Hazardous Duty - PA 8 Page 12

  This included the estates of the late Grafin—Countess—Erzsebet of Cséfalzvik. In her last will and testament, the countess had left all of her property of whatever kind and wherever located to her beloved grandnephew, Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger, and decreed that the Cséfalzvik titles would pass on her death to her aforesaid beloved grandnephew.

  Billy Kocian took over the administration of the estates, which included Castle Cséfalzvik, now a hotel, the farmlands, the vineyards, and considered then decided against moving into the Cséfalzvik mansion in Budapest. Instead, he rented it to a Saudi Arabian prince who was fascinated with Hungarian women and was willing and more than able to pay whatever asked to rent a suitable place to entertain them.

  Billy Kocian also told Karlchen that if he was waiting for him to address him as His Grace, Duke Karl I of Cséfalzvik, it would be wise not to hold his breath.

  [TWO]

  La Casa en el Bosque

  San Carlos de Bariloche

  Río Negro Province, Argentina

  0930 7 June 2007

  Following Morning Prayer in the chapel, breakfast was served in the Breakfast Room of La Casa, which overlooked the mansion’s formal gardens.

  Charley had attended Morning Prayer because he knew if he didn’t Sweaty would deny him the privileges of their prenuptial couch and also because he liked the ceremony itself. Much of the service was sung—men only, including about a dozen ex-Spetsnaz—and their voices had a haunting beauty.

  His Eminence was in fine voice, and showed no signs of suffering from all the wine of the previous evening.

  The breakfast that followed was literally a movable feast. Just as soon as His Eminence had expressed his gratitude to the Deity for the bounty they were about to receive, white-jacketed servants began rolling in that bounty on carts. There was champagne and cognac (Argentine, and labeled as such because the Argentines could see no reason to give the French exclusive rights to those appellations for sparkling wine or distilled white wine); salmon (Chilean, from a bona fide fish farm Aleksandr Pevsner owned there); caviar (Uruguayan, which Aleksandr Pevsner decreed as just about as good as that from the sturgeon in the Black Sea); the expected locally sourced eggs, breads, ham, trout, and fruit; and the not expected—Aleksandr Pevsner’s favorite breakfast food, American pancakes, served with what he called “that marvelous tree juice,” or maple syrup.

  Sweaty beamed when His Eminence called to her to sit beside him at the long table. “And you, Carlos, my son, on my other side.”

  And her smile grew even broader when His Eminence said, “I think the time has come to discuss plans for the wedding.”

  It disappeared a moment later when His Eminence went on, “Starting with when. How long do you think your intended will be gone?”

  “Gone where, Your Eminence?” Svetlana asked.

  “Wherever this ‘extended hazardous active duty’ Colonel Naylor told us about takes him. How long would you say that’s going to take him?”

  Svetlana was struck dumb.

  “Carlos,” His Eminence went on, “is really fortunate in that very few brides-to-be have the sort of experience you do. Most would not understand how important answering the call of duty is.”

  “Your Eminence,” Charley said, “I never like to take risks without a good reason, and I don’t see any good reason to take this one.”

  “But I would suggest your friends do,” His Eminence reasoned, “otherwise they wouldn’t be here.”

  His Eminence leaned over and looked past Svetlana to Jake Torine, who was sitting farther down the table.

  “Colonel, why do you think Colonel Castillo should take this assignment?”

  “Your Eminence,” Charley said politely, and then very quickly realized (a) that his temper was rising, (b) had in fact risen, and (c) that he had every right to be pissed—Who the hell are you to be deciding what I should or should not do?—went on, somewhat less politely, “I don’t give a damn what Jake thinks. It’s my ass on the line here, not his. Or, for that matter, yours.”

  “Carlos!” Sweaty said, horrified.

  The archbishop was unruffled.

  “Perhaps you would be good enough, my son, to tell me why you are so opposed to doing your duty?”

