The Outlaws (Presidential Agent 6)

The man looked at Castillo in surprise, and then at García-Romero for guidance.

García-Romero courteously waved Svetlana ahead of him through the door, and then motioned for the others to follow.

Inside, there was a desk and chairs and a cot, and another door. That was opened only after another punching of a keypad—this one mounted in sight beside the door—and the sliding of another bolt.

Inside the interior room there was a wall holding more than a dozen monitors. A man sat at a table watching them. There was room and chairs for two more people at the table.

Castillo looked at the monitors. He was not surprised to see that it was a first-class installation, which covered just about everything in and around the house, the “airfield,” and the cave. And he was pleased to see a battery of recorders; that meant that whatever had happened when the Tupolev Tu-934A had been at Drug Cartel International had been recorded and would be available.

“We want to see whatever the cameras picked up when that strange airplane was here,” García-Romero said. “So I suspect we had better start with the arrival of the cars from the Russian embassy.”

The man who had opened the door for them went to a rack, quickly found what he was looking for, and inserted it into a slot of the desk.

“It will be on Monitor Fourteen, Don Héctor,” he said.

“What cars from the Russian embassy?” Pevsner demanded a split second before Castillo had finished opening his mouth to ask the same thing.

“There were three,” García-Romero said, “two Ford sport—”

He stopped and pointed to Monitor Fourteen.

The monitor showed two enormous black Ford Expeditions and a Mercedes sedan being waved past khaki-clad guards at a gate across a dirt road.

“Aleksandr, I was told that the aircraft would be on the ground here just long enough for the people from the Russian embassy to take the two crates from it,” García-Romero said.

“Héctor, anything you have to tell anybody about this, you tell me,” Castillo said. “Alek is not the tsar of this operation, I am.”

Pevsner’s face whitened but he didn’t say anything.

“Are you going to tell me what ‘this operation’ is all about, Carlos?” García-Romero asked.

“Probably not. Who told you about the Tupolev coming and the involvement of the Russian embassy?”

García-Romero hesitated before replying, then said, “Valentin Borzakovsky.”

“Who’s he?”

García-Romero hesitated again.

“He’s a businessman who lives in Venezuela.”

“What kind of a businessman? FSB or drug cartel?”

“I don’t think I like the question, or your tone, Carlos,” García-Romero said.

“Probably both, Carlos,” Nicolai Tarasov answered Castillo. “He’s one of the people we often fly out of here. And then back in here.”

“With suitcases full of money?”

Tarasov nodded, smiled, and added, “On the way out. He always comes back empty-handed.”

Monitor Fourteen now showed the cave. The Expeditions and the Mercedes were driving into it.

Then it showed the sky, the camera obviously looking for an aircraft.

Or cameras, plural, Castillo thought as the view which had shown some terrain changed to one showing only the sky.

How do they know to expect it?