W. E. B. Griffin - Presidential Agent 07 (31 page)

“Castillo has a well-earned reputation for leaving bodies all over.”

“Do you really care how many SVR bodies or drug cartel bodies Castillo leaves anywhere?”

Schmidt considered the question for a long moment, as if it confused him, and then he said: “Frank, when I consider the option of Montvale taking over, I have to admit that I don’t.”

 

 

Castillo, Sweaty, Bradley, Tom Barlow, Kiril Koshkov, and Stefan Koussevitzky were sitting around an enormous round table with a wood fire burning in its center when a white-jacketed bellman pointed them out to the four men he’d just brought from the airport.

They were Colonel Jacob Torine, U.S. Air Force (Retired); Major Richard Miller, U.S. Army (Retired); former Captain Richard Spark-man, U.S. Air Force; and CWO5 Colin Leverette, U.S. Army (Retired).

Castillo stood and addressed Torine: “Good afternoon, Colonel, sir. I trust the colonel had a nice flight?”

Torine eyed him suspiciously.

“Why am I afraid of what comes next?” Torine asked, then went to Svetlana and kissed her cheek.

“I believe the colonel knows Colonel Berezovsky,” Castillo went on. “And he may remember Major Koussevitzky . . .”

“Indeed, I do,” Torine said. “How’s the leg, Major?”

“It only hurts when I move, Colonel,” Koussevitzky replied. “Good to see you again, sir.”

“And this is Kiril Koshkov, late captain of the Spetsnaz version of the Night Stalkers,” Castillo went on. “Kiril, Stefan, these distinguished warriors are Colonel Jacob Torine, Captain Richard Spark-man, and Mr. Colin Leverette.”

The men shook hands.

“I’m afraid to ask,” Torine said, “but why are we being so military?”

Max walked to Torine, sat beside him on his haunches, and thrust his paw at Dick Miller until he took it.

“Max, I hate to tell you this,” Miller said, “but as I came through the door there was a sign in at least four languages that says NO DOGS.”

“Not a problem. Max knows the owner,” Castillo said.

“You were telling me, Colonel,” Torine said, “why we are being so military.”

“I spent the morning playing general,” Castillo said. “I gave a PowerPoint presentation of a staff study that I am forced, in all modesty, to admit was brilliant.”

Svetlana shook her head in resignation.

“How so?” Torine asked, smiling.

“Don’t shake your head at me, Podpolkovnik Alekseeva,” Castillo said. “Did I, or didn’t I, convince Ivan the Terrible Junior that his plans for this problem wouldn’t solve it?”

“What were his plans?” Torine asked.

“They did have, I’ll admit, the advantage of simplicity,” Castillo said. “What he wanted to do was whack anyone who he suspected was SVR. I finally managed to convince him that Vladimir Vladimirovich has more SVR operators than we have bullets, and that a wiser, less violent, solution was called for.”

“Which is?” Torine asked, smiling as he beckoned to a waiter.

“I’m still working on that,” Castillo said. “Little problems keep popping up.”

“You managed to talk Pevsner out of whacking everybody in sight and letting God sort it out,” Leverette asked, incredulously, “without having a Plan B?”

“I was impressed,” Tom Barlow said. “That’s just what he did. I didn’t think he was going to get away with it.”

Castillo smiled at Svetlana, and said, “Pay attention to your big brother, Sweaty.”

“What makes either of you think you really got away with it?” Sweaty replied.

“No plans at all, Charley?” Leverette asked.

“More questions than plans,” Castillo said.

He pointed at the laptop in front of Bradley.

“Lester, show Uncle Remus, Uncle Jake, and Gimpy the letter that the President wants President Martinez to send to him.”

The three bent over the laptop and read the letter.

“Where’d you get this?” Torine asked.

“What is it?” Miller asked.

“That’s the letter the President ordered Natalie Cohen to give to Ambassador McCann, so that McCann can go to President Martinez with it, and have Martinez send it back. She sent it to Lammelle, and he sent it to me.”

“So?” Torine said. “He wants to swap the guy doing time in Florence for Ferris. We knew that.”

“Uncle Remus has that pained look on his face that shows he’s thinking,” Castillo said. “That, or he smells a rat.”

