By Order of the President

by W. E. B Griffin

  “So what are you doing here?”

  “You knew they sent me to the agency when I got out of the hospital?”

  “I heard you were training nice young men to be spooks at the Farm.”

  “That didn’t last long. I strongly suspect that my boss called in all favors due to have me reassigned elsewhere. Anywhere elsewhere.”

  “So they sent you here? To do what?”

  “On paper, I’m the assistant military attaché.”

  “But, actually, you’re the resident spook, which you can’t talk about?”

  Miller nodded.

  Jesus, I wish I had known that. It would have saved me the trip over here.

  “Actually, being the resident spook is a real pain in the ass,” Miller said.

  “Why?”

  “You met her,” Miller said. “My boss.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Who sent me to find out who you really are. The lady suspects there is something fishy about you, my German journalist friend.”

  “You’re talking about the blonde on the airplane?”

  Miller nodded.

  “Who is she?” Castillo asked.

  “Her name is Wilson. Mrs. Patricia Davies Wilson . . .”

  “She’s not wearing a wedding ring,” Castillo interrupted.

  “Ah, so you haven’t lost your legendary powers of observation, ” Miller said. “At the airport, I wasn’t sure.”

  “Meaning?”

  “I did everything, Charley, but blow you a kiss,” Miller said.

  “I didn’t see you,” Castillo admitted. “So who is this . . . married . . . woman?”

  “The company’s regional director for Southwest Africa,” Miller said. “Everything from Nigeria—actually, Cameroon, not including Nigeria—to South Africa, but excluding that, too. And halfway across the continent. None of the important countries. She’s spook-in-charge of what in a politically incorrect society one might think of as the African honey bucket.”

  Castillo smiled. In military installations, the fifty-five-gallon barrels cut in half and placed as receptacles in “field sanitary facilities”—once known as “latrines”—are known as honey buckets.

  “She told me she works for Forbes magazine,” Castillo said.

  “That’s what they call a cover, Charley,” Miller said, dryly.

  “And who is Mr. Wilson?”

  “A paper pusher at Langley, middle level, maybe twenty years older than she is. One unkind rumor circulating is that he’s a fag with an independent income and married the lady to keep the whispers down. Having met him, I’m prone to believe the unkind rumor.”

  “And what’s her background?”

  “She was an agricultural analyst at Langley before she was smitten by Cupid’s arrow. Shortly after her marriage, she managed to get herself sent through the Farm, reclassi fied as a field officer, and has worked herself up to where she is now. Which she sees as a stepping-stone, which is what makes her a genuine pain in the ass, to get back to that.”

  “How so?”

  “Her underlings make all the mistakes, and, when something is done right—that actually happens once in a while— she takes the credit. I personally know three nice young guys who quit because they couldn’t take any more of her bullshit. ”

  “And she thinks I’m fishy?”

  “Either that or she wants to really make sure you’re who you told her you are before she lets you into her pants.”

  “She has a reputation for that, too?”

  “Charley, she’s certainly not getting what she so obviously needs at home,” Miller said. “There have been whispers. ”

  “Sounds like the girl of my dreams,” Castillo said.

  “So how do you want me to handle this, Charley?”

  “Except for letting her know we know each other, run me,” Castillo said. “I’d like to know what can be turned up about Gossinger.”

  “Like I said, the lady is a bitch,” Miller said. “What if she finds out, now or later, that we know each other?”

  “I can cover that,” Castillo said. “You are hereby ordered not to divulge that we are acquainted.”

  “You have that authority, Charley?”

  “Dick, I was sent on this excursion—and you are hereby ordered not to divulge this either—by a guy who lives part-time in a Gone With the Wind-style mansion that overlooks the Atlantic Ocean near Savannah.”

  “No kidding?”

  Castillo nodded.

  “So what’s the excursion all about? Can you say?”

  “The guy I’m talking about wants to know, and I quote, ‘who knew what, and when they knew it,’ end quote, about this missing 727.”

