“Just like that, Dick,” Torine said, chuckling.
“Go pack a bag with enough civvies—you won’t need your uniform—for a week, and then come back here,” Castillo ordered. “Major Miller here will run you through our in-processing procedures.”
At the safe house in Alexandria, Castillo cut his end of the cellular telephone connection with Torine, put the telephone in his trousers pocket, then picked up the handset of another secure telephone on his office desk. He pushed one key on the base and said, “C. G. Castillo.”
It took a second or two—no more—for the voice-recognition circuitry to function, flashing the caller’s name before the White House operator.
“White House,” the pleasant young female operator’s voice said. “Merry Christmas, Colonel Castillo.”
“Merry Christmas to you, too. Can you get me Ambassador Montvale on a secure line, please?”
The rule was that those people given access to the special White House switchboard circuit were expected to answer their telephones within sixty seconds. Charles W. Montvale, former deputy secretary of State, former secretary of the Treasury, former ambassador to the European Union, and currently United States director of National Intelligence, took twenty-seven seconds to come on the line.
“Charles Montvale,” he said. His voice was deep, cultured, and charming.
“Merry Christmas, Mr. Ambassador. Colonel Castillo for you,” the White House operator told him. “The line is secure.”
Castillo picked up on the ambassador’s failure to return the operator’s Christmas greetings.
“Merry Christmas and a very happy New Year, Mr. Ambassador,” Castillo said cheerfully.
The ambassador did not respond in kind, but instead said, “Actually, I was about to call you, Charley.”
“Mental telepathy, sir?”
“Does the name Kurt Kuhl mean anything to you, Colonel?”
Montvale’s tone, and the use of Castillo’s rank, suggested that Montvale was displeased with him. Again. As usual.
There is an exception, so they say, to every absolute statement. The exception to the absolute statement that the director of National Intelligence exercised authority over everyone and everything in the intelligence community was the Office of Organizational Analysis, which answered only to the commander in chief.
Ambassador Montvale found this both absurd and unacceptable, but had been unable to take OOA under his wing beyond an agreement with Castillo that he would be informed in a timely fashion of what Castillo was up to.
On Castillo’s part this meant it was frequently necessary to remind the director of National Intelligence of the great difference between Castillo telling Montvale about taking some action and Castillo asking Montvale’s permission—or even Montvale’s advice—about taking some action.
“No, sir. It doesn’t ring a bell. Who is he?”
There was a perceptible pause before Montvale replied: “Kuhl was a deep-cover CIA asset in Vienna and elsewhere in that part of the world.”
“Past tense?”
“I was informed an hour or so ago that he and his wife were found garroted to death behind the Johann Strauss statue in the Stadtpark in Vienna yesterday.”
“They know who did it?”
“I was hoping you might be able to offer a suggestion. I seem to recall that you have some experience with people who are garroted to death.”
“Sorry. I never heard of him.”
There was a moment’s silence while Montvale considered that, then he abruptly changed the subject: “What’s on your mind, Castillo?”
“I’m going to Germany in the morning.”
“Is that so? And are you going to share with me why?”
“Otto Görner called a few minutes ago to tell me that a Tages Zeitung reporter was found murdered in interesting circumstances.”
“How interesting?”
“The body was mutilated. First, Otto thinks, to make it look as if it was a homosexual lovers’ quarrel—multiple stab wounds.”
“And second?”
“One of the victim’s eyes was cut out.”
“Suggesting the message ‘This is what happens when you look at something you shouldn’t’?”
“That’s what Mr. Delchamps suggests. It follows, as Otto says this reporter was working on the oil-for-food scheme.”
“And your—our—interest in this tragic event, Colonel?”
“Eric Kocian insists on going to the funeral. The man was an old friend of his.”
“He can’t be dissuaded?”
“Not a chance.”
“How hard did you try?”
“Not at all. It would have been a waste of time.”
“The President happened to mention at dinner that he hadn’t seen you since he visited you at Walter Reed, and perhaps there would be a chance to do so over the next few days. What am I supposed to tell him?”
“That in keeping with the accord between us, I told you where I was going and why.”
“How much is this going to delay the investigation?”
“It might speed it up.”
“You need anything, Charley?”
“Can’t think of a thing.”
“Keep in touch,” Montvale said, and broke the connection.
“Anything else, Colonel?” the pleasant young female White House operator’s voice asked.
“That’ll do it. Thanks very much. And Merry Christmas.”
“You, too, Colonel.”
Castillo put the handset back in its cradle and thought hard about what else he had to do.
After a long moment he decided that he had done everything necessary, and that it was highly unlikely that anything else was going to come up and interfere with their Christmas dinner.
That carefully considered prediction proved false about seventeen minutes later, when the cellular in his trousers pocket vibrated against his leg while his grandmother was invoking the Lord’s blessing on all those gathered at the table.
He of course could not answer it while his grandmother was praying.
Sixty seconds later, the White House phone buzzed imperiously. One of the Secret Service agents quickly rose from the table to answer it.
Thirty seconds after that, surprising Castillo not at all, the agent reappeared and mimed that the call was for Castillo.
