Black Ops (Presidential Agent 5)

Duffy was visibly surprised but quickly recovered.

"You must be Lieutenant Colonel Alekseeva," he said, then asked in heavy macho-laden sarcasm, "Are there many female officers of your rank in the Russian secret police?"

"My name is Susan Barlow, Comandante. I'm Tom's sister. I really don't know what you're talking about."

Screw it, Castillo thought. I can play, too.

"Now I'm curious, Liam," Castillo said. "How many senior female officers are there in the gendarmeria? I didn't know you had any."

"Carlos," Duffy said. "You're not going to deny that this woman is the Russian defector?"

"Carlos?" Svetlana asked. "Why did you call Colonel Castillo 'Carlos,' Comandante?"

He looked at her incredulously, then sarcastically snapped: "Because that's his name, Colonel."

"I didn't know that," she said in what was almost a purr. "Carlos is much nicer than Charley. Hello, there, Carlos!"

Castillo could not resist smiling at Svet. This visibly confused Duffy and visibly annoyed Munz.

"Please go on, Alfredo," Svetlana said. "I didn't mean to interrupt. You were saying something was incredible. No. The comandante was saying that."

Yes, you did mean to interrupt, baby.

You decided to confuse Duffy.

Knock him off balance, knock some of that self-righteous confidence out of him, make the point that he's not as important as he would like to think he is.

"If everyone is through being clever," Munz said, quietly furious, "may I get on with this?"

"Susan," Castillo said, "Comandante Duffy finds incredible the notion of a chemical laboratory in the Congo and the whole idea of poisoning the water supplies of major American cities."

"Yes, I do," Duffy said firmly.

Svetlana smiled. "So did I, Comandante, when I first heard about it. You do have to expand your mind even to begin accepting it."

" 'Expand your mind'?" Duffy parroted.

"Consider this, Comandante," Svetlana said. "The day before Hiroshima, how many people could have accepted that the Americans had developed an incredible bomb with the explosive power of thousands of tons of dynamite? Or, on the tenth of September, how incredible would it have been to hear that the next day two one-hundred-story buildings would be taken down by religious zealots flying passenger airliners into them?"

Duffy thought about that a moment. "I take your point, Colonel. Which is not to say that I suddenly believe this Congo thing."

Castillo met Munz's eyes, then Berezovsky's.

They heard it, too.

Duffy called her "Colonel"--and without a hint of sarcasm or condescension.

What comes next is the truth. . . .

"Then," Svetlana went on, "you have to ask yourself why we would make up something such as this."

Duffy began to argue: "If there was anything to this at all, certainly the CIA must have some idea--"

"As of a few hours ago, Liam," Castillo interrupted, "the CIA sees no threat in the Congo operation. Specifically, the CIA believes that what's there is nothing more than a fish farm."

"How do we know they're wrong?" Duffy asked reasonably.

Operative words, "How do we know?"