  “Generally, because it’s not my duty, and specifically because I don’t want to wind up in the basement of that beautiful building on Lubyanka Square.”

  The beautiful building to which he referred had been built in Moscow in 1900 as luxury apartments renting for two or three times the norm. The Trump Towers or the One57 building of its time, so to speak. In 1919, the capitalist tenants were evicted by Felix Dzerzhinsky so that the building could be put to use for the benefit of the workers and peasants. The Cheka moved in, and the storage areas in the basement were converted to cells. The building has been occupied ever since by successor organizations to the Cheka.

  His Eminence apparently knew about Lubyanka, but was again unruffled.

  “And you believe, my son, that would be inevitable?”

  “I don’t play Russian roulette, either,” Charley said.

  Vic D’Alessandro laughed, then raised his hand and asked, “Permission to speak, Colonel, sir?”

  “If you think this is funny, go fuck yourself,” Charley replied.

  “I’ll take that as ‘Permission granted,’” D’Alessandro said. “Thank you, sir.”

  Charley gave him the finger.

  “Your Eminence,” Svetlana said, “I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive my Carlos. He tends to forget his manners when he’s a little upset.”

  The archbishop graciously gestured that he was prepared to forgive Svetlana’s Carlos, and then that D’Alessandro should continue.

  “Your Eminence, I have known Colonel Castillo since he was a second lieutenant maybe five months out of West Point,” D’Alessandro said. “When I met him he already had the Distinguished Flying Cross and his first Purple Heart—”

  “Jesus Christ!” Charley said.

  “If you love God, you should not blaspheme, my son,” the archbishop said. “Please continue, Mr. D’Alessandro.”

  “And in the next couple of weeks,” D’Alessandro went on, “he had the Silver Star, another Purple Heart, and an assignment as aide-de-camp to an up-and-coming new brigadier general.

  “At that point, we began to call him, and he thought of himself, as ‘Hotshot.’”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?” Charley demanded. “And I never thought of myself as ‘Hotshot.’”

  D’Alessandro laughed, shook his head, and then went on, “And what Hotshot decided then was that he had the Army figured out. Just so long as he kept getting medals, he wouldn’t have to do what ordinary soldiers spent most of their time doing.”

  “I don’t think I understand,” the archbishop said.

  “Napoleon said, ‘An army travels on its stomach,’” D’Alessandro said. “He was wrong. The army travels on paper.”

  The archbishop shook his head, signaling he still didn’t understand.

  “Soldiers, Your Eminence, especially officers, spend a great deal of time making reports of unimportant things that no one ever reads. For all of his career, Charley skillfully managed to avoid doing so. But that’s over.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Castillo asked.

  “Solving your problem with the President.”

  “By writing reports?” Castillo asked. “Reports about what?”

  “On the way down here, Frank Lammelle sent me this,” D’Alessandro said, as he took out his CaseyBerry. “He recorded it while the President was telling everybody about his latest brilliant idea. Pay attention.”

  He played the recording.

  “Well,” D’Alessandro then asked Castillo, “what did you get out of that?”<
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  His Eminence answered the question.

  “Paraphrasing what the President said, he wants to involve Colonel Castillo as a knowledgeable, objective observer of the piracy and drug problems to see how those situations are being handled, and to report his observations and recommendations directly to him. What’s the problem there? That sounds reasonable. It doesn’t even seem hazardous.”

  “He also asked, ‘How soon can we get him in here?’” Castillo said. “That sounds hazardous to me.”

  “Cutting to the chase, Charley,” D’Alessandro said, “all you have to do is stall until the President gets tired of this nutty idea and moves on to the next one.”

  “If ‘stall’ means ignore him, I’ve already figured that out myself,” Castillo said.

  “Ignoring him won’t work. I said, ‘stall.’”

  “How do I do that?”

  “Tomorrow, Allan sends an Urgent message through the proper channels to POTUS—”

  “POTUS?” His Eminence parroted.

