Black Ops (Presidential Agent 5)

"The point I'm trying to make, Colonel," Castillo went on, making it clear that he was talking to Berezovsky, not to Svetlana, "is that I will make every reasonable effort to make our relationship as business-like as possible, as comfortable as possible, so long as you're here."

"And how long will that be?" Svetlana asked.

Castillo ignored her.

"Every reasonable effort for comfort is dependent, of course, on good behavior. The alternatives range from moving you onto cots in the garage, which is not air-conditioned, to leaving one or both of you trussed up like Christmas turkeys on the driveway of the Russian embassy on Rodriguez Pena."

"I asked, 'How long are we going to be here?' " Svetlana said.

Castillo turned to her after a moment. "Until you earn back the cost of what it cost me to get you here, plus of course the two million dollars we've talked about."

"And how long do you think that will take?" she pursued.

"And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to leave you with Mr. Darby and Mr. Delchamps. While they are having a look at your luggage, Mr. Davidson, Max, and I are going to take a dip until supper."

On his way to the quincho five minutes later, Castillo--now wearing bathing trunks--was intercepted by the housekeeper. She was holding up a bathing suit.

"For the poor little chica, if that's all right. It belongs to Juanita. I already gave one to the other lady."

Castillo presumed that "Juanita" was either a diminutive maid or one of the housekeeper's children. Or grandchildren.

"That's very kind," Castillo said. "How about going out there with me and helping her get into it?"

When Castillo, trailed by the maid, walked into the quincho, Bob Kensington was standing by the AFC communications device and a stand-alone all-in-one device that could print, scan, and send and receive facsimile transmissions. Kensington was feeding the machine from the stack of passports, identification cards, driver's licenses, and the like that they had taken from the Russians.

Kensington stated the obvious. "This goddamn thing is the slow-link--takes forever to scan this stuff."

"Miller can't run that stuff through NSA at Fort Meade until he has it. Nose to the grindstone, Sergeant Kensington!"

"Yes, sir," Kensington said, then loudly shouted, "Hoooo-rah!"

Castillo laughed. The shouting of "Hoooo-rah!" to indicate their enthusiasm to carry out a difficult task was getting to be almost a hallmark of U.S. Army Rangers, and even some lesser ordinary soldiers.

Most Special Forces people--and almost everybody in Delta Force--thought doing so was ludicrous.

Castillo said: "Your oh-so-commendable enthusiasm, Sergeant, has earned you a promotion. You are now the detachment's classified documents officer."

"I guess I should have seen that coming. Where's the Pride of the Marine Corps when I need him?"

"Lester will be here tomorrow morning. But you will not delegate that responsibility to him. A lot of that stuff's likely to be very important later on, not just now. I don't want any of it lost."

Kensington nodded his understanding. He scanned two pages of Svetlana's passport, then using a flash memory thumb-sized chip, put the chip into a slot and transferred the file to the AFC device. It beeped. Before he could open the scanner to rearrange the passport and repeat the process, the AFC beeped again--and a sultry female voice announced, "All done, baby. Slip it to me again! I never get enough!"

Castillo raised an eyebrow. "I presume that means the file has been received and verified, and the AFC is ready to accept another file?"

"That's about it, sir," Kensington said, a little--but only a little--embarrassed.

"Where'd you get the voice?"

"I played around with the voice-recognition circuits." Kensington now smiled. "I can make anybody say almost anything."

Castillo turned to see what, if anything, Sof'ya thought of the sultry female voice

. He saw that she was shyly and politely trying to tell the maid, in English, that she would please like to wait until Mama came back before accepting the bathing suit.

The maid spoke very little English.

Castillo wondered what the child had been told about what was happening, and what rules Mama had told her that now governed her behavior.