  "I think they call that ‘internal review,’ ” Miller said.

  “I was about to send my boss an e-mail. I’ll tell him I ran into you and ordered you to keep your mouth shut.”

  “You e-mail the president directly?”

  “No. I work for Matt Hall. The secretary of Homeland Security?”

  Miller’s face showed he knew who Hall was, and was surprised that Charley had asked.

  “. . . who is a good guy,” Castillo went on. “He was a sergeant in Vietnam. He and the president are great buddies. You’re covered, Dick.”

  Miller made a gesture meaning he took Castillo at his word.

  “So what have you learned about the airplane that went missing?” Miller asked.

  “Some—maybe most—people think it’s close to here, being cannibalized for parts. Only a few—very few—people think it will be flown into a skyscraper somewhere. There’s also a theory that the pilot put it on autopilot and went out the back door so the owners can collect the insurance.”

  “And how many people, just for the hell of it, agree with my theory about what happened to it?”

  “I don’t understand, Dick.”

  “That Vasily Respin got it.”

  “Vasily who?”

  “The Russian arms dealer. You don’t know about him?”

  Castillo shook his head.

  “And I didn’t see his name—or anything about a Russian arms dealer—on either the CIA, DIA, or State intel files, either, ” Castillo said. “You filed your theory?”

  Miller nodded. “You’re sure you saw all the files?” he asked.

  “I saw everything Hall got, and I saw Cohen’s memo that Hall was to get everything,” Castillo said. “Which offers all sorts of interesting possibilities.”

  Castillo thought, but did not say: Hey, maybe that’s really what all this is about. So far as many people close to the Oval Office were concerned, there were three things wrong with Dr. Natalie Cohen, the president’s national security advisor. In ascending order of importance, they were that she was a woman, brilliant, and a close personal friend of the president.

  If someone was trying to stick a knife in her back, she would (a) either sense it, or find out about it, whereupon (b) she would go to the president. The president would then logically decide that Hall was one of the guys at that level who should look into it. For a couple of reasons. Hall was also an absolutely loyal personal friend of the president, and, unlike the other cabinet officers, the secretary of homeland security did not have his own intelligence service.

  Asking any of the heavy agencies to look into what was bothering Dr. Cohen would have the CIA pointing a finger at the DIA or the DIA pointing a finger at the State Department —und so viete—anywhere but at someone in their own agency.

  Maybe that’s what this is all about? Maybe not what it’s all about, but it’s an element of it certainly.

  If the president—and maybe, probably, Hall too—thinks someone is screwing with Cohen, they want to know who it is and the facts about how the various agencies had handled the gone-missing 727 would point them in the right direction.

  “Such as?” Miller asked.

  “Dick, this may be more important than you know,” Castillo said. “Let me make sure I have it right. You have a theory that some Russian
arms dealer . . .”

  “Vasily Respin,” Miller furnished.

  “. . . either stole, or was responsible for the theft of, the 727?”

  “I don’t think he was in the cockpit, Charley, but I have a gut feeling he’s at least involved in this. And I saw some of his people here.”

  “Tell me about him? Why do you think that?”

  “You never heard of him? I’m surprised. There should be a hell of a file on him.”

  “Who is he? What does he do?”

  “Cutting a long story short, Charley, in 1992—when Vasily was twenty-five—he bought three Antonov cargo planes from Russian military surplus. Paid 150 grand for all three, is what I heard. Anyway, the Russian black market had just begun to kick into high gear. The Russians had gold, and the Danes had things—basic things, but luxuries in Moscow—to sell and liked getting paid in gold.

  “Respin made a lot of money, and quickly, and within a year he had set up an airline in Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates. Dubai has a duty-free port. Respin—who by then had already expanded his fleet—flew everything from ballpoint pens to automobiles home to Mother Russia. He made a fortune.

