Black Ops

“Did you go to the Kuhls when you decided to leave, or did he try to turn you?”

“I went to him. We have known about them for years.”

“And he put you in contact with our station chief in Vienna?”

“Finally.”

“What about her?”

“I presume you wish an honest, rather than a courteous, opinion?”

“Yes, I do.”

“She was the problem. She would do nothing without permission.”

“Is that what you meant by she ‘finally’ made contact with you?”

“She finally allowed us to make contact with her. And it was Svetlana and I who were taking the risk, not she.”

“Is that why you suddenly decided to approach me?”

“There was a possibility they were onto us. That was a possibility. In Svetlana’s and my judgment, it was a certainty that should it appear to Miss Dillworth that there was any possibility of anything going wrong, we would be left to fend for ourselves.”

“Thank you for your honesty,” Castillo said.

“And speaking of Vienna, Charley,” Delchamps said, “Miller said that guy you wanted an eye on . . . what the hell was his name?”

“Alekseeva?”

“Some kind of a relative of Little Red Under Britches?”

“Yeah. What about him?”

“Miller said NSA said they were already running an eye on him for somebody else. They wouldn’t tell him who, but it sounds like the agency. Anyway, he’s on an Air France—not Aeroflot—flight to Rome from Moscow sometime this afternoon. And then has a train reservation to Vienna.”

“That means they have allowed him the opportunity to redeem himself by eliminating Svetlana,” Colonel Berezovsky said. “Be careful, Svet!”

“And you don’t think he’s coming after you, too?” Svetlana said.

“I can deal with Evgeny. It’s you I’m worried about.”

“Pride goeth before a fall,” she said.

“And I’ll bet that’s in the Bible, too,” Castillo said sarcastically.

“Proverbs 16:18,” she replied matter-of-factly.

“I think it might be useful if we knew what everybody’s talking about,” Delchamps said.

“This guy’s out to whack our new friends. Tell Miller to get NSA to keep an eye on him. I want to know if he’s in Vienna, and if and when he leaves Vienna. And where he’s headed when he leaves.”

“And don’t bother the agency with this, right?”

“Absolutely don’t bother the agency with this.”

“Anything else?”

“I can’t think of anything.”

“You want a call to report we’ve made the move?”

“Not unless something goes wrong.”

“Okay. See you the day after tomorrow at Jorge Newbery.”

[FOUR]

“The possibility exists, Aleksandr,” Svetlana said, “that even if they weren’t onto us, they are now, and consequently may have already learned about the money, and we must presume that if they haven’t, they soon will. I have the numbers memorized . . .”

She stopped when a maid came into the library. It was just the three of them. Munz was off somewhere, presumably on the telephone, and Lester had been summoned by Anna to see if he could do something about Max, who was apparently snatching the small pastries off the Novogodnaya Yolka as soon as they could be hung, then growling at any adult who tried to stop him.

It was the fourth time their conversation had been interrupted by one of the help.

“Enough,” Pevsner declared in Russian, which caused the middle-aged maid to look at him almost in alarm.

“When you finish whatever it is you have to do in here, please tell Madam Pevsner that we will be in the Green Room, where we do not wish to be disturbed unless it’s the Second Coming of our Lord and Savior.”

The maid nodded her understanding.

She almost prostrated herself before Tsar Aleksandr. It was—Castillo stopped the thought until he came up with the word he was searching for—serflike. Not almost. Serflike. And she’s Russian. So how did a Russian serf wind up in Bariloche?

“There is a study in the Green Room,” Pevsner announced. “Large enough. We will continue this there. With the door locked.”

“I want one of those,” Svetlana said as Castillo opened the lid of his laptop. “Will you get me one, Charley?”

“No,” he said simply.

Pevsner chuckled.

“Then I will buy one myself.”

“I don’t think that’s very likely,” Castillo replied. “But speaking of money, as we were when we were interrupted—”

“What about it?”

“Those bank account numbers you told Alek you have memorized—”

“What about them?”

“I’ve got them in here,” he said, tapping the laptop. “Why don’t I just put them on a CD if Alek needs them?” He was looking into her eyes and hoping he was at least somewhere close to matching the icy looks Pevsner was so good at.

And I hit home. Her eyes show it.

“Or are we talking about bank account numbers you somehow forgot to mention when you were telling me everything, Girl Scout’s Honor?”

“Oh, God, Charley, I was going to tell you about them!”

That look of genuine remorse is either genuine, or she should be on the stage.

Svetlana looked at Pevsner for support and, Castillo saw, got none.

“Before we get into what else may have slipped your mind and you didn’t tell me,” Castillo said, “what are the memorized account numbers?”

“That’s where most of the money is,” she said. “Most of it in Lichtenstein, but some in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. There are five accounts in all.”

“And the numbers you gave me?”

“What we did, Charley, is put a little bit of money in those accounts, so in case we were found out, they would think they had found the money and stop looking. You understand?”

“Define ‘a little bit of money.’ ”

“Usually never more than a quarter of a million dollars.”

“Looks can be deceiving, Svetlana. I’m not really stupid enough to believe that.”

“Before God, it is the truth.”

He did the math in his head before going on. “You expect me to believe that whoever chases after dirty money in Russia is going to come across your lousy eight thousand dollars and say, ‘Eureka, we found it. Call off the search’?”

“Eight thousand dollars?” she asked in what seemed to be genuine confusion.

Pevsner laughed.