“She’s a woman,” Berezovsky said. “I suspect your learning about women is going to be an interesting experience for you. Painful, but interesting.”
[SEVEN]
1250 8 January 2006
Casey’s Gulfstream V—which Castillo thought was both beautiful and probably carried the most advanced avionics in the world—touched smoothly down, turned at the end of the strip, and taxied back to the hangar.
The stair door opened and Aloysius Francis Casey, Ph.D., came down the steps carrying an open laptop computer. He was wearing clothing not often seen in South Boston: a Stetson hat, Western World ostrich-skin boots, a sheepskin-lined denim jacket, and matching trousers.
He saluted. Castillo returned it.
“We cheated death again,” Casey announced triumphantly, then nodded at the computer. “This little sonofabitch was right on the money.”
He handed the laptop to Lester Bradley.
“You can carry this. I wouldn’t want a Marine to rupture himself trying to carry anything heavier.”
“Yes, sir,” Bradley said. He looked at the screen. “Dr. Casey, why does this show we’re in Dallas?”
Casey took a quick, shocked look at the screen.
“You little sonofabitch, you got me!” Casey said approvingly.
A man wearing the shoulder boards of a first officer came down the stairs carrying a large cardboard box, followed by a man wearing the four-stripe shoulder boards of a captain and also carrying a large cardboard box.
“That’s the delicate stuff,” Casey barked. “Be careful with it.”
“Yes, sir,” they said in unison as they headed for one of the Yukons. Bradley went to the nearest and opened the rear door.
“Where’d you get the cowboy suit?” Castillo asked.
“Weren’t you paying attention in the Q course when they said you should always try to blend into the native population? And this is Texas, right? At least Dallas, if one were to believe the Boy Marine.”
Castillo chuckled.
“Well, hello,” Casey said, having spotted Svetlana.
“I like your cowboy suit,” Svetlana said. “Carlos, I want one just like that.”
“Aloysius, this is Susan Barlow,” Castillo said. “And her brother, Tom.”
“You don’t sound like a Texan,” Casey said. “But as pretty as you are, you can sound like anything you want.”
“My grandmother’s in the house, setting up lunch,” Castillo said.
“Your grandmother?”
“We need all the help we can get,” Castillo said.
“And here I am,” Casey said. “Let’s get this crap off the airplane.”
The “crap off the airplane” nearly filled both Yukons.
Less than an hour after it touched down, Casey’s Gulfstream went wheels-up.
“What we’re going to need before too long are a couple of large, very large, monitors,” Casey announced. “Better, three. Better yet, four. That’s presuming the Marine Corps doesn’t smash everything taking it out of the boxes.”
He nodded toward Bradley, who was half inside one of Casey’s large cardboard boxes that crowded the library.
“Not to worry, sir. I know how delicate vacuum tubes are.”
“Vacuum tubes?” Casey asked incredulously, then said, “The Boy Marine got me again!”
“So it would appear,” Berezovsky said.
“I may decide not to like you, Tom. And I don’t even know who you are.”
“You tell me what kind of monitors you want, and I’ll go into town and get them,” Castillo said. “And while I’m doing that, Davidson can tell you who Tom is and otherwise bring you up to speed.”
Casey said, “Go to Radio Shack and get a bunch of precision soldering irons and hand tools, that kind of thing. Mine are in my kitchen. As far as the monitors go, get the best they have. I don’t want to have to fix monitors in addition to everything else I have to do around here.”
He reached for his wallet. “Let me give you a credit card.”
“I have a credit card, thank you. The Lorimer Charitable and Benevolent Fund will pick up the tab.”
Castillo was almost out the front door when he remembered that if he used the Lorimer AmEx, or anything with his name on it, the FBI would quickly learn his whereabouts.
Abuela, Estella, and Svetlana were cleaning up the kitchen after breakfast when he walked in.
“Abuela, I need you to go into town with me to buy some things. And bring your credit card, please. I’ll pay you back later.”
“Carlos, you don’t have a credit card?” she said incredulously, if disapprovingly.
“I do. But if I use it, the FBI will know I’m in Midland, and I don’t want them to know that.”
That announcement didn’t faze her.
“I was just about to ask, Carlos, if it would be safe for Svetlana to go into Midland.”
Castillo looked at her. “Why do you want to, Svet?”
Doña Alicia answered for her. “I promised her I’d show her St. Agnes’s, where you sang in the choir . . .”
“Before you grew up and became a heathen,” Svetlana said.
“. . . and she wants to buy some denims,” Doña Alicia picked up.
“I became neither a heathen nor a Roman Catholic,” Castillo said.
“He doesn’t mean that the way it sounds, dear. He’s a Protestant—”
“He’s not a very good anything now,” Svetlana said. “That I will change.”
“And I was thinking if you could get what you need in Sam’s . . .”
“Sam’s and Radio Shack, probably.”
“. . . Svetlana could get the denims there. And if you’re going to have to go to Radio Shack, that’s right down the street from Western World. They have some very nice ready-to-wear boots, and blouses and things. That’s if it’s safe for her to go into town.”
The odds are pretty slim that the local FBI people would spot this Interpol fugitive in Sam’s or Western World, or riding around in a Yukon with a Double-Bar-C sign on the door.
“Whenever you’re ready, ladies,” Castillo said.
“Svetlana can ride with me. That would attract less attention,” Doña Alicia said.
[EIGHT]
1745 8 January 2006
The Yukons returned to the Double-Bar-C each transporting two fifty-six-inch flat-screen liquid-crystal monitors, one strapped to each roof and one extending four feet out the rear door of each with a little flag flying from the boxes—Lester Bradley had said there was no reason not to avoid a conflict with the cops for having something hanging out the back of the truck.
Doña Alicia and Svetlana, carrying boxes of denim clothing and whatever the big box labeled WESTERN WORLD contained, disappeared into the house.
Ernesto—Estella’s son—and Bradley and Castillo started off-loading the monitors. After they had carried the first one into the library—which was now a sea of electronic devices and parts there for—Davidson came out to help with the others.
“Miller called, Charley.”
“And?”
“Colonel Hamilton and Phineas will arrive at Reagan at oh-nine-something. He’ll take them to the Motel Monica. Tom McGuire has some Secret Service guys who’ll sit on them tonight and tomorrow without asking any questions. He said there’s nothing to connect them with us anyway.
“And Delchamps is on the 2130 Lufthansa flight to Munich, and Darby on the 2150 American flight to Frankfurt, both out of Dulles. Miller gave them $9,900 apiece—a hundred under the law requiring anything over ten grand taken out of the country to be declared.”
Castillo nodded. “What else?”
“He’s got a Beechcraft King Air laid on from noon tomorrow to take Hamilton’s stuff to Bragg. Actually to Fayetteville, where Vic will have somebody meet it. No jet was available, and he said it won’t make any difference anyhow, as Torine can’t leave without that stuff or the shooters, and Uncle Remus is not finished with the paperwork for the shooters.”