Black Ops (Presidential Agent 5)

La Casa en Bosque

San Carlos de Bariloche

Rio Negro Province, Argentina

0845 31 December 2005

"I love you, my Charley," Lieutenant Colonel Alekseeva announced, and kissed him very quickly, if incredibly intimately, and then went on: "And I love this room! I'm going to have one just like it!"

She jumped out of the bed and trotted naked to the window on her toes. She pulled the translucent curtain aside and further clarified her desire. "With a view of a lake, like this, and the mountains!"

They were in "The Blue Room," so identified by a little sign on the bedside telephone, the walls of which were covered with pale blue silk brocade--Castillo thought it was the same shade of blue as that on the Argentine flag and had, when he had been shown--alone--to the room, wondered if that was intentional or coincidental.

He had had perhaps three minutes to consider this and a number of other things when the door to the adjacent room had opened and Lieutenant Colonel Alekseeva, attired as she was now--and carrying a bottle of champagne and two glasses--had joined him.

It was some time later that he noticed through the open door that the walls of the adjacent room were covered with dark green silk brocade and wondered if it was called "The Green Room."

By then, he had come to several philosophical conclusions:

Live today, for tomorrow you may die was one of them.

Anything this good can't be bad was another.

So I'm out of mind, so what? was yet another.

Svetlana let the curtain fall back into place and looked at Castillo.

"I see your face," she said. "Anything worth having is expensive."

Then she trotted back to the bed and dove into it.

"You don't like this room?" she asked.

"I like it fine."

"Then I will buy one just like it for you," she said, and then corrected herself. "For us, my Charley!"

He put his arms around her shoulders and she crawled up on his chest and bit his nipple.

He had time for just one more philosophical conclusion, There's no such thing as too much of a good thing, when there was a knock at the corridor door.

"Oh, no!" Svetlana said, raising her head to look at it.

"May I come in?" Anna Pevsner called.

"One moment," Svetlana called, rolled onto her back, pulled the sheet--which was also, Castillo noticed for the first time, Argentina blue--modestly over them, and then called, "Okay. Come!"

Anna came into the room and stood at the foot of the bed with her hands folded in front of her.

"This is difficult for me," she said. "But the children . . ."

"What, Anna?" Svetlana said.

"I believe, as I know you do, what Holy John Chrysostom said about 'the sacrament of the brother.'"

"Good," Svetlana said. "Then don't do it."

What the hell is this?