Black Ops (Presidential Agent 5)

"Give them ninety seconds to get off the car, then we'll see if Sandor can come up with some way to get them safely off the train."

"You got thirty seconds to listen to me, Charley?"

"Sure."

"Prefacing this by saying you did a good job with those two--which, considering the make the lady colonel was putting on you, couldn't have been easy. . . ."

"If you have something to say, Jack, say it."

"The only way I could get McNab to send me to work for you, Charley, was to promise on the heads of my children--"

"You don't have any children."

"Well, if I did . . . you get the point. I had to promise McNab--and mean it--that I would sit on you when it looked to me like your enthusiasm was about to overwhelm your common sense, as it has been known to do. I think that time has come."

Castillo looked at him for a moment.

"As a point of order, Jack, when the hell was the last time my enthusiasm overwhelmed my common sense?"

"Oh, come on, Charley! I don't know when the last time was, but I was there when you stole the helicopter."

"I didn't steal it. I borrowed it. And if memory serves, you were enthusiastically manning the Gatling in the door of that helicopter when we went after Dick Miller."

"I knew I couldn't stop you, Charley."

"And you can't stop me now, Jack. I think those two are just what we're looking for."

Davidson met his eyes for a moment, then shrugged.

"Okay. I tried. I'll go see if Sandor knows how we can get Mata Hari and her brother off the train."

[FOUR]

Castillo was surprised fifteen minutes later when he slid the compartment door open a crack and saw that both Berezovsky and Svetlana were standing in the corridor.

He expected to see Berezovsky alone--Berezovsky was, after all, the full colonel and she the lieutenant colonel and kid sister--or Svetlana alone, playing the damsel in distress.

He glanced over his shoulder at Jack Davidson, made an angry face that said, What the hell?, then motioned them inside and closed and latched the door.

"If this is going to go any further," Castillo said sharply, "you're going to have to learn to take orders. I said I wanted one of you back, not both. Now one of you leave."

"I don't want my brother making decisions with my life," Svetlana said evenly. "Either we both stay or we both go."

He met her eyes, hoping she would think he was doing so coldly.

After a moment, he nodded.

"Okay. What are you offering besides blue sky?" Castillo said.

" 'Blue sky'?" Svetlana repeated.

"All I have to do to find out who's replaced Colonel Zhdankov is get on the telephone. I don't have to risk anything."

Brother and sister looked at each other for a moment, and then Berezovsky asked, "What do you want, Colonel?"

"The names of the people who eliminated Friedler; ditto for the Kuhls."

"As you may have guessed, Friedler was dealt with by ex-Stasi," Berezovsky said. "I can give you the names they used, but they won't do you any good. Their papers were phony. I borrowed them from the Special Center. There was no reason for me to know their names, and they weren't given to me."