VI
[ONE]
Estancia San Joaquín
Near San Martín de los Andes
Patagonia
Neuquén Province, Argentina
1645 5 February 2007
From the air, the landing strip at Estancia San Joaquín looked like a dirt road running along the Chimehuín River, which arguably was the best trout-fishing river in the world.
It was only when the manager of the estancia heard the Aero Commander—which he expected—overhead and threw a switch that the aeronautical function of the dirt road became obvious. The switch (a) caused lights marking both ends of the runway to rise from the ground and begin to flash, and (b) another hydraulic piston to rise, this one with a flashing arrow indicating the direction of the wind.
The sleek, twin-engined, high-wing airplane touched down and taxied to a large, thatched-roof farm building near the road. There, part of what looked like the wall of the farm building swung open and, as soon as the pilot shut down the engines, a half-dozen men pushed the aircraft into what was actually a hangar. There was a Bell Ranger helicopter parked inside.
The door/wall closed, the marking lights sank back into the ground, and the airfield again became a dirt road running along the tranquil Chimehuín River.
Edgar Delchamps was the first to emerge from the airplane.
Max ran to greet him, which he did by resting his paws on Delchamps’s shoulder as he kissed him.
It was a long moment before the dog had enough and Delchamps could straighten up.
“Funny, I would never have taken you for a trout fisherman,” Charley Castillo greeted him.
Castillo was wearing a yellow polo shirt, khaki trousers, a battered Stetson hat, and even more battered Western boots.
“Ha-ha,” Delchamps responded.
Delchamps pointed to the helicopter and raised his eyebrows.
“Our host’s,” Castillo said. “Alek loans it to me from time to time, when I have something important to do, like going fishing.”
Alex Darby came out of the airplane next, followed by Liam Duffy, and finally a man wearing a Gendarmería Nacional uniform and pilot’s wings.
Darby and Castillo shook hands. Liam Duffy wrapped his arm around Castillo’s shoulders and hugged him.
“Ace, your pal Alek wouldn’t happen to be here, would he?” Delchamps asked.
“As a matter of fact, he is.”
“Why do I think Alek is not here to fish?” Delchamps said.
“Because in a previous life, you were trained to be suspicious,” Castillo replied. “You’re going to have to adjust to our changed circumstances.” When he saw the look on Delchamps’s face, he went on: “But since you ask, at a few minutes after seven this morning, Alek and I were out on the beautiful Río Chimehuín catching our breakfast.”
“Then Pevsner doesn’t know about the letter?”
“Charley,” Liam Duffy interrupted, nodding at the pilot. “We’re going to have to get Primer Alférez Sanchez to the airport.”
Primer Alférez, Alférez Sanchez, who had piloted the Aero Commander, was the equivalent of first lieutenant in the gendarmería. And Castillo saw his unhappy look.
He’s thinking, “I’m being gotten rid of so I won’t learn what’s going on here.”
And he’s right to be pissed. Liam could have handled that better; the last thing we want is a pilot who knows more than he should harboring a grudge.
Duffy’s sometimes the sort of commander whose officers loathe him.
“Sanchez, what did you think of the new avionics in that old bird?” Castillo asked, switching to Spanish, and smiling at the pilot.
“Fantastic!” the pilot replied. “All I had to do was take it off and land it. The navigation was entirely automatic, and when I dropped out of the cloud cover, I was lined up with the runway.”
“We’re working on that,” Castillo said. “The idea is to eliminate pilots like you and me.”
“I’m not sure I’d like that, señor.”
“As I was just telling my friend here, one has to adjust to changed circumstances. I’m sorry there’s no time to offer you a drink, but Aerolíneas Argentinas waits for no man, and if you don’t get to the San Martín de los Andes airport in the next forty-five minutes ...”
“I understand, señor,” the pilot said, and then came to attention. “With your permission, mí comandante?”
Duffy nodded. The pilot saluted and Duffy returned it.
“Sanchez,” Castillo said, “don’t tell anyone about the avionics.”
“El comandante made that clear on the way here, señor.”
Delchamps waited until the pilot had left the hangar, and then said, “Tell me about the changed circumstances, Ace.”
“I hardly know where to start,” Castillo said.
“Try starting with telling me whether or not Pevsner has seen Solomatin’s letter.”
“Gladly,” Castillo said. “Okay, starting at the beginning: Alek’s man went on the net as scheduled at oh-four-twenty hundred Zulu.”
“‘Alek’s man went on the net’? Our net?”
“I thought you knew that all of us are retired and have fallen off the face of the earth. We now have people to do things like going on the net at one-twenty in the morning.”
Delchamps and Darby both shook their heads. This was unexpected.
“So Alek’s guy,” Castillo went on, “went on the net at oh-one-twenty local time. At oh-one-twenty-two, Colonel V. N. Solomatin’s letter came through, five by five. At oh-one-twenty-five, Alek telephoned me here, waking me from the sleep of the innocent, to tell me he had a letter from Cousin Vladlen and that he wanted me to see it as soon as possible.”
“Paul Sieno told me Kocian wanted to get the letter to you without anyone else seeing it.”
“Don’t anyone let Alek know you’re surprised that he has seen it. We now have no secrets from Alek.”
“Jesus Christ!” Delchamps said.
“So I told him that I’d fire up”—Castillo pointed to the Bell Ranger—“at first light, go pick him up, and he could show me Cousin Vladlen’s letter. Or, better yet, bring him back here and he could have breakfast with Sweaty and me, we’d all read Cousin Vladlen’s letter, and then go fishing to kill the time until you, Darby, and Duffy got here. Since that was the best idea he’d heard so far this week, Alek said that was fine, and he’d bring Tom Barlow along, since the letter was addressed to him in the first place.”
“So Colonel Berezovsky is here, too?” Darby asked. “I wondered where he was.”
“Aside from my belief that Colonel Dmitri Berezovsky has also fallen off the face of the earth,” Castillo said, “I have no idea where he might be. Tom Barlow, however, is at the San Joaquín Lodge.”
“And Sweaty has seen the letter, no doubt?”
“Certainly, Sweaty has seen it. How could I possibly not show it to her? Alek would have anyway.”
Delchamps shook his head in resignation.
“Okay. Can we go now?”
“You don’t want to know what else has happened?” Castillo asked.
“I’m afraid to ask.”
“Well, we had another offer of employment from those people in Las Vegas,” Castillo said.
“To do what?”
“It seems that someone sent Colonel Hamilton a rubber beer barrel full of whatever it was Hamilton brought out of the Congo ...”
“Jesus H. Christ!” Darby exclaimed.
“... and they wanted us to find out who did it and why.”
“And?” Delchamps asked.
“I told them, sorry, we have all fallen off the face of the earth.”
“What the hell is that all about?” Darby asked.
“It’s none of our business,” Castillo said.
“They were supposed to have destroyed everything in a twenty-mile area around that place in the Congo,” Darby said.
“So they said,” Castillo said.
“You think there’s some sort of connection between that and Solomatin’s letter?” Darby asked.
“I don’t know, but you can count on Alek asking you that question.”
He gestured toward an open rear door of the hangar. Two shiny olive-drab Land Rovers sat there.
