By Order of the President

by W. E. B Griffin

  And very good cognac. Who said crime doesn’t pay?

  “I’m pleased,” Pevsner said and smiled at him. “You seem like such a nice fellow,” Pevsner went on. “I am really pleased that it was not necessary to give you an Indian beauty mark.”

  “Excuse me?”

  With a sudden movement—so quick Castillo didn’t have time to jerk his head out of the way—Pevsner touched Castillo in the center of his forehead with his index finger.

  What the hell is that all about?

  Indian beauty mark?

  Jesus Christ! He’s talking about a bullet hole in the center of my forehead!

  Pevsner picked up his cognac snifter and carried it to the guard fence. He very carefully balanced the glass on the top railing of the fence, relit his Upmann with the Dunhill, and then leaned on the fence with his hands supporting him.

  After a moment, Pevsner looked over his shoulder, then waved with his left hand for Castillo to join him.

  Castillo walked to the fence.

  Pevsner gestured at Vienna.

  “There it is,” he said, “laid out before us. As it was for Emperor Franz Josef, and, before him, Napoleon. And you’re right on time. We will shortly begin to see darkness— as you well know—rise and gradually mask Vienna.”

  “I suppose we will,” Charley said.

  “So here we are. We are drinking rather decent cognac and smoking what I think are really good cigars, and when darkness has finished rising from the ground, and all we will be able to see is a sea of lights under us, I hope you will be my guest at dinner.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” Castillo said.

  Two inane responses in a row. Attaboy, Charley! Dazzle this guy with your quick mind and verbal agility.

  “Under those circumstances, wouldn’t it be nice if we could be honest with one another? As we begin what could be—and, I hope, will be—a long and mutually profitable association? ”

  What’s he going to do? Offer to put me on his payroll not to mention his name in print?

  “That would be very nice, Herr Pevsner,” Castillo said.

  That’s three in a row, Charley.

  “I really hope you mean that, Major Castillo,” Pevsner said, in English.

  Jesus H. Fucking Christ!

  “Please don’t act as if you have no idea what I mean,” Pevsner said.

  “How the hell did you find out?” Castillo asked after a long moment.

  “It doesn’t really matter, does it? But I understand your curiosity.” Pevsner inclined his head toward the smaller Mercedes. “Before he became associated with me, Howard spent twenty years with the FBI.”

  “Is that his first name or his last?”

  “Howard Kennedy,” Pevsner said. “Over the years, our relationship has changed from employer-employee to being friends. I call him by his Christian name.”

  It took a surprisingly short time for darkness to rise, until all that could be seen of Vienna was a sea of lights.

  Pevsner had said nothing more. He had sipped his cognac and puffed on his cigar. It went out once and he relit it with the gold Dunhill and then politely offered the lighter to Castillo.

  “Mine’s still going, thank you,” Castillo had said.

  Finally, Pevsner said, “Well, that’s all there is to see. Unless we want to stay here until the sun rises. Shall we go?”

  “Fine,” Castillo said.

  Pevsner started toward the 600. There was just enough light for Castillo to see the East European hurry to open the rear door for them.

  Pevsner waved Castillo into the backseat ahead of him. When he was inside, he saw that Howard Kennedy was in the front seat.

  I guess Inge doesn’t get to ride with the boss.

  Kennedy turned and extended his hand over the seat back.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Castillo. In certain circles, you have quite a reputation.”

  Castillo shook the hand but said nothing.

  “I’m sorry about that business in the men’s room,” Kennedy went on. “But Mr. Pevsner, for obvious reasons, doesn’t like his conversations recorded.”

  Castillo nodded.

  Out the window, he saw the East European first move the cognac snifters, the bottle, and the small humidor to the trunk of the smaller Mercedes, and then fold the table and put that in the trunk. Then he got behind the wheel and they started off.

  They followed the 220 down Cobenzlgasse into Vienna, and then through the early evening traffic back to the center of the city, finally turning off The Ring onto Kaertnerstrasse.

