“So, what did you do?”
“We made some parts that wouldn’t quite fit, or would wear out in a week or so, or would cause the drilling strings to break, or all three, and put them into crates marked ‘More Fine Products of Russian Federation Craftsmen.’ Then we loaded them and some SEALs onto nuclear submarines.”
“I know what’s coming,” Pevsner said. “Genius! No wonder we — I mean the USSR — lost the Cold War!”
“When the crates were off-loaded from the Russian ships onto docks in Venezuela, that same night the SEALs exchanged our crates for their crates. The parts the Russians bought from us were taken back to the U.S., put on shelves, and sold. They’re good parts. The — excuse the expression — bad parts no doubt now are installed in Venezuelan drilling rigs and refinery equipment. It’s only a matter of time before that equipment promptly breaks down or blows up — or both. The Venezuelans then will say unkind things to the Russians, and the Russians, who know they haven’t done anything wrong, will say unkind things to the Venezuelans.”
“When I changed sides, I knew it was time for us to change sides,” Pevsner said. “Didn’t I say that, Dmitri?”
“I remember you saying exactly that,” Tom Barlow said. “And you were right.”
“I’m always right. Or almost always. I have to admit that I did place my trust in that Korean sonofabitch who sold me those lousy air conditioners.”
He turned to Castillo.
“So when are you going to start the C. G. Castillo Pirated Ship Recovery Training Program?”
“After what you’ve just told me, how can I?” Castillo asked. “Won’t it take days to… how do I say this delicately?… restore the ladies’ rooms to their normal pristine and functioning condition?”
“This is another of those times when I wonder both how you got to be an intelligence officer and whether or not you’re intelligent enough to be let into the family. The last I heard there are zero females in your Delta Force and zero in your SEALs. That suggests there will not be a requirement for ladies’ restrooms, whether functioning and pristine or not.”
“You have a point,” Castillo admitted. “Does that mean I can charter the Czarina of the Gulf?”
“Absolutely!”
[FIVE]
“Roscoe,” Major Dick Miller, USA, Retired, said to Roscoe J. Danton, who was sitting beside him in the co-pilot’s seat of the aircraft, “I’m about to begin our descent into John Foster Dulles International Airport. Should I call ahead and get a limousine for you?”
“You mean a limousine for us?”
“No, I mean a limousine for you.”
“You’re not going to the White House with me?”
“What I’m going to do is drop you off and then fly to Chicago to pick up Archbishop Valentin and Archimandrite Boris and take them to Cozumel.”
“Who the hell are they?”
“The clergymen who are going to unite Sweaty and Charley in holy matrimony.”
After a moment’s thought, Roscoe said, “Thank you, Dick, but no. I’ll just get a taxi.”
“Why not a limousine? We’re living high on the CIA’s dime. If Charley can charter a Gulfstream Five, the Rhine River cruiser Die Stadt Köln, and now the two-thousand-plus-passenger Czarina of the Gulf, why can’t you ride to the White House in a limousine?”
“Frankly, Dick, I’m shocked at the suggestion. Here you are marching along in the Great Gray Line of West Pointers and suggesting that I waste the taxpayers’ hard-earned money by taking a limousine.”
“And now that I think of it, Charley’s going to bill the CIA five thousand dollars an hour for flying you here in his thirty-eighth birthday present.”
“Be that as it may, I will take a cab.”
“Suit yourself. And that’s the Long Gray Line of West Pointers, not the Great Gray Line.”
“Thank you. I’ll make a note of that. As a journalist I pride myself on making accurate statements.”
“If that’s the case, since my leg is still pretty well fucked up, you should have said, ‘Here you are limping along in the Long Gray Line.’”
“I’ll make a note of that, too. Accuracy and truth in all things has long been the creed of Roscoe J. Danton.”
The truth of the matter here was that Mr. Danton not only did not wish to go to the White House in a limousine, he had no intention of going to the White House at all.
He had made that decision while Castillo was still on his CaseyBerry speaking with Secretary of State Cohen and DCI Lammelle. She had called to say that the First Lady wanted Danton’s version — in person — of why Red Ravisher had thrown the paparazzo at him, and the President wanted to hear — in person — what he was doing in Las Vegas with Miss Ravisher when he was supposed to be in Budapest trying to sneak into Somalia.
The moment Castillo had said, “Well, okay. If you two are agreed it’s that important, I’ll have Dick Miller fly him up there in the morning,” Roscoe had had an epiphany, the first he could ever recall having, and which he had previously believed was a religious holiday, falling somewhere during Lent.
I’m not going, his epiphany had told him. I don’t know how I’m not going, but I am not going to try to explain to the President or the First Lady what happened at the airport in Las Vegas. Cohen and Lammelle and Castillo want to throw me at them — like a chunk of raw meat thrown to a starving tiger — to get the pressure off themselves, and I am just not going to permit that to happen.
He had had no idea how he was just not going to permit that to happen until Miller had brought up the subject of a limousine to take him from Dulles to the White House. Then, in an instant, he had another epiphany: He would get in a taxi, go directly to Union Station, take the train to New York, and seek asylum in the embassy of the People’s Democratic Republic of Burundi.
Several months before, while driving home from a party at the Peruvian embassy, he had come across a sea of flashing lights on patrol cars and police prisoner transport vehicles, and stopped to investigate. He had quickly learned what was going on.
The police were in the process of raiding the K Street Stress Relief Center, as the stress relief techniques offered apparently violated the District’s ordinances vis-à-vis the operation of what were known as disorderly houses.
Roscoe, in the hope that he would see, which seemed to be a distinct possibility, in the lines of now stress-free customers being led in handcuffs to the police prisoner transport vehicles, one or more distinguished members of Congress, had gotten out of his car for a better look.
Surprising him, he hadn’t seen any congressmen, but he had recognized someone who had been at the Peruvian embassy party. He recognized him because he was about seven feet tall and weighed probably 350 pounds, and wore a zebra-striped robe and an alligator-tooth necklace.
He saw, too, that the Burundian ambassador had recognized him.
He hadn’t written anything about the incident for a number of reasons. For one thing, diplomats being hauled off by the cops from establishments like the K Street Stress Relief Center was hardly news. For another, the ambassador had a name that could be pronounced and spelled only by fellow Burundians.
Roscoe had not been surprised to see the ambassador’s photo in the society section of the next day’s edition of the Washington Times-Post. He was pictured with his wife, who was even larger and more formidable-appearing than he. That explained why he had sought stress relief.