When they were off-loaded at the Venetian's grand entrance, there was one assistant manager in gray frock coat and striped pants for each of them.
"May we show you to your suites?" each asked.
Castillo, who still had not shaved, felt a little uncomfortable in the elegance of the lobby, but he reasoned he would soon be alone with Svetlana and right now that was all that mattered.
"The center door, sir. You are expected. Just go right in," his assistant manager ordered.
Castillo pushed open the door.
"Sweaty?"
"In here, Charley," Aloysius Francis Casey called.
Shit!
Swapping war stories with Aloysius is not what I had in mind.
He found himself at the head of a set of sweeping glass stairs leading down a floor to a dimly lit sunken living room. Aloysius Francis Casey and half a dozen men he could not remember ever having seen before sat on a circular couch that appeared to be upholstered with gold lame.
Castillo started down the stairs, then realized he knew two of the men. Tom Barlow and Jack Davidson were sitting with their feet on a piece of furniture in front of the circular couch. And then he heard a familiar whine--Davidson was barely holding back Max.
What the hell is going on? he thought as Max broke loose and ran to him. Then Castillo realized that he did recognize some of the others. One was a legendary character who owned four--maybe five?--of the more glitzy Las Vegas hotels.
But not this one, a voice from the memory bank told him.
Another was a well-known, perhaps even famous, investment banker.
And another had made an enormous fortune in data processing. Castillo remembered him because he was a Naval Academy graduate.
The others he couldn't place.
"Need a little taste, Charley?" Aloysius asked. "You look like you could use one."
"Yes, thank you. I do." He petted Max. "How are you, buddy?"
A butler in striped pants and a gray jacket took his order, and delivered it in a nearly miraculous short time.
"Gentlemen, now that the colonel has his drink," Casey said, "I propose a toast to Colonel Hamilton, Phineas DeWitt, and the incomparable Uncle Remus. They did the job of getting Operation Fish Farm off the ground better than anyone in this room thought they could."
Glasses were raised and clinked and there was a chorus of overlapping voices.
"Charley, word has come back-channel that a scrambled sortie comprised of F-16A, F-15E, and F-15C attack aircraft--on a black op devised by one Colonel Torine--has turned a so-called 'fish farm' into a flaming crater."
All these people know about Op Fish Farm?
I can't believe Aloysius has been running at the mouth.
Or Dmitri or Jack--and what the hell are they doing here?
"Everybody pay attention," Casey said. "You don't often get a chance to see Charley with a baffled look on his face."
"Okay, Aloysius, you have pulled my chain--more than it's ever probably been pulled. What the hell is going on around here?"
"How many times since you made the acquaintance of Colonel Hamilton have you said dirty words when he told you of 'his people'?"
"Every damn time. So what?"
"Here we are, Charley. We're Hamilton's people. And now that you're soon to be unemployed, we'd like to be yours."