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"You think they're still going to be there when you go back?"
"You're not listening, Ace. There were six of them. Alex and I were outnumbered and outgunned. If Berezovsky wanted to leave, he would have left."
"Interesting."
"He told me what he wants to do is to have a little chat, mano a mano, with you."
"About what?"
"Why don't we get into that when you've finished telling us about the ambassador? Starting at the beginning and leaving nothing out."
"Fair enough," Castillo said, and began: "When I parked at Jorge Newbery, there was a Presidential Flight Gulfstream on the tarmac. The pilot told me not only that it had carried Montvale down here, but that Montvale had blown his stack when Ambassador Silvio told him he had no idea where I was.
"So I went looking for him. I found him in the Rio Alba and then we went to the embassy for a little chat. . . ."
It took Castillo about five minutes to bring everybody up to speed.
"Okay. That's about it. Anybody?"
Colonel Jake Torine shook his head in wonder. He--and everyone else-- had just heard that he was being sent to the Nebraska Avenue Complex, where--aided and abetted by Mrs. Agnes Forbison, their very own expert on all things bureaucratic--he was to be prepared to convince Mr. C. Harry Whelan of The Washington Post that the Office of Organizational Analysis was in fact what its name suggested, just one more small governmental agency charged with analyzing government organization, in this case that of the Department of Homeland Security.
Castillo looked at Torine. "Jake?"
"Why do I think you have a hidden agenda here, Charley?"
"Because by nature you are simply unable to trust your fellow man?"
"How about because I have been around the block with you too many times, ol' buddy."
"Did I forget to mention that I hope you and Sparkman will be able to tear yourself away from your analytic duties for a few hours so that you might consider the problems of getting whatever materiel and men into the Democratic Republic of the Congo in complete secrecy so they can take out a chemical laboratory/factory?"
"No, I guess that slipped your mind," Torine said.
"And of course once they have accomplished that little task, to get them out of the Democratic Republic of the Congo as unobtrusively as they entered?"
"That presumes that you will be allowed to use the Delta Force 727."
Castillo nodded. "And some people from Delta Force. Uncle Remus comes to mind."
Chief Warrant Officer Five Colin Leverette, a legendary Delta Force special operator, was an enormous, very black man who was called "Uncle Remus" by his close friends--and only by his close friends--in the special operations community.
"From what you have told us of your little chat with Ambassador Montvale, are you sure that's going to happen?"
"No," Castillo said simply.
"Then what, Charley?"
"I haven't quite figured that out."
"Wonderful!"
"If you're uncomfortable with this, Jake, don't do it. Just con C. Harry Whelan and leave it at that."
"Every time you lead me around the block, I'm uncomfortable," Torine said. "But I always go, and you know that."
"That was before," Castillo said, "when you were able to con yourself into thinking I wasn't really crazy."
"Not without difficulty," Torine said, chuckling.
