Castle didn't even hold a grudge against the three "kidnappers" who had misled him into drinking the sedative and bringing him to Eastern Europe. In fact, if he hadn't been so foolishly impulsive, this whole situation wouldn't have happened!
Who was to blame? Himself, of course!
If he had just pressed a button on his smart wristband before drinking the sedative, he wouldn't have flown thousands of miles from New York to Europe.
Waking up to find himself on the other side of the Atlantic, and even in Montenegro, was bad enough. The castle he was now in, located not far from the Montenegrin border, was less than 140 kilometers from Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and just over 200 kilometers from Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. If he wanted to reach the coastal cities of Budva or Herceg Novi in western Montenegro, the distance across the Adriatic Sea to the nearest point in Italy was only a little over 200 kilometers—or 120 nautical miles, to be precise.
Damn it, what really annoyed Castle was that he had tried to play the hero and investigate who was behind the kidnapping, but his miscalculation of his opponent had led to this huge mess. And now, his girlfriend, in her haste to find him, had unleashed Jarvis and the Eye of God, which were essentially the nuclear weapons of the internet.
In other words, his stupid actions from last night and his failed attempt to show off had already been exposed to his friends. That was what really pissed him off.
This time, he had wanted to impress Beckett and the others, but his misjudgment of his opponent had turned him into a laughingstock. How embarrassing!
Yes, from the beginning, Castle hadn't taken Le Chiffre's grandstanding seriously. Even if Gianna hadn't sent Cassian and the D'Antonio family's men to rescue him, Castle was confident he could escape safely or deal with Le Chiffre, whose eyes and brain were both faulty. The simplest solution would have been to call in the U.S. military, which had bases all over the world.
The U.S. Air Force was eagerly waiting for Castle to finalize the first-generation visual cloaking technology. If they found out that a guy who laundered money for African warlords had kidnapped the key figure behind this technology? Well, let's just say the U.S. military wouldn't be polite or considerate toward a small country like Montenegro.
But Castle felt it wasn't necessary. Sure, calling in the U.S. military would be easy, but it would also mean explaining why he had been kidnapped in the first place. Since he could handle this situation with his own skills and Gianna's timely backup, there was no need to complicate things further.
After finishing his call with New York and learning that Gianna had sent her family's forces, led by her former bodyguard Cassian, to Montenegro to rescue or support him, Castle decided to wait for Cassian and the D'Antonio family's men to arrive and make contact with him first.
Right now, he was mainly angry with himself. As for Le Chiffre?
Even if he didn't deal with him this time, the so-called "most violent 007" would soon come after him. So, it all depended on Le Chiffre's luck.
If Cassian and his team had already located this "banker," then there was nothing more to say—Castle would send a bullet his way before leaving.
If Le Chiffre was lucky and not in Montenegro, Castle didn't feel the need to hunt him down. He could just place an order with the Continental Hotel after returning to New York.
However, Pompeo, the shareholder of the European aircraft company, couldn't be dealt with so simply by sending an assassin to blow his head off.
After inheriting his father's title and seat on the board of the European aircraft company, Pompeo was no longer someone who could be easily eliminated.
Unlike Le Chiffre, Pompeo was an important figure representing France among the 52 board members of the world's largest aircraft manufacturing consortium. Therefore, Pompeo couldn't be directly killed by Castle or an assassin sent by him. Instead, after returning to New York, Castle would use this incident to warn Pompeo. Whether this would make the second-generation nobleman behave himself, even Castle wasn't sure.
Castle was well aware that, no matter how foolish Pompeo was, he couldn't just have his father send assassins from the Continental Hotel or the High Table to eliminate him. For people at Castle's or Pompeo's level, even when settling personal grudges, they couldn't simply send assassins. Doing so would break certain unwritten rules that everyone at their level silently followed.
As for Le Chiffre, who acted as Pompeo's white glove, he wasn't protected by these unwritten rules. But since Castle knew that Le Chiffre would soon be targeted by the "most tragic" 007 who drove a Mondeo, he didn't feel the need to get entangled with him.
If Cassian's men found Le Chiffre in Montenegro after rescuing Castle, then Castle wouldn't mind taking him out. But if Le Chiffre wasn't in the country by then, Castle wouldn't go out of his way to hunt him down. Instead, he could just leak all of Le Chiffre's misdeeds online through Jarvis and let him enjoy a taste of internet fame.
As Castle sat on the windowsill of the second-floor room in the castle where he was being held—a room that lacked any electronic devices but was otherwise luxuriously furnished with all sorts of drinks—watching the setting sun, Beckett and the others in New York finally pieced together the entire story.
Since Pompeo had ordered Le Chiffre, his white glove and money-laundering expert, to kidnap Castle without any attempt at secrecy, Jarvis, with full authorization from Beckett, who had control rights second only to Castle himself, easily obtained all the emails and voice call records between Le Chiffre and Pompeo.
These two had failed to conduct a thorough investigation into Castle beforehand, so they had no idea that their supposedly secret emails were no match for a fully unleashed AI. This, in turn, reassured Beckett, who had been deeply worried about Castle's safety.
John and Gianna, after fully understanding the situation, laughed and went back next door to take care of their child. As John said to Beckett before leaving, "Kate, I think what you should be most worried about now isn't Rick's safety, but how to tell this guy, who keeps wanting to go on adventures, to calm down once he's safely back in New York…"
John and Gianna's reassurances, knowing full well how skilled and capable their friend was, were quite effective. Especially after Castle took out a backup smart wristband from his personal space and established continuous communication with New York, Beckett really did stop worrying about her ever-childish boyfriend and started thinking about how to deal with him once he returned.
But Beckett also knew that Castle was just someone who loved adventure (or had a knack for getting into trouble). Otherwise, she wouldn't have ended up with him because of their work on cases. The reason she had met Castle in the first place was because he had gone out of his way to get close to her and work on cases together, which was how he had won her over.
The chubby kid, with a good heart, quietly used the smart wristband's text messaging feature to warn Castle, who was still unaware of what awaited him upon his return to New York. However, Castle didn't have time to check these messages now.
He had just received a call from Cassian, who had rushed to Montenegro with a large team of D'Antonio family gunmen. They had arrived!
However, Cassian and his team were currently in Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro, while Castle was in a mountainous area some distance from the capital. So, Cassian was now respectfully asking Castle over the phone what he should do.
Should he immediately bring his men to the mountains to rescue Castle?
Or did Castle have some other plan for him and his team?
After receiving Cassian's call, Castle didn't ask him to travel another hundred or so kilometers to the mountains to rescue him. Escaping on his own would be too easy—he just needed to take out the seven people in the castle. Then, he could drive their car back to Podgorica himself. So, he told Cassian to wait for him in the capital.
He also asked Cassian to check if the idiot who had kidnapped him, Le Chiffre, was in Podgorica…
(End of Chapter)
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