“I think we can all get in one of those, can’t we?” Castillo asked.
[TWO]
The Lodge at Estancia San Joaquín was a single-story stone masonry building on a small rise perhaps fifty feet above and one hundred yards from the Chimehuín River.
It had been designed to comfortably house, feed, and entertain trout fishermen from all over the world, never more than eight at a time, usually four or five, who were charged three thousand dollars a day. The furniture was simple and massive. The chairs and armchairs were generously padded with foam-filled leather cushions.
The wide windows of the great room offered a view of the Chimehuín River and the snow-capped Andes mountains. There was a well-stocked bar, a deer head with an enormous rack above the fireplace, a billiards table, a full bookcase, and two fifty-six-inch flat-screen televisions mounted so one of them was visible from anywhere in the room.
There were four people in the great room—plus a bartender and a maid—when Castillo and the others walked in: Tom Barlow, his sister Susan, and Aleksandr Pevsner, a tall, dark-haired man—like Castillo and Barlow in his late thirties—whose eyes were large, blue, and extraordinarily bright. The fourth man was János, Pevsner’s hulking bodyguard, of whom it was said that he was never farther away from Pevsner than was Max from Castillo.
There were fourteen Interpol warrants out for the arrest of Pevsner under his own name and the seven other identities he was known to use.
Barlow was dressed like Castillo, in khaki trousers and a polo shirt. Pevsner was similarly clothed, except that his polo shirt was silk and his trousers were fine linen. The men were at the billiards table.
Susan, who was leaning over a coffee table, fork poised to spear an oyster, was dressed like Castillo and her brother, except her polo shirt was linen and her khakis were shorts. Short shorts. Her clothing and posture left virtually nothing to the imagination about her bosom, legs, and the contours of her derriere.
“Funny,” Edgar Delchamps said, “I would never have taken Sweaty for a fisherman.”
Susan/Sweaty looked up from the platter of oysters, popped one in her mouth, smiled at Delchamps, and gave him the finger.
It was a gesture she had learned from Castillo and subsequently had used, with relish, frequently.
Pevsner carefully laid his cue on the billiards table, then walked to Delchamps, Darby, and Duffy, and wordlessly shook their hands. Tom Barlow waved at them.
“I’m sure you’re hungry,” Pevsner said. “I can have them prepare supper for you now. Or, if you’d rather, there’s oysters and cold lobster to—what is it Charley says?—munch on to hold you until dinner.”
“How the hell do you get oysters and lobster in the middle of Patagonia?” Darby said as he walked to the coffee table to examine what was on display.
“I have a small seafood business in Chile,” Pevsner said.
That triggered a tidal wave of doubt and concern in Castillo, surprising him both by its intensity and the speed with which it hit him and then grew.
It started with his reaction to Pevsner’s saying he had a “small seafood business in Chile.”
A small seafood business, my ass, Castillo had thought sarcastically. It’s called Cancún Provisions, Limited, and it flies a Boeing 777-200LR full of seafood to Cancún every other day. The 777 is owned by Peruaire. And you own that, too.
Was that natural modesty, Alek, or was the modesty a Pavlovian reflex of a former KGB colonel?
“Say as little as possible; deflect attention.”
How much can I really trust Comrade Polkovnik Pevsner?
Right now he tells me I’m family. In love—intending to marry—his cousin Susan, formerly Podpolkovnik Svetlana Alekseeva of the SVR.
But how long will that last if whatever the hell is going on here threatens his wife and children or his way of life?
Most of the charges laid against him are bullshit.
But, on the other hand, I know he supervised the beating to death with an angle iron a man who betrayed him. Or used the angle iron himself. Probably the latter.
My friend Alek is not a nice man.
Edgar Delchamps neither likes nor trusts Alek, and has told me so bluntly. And I know I can trust Delchamps. He’s been dealing with Russian spooks—successfully dealing with them—for nearly as long as I am old.
Castillo was as suddenly brought out of his unpleasant reverie as quickly as he had entered it.
There were soft fingers on his cheeks, the scent of perfume in his nostrils, and light blue eyes intently searching his.
“My darling,” Sweaty asked. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“You look like you’d seen a ghost!”
He shook his head, said, “I’m fine, baby.” He put his hand on her back and felt her warmth though the linen shirt.
Sweaty rose on her toes and kissed him on the lips with great tenderness.
Edgar Delchamps’s face showed signs of amused scorn.
Castillo gave him the finger with the hand that had been against Sweaty’s back, and announced, “I need a drink.”
He mimed to the bartender what he wanted. The bartender, a shaven-headed, barrel-chested man in his thirties, nodded and reached for a bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon. Castillo knew that the crisp white bartender’s jacket concealed a Micro Uzi submachine gun.
The bartender was one of the nearly one hundred ex-members of the KGB or the SVR whom Pevsner had brought out of Russia to work for him. And from the looks of him, the bartender was probably ex-Spetsnaz.
There was the snap of fingers.
The bartender looked at Pevsner, who held up two fingers, and then pointed to two armchairs by the coffee table. The bartender nodded.
Pevsner waved Castillo toward the armchairs. Sweaty steered Castillo away from the armchair and to the couch and then sat beside him. Pevsner’s face showed much the same amused scorn as Delchamps’s face had. Castillo reacted by leaning over to Sweaty and kissing her.
Max walked to the coffee table, sniffed, decided he would pass on the seafood, and went and lay at Castillo’s feet.
The bartender served the bourbon to Pevsner and Castillo, then looked to the others for orders. Sweaty shook her head. Delchamps ordered, in Russian, Scotch whisky on the rocks, two chunks only, and a glass of water on the side.
How did he know he’s Russian?
Was that a way to find out?
The bartender looked at Darby and Duffy, and in English said, “What may I get for you, gentlemen?”
Pevsner looked genuinely amused, and he even made a little joke when everyone had their drinks and had taken seats around the plates of cold lobster chunks and oysters laid out on the coffee table.
“Well,” Pevsner said. “Now that we’re all here, whatever shall we chat about?”
Tom Barlow took the chair Pevsner had wanted Castillo to sit in, bringing with him an ice-covered bottle of vodka and a frozen glass.
“My call?” Delchamps asked.
Pevsner gestured for him to go on.
“Is that letter genuine?” Delchamps asked. “Is it really from Cousin Vladlen, or did Solomatin just sign what somebody put in front of him?”
“That’s two questions, Edgar,” Tom Barlow said. “Yes, I think the letter is genuine. And I think Cousin Vladlen wrote it. But he would have signed anything put in front of him by General Sirinov. Cousin Vladlen has built his career by doing whatever he is told to do.”
“I know people like that in the agency,” Delchamps said, smiling. “Is he really your cousin?”
“His father is our mother’s brother,” Barlow said, pointing at Sweaty.
“How come Cousin Vladlen didn’t get burned when you and Sweaty took off?”
“General Sirinov may have believed him when he said he had no hint what Svetlana and I were planning. Vladlen’s a respected oprichnik.”
“A what?” Darby asked.
“That’s right,” Castillo said. “You weren’t here for this history lesson, were you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Darby said.
