Black Ops (Presidential Agent 5)

0735 8 January 2006

"Sorry to keep you waiting, Vic," Castillo said. "I was in bed."

"I heard about that," D'Allessando said. "When do I get to meet her?"

"Soon enough. Look, Lester's rounding up the others; it'll take a minute."

"Everybody knows everything, right?"

"Right."

"You were just a wee slip of a lad when I taught you that," D'Allessando said.

"And you still had hair, Vic. It was a long time ago."

"Actually, I thought about those days this morning, while jogging around Smoke Bomb Hill with Colonel Hamilton."

"And the general?"

"I have no idea who you're talking about, Colonel," D'Allessando said.

Castillo waved for Bradley to bring the crowd into the room.

"Everybody's here, Vic," Castillo said.

Including my grandmother, whom I'm not going to run off; she's not a Russian spy. I'm sleeping with the Russian spy. Who is here with her brother, also a Russian spy, who just shook hands with my grandmother.

"Hello, one and all," D'Allessando said. "Our problem is Colonel Hamilton, with whom, as I just told Charley, I took a jog down memory lane around Smoke Bomb Hill. He was crushed to learn that the barrack in which he once commanded a platoon was long ago torn down.

"He also told me, 'Of course I'm going into the Congo.' "

Castillo said, "Absolutely out of the question. He can go as far as Bujumbura, and even that makes me uncomfortable."

"Well, you're going to have to tell him that, Charley."

"I'm a lowly lieutenant colonel. He's a more than a little starchy full bird. Get McNab to tell him."

"Get who?"

"General McNab."

"I thought he told you . . ."

"Told me what?"

"The general doesn't know you anymore," D'Allessando said. "He hasn't seen you since you went off to Washington a long time ago, where he hears you went off the deep end. He knows you snatched two Russian spies away from the CIA and won't give them back. He thinks you're a disgrace to the uniform and has already taken steps to see that you're booted out of the Army. He wouldn't talk to you even if, by some wild stretch of the imagination, you had the effrontery to try calling him."

Castillo saw the look on Svetlana's face and then on Abuela's.

"I'd forgotten," Castillo said.

I remember him telling me, "From the moment I walk out that door, I don't know where you are, or what you're doing, or anything about you except that I agree you're not playing with a full deck."

But, until just now, what it meant just didn't sink in.

"Keep it in mind, Charley," D'Allessando said.

"Where is Colonel Hamilton?"