The Outlaws (Presidential Agent 6)

Castillo considered that a moment, and then realized: I’ll be a sonofabitch if I don’t believe him!

Why? Because I want to?

“Why do I keep waiting for you to say ‘but’?” Castillo asked.

“Aleksandr, I think you should answer Charley’s question, and fully,” Svetlana said.

Pevsner glared at her.

“Svet took the words from my mouth, Alek,” Tom Barlow said. “Not only is he entitled to an answer, but the last thing we need right now is Charley questioning your motives.”

“I’m not used to sharing the details of my business operations with anybody,” Pevsner said. “I told you I am not, and never have been, involved with the drug trade. That should be enough.”

“I keep waiting for the rest of the sentence beginning with ‘but,’” Castillo said.

“Colonel Castillo,” Tarasov said, “let me try to explain: Once a month—sometimes three weeks, sometimes five—certain businessmen—most often Mexican, Venezuelan, and Colombian, but sometimes from other places—want to visit Switzerland, or Liechtenstein, or Moscow, without this coming to anyone’s attention.

“We pick them up at Laguna el Guaje. It’s always two of them. Each has two suitcases, one of them full of currency, usually American dollars, but sometimes euros or other hard currency. But only cash, no drugs.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because we open them to count the cash, which determines the fare, which is five percent of the cash. We bring them here, where they travel to El Tepual International Airport at Puerto Montt, Chile, aboard a Peruaire aircraft returning from a foodstuff delivery here. At El Tepual, they transfer to an aircraft— depending on their final destination—of either Cape Town Air Cargo or Air Bulgaria—”

“Both of which the tsar here owns?” Castillo asked.

“The tsar or one of the more charming of the tsar’s grand dukes,” Tarasov said. “To finish, the aircraft is carrying a cargo of that magnificent Chilean seafood and often Argentinean beef to feed the affluent hungry of Europe. Getting the pi

cture? Any questions?”

“Oh, yeah,” Castillo said. “And the first one that comes to mind is: Are all you Russian expatriate businessmen really related? Aren’t you worried that you’ll corrupt the gene pool?”

Tarasov laughed. “I’m starting to understand you, Colonel Castillo. You say things designed to startle or outrage. People who are startled or outraged tend to say things they hadn’t planned to say. Alek was right to warn me not to go with my first impression of you, which—by your design, of course—is intended to make people prone to underestimate you.

“Got me all figured out, have you, Uncle Nicolai? Tell me about the gene pool.”

“We’re not really related, except very distantly. Our families have been close, however, for many years.”

“Do I see the Oprichnina raising its ugly head?” Castillo asked.

“Why ugly?” Tarasov said. “Did what you may have heard of the Oprichnina make you think that?” He turned to Pevsner. “How much did you tell the colonel about the separate state, Alek?”

“What I didn’t tell him, Svetlana did,” Pevsner said.

“And what Svet didn’t tell him, Nicolai, I did,” Tom Barlow said, and then turned to Castillo. “Charley, when Alek first left Russia and bought the first Antonov An-22 and went into business, the man who flew it out of Russia was an ex-Aeroflot pilot and Air Force polkovnik named Nicolai Tarasov.”

“And we have been in business together since then,” Tarasov said. “Does this satisfy your curiosity, Colonel Castillo, or have you other questions?”

This could all be bullshit, which I am, in my naïveté, swallowing whole.

On the other hand, my gut tells me it’s not.

“Just one,” Castillo said. “Are you going to check me out in the Mustang on our way back and forth to Area 51?”

“It would be my pleasure,” Tarasov said.

“Can I go like this?” Sweaty asked, twirling in her bikini.

Castillo saw in Pevsner’s eyes that he was considering discouraging her notion, and wondered why, and then that Pevsner had decided she could—or even should—go, and wondered about that, too.