Black Ops (Presidential Agent 5)

"And speaking of Vienna, Charley," Delchamps said, "Miller said that guy you wanted an eye on . . . what the hell was his name?"

"Alekseeva?"

"Some kind of a relative of Little Red Under Britches?"

"Yeah. What about him?"

"Miller said NSA said they were already running an eye on him for somebody else. They wouldn't tell him who, but it sounds like the agency. Anyway, he's on an Air France--not Aeroflot--flight to Rome from Moscow sometime this afternoon. And then has a train reservation to Vienna."

"That means they have allowed him the opportunity to redeem himself by eliminating Svetlana," Colonel Berezovsky said. "Be careful, Svet!"

"And you don't think he's coming after you, too?" Svetlana said.

"I can deal with Evgeny. It's you I'm worried about."

"Pride goeth before a fall," she said.

"And I'll bet that's in the Bible, too," Castillo said sarcastically.

"Proverbs 16:18," she replied matter-of-factly.

"I think it might be useful if we knew what everybody's talking about," Delchamps said.

"This guy's out to whack our new friends. Tell Miller to get NSA to keep an eye on him. I want to know if he's in Vienna, and if and when he leaves Vienna. And where he's headed when he leaves."

"And don't bother the agency with this, right?"

"Absolutely don't bother the agency with this."

"Anything else?"

"I can't think of anything."

"You want a call to report we've made the move?"

"Not unless something goes wrong."

"Okay. See you the day after tomorrow at Jorge Newbery."

[FOUR]

"The possibility exists, Aleksandr," Svetlana said, "that even if they weren't onto us, they are now, and conseque

ntly may have already learned about the money, and we must presume that if they haven't, they soon will. I have the numbers memorized . . ."

She stopped when a maid came into the library. It was just the three of them. Munz was off somewhere, presumably on the telephone, and Lester had been summoned by Anna to see if he could do something about Max, who was apparently snatching the small pastries off the Novogodnaya Yolka as soon as they could be hung, then growling at any adult who tried to stop him.

It was the fourth time their conversation had been interrupted by one of the help.

"Enough," Pevsner declared in Russian, which caused the middle-aged maid to look at him almost in alarm.

"When you finish whatever it is you have to do in here, please tell Madam Pevsner that we will be in the Green Room, where we do not wish to be disturbed unless it's the Second Coming of our Lord and Savior."

The maid nodded her understanding.

She almost prostrated herself before Tsar Aleksandr. It was--Castillo stopped the thought until he came up with the word he was searching for--serflike. Not almost. Serflike. And she's Russian. So how did a Russian serf wind up in Bariloche?

"There is a study in the Green Room," Pevsner announced. "Large enough. We will continue this there. With the door locked."