W. E. B. Griffin - Presidential Agent 07 (19 page)

“Yes, ma’am. It’s always a pleasure to see you,” Castillo said.

She took a quick look around the room and smiled at the few people she knew.

“Let me get right to the point, Charley,” she said. “You’re not thinking of going out to Arlington, are you?”

“I’m going,” Castillo said, and gestured around the suite. “We’re all going.”

“That wouldn’t be a wise thing to do, Charley,” she said. “Have you considered that?”

“Are you and Vice President Montvale here to try to talk me out of going to my friend Mr. Salazar’s interment?”

“Is there somewhere we can speak privately, Charley?” she asked.

He indicated the door to what turned out to be, when she and Montvale and Castillo walked through it, the master bedroom.

She closed the door, then turned to the men and said, “What is said in here goes no further. Agreed?”

Both men nodded.

“I understand you’re aware, Charley, of the meeting in which it became apparent that the President thinks we have been engaged in a coup d’état that would see Charles in the Oval Office?”

Castillo nodded.

“The fact that that’s absolutely untrue is really irrelevant; that’s what the President believes, and it’s what we have to deal with. Understood?”

Castillo nodded again.

“There was another meeting, yesterday, in the Situation Room that”—she glanced at Montvale—“with the Vice President’s permission, I’d like to tell you about. All right, Charles?”

Montvale hesitated a moment and then nodded.

The secretary picked up on the hesitation, and said, “Would you prefer to tell him about it?”

“You tell him,” Montvale said. “I don’t think he trusts me.”

“True,” Castillo said.

“Well, you’d better learn to trust him, Charley,” Cohen said. “If we don’t stick together, the President is going to take us down one by one. He’s already gotten rid of John David Parker. And what is Parker doing here?”

“As of a few minutes ago, he’s director of public relations of the LCBF Corporation,” Castillo said.

“What the hell is that all about?” Montvale asked.

“Keeping our names out of the newspapers and our faces off Wolf News. You were about to tell me about the meeting, Madam Secretary.”

“Tell me if I leave anything out, would you, please, Charles?”

She then began to deliver a report of who had said what to whom, which ultimately lasted ten minutes.

About a minute into it, Castillo realized it was almost a verbatim report of the meeting, and moments after that,
“Almost”?

Finally, she finished and looked at Montvale.

“Did I leave anything out?” she asked.

“What kind of a tie was the President wearing?” Castillo asked.

Secretary Cohen hesitated just a moment, looked confused, and then replied, “Dark blue, with what looked like crests on it. What’s that got to do with anything?”

“I’m awed, ma’am, with your powers of total recall,” Castillo said.

“Don’t be, Charley. I was born this way.” She paused. “It’s the same sort of thing you have with languages. An aberration. You speak what—fourteen?—languages. And I can recall things in great detail. It’s a gift, so it’s nothing to be proud of. But it does give us a leg up in our professions, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, ma’am, I’ve found that.”

“Do you understand now why I think it would be unwise for you to go to Arlington? He’d see you. He hates you—he thinks you’re involved in this coup d’état fantasy of his, among other things, such as you wanting my job—and seeing you there would likely set him off. The one thing none of us should do now is do anything to make him lose control.”

“I want to be secretary of State?” Castillo said.

Secretary of State Cohen made a face, then nodded gently.

“Unbelievable. But what’s not unbelievable is that I’m going to Mr. Salazar’s interment. Everybody out there is going to it. I’m sorry if that causes any problems, ma’am.”

“For Christ’s sake, Castillo, didn’t you hear what she said?” Vice President Montvale snapped.

“I’m sure you have your reasons,” Secretary Cohen said.

“To hell with his reasons,” Montvale exploded. “He’s not going out there! I’ll have the Secret Service confine him and the rest of them in the suite until the interment’s over.”

“If you do that, Mr. Vice President,” Castillo said calmly, “it will be on Wolf News and on the front page of the
Times-Post
. You did see Roscoe Danton out there, didn’t you?”

