Black Ops (Presidential Agent 5)

"The way you said that sounds like maybe I didn't have to put an edge on my hari-kiri sword after all; maybe I won't have to commit seppuku."

Castillo happened to glance at Svetlana. She was glaring at him.

"Sit there, Colonel, and just talk in a normal voice. Okay, Ace, we're all gathered here to witness the miracle."

"Colonel Berezovsky, can you hear me?" Castillo asked.

"I can hear you."

Castillo gestured to Aleksandr Pevsner.

"God has mercifully answered our prayers, Dmitri," Pevsner said. "Our mothers are smiling down on us from heaven. Thanks be to God, you are safely out of hell on earth."

And we will now sing Hymn Number One One Four, "Onward, Christian Soldiers."

Castillo was immediately sorry when he heard Berezovsky finally manage to ask, in a choked voice, "Aleksandr?"

And even worse when he saw that Pevsner couldn't find his voice, either.

I hate to tell you, Edgar, but right now neither of them looks like a tough sonofabitch to me.

"Pity you're not here, Tom Barlow, ol' buddy. You could help us decorate the Novogodnaya Yolka."

That earned him another icy glare from Svetlana.

Pevsner found his voice.

"Dmitri, the situation has changed greatly. Listen to me carefully. Do whatever Mr. Darby--or any of Charley Castillo's people--tells you to do. Tell them anything they want to know. Do what they say."

"You know this man Castillo?"

"He is the next thing to family," Pevsner said. "He is family, if you ask Anna."

"Or me, Dmitri," Svetlana said. "So far as I am concerned, before God and the world, he is family."

"Has he met Alfredo?" Pevsner asked Castillo, who nodded.

"Dmitri, Colonel Munz is not only my friend, but he speaks with my voice," Pevsner said. "We're going to move you from where you are to a safer place. Alfredo will explain."

Munz then addressed Darby. "Alex?"

"Here, Alfredo."

"There is a second safe house at the Buena Vista Country Club. Colonel Castillo wants you to go there--you and Delchamps; everybody else stays at Nuestra Pequena Casa--with Colonel Berezovsky and his family. Within the hour, a Coto supermarket delivery truck will come there and back up to the front door. Load everybody in it."

"Whose truck?"

"Pevsner's, and the men in it will be his. We've got another place at the Golf and Polo Country Club as a backup."

"This is Charley's idea?" Darby asked dubiously.

"Until something better can be worked out, yeah," Castillo said. "By the time I get back to Buenos Aires--"

"When will that be, Ace?" Delchamps asked.

"I'm going to leave here at first light on the second. I'll be at Jorge Newbery--and somebody will have to meet me--four hours and something after that. I'll have Alfredo and Lester with me."

"And me," Svetlana said.