“Very probably,” Pevsner said, and smiled warmly at her and Castillo.
Castillo thought: My God! Aleksandr Pevsner, you’re good!
I’ve known you long and well enough to know when you’re really pissed off, and the last time I saw you this pissed was when you learned that Howard Kennedy had betrayed you.
If you could, you’d happily throw Max off the balcony, à la Ivan the Terrible, who Svetlana told me threw dogs off the Kremlin walls so he could watch them try to walk on broken legs.
But right now, you need all the help you can get to protect you and your family from Putin and the SVR—which means you think that’s a real threat, which is nice to know—and you can’t afford to piss me off—which means you think I have what you don’t have and can’t do without, which is also nice to know—so you smile warmly at the uncontrollable beast’s owner and his girlfriend as if you agree that he’s an adorable puppy and you didn’t mind getting soaked at all.
They call that professional control, and it’s one facet of character I don’t have and really wish I did.
Ten minutes later, the doorbell chimed, and when Alex Darby answered it, seven former members of the now-defunct Office of Organizational Analysis—two more than Castillo expected—walked in.
They were Colonel Jake Torine, USAF (Retired); former USAF Captain Richard Sparkman; former USMC Gunnery Sergeant Lester Bradley; Major H. Richard Miller, Jr., USA (Retired); First Lieutenant Edmund Lorimer, MI (Retired); Chief Warrant Officer (Five) Colin Leverette (Retired); and former FBI Special Agent David William Yung, Jr.
“I knew in my bones that there would be no rest for the weary,” Leverette greeted him. “How they hanging, Charley?”
Colin Leverette was an enormous black man, a legen
dary Special Operations man, known to his close friends—and only his close friends—as Uncle Remus.
“You and Two-Gun got yourselves kicked out of Uruguay, did you?” Castillo said, and turned to Torine. “You actually went to Uruguay to pick them up? Wasn’t that a little out of your way?”
“It was a supply run, Charley,” Torine said, and then, seeing the confusion on Castillo’s face, added, “about which, I gather, you didn’t know?”
“I’m always the last to know anything, Jake. You know that.”
“We went down there with a planeload of the newest Casey radios,” Torine said. “That’s not precise. We went down there with a bunch of the newest Casey radios. You won’t believe how small the new ones are. And they don’t need the DirecTV dish antenna.”
Leverette said, “Colonel Torine was kind enough to take pity on us when we met him in Montevideo and told him that unless he took us with him, we couldn’t get here in less than seventy-two hours.”
“He was weeping piteously,” Torine said. “He said you needed him.”
“To do what, Uncle Remus?” Castillo asked.
“To get you out of whatever trouble you’re in,” Leverette said.
“And your excuse, Two-Gun?” Castillo asked.
“I came to deliver this,” Yung said, and handed Castillo a small package.
“What’s this?”
“Two hundred thousand in used—therefore nonsequentially numbered—hundreds, fresh from the cashier’s cage at the Venetian,” Yung said. “When Casey told me you’d asked for the money, I told him to give it in cash to Jake. It would have been too easy to trace if it went into and out of your personal German account.”
“I don’t recall asking for volunteers,” Castillo said.
“Oh, come on, Charley,” Leverette said. “Come and let Uncle Remus give you a great big kiss.”
“Screw you,” Castillo said.
Moving with astonishing speed for his bulk, Leverette walked quickly to Castillo, wrapped his massive arms around him, which pinned Castillo’s arms to his sides, and then proceeded to wetly kiss both of Castillo’s cheeks and then his forehead.
Castillo saw that Pevsner was smiling.
That’s a genuine smile.
Because Uncle Remus is kissing me?