The Outlaws (Presidential Agent 6)

“Colonel Castillo showed up in Vienna, loaded them on his plane, and flew them to South America.”

“She told you this?”

“No. What actually happened was that Dillworth said she wasn’t going to tell me what had happened, because I wouldn’t believe it. She said she would point me in the right direction, and let me find out myself; that way I would believe it.”

“Is this Russian defectors story true?”

“There’s an Interpol warrant out for”—Roscoe stopped and consulted his organizer, and then went on—“Dmitri Berezovsky and Svetlana Alekseeva, who the Russians say stole several million euros from their embassies in Germany and Denmark.”

“And you know that Castillo took these Russians to South America? How do you know?”

“My friend who is close to the DCI and doesn’t like Ambassador Montvale told me that Montvale told the DCI that he was going to South America to get the Russians. And that when he got down there, Castillo told him the Russians had changed their minds about defecting.”

“And you believe this?”

“I believe my friend.”

“So what happened is that when Castillo stole the Russians from Dillworth, blew her operation, the agency canned her?”

“That got Dillworth in a little hot water, I mean when the Russians didn’t come in after she said they were, but what got her recalled was really interesting. Right after this, they found the SVR rezident in Vienna sitting in the backseat of a taxi outside our embassy. He had been strangled to death—they’d used a garrote—and on his chest was the calling card of Miss Eleanor Dillworth, counselor for consular affairs of the U.S. embassy.”

“Curiouser and curiouser,” Waldron said. “The agency thought she did it?”

“No. They don’t know who did it. But that was enough to get her recalled from Vienna. She thinks Castillo did it. Or, really, had it done.”

“Why? And for that matter, why did he take the Russians? To Argentina, you said? He was turned? We have another Aldrich Ames? This one a killer?”

> Aldrich Hazen Ames was the Central Intelligence Agency counterintelligence officer convicted of selling out to the Soviet Union and later Russia.

“I just don’t know, Chris. From what I’ve been able to find out about him, Castillo doesn’t seem to be the traitor type, but I suppose the same thing was said about Ames until the FBI put him in handcuffs.”

“And what have you been able to find out about him?”

“That he was retired at Fort Rucker, Alabama—and given a Distinguished Service Medal, his second, for unspecified distinguished service of a classified nature—on January thirty-first. He was medically retired, with a twenty-five percent disability as the result of a medical board at Walter Reed Army Hospital. That’s what I got from the Pentagon. When I went to Walter Reed to get an address, phone number, and next of kin from the post locator, he wasn’t in it.

“A diligent search by another friend of mine revealed that he had never been a patient at Walter Reed. Never ever. Not once. Not even for a physical examination or to have his teeth cleaned.”

“And being the suspicious paranoid person you are, you have decided that something’s not kosher?”

“I suppose you could say that, yes.”

“What do these women want?”

“Revenge.”

“Is Dillworth willing to be quoted?”

“She assures me that she will speak freely from the witness box, if and when Castillo is hauled before Congress or some other body to be grilled, and until that happens, speak to no other member of the press but me. Ditto for Mrs. Patricia Davies Wilson.”

“She has visions, in other words, of Senator Johns in some committee hearing room, with the TV cameras rolling, glaring at this Castillo character, and demanding to know, ‘Colonel, did you strangle a Russian intelligence officer and leave him in a taxicab outside the U.S. embassy in Vienna in order to embarrass this fine civil servant, Miss Eleanor Dillworth? Answer yes or no.’”

Senator Homer Johns, Jr. (Democrat, New Hampshire), was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and loved to be on TV.

Roscoe laughed, and added, “‘Would you repeat the question, Senator?’”

Waldron laughed, then offered his own answer: “‘Senator, I don’t have much of a memory. I’ve been retired from the Army because I am psychologically unfit for service. I just don’t recall.’”

“‘Well, then, Colonel, did you or did you not steal two Russians from under Miss Dillworth’s nose and fly them to Argentina?’”