Black Ops (Presidential Agent 5)

Pilar Golf & Polo Country Club

Pilar, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina

1740 2 January 2006

After thinking about it, Castillo decided there was more to be lost than gained by eluding the gendarmeria SUV that was waiting for them outside the gate of the Mayerling Country Club.

Comandante Liam Duffy would be annoyed, Castillo understood, and now was not the time to annoy the Latin-tempered (his mother was Argentine) gendarmeria officer. That was, annoy him any more than he already was annoyed.

Castillo knew that Duffy remained furious about the assassination attempt on Christmas Eve on Duffy and his family, and while Castillo had almost identified the SVR officer who had organized and probably participated in that, he would have to check with Berezovsky before he was sure. And as soon as Duffy learned that name, he was going to do his very best to find him and then kill him and his close associates in the most imaginatively painful ways he could think of.

While Castillo fully sympathized with Duffy, he didn't want that to happen until the Congo operation was over. Taking out the SVR officer who had replaced Lieutenant Colonel Viktor Zhdankov in South America would tell the SVR more than Castillo wanted them to know about the extent of his knowledge of SVR operations.

Replacing Zhdankov had become necessary after Corporal Lester Bradley, USMC, using his Colt Model 1911 .45-caliber semiautomatic, had taken Zhdankov out with a well-placed head shot in the basement garage of the Pilar Sheraton Hotel and Convention Center when Zhdankov had been engaged in trying to take out Aleksandr Pevsner.

The initial order, according to both Aleksandr Pevsner and Svetlana, had come from Lieutenant General Yakov Sirinov, who was the man in charge of that sort of thing for the Sluzhba Vnezhney Razvedki. He ran either Directorate S, the oddly brazenly named Illegal Intelligence arm of the SVR, or Service A, which was the arm of the SVR charged with planning and implementing "active measures," which meant such things as assassinations.

Or General Sirinov ran both Directorate S and Service A.

Or Directorate S and Service A were really one and the same entity.

Svetlana and Pevsner had told Castillo the order from General Sirinov had probably been rather vague in nature, stating only that the individuals on a list had been determined to be posing a threat to the Russian Federation and were to be eliminated as soon as the local rezidents could arrange to have it done, preferably within the same twenty-four-hour period.

That, Svetlana had matter-of-factly told Castillo, would serve both to keep the others on the list from suspecting they were in danger because one of their number had been eliminated, and would also make a statement, when the assassinations had been successfully carried out, that the SVR was back and dealing with its enemies as the KGB, the NKVD, and the Cheka had done in the past.

The names certainly listed were Frau und Herr Kuhl in Vienna, Herr Friedler in Marburg, Mr. Britton in Philadelphia, and Comandante Duffy in Buenos Aires. Both Svetlana and Pevsner felt that some people on General Sirinov's list who would be eliminated, if possible, as a second priority included Otto Gorner, Eric Kocian, and Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger, aka C. G. Castillo.

Neither Svetlana nor Pevsner had mentioned that the Berlin rezident ordered to implement the successful termination of Herr Friedler and, if possible, as a second priority, Otto Gorner, Eric Kocian, and Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger aka C. G. Castillo, was one Dmitri Berezovsky--and, although this thought had run through Castillo's mind more than once, neither had he.

When Jack Davidson had driven the BMW out of the Mayerling gate, Castillo had signaled cheerfully for the gendarmes in their Mercedes SUV to follow them.

When finally he had to deal with Liam Duffy's impatience--angry impatience--to learn the name of the man who had tried to kill Duffy and his family, at least the Argentine cop wouldn't have his Irish temper already inflamed by Castillo having eluded his protectors. Read: tail.

Several miles past the end of the Autopista del Sol, where the six-lane toll road had turned into a two-lane macadam highway, Castillo saw a sign reading PILAR GOLF & POLO COUNTRY CLUB, and moments later saw the gatehouse of the place itself.

Unlike either the Mayerling or Buena Vista country clubs, where a combination of high fences, closely packed trees, and thick shrubbery hid everything inside from anyone on the roadway, the Pilar Golf & Polo Country Club presented an unobstructed view of immaculate fairways and greens as far as the eye could see. A dozen electric golf carts were on narrow, concrete paths that picturesquely wound near the fairways and the greens.

At least a mile from the gatehouse, sitting on a gentle hill, were a dozen houses--maybe more--all of which seemed to Castillo to be larger than Nuestra Pequena Casa.

There might have been a fence around them, but Castillo didn't get a good enough look at them before Davidson had to stop at the gatehouse, which itself was a substantial two-story building. Castillo saw that there were two barrier gates in series, each a substantial affair that opened by rolling to the side; the interior gate was two car lengths distant from the exterior one.

From behind thick glass windows in the gatehouse, three uniformed, armed guards examined the BMW and its occupants. Castillo could see on an interior wall a row of video monitors mounted over a rack of shotguns. The monitors gave the guards a clear view of what the surveillance cameras were recording--at the moment, six views of the BMW, including its undercarriage.

At this point, Castillo had a somewhat unnerving and embarrassing thought: He knew Svetlana, Munz, and Lester were inside the Pilar Golf & Polo Country Club, but not exactly where.

Nothing beyond "in another of Pevsner's safe houses."

You should have asked how to get in here, stupid!

It didn't turn out to be a problem.

First, a black KIA sport utility vehicle with darkened windows appeared from the side of the gatehouse in the area between the barriers and stopped its nose against the interior barrier. A large and sturdy man in a business suit got out of the KIA, in the process unintentionally revealing that he carried a large semiautomatic pistol in a shoulder holster.

Next, the red light in a traffic signal mounted on the side of the gatehouse went off and the signal's green light came on. The exterior barrier then rolled slowly to one side. When there was room, Davidson drove up to the KIA as the barrier now behind him closed.

The man who had gotten out of the KIA walked to the BMW, smiled, and bent down beside it.

When Davidson rolled down his window, Max erupted from the backseat, where he had been sitting beside Edgar Delchamps, put his head between Davidson and the lowered window, then growled deep in his chest and showed the man his teeth.