Castillo walked to the edge of the upper-level entrance foyer, rested his hands on the bronze rail atop the glass wall, and looked down to the lower level. Max went with him, put his front paws on the rail, and barked.
Four men—three of them well, even elegantly, dressed—were standing there, looking up at the upper level. One of them was a legendary hotelier who owned four of the more glitzy Las Vegas hotels, and three more in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and Biloxi, Mississippi.
Another was a well-known, perhaps even famous, investment banker. Another had made an enormous fortune in data processing. Castillo knew him to be a U.S. Naval Academy graduate. The fourth man was a sort of mousy-looking character in a suit that looked as if it had come off the final-clearance rack at Goodwill. All that Castillo knew about him was that no one knew exactly how many radio and television stations he owned.
Those People and the executive board of the LCBF were about to meet.
Castillo turned and walked back to the people by the elevator door.
“This is your show, Aloysius,” he said, loudly enough for Those People to hear. “You get to choose who gets thrown off the balcony first.”
Delchamps and Tom Barlow chuckled. Yung smiled.
Casey shook his head and walked toward the head of the curving staircase leading to the lower level. Max trotted after him, then turned to look at Castillo as if expecting an order to “stay.” When that did not come, he went down the stairs ahead of Casey, headed directly for a coffee table laden with hors d’oeuvres, and with great delicacy helped himself to a caviar-topped cracker.
“Careful, Max,” Castillo called. “They’re probably poisoned.”
“Enough, Carlito!” Señorita Barlow ordered.
She then started down the stairs. Everyone followed, Casey last, after Castillo, as if to ensure that Castillo didn’t get away.
“Annapolis,” as Castillo thought of him, waited at the foot of the stairs and put out his right hand.
“Thank you for coming,” he said. “We have to get this straightened out between us.”
Castillo took the hand with visible reluctance.
“For the good of the country,” Annapolis added.
“We don’t seem to agree on what’s good for the country, do we?” Castillo replied.
“I thought champagne would be in order,” “Hotelier” said, “to toast the success of the latest operation. What was it called?”
He snapped his fingers, and two waiters moved to coolers and began to open bottles of champagne.
“I understand some people called it March Hare,” Edgar Delchamps offered.
“Well, whatever it was called, it was one hell of a success,” “Radio and TV Stations” said.
The waiters quickly poured the champagne, and then walked around, offering it on trays to everyone.
“I give you . . .” Hotelier said, raising his glass.
“Whoa!” Castillo said. “Two things before we do that, if you please. One, why are we talking about such things with these fellows in here passing the champagne?”
“They work for me,” “Investment Banker” said. “They are trustworthy.”
“Somewhat reluctantly—I’m paranoid on the subject of who gets to hear what—I’ll give you a pass on that.”
“Thank you,” Investment Banker said. “Anything else, Colonel?”
“One more thing,” Castillo said. “Two-Gun, give the nice man the envelope.”
David W. Yung had earned the moniker “Two-Gun” when he and Edgar Delchamps were about to pass through customs into Argentina. Yung was at the time a legal attaché—the euphemism for FBI agent—accredited to both Argentina and Uruguay, and thus immune to laws regarding the carrying of firearms. Delchamps enjoyed no such immunity; if found in possession of a weapon, he would have been arrested. The problem had been solved by his giving Yung his Colt Officer’s Model .45 ACP pistol to carry through customs—thus resulting in Yung’s immediately being dubbed “Two-Gun.”
Yung walked to Investment Banker and handed him a large manila envelope. It was fully stuffed and held together with thick rubber bands.
“And this is?” Investment Banker said.
“I’ve been told it contains two hundred thousand dollars in circulated currency,” Castillo said. “I never opened it.”
“The funds we sent to you?”
“Correct. I wanted you to have them in case you were thinking your money had anything to do with the success of Operation March Hare.”
“Did you really think you could put my Carlos in your pocket for a miserable two hundred thousand dollars?” Señorita Barlow demanded.
