“So, I got in the remise and went back to Darby’s apartment. He was gone.
“I still had one card to play. You remember the Secret Service guy on the presidential protection detail who fell off the bumper of the limousine?”
“Tony Santini,” Montvale said. “Good man.”
“Yes, he is. We have shared a drink or two on occasion. Well, when I knew I was coming down here I remembered that when he got fired from the protection detail, they sent him down here to look for funny money. So, I tried to call him. I got some other Secret Service guy on the phone who told me Tony had retired, but that he thought he was still in Argentina in a country club—that’s Argentine for really tightly gated community—outside of town. I remembered the address: the Mayerling Country Club in Pilar. I’ve got a cousin named Pilar, and Mayerling was the Imperial Austrian hunting lodge where Emperor Franz Josef’s son shot his sixteen-year-old girlfriend and then committed suicide.
“So, I got in the remise Duffy suggested, and told the driver to take me out to this place. We go instead to the Gendarmería Nacional headquarters. Out comes Duffy, now in uniform. He’s the generalissimo or something of the Gendarmería Nacional. Duffy says I really don’t want to go to Mayerling. Too dangerous. People started out for Mayerling and were never heard from again. I got the message.”
“So, you never got to see Tony,” Montvale said. “Pity. I’m sure he would have helped you.”
“Yeah, probably.”
“Roscoe, we may be in a position to help each other,” Montvale said. “Can we go off the record?”
“Yeah, sure. But why bother? You tell me something, I report it, and then you say, ‘I never said that,’ and Ellsworth says, ‘That’s right. I was there and the ambassador never said anything like that.’”
“Let me rephrase. What if these rumors you heard were true? What if there was a renegade lieutenant colonel named Castillo who did in fact snatch two senior Russian defectors from the CIA station chief in Vienna? What if he’s now trying to sell them to the CIA?”
“No shit?”
“What if the President sent an unnamed but very senior intelligence official—”
“Who used to be a diplomat, Mr. Ambassador?”
“—down here with orders to find Colonel Castillo and these two Russians and then load them onto an airplane and fly them to the States?”
“You’re going to pay the ransom, or whatever?”
“That’s the point. I’m trusting your discretion on this, Roscoe. I know you’re a patriotic American. No. The United States of America will not ransom the Russians. But they will be returned to the States and turned over to the CIA.”
“Kidnap them back, you mean?”
“The Russians will be returned to the United States and turned over to the CIA. And Colonel Castillo will be returned to the United States and the United States Army for what is euphemistically known as ‘disciplinary action.’”
“Jesus!”
“My search for these people has met with more success than yours, Roscoe,” Montvale said.
“You know where they are?”
“I’m in a position to offer you confirmation of those rumors you heard. I’m further in a position to give exclusive rights to—what shall I say?—‘the repatriation process’ and to the Russians, and to Colonel Castillo.”
“If I what?”
“How do I put this? If, splendid journalist that you are, you nevertheless failed to notice any unpleasantness that may occur during the repatriation process, any minor violations of Argentine law—or, for that matter, of American law. Do you take my meaning?”
Roscoe J. Danton thought: Fuck you, Montvale.
Once I’m back in the States, I’ll write whatever the hell I feel like writing about anything I see.
Roscoe J. Danton said: “Deal. When does this come down?”
“Now. Truman, please call that Air Force colonel and have the plane ready by time we get to the airport.”
Truman Ellsworth said, “Yes, sir.”
Truman Ellsworth thought: If I thought there was any chance at all of Castillo, the Russians, or even Alex Darby actually being in Ushuaia, I would at this moment be experiencing shortness of breath, excruciating pain in my chest, and numbness of my left arm and waiting for the ambulance to haul me off to whatever hospital the embassy sends visiting VIPs suffering a heart attack.
But since I’m sure that all he’s going to find down there—at best—is Alex Darby suffering a midlife crisis in the arms of a girl young enough to be his daughter, I’m going to pretend I believe this idiocy.
For one thing, I simply have to see how Charles tries to talk himself out of this fiasco once it comes tumbling down around him. I would never forgive myself if I didn’t.
[ONE]
The Oval Office
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C.
1405 8 February 2007
Secretary of State Natalie Cohen, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency John Powell, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Mark Schmidt, and General Allan B. Naylor, the commanding general of the United States Central Command, were all in the reception area of the Oval Office when the President of the United States, having returned from his trip to Chicago, entered.
They all rose to their feet when they saw the President. He acknowledged none of them.
Instead, Joshua Ezekiel Clendennen continued walking into his office, sat in the leather chair behind his desk, and issued two orders: “Get me some coffee. And then let them in.”
Three minutes later, Cohen, Powell, Schmidt, and Naylor filed into the Oval Office.
“I’m glad you weren’t in Timbuktu, General,” Clendennen said.
Thinking that the President was joking, Naylor replied in kind: “That’s next Thursday, Mr. President.”
“You’re not going anywhere, General, until this business is finished,” the President snapped.
“Yes, sir,” General Naylor said.
“Sit down,” the President said, gesturing to all of them.
