“The question comes up frequently, sir,” Castillo said. “Usually followed by, ‘Are you adopted?,’ to which I reply, sir, ‘No, it’s a question of genes.’ ”
The president chuckled, then grew serious.
“I guess the secretary has brought you up to speed on this,” he said.
“Yes, sir, he has.”
“What did he tell you?” the president asked.
Castillo’s somewhat bushy left eyebrow rose momentarily as he visibly gathered his thoughts.
“As I understood the secretary, Mr. President,” Castillo began, “a Boeing 727 that had been parked at the Luanda, Angola, airfield for fourteen months took off without clearance on 23 May and hasn’t been seen since. The incident is being investigated by just about all of our intelligence agencies, none of which has come up with anything about where the aircraft is or what happened to it. The secretary, sir, led me to believe that he wants me to conduct an investigation ..."
“I want you to conduct an investigation,” the president interrupted.
“Yes, sir. The purpose of my investigation would be to serve as sort of a check on the investigations of the various agencies involved . . .”
“What I’d like to know,” the president said, with a dry smile on his face and in his voice, “is what did they know, and when did they know it?’ ”
Secretary Hall chuckled.
“There is nothing to suggest,” the president said, “that any of the agencies looking into the 727 gone missing have either done anything they shouldn’t have or not done something they should have. Or that anyone suspects they will in the future. You should have that clear in your mind from the beginning.”
“Yes, sir.”
“On the other hand,” the president went on, “I can’t help but have in mind that a highly placed officer in the agency who was in the pay of the Russians for years was not even suspected of doing anything wrong—despite his living a lifestyle he could obviously not support on his CIA pay— until, against considerable resistance from the agency bureaucracy, an investigation was launched. You’re familiar with that story?”
“Yes, sir, I am.”
“And then—it came far too belatedly to light—the FBI had a highly placed officer in charge of counterintelligence who had taken a million dollars from the Russians in exchange for information that led to the deaths of people we had working for us in Moscow and elsewhere.”
“Yes, sir. I know that story, too.”
“That’s what the agency would call the worst possible scenario,” the president went on. “But there is another scenario —scenarios—that, while falling short of moles actually in the pay of a foreign intelligence service, can do just as much harm to the country as a mole can do. Are you following me, Major?”
“I hope so, sir.”
“Intelligence—as you probably are well aware—is too often colored, or maybe diluted or poisoned, I learned, by three factors. I’m not sure which is worst. One of them is interagency rivalry, making their agency look good and another look bad. Another is to send up intelligence that they believe is what their superiors want to hear, or, the reverse, not sending up intelligence that they think their superiors don’t want to hear. And yet another is an unwillingness to admit failure. You understand this, I’m sure. You must have seen examples yourself.”
“Yes, sir, I have.”
“Matt . . . Secretary Hall and I,” the president said, “are agreed that in the intelligence community there is too much of a tendency to rely on what the other fellow has to say. I mean, in the absence of anything specific, the CIA will go with what the FBI tells them, or the ONI on what the DIA has developed. You’re still with me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Some of that, obviously, has to do with funding. Funding is finite. One agency feels that if another agency has come up with something, there’s no sense in duplicating the effort, which means spending money. That’s just human nature. ”
“Yes, sir, I understand.”
“And then Secretary Hall came up with the idea that one way to have a look at what’s really going on in the field would be to have a quiet look at an active case where more than one agency—the more, the better—is involved. This gone-missing airplane is a case where not just two or three agencies but most of them are involved. I don’t have to get into that with you, do I, Major? The jealously guarded turf of the various agencies?”
“No, sir. I’m familiar with the Statements of Mission.”
“Okay,” the president said. “In the case of this missing 727 airplane, the agency has primary responsibility. But the State Department has been told to find out what they can. And the Defense Intelligence Agency. And DHS, because one scenario is that the plane was stolen for use as a flying bomb against a target in this country. There is not much credence being placed in that story, but the fact is we just don’t know. What we do know is that we cannot afford to allow it—or any other act of terrorism—to happen again. And certainly not as a result of interagency squabbling . . . or one agency deciding it doesn’t want to spend money because it (a) would be duplication and (b) could be more profitably spent on something else.
“So that gives Secretary Hall reason to send someone to find out what he can. Because the agency and the others are involved, and he will have access—at least in theory—to what intelligence they develop, he will not be expected to send a team, just go through the motions with someone junior who can be spared. You with me, Major?”
“Yes, sir. I think I am.”
“The question then became who could Secretary Hall send on this mission, and he answered that by saying he had just the man, and he thought I would like him because he was just like Vernon Walters. You know who General Walters was, of course?”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
“Well, are you like Vernon Walters, Major? You do speak a number of languages fluently?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Russian?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Hungarian?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How many in all?”
“Seven or eight, sir,” Castillo said, “depending on whether Spanish and Texican are counted as one language or two.”
The president chuckled. “How did you come to speak Russian?” he asked.
“When I was growing up, sir, my mother thought it would be useful if the Russians won. We lived right on the East/West German border, sir.”
