State of Siege - Tom Clancy [19]
"It's the Vietnamese's turn," he quipped when they arrived here from the hotel.
Barone thought he heard a sound off to the side of the building. Reaching into his windbreaker, he withdrew his automatic. He walked cautiously to the darkened alley to the north. There was a club behind a high chain-link fence. The Dungeon. The doors, windows, and brick walls were all painted black. He couldn't imagine what went on there. It was odd. What they had to do in secret in Cambodia, sell girls for money, was probably done openly in places like this.
When a nation stands for freedom, he thought, it has to tolerate even the extremes.
The club was closed for the night. A dog was moving behind the fence. That must have been what he heard. Barone slid the gun back into its shoulder holster and returned to his post. Barone pulled a hand-rolled cigarette from his breast pocket and lit it. He thought back over the past few days. Things were going well, and they'd continue to go well. He believed that. He and his four teammates had reached Spain without any problem. They split up in the event that any of them had been identified, and over the next two days, flew to the United States from Madrid. They met at a Times Square hotel. Georgiev had been the first to arrive. He had already made the connections necessary to obtain the weapons they needed. The negotiations were going on inside while Barone stood guard.
Barone drew on the cigarette. He tried to concentrate on the plan for tomorrow. He wondered about Georgiev's other ally, the one known only to the Bulgarian. All Georgiev would tell them was that it was an American whom he had known for over ten years. That would be about the time they were in Cambodia together. Barone wondered who he could have met there and what role they could possibly be playing in tomorrow's action. But it was no use. Barone's mind always went where it wanted to go, and right now, it didn't want to think about Georgiev or the operation. It wanted to go back. It wanted to go home. To the loneliness, he thought bitterly. A place familiar to him strangely comfortable.
It wasn't always that way. Though his family had no money, there was a time when Montevideo seemed like paradise. Located on the Atlantic Ocean, it's the capital of Uruguay and home to some of the most spacious and beautiful beaches in the world. Growing up there in the early 1960's, Bernardo Barone couldn't have been happier. When he wasn't in school or doing his chores, he used to go to the beach with his twelve-years-older brother Eduardo. The two young men would stay there long into the night, swimming endlessly or building forts in the sand. They would light campfires when the sun set and often went to sleep beside their forts.
"We'll rest in the stables with the magnificent horses," Eduardo would joke. "Can you smell them?" Bernardo could not. He could only smell the sea and the fumes from the cars and boats. But he believed that Eduardo could smell them. The young boy wanted to be able to do that when he grew up. He wanted to be like Eduardo. When Bernardo and his mother went to church every weekend, that was what he prayer for. To grow up just like his brother. Those were Bernardo's happiest memories. Eduardo was so patient with him, so friendly with everyone who came by to watch them build the tall, creaellated walls and moats. Girls loved the handsome young man. And they loved the handsome young man's cute little brother, who loved them right back.
Bernardo's beloved mother was a baker's assistant and their father Martin was a prizefighter. Martin's dream was to save enough to open a gym so his wife could quit her job and live like a lady. From the time Eduardo was fifteen, he spent many days and nights traveling with the elder Barone, working as his corner man. Often they'd be gone for weeks at a time, participating in the Rio de la Plata circuit. Groups of fighters traveled together by bus from