“Charley, we’ve been talking,” Delchamps began.
“We think there’s something to the chemical factory in the Congo,” Delchamps said.
“Something really heavy, Charley,” Darby added.
“You ever wonder, Charley, why the ragheads didn’t hit us again after 9/11?” Santini asked.
“Other than us good guys are doing a helluva job shutting them down? Last I looked, the Liberty Bell was still intact.”
“There is that,” Delchamps said. “But there’s something more.”
“What ‘more’?” Castillo said.
“You think maybe they’re sorry, have gone to confession, received absolution, and ain’t gonna do nothing like that never no more?” Santini pursued.
“Where’re you headed, Tony?” Castillo asked.
“Hold that thought, Ace,” Delchamps said, and gestured to Britton.
“Colonel,” Britton asked, “did you ever wonder who was really behind the stolen 727 headed for your beloved Liberty Bell, and why whoever it was had involved the African-American Lunatics in Philadelphia, only a very few of whom can walk and chew gum at the same time?”
Castillo held up both hands in a helpless gesture.
“Same question,” Castillo said. “Where’re—”
“Same response,” Delchamps said. “Hold that thought.”
“Okay.” Castillo leaned back and slowly sipped his coffee.
“Have you considered the possibility that our Russian friends were already en route to Vienna to defect when you were dumped in their lap?” Delchamps asked.
“Yeah, I have,” Castillo said. “What’s been bothering me is how they knew that I’m Gossinger—”
“They know who you are, Ace, because Berezovsky is very good and because he runs their show in Germany.”
“—and how they knew I was going to be at the Friedler funeral.”
“That one’s even easier to explain, Ace. It was in the
“Are you going to give me a scenario, or keep me guessing?”
“Berezovsky is in Marburg to supervise the taking out of Otto Gorner, following which he will go to Vienna to meet the people with the wax statue of Whatsisname?”
“Peter the First,” Castillo furnished.
“Following which, he and Little Red Riding Hood will defect. Hold that thought, too.”
“Get on with the scenario, Edgar,” Castillo ordered.
“The day before, maybe still in Berlin, maybe in Marburg, he hears that the Kuhls got eliminated. That scares the hell out of him. He didn’t know about that.
“Conjecture: Kuhl didn’t go to him to try to turn him. Berezovsky went to Kuhl; they knew who he was. Who
“Are they onto them? What to do?”
“Keep doing what he was supposed to do, take out Otto Gorner. And then he hears that you and Kocian are going to be at Friedler’s funeral. . . .
“Now, going off at a tangent: Why was Friedler terminated? Because he was getting too close to what? German involvement in this African chemical factory maybe?
“Then, after Berezovsky orders that you and Billy get taken out, he has a second thought. Or maybe—even probably—Little Red Riding Hood does. She’s as smart—”
“Little Red Under Britches,” Castillo corrected him without thinking, then had a mental flash of her coming out of the bath sans any britches.
“What the hell is your fascination with her underwear all about?”
“Not now,” Castillo said. “Keep going.”
“
“So Berezovsky warns you that you’re going to be hit. That makes him a good guy in your eyes. And then he’ll find you in Vienna. . . .”
“Instead, we get on the same train,” Castillo said.
“Right,” Delchamps said. “By that time, he’s really scared. When he called off the hit on you, he called it off on Gorner, too. Which he was supposed to ensure. And he doesn’t know what the hell he’s going to find in Vienna. With no other options, short of swallowing his own bullet, now he really has to use you. So he offers you the most important thing he has to barter, the chemical factory in Congo-Kinshasa.”
“You think that’s important?” Castillo said.
“Charley, do you know what’s there, what
Castillo shook his head.
“In the bad old days, the West Germans had a nuclear laboratory there,” Delchamps said matter-of-factly. “That area was German East Africa before Versailles. We pretended not to know, but when the wall came down, we made them shut it down. It’s another of the reasons the Krauts don’t like us much anymore; the Israelis have nukes and they don’t.”
“You’re saying there’s a nuclear laboratory there?”
“I’m saying there’s a
“Making what?”
“Maybe something as simple as
“I think I probably read the same bio-warfare stuff that you did,” Castillo said. “It causes rabbit fever, right?”
Darby nodded. “Or something else: anthrax, botulinum toxin, plague . . .”
“I’m not trying to be argumentative, Alex, but what I’ve read says that, as scary as all that stuff sounds, it’s not all that dangerous. Only anthrax and the rabbit fever virus can survive in water, and the ordinary chlorination of water in a water system kills both.”
“And both can be filtered out by a zero-point-one-micron or smaller filter, right?” Delchamps asked, paused, and then said, “You want to take a chance that these bastards haven’t developed a chlorine-proof bacterium, or something that’ll get around or through that point-one filter?”
“You think this is the real thing, don’t you?”
Delchamps did not answer directly. Instead, he held up his index finger in a gesture of
He nodded at Jack Britton.
“This is conjecture again, Colonel,” Britton said. “But it fits. I’ve been wondering why they tried to whack Sandra and me in Philly. First, they had to go to a lot of trouble to find out who Ali Abid ar-Raziq was—I just disappeared from the mosque, you’ll remember; no busts, no questioning by me, nothing that would tell them I was a cop—and then for them to set up the hit. They’re just not smart enough to do that, period. Somebody smart found me.”
“And why was that so important?” Castillo asked.
“I knew which of the mullahs had gone to Africa, including the Congo, on somebody else’s dime,” Britton said, “and one of the things I did for Allah was take pictures of the water supply so it could be poisoned. When I turned
