Covert Warriors (Presidential Agent 7)

Pevsner flashed him an icy glance and went on as if he hadn’t heard the question: “. . . is waiting for him to react. He either reacts, or . . . what is Carlos always saying? ‘There goes the old ball game.’”

“Reacts to what?” Roscoe asked.

“His gross underestimation of Svetlana and her Carlitos,” Tom Barlow said, and laughed.

“About sixteen months ago, Mr. Danton,” Pevsner said, “Vladimir Vladimirovich thought he had the world by the tail—”

“The expression, Alek,” Castillo interrupted, “is ‘had the world by the balls.’”

Delchamps chuckled. Pevsner glared at both of them, and again went on as if he had not been interrupted: “. . . but then a series of things went very wrong for him. Again, quoting my friend Charley, ‘cutting to the chase,’ culminating in what happened two months ago—”

Roscoe quickly did the arithmetic and interrupted: “Exactly two months ago today, Clendennen was ‘persuaded’ to name Montvale Vice President. Is that what you mean?”

This time Pevsner chose to answer.

“That had a bearing on it, of course, but what I was thinking of, Mr. Danton, was what happened in the lobby bar of the Mayflower Hotel immediately before that happened.”

Danton’s face showed his confusion.

Pevsner went on: “There was a meeting there between Sergei Murov, the SVR rezident in Washington, and Mr. Lammelle—who later that morning would be appointed as head of the CIA—and Dmitri, Svetlana, and Charley.

“The previous afternoon, as you reported on Wolf News, Charley landed a Tupelov Tu-934A at Andrews Air Force Base. On that pride of the Russian air force were the last barrels of Congo-X that Vladimir Vladimirovich and Lieutenant General Yakov Sirinov had.

“Thanks to your journalistic discretion, Mr. Danton, which we all deeply appreciate, there was no mention of the Congo-X or General Sirinov either on Wolf News or in The Washington Times-Post.

“But Sergei Murov, of course, knew about both, and was thus naturally quite anxious to hear what Mr. Lammelle and the others wished to say.

“Mr. Lammelle got right to the point. He informed Sergei that Secretary of State Natalie Cohen had called the Russian ambassador and told him that unless Murov voluntarily gave up his post and returned to Russia he would be declared persona non grata and expelled within forty-eight hours.”

“And I told him,” Sweaty chimed in, “that when he left, I had a little present for Vladimir Vladimirovich I wanted him to take with him; a barrel of Congo-X that had been rendered harmless. And I also told him that if Stefan Koussevitzky and his family were not in Budapest within seventy-two hours—”

“She would make sure,” Castillo picked up the narrative, laughing, “that every officer of the SVR would know that what Putin was doing behind closed doors when he was running the KGB in Saint Petersburg was write poetry. For some reason, I gather that Saint Petersburg poets are regarded with some suspicion vis-à-vis their sexual orientation.”

Tom Barlow chuckled.

“I’m not sure that pouring salt on an open wound was wise,” Pevsner said.

“I disagree,” Nicolai said. “Always press an advantage, Alek. You know that.”

“And it worked,” Koussevitzky said. “We were on our way to Argentina via Budapest the next day.”

“Which caused you to decide that Charley’s offer of an armistice had been accepted,” Pevsner said. “Which we now know is not the case.”

He let that sink in a moment, and then went on: “It was a low point for Vladimir Vladimirovich, Mr. Danton. He had dispatched General Sirinov personally on the super-secret Tu-934A with the last stocks of Congo-X, confident that President Clendennen would happily exchange Svetlana, Dmitri, and Charley for the Congo-X.

“When Sergei—who had proposed the exchange to Lammelle—walked into the hotel bar to learn he was about to be declared persona non grata, Charley’s March Hare assault on Hugo Chavez’s La Orchila Island had not only already taken the Congo-X—and rendered it harmless—but also had taken possession of the Tu-934A and taken General Sirinov prisoner.”

“And under those circumstances, Aleksandr,” Tom Barlow said, “Svetlana was right to rub salt in his wound, and Charley was right to propose the cease-fire.”

“And he accepted the cease-fire proposal, didn’t he?” Pevsner countered sarcastically. “Even going so far as to permit Stefan and his family to leave Russia. Unless, of course, he did that to lull us to sleep.”

“But, according to your theory,” Castillo said, “in our naïveté we were already asleep. So what’s the hit and kidnapping all about? Wouldn’t that wake us up?”

“I thought we were agreed, Charley,” Pevsner said, “that we are all now wide awake.”

“Touché,” Castillo said.

“I don’t know about any of that, Charley,” Vic D’Alessandro spoke up. “But everything I heard in Acapulco—correction—nothing I heard in Acapulco makes me think Danny and the others were whacked because they were causing the Sinaloa cartel trouble.”