  “Do you know the Drei Hussaren, Major Castillo?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “What do you prefer to be called? ‘Carlos’? Or ‘Charley’? Or perhaps ‘Karl’?”

  “ ‘Charley’ is what my friends call me.”

  “That’s what Howard thought,” Pevsner said. “You’re really amazing, Howard.”

  “Thank you,” Howard chuckled.

  Pevsner touched Castillo’s arm.

  “In that case, since I really hope we are to become friends may I call you Charley?”

  “Of course.”

  “My Christian name is Aleksandr,” Pevsner said. “Howard calls me ‘Alex.’ Would you be comfortable calling me Alex, Charley?”

  At the last split second, Castillo stopped himself from saying, “Yes, sir.”

  “Yes, I would. Thank you.”

  That’s a lie. I am not comfortable calling you Alex. I am not comfortable, period. I can’t remember the last time I felt so helpless, so much at the mercy of a situation I don’t understand and over which I have absolutely no control.

  “And the Drei Hussaren is all right with you for dinner? If you have another . . . ?”

  “The Drei Hussaren is fine with me,” Castillo said, as the Mercedes pulled up in front of the entrance to the restaurant.

  And what would have happened if I had said, “Come to think of it, I know a very nice place just off Gumpendorferstrasse ”?

  The doorman of the Drei Hussaren pulled the doors open. Kennedy and Pevsner got out, and Castillo slid across the seat and joined them.

  The headwaiter was standing inside the entrance, greeted them effusively, and led them down the stairs into the dining room, and then across it and into a private dining room. There were three places set at a table that could hold eight.

  I guess Inge doesn’t get to eat with the boss, either.

  Glasses were produced and a waiter poured a white liquor into them.

  In German, Pevsner said, “Since you have been here before, Karl, you know about the slivovitz. The management has learned the more slivovitz they can give away, the less likely their customers are to complain about the service, the size of the portions, the quality, and, most important, the size of the bill.”

  Castillo knew about the plum brandy—the best came from Moldavia—and suspected that what Pevsner said was absolutely true.

  He chuckled.

  “Herr Barstein,” the headwaiter said, “that’s a terrible thing to say about us!”

  Castillo picked up on the Barstein.

  “But it’s truth. And the truth is important, isn’t it, Karl?”

  “Very important,” Castillo said, picked up the glass, tipped it toward the headwaiter, said, “Prosit,” and tossed it down.

  Pevsner laughed.

  “Karl, one of the few things they do half decently around here is the sauerbraten. They make it with deer—venison. May I suggest that?”

  “That sounds fine,” Castillo said.

  “For all of us,” Pevsner ordered. “And aware I’m taking an awful chance, a dry red wine of your choice. You can leave the slivovitz.”

  “Jawohl, Herr Barstein,” the headwaiter said.

  After he left, Kennedy went to the door and made sure it was closed.

  “Howard,” Pevsner said, “Charley is curious about how we learned he is not all the time Herr Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger.”

  Kennedy chuckled,
helped himself to some more slivovitz, poured some in Castillo’s and Pevsner’s glasses, and said, “I know I really shouldn’t drink this stuff but I like it.”

  Pevsner and Charley chuckled.

  Kennedy looked at Castillo.

  “Well, when the story came out, and Mr. Pevsner decided we should have a talk with you, we sent some people to Fulda ...”

  To give me an Indian beauty mark on my forehead?

  “. . . and when they reported that Gossinger was in Washington, Mr. Pevsner asked me to personally take over. I put a lot of time in D.C. when I was with the bureau.”

  Did taking over mean that you were going to personally apply the Indian beauty mark?

  “Anyway, it wasn’t hard to find out that Gossinger was sharing Suite 404 in the Mayflower with a fellow named Carlos Castillo. For a bit, we thought that Castillo might be Gossinger’s playmate—a handsome Cuban or Tex-Mex might explain why Gossinger wasn’t married. And that might have been useful . . .”

  He took a sip of water, then continued.

