“Is that what they call loyalty to your co-workers? I thought agency types never ratted on one another.”
“I don’t suppose you know where that dinosaur is, do you?”
“He could be in Budapest, I suppose—”
“Budapest?”
“—Or Buenos Aires. Or just about any place in between.”
“He’s not with you in Las Vegas?”
“I never said I was in Vegas. You did.”
“Wherever you are, the FBI will inevitably find you.”
“I’ll bet there’ll be a lot of volunteers to look for me in Las Vegas. Who did you say told you I was here—I mean, there?”
Casey and Berezovsky grinned widely.
“All right, Castillo, enough. I have told the DCI I want a separate investigation of the allegations your Russian friends have made about a secret factory in the Congo. You have accomplished that much, if they are not making a fool of you. And now, it seems to me, it’s time for you to put up or shut up.”
“Meaning what?”
“Berezovsky and Alekseeva should step forward and tell the agency what they know.”
“That’s unlikely. They trust the agency a little less than even I do.”
“Charley, I don’t care where in the world you have them hidden. You tell me where, and I’ll have a plane there in a matter of hours.”
“Which will transport them to one of those nice houses the agency has in Maryland? I don’t think so, Mr. Ambassador. But I’ll tell you what I will do: In a couple of days, when I get it all together, I will send you everything they have told me about what the agency thinks is a harmless fish farm. Plus what I’ve managed to dig up myself.”
Montvale didn’t reply for a long moment.
“I’m surprised. I thought there was nothing you could do that would surprise me. But I should have thought that you would be doing something like this.”
“Something like what?”
“You still want to go over there yourself, don’t you, John Wayne? Jump on your goddamn horse and gallop off to fight the fucking Indians. You think if you can put before the President enough of your bullshit, mixed with the bullshit your fucking Russian friends are feeding you, the President will say, ‘Sure, hotshot. Go over there and show up the agency. Have Montvale set it up.’ All the while ignoring whatever damage you can do to the President if you fuck it up—when you fuck it up.”
“I thought you weren’t going to lose your temper.”
“Mark my fucking words, Castillo, you will go to Africa and embarrass the President and the country and me over my dead body. You will not have access to any assets over which I have control—”
“Well, it’s always a pleasure to talk to you, Mr. Ambassador,” Castillo said. “Break it down, White House.” When he heard the click, he said, “Castillo out.”
“In about a minute,” Casey said, “I suspect a cell phone will start to ring in the Venetian. No one will hear it, because the ringer’s been muted. And I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if, shortly thereafter, lots of gun-toting guys in bad suits with emission detectors in their ears will start prowling the miles of Venetian corridors. That won’t work, as I thought of that and came up with a fix. But was that smart, Charley?”
Castillo looked at him but said nothing.
“Thank you, Carlos,” Berezovsky said.
“For what? I told you I’d never turn you over to the agency, and that was before—”
“Before Cupid’s arrow struck? No. Thank you for not backing down from that assault. You reminded me of David and Goliath.”
Castillo pointed his finger at him. “You shut up.” Then he pointed at Casey. “And you deal.”
Doña Alicia and Svetlana came into the library fifteen minutes later. They had been watching an old Paul Newman movie on television in the ranch house’s main living room. They joined the game.
When they quit playing—just before midnight, when Lester Bradley came in for his watch duty with the AFC—Doña Alicia had won almost twenty dollars and Sweaty had shown that she was a lousy loser by twice throwing her cards angrily on the table and uttering thirty-second recitations of Russian expletives that Castillo was glad Doña Alicia didn’t understand. As Castillo stood, he noted on the monitors that the countdown read 50:45:15.
[EIGHT]
0900 13 January 2006
Castillo walked into the library carrying a mug of coffee.
Davidson shook his head and said, “Not a fucking peep, Charley.”
Castillo sat at the table.
“I think what you were supposed to say was, ‘Good morning, sir. I hope the colonel slept well. I beg to report there have been no reports from any of the reconnaissance parties, sir.’ ”
Davidson gave him the finger. “Uncle Remus said seventy-two hours, Colonel, sir.”
He pointed at the countdown. Castillo saw that it read 41:40:40.
“I think we have a surfeit of precision. Why the hell are we counting in seconds?”
“I don’t know. Because we can?”
“Let’s wake up the Air Force and see what they’re doing to earn all the money the taxpayers are throwing at them,” Castillo said. “C. G. Castillo for Colonel Torine. Encryption Level One.”
Sexy Susan said: “One moment, please, Colonel.”
Davidson’s fingers attacked his keyboard.
The monitor Castillo was watching changed its data display. It now showed a three-dimensional picture of the terminal building at Kilimanjaro International Airport, Tanzania. A lightning bolt at the top of the screen began to flash, then the screen showed the local date and time at the airport: 1701 13 JAN 06.
“Back that up, Jack,” Castillo said. “Let’s have a look at the Congo.”
Sexy Susan said: “I have Colonel Torine for you, Colonel. Encryption Level One.”
“What’s up, Charley?” Jake Torine asked.
“Hold one, Jake,” Castillo said.
The screen showed the last known positions of 5-Leverette, C and 6-DeWitt, P. They were now inside the Congo, eighty-some kilometers northeast of Kisangani. Their symbols were nearly superimposed on each another, which could have meant that they were together, or in the same area just a klick or two apart.
“Speaking of precision,” Castillo said.
“That’s it, Charley,” Davidson replied. “It won’t go any closer. What they did was turn on the AFC just long enough for the computer to get a GPS position.”
Castillo’s fingers flew over the keyboard of his laptop.
“Jake, I’ve got a last-known position on Uncle Remus. He’s in the Congo.”
“He told me that’s where he was going. Anything a little closer than that? The Congo is a great big place, Charley.”
“You have a pencil or something to write this down?”
“The Lorimer Fund bought me the latest and greatest laptop computer just before I came over here. I thought maybe it would come in handy.”
Castillo read from his laptop screen: “One point zero six north latitude; twenty-five point nine east latitude. That’s eighty-odd klicks northeast of Kisangani.”
“Let me have those coordinates again. Slowly.”
Castillo read them again slowly.
“Got it. Where the hell did you get that?”
“We Army special operators try to stay on top of things,” Castillo said. “I think this place we’re interested in is another fifty or sixty klicks farther northeast of Uncle Remus’s LKP.”
“That would fit,” Torine said thoughtfully.
“It’s possible, repeat possible, that we’ll get position updates, and I thought that while we’re waiting maybe we might consider what we could do if this place turns out to be what it is, and where we think it is.”