“And Hungarian?” the president asked.
“An elderly grandaunt who was Hungarian lived with us, sir. I got it from her.”
“General Walters . . .” the president began, then paused. “I suppose protocol would dictate that I refer to him as Ambassador Walters, but I think he liked being a general far more than he ever liked being an ambassador. Anyway, he told me that languages just came to him naturally, that they hadn’t been acquired by serious study. Is that the way it is with you, Major?”
“Yes, sir. Pretty much.”
The president studied Castillo carefully for a moment and then asked, “You think you’re up to what’s being asked of you, Major?”
“Yes, sir,” Major Carlos Guillermo Castillo said, confidently.
“Okay. It’s settled,” the president said. “I was about to say, ‘Good luck, thank you for coming, and one of the Hueys will take you back to Fort Stewart to wait for Matt . . . for the secretary.’ ”
“There’s no reason for him to stay at Fort Stewart, Mr. President,” Hall said. “Actually, I promised him the long weekend off if we finished here quickly.”
The president nodded, then asked Castillo: “Well, we are done. Any plans?”
“Yes, sir. I promised my grandmother a visit.”
“She’s where?”
“Outside San Antonio, sir.”
“Would a chopper ride to Atlanta cut some travel time for you, Major?”
“Yes, sir. It would. But a ride back to Fort Stewart is all I’ll need, sir.”
“How’
s that?”
“Sir, I’m going to meet a cousin at Savannah. We’re going to Texas together.”
The president raised his voice. “Nathan!”
A very large, very black man appeared almost immediately from inside the house. He had an earphone in his ear and a bulge under his arm suggested the presence of either a large pistol or perhaps an Uzi. Right on his heels was one of the secretary’s Secret Service bodyguards.
“Yes, Mr. President?”
“See that Major Castillo gets to a Huey and that it takes him back to Stewart,” the president ordered.
“Yes, Mr. President.”
The president offered Castillo his hand and put a hand on his shoulder.
“We’ll see each other again,” the president said. “Thank you.”
“I’ll do my best, Mr. President.”
“I’m sure you will,” the president said.
Secretary Hall shook Castillo’s hand. Hall said: “See you in my office at noon on Tuesday.”
A Secret Service Yukon rolled up a moment later. The president and Secretary Hall watched as Castillo got in the front seat and they waved as the SUV started off.
“A very interesting guy, Matt,” the president said.
“The Secret Service dubbed him ‘Don Juan,’ ” the secretary said. “I never asked them why.”
The president chuckled.
“Where did you get him, Matt?”
“From General Naylor,” the secretary said. “I got on my knees and told him I really needed him more than he did.”
“That’s right,” the president said. “You and Naylor go back a long way, don’t you?”
“To Vietnam,” the secretary said. “He was a brand-new captain and I was a brand-new shake-and-bake buck sergeant. ”
“A what?” the president asked.
“They were so short of noncoms, Mr. President, that they had sort of an OCS to make them. I went there right out of basic training, got through it, and became what was somewhat contemptuously known as a ‘shake-and-bake sergeant. ’ ”
“Where did Naylor get him?” the president asked.
“Actually, he and Charley go a long way back, too,” the secretary said.
“Charley?” the president parroted.
“He doesn’t look much like a Carlos, does he?” the secretary said. “Yeah, I call him Charley.”
“So where did Naylor get him? Where does he come from?”
“It’s a long story, Mr. President,” the secretary said.
The president looked at his watch.
“If you’re not in a rush to get back,” the president said, motioning toward the wicker rockers and the tub of iced bottles of beer, “I have a little time.”
IV
WINTER 1981
[ONE]
Near Bad Hersfeld Kreis Hersfeld-Rotenburg Hesse, West Germany 1145 7 March 1981
“That has to be it, Netty,” Mrs. Elaine Naylor, a trim, pale-faced redhead of thirty-four, said to Mrs. Natalie “Netty” Lustrous, a trim, black-haired lady of forty-four, pointing. “It’s exactly three-point-three klicks from the little chapel.”
“Yeah,” Netty Lustrous said, slowing the nearly new black Mercedes-Benz 380SEL and then turning off the winding, narrow country road through an open gate in a ten-foot -high steel-mesh fence onto an even more narrow road.
Fifty yards down the road, a heavyset man stepped into the middle of it. He was wearing a heavy loden cloth jacket and cap and sturdy boots. A hunting rifle was slung muzzle downward from his shoulder.
Netty stopped the Mercedes and the man walked up to it.
“Guten tag,” the man said.
“Is this the road to the House in the Woods?” Netty asked, in German.
“Frau Lustrous?” the man asked.
“Ja.”
“Willkomen,” the man said, stepped back, and somewhat grandly waved her down the road.
Netty smiled at him. “Danke shoen,” she replied and drove on.
“I didn’t know anything was in season,” Elaine said in obvious reference to the hunting rifle the man had been carrying.
“I don’t think anything is,” Netty chuckled. “But Jaegermeisters can carry weapons anytime in case they run into dangerous game in the woods.”
“Or Americans without invitations?” Elaine asked.