“Señorita Barlow,” Annapolis said reasonably, “that was all that Colonel Castillo asked for.”
“Score one for the Navy, Sweaty,” Castillo said.
During her association with the Merry Outlaws, “Svetlana” had quickly morphed first to “Svet” and then even more quickly to “Sweaty.”
Annapolis pressed his advantage.
“We stood willing to provide whatever was asked for,” he said.
“Yeah,” Aloysius Casey said, “but you thought you were buying something that wasn’t for sale.”
“It seems to me,” Investment Banker said, “if I may say so, that our problem has been one of communication . . .”
“I just told you what our problem was,” Casey interrupted. “You thought you were buying something that wasn’t for sale.”
“It seems to me, if I may say so,” Delchamps said sarcastically, “that the Irishman has just put both thumbs on the problem. You thought you owned us for two hundred thousand.”
There was silence for a moment, then Investment Banker said, “If I may continue, gentlemen?”
He interpreted the silence that followed to mean there was no objection, and he went on: “If either of us had, when suspicions arose, contacted the other . . .”
“You were suspicious of us?” Yung challenged sarcastically.
“Yes, indeed, Counselor,” Investment Banker said. “Perhaps I was being paranoid, but when the Locator suddenly showed Colonel Castillo to be halfway between Budapest and Vienna—on a Danube riverboat that has the reputation of being a floating brothel—when last we’d heard he was on the Lopez Fruit and Vegetables Mexico property, I began to question Dr. Casey’s data, and thought we might be having a problem.”
“I thought putting Charley on the Love Boat was a nice touch,” Delchamps said smugly.
Casey explained: “We were just a little worried that one of you might tell Montvale, or maybe even Clendennen, that Charley was in Mexico—and where.”
President Clendennen recently had appointed Charles W. Montvale to be his Vice President. He had previously been director of National Intelligence.
“To be completely honest,” Annapolis said, “that path of action was discussed. The phrase I used at the time was ‘over my dead body.’ And obviously I prevailed.” He looked at Castillo. “I give you my word of honor, Colonel.”
We have just knocked rings, Castillo thought.
A former member of the Brigade of Midshipmen of the Naval Academy has just given his word of honor to a former member of the Corps of Cadets at West Point, fully expecting him to take it.
And the funny thing is, I’m going to do just that.
“I’ll take your word,” Castillo said. “Operative word, your. To be completely honest, you’re the only one of your crew I trust.”
“Some small progress is better than none at all,” Hotelier said. “For your information, Colonel, we take no actions of that sort unless there is unanimity among us.”
Castillo didn’t reply.
“Without objection, I will continue with the toast,” Hotelier said. “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the magnificent success of Operation March Hare.”
Champagne was sipped. Max took the opportunity to help himself to a bacon-wrapped oyster.
“There’s liable to be a toothpick in that,” Sweaty said with concern.
“Max knows who we’re dealing with,” Castillo said. “He looked carefully before he grabbed it. He also sniffed for cyanide.”
There were a few chuckles at this.
“Very droll,” Investment Banker said. “But if we are to continue working together . . .”
“And whatever gave you the idea that is even a remote possibility?” Castillo asked.
“Because we share the same objective,” Hotelier said. “Of defending the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
“I heard somewhere that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel,” Castillo said. “Would you be interested in my take on You People?”
“I suspect we’re going to get it even if all of us chorused, ‘Hell, no,’ ” Annapolis said. “But I’d like to hear it.”
“You started out with good intentions,” Castillo said. “And I’ll admit that the money you’ve provided to SPECOPSCOM—and I presume to the Agency and others—helped them to do things that they wouldn’t have been able to do because they couldn’t get the funds from Congress.
“But then—how did that Englishman put it? ‘Power corrupts . . .’ ”
“If you’re talking about John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, First Baron Acton,” Annapolis said, “what he said was ‘All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ ”
“Thank you,” Castillo said. “Sweaty, Annapolis men always like to demonstrate their erudition.”
