“But then-how did that Englishman put it? ‘Power corrupts. .’ ”
“If you’re talking about John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, First Baron Acton,” Annapolis said, “what he said was ‘All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ ”
“Thank you,” Castillo said. “Sweaty, Annapolis men always like to demonstrate their erudition.”
Delchamps laughed.
“I tend to agree with the first part of that quotation,” Annapolis went on. “Is that what you’re suggesting happened here?”
“Bull’s-eye, Admiral,” Castillo said.
“Actually, I was a commander,” Annapolis said. “All right, Colonel, we’re guilty as charged. What would you have us do? Commit seppuku?”
“That’d work for you,” Castillo said. “But I don’t see any VFW buttons on your pals.”
“What are you talking about?” Sweaty demanded.
“Seppuku, my love, also known as hara-kiri, is what defeated samurai-warriors-do to atone for their sins. It involves stabbing yourself in the belly with a sword and then giving it a twist. But only warriors are allowed to do that.”
Delchamps chuckled.
“I don’t have a VFW pin, Colonel,” Radio and TV Stations said. “But I do have a baseball cap with the legend PALM BEACH CHAPTER, VIETNAM HELICOPTER PILOTS ASSOCIATION embroidered in gold on it. Would you say that gives me the right to disembowel myself?”
“Only if you didn’t buy the cap at a yard sale,” Castillo said.
Radio and TV Stations did not look anything like what comes to mind when the term warrior was used.
“I got mine after I showed them my DD 214 and gave them fifty bucks,” Radio and TV Stations said.
DD 214 was the Defense Department’s form that listed one’s military service, qualifications, and any decorations.
“You were a helicopter pilot in Vietnam?” Castillo asked, but even as the words came out of his mouth he knew that was the case.
Radio and TV Stations met Castillo’s eyes and nodded.
“I’ll be a sonofabitch,” Castillo said.
“It gets better than that, Castillo,” Annapolis said. “Tell him, Chopper Jockey.”
“I’d planned to tell you this at some time, but not under these circumstances,” Radio and TV Stations said, “but what the hell. I would guess you’ve heard of Operation Lam Son 719?”
Castillo nodded.
“I was shot down-and wounded-during it,” Radio and TV Stations went on. “My co-pilot and I were hiding in a rice paddy, wondering if we were going to die right there-or after the VC found us and put us in a bamboo cage-when a pretty well shot-up Huey flew through some really nasty antiaircraft fire and landed next to us. The pilot and his co-pilot jumped out, threw us onto the Huey, and got us out of there.
“I later learned the pilot was a young Mexican-American from San Antonio who had flown fifty-odd such missions before his luck ran out. He became a posthumous recipient of the Medal of Honor.”
“He wasn’t a Mexican-American,” Castillo said. “He was a Texican, a Texan of Mexican heritage.”
“You knew this man, Karl?” Berezovsky asked.
“Unfortunately, no,” Castillo said.
“Don’t stop there,” Annapolis said. “Tell him the rest.”
Radio and TV Stations considered the order, nodded, and went on: “Fast forward-what? Twelve, thirteen years? Maybe a little longer. I was in San Antone on business. I own one of the TV stations there, an English FM station, and one each Spanish-language AM and FM station.
“I found myself with a little time to kill, and finally remembering the man who saved my life just before he got blown away was from there, thought they might have buried him there in the Fort Sam National Cemetery. I called them, they said he was, so I stopped by a florist, and went to the cemetery and laid a dozen roses on the grave of Warrant Officer Junior Grade Jorge Alejandro Castillo, MOH.”
“Your father, Carlito?” Sweaty asked softly.
Castillo nodded.
“Who, according to his tombstone had left this vale of tears when he was nineteen years old,” Radio and TV Stations went on, “which caused me to think, what am I doing walking around with more money than I know what to do with, and this Mexican-excuse me, Texican-kid who saved my life is pushing up daisies?
