Black Ops (Presidential Agent 5)

"Bob, get on the horn to Major Miller, tell him I need yesterday (1) the agency's file on Evgeny Alekseeva, Colonel, SVR. I spell." He did so, and looked at Svetlana to see if he had it right, which of course caused him to look into her eyes.

She nodded.

"And (2) tell him to get quietly onto NSA and get me all Russian traffic on the same guy. All of his aliases, too. If he's moving, I want to know all about it.

"And I just thought of (3): Call Two-Gun and our cryptologist and tell them to hold off sending the data on that chip to NSA; I think we can decrypt it here. Got it?"

There was a pause as he heard it read back.

"If you got it, how come I didn't get no 'Hooooo-rah!' ?" Castillo asked, and hung up the phone.

Davidson raised his eyes from his laptop and, shaking his head, smiled at him.

Svetlana looked at Castillo as if wondering why he wasn't in a straitjacket.

"Which brings us back to Question One, Colonel: the reasons I won't believe why you've defected. If it wasn't to make off with the money, then what?"

"Dmitri and I realized that things weren't really changed, that they were going back to the way they were, and that we didn't want to be part of it anymore."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Castillo confessed.

"How much do you know about the SVR, about Russia?"

"Not much."

That's not true.

I know a good deal about both Russia and the SVR. And she knows I do.

Which means she knows I'm lying to her.

Which she expected me to do.

So why does that bother me?

"I think you think you know a good deal about Russia and the SVR," Svetlana said.

She's reading my mind again!

"Is your ego such, Colonel," she went on, "that you could accept that there's a good deal you think you see that isn't at all what you think it is, and that there is a good deal you don't see at all?"

That's a paraphrase of what General McNab has been cramming down my throat since the First Desert War: "Any intelligence officer who thinks he's looking at the real skinny is a damn fool, and any intelligence officer who thinks he has all the facts is a goddamned fool."

Castillo glanced at Davidson, who apparently not only could walk and chew gum at the same time but also had been often exposed to the wisdom of General Bruce J. McNab and just now had heard the same thoughts paraphrased by a good-looking Russian spook.

They smiled at each other.

"Did I say something amusing?" Svetlana snapped.

"Not at all," Castillo said. "We just found it interesting that you are familiar with the theories of B. J. McNab, the great Scottish philosopher."

"I never heard of him," Svetlana said.

"I'm surprised," Castillo said. "You'll have to expand on what you said."

"It'll sound like a history lesson," she said. "And I don't like the idea of playing the fool for you."

"I'm always willing to listen. Believing what I hear is something else."