Delchamps laughed.
“I tend to agree with the first part of that quotation,” Annapolis went on. “Is that what you’re suggesting happened here?”
“Bull’s-eye, Admiral,” Castillo said.
“Actually, I was a commander,” Annapolis said. “All right, Colonel, we’re guilty as charged. What would you have us do? Commit seppuku?”
“That’d work for you,” Castillo said. “But I don’t see any VFW buttons on your pals.”
“What are you talking about?” Sweaty demanded.
“Seppuku, my love, also known as hara-kiri, is what defeated samurai—warriors—do to atone for their sins. It involves stabbing yourself in the belly with a sword and then giving it a twist. But only warriors are allowed to do that.”
Delchamps chuckled.
“I don’t have a VFW pin, Colonel,” Radio and TV Stations said. “But I do have a baseball cap with the legend PALM BEACH CHAPTER, VIETNAM HELICOPTER PILOTS ASSOCIATION embroidered in gold on it. Would you say that gives me the right to disembowel myself?”
“Only if you didn’t buy the cap at a yard sale,” Castillo said.
Radio and TV Stations did not look anything like what comes to mind when the term warrior was used.
“I got mine after I showed them my DD 214 and gave them fifty bucks,” Radio and TV Stations said.
DD 214 was the Defense Department’s form that listed one’s military service, qualifications, and any decorations.
“You were a helicopter pilot in Vietnam?” Castillo asked, but even as the words came out of his mouth he knew that was the case.
Radio and TV Stations met Castillo’s eyes and nodded.
“I’ll be a sonofabitch,” Castillo said.
“It gets better than that, Castillo,” Annapolis said. “Tell him, Chopper Jockey.”
“I’d planned to tell you this at some time, but not under these circumstances,” Radio and TV Stations said, “but what the hell. I would guess you’ve heard of Operation Lam Son 719?”
Castillo nodded.
“I was shot down—and wounded—during it,” Radio and TV Stations went on. “My co-pilot and I were hiding in a rice paddy, wondering if we were going to die right there—or after the VC found us and put us in a bamboo cage—when a pretty well shot-up Huey flew through some really nasty antiaircraft fire and landed next to us. The pilot and his co-pilot jumped out, threw us onto the Huey, and got us out of there.
“I later learned the pilot was a young Mexican-American from San Antonio who had flown fifty-odd such missions before his luck ran out. He became a posthumous recipient of the Medal of Honor.”
“He wasn’t a Mexican-American,” Castillo said. “He was a Texican, a Texan of Mexican heritage.”
“You knew this man, Karl?” Berezovsky asked.
“Unfortunately, no,” Castillo said.
“Don’t stop there,” Annapolis said. “Tell him the rest.”
Radio and TV Stations considered the order, nodded, and went on: “Fast forward—what? Twelve, thirteen years? Maybe a little longer. I was in San Antone on business. I own one of the TV stations there, an English FM station, and one each Spanish-language AM and FM station.
“I found myself with a little time to kill, and finally remembering the man who saved my life just before he got blown away was from there, thought they might have buried him there in the Fort Sam National Cemetery. I called them, they said he was, so I stopped by a florist, and went to the cemetery and laid a dozen roses on the grave of Warrant Officer Junior Grade Jorge Alejandro Castillo, MOH.”
“Your father, Carlito?” Sweaty asked softly.
Castillo nodded.
“Who, according to his tombstone had left this vale of tears when he was nineteen years old,” Radio and TV Stations went on, “which caused me to think, what am I doing walking around with more money than I know what to do with, and this Mexican—excuse me, Texican—kid who saved my life is pushing up daisies?
“Inspiration struck. What I could do to assuage my guilt was throw money at his family. I even thought that might be the reason God or fate or whatever had let me make all the money, so I could do something good with it.
“So I called the guy who does security for my stations—he’s an ex-cop—and told him to get me an address for Mr. Castillo’s family. In ten minutes, I had it, so I told the limo driver to take me there.
