The Outlaws (Presidential Agent 6)

“Venezuela,” Delchamps suggested. “Hugo Chávez is in love with Communism, and has yet to be burned by the Russians, as the Castros were burned. And, God knows, Fat Little Hugo is no rocket scientist. Sirinov could easily have put him in his pocket.”

Barlow pointed at Delchamps, and said, “You’re on it, Edgar.”

“Okay, then. Now what?” Leverette said. “We’ve located the Congo-X in Venezuela. What do we do about it?”

“We start to prove—or disprove—the scenario,” Castillo said. “First step in that will be when we get from Aloysius the intel he’s going to get from the DCI.”

“You don’t know that’s who’s giving him the intel he’s promised to send, my darling,” Svet said.

Castillo, at the last split second, kept himself from saying something loving and kind—for example, What part of “Don’t offer a goddamn opinion unless I ask for it” didn’t you understand, my precious?

Instead, he said: “Who else could it be?”

Svetlana replied, “The value of the intel we get from Casey is only as reliable as the source, and we don’t know it’s coming from the CIA, do we? So I suggest we take what Casey sends us with a grain of salt.”

“She got you, Ace,” Delchamps said. “Listen to your consigliere.”

“Yeah, she did,” Castillo admitted. “Okay, Sweaty: Give us your take on the ‘Come home, all is forgiven’ letter from Cousin Vladlen.”

“You haven’t figured that out? It is meant to let your government off the hook, my darling. It’ll come out that we’ve returned to Russia—”

Castillo interrupted, “What do you mean, ‘we’ve returned to Russia’?”

“You asked me a question: Let me finish answering it,” Svetlana said. “Maybe I should have said if we return to Russia and it comes out—and it would—then your government couldn’t be accused of cruelly and heartlessly sending us home to the prison on Lubyanka Square. Your press will get that letter. It says ‘All is forgiven.’ Your government can then say all they did when they loaded us aboard an Aeroflot airplane was help us go home to our loving family.”

“Score another one for Sweaty,” Delchamps said.

“The U.S. government is not going to put you on an Aeroflot plane,” Castillo said.

“You better hope, Ace,” Delchamps said.

“Over my dead body,” Castillo said.

“Thank you, my darling,” Svetlana said. “I will pray that it doesn’t come to that.”

“Me, too,” Tom Barlow said. “May I offer a suggestion, Charley?”

“Sure.”

“Before we get whatever Casey is going to send us, why don’t we all, independently, try to find fault with our scenario?”

Castillo nodded. “Sure. Good idea.”

“And while we’re all doing that, independently come up with a scenario on how to deal with this?”

“Another good idea,” Castillo said.

“Are we going to try to grab this stuff in Venezuela?” Lorimer asked.

“What I would like to do is grab that Tupolev Tu-934A in Venezuela,” Torine said.

Everyone was quiet for a long moment.

Then Pevsner said: “I’ll check, but I think everybody’s rooms should be ready by now. Shall we meet here in, say, an hour and have another of Leverette’s cocktails and then dinner?”

[ONE]

Claudio’s Shell Super Service Station