Black Ops

“What?”

“Nobody in the agency is supposed to know what anybody else has done, right? If you get blown away, they put a star with no name on it on the wall. But that’s bullshit. Anybody with enough brains to find his ass with both hands knows what’s going on.”

“Where the hell are you going with this?” Castillo demanded.

“We weren’t going to tell you this until this little escapade . . . scratch ‘little escapade’ . . . until this situation is over, one way or the other.

“What happened after we had our discussion last night, leading to everything I said before, is that Darby and I had a couple of belts and, write this down, Ace, in vino veritas, I told him that I had had enough of the agency, even my dealings with it while working for you.”

“I keep saying this, but I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“Okay. If I was a good agency man, when you told me in Vienna that you had these two in the bag I would have insisted that we follow the rules and hand them over to Miss Moneypenny, she being the CIA officer responsible for defectors, according to paragraph nine, subparagraph thirteen. If you had not done that, I was obligated to inform her or a suitably senior agency bureaucrat of your defiance of the United States Code and the rules governing the clandestine service of the CIA.”

“You didn’t say anything.”

“Because you were doing the right thing, Ace. You had the ball and you ran with it.”

“Charley,” Darby said, “when you told me you were drafting me to work for you again, and not to tell anybody, I didn’t.”

Castillo looked at him and waited for him to go on.

He didn’t. Delchamps answered for him: “Even though he had a direct order from Frank Lammelle, the DDCI, to call him—or the DCI—immediately and personally if he ever had any contact with you about anything ever again. And, of course, not to tell you about the order.”

“I’ll be a son of a bitch,” Castillo said.

“And you thought good ol’ Frank just came to see you in the hospital and wish you a speedy recovery from taking that hit in the tail, right? I think his primary purpose in coming down here was to fumigate his people who had been contaminated by you.”

“He gave the same speech to the Sienos and Bob Howell,” Darby said, mentioning the CIA station chief in Montevideo.

Delchamps said: “No witnesses. Nothing in writing. The sonofabitch even told the Sienos one at a time, so that it would be he-said/she-said.” He paused, then went on: “And if you went to Montvale with this—I suspect that thought is running through your head—what would happen, Ace? Not a goddamn thing, and you know it. You could go to the President, and he would have the choice of firing the DCI, the DDCI, the ambassador, or Lieutenant Colonel Charley Castillo—and you know who would win that one.”

Delchamps paused and waited until he saw that Castillo couldn’t argue with what he had just said, then went on: “Okay, so getting back to why do we want you out of here: I told Alex I was going to stick around until this esc—situation—is resolved one way or the other, and then I’m really going to put in my papers.”

“You ever hear ‘great minds travel similar paths,’ Charley?” Darby said. “I told Edgar that I’ve been thinking about hanging it up since I got the speech about you from Lammelle, and that, when I hadn’t called the SOB when you drafted me again, it looked like I’d made up my mind.”

“And that started the mutiny,” Santini put in. “I said, ‘Count me in. If they don’t trust me to protect the President because I slipped on an icy step, then fuck ’em.’ ”

“And,” Jack Britton said, “for much the same reasons as my distinguished comrade has offered, Colonel, I, too, have decided that my Secret Service career has been nipped in the bud. Somebody tried to whack me, and getting shot at is just not allowed.”

Castillo shook his head. “And why did you think you couldn’t, or shouldn’t, tell me this?”

“I’m not through, Ace. Now, several things are going to happen when this situation is resolved. I think this factory is heavy. So does Alex. If we’re right and something can be done about it, that’s a very good way for Alex and me and Santini to be remembered.

“Worst-case scenario: We’re wrong. It’s bullshit. But it comes out—and it will—that you did indeed snatch Berezovsky and Sister from the CIA, aided and abetted in this criminal enterprise by renegade Clandestine Services and Secret Service agents. They would ordinarily try to make an example of us, but I don’t think so. That might get in the papers, and make the agency and the Secret Service look foolish. We’ll all just retire—quietly fold our tents and steal away into the night.”

“All of you? Two-Gun, for example?”

“Two-Gun can never go back to the FBI, no more than . . .”

He stopped.

“Finish what you were going to say,” Castillo said.

“No more than you can go back to the Army, Ace, if the worst scenario is what happens. You know that you’ve been a pain in the ass to Montvale since this whole OOA business started. Now, when the DCI goes to him —or directly to the President—he has all the reasons he needs—you gave them to him when you snatched Berezovsky—to say, ‘I knew all along, Mister President, that something like this was going to happen. Castillo is a loose cannon,’ etcetera, etcetera.”

“Yeah,” Castillo agreed.

“Maybe you could walk on this, Ace, if you truthfully said that you never interrogated Colonel Berezovsky and that as soon as you could, you turned over him and his family to the CIA. You didn’t even know that the sister was a spook.”

“What makes you think I’d want a walk?”

“Because you’re very good at what you do, Ace. You are far too young to retire, and can probably be very useful to the President in the future.”

“You know goddamn well that’s not going to happen,” Castillo said. “Snatching the Russians was my idea. If everything goes sour, I’ll take the lumps.”

Delchamps nodded. “And lumps there will be, Ace. Whether or not it goes sour. I told you that in Vienna. Let’s say we”—he gestured at the others—“are right. And we get Berezovsky to tell all. That would really put egg on the agency’s face, and Montvale’s. They would really come after you.”

“You’re all determined to quit, right?”

They all nodded.

“Charley, there’s no other option,” Darby said, and chuckled. “ ‘No good deed ever goes unpunished.’ You never heard that?”

“Is Duffy here?” Castillo asked.

Delchamps shook his head.

“If I’m going to go to Bariloche, I’m going to need his friend’s Aero Commander.”

“Duffy’s at Jorge Newbery arranging that,” Delchamps said. “Where shortly he will be joined by Sergeant Major Davidson and Corporal Bradley, whom he picked up at Ezeiza. Davidson said the Cherub could sit on Red Underpants while you’re visiting Pevsner.”

“You must have been pretty sure I was going to go along with this,” Castillo said.

“Davidson was. He’s also a mutineer, Ace.”

“He said he’s got his twenty years in,” Santini said. “And he’s sick of being pushed around by a chickenshit, just-promoted light colonel who’s younger than he is.”

“Don’t take it to heart, Charley,” Britton said. “He probably didn’t mean it.”

“And what do we do with Lester?” Castillo asked.

“The Cherub, I am ashamed to say, did not come up in the course of this conversation,” Delchamps said. “I don’t think the Marine Corps will let him retire at nineteen. But we’ll think of something.”

“And now I suggest we go in and have breakfast with our guests,” Darby said. “And while we’re doing that, the housekeeper will throw a few things in a bag for Colonel Alekseeva, just enough for a day or two of fun and romance in the beautiful Llao Llao Resort and Casino.”

Castillo looked at him and after a long moment decided that the word “romance” had gone innocently into