“General, C. Harry Whelan, Jr., and Andy McClarren were talking about you on Wolf News last night. Are you aware of that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Whelan told McClarren that the chief of staff of the Army no longer runs it—he’s just in charge of administering it—and that since Central Command controls more troops, more airplanes, more ships, and more military assets in more places all around the world than any other headquarters, then that makes you, as its commanding general, the most important general in the Army. Did you see the program, by any chance?”
“It was brought to my attention, Mr. President.”
General Naylor did not think he should get into the details of how the Wolf News program had come to his attention. He had been reading in his living room, and ignoring the television. His wife, Elaine, and their son, Major Allan B. Naylor, Jr., and his family, who had come for supper, were watching the Wolf News program The Straight Scoop.
When the Whelan-McClarren exchange concluded, General Naylor’s wife and son went to him on their knees, called him “Oh, Great One!” and mimed kissing his West Point ring, then backed out of his presence into the kitchen convulsed with laughter and to the applause of his daughter-in-law and grandchildren.
He actually had had to demand to be told what the hell was going on.
What was so funny?
And when he was told, he didn’t think it was at all funny.
The chief of staff was going to hear about it, Naylor had said, and he wasn’t going to find any humor in it.
And then he’d had an even more disquieting thought. He didn’t like C. Harry Whelan, Jr., but it was possible that he was right about this, too. It seemed to be a truism that whoever commanded the most troops was de facto, if not de jure, the most important general officer.
The President asked, “Would you agree with that assessment, General?”
&
nbsp; “Sir, since the chief of staff gives me my orders and writes my efficiency reports—”
“Well, this is one of those rare occasions on which I fully agree with Mr. Whelan,” the President said. And then went on: “Does the name ‘Sergei Murov’ mean anything to you, General?”
“The SVR rezident in the Russian embassy, sir?”
The President nodded. “And I believe you know Frank Lammelle, the deputy director of the CIA, pretty well?”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
“Mr. Powell, will you please tell General Naylor of the meeting Lammelle had with Murov in the Russian compound on the Eastern Shore?”
“Yes, sir,” Powell said, and did so.
When Powell had finished, Naylor said, “Very interesting.”
“I have never liked traitors,” the President then announced, more than a little piously. “And so I have decided to give the Russians these two. What are their names again, Jack?”
“Colonel Dmitri Berezovsky and Lieutenant Colonel Svetlana Alekseeva, Mr. President,” the CIA director furnished.
“Mr. President, do we have them?” Naylor asked. “I was under the impression that—”
“That Lieutenant Colonel C. G. Castillo,” the President said, “who snatched them away from our CIA station chief in Vienna, has them?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I understand, General, that you are personally acquainted with Lieutenant Colonel Castillo.”
“Yes, sir, I am.”
During the Cold War, there had been a custom in the regiments of the United States Constabulary in occupied West Germany called the “Dining In.” Once a month, the officers of the regiments met for dinner in their regimental officer’s club. These were formal affairs, ones presided over by the regimental commander, with seating at the one large table arranged strictly according to rank. Dress uniform was prescribed. Officers’ ladies were not invited.
A splendid meal was served, with appropriate wines at each course. After the food had been consumed, and the cigars and cognac distributed, one of the officers—in a rigidly choreographed ritual—rose to his feet, and said, “Gentlemen, I give you the President of the United States.”
Whereupon all the other officers rose to their feet and raised their glasses in toast.
The toasting then worked its way down the chain of command until it had reached the regimental commander.
And then the officers got down to some serious informal drinking and socializing, the intention of which was to raise the awareness of officers—particularly officers just reporting for duty—of their role in the Army, the Army of Occupation, the United States Constabulary, and their regiment.
It was at his first Dining In that newly arrived Major Allan B. Naylor, Armor, had first heard about the Gossinger family. The event had been held at the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment Officer’s Club in Bad Hersfeld, which was in Hesse, very close to the border between West Germany and East Germany.
The 11th ACR—“The Blackhorse Regiment”—had the mission of patrolling the border between East and West Germany. Their patrols ran through the Gossinger family’s farmlands, which had been cut by the barbed-wire fence and the minefields erected by East Germans at Soviet direction to separate the East and West Germanys. Most of the Gossinger farmlands had wound up in East Germany.
By the time the story of the princess in Castle Gossinger came up, both alcohol and tradition had eased much of the formality of the Dining In. It was now time to tell war stories and other kinds of stories, the idea being more to entertain those who had not heard them than to present an absolutely truthful version of the facts.
For example, the story went that the barbed-wire fence and the minefields had been erected to keep Americans and West Germans from escaping into the Heaven on Earth of the Communist world.
As far as the Gossinger castle was concerned, the good news was that the Gossinger family—the full family name, identifying them as highly ranked in the Almanach de Gotha, was “von und zu Gossinger”—had lucked out: After the fence had gone up, their castle was in West Germany.
The bad news was that the Gossinger castle didn’t look at all like Neuschwanstein Castle, the one built—damn the expense—by Mad King Ludwig in Bavaria. It instead more resembled a tractor factory.
