt had personally identified each and every partygoer for him. .”

“It wasn’t a party, for Christ’s sake. In our last conversation, you will recall, I told you it was more like a wake. We stood around drinking, telling Danny Salazar war stories-”

“I remember,” Lammelle interrupted him, and then went on, “. . he gave them to Beiderman with orders to give them to Naylor, with orders for Naylor to show them to McNab and tell him that he-the President-knew, quote, what McNab was up to, close quote, but that if McNab applied for immediate retirement it, quote, would be the end of it, close quote.”

“What does he think McNab was. . is. . up to?”

“He apparently believes McNab is in a conspiracy to get him out of the Oval Office and Montvale into it. If I have to say this, he thinks you’re a coconspirator.”

“That’s crazy!”

“Please remember later, if you are asked under oath, that I did not introduce that word into this conversation. You did.”

“Jesus Christ,” Castillo muttered, then exhaled audibly, and said, “The first thing that comes into my mind-unwilling as I am to accept crazy-is that he’s into the bottle. A secret tippler. Was our beloved Commander in Chief sober when he did all this?”

“Yes, he was. He’s a teetotaler. The boozers in his family are his mother and mother-in-law.”

“Where are you getting all this, Frank?”

“General McNab made the point to me that he has not spoken with you since before Salazar and the others were murdered and Colonel Ferris kidnapped. .”

“He hasn’t,” Castillo confirmed.

“. . which of course suggested to me that he wanted me to bring you into the loop especially in view of the fact that the other players are not liable to.”

“The other players being?”

“Thus far, Naylor and Beiderman. So, after speaking with General McNab, I spoke-separately-with both General Naylor and Secretary Beiderman.”

“They agree with your crazy theory?”

“I don’t have a crazy theory, Charley. Write that down. In blood. On your forehead.”

“They agree with the ‘he’s out of his mind’ theory?”

“They talked around it. But, yeah, they’re worried.”

“What happened when Beiderman or Naylor told McNab the President wanted him to retire?”

“It didn’t get that far. Beiderman told McNab to get out of Dodge before he had to show him the pictures. He did.”

“For McNab to retire would be an admission that he was involved in this nutty coup d’etat scenario. He wouldn’t-couldn’t-do that. He’d demand a court-martial.”

“That’s precisely what McNab told them just before Beiderman told him to go to Afghanistan before he could show him the pictures and deliver the ‘retire now’ ultimatum. Both Beiderman and Naylor are hoping the whole thing will pass when Clendennen has a couple of days to cool off.”

“That looks to me like pissing into the wind, Frank.”

“Yeah. Agreed.”

“Did my name come up when you talked with Naylor and Beiderman?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Either one of them think I’m involved in this conspiracy?”

“No. But when your name came up, the phrase Beiderman used was ‘loose cannon,’ in the phrase ‘the one thing we don’t need in these circumstances is a loose cannon like Castillo.’ ”

“And Naylor didn’t rush to my defense?”

“No. He didn’t.”

“So what happens now?”

“We wait to see if this coup d’etat theory of the President goes away when he’s had a few days to cool off.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

Lammelle was silent a long moment. Then he said, “I don’t know, Charley.”

Then, when Castillo didn’t reply for maybe thirty seconds, Lammelle asked, “Any questions?”

“Just one. Where’s my helicopter?”

“I’m not sure I should tell you.”

“Come on, Frank.”

Lammelle took another long moment of silence before he said: “Okay, Charley. In a move I regretted before I finished hanging up the phone, I ordered it loaded onto a truck and taken to Martindale Army Airfield at Fort Sam for indefinite storage.”

“Despite what everybody says about you, Frank, on certain occasions, you can be a good guy.”

“I’m not asking what you’re going to do with it, because I don’t want to know.”

The green LED on Castillo’s handset went out.

“So long, Frank,” he said to the dead headset. “It’s always a pleasure to hear from you.”

He handed the headset to Lester, picked up his lobster fork, then glanced around the table. All eyes were on him.

“Anything wrong, Charley?” Aleksandr Pevsner asked with a smile. “You looked very unhappy while you were talking.”

“Nothing I can’t handle in the morning, Alek, when time will have taken the emergency liquid out of my system.”

“Excuse me?”

“I thought you knew that I never discuss serious things when I’ve been drinking.”

“Not even with family?”

“ Especially not with this family,” Castillo said.

That earned him smiling lips and icy eyes from Pevsner.

When he looked at Sweaty, he knew she wouldn’t be smiling, and he expected to get the same icy glare from her blue eyes.

Instead, he got a faint smile-of approval, he realized with some surprise after a moment-and then, as he moved a chunk of lobster from a bowl of melted butter to his mouth, she groped him tenderly under the tablecloth.

The feeling of euphoria-or at least carnal anticipation-lasted until they were in their room. Castillo had waited maybe a second after Sweaty had gone into the bathroom before getting naked and under the sheets. He had been lying on his back with his fingers laced behind his head, waiting for her to join him, when his world crashed around him.

Epiphany!

Stop thinking with your dick, James Bond.

What you thought about good ol’ Alek is also true of Sweaty.

You can take the girl out of Russia, but only a fool thinking with his little head would believe you could take the SVR out of former Podpolkovnik Svetlana Alekseeva.

The most important thing to any of them is family. And/or the Oprichnina.

And you are not family. And certainly not an Oprichnik.

They told me-and I believe it-that the way they’ve survived since Ivan the Terrible is by doing whatever was necessary. The translation of that is being as ruthless as necessary.

And she’s smart. God, is she smart! When Juan Carlos Pena wanted my nonexistent address in Uruguay, she came up with the Golf and Polo Club in the next breath.

Which means she had no trouble at all figuring out that I’m likely to pose problems in their current battle with their former comrades in the SVR. I told her I was going to make it clear to Pevsner that I wasn’t going to let him whack anybody without my permission. And when I got into it with Pevsner just now. .

“I never discuss serious things when I’ve been drinking.”

“Not even with family?”

“ Especially not with this family.”

. . it had to be obvious to her that I was not going to be a good little boy and do whatever Wise ol’ Uncle Alek thinks I should do.