The Outlaws (Presidential Agent 6)

PeruaireCargo, Cancún Provisions, Ltda., The Grand Cozumel Beach and Golf Resort, and at least four of the cruise ships were owned—through a maze of dummy corporations, genuine corporations, and other entities at least twice as obfuscatory as the ownership of Gulfstream 379—by a man named Aleksandr Pevsner.

In the late Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Pevsner had been simultaneously a colonel in the Soviet Air Force and a colonel in the KGB, responsible for the security of Aeroflot worldwide.

When the KGB was faced with the problem of concealing its wealth— hundreds of billions of dollars—from the people now running Russia, who were likely to put it in the state treasury, they decided that the wealth—much of it in gold and platinum—had to be hidden outside Russia.

And who better to do this than Colonel Aleksandr Pevsner? He knew people—many of them bankers—all over the world.

Pevsner resigned from the Air Force, bought several ex-Soviet Air Force cargo aircraft at distress prices, and soon began a profitable business flying Mercedes automobiles and other luxury goods into Moscow. The KGB’s gold, platinum, precious stones, and sometimes cash—often contained in fuel barrels—left Moscow on the flights out.

For the latter service, Pevsner had been paid a commission of usually ten percent of the value. His relationship with the KGB—its First Chief Directorate now the SVR—had soured over time as the SVR had regained power under Vladimir Putin. The new SVR had decided that if Pevsner were eliminated, he could not tell anyone where their money had gone, and they might even get back some of the commissions they had paid him.

There had been a number of deaths, almost entirely of SVR agents, and Pevsner was now living with his wife and daughter in an enormous mansion on a several-thousand-hectare estate in the foothills of the Andes Mountains, protected by a security force Castillo called Pevsner’s Private Army.

The mansion—which had been built during World War II—bore a remarkable similarity to Carinhall, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring’s estate in Germany. Not really joking, Pevsner and Castillo said it had probably been built by either admirers of the Number Two Nazi—or even for Göring—when the Nazi leadership was planning to keep Nazism alive under the Operation Phoenix program by fleeing to Argentina.

Castillo had met Pevsner—more accurately, Pevsner had arranged to meet Castillo—when Castillo thought Pevsner was a likely suspect in the disappearance of the 727 from Aeroporto Internacional Quatro de Fevereiro in Luanda, Angola.

Pevsner had learned of Castillo’s suspicions from his chief of security, a former FBI agent. Castillo had been snatched from the men’s room of the Hotel Sacher in Vienna and taken to the Vienna Woods at gunpoint.

On meeting Castillo, Pevsner decided the wisest path for him to follow was to help Castillo find the missing aircraft. He really didn’t like to kill people unless it was absolutely necessary—incredibly, he was a devout Christian—and killing Castillo would certainly draw more American attention to him and his business enterprises.

The missing airplane was found with his help, and there was no sudden burst of activity by the Americans looking into Pevsner and his affairs.

But the real reason Pevsner was able to feel he had really made the right decision not to kill Castillo came when Pevsner was betrayed by the former FBI agent, who set up an assassination ambush in the basement garage of the Sheraton Pilar Hotel outside Buenos Aires.

The team of SVR assassins found themselves facing not only János, Pevsner’s massive Hungarian bodyguard, but a number of members of the OOA, who had learned what was about to happen.

In the brief, if ferocious, firefight which ensued, János was seriously wounded and all four of the SVR would-be assassins had been killed. One of the Russians had been put down by Corporal Lester Bradley, USMC, with a headshot at thirty meters’ distance from Lester’s Model 1911A1 .45 ACP pistol.

That had, of course, made Aleksandr Pevsner think of Charley Castillo as a friend, but there had been another unexpected development. Shortly after they had been struck with Cupid’s arrow, Sweaty had told her Carlos that the reason they had wanted to come to Argentina was because she and her brother had a relative living there. They were cousins. His mother and the mother of Sweaty and Tom were sisters. They didn’t know where he was, and she hoped her Carlos would help her find him.

His name, Sweaty had said, was Aleksandr Pevsner.

Behind the flight deck of the PeruaireCargo 767 there was a small passenger area equipped with a table, a galley, and six seats which could be converted to beds at the press of a switch.

Castillo sat down beside Sweaty, and a stewardess showed him a bottle of Argentine champagne, her eyes asking if it met his pleasure. He nodded and she poured champagne for him and Sweaty and for Tom Barlow and Two-Gun.

“Randy came to my retirement parade,” Castillo told Sweaty. “He asked if he was ever going to see me again.”

“Oh, my poor Carlos,” Sweaty said, and took his hand and kissed it.

Max, who seemed to understand his master was unhappy, put his paws on Castillo’s shoulders and licked his face.

The PeruaireCargo 767 flew nonstop from Cancún to Santiago, Chile.

For some reason, the Chilean immigration and customs officials, who had a reputation for meeting all incoming aircraft before the doors were open, were not on the tarmac.

Castillo, Sweaty, Tom, Two-Gun, and Max were thus able to walk directly, and without attracting any attention, from the 767 to a Learjet 45 which was conveniently parked next to where the 767 had stopped. The Learjet began to taxi the instant the door had closed.

A short time later, it landed at the San Carlos de Bariloche airport in Argentina, just the other side of the Andes Mountains. Coincidentally, the Argentine immigration and customs authorities, like their brothers in Santiago, seemed not to have noticed the arrival of the Learjet. No one saw its passengers load into a Mercedes sedan and, led and trailed by Mercedes SUVs, drive off.

Forty-five minutes later, Charley was standing on the dock on the edge of the Casa en el Bosque property and looking out across Lake Nahuel Huapi.

“What are you thinking, my darling?” Sweaty asked, touching his cheek.

“That I just have, in compliance with orders, dropped off the face of the earth.”

“Okay,” Castillo said, “the motion to split the money and run having failed, we’re still in business. But as what?”