The Outlaws (Presidential Agent 6)

Darby looked at Delchamps angrily, looked for a moment as if he were going to reply, but in the end said nothing.

Castillo said, “What’s your hypothesis, Tom, about the stuff from the Congo suddenly showing up at Fort Detrick?”

“Well, it’s clear it’s got something to do with this,” Barlow replied. “What, I don’t know.”

“It could have something to do with Vladimir Vladimirovich’s ego,” Pevsner said.

“He couldn’t resist the temptation to let us know that we didn’t wipe the Fish Farm off the face of the earth?” Delchamps offered.

Pevsner nodded.

“If he’s got that stuff, he could have used it, and he didn’t,” Castillo said thoughtfully.

“So, what’s next?” Delchamps said. “I buy that stick-it-up-your-ass motive, Alek, but I don’t think that’s all there is to it.”

Pevsner nodded his agreement.

“So Charley has to tell those people in Las Vegas that he’s changed his mind about working for them,” Barlow said.

“Why would I want to do that?” Castillo replied. “The Office of Organizational Analysis no longer exists. I am in compliance with my orders to fall off the face of the earth and never be seen again. Sweaty and I are going to build a vine-covered cottage by the side of the road and live happily therein forever afterward.”

“There goes that sophomoric sense of humor of yours again,” Pevsner snapped.

“How so?” Castillo replied.

“Vladimir Vladimirovich is going to come after you. And Svetlana,” Pevsner said. “You ought to read a little Mao Zedong. He wrote that ‘the only real defense is active defense.’”

“Did he really?” Castillo said. “I wonder where he got that?”

“Probably from Sun-tzu,” Svetlana said seriously. “That’s where most people think Machiavelli got it.”

“Sun-tzu?” Castillo asked. “That’s the Chinaman who turned two hundred of the emperor’s concubines into soldiers and won the war with them? I’ve always been an admirer of his.”

“It was one hundred eighty concubines,” Svetlana said. “He got their attention by beheading the first of them who thought it was funny and giggled, and then he beheaded the second one who giggled, and then so on down the line until he came to one who understood that what was going on was no laughing matter.”

“Does anybody else think Sweaty’s trying to make a point?” Delchamps asked innocently.

“Let me make a point, several points,” Castillo said seriously. “One, as far as the intelligence community is concerned, I’m a pariah. So is everybody ever connected with the OOA. They hated us when we had the blessing of the President, and now hating us is politically correct. I’ll bet right now both the company and the FBI—hell, all the alphabet agencies—have a ‘locate but do not detain’ bulletin out on us. They’re not going to help us at all. Quite the opposite: If we start playing James Bond again, we’ll find ourselves counting paint flecks on the wall at the Florence maximum security prison in Colorado.

“And, if I have to say this, we’ll have less than zero help from anybody.”

“I think you’re wrong about that, Charley,” Barlow said. “We know that—”

“Let me finish, Tom,” Castillo said sharply. “Point two—probably the most important thing—is that any operation we might try to run would have to have a leader. And C. Castillo, Retired, cannot be that leader. What did President Johnson say? ‘I shall not seek, nor will I accept ...’”

“You’re wrong about that, too, Ace,” Delchamps said. “I for one won’t go—and I don’t think any of the others will—unless you’re running the show. And we have to go, since the option to that is sitting around waiting for some SVR hit squad to whack us. And, Romeo, what about the fair Juliet? You’re going to just sit around holding Sweaty’s hand waiting for the hit squad to whack her? Worse, drag her back to Mother Russia?”

“You don’t know how the others will feel,” Castillo said, more than a little lamely.

“Hypothesis: They’ll all go. Any questions?” Delchamps said.

“Count me in, Charley,” Alex Darby said.

“I wouldn’t know where to start,” Castillo said.

“I’m not sure if you’ve ever heard this before,” Barlow said. “But some people in our line of work think collecting as much intelligence as possible as quickly as possible is a good way to start.”

“And how would I go about doing that?”