“And that makes me?” she asked.
“
“Trust has to be earned, Colonel.” She held up the
“From cover to cover,” he said.
She smiled.
“Are you about to tell me the real reason—that I won’t believe—why you’re defecting?” Castillo asked.
“I told you that I’d tell you why we are—why we have—defected when the time was right. That’s not yet.”
“You promised to tell the details of the family you have in Argentina.”
“I told you that I would tell you that at the fuel stop. We’re not at the fuel stop, are we?”
“No, we’re not.”
“Where is the fuel stop?”
“Dakar, Senegal. From there we’ll go to Sao Paulo, Brazil, then down to Buenos Aires. If we’re lucky we should be in B.A. about five in the afternoon, which is noon in B.A. And since December is the middle of winter in Vienna, it will be the middle of summer in B.A. In other words, hot, very hot, and humid.”
“We’ll be flying through most of the night and most of what would be the day in Vienna. You might consider getting some sleep. That seat goes down almost flat.”
“I think I will,” she said with a smile.
“It might be easier to sleep if you took off your pistol.”
She looked at him with what could have been surprise or indignation—or both.
“That holster must be uncomfortable,” Castillo went on. “And you’re really not going to have to shoot anybody anytime soon.”
“Or would you rather I took the holster off?” Castillo added.
Svetlana’s eyes turned to ice.
She unfastened her seat belt, stood, then marched down the aisle to the lavatory. Ninety seconds later, she was back. Without looking at him, she dropped the holstered pistol in his lap, got back in her seat, adjusted it almost flat, then turned on her side, facing away from him, and closed her eyes.
When Castillo took the pistol from the holster he saw that Davidson had been right: It was a 1908 Colt Vest Pocket. But chambered for .32 ACP, not .25 as Jack had guessed. He carefully ejected the magazine and worked the action. A cartridge flew out. He tried but failed to catch the live round, so he went looking for it. He found it under the seat, put it into the magazine, then put the magazine back in the pistol and the pistol back in its holster.
The elastic straps were still warm from her body, and he had a quick mental image of her leaping onto the platform at the Westbahnhof.
He put the pistol into his briefcase, lowered his seat, and promptly fell asleep.
When they landed at Yoff-Leopold Sedar Senghor International Airport in Senegal, and Max made his routine visit to the nose gear, both pups and the girl followed him. Delchamps followed the pups. Castillo had thought that the only words to really describe the pups bouncing happily after Poppa, and then trying—and failing—to emulate his raised high leg, were
Castillo had glanced at Svetlana. She was smiling at the scene warmly, maternally, causing Castillo to think,
Svetlana didn’t volunteer any information about her family when they had a mostly unsatisfactory French breakfast—bitter coffee and stale, too sweet croissants—making Castillo wonder if that was something she had invented to explain why they wanted to go to Argentina, and that there was, in fact, no family to help them disappear.
He didn’t press her.
[TWO]
Aeropuerto Internacional Jorge Newbery
Buenos Aires, Argentina
1240 29 December 2005
Castillo had taken his turn at the controls on the Vienna-Dakar leg and again on the last, short leg from Sao Paulo, Brazil, to Buenos Aires. On the latter—having relieved Jake Torine, which put him in the left seat—he had, without thinking about it, made the approach and landing.
At the end of the landing roll, he glanced at Dick Sparkman in the right seat and saw the look on his face.
“I hope you were paying attention, Captain,” Castillo said straight-faced. “If after much practice and study you can make a landing like that, then there may be hope that one day you can sit in the captain’s seat yourself.”
Sparkman shook his head, started to say something, and stopped.
“You may speak, Captain Sparkman.”
“I don’t know how to say this. . . .”
“Give it a shot.”
“Colonel Torine told me . . .” He paused again, then said, “How many landings have you made in a Gulfstream?”
“Not many. Torine usually takes it away from me whenever we get within fifty miles of our destination.”
“How many?”
“You could count them on my fingers. With a thumb, maybe both thumbs, left over.”
“Colonel, you had a gusting crosswind, thermals, everything that usually adds up to a bumpy landing—and you greased it in. Colonel Torine said you were a natural pilot. I didn’t know what he meant. Now I do.”
“Flattery will get you everywhere, Sparkman.”
“That was more surprise, maybe even awe, than flattery, Colonel.”
As Castillo taxied to the private aircraft tarmac, his pleasure at the compliment was more than a little tempered by some reflection. If all the threats to a smooth landing that Sparkman mentioned had indeed existed— and Castillo had no doubts about Sparkman’s judgment as an aviator—he hadn’t seen them.
That sobering thought left his mind as he approached the general aviation complex. He could see their welcoming party. In addition to immigration and customs officials, and their vehicles, he saw Alfredo Munz, Alex Darby, and Tony Santini standing in front of the wheels he had asked them to bring.
How he was going to deal with Duffy—when he inevitably had to—was one of the things he had been thinking about when he had not been thinking about gusting crosswinds and thermals rising from the runway baking in the noonday sun.
“Shut it down, Sparkman. And keep everybody on the plane until I see what the hell’s going on outside.”
When Castillo opened the stair door, and the decreasing whine of the engines filled the cabin, he called out,
