For a romantic interlude in Bariloche?
Jesus, maybe they do know!
Is that what this is?
They want me out of the way because I just proved my gross goddamn stupidity by screwing a SVR agent?
And since they can't order me out of the way, they're offering me three sex-filled days in beautiful Bariloche.
Well, sanity has returned.
Svetlana, my love, I now understand what happened. I'm not even angry with you. You did what you thought you had to do, and you did it with great skill. I will remember that piece--those pieces--of absolutely superb ass to my dying day.
But . . . Yea, I have seen the light, Praise Jesus, and ol' Charley ain't gonna sin no more.
"Okay, Edgar," Castillo said. "Let's cut the crap. Why do you want me out of here?"
The question surprised--maybe shocked--not only Delchamps but the others as well. It showed on their faces.
"Ace, I just told you. We want to interrogate that bastard for forty-eight hours."
"You could do that if I was here. You know I usually defer to you in matters like this. What else is there? I either get a good answer or I stay and wait for the agency to send people to take these people off my hands."
"Jesus Christ!" Darby said.
"I told you something like this would probably happen," Delchamps said.
"Let's have it," Castillo ordered.
Darby threw up his hands in resignation. "Tell him."
"You're not going to like this, Ace."
"Come on, come on."
"Our egos are involved," Delchamps said.
"What?"
"Nobody in the agency is supposed to know what anybody else has done, right? If you get blown away, they put a star with no name on it on the wall. But that's bullshit. Anybody with enough brains to find his ass with both hands knows what's going on."
"Where the hell are you going with this?" Castillo demanded.
"We weren't going to tell you this until this little escapade . . . scratch 'little escapade' . . . until this situation is over, one way or the other.
"What happened after we had our discussion last night, leading to everything I said before, is that Darby and I had a couple of belts and, write this down, Ace, in vino veritas, I told him that I had had enough of the agency, even my dealings with it while working for you."
"I keep saying this, but I don't know what the hell you're talking about."
"Okay. If I was a good agency man, when you told me in Vienna that you had these two in the bag I would have insisted that we follow the rules and hand them over to Miss Moneypenny, she being the CIA officer responsible for defectors, according to paragraph nine, subparagraph thirteen. If you had not done that, I was obligated to inform her or a suitably senior agency bureaucrat of your defiance of the United States Code and the rules governing the clandestine service of the CIA."
"You didn't say anything."
"Because you were doing the right thing, Ace. You had the ball and you ran with it."
"Charley," Darby said, "when you told me you were drafting me to work for you again, and not to tell anybody, I didn't."
Castillo looked at him and waited for him to go on.