“An ‘oprichnik’ is a member of the Oprichnina, the secret police state-within-the-state that goes back to Ivan the Terrible,” Castillo said, and looked at Sweaty. “Did I get that right, sweetheart? Do I get a gold star to take home to Mommy?”
She smiled and shook her head resignedly.
“I’ll explain it to you later, Alex,” Castillo said.
“Tell me about General Sirinov,” Delchamps said.
“General Yakov Sirinov runs the FSB and the SVR for Putin,” Pevsner said.
“Putin as in Prime Minister Putin?”
“As in Prime Minister Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, formerly president of the Russian Federation, and before that, polkovnik of the KGB, and before that ...”
“Oh, that Putin,” Delchamps said.
Castillo and Barlow chuckled.
“You think Putin’s personally involved in this?” Castillo asked.
“Up to the nipples of his underdeveloped chest,” Pevsner said.
“I’m getting the feeling you don’t like him much,” Delchamps said.
Pevsner chuckled.
“Is anyone interested in the possible scenario I’ve come up with?” Pevsner then said.
“Does a bear shit in the forest?” Delchamps asked in Russian.
“There’s a lady present, Edgar,” Castillo said.
“She’s not a lady, she’s an SVR podpolkovnik,” Delchamps said.
Sweaty gave him the finger.
“A former lieutenant colonel of the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki,” she corrected him. “Which has nothing to do with whether or not I’m a lady.”
“I hate to tell you this, Sweaty, but it’s a stretch to think of anyone—how do I put this delicately?—consorting with Ace here as being a lady.”
Sweaty and Castillo both gave him the finger.
“Anyway,” Delchamps said, “according to that letter, ‘all is forgiven, come home.’ That sounds as if someone still thinks of you as an SVR podpolkovnik in good standing.”
“Alek, do they really think anyone is going to believe that letter?” Castillo asked. “That Tom and Sweaty are going to be ‘welcomed home as loyal Russians’?”
“I am a loyal Russian,” Svetlana said. “But loyal to Russia, not to Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.”
“That—loyalty, loyalty to Russia, or even loyalty to Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin personally—may be at the bottom of this,” Pevsner said.
“What do you mean?”
“Putin wants Dmitri and Svetlana to come home.”
“Is he stupid enough to think they’d be stupid enough to go back?” Castillo asked.
“No one who knows him—and I know Vladimir Vladimirovich very well—has ever suggested he’s stupid,” Pevsner replied. “And Dmitri ... Tom ... knows him even better than I do.”
“I hate to use the word ‘genius,’” Tom Barlow said, “but ...”
“How about ‘evil genius’?” Svetlana suggested.
“Why not?” Barlow said chuckling.
“So what is the evil genius up to?” Castillo asked.
“I wonder if you understand, Charley—at least as well as Edgar and Alek do—how important it is for the FSB and the SVR to appear both to the people and, more important, to its own members as all-powerful and without fault.”
Castillo’s temper flared.
But when he spoke, his voice was low and soft. Those who knew him knew that meant he was really angry.
“I don’t even know what the Federal’naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti and the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki are,” he said, speaking Russian with a Saint Petersburg accent. “Perhaps before we go any further, someone will be kind enough to tell me.”
“I hate to tell you this, Alek,” Delchamps said in Russian, “but I think you just pissed Ace off.”
After a moment, during which Pevsner looked carefully at Castillo, he said, “More important, Edgar, I once again underestimated my friend Charley. I tend to do that. It probably has something to do with his sophomoric sense of humor. No offense was intended, Charley.”
“Offense taken, Polkovnik Pevsner,” Castillo said. “In other words, screw you, friend Alek.”
Pevsner shook his head, and smiled.
“Let me continue,” Pevsner said. “Not long ago, all was right in the world of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. He had both finally taken over the KGB and its successor organizations and was president of the Russian Federation.
“He could start to restore the Russian Empire. With a good deal of help from me, he had managed to keep most of the KGB’s money out of the hands of those misguided souls who thought it belonged to the people of Russia.
“He would have to deal with me, eventually, of course. I knew too much, and I had too much of what he considered the KGB’s money. But that could wait—what does Charley say?—could ‘sit on the back burner’ until the right time came.
“He was so happy with the way things were going that when General Sirinov came to him with an idea to tweak the American lion’s tail at little cost and with minimum risk—using a group of converts to Islam; there would be minimal Russian involvement—he told him to go ahead.
“What he was going to do was have the Muslims crash an airliner into the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. There was an old American airplane sitting deserted on a runway in Angola. This plane would be stolen, equipped with additional fuel tanks, flown to Philadelphia, and ...”
He made a diving gesture with his hand.
“I always thought he came up with that idea himself,” Tom Barlow said.
“He could have,” Pevsner said. “But Sirinov has the better imagination. It doesn’t matter. I think of the both of them as one, as Putin-slash-Sirinov.”
“Point taken,” Barlow said.
“Enter friend Charley,” Pevsner said, waving a hand in Castillo’s direction. “A lowly U.S. Army major who, not having a clue about what was going on, jumped to the conclusion that the evil arms dealer Vasily Respin or the smuggler Alex Dondiemo or even the more mysterious and wicked Aleksandr Pevsner had stolen the 727 from the field at Luanda, Angola, for their criminal purposes and set out to reclaim it.”
Everyone was aware that “Dondiemo” and “Respin” were two of the identities Pevsner used when he thought it was necessary.
“When this came to my attention through a man I had working for me and at that point trusted—Howard Kennedy—”
“That’s the ex-FBI agent who was beaten to death by parties unknown in the Conrad Casino in Punta del Este?” Darby asked.
“That’s the fellow. Kennedy looked into Major Castillo and reported what he had learned to me. Some of this—for example, that Major Charley Castillo was also Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger, majority shareholder of the Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H., empire and that he was working directly for the American President—made me rethink my original solution to the problem.”
“Which was?” Delchamps asked.
“An Indian beauty mark,” Pevsner replied matter-of-factly, tapping the center of his forehead with his index finger.
“That sometimes takes care of problems like that,” Delchamps said.
“God wouldn’t let you kill my Charley,” Sweaty said seriously.
“Possibly. I never underestimate the power of divine intervention,” Pevsner said. “But at the time, I thought it was just common sense. My primary motive was to avoid drawing attention to myself. But, now that I think about it, at the time, I was asking God’s help to avoid taking anyone’s life unnecessarily, so perhaps, Svetlana, you’re right, and God was involved.”
Charley smiled when he saw Alex Darby’s face. It showed that he was having difficulty with Sweaty’s and Pevsner’s matter-of-fact references to the Almighty.
They don’t sound much like godless Communists, do they, Alex? Maybe more like members of the Flaming Bush Church of Christ in Porter’s Crossroads, Georgia?
“So,” Pevsner went on, “I arranged to meet Charley in Vienna, to see if I could reason with him, come to some kind of understanding—”
“What you did, Alek,” Castillo interrupted, “was have that sonofabitch Kennedy blindside me while I was taking a leak in the men’s room of the Sacher Hotel bar. Then he dragged me, at gunpoint, up to the Cobenzl.”
