Black Ops (Presidential Agent 5)

"What I'm doing is telling you the truth," Castillo said.

"Then who do you work for?"

"That I can't tell you."

"If he did, Tom," Davidson said conversationally, "I'd have to kill you."

Berezovsky glared at him in disbelief, then stood.

"Let's go, Svetlana. We're wasting our time with these fools."

Max got up and growled softly.

"I don't think Max likes you, Tom," Castillo said.

The sister, still seated, smiled at Castillo, then looked at her brother.

"Sit down,

Dmitri."

"I thought your name was 'Susan,'" Davidson said innocently.

She smiled at him and shook her head.

"Permit me to introduce myself," she said. "I am Lieutenant Colonel Svetlana Alekseeva of the Sluzhba Vnezhney Razvedki. Presumably, you know what that is?"

"The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service," Castillo replied. "Sluzhba Vnezhney Razvedki--SVR--is the new name for the same branch of the Service for the Protection of the Constitutional System. If I didn't know better, I'd think someone was trying to fool somebody."

Her expression showed Lieutenant Colonel Alekseeva did not share Castillo's sense of humor.

"Specifically, I am presently the rezident in Copenhagen. My brother, Colonel Dmitri Berezovsky, is the SVR rezident in Berlin. If I have to say so, he is also a member of the Service for the Protection of the Constitutional System. We are willing, if our conditions are met, to defect."

"Wow!" Castillo said, then parroted: " 'If our conditions are met'!"

"Come, Svetlana," Berezovsky said. "We don't have to put up with this."

"It is said that Dmitri would already be a general if his brilliance were not tempered with his impatience," Svetlana said, then added to her brother, "Sit down!"

She turned to Castillo and locked her eyes on his.

"Are you interested?" she asked evenly. "More importantly, if you are, are you in a position to deal?"

She does that look-you-in-the-eye thing like Aleksandr Pevsner does.

Does it come naturally? Or did somebody teach them how to do it?

She has eyes like Alek's, too. Light, sky blue. Very attractive.

"Am I permitted to ask why you would like to defect?" Castillo asked, his tone now serious.

"If I told you the truth, you wouldn't believe me," she said. "So I will say financial considerations."

"What figure did you have in mind?"

"Two million dollars," she said simply.

"And what would we get for our two million dollars?"