The Outlaws (Presidential Agent 6)

“He said there would be very little risk. Pavel Koslov of the Russian embassy—who of course has diplomatic immunity—would come here to meet the airplane, immediately load this cargo into Russian embassy trucks, and be gone within minutes.”

“How much else do you think your friend Valentin Borzakovsky, this Venezuelan businessman good friend of yours, told Koslov about what goes on here?” Pevsner asked angrily.

García-Romero didn’t respond, and instead said, “He offered me one hundred thousand euros for the service.”

“You risked everything we have here for a hundred thousand euros?” Pevsner asked incredulously.

“Do you know how much it costs to maintain this facility, Aleksandr?”

“To the penny!” Pevsner snapped. “And the last time I looked, the income made the cost look like a minor operating expense. And you risked losing all that income for a hundred thousand euros? My God, you are a fool!”

“I also thought it might be useful to have the Russian embassy owe us a favor,” García-Romero said.

“Did it occur to you, Tío Héctor,” Castillo asked, “that once you did this hundred-thousand-euro ‘favor’ for the Russians that you had jumped into their pocket, and they would be back asking for other ‘favors’ and this time there would be no euros, just the threat to expose you for what you did?”

“Or that once this happened, we couldn’t take the risk of ever using this place again?” Nicolai Tarasov put in before García-Romero could open his mouth.

“Is that all the bad news, Héctor?” Pevsner asked. “Or is there more?”

García-Romero hesitated a long moment before replying.

“There is more,” he said. “I don’t know whether you think it will be bad news or not.”

“Let’s have it.”

“My men have heard gossip that the coyotes—there were seven or eight of them—were found shot to death near the American border.”

“Dead men tell no tales,” Castillo said. “You might want to write that down, Alek.”

Pevsner’s response was not what Castillo—or, for that matter, any of the others—expected.

“Have you any further questions for your Uncle Héctor, friend Charley?” he asked matter-of-factly.

“I’ve got a couple, including one I expected you to ask,” Castillo said.

“Which is?”

“How much does your friend Borzakovsky know about Nicolai and Alek’s operations here?”

“Nothing,” García-Romero said immediately. “I swear your name didn’t come up, Aleksandr.”

I don’t believe you, Uncle Héctor, and I don’t think Pevsner will either.

Did you commit suicide when you made this deal with the Russians?

“Anything else you want to know, Charley?” Pevsner asked.

“How long is it going to take you to put all those surveillance tapes in a box for me?”

“You’re going to do what with them?” Pevsner asked.

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“Slide them—or copies of them—under the door of that big building in Langley, Virginia.”

Pevsner considered that for a long moment, but made no comment.

“And after you’ve done that, Héctor,” Pevsner said, “what you’re going to do is shut this place down. I want all the surveillance tapes that Charley doesn’t take destroyed. I want the system removed. I want everybody who has worked here to find employment as far from here as possible. If this place should suddenly attract the attention of the Mexican government, I want them to find nothing that will tie me—or, for that matter, you—to it in any way.”