That earned him smiling lips and icy eyes from Pevsner.
When he looked at Sweaty, he knew she wouldn’t be smiling, and he expected to get the same icy glare from her blue eyes.
Instead, he got a faint smile-of approval, he realized with some surprise after a moment-and then, as he moved a chunk of lobster from a bowl of melted butter to his mouth, she groped him tenderly under the tablecloth.
The feeling of euphoria-or at least carnal anticipation-lasted until they were in their room. Castillo had waited maybe a second after Sweaty had gone into the bathroom before getting naked and under the sheets. He had been lying on his back with his fingers laced behind his head, waiting for her to join him, when his world crashed around him.
Epiphany!
Stop thinking with your dick, James Bond.
What you thought about good ol’ Alek is also true of Sweaty.
You can take the girl out of Russia, but only a fool thinking with his little head would believe you could take the SVR out of former Podpolkovnik Svetlana Alekseeva.
The most important thing to any of them is family. And/or the Oprichnina.
And you are not family. And certainly not an Oprichnik.
They told me-and I believe it-that the way they’ve survived since Ivan the Terrible is by doing whatever was necessary. The translation of that is being as ruthless as necessary.
And she’s smart. God, is she smart! When Juan Carlos Pena wanted my nonexistent address in Uruguay, she came up with the Golf and Polo Club in the next breath.
Which means she had no trouble at all figuring out that I’m likely to pose problems in their current battle with their former comrades in the SVR. I told her I was going to make it clear to Pevsner that I wasn’t going to let him whack anybody without my permission. And when I got into it with Pevsner just now. .
“I never discuss serious things when I’ve been drinking.”
“Not even with family?”
“Especially not with this family.”
. . it had to be obvious to her that I was not going to be a good little boy and do whatever Wise ol’ Uncle Alek thinks I should do.
So what to do about that? They can’t whack me-although that remains a possibility for the future-because right now they need me.
She knew that I was talking to Lammelle on the phone, even from the one side of the conversation I let her hear.
So, just as fast as she came up with the address for Juan Carlos, when she saw that I was already challenging Pevsner’s authority, she decided the way to deal with the situation was in bed. She could control me there.
And why shouldn’t she think so?
Less than twenty-four hours after we first met, she was in my bed-and has been leading me around by the wang ever since.
So she grabbed hold of it under the table here.
And I can’t even get really pissed off at her. She is what she is, and what she is is a fourth-hell, maybe sixth-generation Soviet spook.
Can I be pissed at me-James Bond Junior?
Sure.
Because James Bond Junior is acting not like even a junior spook-one six months out of Fort Huachuca or the Farm-but like some seventeen-year-old with raging hormones who just got laid for the first time and is convinced there has never been love like this since Adam screwed Eve in the Garden of Eden.
And because it’s humiliating having to face proof of my gross stupidity.
Sweaty came out of the bathroom, holding a towel by its edges.
“Showtime!” she said, and dropped the towel.
That has to be the most beautiful woman in the world.
She walked on her toes to the bed quickly and with exquisite grace and got in beside him.
She laid her body half across Castillo, making him think that she had the most wonderful breasts he had ever encountered by any standard he could think of.
“You play the fool so well,” she said, “that sometimes I forget that you’re not a fool at all.”
He could feel her breath against his ear.
“Flattery will get you everywhere,” he said. “But what specifically do you have in mind?”
“Aleksandr’s face, when you told him you never discuss business when you’re drinking, especially with this family, was priceless.”
Well, here it is. The schmooze starts.
“Beware of Russians bearing booze is my motto, baby.”
“And why didn’t you tell me you’re a legend?”
“Who said I was?”
“Kiril. When I said, ‘Thank you for letting Carlos fly as your co-pilot,’ he said, ‘I was glad to have him. I don’t think anyone knows more about flying in the mountains than he does. He even wrote a book about it. He’s a legend in the American army.’ Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Modesty.”
She pinched his nipple.
Well, she’s a good schmoozer. I almost believe her.
“Can I ask you a personal question?” he said.
“No.”
“What kind of don’t-get-pregnant medicine do you take?” he pursued, then thought: Where the hell did that come from? Did Alek put a little sodium pentothal in that vodka?
“I should have known. .” she said with a sigh.
“You’re not answering the question.”
“You really want to know?”
“I really want to know.”
Why not? Like it says on the CIA’s wall in Langley, “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”
“When I stopped living with Evgeny, I stopped taking those once-a-day pills.”
“You were on that stuff when you were married to Evgeny? Why?”
“I didn’t want his baby, obviously.”
Charley thought: And since you certainly don’t want mine. .
He said: “And now?”
“When I knew Dmitri and I were going to try to get out, I went to a Danish gynecologist and she gave me a shot.”
“What kind of a shot?”
“I don’t know what it was called, but she said it would keep me from getting with child for a year. .”
In case you just happened to meet somebody who could be useful if you let him into your pants, right? Like me?
“. . which was enough. I didn’t mind dying, but I didn’t want the bastard child of an SVR interrogator. .”
“What?”
“The first step when breaking down a senior female traitor is to rape her,” Sweaty said matter-of-factly. “Multiple times, different men, over a forty-eight-hour period. I could handle that, but I didn’t want a child coming