“Lovely spot,” Delchamps said. “I know it well. Just hearing ‘Cobenzl’ makes me think of fair-haired mädchen and hear the romantic tinkle of the zither.”
This earned him a look of mingled disbelief and annoyance from Pevsner.
After a moment, Pevsner said, “The moment I first saw Charley, I realized that it would be painful for me to have to give him a beauty spot. And, Svet, now that I think about, I did ask God to help me spare his life.”
Darby was now really confused. He kept looking at Delchamps and Duffy to get their reaction to Pevsner’s continued references to the Deity. But knowing of the genuine—if more than a little unusual—deep faith of Pevsner and the other Russians, their faces showed neither surprise or confusion.
“And that’s the way it worked out,” Pevsner went on. “Charley and I had a cigar and a little cognac watching night fall in Vienna, and then we went to dinner.”
“At the Drei Hussars,” Charley furnished. “Around the corner from the Opera House. By the time it was over, Alek and I were buddies.”
Pevsner gave him an annoyed look.
“Charley,” Pevsner continued, “said that he would do what he could with the President to call off the CIA and the FBI—they were then trying very hard to find me—if I would help him find the missing aircraft. I took a chance and trusted him.
“I admit that finding the missing 727 wasn’t difficult for me. I operate a number of airplanes in sub-Saharan Africa, and all of my crews always keep their eyes open for things in which they think I might be interested.
“Cutting a long story short, Charley was able to take the 727 back from the Muslims before they could do any damage with it. And, as he said he would, he got the President to call off the FBI and the CIA.
“I did not know of General Sirinov’s plan to tweak the American lion’s tail, and Sirinov had no reason to suspect that I even knew Charley, much less that I was the one who had been instrumental in upsetting it.
“He did learn, of course, that Charley had flown the aircraft into MacDill Air Force Base in Florida. Charley was thus added to Sirinov’s list of people to be dealt with when the opportunity presented itself.
“Next, friend Charley messed up another SVR operation. Sirinov sent a team—under Cuban Dirección General de Inteligencia Major Alejandro Vincenzo—to Lieutenant Colonel Yevgeny Komogorov, his FSB man in charge of operations in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, to eliminate a man who knew too much and had also made off with sixteen million dollars of the SVR’s money. When that escapade was over, Vincenzo and his men were dead, and Charley had the sixteen million dollars.
“Since Komogorov needed somebody to blame for that disaster, he decided to blame it on me, reasoning that if I were dead, I couldn’t protest my innocence. So he paid a large sum of money to my trusted assistant, the late Mr. Howard Kennedy, to arrange for me to be assassinated in the garage of the Sheraton Hotel in Pilar, outside Buenos Aires.
“When that was over, I was alive and Komogorov wasn’t. Corporal Lester Bradley had put an Indian beauty spot on his right eye. The others on his team were taken out by others working for friend Charley. And Mr. Kennedy went to meet his maker shortly thereafter.
“All of this tended to reduce the all-powerful, faultless image of both the FSB and the SVR, which meant that the power of Sirinov and Vladimir Vladimirovich was becoming questionable.
“Sirinov decided to settle the matter once and for all. With a great deal of effort, Sirinov ordered the simultaneous assassinations of a man in Vienna known to be a longtime deep cover asset of the CIA; a reporter for one of Charley’s newspapers who was asking the wrong questions about Russian involvement in the oil-for-food program; Liam Duffy, who had interrupted a previously successful SVR drug operation in Argentina and Paraguay; and—”
“So they’re all connected,” Alex Darby said.
“Oh, yes. Please let me finish,” Pevsner said. “And the assassination of another of Charley’s men, a policeman in Philadelphia, who knew the Muslims who planned to crash an airplane into the Liberty Bell were not smart enough to conceive of, much less try to execute, an operation like that by themselves and suspected the SVR was involved.
“When only the assassinations of the CIA asset in Vienna and of the journalist were successful, Sirinov had to report this failure to Putin. So far as Vladimir Vladimirovich is concerned, there is no such thing as a partial success. And Sirinov knew that the only thing worse than reporting a failure to Vladimir Vladimirovich was not having a credible plan to make things right.
“And he had one: Dmitri and Svetlana had been ordered to Vienna to participate in a conference of senior SVR officers. The cover was the presence in Vienna of Bartolomeo Rastrelli’s wax statue of Peter the First, which the Hermitage had generously loaned to the Kunsthistorisches Museum.
“The Tages Zeitung journalist whom he had managed to eliminate was going to be buried with much ceremony in Marburg an der Lahn, Germany. There was no question that Eric Kocian and Otto Görner, managing director of Gossinger G.m.b.H. would be there. With a little bit of luck, so would Karl von und zu Gossinger, who was not only the owner of the Gossinger empire but Lieutenant Colonel Castillo, who had been causing the SVR so much trouble. All three—plus at least some of Charley’s people who would be with him—could be eliminated at the same time.
“Tom’s train would pass through Marburg on its way to Vienna. So Sirinov dispatched a team of Hungarians—ex-Államvédelmi Hatóság—to Marburg, with orders to report to Polkovnik Berezovsky. Sirinov knew Dmitri—Tom—could be counted upon to supervise their assassination assignment with his well-known skill for that sort of thing. And then catch the next train to Vienna.
“Well, that turned out to be an even greater disaster for General Sirinov, as we all know.”
“Through God’s infinite mercy,” Svetlana said very seriously.
She crossed herself.
“Svet,” Pevsner said seriously, “you may very possibly be right, but there’s also the possibility that it was the incompetence of the CIA station chief in Vienna that saved Charley and Kocian from the ministrations of the Államvédelmi Hatóság.”
“It was the hand of God,” Svetlana said firmly.
“Possibly, Sweaty, it was the hand of God that contributed to Miss Eleanor Dillworth’s incompetence,” Delchamps said. “Same result, right?”
Svetlana looked at him coldly, not sure—but deeply suspecting—that he was being sarcastic.
“Eleanor is not incompetent,” Alex Darby said loyally.
“Come on,” Delchamps said. “She was incompetent in Vienna. The rezident there ... what was his name?”
“Podpolkovnik Kiril Demidov,” Barlow furnished. “He used to work for me.”
“Demidov was onto Dillworth,” Delchamps said firmly. “Maybe he didn’t know it was Tom and Sweaty, but he knew that—Jesus Christ!—Dillworth had a plane sitting at Schwechat airfield ready to haul some defector, or defectors, away from the Kunsthistorisches Museum.”
“You don’t know that,” Darby protested.
“I know that your pal Eleanor should have known that Demidov was going to take out the Kuhls. And once that happened, she didn’t have a clue what to do next. I asked her. She said she was ‘waiting for instructions from Langley.’”
“If I may continue, gentlemen?” Pevsner said a little impatiently.
“I didn’t trust her, Edgar,” Tom Barlow said, ignoring Pevsner. “I don’t know if it was that I thought she wasn’t professional or what.”
“It was the hand of God,” Svetlana insisted.
“But once I saw the picture in the Frankfurter Rundschau of Charley getting off his private jet,” Barlow went on, “I decided that Svetlana and I were going to leave Europe on that aircraft if I had to give him Sirinov and all the ex-Államvédelmi Hatóság people.”
