Black Ops (Presidential Agent)

by W. E. B Griffin

  "Billy then makes his way to Fulda. My grandfather had become a father figure to him. And vice versa. The two of them dig into the rubble that had been the printing plant of the Fulda Tages Zeitung and put together one Mergenthaler Linotype machine from what was left of two dozen of them.

  "That machine is now on display in the lobby of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H. It was used to set the type for the first postwar edition of the Tages Zeitung.

  "When my grandfather had applied to the American Military Government for permission to publish, he thought he had one thing going for him. A classmate at Philipps University--an American brigadier general--was military governor of Hesse and knew my grandfather was not a Nazi.

  "Actually, Grandpa had three things going for him. Second was that counterintelligence had found his name on a Gestapo hit list; he was involved in the 1944 bomb plot. The only reason he hadn't been shot--or hung on a butcher's hook--was that the Gestapo thought he was already dead. And, third, the officers he'd taken to Katyn remembered him as a good guy.

  "The first post-war Tages Zeitung was in Fulda. Then Kassel. Then Munich. Billy Kocian was sent to Vienna to get the presses up and running and then to look around for a staff, including editors, for my grandfather to vet. He was then twenty-one or twenty-two. The next time my grandfather heard from Billy was when Billy sent him the first edition of the Wien Tages Zeitung. The masthead read: Eric Kocian, Associate Publisher and Editor in Chief.

  "My grandfather in effect said, 'What the hell, why not? Give him a chance. See if he sinks or swims.' Billy swam."

  "Herr Oberst," Yung said. "Billy Kocian's history is fascinating, but is there a bigger point to all this?"

  "Bear with me," Castillo said. "So things were looking up. My grandfather had two children, my Uncle Willi and my mother. Uncle Willi went to Philipps, took a degree in political science, and went to work for Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, bringing with him his buddy Otto Gorner.

  "My mother was the princess in the castle. Everybody thought that as soon as she was old enough to make it socially acceptable, she would marry Otto, who was being groomed to handle the business side--as opposed to just the newspaper side--of the business.

  "And then into the princess's life appeared the evil American--in the right seat of a D-model Huey--playing war with the Fourteenth Armored Cavalry, which in those days patrolled our fence line with East Germany. And three or four days later, said evil American disappeared, never again to be seen by the princess.

  "The kindest thing my grandfather had to say when he was told he was going to be a grandfather was that he thanked God my grandmother wasn't alive to be shamed by my mother's blatant immorality.

  "When I asked why I didn't have a daddy like the other kids, Grandpa would walk out of the room and my Uncle Willi would tell me--little Karlchen--that that was not to be discussed. All my mother would say was that my father was an American army officer who had had to go away and would not be coming back, and that I was not to talk about him to Grandpa, Uncle Willi, or 'Uncle' Otto.

  "Then, when I was about eleven, Uncle Willi, with my grandfather next to him on their way home from Kassel, drove his Gullwing Mercedes off a bridge on the A7 Autobahn at an estimated one hundred thirty miles an hour.

  "That left my mother and me alone in the Haus im Wald, the family castle, which actually looks more like a factory. Mother again declined Otto's offer of marriage. She inherited her one-quarter of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, the other three-fourths going to Uncle Willi and Uncle Billy and yours truly in equal parts. Uncle Willi had left everything he owned--his quarter--to my mother in the belief that she would eventually come to her senses and marry Otto. So she got that share, too.

  "But it wasn't in the cards for my mother to live happily ever after with Little Karlchen in the castle. Six months after Uncle Willi and Grandpa went off the A7 bridge, she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Terminal. Two months to live."

  "Jesus!" David Yung exclaimed.

  "At which point, Mother, apparently deciding that the orphan-to-be needed to establish contact with his father, whether or not the father was going to be pleased to learn that he had left a love child behind in Germany, turned to the 14th Armored Cavalry for help, giving them the father's name--Castillo--that she had steadfastly refused to give her father.

  "The Fourteenth's regimental commander turned over the task of locating the father to one of his majors, one Allan B. Naylor--"

  "Who now has four stars--that Naylor?" Davidson asked.

  "That's the guy," Castillo confirmed. "He had a little trouble locating a Huey jockey named Castillo who had once maneuvered with the Fourteenth. Reason being: He was in San Antonio, in the National Cemetery there, with a representation of the Medal of Honor chiseled into his headstone."

  "Your father won the Congressional Medal of Honor?" Yung asked softly.

  "It's properly just the 'Medal of Honor,' David. And you don't win it. You receive it."

  "No offense, Charley."

  "None taken. Well, this changed things a good deal. The illegitimate offspring of a Medal of Honor recipient can't be treated like just one more bastard among the maybe a hundred thousand bastards spawned by the U.S. Army of Occupation. And Naylor, being Naylor, had also found out that I would own, when my mother died, all of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft with the exception of Billy Kocian's quarter-share.

  "That raised the very real possibility that a wetback Texican family living in squalor on the riverbank in San Antonio was suddenly going to get their hands on the considerable fortune of the grandchild, nephew, cousin, whatever, they didn't even know existed.

  "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 fraulein 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 Gorner 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 Fuhrer, 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 Gorner 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 Gorner 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 Gorner 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 Gorner? 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 Gorner'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 Gorner 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, Madchen'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 Gorner and Sandor Tor followed him off the elevator.

  "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. Madchen 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 Madchen and scratched her ears.

  "Sandor," 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 Gunther 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."

  Sandor 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 b
etween 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.