“Both,” Leverette said.

“Go on.”

“The President wrote this himself?” Leverette asked.

“The President told Natalie that Clemens McCarthy wrote it,” Castillo said. “He told Natalie he thought it was brilliant.”

“‘. . . your Marshals would transport him to the Oaxaca State Prison, where they would turn him over to prison authorities,’” Leverette quoted.

“I, too, found that interesting.”

“I don’t understand,” Torine said.

Castillo nodded, then said: “Question one: Why would the President be specific about where Abrego was to go to be exchanged? Question two: Why the Oaxaca State Prison? It’s way south, not near the U.S. border. There must be a state prison near our border.”

“Oaxaca is closer to Venezuela?” Uncle Remus asked.

“That may—probably does—have something to do with it. I have no idea what, but there is a reason.”

“You just said McCarthy wrote the letter,” Miller said.

“Same questions,” Castillo said.

“Where are you going with this?”

“I don’t know; I just started thinking about it,” Castillo said. “Okay, here goes. A lot of people are beginning to realize that Clendennen is losing, or has lost, his marbles. That’s what everybody—including me—thought when we heard his paranoid suspicions that we were staging a coup d’état to get him out of the Oval Office, and Montvale in.

“There’s considerable proof that he’s not playing with a full deck. For example, he staged that business at Langley and fired Porky Parker for disloyalty. Then he went bananas because we walked out on his speech. And then he started this swap-Abrego-for-Ferris business.”

“But?” Leverette asked.

“The possibility exists that he’s not being paranoid about a coup d’état.”

“Jesus Christ!” Miller said.

“Who would be behind that, Charley?” Torine asked dubiously, and then had an additional thought and incredulously asked, “Montvale?”

Castillo nodded.

Miller said, “Jesus Christ! Are you serious, Charley?”

“I may be wrong. I hope I am wrong. But, yeah, the more I think about it, the more serious I become.”

“How long have you had this dangerous idea?” Miller asked.

“When I smelled something wrong in that letter—where the President wanted Martinez to tell him where he wanted Abrego to be sent. What the hell is that all about?”

“He didn’t,” Torine argued. “McCarthy wrote that letter.”

“Even worse,” Castillo said. “How could McCarthy know about the Oaxaca State Prison? He’s been on the job only a couple of days.”

“So where did he get it?”

“Supervisory Secret Service Agent Mulligan probably knew about it.”

“You’re suggesting Mulligan had a hand in writing that letter,” Leverette said.

“Yeah, I am. When Montvale was director of National Intelligence, he had the secretary of Homeland Security in his pocket. And the Secret Service is part of Homeland Security. I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to wonder if he had this Mulligan character keeping an eye on Clendennen for him. And if Mulligan did slip Oaxaca State Prison into that letter—why would he do that unless Montvale told him to?”

“Why, Charley?” Torine asked.

“Try this scenario on for size,” Castillo said. “Abrego is taken to this prison in the middle of nowhere in Mexico by U.S. Marshals. I don’t know whether they’re planning to exchange him for Ferris or ‘allow him to escape.’ It doesn’t matter, the plan blows up. Abrego gets away and Ferris is whacked.

“They find him with his head cut off, or hanging from a bridge overpass in Acapulco, or both. The press starts to run down the story. The letter from Martinez is leaked—” He paused in thought, then went on, “Going off on a tangent, Clendennen is pushed over the edge at this point. He publicly accuses Crenshaw and Cohen of betraying him. Since they haven’t betrayed him, they deny it. Clendennen starts looking like a lunatic.

“By this point, the press is hot on the story. They learn from the Bureau of Prisons that they were ordered by the attorney general to take Abrego from Florence to the Oaxaca State Prison—something that is against long-standing U.S. policy and has never been done. The attorney general says Clendennen ordered it over his objections and that Natalie Cohen not only was there when he did it, but was also given a letter by him—this letter—which set up the whole thing.

“At this point, either Clendennen resigns or impeachment proceedings start in the Congress, or—and I think this is what Montvale is shooting for—Clendennen really starts frothing at the mouth, which will cause whatever authorities make decisions like this—the Cabinet?—to conclude that his mental condition is such that he cannot discharge his duties as POTUS, whereupon . . .”