  “And then he got chummy with Mobutu in the Congo and that brought him to the attention of Langley, who put out the word to watch him, and, shortly afterward, the CIA in Kinshasa was sending photographs of Respin standing by an Ilyushin at a Congolese field in the middle of nowhere while Mobutu’s soldiers off-loaded crates of AK-47s and more sophisticated weaponry.”

  “Okay,” Castillo interrupted. “I know who you’re talking about. But I thought his name was Aleksandr Pevsner.”

  “That’s one name he uses,” Miller said, then looked at Castillo and deadpanned: “It’s really astonishing how many people you meet these days who have several names.”

  “From what I’ve heard, Pevsner—or whatever his name is—has lots of airplanes. What would he want this one for?”

  “Starting with the obvious, he has—or so the story goes—several, maybe half a dozen 727s. They need parts. Okay? It’s entirely possible that this one went directly to Sharjah . . .”

  “It would have to refuel,” Castillo interrupted.

  “Probably twice,” Miller quickly agreed. “No problem, with a little planning. The friendly skies over Mother Africa are pretty open, Charley. And there are probably thirty deserted airstrips in the Congo and Sudan where a 727 can sit down unseen and get itself refueled. For that matter, Respin wouldn’t even have to preposition fuel on deserted fields— although my bet is that he did. Whoever was flying this 727 could land and take on fuel at Kisangani in the Congo and Kartoum in the Sudan—with no questions asked in either place—and then take off to Sharjah.”

  “The satellites didn’t spot it—or any unidentified 727— on any airfield anywhere,” Castillo argued.

  “What’s an ‘unidentified’ 727?” Miller asked. “All they had to do was land the stolen 727 somewhere close to here and do a quick paint-over of the numbers on it, using the numbers of one of Pevsner’s 727s conveniently out of sight in a hangar in Sharjah. They would have had plenty of time to do that before Langley could turn the satellite cameras on.”

  He paused, put his hand on his hip, and, mimicking a light-on-his-feet photo analyst examining satellite downloads, lisped, “Well, that’s a 727 all right, Bruce, but it’s not the one we’re looking for. That 727 belongs to Rag-Head Airways. I have that tail number right here.”

  “I take your point,” Castillo said, chuckling.

  “Maybe Pevsner’d use the airplane himself, but, more likely, if he didn’t use it for parts he’d sell it to somebody ... the Chinese, or any one of the Holy Warrior organizations ...”

  “How much of this fascinating scenario did you put in your file, Dick?” Castillo interrupted.

  “I sent a satburst to Langley—the third one, I think—giving the nut of the scenario. I was in the commo room when we got the acknowledgment, so it should have been on the desk of the regional director for Southwest Africa when she went to work at Langley the next morning. Then I went to work writing what I would send when I got the ‘without diverting substantial assets, attempt to develop further’ response. It’s SOP; I expected that would come in as soon as she read the satburst.”

  “Let me get this straight. You prepared more than a satburst? ”

  “A six-page filing,” Miller said. “I even read it over very carefully to make sure I had all the big words spelled right.”

  “I never saw anything like that. When did you send it?”

  “I never sent it,” Miller said. “I never got the ‘develop further’ reply.”

  “Why didn’t you send it anyway? If you had it, had done it?”

  “I told you, because I never got the ‘develop further’ response. She wasn’t interested.”

  “She wasn’t interested? Why not? You’re suggesting she just shot down your idea? Why would she do that?”

  “If it was shot down by somebody at Langley, I suspect she was the shooter, but I don’t know that.”

  “What we were supposed to get, Dick, were summaries to date, plus not yet evaluated raw data,” Castillo said. “Even if Langley didn’t have time to evaluate it, Hall was supposed to get it. And I read everything he got. There was no copy of your satburst, or anything from anybody about a Russian arms dealer.”

  Miller nodded.

  “Alleged arms dealer,” Miller said. “That may be it, Charley. You want my gut reaction, with the caveat that—as you may have suspected—I don’t like the lady?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Pevsner is smart as hell, and there’s no question in my mind—if no proof—that the agency has used his services. He doesn’t ask questions about what’s in the boxes loaded in his airplanes; all he cares about is the cash up-front.”

