Black Ops (Presidential Agent 5)

XI

[ONE]

Nuestra Pequena Casa

Mayerling Country Club

Pilar, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina

1605 2 January 2006

When Jack Davidson turned the embassy's BMW into Mayerling, the gendarmeria Mercedes-Benz SUV following them made a U-turn, then stopped and backed off the road into a position from which it could easily follow the BMW when it left the country club, no matter which way it turned when it came out.

Seeing what the gendarmeria vehicle had done, Castillo realized that he was going to have to somehow dump his protective tail. As soon as he could, he wanted to join Svetlana at the Pilar Golf & Polo Country Club, and he didn't want the gendarmes to follow him there. They would attract unwanted attention.

When they got to the safe house, Jack Britton, holding an Uzi along his leg, opened Castillo's car door and told them that "everybody" was out back by the quincho.

"Everybody" turned out to be more than Castillo expected.

When he walked up to the shaded verandah of the quincho, "everybody" was comfortably sprawled like passengers on a cruise ship in lines of teak deck chairs on the verandah and in teak chaise lounge chairs along one side of the pool.

Susanna and Paul Sieno, Sandra Britton, Bob Kensington, and Dick Sparkman, all in bathing suits, were at the pool. Castillo knew that Paul Sieno had come from Asuncion while he had been in Bariloche. Jake Torine, Tony Santini, and Jack Britton, wearing slacks and polo shirts, were in deck chairs in the shade of the verandah. A garbage can full of iced-down beer was helping them deal with the heat, and a mound of jumbo-sized packages of pretzels and potato chips on a table was giving them sustenance.

Castillo had not expected to see either Edgar Delchamps or Alex Darby, who were also on the verandah. They were wearing somewhat sweat-soaked dress shirts, and their suit jackets and the shoulder holsters they had worn under them were lying on the tiled floor beside their deck chairs.

They're supposed to be with Berezovsky and his family at Pevsner's second safe house way the hell the other side of Pilar!

Castillo's mouth went on automatic: "What the hell are you two doing here? Who's sitting on the Berezovskys?"

Delchamps didn't like Castillo's tone, and his voice showed it when he replied.

"In reply to the first question, Ace, we're sucking on a cerveza while waiting for you to tell us all about your chat with Montvale." He took a long pull on his Quilmes beer bottle to illustrate. "As for the second question, Polkovnik Berezovsky and his family are being sat upon by half a dozen heavily armed men working for our own Alfredo Munz, four of them Argentines and the other two former associates of the colonel."

He paused, and when he saw by Castillo's expression that that information had re

gistered, then went on: "And when you have finished telling us what the ambassador had to say, Ace, we need to have a little chat ourselves."

Max interrupted the exchange by making a quick run to a table between two of the deck chairs, delicately snatching a jumbo-sized package of potato chips in his mouth, then effortlessly jumping the fence around the swimming pool and trotting to the far side of the pool, away from the deck chairs, where he lay down with the bag between his paws. He tore the bag fully open, took a mouthful of chips, then more or less casually looked up at the humans to see if there was any objection to his action.

"Max, you sonofabitch!" Castillo called.

Max took this as permission to proceed--with haste--and dug his nose back into the bag.

Castillo shook his head but couldn't help but smile.

"To err on the side of caution, I think I had better deliver the bad news inside," Castillo said as he signaled the swimmers to join him.

Everybody hoisted themselves out of the deck chairs and filed inside the quincho.

"Gather 'round me, children," Castillo said after "everybody" had entered and he had hoisted himself to sit on the pool table. Everybody shifted chairs so that they formed a half circle facing him.

"How did you know I was with Montvale?" Castillo asked, looking at Delchamps.

"I called here right after Davidson had called saying you were on the way here, had just left Montvale, and wanted everybody here. Alex and I decided we could consider ourselves 'everybody.' "

"And that it would be all right to leave the Berezovskys with those people?"

"The only question in my mind, Ace, was whether the sitters would let us go. There were six of them and two of us. It finally took a call to Alfredo before they would."