Doña Alicia looked at him as he rose from the table. He wasn’t sure if she was annoyed or felt sorry for him.
The legend on the small LCD screen next to the telephone read: SECURE JOEL ISAACSON SECURE.
Castillo picked up the handset, said “C. G. Castillo,” waited for the voice recognition circuitry to kick in, then said, “What’s up, Joel?”
Joel Isaacson was the Secret Service supervisory special agent in charge of the protection detail for Homeland Security Secretary Matt Hall. But the tall, slim, forty-year-old Isaacson, who had once been number two on the presidential detail, was de facto more than that.
In the reorganization after 9/11, the Secret Service, which had been under the Treasury Department, was transferred to the newly formed Department of Homeland Security.
The chief of the Secret Service had assigned two old and trusted pals, Supervisory Special Agents Joel Isaacson and Tom McGuire, to the secretary’s protection detail. It was understood between them that their mission was as much to protect the Secret Service from its new boss—new brooms have been known to sweep out the good and keep the garbage—as it was to protect him from Islamic lunatics.
It had worked out well from the beginning. The secretary quickly learned that if he wanted something from the Secret Service—about whose operations he knew virtually nothing—Isaacson or McGuire could get it for him. Similarly, the chief of the Secret Service quickly learned that if he wanted something from the secretary, it was better and quicker to make the request of McGuire or Isaacson than directly of the secretary, who made no decisions involving the Secret Service without getting the opinion of one or the other.
And then when the President issued the Finding setting up the Office of Organizational Analysis—which in the chief of the Secret Service’s very private opinion was not one of his wiser decisions—Tom McGuire was one of the first people assigned to it. The chief did not entirely trust Isaacson’s and McGuire’s opinion that despite his youth, junior rank, and reputation, Major C. G. Castillo was just the guy to run what the chief very privately thought of as the President’s Own CIA/FBI/Delta Force.
The assignment of McGuire to OOA left Isaacson as the chief’s conduit to the secretary, and that was just fine. But he worried about Tom McGuire getting burned when someone burned the OOA, which seemed to the chief to be inevitable.
My God, that crazy Green Beret launched an invasion of Paraguay to rescue a DEA agent the druggies had kidnapped.
That the mission had succeeded did not, in the chief’s opinion, mean the operation was not as lunatic an operation as he had ever heard of, and he’d been around the Secret Service for a long time.
“Jack Britton and his wife are on their way out there, Charley,” Joel Isaacson announced without any preliminaries. “I need you to talk to him. Okay? As a favor to me?”
“Talk to him about what?” Castillo replied, and then: “And his wife?”
“They had to take him off the Vice President’s protection detail. And he’s pretty annoyed.”
“What did he do to get canned?”
“Somebody, most likely those AALs in Philadelphia, tried to take out him, and his wife, yesterday afternoon.”
“Is he all right?”
“They weren’t hit, but the supervisor in Philadelphia told me he counted sixteen bullet holes in Britton’s new car. Plus about that many in his front door, picture window, etcetera. They used automatic Kalashnikovs.”
“What’s this got to do with him getting taken off the Vice President’s protection detail?”
There was a just-perceptible pause before Isaacson said, “Think about it, Charley. These people try to take him out again when he’s on duty, then the Vice President becomes collateral damage.”
“Stupid question. Sorry. Britton didn’t understand?”
“What he didn’t understand was being brought here. Standard procedure when something like this happens. Gets them out of the line of fire.”
“That made him mad?”
“What made him mad was being told that he was going to be placed on administrative duties in—I forget where; probably Saint Louis—until the matter is resolved. When he heard that, the kindest thing he had to say to the supervisor on duty downtown was that the supervisor could insert the whole Secret Service into his anal orifice. That’s when they brought him to me.”
“What’s Jack want to do?”
“He wants to go back to Philly and play Bat Masterson with the people who shot at his wife,” Isaacson said.
“This is probably the wrong thing to say, but I can understand that.”
“You’re right. It is the wrong thing to say. Charley, I assumed responsibility for them. The big brass are determined he will not go back to Philadelphia; they wanted to hold him—them—as material witnesses to an assault on a federal officer.”
“Can they do that?”
“They could her. What I told the supervisor was that they were going to have a hard time convincing a judge that a member of the Vice President’s protection detail—and a highly decorated former Philly cop—was going to vanish so that he wouldn’t have to testify against the bad guys who had tried to whack him and his wife. That’s when they turned them over to me. They’d rather that I be responsible for putting this little escapade on the front page of The Washington Post.”
When Castillo didn’t immediately reply, Isaacson went on: “Or for a headline in The Philadelphia Inquirer: ‘Secret Service Agent Guns Down Area Muslims; Alleges They Tried to Kill Him and His Wife.’”
“So that’s the priority? Keeping egg off the face of the Secret Service?”
“That, and keeping Jack out of jail.”
“What am I supposed to do with them?”
“Convince him that going back to Philly would be stupid, then put them on ice someplace until this can be worked out.”