“I wouldn’t be surprised, from what Fred tells me, if there were three or four Jaegermeisters around here looking for things that don’t belong.”
The road wound upward for about a kilometer—which both women, as Army wives, had learned to call “a klick”—through an immaculate pine forest. And then the trees were gone and what had to be das Haus im Wald was visible.
It was large but simple. It looked, Netty thought, somehow out of place in the open country. Like a house from the city that had suddenly been transplanted to the country.
Halfway between the trees and the house was another Jaegermeister with a rifle slung from his shoulder. He didn’t get into the road, but stepped to the side of it and took off his cap in respect as the Mercedes rolled past him.
The left of the double doors of das Haus im Wald opened and a slim woman in a black dress, her blond hair gathered in a bun at her neck, stepped out onto a small stone verandah, shrugging into a woolen shawl as she did so.
“Is that her?” Elaine asked.
“I don’t know,” Netty said. “I’ve never met her, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a picture of her. Fred knows her— or at least has met her. He knew her father pretty well.”
Fred was Colonel Frederick J. Lustrous, Armor, United States Army, to whom Netty had been married for more than half her life.
Netty pulled the car in beside another Mercedes—which she recognized to be that of Oberburgermeister Eric Liptz of Fulda—and stopped as the blond woman in the shawl came off the verandah.
“That’s the Liptzes’ car, right?” Elaine asked. “Meaning Inge’s here?”
“I hope so,” Netty said. “But that’s their car.”
She unfastened her seat belt, opened the door, and got out.
“Mrs. Lustrous?” the slim blond woman asked in English.
“Netty Lustrous,” Netty said.
“Welcome to the House in the Woods,” the blond woman said, offering her hand. “I’m Erika Gossinger.”
Her English is accentless, Netty thought. Neither Brit nor American.
And she didn’t say “Erika von und zu Gossinger.” Interesting. On purpose?
The von und zu business reflected the German fascination —obsession?—with social class. It identified someone whose family had belonged to the landowning nobility.
Was it that Erika felt that was nonsense? Or that she was trying to be democratic? Or just that she had just dropped the phrase for convenience?
“Thank you having us,” Netty said.
“Thank you for coming,” Erika said.
Elaine came around the front of the Mercedes.
“This is my good friend Frau Elaine Naylor, Frau Gossinger,” Netty said.
The invitation, engraved in German, had said that Frau Erika von und zu Gossinger would be pleased to receive at luncheon at das Haus im Wald Frauoberst Natalie Lustrous (and one lady friend). A separate engraved card in the envelope had a map, showing how to reach the property, which was several klicks outside Bad Hersfeld.
The women shook hands.
“Our friend Inge is already here,” Erika said. “As is Pastor Dannberg. Why don’t we go in the house?”
“Thank you,” Netty said.
Inge Liptz, a trim blonde in her early thirties, was in the library with a small, wizened, nearly bald old man in a clerical collar, Pastor Heinrich Dannberg, who was first among equals in the Evangalische hierarchy of the area.
Inge, who was drinking champagne, walked up to Netty and Elaine and kissed both of them on the cheek.
“I see we’re all in uniform,” she said.
At a social gathering a year or so before, she had smi
lingly observed that she and Netty and Elaine were very similarly dressed, in black dresses, with a single strand of pearls.
Netty had replied, “I don’t know about you, Inge, but for Elaine and me this is the prescribed uniform of the day for an event like this.”
Inge, whose husband was the Oberburgermeister of Fulda, had never heard that before and thought it was hilarious.
“You know Pastor Dannberg, of course?” Erika asked.
“Yes, of course,” Netty said. “How nice to see you, Pastor Dannberg.”
He took her hand in his, made a gesture of kissing it, then clicked his heels and said, “Frau Lustrous,” and then repeated the process with Elaine.
A maid extended a silver tray with champagne flutes.
“Again, welcome to the House in the Woods,” Erika said, raising her glass. “I don’t think you have been here before, have you?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Your husband has, many times, over the years,” Erika said. “He and my father have taken many boar together.”
“Yes, he’s told me,” Netty said.
“I first met your husband, Frauoberst Lustrous,” Pastor Dannberg said, “when he was a lieutenant, and he and his colonel came to Saint Johan’s School with a truck loaded with boar they had taken—very near here, as a matter of fact—and which they gave to us to feed our students.”
“I didn’t know that,” Netty said.
“Oh, yes. And they did that often. It was a great service to us. The woods were overrun with boar—they had not been harvested in the last years of the war. We needed the meat, of course, and, additionally, the boar, we knew, were going to cause the badly needed corn crops severe damage. I have ever since regarded him as both a friend and a Christian gentleman. ”
“That’s very kind of you to say so, Pastor,” Netty said.
And it is. So why do I feel I’m being set up for something?
“And my father, too, thought of Colonel Lustrous as an old and good friend,” Erika said.
And there it goes again.
“My husband, Frau Gossinger, was very saddened by . . .”
“My father killing himself and my brother by driving drunk at an insane speed on the autobahn?” Erika said very bitterly.
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