“Don’t you threaten me, you arrogant sonofabitch! I’m the Vice President of the United States.”

“Get your temper under control, Charles,” Natalie Cohen said calmly. “Charley, why is this so important to you?”

“Yesterday, Mrs. Salazar telephoned me—”

“How the hell did she know where to find you?” Montvale demanded.

Castillo ignored Montvale.

“If I may continue, Madam Secretary?” he asked.

“Please.”

“I’ll answer Mr. Montvale’s question for your background, ma’am. Special Operations, Special Forces generally, and especially Delta Force and Gray Fox—and just about everybody outside who is or has been one or the other or both—is like a family. We take care of each other; we know how to find each other when there is a problem.”

“And Mrs. Salazar had a problem?” Secretary Cohen asked. “She didn’t want her husband interred in Arlington?”

Castillo nodded.

“She told me that General Naylor had telephoned her—and now I know where that order came from—and fed her a line about the great honor it was for Danny to be interred in Arlington, with the President himself attending.

“When she told him thank you but no, thank you—that she wanted Danny buried in San Antonio, where she could visit and tend his grave—Naylor told her that the arrangements had been made, that they were sending a plane to Bragg to pick up her and the kids, and that the President would be embarrassed if she refused his kind offer to plant Danny in Arlington. So she went along.

“But after she thought it over, she went to see General McNab. General McNab told her—out of school; he’s part of the family I mentioned—that he had been ordered by General Naylor not to talk to her about it, and also, incidentally, that he had been ordered to stay away from Arlington himself.”

“And then that sonofabitch told her to call you, right?” Montvale said.

“No, he didn’t,” Castillo said evenly. “And that was the last question you get to ask, Mr. Montvale. If you open your mouth again, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“You can’t do that!” Montvale flared.

“It’s his apartment, Charles,” Secretary Cohen said. “He has the right to ask you to leave.”

“And if you’re thinking about your Secret Service guys,” Castillo added, “a scrap between them and the guys outside would be very interesting. It would also make a hell of a story for Wolf News: ‘Vice President’s Protection Detail Gets Their Ass Kicked in Lobby of Mayflower.’ ”

Cohen said: “All right, Charley. Enough. So what happened when Mrs. Salazar called you?”

“Well, my first reaction to what she told me was to call my beloved Uncle Allan and tell him to butt the hell out of something that was none of his business. But then calm reason prevailed . . .”

The Vice President snorted.

“. . . I realized that as much as I would love to embarrass the sonofabitch . . .”

“You’re speaking of the President, Charley,” Cohen said.

“. . . who tried to turn me over to the SVR.”

He met her eyes for a long moment, and then went on: “I realized there would be unacceptable collateral damage to Maria Salazar and their kids. They didn’t need microphones being shoved in their faces, which would have happened if I told her she didn’t have to go along with the . . .
the President’s
using Danny’s funeral to get himself reelected. So I told her it was indeed an honor to be buried in Arlington, as it’s for national heroes. And I told her I’d see her at the interment.

“As I was telling her this, I remembered it’s also an honor to be buried in the national cemetery in San Antone. My father’s buried there. And then I wondered if anyone had thought to invite Colonel Ferris’s wife to the interment. I knew she would want to be there.

“So I called her, and she hadn’t been invited.

“So I spent the next hour or so on the telephone, setting things up. Jake Torine and Dick Miller, who are almost as pissed about this as I am, have been flying around the country picking up people who want—and have every right—to watch Danny get his military funeral. The guys—and several women—are scattered between here and the Willard.

“Mrs. Ferris and their kids are also in the Willard, about to get in the limousine that will take them out to Arlington. After the interment, they’ll come here. We’re going to have a few drinks, and then, later, dinner.

“So, Madam Secretary, as much as I really hate to tell you no to anything you ask of me, I’m going to be at Arlington when Danny’s buried.”