“Inspiration struck. What I could do to assuage my guilt was throw money at his family. I even thought that might be the reason God or fate or whatever had let me make all the money, so I could do something good with it.
“So I called the guy who does security for my stations-he’s an ex-cop-and told him to get me an address for Mr. Castillo’s family. In ten minutes, I had it, so I told the limo driver to take me there.
“Great big house behind a twelve-foot-tall cast-iron fence. The Castillos were obviously not living on food stamps. On the lawn, a blond teenage boy and a great big fat Mexican teenage boy were beating the hell out of each other. I later realized that was probably you, Colonel.”
“And my cousin Fernando, also a Texican,” Castillo said.
“So I called the security guy back and got the skinny on the Castillo family. They could buy and sell me. So I told the driver to take me to the airport.”
“You didn’t go in the house?” Sweaty asked.
“Sweaty. . is it all right if I call you that?”
Svetlana considered that for a full ten seconds, then nodded.
“Sweaty, I’m a coward with an active imagination. I could see myself introducing myself to Mr. Castillo’s father and mother and maybe his kid, telling them their dead son had saved my life in Vietnam, and then them asking, ‘So where the hell have you been for the past thirteen, fourteen years? You had more important things to do?’ ”
“They wouldn’t have done that,” Castillo said. “My father’s co-pilot-my father kicked him out of his Huey just before he took off and got blown away-is practically a member of the family. He’s a retired two-star.”
“Like I said, Colonel, I’m a coward,” Radio and TV Stations said. “What I’m hoping is that this trip down memory lane will convince you there were two of us who said ‘over my dead body’ when it was suggested that turning you over to Ambassador Montvale so that he could turn you over to the Russians was the best solution to the Congo-X problem.”
Castillo looked first at Sweaty, who shrugged, which he interpreted to mean “Maybe, why not?” and then at Delchamps, who did the same thing, and finally at Annapolis, who nodded.
“Okay,” Castillo said. “Two good guys out of four. Or are there any more of you?”
“There’s more,” Annapolis said. “The proponents of letting Montvale turn you and Sweaty and Colonel Berezovsky over to the Russians felt their presence here today might be a little awkward.”
Castillo snorted, and then asked, “How many more?”
“Well, counting Aloysius and Colonel Hamilton. .”
“Don’t count either one of us,” Casey said. “Hamilton’s as pissed with you people as I am. More. He was the one who let me see how you regarded us as employees.”
“Does that mean you are permanently shutting down our communications?” Annapolis asked.
“It means I’m with Charley, whatever Charley decides.”
“How many others?” Castillo pursued.
“In all, there are nine of us,” Annapolis said.
“Which means that five of you wanted to throw Charley to the lions?” Mrs. Agnes Forbison asked. It was the first time she’d opened her mouth.
“Unfortunately,” Investment Banker said, “five of us were considering that option.”
“But were dissuaded from doing so,” Agnes said. “The question then becomes, how can we be sure they can be dissuaded the next time a situation like that comes up?”
“The question, Mother Forbison,” Delchamps said, “is whether or not, having indulged the Irishman by coming here in the first place, we decide we’ve heard enough, give these people the
finger, and walk out of here.”
“Is that what you want to do, Edgar?” Castillo asked.
“It was when I walked in here,” Delchamps replied. “Now I’m not so sure. And neither, to judge by Mother Forbison’s question, is she.”
“You want to discuss this privately?” Castillo asked.
“That was the first thing that popped into my mind,” Delchamps said. “But I’ve sort of changed my mind about that, too. Let’s lay everything on the table.”
“Go ahead,” Castillo said.
“Giving the benefit of the doubt to the five of These People who were smart enough not to show up here today, I understand where they were coming from. They have been passing both money and information to people in the community for some time. The money was really needed and the information was more often than not useful, and the people who got it were grateful. Maybe pathetically grateful because it allowed them to do what they’re supposed to do. And then the Irishman got in the act and supplied These People with better communication than anybody else has. It wasn’t hard for the Evil Quintet to go from that to thinking they were really important, and thus knew what was best for the community. . and from that to thinking they knew what was best for the country. And there’s a little of ‘he who pays the piper calls the tune’ in that.”