  “. . . but then we found out, lo and behold, that Gossinger and Castillo were one and the same. And then we started asking about Señor Castillo. The first thing I thought then was that you were probably with the agency, but then I found out first that you’re an Army officer—a West Pointer, a Green Beret, an aviator—and then that you are Matt Hall’s special assistant. At that point, Mr. Pevsner decided we should have a talk with you . . .”

  A talk-talk, as opposed to a beauty spot chat?

  “. . . so we had someone call Herr Görner and tell him that Mr. Pevsner was willing to give Herr Gossinger an interview and here you are.”

  “My original purpose in all this, Charley,” Pevsner said, “was—for that matter, still is—to keep the U.S. government off my back. And, of course, to keep my name out of the newspapers. I had nothing to do with stealing that old airplane in Angola. Where did you get that, anyway?”

  “You had nothing to do with stealing the 727?”

  “Absolutely nothing. For one thing, I have airplanes. Just last week, I bought another one—a nearly new 767 from an airline that went under in Argentina—and I don’t need an old 727. Particularly, I don’t need to steal one, which would attract the sort of attention I really don’t want from the U.S. government and a lot of other people.”

  I’ll be damned. I believe him. Or is that because I had two beers in the Sacher, two hefty snifters of cognac on the Cobenzl, and two slivovitz here?

  “Where did you get the idea I had anything to do with it?” Pevsner asked.

  “Two of your people were seen in Luanda just before the airplane was stolen,” Castillo said.

  “You don’t happen to remember their names, do you?” Kennedy asked, casually.

  If I did, I wouldn’t give them to you.

  “No,” Castillo said, simply. “I don’t.”

  “Howard?” Pevsner said.

  “I’ll look into it,” Kennedy said.

  Jesus Christ, what did I just do? Cause two people I never met, never saw, to take a bullet in the forehead?

  The conversation was interrupted by two waiters, who delivered a rich-looking meat-and-vegetable soup and two bottles of red wine.

  “This one, Herr Barstein,” the waiter said as he poured a sip into Pevsner’s glass, “is Hungarian. The other is from the north of Italy. Definitely not a Chianti. Whichever is your pleasure will be a small gift from Drei Hussaren.”

  As Pevsner raised the glass to his nose, he signaled with his finger for the waiter to give Castillo and Kennedy a taste. The waiter poured wine into their glasses.

  Pevsner took a sip and nodded his approval.

  “Very nice,” he said. “Now, let’s try the other one.”

  The ritual was repeated for everyone, which required other glasses to be produced from a cabinet against the wall.

  “Decisions, decisions,” Pevsner said. “What do you think, Karl?”

  “I like the Hungarian,” Castillo said.

  “So do I,” Pevsner said.

  “I like the Italian,” Kennedy said. “The Hungarian’s a little too sweet for me.”

  Well, Kennedy doesn’t apparently feel compelled to agree with the boss about everything.

  “In that case,” Pevsner said, “we accept the Drei Hussaren ’s kind gift of both. Thank you very much.”

  “Our great pleasure, Herr Barstein.”

  The waiters filled glasses and then left.

  The vegetable soup was as good as it looked.

  As he reached for his wineglass, Castillo thought, Easy on the sauce, Charley. You’re already half-crocked.

  He took a very small sip, and, when he put the glass down, sensed Pevsner’s eyes on him.

  “If you didn’t steal the 727, who do you think did?” Castillo asked.

  “I’m not absolutely sure about this but right now I think it was stolen by an obscure group of Somalian lunatics . . .”

  “Somalian?” Castillo interjected, surprised.

  “. . . who call themselves the Holy Legion of Muhammad, ” Pevsner went on. He paused and then added: “Who plan to crash it into the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. ”

  “That’s crazy,” Charley blurted.

  “Sounds that way, doesn’t it?” Kennedy agreed. “But that’s what we’ve got so far.”

  “I used the word lunatics,” Pevsner said. “Crazy people tend to do irrational things. That’s what makes them so very dangerous.”

  “The Liberty Bell?” Castillo argued. “Not the Statue of Liberty? The White House? The Golden Gate Bridge? Why would they want to hit the Liberty Bell?”

