Black Ops

“No, sir.”

“Neither have I. There’s a room-service menu on the table there.” Castillo gestured to it. “Order up.”

“Thank you, sir.”

He took the menu from the coffee table and began to study its possibilities.

“See anything you like?” Castillo asked after a moment.

“Yes, sir. They have buckwheat pancakes with genuine Vermont maple syrup, not that usual molasses crap they call pancake syrup.”

“Well, that sounds good. Then that’s what we’ll have.” He paused. “What kind of questions, Randy?”

“Like, what’s going on here, sir?”

“I don’t understand.”

Randy shrugged. “The last thing I heard was that you were getting kicked out of the Army.”

Jesus H. Christ!

“Where did you hear that?”

“Last week my father came home . . .”

He’s not your father.

I am.

“. . . and told Mom that you were getting kicked out of the Army. Some guy he used to work for in the Pentagon . . . Colonel Remley? . . .”

“I know Colonel Remley,” Castillo said evenly.

“. . . told him General McNab was sending him to Argentina to get you to sign the papers.”

Castillo didn’t answer.

“And here you are,” Randy finished, “with General McNab.”

“Randy, what you got, what your father got, is called ‘a garbled message.’ I’m retiring from the service.”

“And when he came to the motel last night, I was in the bathroom. I heard him tell Mom that she wouldn’t believe it, but you were having a party with General McNab in McGuire’s restaurant.”

“And so we were. Your father was invited, of course, but he wanted to be with you and your mother.”

“How are you going to retire? You don’t have enough service to retire; you’re a classmate of my father’s.”

I will be goddamned if I’ll lie to my son and tell him I’m “psychologically unfit to remain on active service.”

Damn that paper-pushing, straight-leg-chair-warming sonofabitch Remley!

“Medically,” Castillo said. “I’m being medically retired.”

“What’s wrong with you?”

Sonofabitch!

There was the sound of a door opening, and both automatically looked toward it.

“Good morning,” Svetlana said from the doorway to the master bedroom.

She was wrapped in a terry-cloth robe, running a heavy wooden-handled brush through her lustrous hair.

Randy politely got to his feet.

“Randy, this is Miss Barlow,” Castillo said. “Svet, this is—”

“I know who he is,” she said, smiling warmly and looking between them. “One look at those eyes and I’d know him anywhere!”

Oh, shit!

Svetlana saw something on both their faces but didn’t know what it was. Her smile disappeared.

“Oh? You are not Carlos’s son, his son who lives with his mother and her husband?”

Where the hell did she get that?

From me, of course—that’s where the hell she got that, stupid.

I told her—and Pevsner and damn near everybody else—that I had a son who lived with his mother.

“Well, I guess that answers most of my other questions,” Randy said.

“What?” Castillo asked.

Randy looked him in the eyes. “Like why I look just like the pictures of your father, Colonel Castillo, sir. And why Abuela wanted me to call her Abuela. And—”

“He didn’t know?” Svetlana suddenly exclaimed. “Oh, Carlos!”

“No, ma’am. I didn’t know. I think everybody else knew. My Grandfather Wilson has known all the time. And, of course, I think it’s safe to assume Mom knows—”

“Randy!” Castillo said.

“Why the hell didn’t anybody tell me?” Randy asked.

Castillo saw that the boy was on the edge of tears.

“I don’t think your father knows,” Castillo said gently.

Which is true.

I don’t think Righteous Randolph would be able to believe his wife ever had been to bed with me.

Much less believe that their honeymoon child was mine.

“Is that an admission, Colonel Castillo, sir, that I am in fact your bastard son?”

“Oh, Randy!” Svetlana said.

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me?” Randy demanded, his voice cracking. “What kind of a man would—”

“Shut up!” Castillo ordered.

Both Svetlana and Randy looked at him in shock.

“I have a habit of saying—and, of course, thinking I’m clever when I say it—that when you don’t know what to say, try telling the truth. Are you able to handle the truth, Randy?”

The boy nodded.

“Okay, let’s start with being a bastard.”

“Carlos!” Svetlana said warningly.

“My parents were not married. That makes me a bastard. You learn to live with it. My mother loved me deeply and I deeply loved her. I am sure that my father would have—but he never knew about me. He was killed before I was born.”

Charley looked at Svetlana.

“He was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, Svet. And Randy’s grandfather was his co-pilot.”

“At Fort Rucker,” Randy said, “there’s a picture of them in a building they named for Colonel Castillo’s father—or should I say ‘my other grandfather’? He won the Medal of Honor. I look just like him. Did you really think nobody would ever know?”

“Well, I didn’t know until we flew down to see the Mastersons and the Lorimers— yeah, Svet, our Ambassador Lorimer—right after Hurricane Katrina.”

He met Randy’s eyes.

“I honest to God didn’t know about you, Randy. Worse, in Mississippi, after Ambassador Lorimer told me, ‘Your son has eyes just like yours,’ I told him I didn’t have a son.”

“My God!” Svetlana said. “You really didn’t know!”

“So he says,” Randy said more than a little sarcastically.

“I’m getting off the track here,” Castillo said. “One point I was trying to make, Randy, is that I can’t work up a hell of a lot of sympathy for you. You have a loving mother, and she’s still around. Mine died when I was twelve. I never knew my father, and you’ve had a good man all of your life who thinks he’s your father and who loves you.”

“You sonofabitch!”

“No,” Castillo replied more calmly than he expected. “I am not a sonofabitch, and neither are you. My mother was the antithesis of a bitch, and so is yours. Think what you like of me, but never ever apply that term to me. And never allow anyone to apply it to you.”