  “Where are you going with this, Dick?” Castillo asked.

  “If I strongly suspect the agency used Pevsner, Mrs. Wilson probably knew that the agency did. Okay. So if she passed my file upward, a couple of things could have happened. For one thing, I suspect the African section would have told her to send one of those ‘without diverting substantial assets, attempt to develop further’ messages to me. In her mind, if I would have looked into it further, there were only two possible results. One, I would have come up with zilch, which would have embarrassed her—one of her underlings was incompetent—or, two, I would have come up with something solid, which would have opened the Pevsner can of worms and pissed off the covert guys. Either way, it would be a speed bump on her path to promotion.”

  “You don’t have a copy of your file, do you?” Castillo asked. “Your satburst and then what you wrote and didn’t send?”

  “Of course not, Charley,” Miller said. “Maintaining personal copies of classified documents is a serious violation of security regulations. Anyone who does so is liable not only for immediate dismissal from CIA service but subject to criminal prosecution, either under the U.S. Code or the Uniform Code of Military Justice, whichever is applicable. You of all people should know that.” Miller paused, looked impassively at Castillo, then asked: “You want to see it?”

  “If I go to my boss with this, I’m going to have to have it,” Castillo said.

  Miller’s right eyebrow rose in thought and stayed there for thirty seconds but seemed longer.

  Then he took a business card from his wallet, wrote something on it, and handed it to Castillo.

  “If I’m going to risk sending my brilliant career down the crapper,” he said, “not to mention going to the slam, I might as well go whole hog and use e-mail. Let me have your e-mail address, Charley, and I’ll go home and send it to you. It’s on my laptop. It’ll be encrypted. That’s the key.”

  Castillo looked at the card. Miller had written “bullshit” on it.

  “Gringo at Castillo dot-com,” he said. “You want to write it down?”

  Miller shook his head.

  “Dick, once you do this, you might think about getting
rid of your file.”

  Miller considered that for ten seconds before replying, “I will give that solemn thought, Charley.”

  He stood up and put out his hand.

  “Thanks for the booze, Charley,” he said. “Why don’t you give me three minutes to get to the service elevator, then go outside and find there’s something wrong with the lock on your door?”

  Castillo nodded.

  “Okay,” he said, then: “Dick, I’m pretty well covered. But you’re really sticking your neck out . . .”

  “I know,” Miller interrupted. He touched Castillo’s shoulder and walked toward the door.

  Castillo looked at his watch, punched the timer button, and precisely three minutes later went into the corridor, closed the door, and tried again to open it with the plastic key.

  When again it wouldn’t work, he walked down the corridor to the bank of elevators, where he had seen a house phone.

  The concierge said that he would send someone right up.

  [TEN]

  It took five minutes for a bellman to show up on the fifteenth floor, and another five minutes for him to prove to himself that there was something wrong with the lock at the door to Suite 1522, whereupon he went back to the house phone by the elevator bank and reported this to someone.

  Five minutes later, an assistant manager and the bell captain got off the elevator on the fifteenth floor. They spent another five minutes proving to themselves that there was something wrong with the lock on the door to Suite 1522. Then the bell captain went to summon further assistance while the assistant manager stayed behind to assure Herr Gossinger that this sort of thing almost never happened and that it would be put right in short order.

  Five minutes after that, a hotel engineer and his assistant showed up with a device that was supposed to open door locks in situations such as this. And after another five minutes, they managed to get the lock to function partially. In other words, it would permit the door to be opened, but, once closed again, the lock again refused to function with the plastic key.

  The engineer and the assistant manager then held a whispered conference, after which the assistant manager went to Herr Gossinger and said that he certainly didn’t wish to alarm him but in the opinion of the engineer someone might have tried to gain access to Herr Gossinger’s room. When the engineer opened the door again, it would probably be a good idea to see if anything was missing.