Castillo was surprised at Delchamps’s little speech. He often thought that the veteran CIA agent was as voluble as a clam.
And Delchamps wasn’t through.
“A good idea went wrong. That happens. What you do when that happens is make the necessary adjustments.”
“Such as?” Castillo asked.
“Remove temptation,” Delchamps said. “The information stream becomes one way. They tell us. . only us. . what they know, and we decide who, if anybody, also gets to know. And they don’t tell anybody what we’re doing unless we tell them they can. I don’t think the admiral here or the chopper pilot would have any problem with that.”
He paused and looked at first Radio and TV Stations and then at Annapolis, and then asked, “Would you?”
“No,” Radio and TV Stations said.
“None at all,” Annapolis said.
“You’re not going to ask me?” Investment Banker asked.
“What you two, and especially the Evil Quintet, would have to fully understand is that whoever breaks the rules has to go.”
“What do you mean, ‘has to go’?” Investment Banker asked.
Delchamps shrugged. “I think you take my meaning,” he said.
“My God!” Hotelier said. “Was that a threat?”
“I have never threatened anybody in my life,” Delchamps said. “I’m just outlining the conditions under which we could have a continuing relationship.”
Dmitri Berezovsky smiled.
They all know, Castillo thought, that the CIA establishment refers to Delchamps and perhaps a dozen other old clandestine service officers like him as “dinosaurs.”
They were thought to be as out of place in the modern intelligence community as dinosaurs because to a man their operational philosophy had been a paraphrase of what General Philip Sheridan said in January 1869 vis-a-vis Native Americans.
The dinosaurs believed that the only good Communist was a dead Communist.
They all also know that Delchamps is alleged to have recently applied this philosophy to the SVR rezident in Vienna and to a member of the CIA’s Clandestine Service who had sold out. The latter was found dead in his car in the CIA parking garage in Langley with an ice pick in his ear, and the former had been found strangled to death with a Hungarian garrote in a taxi outside the U.S. embassy in Vienna.
Neither the FBI nor the Austrian Bundeskriminalamtgesetz was able to solve either murder.
And maybe proving that I’m a young dinosaur, the truth is I wasn’t at all upset that they had been unsuccessful.
The question then becomes how are These People going to react to Delchamps’s “outlining the conditions under which we can have a continuing relationship”?
“Would you like a moment alone to discuss this?” Delchamps asked.
“So far as I’m concerned, that won’t be necessary,” Annapolis said. “I can accept those conditions.”
“And if anyone else doesn’t like it,” Radio and TV Stations said, “they’re out.”
He looked at Investment Banker and Hotelier.
“In or out?” he asked.
“I can’t remember ever having been in a negotiation before, even with the Mafia,” Hotelier said, “where the options were to go along or ‘go away.’ ”
“Is that a yes or a no?” Radio and TV Stations asked.
“I think what Mr. Delchamps has proposed is reasonable under the circumstances. I’m in.”
“I always look for the bottom line,” Investment Banker said. “And the bottom line here is that both parties need each other to do what we know has to be done, and that no one else can do. I accept the conditions.”
“I’ll deal with. . what did you call them, Mr. Delchamps? ‘The Evil Quintet’?” Radio and TV Stations said.
“That’s what I call them when there are ladies present,” Delchamps said. “When you ‘deal with’ them, you might mention that.”
He looked at Castillo.
“Your call, Ace,” he said. “You’ve heard the proposal. Okay by you?”
Castillo stopped himself just in time from saying, “I’m going to have to consult with my consigliere.”
But he did just that, by looking first at Sweaty and then at her brother. Both nodded just perceptibly.
“Okay,” he finally said, simply.
