Black Ops

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Naylor was dispatched to reconnoiter the terrain in San Antone while the brightest Army lawyers gathered in emergency session to come up with some way to protect the kid’s assets from said wetbacks.

  “What Naylor found, instead, was that my so-called wetback grandfather was just about convinced that some greedy fräulein of loose morals was trying to get her hands into the Castillo cash box and he was going to do whatever had to be done to keep that from happening.

  “My grandmother had no such concerns. She took one look at the photo of Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger that Naylor had shown her and said she could tell from the eyes—which were the same as his father’s—her son’s—that this was her grandson. Two hours after she met Allan Naylor for the first time, she went wheels-up with Naylor in my grandfather’s Lear for New York, where they caught the five-fifteen PanAm flight to Frankfurt that afternoon.

  “My grandfather caught up with her the next day. A week after that, clutching his brand-new American passport, Carlos Guillermo Castillo got on another PanAm 747 at Rhine-Main with his grandmother. My grandfather stayed in Germany a little longer. He buried my mother—she didn’t want me to see her in her last days of that horrible disease—and he left Otto Görner in charge—temporarily—of my assets. He’s still in charge.

  “As far as the German government is concerned, I am Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger, which means I have a German passport. That’s proven useful more than once in our line of work, and when, for example, I need a couple of hotel rooms in a hurry.”

  “Ace, if you think I’m going to be nicer to you,” Delchamps said, “now that I know how rich you are—well, then, yes, sir, your excellency, mine Führer, you handsome, wise, charming sonofabitch, I certainly will be.”

  “Screw you, Edgar,” Castillo said. Then he exhaled audibly and added: “Okay, that’s the story. Aside from bringing Jack Doherty and Sparkman up to speed—Jake has already heard all this—I’d really appreciate your keeping it—especially the soap opera details—to yourselves.”

  IV

  [ONE]

  Das Haus im Wald

  Near Bad Hersfeld

  Kreis Hersfeld-Rotenburg

  Hesse, Germany

  2315 26 December 2005

  “We’re almost there,” Castillo said as the Jaguar swiftly moved down a macadam road winding through a thick pine forest.

  A moment later, he braked very sharply and with a squeal of tires made a right turn onto an almost identical road. The driver of the van behind them decided it best not to try to turn so fast and went past the turn, then stopped and backed up, then followed.

  The headlights of the Jaguar lit up reflective signs on each side of the road. Each two-foot-square sign showed a skull and bones and the legend, ZUGANG VERBOTEN!!!

  “Looks like they expect you, Ace,” Edgar Delchamps said. “Welcome home!”

  Then the headlights picked up the form of a heavyset man standing in the middle of the road. He was swinging a heavy-duty flashlight back and forth as a signal to stop. The man was wearing a heavy Loden cloth cape, the drape of which was distorted by what Castillo professionally guessed to be a submachine gun, probably a Heckler & Koch MP7A1.

  He approached the car. Castillo put the window down.

  “Wie gehts, Karlchen?” the man said, offering Castillo his hand.

  From the backseat, Max moved so that his front paws were on the console between the front seats. He showed his teeth and growled deep in his chest.

  “Oh, shut up, Max,” the man said. “You know me.”

  Max sat down.

  “Guten Abend, Siggie,” Castillo said, chuckling.

  “It is good to see you again, Karlchen.”

  “It’s good to see you.”

  “You have Max. Are Herr Görner and Herr Kocian close behind you?”

  “I have Max and family. His wife, so to speak, and four of their pups are in a van coming right behind me. Otto and Uncle Billy went to Wetzlar; they should be along shortly.”

  “Frau Görner will be overjoyed. You know how she loves dogs.”

  Castillo grinned broadly. “Wait until she learns one of the pups is for Willi and Hermann.”

  The man returned the grin. “It will make her Christmas complete, Karlchen.”

  The man noticed movement coming up behind the Jaguar. It was the van. He then stepped back and waved both vehicles down the road.

