crazy.”
“Not without difficulty,” Torine said, chuckling.
“I’ve got something to tell you that will probably make you conclude I have finally really gone over the edge.”
“Frankly, Charley, that wouldn’t be hard.”
“I’m emotionally involved with Svetlana Alekseeva,” Castillo said.
Torine looked at him intensely, his eyes wary, but otherwise there was no expression on his face at all.
“To prevent any possible misinterpretation of that, Jake, let me rephrase: I am in love with her, and that emotion, I believe, is reciprocated.”
“I’m really glad to hear you say that, Ace,” Delchamps said.
Castillo instantly decided he had not correctly heard what Delchamps had said.
“Excuse me?”
“If you had said anything but almost exactly that, we would have had, added to our other burdens, the problem of protecting you from the lady’s big brother. In my brief association with him, I have learned he is one smart, tough sonofabitch, and protecting you from him might not have been possible.”
Castillo thought he saw a look of disbelief in Susanna Sieno’s eyes, then wondered if it was disbelief or contempt.
Paul Sieno and Sparkman had their eyes fixed on the floor.
“Charley,” Torine said finally, “I hope you weren’t crazy enough to tell Montvale about this.”
Castillo shook his head.
There was another long pause before Torine went on: “Insofar as reciprocity is concerned, would this explain Colonel Berezovsky’s otherwise baffling sudden change of attitude?”
Castillo first noticed the near-stilted formality of Torine’s question, then realized:
“Pevsner told him that I was almost family. . . .”
“Supported,” Torine went on, “by Lieutenant Colonel Alekseeva’s statement, which I thought was odd: ‘So far as I am concerned, before God and the world, he is family.’ ”
“That’s what she said,” Castillo agreed.
Delchamps put in: “If I’m to believe Polkovnik Berezovsky—and truth being stranger than fiction, I do—the whole family, including the infamous Aleksandr Pevsner, is deeply religious folk with quote family values unquote that would satisfy the most pious Southern Baptist. Make that Presbyterian; they do like their booze.”
He looked at Alex Darby.
“That’s my take,” Darby said, nodding gently.
Susanna Sieno looked like she was going to say something but changed her mind.
“Following which,” Torine went on almost as if he was in a daze and hadn’t heard Delchamps, “Colonel Berezovsky began not only to answer questions he had previously answered evasively and ambiguously—if at all— and began not only to answer such questions fully, but also to volunteer intelligence bearing on the questions.”
“One explanation for the change in attitude,” Susanna Sieno said more than a little sarcastically, “might be Charley repeating his offer of two million dollars for the information.”
Delchamps looked at her coldly but didn’t challenge her.
“No, Susanna, that wasn’t his motivation,” Castillo said. “They asked me for two million on the train to establish a credible motive for their defection. But they don’t need money. They brought out with them—it’s in various banks around the world—far more than two million. So much money I have trouble believing how much.”
Torine, deep in thought, looked out the quincho’s doors.
“That is the belief of their interrogator,” he went on in the military bureaucrat cant of the staff study, which sounded even more stilted when spoken. “Inevitably raising the question of the soundness of the interrogator’s judgment, inasmuch as the interrogator in his admission of romantic involvement has also admitted he has abandoned the professional code he has followed throughout his adult life.”
Torine stopped and tapped his fingertips together for a good thirty seconds.
Then he raised his eyes to Castillo’s. “So, you see, Colonel, the dilemma into which you have thrust me?”
“Jake, you say the word and I’ll get on Montvale’s airplane. If you tell me you think I can’t . . .”
He stopped when Torine held up his hand.
“—said dilemma makes me seriously consider that you may have in fact lost your fucking mind.”
Jack Davidson chuckled.
“So you think I should get on Montvale’s airplane?”
“No, that’s not what I said. Or mean. I just think you should keep in mind that you’re not acting rationally.”
“That’s . . .” Susanna Sieno started and then stopped.
“Go on, Susanna,” Castillo said, gesturing. “Let’s hear it.”
She met his eyes for a moment, shrugged, then went on: “What I was about to say, Charley, was that that’s something of an understatement.”
“Guilty,” Castillo said. “That thought has occurred to me.”
“And you still think you’re in love?”
He nodded.
“In that case, maybe I should just shut up.”
“I wish you wouldn’t,” Castillo said. “Let’s get it all out.”
She considered that a moment, shrugged again, then said: “Here’re a couple of things to consider. Charley. . . . Oh, hell, I was about to say that Svetlana is at least as good a spook as I am, maybe even as good as you are. But you’ve considered that, I’m sure. Anyway, given that, if I were in her shoes, snaring somebody like you by whatever means—certainly including spreading my legs—would be a no-brainer.”
“Jesus Christ, honey!” Paul Sieno exclaimed.
“Stop thinking like a husband, Paul,” Susanna said.
“And,” Jack Britton said, “since we’re all running at the mouth, Charley, you were on the rebound after Betty Schneider dumped you, ripe to get plucked by any female, and certainly by a really good-looking, smart one with every reason to have a ‘protect my ass’ agenda.”
“Betty dumped him?” Sandra Britton asked, surprised. “You never told me about that!”
“I didn’t think it was any of our business,” Britton said.
“How’d you hear about that?” Castillo asked.
“I heard Agnes and Joel Isaacson talking,” Britton said.
Castillo shrugged. “She did dump me. What she said was that she didn’t want to be married to a guy who instead of coming home for supper would leave a voice mail that he was off to Timbuktu. But what I really think it was is that being with me would interfere with her new Secret Service career; that what she really wanted to do was be more of a hotshot cop than her brother. And I really don’t think I was on the rebound.”
Britton’s face showed he didn’t believe that at all.
“The flaw in your argument, Susie,” Alex Darby said, “is that none of the Russians need Charley now. If she had, to use your apt if indelicate phraseology, spread her legs before he brought them here . . .”
“We don’t know when or where that happened,” Susanna said, and looked at Castillo.
He was on the verge of telling her that it was none of her goddamn business when he had first been intimate with Svetlana, but then realized that, in fact, it was.
Castillo made a grand gesture with his right index finger, poking the felt of the table. “Here, the first night.”
There was a resounding silence.