“Personally, I’ll do anything I can for Jack. But why me?”
“Because the chief of the Secret Service has been told that any inquiries he wishes to make about OOA will have to go through me.”
“Jesus Christ!”
“Indeed. Merry Christmas, Charley. Please don’t tell me what you decide to do with them; that way I’ll truthfully be able to say I don’t know where they are when I’m asked. And I will be asked.”
“Jesus Christ!” Castillo said again.
But no one heard him.
The legend on the screen now read: CALL TERMINATED.
III
[ONE]
7200 West Boulevard Drive
Alexandria, Virginia
1445 25 December 2005
“Not more bad news, I hope, Carlos?” Doña Alicia asked as Castillo took what Davidson referred to as the “paterfamilias seat” at the head of the table.
Castillo looked at her and had the first not-unpleasant thought he’d had in the last five minutes: This is not classified. I won’t have to take Delchamps and McGuire into the office or, even worse, ask Abuela to leave the room so we can discuss it.
“There’s some good news,” he said. “And . . .”
“Let’s have that first,” Doña Alicia said. “The good news.”
“Okay. Jack Britton and his wife will appear here shortly.”
“Oh, good!” Tom McGuire said. “You’ll like them, Doña Alicia. Particularly her. Great sense of humor. As my sainted mother used to say, she’s the kind of girl who can make a corpse sit up in his casket at the funeral and start whistling.”
“Tom, that’s terrible,” Doña Alicia said, but she was smiling.
“And the bad news, Ace?” Delchamps asked.
“They have been wrapped in the protective arms of the Secret Service.”
McGuire’s smile vanished. He liked Britton. He had recruited him for the Secret Service.
“Why?” he asked softly.
“Isaacson told me that that’s standard procedure when a special agent is attacked. As is taking a member of the Protection Service off the detail and assigning him administrative duties.”
“Somebody attacked Jack?” Davidson asked.
“And Sandra,” Castillo confirmed. “Sixteen bullet holes in his new Mazda convertible. And that many more in the picture window of his house.”
“Oh, my God! How terrible!” Doña Alicia said.
“The African-American Lunatics?” David W. Yung asked.
Doña Alicia looked at him in confusion.
“Who else?” Castillo said.
“Where are they sending him?” McGuire said. Before Castillo could reply, he added, surprised, “They want to keep him here?”
“They wanted to send them to Saint Louis, or someplace like that.”
“And?” McGuire pursued.
“When they told him that, Jack said something very, very rude to the supervisor who told him, and then said he was going back to Philadelphia. That’s when he was turned over to Joel.” He paused. “And then Joel turned him over to me.”
McGuire grunted. “Philadelphia’s not an option,” he said. “And I don’t know about here. There’s a train from Union Station to Philadelphia about every hour.”
“Nuestra Pequeña Casa,” Delchamps suggested. “Better yet, Shangri-La.”
McGuire considered that a moment, then nodded. “That’d do it.”
Doña Alicia’s face showed that she didn’t understand any of what had been said.
“Ace, you think your lady friend would go along with one more legal attaché in Buenos Aires or Montevideo?” Delchamps asked.
“Probably. But asking her on Christmas Day?”
“Good point,” Delchamps said.
“Let’s get them do
wn there and worry about that later,” McGuire said. “Worst case, they make us bring them back.”
“Why don’t we wait and see what kind of a frame of mind Jack’s in before we do anything?” Davidson asked.
“If I could repeat in mixed company what he told the Secret Service supervisor, Jack, that would give you a good idea,” Castillo said. “But for the moment, would someone please pass me the cranberry sauce?”
Special Agent and Mrs. Britton arrived fifteen minutes later. They were accompanied by four Secret Service agents. All of the men at the table stood when they came into the dining room.
“If you have any clout with the guards, Tom,” Sandra Britton said, “I’d really like to have a little something to eat before I’m strip-searched and put in my cell.”
“Sandra!” McGuire said uncomfortably.
She went on, unrepentant: “The only thing the prisoners have had to eat today is an Egg McMuffin as we began our journey and, for Christmas dinner, a hamburger in a Wendy’s outside Baltimore.”
She directed her attention to Castillo.
“You’re the warden, right, Colonel? When do I get my one telephone call? I just can’t wait to talk to the ACLU.”
“Just as soon as I introduce you to my grandmother,” Castillo said, laughing. “Abuela, this is Sandra Britton. Sandra, Doña Alicia Castillo.”
“I’m very happy to meet you,” Sandra said. “But what in the world is a nice grandmother doing sitting down with this company?”
“I told you you’d like her, Doña Alicia,” McGuire said.
“Or are you also under-arrest-by-another-name?” Sandra pursued.
“Sit down, my dear,” Doña Alicia said. “We’ll get you some dinner.”
“I understand why you’re a little upset, Sandra,” McGuire said.
“ ‘A little’?”
“My dear young woman,” Billy Kocian said. “I recognize in you not only a kindred soul, but someone else suffering velvet-cell incarceration at the hands of these thugs. May I offer you a glass of champagne? Or perhaps something stronger?”
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