  The House in the Woods appeared in the headlights five minutes later. It sat against a hill, near the top, and did in fact look more like a collection of factory buildings than a residence.

  As the Jaguar and the van stopped on a cobblestoned area, floodlights came on. Castillo got out, motioned for the people in the van to follow him, then walked across a shallow flagstone verandah to a large double door, opened the right side without knocking, and stepped inside.

  Frau Helena Görner was standing just inside the vestibule. With her were two young boys, the housekeeper, and a maid. No one seemed surprised at his presence.

  As Castillo approached, he decided that Siggie—“Siggie the Game Warden,” he’d explained to all in the car, “stops everyone who gets past the skull-and-bones signs and announces that he’s making sure they’re not poachers before turning them away”—had either a cellular telephone or a radio, and then changed his mind: Siggie has a cellular and a radio, and called ahead with one or both.

  “It’s always good to see you, Karl,” Helena said, offering him both her hand and her cheek, both of which were nearly as cold as her smile.

  “You’re looking as lovely as always, Helena.” He turned to those following him. “Gentlemen, may I present our hostess, Frau Helena Görner? And my god-sons, Willi and Hermann?”

  Max towed Jack Davidson to the boys, who were obviously as glad to see the dog as Max was to see them.

  Helena was not touched by the sight. She offered a strained smile, extended her hand to Edgar Delchamps, and said, “Welcome to our home. We have dinner waiting for you. I’m sure you must be . . .” She looked past the visitors toward the van. “What the hell is that they’re carrying in?”

  It was hard to know what tested Frau Helena Görner’s good manners more in the next couple of minutes: her learning that she had gone to the trouble of having dinner prepared for her guests only to be told they had already eaten in Marburg; her learning that not only was Max going to spend the night—or the next few days—in her home but that he had his family with him; or her learning that one of the pups—which would certainly grow as enormous as his parents—was going to stay forever.

  But Helena prided herself on being a lady, and the only expletive she uttered was the mild one that she had used when inquiring about the travel kennel being carried to the house, and five minutes after the visitors had walked into the vestibule, they now were all in the big room of the House in the Woods and having a little something liquid to cut the chill.

  The big room was on the top—third—floor of the house, and was reached by both an enormous wide set of stairs and an elevator. It served as a combined reception and dining room for guests. The Görner family had their own dining and living rooms on the floors below.

  One entire wall of the big room was curtained; the heavy curtains were now drawn. When uncovered, plateglass windows offered a view of the fields in the valley below. The housekeeper and a maid began to reset the dining table for breakfast.

  The pups had been freed from the kennel and were playing with the boys in front of the fireplace. Max, lying next to Castillo, was whining because the moment he moved, Mädchen’s teeth told him that he was not welcome to join in the fun.

  There was the clunking sound of the elevator car rising, then its doors opening.

  “Are they likely to soil the carpet?” Helena inquired of Castillo.

  “Unless you get some newspapers on it, they certainly will,” Eric Kocian announced as he walked from the elevator toward the dogs.

  Otto Görner and Sándor Tor followed him off the ele
vator.

  “Otto, darling,” Helena greeted him, her tone somewhat less than warm. “I was thinking I’d make a place for the dogs in the stable.”

  “That won’t work, Helena,” Kocian said. “It’d be too cold for the pups in the stable. Mädchen and the pups will be in my room. For the time being, I suggest newspaper—appropriately, considering Karlchen’s recent plagiaristic writings therein.”

  He squatted beside Mädchen and scratched her ears.

  “Sándor,” Kocian called. “Be a good fellow and get me a little Slivovitz from the bar, will you, please?”

  He held his hand over his head, his thumb and index fingers at least three inches apart to indicate his idea of a little sip of the 120-proof Hungarian plum brandy.

  Then he stood and turned to Castillo. “I am after the numbing effect, not the taste.”

  “It was bad in Wetzlar?” Castillo asked.