Annapolis walked to him and offered his hand. Castillo shook it. Annapolis then offered his hand to Sweaty, as Radio and TV Stations walked to Castillo with his hand extended. Wordlessly, all of Those People solemnly shook the hands of all of the Merry Outlaws.
“I think another toast is in order,” Hotelier said when that was over. “More champagne, or something stronger?”
“I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me a taste of that twenty-five-year-old Macallan,” Delchamps said, pointing to a long row of whisky bottles on a bar.
“I’ll go along with Patrick Henry,” Agnes Forbison said.
The two waiters quickly took orders for drinks, and quickly and efficiently distributed them.
Castillo wondered how much he could trust Investment Banker’s waiters to forget what they had just heard.
Well, I think we can safely presume if they already don’t know of Edgar’s reputation, he’ll tell them. That should ensure their silence.
“If I may,” Hotelier said, raising his glass. “To the successful conclusion of difficult negotiations and our success in future operations.”
Everybody sipped.
“And if I may,” Castillo then said. “To full understanding of the conditions of our new relationship, and to the long, long time it’s going to be between now and our having to put that understanding to the test.”
Everybody took another swallow.
“I hate to rain on our happy little parade,” Annapolis said, “but that time may be a good deal shorter than we all hoped.”
When no one replied, he went on: “Just before you came in, we were watching Wolf News. We recorded it. I think you should have a look at it.”
He waved at the long couch and at the armchairs around it.
There was a muted whirring and a screen dropped from under the upper-level foyer, and then another whirring as drapes slid over the windows looking down at the Miracle Strip.
When everybody had found a seat, the lights dimmed, and the stirring sounds of the fourth and final part of Gioacchino Antonio Rossini’s William Tell Overture-sometimes known as the Lone Ranger theme-filled the room.
A blond, crew-cut head filled the screen.
“I’m J. Pastor Jones,” the head announced. “It’s five P.M. in Los Angeles, and eight in Montpelier and time for the news!”
It wasn’
t quite time. There followed a ninety-second commercial for undetectable undergarments for those suffering from bladder-leakage problems, and then came another ninety-second commercial for those who suffered heartburn from eating spicy pizza and “other problem-causing goodies.”
This gave Castillo plenty of time to consider that he disliked TV anchors in general and J. Pastor Jones in particular. Jones reminded Castillo of the teacher’s pets of his early childhood and the male cheerleaders of his high school years. J. Pastor Jones was not only from Vermont-which Castillo thought of as the People’s Democratic Republic of Vermont-but had appointed himself as a booster thereof, hence the reference to Montpelier, which few people could find on a map, rather than to Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., or Miami, which were also in the Eastern time zone.
J. Pastor Jones reappeared on the screen, this time sharing it with C. Harry Whelan, Jr., who was a prominent and powerful Washington-based columnist and a Wolf News contributor.
“There is bad news in the war against drugs,” J. Pastor Jones announced. “Very bad news, indeed. Wolf News contributor, the distinguished journalist C. Harry Whelan, has the details. What happened, Harry?”
C. Harry Whelan, Jr., now had the entire screen to himself. It showed him sitting in what looked like a living room whose walls were lined with books.
“We don’t know much,” Whelan announced pontifically, “but what we do know is this: Wolf News has learned exclusively that tomorrow’s Washington Times-Post will carry a story by the distinguished journalist Roscoe J. Danton that three American officers in Mexico to fight the drug cartels were shot to death near Acapulco at noon today. They were, according to Danton, Antonio Martinez and Eduardo Torres, both of whom were special agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration, and Chief Warrant Officer Daniel Salazar, who was attached to the U.S. embassy in Mexico City.”
“Shit,” Castillo said.
“According to Danton, the three murdered men were known to be traveling to Acapulco with Lieutenant Colonel James D. Ferris, an assistant military attache of the U.S. embassy, for a conference with Mexican officials. Colonel Ferris and the embassy vehicle, a Suburban bearing diplomatic license plates, are missing, according to Danton.”
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