The Outlaws (Presidential Agent 6)

Unless we play by the rules, we would never learn anything from one another. Murov waved Lammelle into one of the two places set at the table, and a cook—a burly Russian man—immediately produced coffee mugs and set a bottle of Rémy Martin and two snifters on the table.

That’s really a little insulting, Sergei, if you thought I was going to oblige you by getting sauced and then run my mouth.

Or it could simply be standard procedure: “Put the booze out. The worse that can happen is that the American won’t touch it.”

“I asked Cyril to make eggs Benedict,” Murov said. “That all right with you, Frank?”

“Sounds fine,” Lammelle said, “but looking the gift horse in the teeth, can we get on with this? I really have to get back to the office.”

“Just as soon as he lays the eggs Benedict before us, I’ll ask Cyril to leave us.”

“I hardly know where to begin,” Murov said as he finished his breakfast.

The hell you don’t.

Item two on your thoughtfully prepared agenda—item one being put out the Rémy Martin—was to suggest you don’t know what you’re talking about and simply are going to have to wing it and thus be at my mercy.

“How about this?” Murov went on. “I think there are certain areas where cooperation between us would be mutually advantageous.”

“Does that mean, Sergei, that I have something you want, and you hope that what you’re going to offer me will be enough to convince me I should give it to you?”

Murov considered that a moment, then shrugged, smiled, and nodded.

“You can always see right through me, Frank, can’t you?”

“Only when you want me to, Sergei. If you don’t want me to ...”

“I know how to neutralize Congo-X,” Murov said.

Now, that’s interesting!

Starting with: How does he know that we’re calling it Congo-X?

“I didn’t know you had assets in Fort Detrick. Now I’ll have to tell the counterint

elligence guy there to slit his wrists.”

“I have people all over. Almost as many as you do, Frank.”

“Did your assets tell you that we’ve already just about figured out how to neutralize Congo-X?”

“They told me Colonel Hamilton has had some preliminary success,” Murov said.

I don’t think there’s an SVR agent inside Detrick.

What I think we have is some misguided noble soul, a tree-hugger—or a half-dozen of them—who is making his—or their—contribution to world peace and brotherhood among men by feeding anything they think is another proof of our innate evilness to the Russians, who are no longer godless Communists, and thus no longer a threat.

The proof of how good they are now is that when they reburied the tsar and his family in Moscow, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was there on his knees. Somehow that photograph of that born-again Christian made front-page news all over the world.

“Just for the sake of conversation, Sergei, what have I got that you want?”

“Colonel Dmitri Berezovsky and Lieutenant Colonel Svetlana Alekseeva.”

“Since you have assets all over, Sergei, I’m really surprised you don’t know that we don’t have either of them, and never have had.”

“But in a manner of speaking, Frank, if you have someone who has anything—a bottle of Rémy Martin, for example—wouldn’t it be fair to say you also have that bottle of cognac?”

“If you’re suggesting I have someone who has your two defectors, I don’t. And I think you know that, Sergei.”