Black Ops

“Everybody stay on the plane until I give the okay.”

He went down the stair door and then across the tarmac. He saw Alex Darby, Tony Santini, and Alfredo Munz start walking on the heels of the Argentine officials who were already headed for him and the Gulfstream.

At the top of the stairs, Max shouldered Sparkman out of the way. He made his way down the stairs for his ritual visit to the nose wheel. One of his pups followed him, and then the other. Sof’ya Berezovsky went after the pups. Former Lieutenant Colonel Svetlana Alekseeva of the SVR, in her role as aunt, went after Sof’ya. Edgar Delchamps went after Colonel Alekseeva.

One of the Argentine officials, not smiling, put out his hand. “Documents, please.”

“I’ll have to get them,” Castillo said in Spanish with a smile. He hoped that if he sounded like a Porteno he might get a smile in return.

He turned and saw for the first time that Delchamps, Svetlana, Sof’ya, and the dogs were off the airplane.

He walked back to Svetlana, who was standing at the foot of the step door.

“Get back on the airplane,” he ordered. “Get everybody’s passports.” He looked up and into the airplane and saw Davidson. “Jack, get the airplane’s papers and the Americans’ passports.”

Svetlana went up the stairs.

A moment later, Davidson and Sparkman came down the stairs with all the passports and the aircraft’s documents.

They formed a fire-bucket line, and their luggage began to come off the plane. Castillo saw that Svetlana had taken her place in the line.

And then he saw that Svetlana’s skirt was either Loden cloth or something heavy like it.

Jesus, that’s about the worst thing she could be wearing here.

This is the hottest part of the summer.

The customs officer began a perfunctory inspection of the luggage. A man from Jet Aviation Service began to deal with Torine about landing fees, parking fees, and fuel.

“Very nice, Charley,” Santini said to Castillo, vis-a-vis Lieutenant Colonel Alekseeva. “I have always been partial to redheads.”

Redhead?

Castillo looked. What had looked like dark brown hair now indeed, in the bright sunlight, looked red. Dark red, but red.

“My relationship with the lady is purely professional, Tony,” Castillo said.

“Sure it is.”

“She is—they are—people I want to get to our house in Pilar safely and without attracting attention. When that’s done, I’ll tell you all about them.”

“Who are they?”

“Later, Tony.”

Santini heard the tone in his voice and didn’t push.

“Wheels?” Castillo asked.

“I have my car and an embassy Suburban,” Darby said, offering his hand. “Welcome back, Charley.”

“And I’ve got my car,” Tony Santini said. “And Munz has his.”

Munz saw there was some problem with the customs or immigration officers and went to deal with it.

“The Sienos?” Castillo asked.

“He’s not coming,” Darby said, “and she couldn’t get on the morning plane. She may not be able to get a seat on the afternoon plane, either.”

“Shit!”

“Kensington said that Miller called and said Bradley would be on the Aerolineas Argentinas flight out of Miami tonight.”

“What’s going on, Charley?” Darby asked.

“It’ll have to wait until we’re in Nuestra Pequena Casa,” Castillo said, nodding toward Munz, who was walking back to them, his left fist balled with the thumb extended, signaling that all was okay.

[THREE]

Nuestra Pequena Casa

Mayerling Country Club

Pilar, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina

1545 29 December 2005

“Our Little House” in the exclusive Mayerling Country Club in the Buenos Aires suburb of Pilar had been rented on a two-year lease for four thousand U.S. dollars a month by Senor Paul Sieno and his wife, Susanna. The owner believed them to be fellow Argentines, an affluent young couple from Mendoza.

That the attractive pair was affluent seemed to the owner to be proven when they didn’t try to bargain about the monthly rent or his demand that he be paid the first and last months’ rent plus a security deposit equal to another two months’ rent before they moved in. He had the money in hand—sixteen thousand dollars, in U.S. currency—the day after he had asked for it.

Nuestra Pequena Casa—the owner had named it—could fairly be described as a mansion in a neighborhood of mansions. Mayerling was several kilometers off the Panamericana, a toll superhighway, and fifty-odd kilometers from Plaza del Congreso, the monolith in front of the Congress in central Buenos Aires, from which all distances in Argentina are measured.

Argentine law defined “country club” as a gated community in which at least thirty percent of the land was given over to such things as polo fields, golf courses, and other green areas. Further, a “gated community” in Argentina meant a private neighborhood enclosed by ten-foot-tall fences topped with razor wire, equipped with motion-sensing devices, and patrolled by private security guards armed with pistols, shotguns, and in some cases Uzis.

Mayerling far exceeded the minimum green-space requirements of the law. There were five polo fields and two Jack Nicklaus-designed golf courses. The smallest lot within its ten-foot walls was one hectare, or 2.45 acres.

“Mayerling,” Castillo had noted when the Sienos first rented the property, was also the name of the Royal and Imperial hunting lodge outside Vienna where—depending on which version one chose to believe—Crown Prince Rudolph had shot his sixteen-year-old mistress and then himself, or Crown Prince Rudolph had been shot at the orders of his father, Emperor Franz Josef, who believed young Rudy was planning to split the Austro-Hungarian Empire by becoming King of Hungary.

Many of the homes in Mayerling were built on two or more lots. Nuestra Pequena Casa was built on two, and had six bedrooms, all with bath and dressing room, three other toilets with bidets, a library, a sitting room, a dining room, a kitchen, servants’ quarters (for four), a swimming pool, and, in the backyard near the pool, a quincho.

A quincho was something like an American pool house, except that it was primarily intended as a place to eat, more or less outdoors, and had a wood-fired grill for this purpose.

Our Little House’s quincho was solidly built of masonry and had a rugged roof of mottled red Spanish tiles. It had a deep verandah, which also was covered by the tile roof, and a wall of sliding glass doors that overlooked the pool.

Like most of the houses in Mayerling, Nuestra Pequena Casa was individually fenced on three sides, the fences concealed in closely packed pine trees. They, too, had motion-sensing devices. Motion-sensing devices also protected the unfenced front of the house.

The house—indeed all of Mayerling—had been constructed on a cost-be-damned basis to provide its residents with luxury, privacy, and, above all, security, as kidnapping of the rich was one of the more profitable cottage industries in Argentina.

And all of this, of course, made Nuestra Pequena Casa ideal for the Office of Organizational Analysis, which