“And from that moment, until we walked into Alek’s house here, everything went smoothly,” Svetlana said. “Does no one see the hand of God in that?”
“I do,” Castillo said.
When Sweaty looked at him, he sang, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”
“Don’t mock God, Charley!” she snapped furiously and moved away from him on the couch.
“Well,” Pevsner said, “Dmitri and Svetlana were not intercepted in Vienna, and that was the end of that. Except of course that Liam applied the Old Testament eye-for-an-eye principle to Lavrenti Tarasov and Evgeny Alekseev, who had come to Argentina in search of Tom and Svetlana.”
“Not quite,” Delchamps said. “Alex’s good buddy, Miss Dillworth, sicced a reporter—a good one: Roscoe J. Danton of The Washington Times-Post—on Charley. He came to Alex’s apartment just before we got out of there.”
“A reporter? What did he want?” Castillo asked.
“He wanted you, Ace. He probably wants to know why you stole Sweaty and Tom out from under Miss Dillworth’s nose. And if Dillworth told him about that, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she told him you left the Vienna rezident—what was his name? Demidov?—sitting in a taxi outside our embassy with an Államvédelmi Hatóság garrote around his neck, and her calling card on his chest.”
“I had nothing to do with that, as you goddamn well know. The story going around is that some old company dinosaur did that.”
“You sound like you think I had something to do with it,” Delchamps said.
“Do I?” Castillo said sarcastically.
“Funny thing about those old company dinosaurs, Charley. You’re too young of course to know much about them. But they really believe in what it says in the Old Testament about an eye for an eye, and if they do something like what happened to Demidov, they never, ever, ’fess up to it.”
“Changing the subject just a little,” Tom Barlow said. “I think we should throw this into the facts bearing on the problem: Just as soon as Sirinov and/ or Vladimir Vladimirovich heard that the Americans had taken out the Fish Farm, they realized that information had to have come from me.”
“You don’t know that,” Castillo argued.
“In our profession, Charley,” Tom said, “we never know anything. All we ever have is a hypothesis—or many hypotheses—based on what we think we know.”
“Touché,” Castillo said.
“We all forget that at one time or another,” Barlow said.
Castillo met his eyes, and thought, That was kind of you, Tom.
But all it did was remind everyone in this room that I am the least experienced spook in it.
Which, truth be told, I am.
“One of the things I was tasked to do in Berlin was make sure that the Fish Farm got whatever it needed,” Barlow went on. “It’s not hard to come up with a hypothesis that Sirinov and Vladimir Vladimirovich reasoned that since Polkovnik Berezovsky knew about the Fish Farm and it was destroyed shortly after Polkovnik Berezovsky defected to the Americans, whose CIA had looked into the matter and decided the factory was indeed a fish farm, Polkovnik Berezovsky told the Americans what it really was.”
“You knew what the CIA thought?” Charley asked.
“Of course,” Barlow said.
“You had ... have ... a mole?”
“Of course, but you don’t need a mole to learn things like that,” Barlow said. “Actually you can often learn more from a disgruntled worker who wouldn’t think of betraying her country than from an asset on the payroll.”
“Your pal Dillworth, for example, Alex,” Delchamps said. “What is it they say, ‘Hell hath no fury like a pissed-off female’?”
“Eleanor is a pro,” Darby said, again showing his loyalty.
“She pointed Roscoe Danton at Charley,” Delchamps argued. “What hypothesis does that suggest?”
Darby looked at Delchamps angrily, looked for a moment as if he were going to reply, but in the end said nothing.
Castillo said, “What’s your hypothesis, Tom, about the stuff from the Congo suddenly showing up at Fort Detrick?”
“Well, it’s clear it’s got something to do with this,” Barlow replied. “What, I don’t know.”
“It could have something to do with Vladimir Vladimirovich’s ego,” Pevsner said.
“He couldn’t resist the temptation to let us know that we didn’t wipe the Fish Farm off the face of the earth?” Delchamps offered.
Pevsner nodded.
“If he’s got that stuff, he could have used it, and he didn’t,” Castillo said thoughtfully.
“So, what’s next?” Delchamps said. “I buy that stick-it-up-your-ass motive, Alek, but I don’t think that’s all there is to it.”
Pevsner nodded his agreement.
“So Charley has to tell those people in Las Vegas that he’s changed his mind about working for them,” Barlow said.
“Why would I want to do that?” Castillo replied. “The Office of Organizational Analysis no longer exists. I am in compliance with my orders to fall off the face of the earth and never be seen again. Sweaty and I are going to build a vine-covered cottage by the side of the road and live happily therein forever afterward.”
“There goes that sophomoric sense of humor of yours again,” Pevsner snapped.
“How so?” Castillo replied.
“Vladimir Vladimirovich is going to come after you. And Svetlana,” Pevsner said. “You ought to read a little Mao Zedong. He wrote that ‘the only real defense is active defense.’”
“Did he really?” Castillo said. “I wonder where he got that?”
“Probably from Sun-tzu,” Svetlana said seriously. “That’s where most people think Machiavelli got it.”
“Sun-tzu?” Castillo asked. “That’s the Chinaman who turned two hundred of the emperor’s concubines into soldiers and won the war with them? I’ve always been an admirer of his.”
“It was one hundred eighty concubines,” Svetlana said. “He got their attention by beheading the first of them who thought it was funny and giggled, and then he beheaded the second one who giggled, and then so on down the line until he came to one who understood that what was going on was no laughing matter.”
“Does anybody else think Sweaty’s trying to make a point?” Delchamps asked innocently.
“Let me make a point, several points,” Castillo said seriously. “One, as far as the intelligence community is concerned, I’m a pariah. So is everybody ever connected with the OOA. They hated us when we had the blessing of the President, and now hating us is politically correct. I’ll bet right now both the company and the FBI—hell, all the alphabet agencies—have a ‘locate but do not detain’ bulletin out on us. They’re not going to help us at all. Quite the opposite: If we start playing James Bond again, we’ll find ourselves counting paint flecks on the wall at the Florence maximum security prison in Colorado.
“And, if I have to say this, we’ll have less than zero help from anybody.”
“I think you’re wrong about that, Charley,” Barlow said. “We know that—”
“Let me finish, Tom,” Castillo said sharply. “Point two—probably the most important thing—is that any operation we might try to run would have to have a leader. And C. Castillo, Retired, cannot be that leader. What did President Johnson say? ‘I shall not seek, nor will I accept ...’”
“You’re wrong about that, too, Ace,” Delchamps said. “I for one won’t go—and I don’t think any of the others will—unless you’re running the show. And we have to go, since the option to that is sitting around waiting for some SVR hit squad to whack us. And, Romeo, what about the fair Juliet? You’re going to just sit around holding Sweaty’s hand waiting for the hit squad to whack her? Worse, drag her back to Mother Russia?”
“You don’t know how the others will feel,” Castillo said, more than a little lamely.
“Hypothesis: They’ll all go. Any questions?” Delchamps said.
“Count me in, Charley,” Alex Darby said.
