The Outlaws (Presidential Agent 6)

“He is family,” Svetlana corrected him.

“And I have always thought of Carlitos and his cousin Fernando as my nephews,” García-Romero said.

“So, in a manner of speaking,” Pevsner said, “we’re all family.”

“Above the sound of the violins softly playing ‘Ave Maria,’” Castillo said, “I keep hearing a soft voice asking, ‘Charley, who the hell do these two think they’re fooling?’”

“Excuse me?” García-Romero asked.

“You heard me, Héctor,” Castillo said. “How come I never saw you surrounded by thugs with Uzis before?”

“They’re necessary security, Carlos,” García-Romero said.

“To protect you from whom?”

“You’re a Mexican, a Mexican-American. You know there’s a criminal element here.”

“I’m a Texican, and you goddamned well know the difference between a Mexican-American and a Texican.”

García-Romero did not answer.

“I saw surveillance cameras in that cave downstairs,” Castillo said. “What I want from you now, Tío Héctor, right now, is to see the tapes of the Tupolev Tu-934A when it was here.”

He could see in García-Romero’s eyes that that had struck a chord.

“The what?” García-Romero asked.

“The Russian airplane,” Castillo qualified. “And please don’t tell me you don’t know what I’m talking about. I’ve had about all the bullshit I can take.”

García-Romero looked at Castillo and then at Pevsner.

“You know about that? Is that why you’re here?”

“Why don’t you show us the tapes, Héctor?” Pevsner replied.

“I was going to show them to you anyway,” García-Romero said.

“Mommy, I was only trying to see how many cookies were in the jar. That’s the only reason I had my hand in it. I wasn’t going to eat any of them. And that’s the truth.”

“Let’s go, Héctor,” Castillo said. “Where are they?”

“In the security office,” García-Romero said. “It’s on the upper floor.”

He gestured toward the center of the building, and then led everybody out of the great room into the foyer, and then up a wide, tiled stairway to an upper floor.

The security room was at the end of a corridor to the right.

García-Romero didn’t even try to work the handle, instead pulling down the cover of a keypad and then punching in a code. And even then he didn’t try to open the door.

“I wondered what kind of an airplane that was,” he said. “I’d never seen one before.”

There was the sound of a bolt being drawn, and then the door was opened by a man in khakis. He had a pistol in a shoulder holster.

“We want to see the tapes of that strange airplane,” García-Romero said.

“Shall I bring them to the great room, Don Héctor?”

“No,” Castillo said. “We’ll look at them here.”