  “President of the United States, Your Eminence,” D’Alessandro explained. “And we send it through the military attaché at the embassy in Buenos Aires; that should slow it down three or four hours, maybe longer.”

  “I don’t understand,” the archbishop said. “It sounds as if you intentionally wish to slow down what you just said was an urgent message.”

  “Precisely,” D’Alessandro said. “An Urgent message, big ‘U,’ is the second-highest priority message. Operational Immediate is the highest. That’s reserved for ‘White House Nuked’ and things like that.

  “So, what happens here is that Allan sends a message to the people who sent him down here. I mean the secretary of State, the CIA director, the director of National Intelligence, and of course, his daddy.

  “The message says something like, ‘Located Castillo. Hope to establish contact with him within twenty-four hours.’

  “That message goes from the embassy to the State Department. It will have to be encrypted in Buenos Aires and then decrypted at the State Department, and then forwarded to the Defense Department, the director of National Intelligence, and of course his daddy.

  “That process will buy us probably three or four hours.

  “Finally, Allan’s daddy—or maybe Natalie Cohen, that makes more sense—gets on the telephone to the White House and hopes the President is not available. But eventually the President will get the message and learn that his orders are being carried out.

  “And then, twenty-four hours after the first message we send another, ‘Meeting with Castillo delayed for twenty-four hours.’ And we start that process all over. Getting the picture, Hotshot?”

  “Vic,” Castillo said, “you know I never agreed with everyone who said you were a nice guy but a little slow and with no imagination.”

  “I’m curious,” the archbishop said. “If you really had to communicate as quickly as possible with the President, or Colonel Naylor’s father in a hurry, urgently, how would you do that?”

  D’Alessandro held out his CaseyBerry.

  “If I push this button,” he said, “I’m connected with the White House switchboard. It will tell the operator I’m calling from Fort Bragg. If I push this button, the telephone on General Naylor’s desk will ring. The caller ID function will tell him I’m calling from Las Vegas, confirming General Naylor’s belief that I spend my time gambling and chasing scantily clad women.”

  “Fascinating,” the archbishop said.

  “But speaking of Vegas—with your kind permission, Colonel Castillo, sir, I’m going to call Aloysius and ask him to send Peg-Leg and your faithful bodyguard down here, just as soon as they can go wheels up in Aloysius’s Gulfstream.”

  “Why Peg-Leg?” Castillo asked.

  “Peg-Leg?” His Eminence repeated. “Bodyguard?”

  “First Lieutenant Edmund Lorimer, Retired,” D’Alessandro answered most of both questions at once, “after losing his leg—hence the somewhat cruel if apt appellation—became expert in what might be called obfuscatory paper shuffling.

  “I think we have to go with the worst scenario—that our beloved Commander in Chief will cling to this nutty idea of his for a long time—Peg-Leg can prepare the reports of your progress we’re going to have to send him from various tourist destinations around the world.”

  “Yeah,” Castillo agreed.

  “Bodyguard?” His Eminence asked. “You have a bodyguard, Carlos?”

  Aleksandr Pevsner answered that question.

  “To whom, Your Eminence, I owe my life,” he said. “He looks like he belongs in high school, but he’s very good at what he does.”

  “Think the opposite of Aleksandr’s Janos, Your Eminence,” Sweaty chimed in. “Lester looks like a choirboy, and he is not going to stay in Las Vegas if Peg-Leg comes down here.”

  The archbishop’s curiosity was not satisfied.

  “‘Tourist destinations’?” he asked.

  “Mogadishu, Somalia, comes immediately to mind,” D’Alessandro said. “Because of the pirates. And of course Mexico because of the drug problem Charley’s going to solve there. And a grand tour of Europe, probably starting with Budapest. But I would suggest that we start with Mexico, until the colonel is up to speed again. And then probably Fort Bragg, while he forms his team. Or maybe Fort Rucker, Charley. That would give you a chance to see your son.”

  “His son?” His Eminence asked. “I was asked if Carlos had ever been married and told he had not.”