“I wouldn’t know where to start,” Castillo said.
“I’m not sure if you’ve ever heard this before,” Barlow said. “But some people in our line of work think collecting as much intelligence as possible as quickly as possible is a good way to start.”
“And how would I go about doing that?”
“That’s what I started to say a moment ago,” Barlow said. “You were there, Charley, in that suite in the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas when those people as much as told us that the director of Central Intelligence is either one of them, or damn close to them.”
“I don’t remember that,” Castillo said.
“The man who was a Naval Academy graduate quoted verbatim to you the unkind things you said to the DCI, something about the agency being ‘a few very good people trying to stay afloat in a sea of left-wing bureaucrats.’ Who do you think told him about that?”
“I remember now,” Castillo said. “But I really had forgotten. That’s not much of a recommendation, is it?”
“Charley, I said I’d take your orders,” Delchamps said. “But ... You saw The Godfather?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Both Brando and the son—Pacino? De Niro? I never can keep them straight—had a consigliere. Think of me as Robert Duvall.”
“Think of us both as Robert Duvall,” Barlow said. “It was Al Pacino.”
“I don’t think so,” Delchamps said.
“Can either of my consiglieri suggest how I can get in touch with those people?”
“Well, if you hadn’t been gulping down all that Wild Turkey, I’d suggest you fly everybody to Carinhall in Alek’s chopper. But since you have been soaking up the booze, I guess we’ll have to drive over there and get on Casey’s radio.”
“No,” Castillo said. “There’s a Casey radio in the Aero Commander.”
“It fits?” Delchamps asked, surprised.
“Aloysius’s stuff is so miniaturized it’s unbelievable,” Castillo said. “But call your house, Alek, and tell your man to stand by. There’s no printer in the airplane. And you’d better call down to the airstrip and have them push the plane from the hangar.”
“Yes, sir, Podpolkovnik Castillo, sir,” Svetlana said, and saluted him. Then she saw the look on his face. “My darling, I love it when you’re in charge of things; it makes me feel comfortable and protected.”
“It makes me think Ace’s had too much to drink,” Delchamps said.
“Aloysius, you think the offer from those people is still open?” Castillo asked.
Castillo was sitting in the pilot’s seat of the Aero Commander. Delchamps was in the co-pilot’s seat. Svetlana was kneeling in the aisle and her brother was leaning over her. Pevsner, Duffy, and Darby were sitting in the cabin. Max and János were standing watchfully outside by the nose of the airplane.
“I told them you’d change your mind,” Casey said. “This thing sort of scares me, Charley. There was another beer keg of that stuff sitting on a road near the Mexican border in Texas this morning.”
“Another one?” Castillo asked.
“Another one. They left it where the Border Patrol couldn’t miss it. It’s been taken to Colonel Hamilton at Fort Detrick. We’re waiting to hear from him to tell us if it’s exactly the same thing.”
“Well, send me whatever intel you have, everything you can get your hands on. Everything, Aloysius.”
“Done.”
“What shape is the Gulfstream in?”
“Ready to go.”
“Tell Jake to take it to Cancún. They’ll expect him.”
“You don’t want him to pick you up down there?”
“No. I’ll come commercial.”
Svetlana was tugging at his sleeve.
She rubbed her thumb and forefinger together, mouthed Money, and then held up two fingers.
“Aloysius, I’m going to need some cash,” Castillo said.
“No problem. How much?”
“Will those people stand still for two hundred thousand?”
“Where do you want it?”
Castillo was now aware Svetlana was shaking her head in what looked like incredulity but could have been disgust.
“Send it to Otto Görner and tell him to put it in my personal account.”
“Otto will have it within the hour. Anything else?”
“That’s all I can think of.”
“Let me know,” Aloysius Casey said. “And thanks, Charley. Break it down.”
Castillo looked over his shoulder at Svetlana.
“You’re going to tell me what I did wrong, aren’t you, my love?”
“I meant two million dollars. Now those people are going to think they can hire you for an unimportant sum. The more people pay you, the more important they think you are.”
“Well, my love, you’ll have to excuse my naïveté. This is the first time I’ve signed on as a mercenary.”
“Well, my darling, you’d better get used to it.”
“What you’d better get used to, Ace,” Delchamps said, “is thinking of Sweaty as Robert Duvall.”
[THREE]
The Oval Office
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C.
1715 5 February 2007
It had proven impossible to gather together all the people the President had wanted for the meeting. The secretary of Defense was in Europe at a NATO meeting, and the commanding general of the Defense Intelligence Agency had gone with him. The secretary of Homeland Security was in Chicago.
When Charles M. Montvale, the director of National Intelligence, and Colonel J. Porter Hamilton, MC, USA, walked into the Oval Office, the secretary of State, Natalie Cohen; John Powell, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency; and Mark Schmidt, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, were sitting in chairs forming a rough semicircle facing the President’s desk.
So were Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Mason Andrews, standing in for the secretary, and General Allan B. Naylor, USA, commanding general of United States Central Command, who was representing both the secretary of Defense and the commanding general of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Presidential spokesman Jack “Porky” Parker sat at a small table—just large enough to hold his laptop computer—to one side of the President.
“I’m sorry to be late, Mr. President,” Montvale said.
“It’s my fault, Mr. President,” Hamilton said. “I was engaged in some laboratory processes I couldn’t interrupt.”
“Not even for the commander in chief?” Clendennen asked unpleasantly.
“If I had stopped doing what I was doing when Mr. Montvale asked me to, it would have caused a two- or three-hour loss of time,” Hamilton said. “I considered a fifteen- or twenty-minute delay in coming here the lesser of two evils.”
“Until just now, Colonel, I wasn’t aware that colonels were permitted to make decisions like that,” Clendennen said sarcastically.
Hamilton didn’t reply.
“What were you doing that you considered important enough to keep us all waiting for you to finish?” Clendennen asked.
“Actually, I had several processes working, Mr. President,” Hamilton, un-cowed, said. “The most important of them being the determination that Congo-X and Congo-Y were chemically—perhaps I should say ‘biologically’—identical—”
“What’s Congo-Y?” the President interrupted.
“I have so labeled the material from the Mexican border.”
“And are they? Identical?”
“That is my preliminary determination, Mr. President.”
“Colonel, two questions,” General Naylor announced.
“Sir?”
Clendennen didn’t like having his questioning of Hamilton interrupted by anyone, and had his mouth open to announce Excuse me, General, but I’m asking the questions when he changed his mind.
Clendennen liked General Naylor, and had been pleased when he had shown up to stand in for the secretary of the Defense and Defense Intelligence Agency general. He knew he could always believe what Naylor told him. This was not true of the people he was standing in for: The secretary of Defense had assured President Clendennen that the infernal laboratory in the Congo had first been completely reduced to pebbles and then incinerated. Clendennen had never heard the DIA general mouth an unqualified statement.
“They’re related, obviously,” Naylor began. “First, do you know with reasonable certainty who developed this terrible substance? And, second, how would you say they intend to use it against us?”
“Sir, I have nothing to support this legally or scientifically, but something tells me the origins of this substance go back at least to World War Two and perhaps earlier than that.”