  “That qualifies as an understatement, Karlchen,” Kocian said. He exhaled audibly, then went on, measuring his words, “As does this: I want to get the Gottverdammt sonsofbitches—”

  “Eric, the children!” Helena protested.

  Kocian flashed her an icy look, then went on: “... who did this to Günther Friedler and his family. And the Tages Zeitung newspapers will do whatever we can toward that objective. Starting with doubling that reward to a hundred thousand euros.” He took a sip of Slivovitz, then added, “And—if I have to say this—by providing our Karlchen-the-intelligence-officer and his friends with whatever we have in the files that might help them to find these bastards.”

  “Eric, the children shouldn’t hear this!” Helena said, moving toward the boys, presumably to usher them out of earshot.

  “They can read; they’ve seen the newspapers,” Kocian said. “And so far as Helena’s concern with my language, I remember you, Otto, and Willi teaching Karlchen all the dirty words when he was a lot younger than your two boys.”

  Sándor Tor handed Kocian a water glass three-quarters full with a clear liquid. He raised it to his lips and drank half.

  He looked at Helena.

  “I was led to believe there would be something to eat when we got here.”

  She flushed and then walked quickly out of the room.

  Otto looked uncomfortable.

  And so did everybody else in the room. Including Willi and Hermann.

  Castillo thought: You can’t honestly say there’s no excuse for Billy’s behavior. There is. He obviously regards Friedler’s murder as far more than the loss of a faithful employee under sordid circumstances. There was an emotional relationship between the two—maybe even father and son-like—but whatever it was, it was apparently a lot closer than anyone, maybe even Otto, suspected.

  Maybe Billy started out blaming Otto for putting Friedler on the story, knowing it was dangerous. But Billy has had plenty of time to think that through, time to conclude that maybe Otto didn’t know that Friedler was in the line of fire.

  And if Otto didn’t, the blame for that was not Otto’s; it was his.

  And now Billy knows it, and that hurts.

  Otto has known the pecking order around Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H., from the time he came here. He wasn’t in on Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H., from the beginning; Billy was.

  Even as a kid I knew that order: Grandpa—the Herr Oberst—was Lord and Master of all he surveyed. Then came Onkel Billy, Tier Two. Then Onkel Willi, Tier Three. And finally Otto, Tier Four.

  Otto might’ve jumped to the top after Onkel Willi went off the bridge with Grandpa. But Grandpa’s will hadn’t left him much money—and not a single share of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H. And my mother didn’t marry him.

  And since she didn’t have a clue on how to run the business, she turned to Uncle Billy, who not only knew how to run it but owned a quarter-share of it.

  And the wisdom of that was confirmed when my other grandpa got in the act when my mother died. Otto moved into the Herr Oberst’s office, took on the titles and ran things—and was paid damned well for it. But Don Fernando’s bimonthly trips to Vienna and Billy’s bimonthly trips to San Antonio or Midland had nothing to do with Grandpa having discovered Wiener schnitzel or Billy having a new-found interest in the Wild West.

  Grandpa controlled my three-quarter interest in the firm, and he and Billy decided between them that Otto, with the proper guidance, was well qualified to run the firm. And that they—with every right to do so—would provide that guidance to Otto.

  It worked out well, and certainly a lot of the credit for its success goes to Otto. He’s paid an enormous salary and has a lot of perks. But the bottom line is that he doesn’t own any of Gossinger.

  Billy and I own all of it.

  Including this house.

  I guess I should have gone into that when I was delivering the soap opera scenario in the car on the way here. The explanation would have helped to avoid the unease the others are feeling.

  But I didn’t, and it’s too late now with Otto here.

  There is, of course, a silver lining for me in the black cloud of Billy’s embarrassingly bad manners. He gave me what I so far hadn’t worked up the courage to ask him for: “The Tages Zeitung newspapers will do whatever we can toward that objective. Starting with doubling that reward to a hundred thousand euros. And—if I have to say this—by providing our Karlchen-the-intelligence-officer and his friends with whatever we have in the files that might help them to find these bastards.”