  “There is one little problem with this scenario,” Charley said.

  “Your hitherto undisclosed marriage, you mean?” His Eminence asked. “That opens a number of windows through which we must look before you can be married.”

  “It’s not a problem, Your Eminence,” Sweaty said. “My Carlos has never been married.”

  “The problem is,” Castillo said, “that I’m not going along with this tour of the world. I’m not going anywhere. Sweaty’s right: it would be committing suicide.”

  “Don’t be silly, my darling,” Sweaty said. “Of course you are. You heard what His Eminence said about how important answering the call of duty is. You’re going, and I’m going with you.”

  “‘And Ruth said,’” the archimandrite quoted approvingly, “‘Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go… . ’”

  “First Ruth, sixteen,” the archbishop amplified.

  “Vic, call Aloysius,” Sweaty ordered.

  A moment later, Vic D’Alessandro said, “Hey, Aloysius, how’s things in Sin City?”

  As that conversation began, His Eminence said, “Carlos, my son, tell me about your son.”

  Charley said, “Jake, hand me that bottle of cognac.”

  [THREE]

  Embassy of the United States

  Avenida Colombia 4300

  Buenos Aires, Argentina

  1705 7 June 2007

  Former Major Kiril Koshkov, the onetime chief instructor pilot of the Spetsnaz Aviation School, flew Lieutenant Colonel Allan Naylor, Junior, to Buenos Aires’ Jorge Newbery International Airport in the Cessna Mustang twin-engine jet that Sweaty had given Charley for his birthday.

  There they were met by a Mercedes SUV driven by another former member of Spetsnaz. He had been sent from Aleksandr Pevsner’s home in Pilar—“the World Capital of Polo,” forty kilometers from downtown—to take them to the embassy.

  This took place during the Buenos Aires rush hour—actually hours, as the period started at half past four and did not slack off until eight, or thereabouts. They arrived at five past five. When Colonel Naylor presented himself at the embassy gate and said he wanted to see the Defense attaché, the Argentine Rent-A-Cop on duty announced that that official was gone for the day and he would have to retu
rn tomorrow.

  Allan considered that information, and then decided that while a certain delay was what they were after, delaying fourteen hours was a bit too much of a good thing.

  “In that case, I wish to speak to the duty officer,” Colonel Naylor announced.

  To get through to the duty officer, Allan first had to deal with a Marine sergeant of the Embassy Guard, but finally an Air Force captain appeared. The captain was extremely reluctant to contact the Defense attaché at his residence without very good reason.

  “What’s your business with the colonel, Colonel?”

  Colonel Naylor had been around the military service all his life, and he knew that if he did tell the captain that he wished to send a highly classified message, the captain would almost certainly not have the authority to permit him to do so without checking with his superior, and that superior would not be the Defense attaché himself, but rather an officer, probably a major, immediately superior to the captain. And then the whole sequence would start again with the major’s superior, probably a lieutenant colonel. Et cetera.

  Thus causing too much of a delay.

  “Captain,” Naylor said, “you are not cleared for any knowledge of the nature of my business. Contact the Defense attaché immediately and inform him that an officer acting VOCICCENCOM demands to see him personally and now. That is an order, not a suggestion.”

  The captain wasn’t sure he recognized what the acronym stood for, but did recognize an order when he heard one, and said, “Yes, sir. If the colonel will have a seat there, I will telephone Colonel Freedman.”

  The captain pointed to a row of attached vinyl-upholstered chrome chairs against the wall.

  Naylor did so. After five or six minutes he looked up at the wall and saw large photographs of President Joshua Ezekiel Clendennen, Vice President Charles W. Montvale, and Secretary of State Natalie Cohen smiling down at him.

  He took out his CaseyBerry and punched a button.

  “Yeah, Junior?” CIA Director A. Franklin Lammelle’s voice answered, after bouncing off a satellite floating twenty-seven thousand miles above the earth’s surface.