Lieutenant Colonel Alekseeva brought only her purse with her. When Castillo had waved her into one of the upholstered captain’s chairs at the table, she instead went to his desk and began to unload the purse. Out came a package of Marlboro cigarettes, a disposable lighter, two ballpoint pens, a notebook, a small package of Kleenex, a small bottle of perfume, and a plastic bottle filled with blue gunk. The last item so interested Castillo that he picked it up and read the label. It was Argentine sunscreen lotion with aloe.
“The last time we did this, Charley,” Davidson said in Pashtu as he arranged his toys on the table, “neither the prisoner nor the surroundings were nearly as nice, were they?”
Castillo chuckled, as the image of that last time—a really bad guy in a crude stone building that was more of a hut than a building—popped into his mind.
“What was that, Pashtu?” Svetlana asked, but it was more of a statement.
Castillo ignored her question. Instead, he said: “Before we get into the fingernail-pulling and waterboarding aspects of this, Svetlana, let me tell you what’s going to happen tonight.”
She nodded, just once, and did not smile.
“As we speak, your identification and other information we took are being processed in Washington. When we get that back, we can clear up any inconsistencies there may be.”
She nodded again.
“For now, to get started, let’s clear up a few minor things. First, why don’t you identify these account numbers for us?”
He gestured with his index finger, took a sheet of paper that had been stuck into the legal pad, and slid it across the table to Svetlana.
She glanced at it quickly, then looked into Castillo’s eyes, not quite able to conceal her surprise and discomfort.
“That’s a printout from the chip Mr. Darby found in the lining of your purse,” Castillo said. “Probably the guts of one of those things . . .”
He looked at Davidson, who furnished, “Flash drives, Charley.”
“. . . those
There was no expression on her face, but her eyes showed that she had just been kicked in the stomach.
“Sergeant Kensington,” Castillo continued, “who’s really good at that sort of thing, had a hell of a time reading it, but finally managed it. Darby thinks they’re bank account numbers. Maybe encoded somehow. Anyway, we sent them to Two-Gun Yung in Vienna. . . . Oh, that’s right. You never met Two-Gun, did you? Two-Gun is our money guy. He’s just about as good at finding hidden money as Kensington is at fooling around with computers.”
Svetlana continued to meet his eyes, as if hoping to read something in them, but didn’t say anything.
Castillo went on: “In the belief that (a) the list may be encrypted and (b) if encrypted then done so more or less simply, I’ve sent it to our in-house cryptography lady. If I’m right about (a) and (b), she should be able to quickly crack it. If she can’t—and/or if Two-Gun can’t immediately determine what they are, I’ve told our cryptologist to take the numbers to Fort Meade—the National Security Agency’s at Fort Meade, Maryland; she worked there for years—where they have, honest to God, acres and acres of computers that can eventually crack anything.
“I’d really rather not have to do that. So if you will identify those numbers for us, it will save us some time and might do a lot to convince me you meant it when you said you’d tell me anything I want to know. Right now, your hiding that chip from me brings that promise into question.”
She reached for the pack of Marlboros and put a cigarette in her mouth. Davidson struck a wooden match and held it out to her.
She lit the cigarette. She took a deep puff, held it, looked at the burning tip of the cigarette, and exhaled through both nostrils as she sighed and shrugged her shoulders.
Castillo found this to be erotic.
She turned and met his eyes, which had the same effect.
“The money is, so to speak, our retirement money,” she said.
“Is that list encrypted?”
She nodded.
“And are you going to decrypt it for me?”
“It’s simple substitution,” she said.
She picked up one of the ballpoint pens and demonstrated with underlines on the numbers as she spoke.
“The first block on the second line, the second block on the fourth, the third block on the sixth . . .”
She raised her eyes to Castillo. “You understand?”
He nodded.
“Is the key,” she said. “The alphabet is reversed.”
“Cyrillic?” Castillo asked.
She nodded again and pushed the sheet away from her.
Davidson took it, lifted the lid of his laptop computer, pushed several keys, waited a moment while watching the screen, then began typing.
“You have the Cyrillic alphabet in there?” Svetlana asked, surprised.
“No, but we’re trying to fool you into thinking we do,” Castillo said. “And while Jack’s doing that, we will turn to Subjects Two and Three on our agenda for this evening.”
She took another drag on her cigarette, then crushed it out as she simultaneously exhaled through her nostrils and looked into Castillo’s eyes.
He felt it in the pit of his stomach.
“Something else you promised and didn’t deliver,” Castillo said, “is the reason why you have defected. You said I wouldn’t believe you when you told me. Has it got something to do with these bank accounts? Or is there something else?”
“The money is not the reason we defected,” she said calmly. “The money permitted us to defect. Is it your intention to take the money?”
“Would you believe me if I said no?”
“I don’t know,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Before you start telling me the things I’m not going to believe, let’s talk about Alekseeva. Starting with his full name.”
“Evgeny Alekseeva, Colonel, SVR. I think that would be ‘Eugene’ in English. It’s from the old Greek word for ‘noble.’ Evgeny’s parents were always proud of their bloodline.”
“And he is—or was—your husband?”
“Is.”
“Any children?”
“If I had children, I would be with them here or back there.”
“Why didn’t Evgeny come with you?”
“He is perfectly happy where he is.”
“And, apparently, you were not?”
“I was not.”