The good news was that there was a fair princess living in the castle who loved Americans.
The bad news was that her loving of Americans was past tense. She had loved one American. He had ridden up to the castle on his white horse—actually flying a Bell WH-1D “Huey”—dallied awhile, left her in the family way, and disappeared, never to return. Nor to be heard from again.
More bad news was that her daddy—formerly Oberst Hermann Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger, who had been one of the last seriously wounded evacuated before von Paulus had surrendered at Stalingrad—did not like Americans. This was possibly because of the American chopper jockey’s relationship with the princess. He had made it clear that any contact with Americans would be rare and brief.
Shortly after the Dining In, Major Naylor had been taken to the castle—formally known as Das Haus im Wald—by the Blackhorse’s commander, Colonel Frederick Lustrous, and there introduced to former Oberst Hermann Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger, who received them courteously but rather coldly in his office.
Naylor had obeyed Lustrous’s order: “Allan, look closely at the pictures on the shelf behind his desk” as Lustrous explained to Herr von und zu Gossinger that as the Regiment’s S-3, Naylor would be dealing with the von und zu Gossingers for the regiment.
Major Naylor was surprised at what he saw on the shelf. There was a photo of General George S. Patton standing with his arm around von und zu Gossinger’s shoulder. The third man in the photo Naylor recognized after a moment as Colonel John Waters, Patton’s son-in-law, who had been captured in North Africa. Patton and Waters were splendidly turned out, while “Von und Zu”—as Naylor had quickly come to think of the starchy German—was in a tattered suit.
The picture had obviously been taken immediately after the war, probably just after Waters had been freed and just before Patton had died of injuries suffered in a car/truck accident in Heidelberg. And, judging by the way Oberst von und zu Gossinger was dressed, not long at all after he had been released from a POW camp and taken off his uniform for the last time.
But the photograph clearly made the point that Von und Zu had some powerful American friends. Waters was now a general officer.
Naylor got his first look at the princess—Frau Erika von und zu Gossinger—that first visit to the castle, but they were not introduced. She was a slim young woman in a black dress, her blonde hair gathered in a bun at her neck, and had been with her son, a towheaded ten- or eleven-year-old.
At the time, Naylor decided that while the story of the princess getting herself knocked up by some American chopper jockey made a great Dining In story, it was probably pure bullshit.
Over the next two years, he became more sure of that as he developed a personal relationship with the princess. Or, more accurately, as his bride, Elaine, and Erika became friends, as did the boy and Allan Junior, who was a year younger than Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger.
The two women became much closer about a year later, after Von und Zu and his son went off a bridge on the Autobahn near Kassel in their Mercedes at a speed estimated by the authorities at one hundred ninety kilometers per hour (one hundred eighteen miles per hour), which left the princess and her son not only alone in the castle but the sole owners of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H.
By that time Major Naylor had learned the Gossinger assets went far beyond the farmlands now split by the barbed-wire fence and minefields. There were seven newspapers all over Europe, two breweries, a shipyard, and other businesses.
At the funeral of Erika’s father and brother, Allan had told Elaine that he thought Erika would now be pushed into marrying Otto Görner, managing director of the Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H., empire,
who he knew had made his intentions of such known a long time ago, and who had enjoyed the blessing of the late Oberst von und zu Gossinger.
Elaine had told him that Erika had told her she would never marry—Otto or anyone else.
And she hadn’t.
Six months after the funeral, Elaine, white-faced, showed up at Naylor’s office—something she almost never did—and announced she had to talk to him right then.
“The best of the bad news is that scurrilous story about Karl being the love child of one of our oversexed goddamn chopper jockeys is true,” Elaine had reported, and handed him a slip of paper. “That’s his name.”
On the paper she had written, “WOJG Jorge Castillo, San Antonio, Texas.”
“What am I supposed to do with this?” he’d said.
“Find him.”
“After all this time? Why?”
“The worst of the really bad news, sweetheart, is that Erika has maybe a month, maybe six weeks, to live. She’s kept her pancreatic cancer a secret.”
“My God!”
“Very shortly, that Tex-Mex sonofabitch is going to be Karl’s only living relative. Find him, Allan.”
As any wise major destined for high command would do when faced with a problem that he didn’t have a clue how to solve, Naylor turned to the Blackhorse’s sergeant major. It took the wise old noncom not even thirty minutes to locate Warrant Officer Junior Grade Jorge Alejandro Castillo. He had remembered the name from somewhere, and then he had remembered where.
The sergeant major handed Major Naylor a book entitled Vietnam War Recipients of the Medal of Honor.
WOJG Jorge Castillo was in San Antonio, in the Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery. His tombstone bore a finely chiseled representation of the Medal of Honor and dates that indicated he had been nineteen years old at the time of his death.
That presented problems for Naylor and the Army that were difficult to express without sounding like a three-star sonofabitch. But they had to be, as Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger was about to become a very wealthy twelve-year-old. And all of that money was now going to come under the control of some Mexican-Americans in Texas who probably didn’t even know he existed.
The Outlaws: a Presidential Agent novel Page 34
