Black Ops (Presidential Agent 5)

Miller held up both hands, suggesting it had been only an idle, general comment.

Bullshit, Dick!

You're just waiting to offer your heartfelt, well-meaning philosophical wisdom vis-a-vis my outrageous relationship with Svet.

Well, I should've expected it.

Everything so far today has gone well, almost perfectly, far better than one could reasonably expect.

Berezovsky's wife and little girl and Marina, their Bouvier des Flandres pup had arrived quietly at Jorge Newbery at exactly the right time. The Gulfstream had gone wheels-up five minutes later. The odds were strong that no one had seen them.

Forty minutes into the flight, Sergeant Kensington had called over the secure AFC radio and reported: "Mr. Darby said to tell you that Ambassador Silvio says ambassadors can't do visas--but that he asked the consul, who does, and who was delighted to authorize multiple-entry visas for any friends of Colonsel Castillo."

Thirty-five minutes after that, they landed at the San Martin de los Andes airport. Max had barely begun his nose gear ritual when three Mercedes-Benz SUVs pulled up beside the Gulfstream.

There had been a brief but intensely emotional moment as everybody, tears running shamelessly down their cheeks, embraced everyone else. Castillo had been a little wet-eyed himself.

Then everyone--including Ivan the Terrible and Marina--loaded into the SUVs and took off.

Max looked at Castillo with his head cocked, as if asking, Where the hell are those people going with my children? But when he heard the whine as Miller began to restart the engines, he trotted quickly up the stairs into the fuselage without waiting to be told.

Five minutes later, they broke ground.

The fuel stop at Bariloche posed no problems whatever, and when Miller checked the weather he learned it would be perfect all the way to Punta del Este.

And they found that the immigration authorities had the same immigration setup at Bariloche as the Buquebus had in Buenos Aires. Which was: An Argentine immigration officer put the DEPARTED ARGENTINA stamp in their passports, officially stating that they had left Argentina. Then he slid the passports to a Uruguayan immigration off

icer sitting next to him, who put the ENTERED URUGUAY stamp in the passport. There would be no immigration formalities when they got to Punta del Este.

An hour into what would be the final leg, Sergeant Kensington called again to report that Alfredo, Darby, and "their friend" were aboard the Buquebus about to leave for Montevideo. That meant there had been no questions asked about Berezovsky's new national identity card.

And the flight to Aeropuerto Internacional Capitan de Corbeta Carlos A. Curbelo had been smooth, uneventful, and had ended in what Castillo with all modesty considered to be one of his better landings.

And what that means, as stated clearly in Castillo Rule Seven, is:

"That inasmuch as everything has gone perfectly so far, something will surely fuck up big-time in the next couple of minutes."

"The last time I landed here, we were the only airplane on the field," Castillo said as they turned off the runway to trail a FOLLOW ME pickup truck to where they would be parked. "Now look at it!"

There were too many airplanes on the field to count, but the bigger aircraft among them were four glistening Boeing 737s. Two bore the logotypes of LAN-CHILE and Aerolineas Argentinas. The other two--GOL and OceanAir--Castillo had never heard of, but to judge by the flag on their vertical stabilizers, both were Brazilian.

The FOLLOW ME pickup truck led them between lines of private aircraft--mostly Beechcraft turboprops, but there were two Gulfstreams, one with Brazilian tail numbers and the other with American.

"What is this place, anyhow?" Miller asked.

"Where the rich of South America come in the summer to rest up from counting their money. In the winter, it's just about deserted. The last time I was here, it was winter and it looked like a science fiction movie. Lots of plush apartment houses, multimillion-dollar beachfront houses--and just about no people."

"What were you doing here?"

"Trying to grab Howard Kennedy." He paused and made a question of the statement: "The renegade FBI agent who went to work for Pevsner?"

Miller nodded his understanding.

"Well, Kennedy sold Pevsner out. He tried to have him whacked, and in the process damned near got me. Would have gotten me if Lester hadn't been there. My payback plan was to take Mr. Kennedy home so the FBI could arrange for him to be sent to the Federal ADMAX prison in Florence, Colorado, thereby earning me the profound gratitude of the FBI. For some reason, the FBI doesn't seem to like me very much."

"I've heard that," Miller said. "Jesus, look at all these airplanes!"

"The last time I was here, it was just little ol' me."