  Kocian drained his glass of Slivovitz and looked around for Sándor Tor, who was nowhere in sight—probably taking Billy’s luggage to his room, Castillo decided—and then, muttering, headed for the bar, which was actually an enormous antique sideboard, obviously intending to get a refill.

  Castillo got up and followed him.

  “Easy on the sauce, Billy,” Castillo said softly.

  Kocian raised one bushy, snow-white eyebrow.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said go easy on the Slivovitz.”

  “You don’t dare tell me what to do, Karlchen!”

  “I don’t like her any more than you do, Billy, but we don’t need to humiliate her, or Otto, and make everybody else uncomfortable. Including Hermann and Willi.”

  “Go fuck yourself, Karlchen!”

  Castillo shrugged.

  “Suit yourself,” he said. “I know better than to argue with an old drunk wallowing in self-pity.”

  “Self-pity? You arrogant little ...”

  By then Castillo was halfway back to his chair.

  That was not one of my smartest moves, Charley thought as he went.

  Why the hell did I do that?

  Not as a considered move.

  I guess the Boy Scout in me suddenly bubbled up and escaped.

  Well, I certainly managed to make things worse than they were.

  Helena reappeared several minutes later.

  “It’ll be just a few more minutes, Billy,” she said.

  Castillo looked at Kocian, who he found was already glaring at him.

  Kocian drained his second glass of Slivovitz.

  “Helena,” Kocian said, “it has been pointed out to me that my behavior toward you and your family tonight has been shameful.”

  “I don’t know what you mean, Billy,” she said.

  “Pray let me finish.” He waited until she nodded, then went on: “I can only hope you can find it in your heart to forgive an old drunk wallowing in self-pity over the loss of a man who was like a son to him.”

  “Billy, you’ve not said nor done anything to apologize to me for.”

  “Otto,” Kocian announced, “your wife is a lousy liar. One with a kind and gracious heart. She’s much too good for you.”

  Helena went to Kocian and kissed him.

  Kocian looked at Castillo.

  “In case you’re curious, Karlchen, that was my heart speaking, not the Slivovitz.”

  Castillo felt his throat tighten and his eyes
start to water. He quickly got out of his chair.

  “Did you drink all the Slivovitz, Onkel Billy? Or can I have one?”

  “I think,” Otto Görner said, “that we should get into the arrangements for tomorrow.”

  [TWO]

  Das Haus im Wald

  Near Bad Hersfeld

  Kreis Hersfeld-Rotenburg

  Hesse, Germany

  0830 27 December 2005

  The drapes over the plateglass windows had been opened, and everyone at the breakfast table could see what Castillo was describing in what he called Lesson Seven, Modern European History 202.

  “You see that thing that looks sort of like a control tower? In the middle of the field?”

  “There was an airstrip, Charley?” Jack Davidson asked.

  “No. And don’t interrupt teacher again unless you raise your hand and ask permission first.”

  Hermann and Willi, sitting on the floor playing with the puppies, giggled.

  Castillo turned to them. “And laughing at your godfather also is verboten!”

  They giggled again.

  “As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted,” Castillo went on, “was that that thing that looks sort of like a control tower was sort of the command post for half a dozen other, simpler control towers, three on each side. There were telephones in the smaller ones, and the larger one had telephones and radios connected to the next level of command—”

  Davidson raised his hand.

  “Yes, Jackie, you may go tend to your personal problem,” Castillo said. “But don’t forget—as you usually do—to wash your hands when you’re finished.”

  Hermann and Willi giggled again.

  “Why is it still there?” Davidson asked. “Too expensive to knock down?”

  “Otto and I decided to leave it up, ‘Lest we forget,’ ” Kocian said. “It did cost a small fortune to take down the other towers and, of course, the fence itself.”