  “We think two reasons,” Kennedy said. “Maybe three. For one thing, since 9/11 the White House, Statue of Liberty, most important bridges, etcetera, have been pretty well covered. Nobody gives much of a damn about Philadelphia, so they stand a better chance of carrying it off. Second, these holy warriors probably—hell, almost certainly—think the Liberty Bell is more of a symbol than it is.”

  “It’s a third-rate tourist attraction, that’s all,” Castillo thought aloud.

  “I’m surprised at that comment, from someone like you,” Pevsner said. “That’s what they call ‘mirror thinking’: looking in the mirror and working on the premise that other people think like what you see in the mirror. They don’t, and that’s especially true of people who call themselves something like the Holy Legion of Muhammad.”

  Goddammit, he’s right. The booze is clouding my thinking.

  “You’re right,” Castillo said. “I am supposed to know better. ”

  “And, third—here I admit I don’t know what I’m talking about,” Kennedy said. “I have a feeling there’s a Philadelphia connection.”

  “A Philadelphia connection?” Castillo asked.

  “If these holy warriors intend to take out the Liberty Bell, somebody gave them the idea. They never would have come up with it themselves. And that suggests somebody in Philadelphia did just that.”

  “Who?”

  “Some converts to Islam. Idn bin Rag-on-His-Head, born John James Smith.”

  Castillo grunted.

  “Did you ever give any serious thought to why so many American blacks converted to Islam?” Kennedy asked.

  “No,” Castillo admitted.

  “Maybe you should,” Kennedy said.

  “You tell me.”

  “Because they hate Whitey as much as the rag-heads hate all infidels,” Kennedy said. “And for exactly the same reason: They got left behind and they don’t like it.”

  “That’s what this war is all about, Charley,” Pevsner said. “The Muslim world getting left behind. Think about it.”

  He paused and took a spoonful of the soup.

  “Take away their oil reserves and what do they have?” Pevsner went on. “They once dominated the known world. Now, with the exception of their oil, they are completely unimportant—more to the point, powerless—in the modern world. They simply don’t have the s
kills and the culture to compete in it. They gave the world mathematics, and some of the most wonderful architecture—so long as the architecture is based on one stone laid on top of another.

  “All the skyscrapers in the Arab world were designed and built by the infidels. And their airplanes were designed and built by infidels and their telephone systems . . . even their sewers. And they need infidels to keep everything running.

  “This isn’t the way Muhammad told them it was going to be. He promised them, in the Koran, that they would control the world. And they all know this because higher education in the Arab world consists mostly of men—only men— memorizing the Koran. And since nothing is their fault, it has to be someone else’s—the infidels’.”

  “That seems pretty simplistic,” Castillo said, and immediately thought: Careful, Charley, you don’t want to piss Pevsner off.

  “Because an answer is simple doesn’t mean it’s not the answer,” Pevsner said.

  He took another sip of the soup and then a healthy swallow of the Hungarian wine.

  “The Muslim world is four hundred—maybe five hundred —years behind the Western world,” Pevsner went on. “And adding to that problem is their religious hierarchy who likes it that way. People in power are never in favor of a system change that will see their power diminished. That’s also true in the Western world, of course. The Roman Catholic and my own Orthodox hierarchies—who also go around in medieval clothing—are as guilty of this as the mullahs. The difference is that as the influence of the Christian hierarchies on their societies has diminished over time, the Muslim hierarchies’ influence has grown.

  “They have—as we see examples of just about every day—thousands, tens of thousands, perhaps many hundreds of thousands of faithful who are perfectly willing to sacri fice their lives because their mullahs tell them it will please God. And also send them directly to heaven, where they will receive the attentions of grateful whores. This, I think you will have to agree, makes for a very dangerous situation for Western society.”

  He stopped and took another healthy sip of the Hungarian red.

  “Excuse me,” Pevsner said. “I really didn’t mean to deliver a lecture.”

  “You make some interesting points,” Castillo said.

  “We were talking about the Holy Legion of Muhammad’s intention of crashing into the Liberty Bell, I believe?”