“I’ll have you stopped at the gate to Arlington,” Montvale said.

“Shut up, Charles,” Secretary Cohen said. She looked thoughtful for a moment, then said, “I think it’s possible that Mr. McCarthy may have considered the possibility that there are some people the President would rather not come to Arlington . . .”

“That would be another great story for Wolf News and
The Washington Times-Post
,” Castillo said. “‘Brawl Mars Funeral at Gate to Arlington.’ Some enterprising journalist might even dig into what it was all about.”

“How are you going to move your friends out there?” she asked.

“We have four stretch limousines,” Castillo replied. “In case some other friends of Danny show up out there and need a ride back here.”

“And you’re paying for all this?” she asked. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked that.”

“The LCBF Corporation is paying for everything. We just turned a tidy profit selling an airplane we got for a bargain to the CIA for a lot of money.”

She smiled at him.

“May I ask you a question I probably shouldn’t ask?” Castillo asked.

She nodded.

“What ever happened to that Mexican police Black Hawk that was ‘found at sea’ and then unloaded on the dock at Norfolk? Dare I hope you showed it to the Mexican ambassador and asked him how he thought it got there?”

She shook her head.

“You know I couldn’t do anything like that, Charley,” she said.

“So what happened to it?”

“That’s not any of your business, and you know it.”

“But you’re going to tell me anyway, right? Is it still there?”

“Frank Lammelle wanted it for the CIA. I okayed it, but I don’t know whether he’s done anything about it. It’s probably still covered up on the dock or in a hangar somewhere.” She paused, then asked, “Charley, did you ever consider the consequences if you had been caught stealing that helicopter from the Mexican police?”

“I didn’t steal it. Didn’t Frank tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“That the Mexicans reported that the helicopter had crashed—total loss—in their unrelenting war against the drug trade?”

“No,” she said simply. “Then . . . how was it ‘found at sea’?”

“You mean how did I get it?”

She nodded.

“I
bought
it from an officer of the Policía Federal. I think he thought I was in the drug trade and was going to use it to move drugs around.” He paused. “That’s the question I hoped you were going to ask the Mexican ambassador. ‘I thought you told us this helicopter had been totally destroyed. How do you explain its miraculous resurrection?’ ”

“I didn’t know anything about how you acquired that helicopter,” she said. “But even if I had—what I am doing is trying to build better relations with Mexico—I wouldn’t have confronted him with something like that.” She thought for a moment, then said, “Why in the world did you buy it?”

“I needed it to go after the Congo-X and the Tupelov,” Castillo said matter-of-factly.

“I thought you used Special Operations helicopters for that,” Montvale said.

Castillo gave him a dirty look, then saw on Cohen’s face that she was worried he was going to throw Montvale out. He decided that would be nonproductive.

“I did. But Jake Torine and I flew the Mexican bird onto the island.”

“You and Torine? Why?” Cohen asked.

“Because on an assault like that, the lead bird generally takes fire. My original idea, presuming that happened, was just to leave it on the island, which would then have had Hugo Chavez angrily asking the Mexicans how come one of their Policía Federal choppers was on his island.”

“Devious,” Montvale said admiringly.

“But then the Night Stalkers suppressed the antiaircraft, and the Mexican bird didn’t get hurt, so I decided to fly it back out to the
Bataan
, and told her captain to take it to Norfolk.”

“Where I would ask the Mexican ambassador to the U.S., ‘I thought you reported this aircraft was totally destroyed’?” Cohen asked.

Castillo looked at her, smiled, and nodded.

“You’re right, Charles, he is devious. Maybe he should have been a diplomat, or a politician.”

“Devious and dangerous,” Montvale said, smiling.

What happened?
Castillo thought.
Have we kissed and made up?

“Turning to the problem at hand,” Secretary Cohen said, “which is that Charley cannot be dissuaded from going out to Arlington with all his friends, how do we deal with that?”