The Teeth of the Tiger - Tom Clancy [44]
"The property? It goes back to before the Civil War. The house was started in seventeen-something. Burned down and rebuilt in 1882. Government got hold of it just before Nixon was elected. The owner was an old OSS guy, J. Donald Hamilton, worked with Donovan and his crowd. He got a fair price when he sold it, moved out to New Mexico and died there in 1986, I think, aged ninety-four. They say he was a mover and shaker in his day, stuck it out pretty far in World War One, and helped Wild Bill work against the Nazis. There's a painting of him in the library. Looks like a guy to step aside for. And, yeah, he did know his wines. This one's from Tuscany."
"Goes nicely with veal," Brian said. He'd done the cooking.
"This veal goes well with anything. You didn't learn that in the Marine Corps," Alexander observed.
"From Pop. He is a better cook than Mom," Dominic explained. "You know, it's an old-country thing. And Grandpop, that son of a bitch, can still do it, too. He's what, Aldo, eighty-two?"
"Last month," Brian confirmed. "Funny old guy, travels the whole world to get to Seattle, and then he never leaves the city for sixty years."
"Same house for the last forty," Dominic added, "a block from the restaurant."
"This his recipe for the veal?"
"Bet your bippy, Pete. The family goes back to Florence. Went up there two years when the Med FMF was making a port call in Naples. His cousin has a restaurant just upriver from the PonteVecchio. When they found out who I was, they went nuts feeding me. You know, Italians love the Marines."
"Must be the green suit, Aldo," Dominic said.
"Maybe I just cut a manly figure, Enzo. Ever think of that?" Captain Caruso demanded.
"Oh, sure," Special Agent Caruso replied, taking another bite of the Veal Francese. "The next Rocky sits before us."
"You boys always like this?" Alexander asked.
"Just when we drink," Dominic replied, and his brother laughed.
"Enzo can't hold his liquor worth a damn. Now, we Marines, we can do anything."
"I have to take this from somebody who thinks Miller Lite is really beer?" the FBI Caruso asked the air.
"You know," Alexander said, "twins are supposed to be alike."
"Only identical twins. Mom punched out two eggs that month. It had Mom and Dad fooled until we were a year old or so. We're not at all alike, Pete." Dominic delivered this pronouncement with a smile shared by his brother.
But Alexander knew better. They only dressed differently-and that would soon be changing.
CHAPTER 5-ALLIANCES
Mohammed took the first Avianca flight to Mexico City and there he waited for British Airways Flight 242 to London. He felt safe in airports, where everything was anonymous. He had to be careful of the food, since Mexico was a nation of unbelievers, but the first-class lounge protected him from their cultural barbarism, and the many armed police officers ensured that people rather like himself did not crash the party, such as it was. So, he picked a corner seat away from windows and read a book he'd picked up in one of the shops and managed not to be bored to death. He never read the Koran in such a place, of course, nor anything about the Middle East, lest someone ask him a question. No, he had to live his cover "legend" as well as any professional intelligence officer, so that he did not come to an end as abrupt as the Jew Greengold in Rome. Mohammed even used the bathroom facilities carefully, in case someone tried the same trick on him.
He didn't even make use of his laptop computer, though there was ample opportunity to do so. Better, he judged, to sit still like a lump. In twenty-four hours he'd be back on the European mainland. It hit him that he lived in the air more than anywhere else. He had no home, just a series