“Great big house behind a twelve-foot-tall cast-iron fence. The Castillos were obviously not living on food stamps. On the lawn, a blond teenage boy and a great big fat Mexican teenage boy were beating the hell out of each other. I later realized that was probably you, Colonel.”
“And my cousin Fernando, also a Texican,” Castillo said.
“So I called the security guy back and got the skinny on the Castillo family. They could buy and sell me. So I told the driver to take me to the airport.”
“You didn’t go in the house?” Sweaty asked.
“Sweaty . . . is it all right if I call you that?”
Svetlana considered that for a full ten seconds, then nodded.
“Sweaty, I’m a coward with an active imagination. I could see myself introducing myself to Mr. Castillo’s father and mother and maybe his kid, telling them their dead son had saved my life in Vietnam, and then them asking, ‘So where the hell have you been for the past thirteen, fourteen years? You had more important things to do?’ ”
“They wouldn’t have done that,” Castillo said. “My father’s co-pilot—my father kicked him out of his Huey just before he took off and got blown away—is practically a member of the family. He’s a retired two-star.”
“Like I said, Colonel, I’m a coward,” Radio and TV Stations said. “What I’m hoping is that this trip down memory lane will convince you there were two of us who said ‘over my dead body’ when it was suggested that turning you over to Ambassador Montvale so that he could turn you over to the Russians was the best solution to the Congo-X problem.”
Castillo looked first at Sweaty, who shrugged, which he interpreted to mean “Maybe, why not?” and then at Delchamps, who did the same thing, and finally at Annapolis, who nodded.
“Okay,” Castillo said. “Two good guys out of four. Or are there any more of you?”
“There’s more,” Annapolis said. “The proponents of letting Montvale turn you and Sweaty and Colonel Berezovsky over to the Russians felt their presence here today might be a little awkward.”
Castillo snorted, and then asked, “How many more?”
“Wel
l, counting Aloysius and Colonel Hamilton . . .”
“Don’t count either one of us,” Casey said. “Hamilton’s as pissed with you people as I am. More. He was the one who let me see how you regarded us as employees.”
“Does that mean you are permanently shutting down our communications?” Annapolis asked.
“It means I’m with Charley, whatever Charley decides.”
“How many others?” Castillo pursued.
“In all, there are nine of us,” Annapolis said.
“Which means that five of you wanted to throw Charley to the lions?” Mrs. Agnes Forbison asked. It was the first time she’d opened her mouth.
“Unfortunately,” Investment Banker said, “five of us were considering that option.”
“But were dissuaded from doing so,” Agnes said. “The question then becomes, how can we be sure they can be dissuaded the next time a situation like that comes up?”
“The question, Mother Forbison,” Delchamps said, “is whether or not, having indulged the Irishman by coming here in the first place, we decide we’ve heard enough, give these people the finger, and walk out of here.”
“Is that what you want to do, Edgar?” Castillo asked.
“It was when I walked in here,” Delchamps replied. “Now I’m not so sure. And neither, to judge by Mother Forbison’s question, is she.”
“You want to discuss this privately?” Castillo asked.
“That was the first thing that popped into my mind,” Delchamps said. “But I’ve sort of changed my mind about that, too. Let’s lay everything on the table.”
“Go ahead,” Castillo said.
“Giving the benefit of the doubt to the five of These People who were smart enough not to show up here today, I understand where they were coming from. They have been passing both money and information to people in the community for some time. The money was really needed and the information was more often than not useful, and the people who got it were grateful. Maybe pathetically grateful because it allowed them to do what they’re supposed to do. And then the Irishman got in the act and supplied These People with better communication than anybody else has. It wasn’t hard for the Evil Quintet to go from that to thinking they were really important, and thus knew what was best for the community . . . and from that to thinking they knew what was best for the country. And there’s a little of ‘he who pays the piper calls the tune’ in that.”
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