“Go down that road,” Clendennen ordered.
“During the Second World War, sir, both the Germans and the Japanese experimented with materials somewhat similar to Congo-X. That is to say, biological material that could be used as a weapon. The Japanese tested it in China on the civilian population and the Germans on concentration camp inmates.”
“And did it work?” the President asked.
“All we have is anecdotal, Mr. President,” Hamilton said. “There is a great deal of that, and all of it suggests that it was effective. There is strong reason to believe material similar to this was tested on American prisoners of war by the Japanese ...”
“Do we know that, or don’t we?” the President asked impatiently.
“A number of POWs were executed by the Japanese immediately after Hiroshima. Their bodies were cremated and the ashes disposed of at sea,” Naylor said.
“Nice people,” the President said.
“And there is further evidence, Mr. President, that the Chinese sent several hundred American POWs captured in the early days of the Korean war to Czechoslovakia, where they were subjected to biological material apparently similar to something like this. Again, no proof. We know the prisoners were sent to Czechoslovakia. But no bodies, not one, were ever recovered. We still have Graves Registration people looking.”
“Why don’t we know more about the chemicals, about whatever was used on the prisoners?”
“At the time, Mr. President,” Naylor said, “the greatest threat was perceived to be the possibility the Russians would get their hands on German science vis-à-vis a nuclear weapon and rocketry. We were quite successful in doing so, but the effort necessary was at the expense of looking more deeply into what the Germans had been doing with biological weapons.
“In the Pacific, actually, we acquired what anecdotal information we have about the executed and cremated POWs primarily because MacArthur was passionately determined to locate, try, and hang as quickly as possible those Japanese officers responsible for the atrocities committed against our prisoners. They were, so to speak, just one more atrocity.”
The President considered that for a moment.
“So, then what is your theory about this, Colonel Hamilton?” he asked.
Hamilton began: “It’s pure conjecture, Mr. President—”
“I thought it might be,” the President interrupted sarcastically, and gestured for Hamilton to continue.
Hamilton ignored the interruption and went on: “It is possible that, at the end of World War Two, the Russians came into possession of a substance much like Congo-X. They might even have acquired it from the Japanese; there was an interchange of technical information.
“They very likely acquired at the same time the German scientists working with this material, much as we took over Wernher von Braun, his rocket scientists, and the rockets themselves.
“If this is true—and even if it is not, and Russian scientists alone worked with it—it had to have become immediately apparent to them how incredibly dangerous it is.”
“Why is it so ‘incredibly dangerous’?” the President interrupted yet again.
Hamilton looked at Clendennen a long moment, then carefully said: “With respect, Mr. President, I believe I’m repeating myself, but: The Congo-X in my laboratory, when placed under certain conditions of temperature and humidity, gives off microscopic particles—airborne—which when inhaled into the lung of a warm-blooded mammal will, in a matter of days, begin to consume the flesh of the lung. Meanwhile, the infected body will also be giving off—breathing back into the air—these contaminated, infectious particles before the host has any indication that he’s been infected.
“When I was in the Congo and saw the cadavers of animals and humans who had died of this infestation, I told the President—our late President—that the Fish Farm, should there be an accident, had the potential of becoming a greater risk to mankind than the nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl had posed.”
“That’s pretty strong, isn’t it, Colonel?” the President asked.
“Now that I have some idea of the danger, Mr. President,” Hamilton said, “that was a massive understatement.”
“Is there a way to kill this material?” Naylor asked.
“I’ve had some success with incineration at temperatures over one thousand degrees centigrade,” Hamilton said, looked at the President, and added: “That’s about two thousand degrees Fahrenheit, Mr. President.”
“I seem to recall the secretary of Defense telling me that the attack produced that kind of heat,” the President said.
“Then where did the two separate packages of Congo-X come from?” Secretary of State Natalie Cohen asked.
“There’re only two possibilities,” Ambassador Montvale said. “The attack was not successful; everything was not incinerated and someone—I suspect the Russians—went in there and picked up what was missed. Or, the Russians all along had a stock of this stuff in Russia and that’s what they’re sending us.”
“Why? What do they want?” Cohen asked.
“We’re not even sure it’s the Russians, are we?” Mark Schmidt, the director of the FBI, asked.
“Are we, Mr. Director of National Intelligence?” the President asked. “Are we sure who’s been sending us the Congo-X?”
“Not at this time, Mr. President,” Montvale replied.
“Have we the capability of sending someone into the Congo?” Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Mason Andrew asked. “To do, in the greatest secrecy—what do they call it?—‘damage assessment’?”
“Not anymore,” Natalie Cohen said.
There was a long silence.
“Madam Secretary,” the President asked finally, icily, “would I be wrong to think that you had a certain Colonel Costello in mind when you said that?”
She met his eyes.
“I had Lieutenant Colonel Carlos Castillo in mind, yes, sir,” she said. “I was thinking that since he managed to successfully infiltrate Colonel Hamilton into the Congo and, more importantly, exfiltrate him—”
“Weren’t you listening, Madam Secretary, when I said that in this administration there will be no private bands of special operators? I thought I had made that perfectly clear. Castillo and his men have been dispersed. He was ordered by my predecessor to—the phrase he used was ‘fall off the face of the earth, never to be seen again.’ I never want to hear his name mentioned again, much less to see him. Is everybody clear on that, absolutely clear?”
“Yes, Mr. President,” Secretary Cohen said.
There was a murmur as everyone responded at once: “Yes, sir.” “Yes, Mr. President.” “Absolutely clear, Mr. President.”
“Mr. President, there may be a problem in that area,” Porky Parker said.
The President looked at him in surprise, perhaps even shock. The President thought he had made it absolutely clear to Parker that the spokesman’s role in meetings like this was to listen, period.
“What did you say, Jack?” the President asked softly.
“Mr. President, Roscoe Danton of The Washington Times-Post is looking for Colonel Castillo.”
“How do you know that?”
“He came to me, sir.”
“And what did you tell him?”
“I told him I had no idea where he was,” Parker said.
“Charles?”
“Sir?” Montvale replied.
“Where is Castillo?”
“I don’t know, Mr. President.”
“I told you the next time I asked that question, I would expect an answer.”
“I’m working on it, Mr. President, but so far without any results.”
“Wonderful! It’s so nice to know that whenever I want to know something, all I have to do is ask my director of National Intelligence!”
There was another thirty-second silence, and then the President went on: “Far be it from me to try to tell the director of National Intelligence how to do his job, but I have just had this probably useless thought: If Roscoe Danton is looking for Colonel Castillo, perhaps he has an idea where he is. Has anyone thought of that? Where’s Danton?”
There was no reply.
“Find out for me, Charles, will you, please?”
“I’ll get right on it, Mr. President,” Montvale said.
[FOUR]
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence
Eisenhower Executive Office Building
17th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C.
1805 5 February 2007
“I can’t think of anything else to do, can you?” Ambassador Montvale asked Truman C. Ellsworth, his executive assistant.
