“I’ll even take the blame for the other Russian Delchamps whacked in Vienna. I should have seen that coming and stopped it.
“Just be good to Svetlana, Lord. Amen.”
Svetlana stopped praying and got to her feet. More than a little awkwardly, Castillo stood, too. She touched his face and kissed him.
He held her.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Don’t be silly.”
“What did you pray for?”
“Evgeny’s soul,” he lied.
Where the fuck did that come from?
On top of everything else, I’m lying through my teeth.
Add that to my demerits list, God.
“Me, too,” she said. “But mostly I prayed for us.”
“For us?”
“Evgeny knew the rules.”
“Excuse me?”
“He knew them, and I know them, and you know them. I prayed to God to excuse us from them, my Carlos.”
What the hell is she talking about?
“Saint Matthew,” she went on as if reading his mind. “When the Romans came to arrest Jesus Christ, Simon Peter drew his sword to protect him. Our Lord told him to put it away. ‘For all those who take up the sword perish by the sword.’ You never heard that?”
“Now that you mention it . . .”
“I prayed to God that he will excuse you and me from that, my darling. It might not hurt if you did the same thing.”
She kissed him quickly on the lips, then gently pushed away from him. She announced, “I’m going to have a shower. You want to go first, or after? Or . . . ?”
“Or,” he said, and followed her into the bathroom, shedding his West Point bathrobe en route.
[SEVEN]
2130 12 January 2006
“Major Miller for Colonel Castillo,” Sexy Susan announced.
Castillo looked up at the monitors from the playing cards he held. The countdown timer read 53:05:50, and there was a flashing lightning bolt above a picture of the house in Alexandria.
He looked across the table at Dmitri Berezovsky and Aloysius Casey, then back at his hand: two aces, two sevens, and a nine.
“I think you’re bluffing, Aloysius,” he said, picking up chips and tossing them in the pile at the center of the table. “Your two dollars and two more.” Then a little more loudly and officially he said, “C. G. Castillo.”
Sexy Susan said, “I have Colonel Castillo for you, Major Miller.”
“How they hanging, Gimpy?”
“Montvale’s looking for you, Charley.”
“So, what else is new?”
“He just called here on the White House secure phone. He asked me if I knew where you were.”
“To which you responded?”
“That you were at the moment out of touch. And then he said, ‘Where is he, and don’t tell me you don’t know,’ to which I cleverly responded, ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to say exactly that, Mr. Ambassador, sir.’ ”
“Why do I think that didn’t end your little chat?”
“He said it was urgent that he speak to you, and please have you call him; he has to talk to you about Vienna.”
“If I call him, since the sonofabitch owns the wiretappers in Fort Meade, he will know where I am. Let me think about it, Dick. I’ll call you back.”
“Figure something out, Charley. Or he will change that ‘locate but do not detain’ on you to ‘put the bastard in chains.’”
“How do we know he already hasn’t?”
“As of three minutes ago—according to Inspector Doherty; I called him before I called you—they haven’t. Doherty said this was probably because they need something called a warrant before they can throw you on the ground and slap on the handcuffs.”
“At the risk of repeating myself, let me think about it. I’ll call you back. Castillo out.”
Aloysius Casey put down his cards, faceup. “All I have is three jacks and a pair of fours,” he said, mock innocently. “What do they call that, a full house?”
As he pulled the money in the center of the table to him, he said, “You want to talk to this Montvale guy, Charley?”
“I don’t want to, but I would if I could figure out how to do it without having him find out where I am.”
“Ask and you shall receive.” He turned toward the AFC radio. “White House, via the Venetian.”
“Right away, Dr. Casey,” Sexy Susan said.
“What this does is activate a cellular in a suite we keep at the Venetian,” Casey said. “Not encrypted—I’m working on that—but what it does is tell the phone company—and Meade, Langley, anyone who’s curious—that the call is being made on a cellular in Vegas. That’s all. I don’t know how many rooms there are in the Venetian, a couple of thousand, anyway . . .”
“You are a genius, sir.”
“White House.”
“Colonel Castillo for Ambassador Montvale.”
“On a regular line?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Ambassador Montvale’s line.”
“Lieutenant Colonel Castillo for Ambassador Montvale,” Sexy Susan announced. “The line is not secure.”
“It’s Castillo,” they heard Truman C. Ellsworth, Montvale’s deputy, say.
“On the White House line?” Montvale then said, and then the director of National Intelligence came on the line. “Good evening, Colonel Castillo.”
“Burning the late-night oil, are you, Mr. Ambassador?”
“Where are you, Charley? We’ve been looking all over for you.”
“So I have been led to believe by Major Miller.”
“He told me he didn’t know where you are.”
“Did he? Well, I don’t always tell him where I am.”
“Are you aware of what happened in Vienna this morning?”
“What?”
“The Austrian foreign minister called the American ambassador and asked him if, in the spirit of international mutual cooperation, he would be willing to have Miss Eleanor Dillworth, his consul, answer a few questions the police had for her.”
“That’s the same lady who accused me of stealing some Russians from her? What did she do, go further off the deep end? What did the Viennese cops think she did?”
“You’re not going to make me lose my temper, Castillo, so you can knock it off.”
“Yes, sir. I’m deeply sorry, sir.”
Castillo saw Casey shaking his head, but he was smiling.
“What the police wanted to know was if she could shed some light on why her business card was found on the chest of a man by the name of Kirill Demidov. He was found sitting with a garrote around his neck in a taxi just down the street from the American embassy.”
“I just can’t believe that Miss Dillworth could have anything to do with anything like that, even if the bastard was the Russian rezident who ordered the garroting of the Kuhls.”
“Who told you that?” Montvale snapped.
“I have some Russian friends, you know. They tell me all kinds of interesting things.”
They heard Ellsworth trying to mask his voice in the background, then Montvale said into the phone, “What the hell are you doing in Las Vegas?”
Casey smiled again and gave Castillo a thumbs-up.
“Who told you I was in Las Vegas?”
“I’m beginning to think Miss Dillworth and a growing number of other people, including General McNab, are right.”
“About what?”
“That you really have lost it.”
“No. That’s just a story you cooked up to convince C. Harry Whelan, Jr., of The Washington Post that a fruitcake like me could not possibly have stolen two Russian defectors from her, as Miss Dillworth alleges. Remember?”
“I think I should tell you that Miss Dillworth has told the Vienna police, the State Department, and of course Mr. Whelan, that if they are looking for the persons responsible for the Demidov murder, they should start with you and your crony Mr. Edgar Delchamps.”