Black Ops (Presidential Agent 5)

Berezovsky shook his head.

"No?" Castillo snapped. "Then, damn you, why?"

"We talked--" Berezovsky began.

Castillo saw Svetlana nodding in agreement.

"We being who?" Castillo interrupted. "You, Delchamps, and who else? You, Svet?"

"Yes, my Carlos. Me, too," she said.

"Anybody else?" Castillo flared. "Lester, maybe? Aloysius?"

Davidson raised his hand.

"Oh, Jesus H. Christ!" Castillo exclaimed.

"Don't blaspheme," Svetlana said.

"You're pissed because I am 'taking the Lord's name in vain,' but it's all right for you and everybody else to sit around planning to whack people? Jesus H. Christ in spades!"

Berezovsky calmly went on: "What we talked about--Darby, too--Carlos, was how to stop the killing."

Castillo could not believe what he was hearing. "You mean, by whacking this guy in Vienna, then leaving the CIA station chief's calling card? I'll bet when that Marine opened the cab door, that calling card was pinned to Demidov's lapel with a rose."

"We didn't get into how anything was to be done, Charley," Davidson said. "Just agreed that it had to be done."

"Et tu, Brutus? Jesus Christ, Jack. Nobody was interested in what I might have to say?"

"I told them what you would say, Charley. 'No.' Was I right?"

"You know fucking well that's what I would have said."

"But Dmitri and Edgar and Sweaty were right, too," Davidson said.

"How the hell do you figure that?"

"My Carlos, hear out Dmitri," Svetlana said, then added, "Please, my darling."

"I'm all ears," Castillo said after a moment, and gestured impatiently for him to explain.

Berezovsky nodded. "Carlos, it is said that the Germans and the Russians are very much alike; that's why the wars between us kill so many millions--"

"What I draw from that philosophical observation is: 'So what?' " Castillo interrupted.

"--That we are either on our knees before our enemies when we believe we cannot win a conflict, or tearing at their throats when we think we can triumph. The only time there is peace between us is when both sides realize that the price of hurting the other is being yourself hurt."

"There is a point to this, right? And you're going to get to it soon?"

"When it was the U.S. versus the U.S.S.R., this concept was called 'Mutual Assured Destruction,'" Berezovsky went on. "And thus there was no exchange of nuclear weapons."

"Where are you going with this?"

You know where he's going with it, stupid!

Berezovsky started to say something. Castillo silenced him with an upraised hand, and said, "We have to take out some of their people, preferably the ones who whacked some of ours, to teach them there's a price to pay?"

"Otherwise, this won't stop," Davidson said.