When Ellsworth had called The Washington Times-Post for Roscoe J. Danton, they refused to tell him where he was. They said they would contact Danton and tell him Ambassador Montvale wanted to speak with him. Ellsworth finally called the publisher, Bradley Benjamin III, and told him what had happened, and asked for his help. Mr. Benjamin told him that what he had already been offered was all he was going to get, and please give Ambassador Montvale his best regards.
Since both Truman C. Ellsworth and Charles M. Montvale would swear—because they believed it—that they were incapable of letting anger, or a bruised ego, interfere in the slightest with their judgment, or the execution of their offices, what happened next was attributed to the fervor with which they chose to meet the President’s request to locate Mr. Roscoe J. Danton.
The National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland, was directed as the highest priority to acquire and relay to the ambassador’s office any traffic by telephone, or over the Internet, containing Mr. Danton’s name.
The Department of Homeland Security was directed to search the flight manifests of every passenger airliner taking off from either Reagan International Airport or Dulles International Airport during the past forty-eight hours for the name of Roscoe J. Danton, and if found to immediately report his destination and time of arrival thereat.
The Secret Service was ordered to obtain the residential address of Mr. Roscoe J. Danton and to place such premises under around-the-clock surveillance and to immediately report any sighting of Mr. Danton. They were further ordered to send agents to the National Press Club to see if any clue to his whereabouts could be obtained.
The cooperation of the FBI was sought and obtained to put out an immediate “locate but do not detain” bulletin on Mr. Danton.
“I just had an idea,” Mr. Ellsworth said when asked if he could think of anything else that could be done.
He told the White House operator get The Washington Times-Post for him again, this time the Corporate Travel department.
Montvale’s eyebrows rose, but he didn’t comment.
“Hello, Corporate Travel?” Ellsworth then said. “Yes, hi. Brad Benjamin just told me you would know where I can find Roscoe Danton.”
Not sixty seconds after that, he said, “Got it. Thank you,” hung up the phone, and turned to Ambassador Montvale and reported, “Danton went to Buenos Aires. They made a reservation for him at the Marriott Plaza.”
“The Marriott Plaza?” Montvale replied, obviously surprised.
“That’s what they told me. You want me to put in a call to our ambassador?”
“I wouldn’t believe that sonofabitch if he told me what day it is.”
“The CIA station chief, then?”
“Get me John Powell. I’ll have the DCI call the station chief and tell him I’ll be calling.”
Ellsworth told the White House operator to connect the director of National Intelligence with the director of Central Intelligence on a secure line and then pushed the LOUDSPEAKER button and handed the receiver to Montvale.
“Jack, Charles M. Montvale. I want you to give me the name of the station chief in Buenos Aires, and something about him, and then call him and tell him I’ll be calling on an errand for the President.”
“Hang on a second, Charles,” Powell replied.
He came back on the line ninety seconds later.
“Got a little problem, Charles. We had a really good man there, Alex Darby, but he went out the door with Castillo. A kid just out of The Farm has been filling in for Darby, until Bob Lowe, another good man, can clear his desk in Mexico City. I don’t know if Lowe made it down there yet.”
“Well, please call the kid, and tell him I’ll be calling.”
“Clendennen.”
“Charles M. Montvale, Mr. President. I’ve located Mr. Danton. He’s in the Marriott Plaza Hotel in Buenos Aires.”
“That would suggest he knows where Colonel Castillo is, wouldn’t you say?”
“That’s a strong possibility, Mr. President.”
“I presume your next call will be to the ambassador down there.”
“I was thinking of calling the CIA station chief, Mr. President.”
“Okay, your call. That might be best, now that I think of it.”
“There’s a small problem there, Mr. President. The acting station chief is a young man just out of agency training. John Powell just told me that the man he’s sending down there to replace the former station chief, who, sir, fell off the face of the earth with Castillo, has not reported for duty.”
“So what are you planning to do?”
“I thought I would send Truman Ellsworth down there, sir. Just as soon as he can get to Andrews.”
“I dislike micromanagement, Charles, as you know. But if I were in your shoes, I would go down there myself. Take What’s-his-name with you if you like.”
“Yes, sir. That’s probably the right thing to do.”
“It would be better if someone of your stature were the person to suggest to Costello that he would be ill-advised to get anywhere near our little problem. You understand me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Keep me advised,” President Clendennen said, and Montvale heard the click that signaled the commander in chief had terminated the call.
“I’ll call Andrews and have the plane ready,” Truman Ellsworth said.
Their presidential mission began in a two-GMC-Yukon convoy from the Executive Office Building. The first Secret-Service-agent-driven, black-tinted-window Yukon held the driver; the two Secret Service agents assigned to protect Montvale; and the two assigned to protect Ellsworth. The second Yukon carried Montvale and Ellsworth and everyone’s luggage.
On the way to Andrews Air Force Base, Montvale and Ellsworth consoled themselves for having to travel all the way down to Argentina by agreeing that it wouldn’t be that bad a trip. The C-37A—the Air Force designation for the Gulfstream V—on which they would fly was just about as nice an airplane as airplanes came.
It had a range greater than the 5,100-odd miles between Washington and Buenos Aires, and could cruise nonstop at Mach 0.80, or a little faster than five hundred miles per hour. There was room for eight passengers, which meant that Montvale and Ellsworth—rank hath its privileges—could make the most of the journey spread out on bed-size couches. Or they could sit up on the couches and have a drink or two from the portable bar in one of the Secret Service agent’s luggage.
And they were sure to get one of the two Gulfstream Vs at Andrews: Ellsworth had made a point of telling the commanding officer of the presidential flight detachment that he and Montvale were traveling at the direct personal order of President Clendennen.
That, however, did not come to pass.
At Andrews, they learned that one of the two Gulfstream V jets had carried Mrs. Sue-Ellen Clendennen to Montgomery, Alabama, where the First Lady’s mother was sick in hospital.
Both Montvale and Ellsworth habitually took a look at the reports of the presidential security detail. They therefore knew the President’s mother-in-law was not in a hospital per se but rather an “assisted-living facility” and that her being sick therein was a sort of code which meant the old lady had once again eluded her caretakers and acquired a stock of intoxicants.
That was moot. They knew they were outranked by the First Lady. And the second Gulfstream V at Andrews was not available to them either, as it was being held for possible use by someone else who outranked them, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, who could be counted upon to throw a female fit of monumental proportions if a Gulfstream V was not immediately available to take her to her home in Palm Beach if she suddenly felt the urge to go there.
That left only a C-20A—what the Air Force called the Gulfstream III—from the half-dozen kept by the Air Force for VIP transport at Andrews for their flight to Buenos Aires. While just about as fast as a C-37A, the C-20A is a somewhat smaller aircraft with a maximum range of about thirty-seven hundred miles. That meant that not only was a fuel stop necessary en route to Buenos Aires, but that the couches on which Montvale and Ellsworth would attempt to sleep were neither as wide nor as comfortable as those on the Gulfstream V would have been.
They had finally gotten off the ground at Andrews just before midnight. Flight time was a few minutes under twelve hours. The fuel stop added another hour and forty-five minutes. There was a one-hour difference between time in Washington and in Buenos Aires. They would arrive, if there were no problems, at Jorge Newbery Airport in Buenos Aires at about one in the afternoon.