W Griffin - The outlaws

"And if he thinks this is an idle bluff, tell him to watch what happens if Koussevitzky's wife Olga-he's a Spetsnaz major; I shot him in the leg and left him on that island-and the entire Koussevitzky family are not in Budapest within seventy-two hours of your arrival in Moscow. I'll have two out of three SVR officers giggling behind Vladimir Vladimirovich's back, whispering that what he did when he was head of the KGB in Saint Petersburg was close his door and write poetry."

She wet her index finger with her tongue and ran it over her eyebrow.

"Dmitri," Lammelle said. "You're right. Her bite is worse than her bark."

"In other words, what you're proposing is an armistice," Murov said.

"On one hand," Castillo said, "I don't believe in the tooth fairy. Putin's going to have a hard time swallowing what we've done to him. He may not be able to. On the other hand, there's been an armistice in Korea for fifty years, during which fewer people on both sides have been killed than would have died if the war was still on. I'll take my chances with that. You tell Putin what Svetlana said."

Murov looked at Castillo and then at Svetlana. He stood.

"It's been very interesting seeing you again," he said. He offered his hand to Lammelle and Berezovsky. "And to meet you, Colonel," he said, offering his hand to Castillo. He then waited for Svetlana to put out her hand, which took a good fifteen seconds. He bowed and kissed it. "And it has been a joy to spend a few minutes-however stressful-in the company of the most beautiful daughter of the Motherland I have ever known. But now I must leave. I have a plane to catch."

He walked out of the Lobby Bar. Castillo, Lammelle, Berezovsky, and Svetlana looked out the window, and in a moment Murov appeared. He walked to the Mercedes SUV-the driver of which had taken advantage of the diplomatic privilege of parking wherever the hell the impulse strikes, and it was now blocking the curbside lane of Desales Street-jerked open the rear window to the cargo area, looked inside, and then slammed the window closed. He got in the passenger seat, slammed the door, and then the Mercedes drove off.

Castillo looked at Svetlana.

She said, "You heard what he said about the 'most beautiful daughter of the Motherland'?"

"What I want to know is what all you Russians have against Saint Petersburg poets."

Lammelle stood, and said, "And now you'll have to excuse me, I have an appointment at the White House." [TWELVE] The Situation Room The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 1005 14 February 2007 "I'm so glad you could join us, Mr. Lammelle," the President said sarcastically.

"Sir, it's a longer walk here from the Monica Lewinsky Motel than I remembered. My apologies for being late."

"No problem, if you remembered to bring your resignation with you."

"I'll give it verbally and leave right now, if that is your desire, Mr. President."

Lammelle looked around the room. It was nowhere near close to capacity. The secretaries of State and Defense were seated at the large table, as were the director of Central Intelligence, the attorney general, the director of the FBI, the director of National Intelligence and his executive assistant, and Generals Naylor and McNab. Plus, of course, the presidential spokesman, Mr. Jack Parker.

"You'll leave when I tell you that you can. Take a seat, Lammelle."

Lammelle sat down. Secretary of State Natalie Cohen stood up, leaned across the desk, and laid an envelope before him.

"What's this?" the President demanded.

"My resignation, Mr. President," she said.

"I haven't asked for it."

"Yes, I know," she said, and sat down.

General Naylor stood up, leaned across the table, and laid an envelope on the table.

"That's my resignation, sir," he said.

The President looked at General McNab.

"Well?"

"Well, what, Mr. President?"

"Aren't you going to offer your resignation?"

"No, sir."

"You didn't think I was going to let you get away with what you did, did you?"

"I don't know what you mean, Mr. President."

"You know goddamn well what I mean!" Clendennen flared. "You've been in this up to that goddamned mustache of yours! Placing the entire country in danger!"

"Sir, I don't understand."

"Maybe after the goddamn Russians open barrels of Congo-X all over the country, you will."

"Sir, that's just not going to happen. The Russians don't have barrels of Congo-X."

"Excuse me, General," Frank Lammelle said. "The Russians do have one barrel of Congo-X. It's dead, but I suppose you could still call it Congo-X. Or maybe I should have said, the Russians have one barrel of Dead Congo-X. I gave it to Mr. Murov, who is going to take it to Moscow later today to show it to Mr. Putin."

"You're telling me there is no longer a Congo-X threat?" Clendennen asked, incredulous.

"With the exception of a couple of quarts of live Congo-X in Colonel Hamilton's laboratory at Fort Detrick," General Naylor said, "there is no Congo-X anywhere in the world. Colonel Castillo seized all that the Russians had when he staged the raid on La Orchila Island in Venezuela. Colonel Hamilton will continue to experiment with it to see if he can find a better way to kill it."

"Why wasn't I told of this?" Clendennen demanded angrily.

"Because no one who knew you trusted you, Mr. President. You had proven you were susceptible to Russian blackmail," Natalie Cohen said. "I saw it as my sworn duty under the Constitution to thwart your announced intentions and did so."

"And now, Madam Secretary, you have resigned," the President said. "What are your intentions now? Are you going to write a book? Go on Wolf News?"

"Frankly, sir, I haven't made up my mind. But I must tell you, sir, that I do not share Ambassador Montvale's qualms about embarrassing you personally, or the Office of the President."

"Madam Secretary," presidential spokesman Jack Parker said. "Have you-"

"Butt out, Porky," the President snapped. "You're supposed to be a goddamned fly on the wall, and that's all."

"No, sir. That's not true. I took the same oath Secretary Cohen did. May I continue, sir? Or would you like my resignation right now?"

After a moment, the President said, "Go on, goddamn it."

"Madam Secretary, have you considered the public relations aspects of what will happen when word gets out that you have resigned, that General Naylor has resigned, and as I strongly suspect he will, Ambassador Montvale has also resigned?"

"Yes, I have," she said. "What are you suggesting, that I not resign? Sorry, Jack, I just don't have the desire to deal anymore with the President."

"Ambassador Montvale, are you going to resign?" Parker asked.

"Yes. And I'm aware of the collateral damage all of this might cause the country. But I can no longer in good faith serve a man who tried to do what the President would have done had not Colonel Castillo-and others-stood up to him."

"I'm going to put my two cents in here," the attorney general said. "I'm a lawyer. We're trained to compromise. You want it all at once, or in pieces?"

"Go slowly, please," Montvale said dryly. "I'm known as Ambassador Stupid, you know."

"My take on this whole thing is that it's an intelligence failure, Mr. Ambassador," the attorney general said. "I think that Jack Powell-the CIA-never really met its responsibilities. If they hadn't insisted that laboratory in the Congo was a fish farm, and if that woman-the Vienna station chief-hadn't scared those two Russians off with her incompetence, we would have learned about it from them. Instead, we had this Keystone Kop business-and it would be funny, if the circumstances were not so terrifying-of everybody chasing Colonel Castillo-unsuccessfully chasing him-all over the world while he did the Venezuelan operation-in essence the CIA's work-for them-"