Hazardous Duty (Presidential Agent 8)

“You think Göring was going to try to come here?” Torine asked.

“I don’t know, Jake,” Castillo had said, “and I don’t think anyone ever will.”

The Bell 429 made a sudden turn to the left, still close to the water, and both Jake Torine and Dick Miller decided it was some kind of evasive maneuver, and both wondered what they were evading.

Three minutes after that, Koshkov turned on the landing lights, and ten seconds after that floodlights came on in what a moment before had been total blackness, and a moment after that a sign illuminated, giving the wind direction and speed.

And forty-five seconds after that the 429 touched down. As soon as it had, the floodlights and the sign went off, replaced by less intense lighting illuminating the helipad.

Janos Kodály, Aleksandr Pevsner’s hulking Hungarian bodyguard, was standing at the front fender of a Land Rover. Behind the Land Rover was a Mercedes SUV, beside which stood four men with Uzi submachine guns hanging from their shoulders.

It was a five-minute ride through the hardwood forest to the mansion, where Janos led them through the huge foyer to the library. There the females of the family were waiting for them.

One was the mistress of the manor, Aleksandr Pevsner’s wife, Anna. The second was their fifteen-year-old daughter, Elena, who, like her mother, was a fair-skinned blonde. The third was Laura Berezovsky, now Laura Barlow, wife of Tom Barlow, formerly SVR Polkovnik Dmitri Berezovsky. The fourth was their fourteen-year-old daughter, Sof’ya, now Sophie Barlow. The fifth was former SVR Podpolkovnik Svetlana Alekseeva, now in possession of Argentine documents identifying her as Susanna Barlow. Susanna and Tom Barlow were brother and sister. The Barlows and the Pevsners were cousins, through Aleksandr Pevsner’s mother.

They were all wearing black dresses, buttoned to the neck and reaching nearly to their ankles. The dresses concealed the curvatures of their bodies. Each had a golden cross hanging from her neck. Simple gold wedding rings on Anna’s and Laura’s hands were the only jewelry visible on any of them.

On the flight from Panama City, Lieutenant Colonel Naylor, who had never met either, asked Vic D’Alessandro what Mesdames Pevsner and Berezovsky looked like.

“Typical Russian females. You know, a hundred and sixty pounds, shoulders like a football player, stainless steel teeth…” D’Alessandro had replied, and then when he got the shocked look he was seeking from Colonel Naylor, said, “Think Lauren Bacall in her youth, dressed by Lord and Taylor, and bejeweled by the private customer service of Cartier. Truly elegant ladies. And the girls, their daughters, Elena and Sophie, look like what their mothers must have looked like when they were fourteen. Four attractive, very nice females.”

Lieutenant Colonel Naylor knew what former Lieutenant Colonel Svetlana Alekseeva looked like. Sweaty—her Christian name had quickly morphed into this once she became associated with Lieutenant Colonel Castillo and his associates—was a striking redheaded beauty given to colorful clothing that did the opposite of concealing the lithe curvature and other attractive aspects of her body.

Today, the women’s hair, which usually hung below their shoulders, was drawn tightly against their skulls and into buns. They wore no detectable makeup, not even lipstick.

“Hey, Sweaty, where’s your otxokee mecto nanara?” Vic D’Alessandro asked, as he kissed her cheek.

She waited until he had exchanged kisses with Laura, Sophie, and Anna before saying, “You will find out soon enough, if, when you get in the dining room, you—any of you—do or say anything at all that offends His Eminence the Archbishop or His Grace the Archimandrite in any way.”

“Not a problem, Sweaty. Liam Duffy told us about the archbishop and Mandrake the Magician. So we will just stay away from them until Charley’s free.”

“Archimandrite, you idiot!” she flared. “He’s the next thing to a bishop. A holy man.”

“As I was saying, Sweaty, where can we hide until these holy men are finished with Charley, or vice versa?”

“If the archbishop did not wish to talk to you, you wouldn’t be here,” she again flared. “Or Janos and I would have greeted you with swinging otxokee mecto nanaras when you tried to get off your airplane.”

“What do these fellows want to talk to us about?” Torine asked.

“Not ‘these fellows,’ Jake,” Sweaty said. “I expected better from you. They are an archbishop and an archimandrite and deserve your respect.”

“Jake,” Anna said, “His Grace and the archimandrite are here in connection with Charley and Svetlana’s marriage problem. This is serious.”

“Okay,” Torine said.

“Now, when Janos takes you into the dining room, what you do is bow and reach down and touch the floor with your right hand…”

Sweaty demonstrated.

“. . . then you place your right hand over your left hand, palms upward…”

Sweaty demonstrated this.

“. . . then you say, ‘Bless, Your Eminence.’ In Russian.”

“I don’t speak Russian,” Naylor said.

“Repeat after me. , ,” Sweaty ordered.