The Outlaws (Presidential Agent 6)

[SIX]

“The freezing process, I gather, is over, or nearly so?” General Naylor asked when Castillo walked into the war room.

“Sir, with respect, I have no intention of discussing anything about this operation in the presence of Mr. Lammelle.”

General McNab’s bushy eyebrows went up. “You never learned in Sunday school what Saint Luke said, Charley? ‘There is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents . . .’ Et cetera?”

“I don’t believe this!” Castillo said. “The sonofabitch wanted to load Sweaty, Dmitri, and me on an Aeroflot—”

Dmitri Berezovsky laughed.

Castillo looked at him in disbelief.

“Actually, General,” Roscoe J. Danton—whose smile showed he was enjoying the situation—said, “I believe what Saint Luke actually said was, ‘There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.’”

“I think I like that better,” McNab said. “I never thought of it before, but I could get used to thinking of myself as an ‘angel of God.’”

Berezovsky laughed again.

“How dare any of you think of yourselves as angels of God!” Sweaty flared.

“But, I’ll concede, it’s a stretch,” McNab said.

“I used to wonder where Carlitos learned his blasphemous irreverence and childish sense of humor. Now it’s perfectly clear. I hope God will forgive you, General McNab. I won’t.”

“Right now,” Castillo said, “if Sweaty tries to turn the both of you heathens into sopranos, I’d be inclined to help her. Now, who turned Frank loose, and why, and what the hell is he doing in here?”

“Frank is now on our side,” McNab said. “Get used to it.”

“Let me try to explain this in heathen terms,” Allan Naylor, Jr., said. “One heathen to another. Like another acquaintance of ours, whose name Satan himself could not tear from my lips, Brother Frank saw the error of his ways, ’fessed up, and is now allied with the forces of goodness and purity.”

“And you believe him?” Castillo asked incredulously. “All of you believe it? And you expect me to believe it?”

“It’s true, Charley,” Lammelle said.

“Charley, Frank obeyed an order without thinking it through,” General Naylor said. “That’s easy to do. You’re supposed to follow orders. What’s hard is admitting that you know the order is wrong, and then doing something to make it right. In Frank’s case, that was doubly difficult for him. Not only did it constitute disobeying the President, but he knew he could have just kept his mouth shut and done nothing. He knew us all well enough to know we weren’t going to harm him ...”

“Harming him did run through my mind. Vic D’Allessando said we should castrate him with a dull knife.”

He looked at D’Allessando.

“I’m with McNab, Charley,” D’Allessando said. “Sorry.”

Castillo said nothing.

“. . . but instead, he is putting his career on the line,” General Naylor finished.

Castillo thought: That shoe fits your foot, too, doesn’t it?

“Is that what happened to you, Uncle Allan?” he asked softly.

Naylor met his eyes, but said nothing.

Colonel Jack Brewer broke the silence.

“The general’s question, Colonel Castillo,” he said, “was whether the freezing process has been satisfactorily completed.”

Castillo hesitated.