Black Ops

what Darby had said.

[TWO]

KM 28.5, Panamericana, Southbound

Buenos Aires Province, Argentina

0820 30 December 2005

“Colonel Castillo,” Lieutenant Colonel Svetlana Alekseeva said, “we are being followed by three men in a Peugeot sedan.”

They were in Darby’s embassy car, an armored BMW with diplomatic license plates and equipped with a shortwave radio. Darby was driving. Castillo was in the front passenger seat holding the puppy, his lap protected by a copy of that day’s Buenos Aires Herald, which had been a sanitary/sartorial suggestion of Sandra Britton.

Max and Svetlana Alekseeva were in the backseat. Darby had confided in Castillo that he had switched on the baby locks, a statement that he had to explain to a baffled Castillo, who was grossly ignorant of most things having to do with any aspect of child rearing, and had no idea there was a device available to keep youngsters—and adult female ex-SVR agents—from opening the rear doors of a car once they had been closed on them.

“Not to worry, Colonel,” Darby replied. “They’re Gendarmeria Nacional. Comandante Duffy doesn’t want anything to happen to you before you tell us who ordered the hit on him and his family.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Svetlana said, somewhat plaintively.

“Right,” Darby said. “What about that promise you made to Colonel Castillo to tell him everything he wanted to know?”

She did not reply for a moment, but then said, again, somewhat plaintively, “I know nothing about a Comandante Duffy.”

“Your call, Colonel Alekseeva,” Darby said.

Aside from a general “good morning” addressed to everyone at the breakfast table, Castillo had not said a word to Svetlana—nor she to him until just now—since he’d gotten up.

But this, Castillo realized, was not because he had inadvertently signaled her—or she had somehow figured out—that he now understood the greatest love story since Anna Karenina—or maybe Doctor Zhivago?—was really her putting into practice what she had been taught in How to Be a Successful Spy 101: Fucking Your Way Successfully Through a Difficult Interrogation.

She thinks she still has me in the bag, and that I am just trying to make sure our great romance is kept in the closet.

Which of course means that she thinks she has had enough postcoital experience to be able to judge the morning-after reaction of the interrogator.

She’s wrong.

Stupid here finally woke up.

[THREE]

Jet-Stream Aviation

Aeropuerto Internacional Jorge Newbery

Buenos Aires, Argentina

0845 30 December 2005

Castillo could see Comandante Liam Duffy, Sergeant Major Jack Davidson, and Corporal Lester Bradley— whom he expected to see—and Alfredo Munz and Captain Dick Sparkman, USAF—whom he did not expect to see— at the airport, standing around the nose of the trim, high-wing, twin-engine Aero Commander 560 when Darby’s embassy BMW drove up to the tarmac fence.

“Keep her in the car until I see what’s going on,” Castillo ordered, and, holding the pup with one hand and the sanitary/sartorial newspaper in the other, got out of the car.

Max nimbly jumped from the backseat, went out Castillo’s door, and raced toward Corporal Bradley, clearing the waist-high fence as if it wasn’t there.

By the time Castillo reached the gate in the fence, and the airport policeman guarding it, two of the men in the Peugeot sedan that had been following them were out of the car and at the gate. One held it open for him, and the other one said, “I will take that newspaper from you, Colonel, and get rid of it.”

Castillo handed it to him, marveling at both how soaked the newspaper had become on the way from Pilar— You little sonofabitch, he thought, scratching the pup’s ears, you must be mostly bladder—and at the unaccustomed courtesy of the gendarmeria officers.

They usually stand around practicing how to look dour.

The reason became immediately apparent. Their commanding officer walked toward Castillo, then broke into a trot and, when he reached Castillo, wrapped him in a bear hug, pounded his back, and kissed him wetly on both cheeks.

“Oh, my friend Charley,” he said. “It is so good to see you!”

What the hell is this all about?

“El Coronel Munz told me that you understand,” El Comandante Liam Duffy said. “But that doesn’t make it any better.”

“There’s nothing to be concerned about, Liam.”

“I had three men killed and six wounded—in addition, of course, to the two men those bastards massacred as soon as we were”—he paused, smiled, and switched to English—“boots on the ground”—then back to Spanish —“and there were funerals and I had to deal with the families.”

“I understand, Liam.”

“I just could not get to Uruguay right away, and when I did, you had already gone to the U.S. of A.”

He grabbed Castillo’s arms with both hands.

“I should have somehow arranged to go to Montevideo,” he said. “You shed blood with us! You are one of us, Carlos!”

He got control of himself.

“You remember Segundo Comandante Martinez and Sargento Primero Perez, of course?” Duffy said, indicating the two gendarmes who’d opened the gate for Castillo and taken care of the sodden newspaper.

Why do I think the last time I saw these guys they were in camos and had black-and-brown grease all over their face and hands?

“How could I forget?” Castillo said, smiling broadly, offering his hand, and then—Oh, hell, when in Rome or Buenos Aires!—hugging them and kissing their coarse cheeks.

“You have luggage, mi coronel?” the younger one—Probably the sergeant, Castillo thought—asked.

“There’s a couple of bags in the trunk,” Castillo said.

“And is the Russian woman in the car?” Duffy asked.

Castillo nodded.

“I would like to introduce her to my wife and children,” Duffy said, “and then kill her slowly and painfully.”

And that, Castillo decided, is not what they call hyperbole.

“Liam, she was in Europe when that happened,” Castillo said.

“She’s one of them,” Duffy said simply.

“She and her brother have information I need.”

“So Alfredo says. What I want are the names of the people who tried to kill my wife and children.”

“I will first have to find out who ordered the attack on you,” Castillo said. “And