Jake Torine finished: “Whereupon the Vice President steps forward and says he is forced to assume the President’s responsibilities until such time as the poor man recovers his faculties.”

“And what happens then?” Leverette asked.

“Uncle Remus, we can’t let it get that far,” Castillo said.

“So how do we stop it?” Leverette asked.

“We follow that military adage of ‘When you don’t know what to do, doing anything is better than doing nothing.’”

“Are you going to translate that, Charley?” Leverette asked.

“All I can think of is snatching Ferris or Abrego or both of them, before, during, or after the exchange, escape, or whatever at Oaxaca State Prison and then wait to see who—beside the Mexicans—comes out of the woodwork looking for them.”

“And how are you going to do that?” Torine asked.

“And how does all this tie in with your scenario that the whole Ferris business is an SVR plot to get you and the other Russians?” Leverette added.

“‘The other Russians’?” Castillo parroted sarcastically.

“You know what I mean,” Leverette said.

“Uncle Remus, I don’t know how it fits in. I don’t even know if the SVR is really after me and the other Russians. And I can’t explain the business about the Oaxaca State Prison. Truth to tell, I’m flying blind.”

“Okay,” Leverette said. “So now that we know that, what’s the plan?”

Torine laughed.

Castillo then said, “I recently ran into an old acquaintance, Juan Carlos Pena,
el jefe
of the Policía Federal for the province of Oaxaca. He came to Hacienda Santa Maria—the grapefruit farm—and out of the goodness of his heart told me to get the hell out of Dodge before I got hurt. These drug people, Juan Carlos told me, are very dangerous.”

“And you suspect he might be pals with them?” Leverette asked.

“That thought has run through my mind,” Castillo said. “I think I’d better have another talk with him.”

“A nice talk? Or the other kind?” Leverette asked.

Castillo didn’t reply directly. He instead said, “What I hope I can do is get Juan Carlos, for auld lang syne, to (a) tell me all he knows about the involvement of the Venezuelans—which means the SVR—in this, and (b) keep me up to date on the plans for Señor Abrego at the Oaxaca State Prison.”

“That’s a tall order, Charley,” Torine said.

“Yeah, I know.”

“Okay,” Leverette said. “Let’s say that works. You know that Abrego is going to be at the prison at a certain time. Then what?”

“Then I offer whoever was going to let Abrego go more money than the Venezuelans are offering, and grab him. And/or grab Ferris, when they take him to Oaxaca State Prison.”

“And there you are, near this prison in the middle of nowhere, with either or both of them,” Leverette said. “What are you going to do with them?”

“Load them on my Black Hawk,” Castillo said.

Leverette looked askance at Castillo. “Before I ask you where you’re going to take them in your Black Hawk, where in hell are you going to get a Black Hawk?”

“I already have a Black Hawk,” Castillo said. “By now . . . or certainly by tomorrow . . . it will be at Martindale Army Airfield at Fort Sam.”

“The one you stole from the Mexican cops?” Leverette asked.

“The one I
bought
from the Mexican cops,” Castillo said. “Natalie Cohen didn’t want to embarrass the Mexican ambassador by asking him to explain its miraculous resurrection from the total destruction he said it suffered in the war against the drug cartels—complete with its weaponry and Policía Federal markings intact—so she gave it to Lammelle and asked him to get rid of it. While making up his mind about the best way to go about it, he had it trucked from Norfolk to Fort Sam for storage.”

“Did he just do that, or did you ask him to?” Torine asked.

“I asked him.”

“Then his neck is on the line,” Torine said.

“All of our necks are going to be on the line with this, Jake,” Castillo said. “I’m not going to line everybody up and ask for volunteers to take one step forward, but I’ll understand if—”

“Come on, Charley,” Dick Miller interjected. “You damn well know better than that.”

Castillo met his eyes, then started to say something but apparently couldn’t find his voice. He offered his hand to Miller, who shook it.

Then Castillo stood up and wrapped his arms around Miller. “I’ll let you hug me, too, Charley,” Leverette said. “But if you think I’m going to kiss you, don’t hold your breath.”