Black Ops (Presidential Agent 5)

He switched the parrilla fork to his left hand, offered his right arm to Svetlana, and marched with her through the door. She towered at least a foot over him.

The portly black man who had come around the corner of the house holding the CAR-4 when they had arrived now walked into the interior patio as the ambassador was slicing an entire tenderloin of beef. He laid the weapon on the table, sat down, and reached for a silver cocktail shaker.

"Colin," he said, "this better be what I think it is."

"Have I ever failed you, DeWitt?" Leverette replied.

"Yes," the man said. "I shudder recalling how many times, where, and how." He picked up the cocktail shaker, poured himself a Sazerac, sipped it appreciatively, then announced, "This will do."

Castillo chuckled.

The black man looked at Castillo and smiled. "You don't remember me, do you, Colonel?"

"No," Castillo confessed.

"All we black folk look alike, DeWitt," Leverette said. "You know that."

"Fuck you, Uncle Remus!" Castillo flared.

Leverette knows that was uncalled for.

And bullshit besides.

There are five "black" people here. The ambassador and his wife, Big Mouth Uncle Remus, Dick Miller, and this old guy, who I never saw before, and now that I think about it is older than I first thought. He's at least sixty.

And the one thing they have in common is that they don't look alike.

One's uncommonly small (the ambassador), another's uncommonly large (Uncle Fucking Remus), one's trim (Miller), and one's more than pleasingly plump (the China Post guy).

And the color of their skin ranges from as light as mine (Mrs. Lorimer) to the you-can't-see-him-when-the-lights-are-out pigmentation of Leverette, who until just now I thought was one of my best friends.

"Easy, Charley," Dick Miller said. "He didn't mean that the way it sounded."

"Yeah, I did," Leverette said.

"Well, then fuck you, too!" Miller said angrily. "You know better than that, Colin. Goddammit!"

Castillo glanced at the ambassador and saw concern on his face; his wife's face looked even worse.

"Goddamn you, Colin!" Castillo flared. "How many of those Sazeracs have you had?"

"Just this one, Boss Man," Leverette said in a thick accent, then raised the glass to Castillo.

Castillo, literally speechless, looked at him in shock. His eye caught the fat old man, who was holding his hands in the form of a T, signaling Time-out.

"We got him, Colin," the black man said. "Enough's enough."

"DeWitt, we got both of them," Leverette said, laughing. "As ye sow, Carlos, so shall ye reap! You might want to write that down."

Castillo glanced at Dewitt.

DeWitt . . . DeWitt, he thought, then a faint bell tinkled in his memory banks.

"When I saw Colin," the fat man was saying, "I said, 'I just saw Hotshot Charley and he looked right through me.'"

"To which I replied," Leverette picked up, " 'DeWitt, I hate to tell you this, but you are no longer the Green Beanie poster boy you were in The Desert.' "

"Master Sergeant DeWitt!" Castillo said, suddenly remembering.