Black Ops (Presidential Agent 5)

The cold truth is I don't have any better idea how to deal with the problem of Comandante Liam Duffy than telling him the truth and seeing what happens.

"Okay, Alfredo," he said. "Tell us how we should handle Duffy. And make it quick; in a couple of minutes, he'll be coming through the door."

"Should we be here?" Susan asked.

Munz answered: "I think it would be best if it were only Charley, Colonel Berezovsky, Senor Lee-Watson, and me. In the study upstairs?"

Berezovsky and Lee-Watson nodded their agreement. Charley was surprised that neither Delchamps nor Svetlana--especially Svetlana--objected.

[TWO]

The study--which actually was more of a library, the room lined with bookshelves--had not been on Svetlana's tour of the house. Four red leather armchairs were arranged around a large, low table on which sat a telephone and an ashtray designed for cigars. Next to the ashtray was a large, silver-plated lighter.

Castillo sat in one of the chairs, then took out and trimmed a cigar. The silver-plated lighter didn't work. He then produced what he called his "terrorist tool"--a butane cigar lighter, a replacement for one that had been seized by the ever-vigilant Transportation Safety Administration inspectors at Washington National Airport as enthusiastically as if it had been an Uzi--and lit the cigar.

He looked at the door to see if Duffy had arrived. His eyes fell on one wall of books. There was something wrong, something odd about them. He got up and went to the shelf. He tugged at one book spine--and suddenly a flimsy shelf-long sheet of something designed to look like book spines fell from the shelf.

"What this is, old boy," Lee-Watson said, laughing, "is what I think you Americans call a model house. Designed, don't you know, to show potential customers how nice-looking these very expensive houses can be when furnished."

"No wonder the toilet wouldn't flush," Castillo said.

Lee-Watson looked horrified.

"Gotcha!" Castillo said.

Lee-Watson sighed. "Quite."

Liam Duffy walked confidently into the study a minute later. He was in civilian clothing. His unbuttoned double-breasted suit jacket revealed a large semiautomatic pistol carried in a high-rise cross-draw holster.

He looked quickly around the room until his eyes fell on Berezovsky.

"Well, I see that everybody's here," he said, mockingly jovial. He looked at Tom Barlow. "Including Colonel Dmitri Berezovsky."

Castillo said: "This is Senor Barlow, Liam. Senor Thomas Barlow, may I introduce Comandante Liam Duffy?"

"Mucho gusto, Senor Barlow," Duffy said. "But I have to tell you that you look just like the man in the photograph on an Interpol warrant that just crossed my desk--for one Colonel Dmitri Berezovsky."

"You're mistaken, Comandante," Lee-Watson said.

"Like hell I am!" Duffy snapped, then looked at Lee-Watson.

"Do you have the pleasure of Senor Cedric Lee-Watson's acquaintance, Liam?" Munz asked.

The question got to Duffy.

"I know who you are, senor," he said. "I must say I'm surprised to see you in this company."

"How are you, Comandante?" Lee-Watson said.

"Liam, listen to me carefully," Munz said. "Are you going to take his word that this is Senor Barlow, or will it be necessary for Senor Lee-Watson to call the foreign minister and have him tell you that you're wrong?"

Duffy didn't immediately reply. After a moment, he said, "Alfredo, we seem to have a problem here."

"One that can be worked around, I'm sure," Munz said.

"One way to do that, Alfredo, is for you to give me the name of the bastard who tried to kill my wife and children. If I had that, I would just leave and forget I had even seen . . . Senor Barlow."

"Unfortunately, it's not quite that simple."