Covert Warriors pa-7
Page 16
“Ninety seconds,” he said. “Maybe a little less.”
Caruthers shook his head in disbelief. Or maybe admiration.
Sixty-two seconds later, the red telephone buzzed and the red LED started flashing.
McNab took a lot longer to pick it up than he had the first time, but finally put the handset to his ear.
“McNab.”
“Please accept my sincere apologies, General McNab,” Naylor said.
“I will, providing you start acting like one old soldier talking to another old soldier-and a classmate, which puts us on a first-name basis-and tell me exactly why Beiderman chewed your ass to the point where you lost your cool.”
There was a long pause, and Colonel Caruthers had just about decided the LED was about to stop blinking again when General Naylor said, “Bruce, Charley was at Arlington.”
“I’m not surprised. Danny Salazar was on the first A Team Charley ever commanded. But I didn’t send him up there, Allan. I haven’t talked to him since before these Mexican slime murdered Salazar. And I didn’t send the others, either. I didn’t even know they were going.”
“And then they all drove away, just when the President was about to deliver his remarks,” Naylor said. “And their departure was on Wolf News for the whole world to see, thanks to Andy McClarren.”
“What’s the President pissed off about? That they were there, or that they walked out on his speech?”
“Both. And it’s worse than that. Are you alone?”
“Max Caruthers is here.”
There was another long pause.
“I hope that silence doesn’t mean you don’t trust Max,” McNab said finally.
“No offense intended, Colonel Caruthers,” Naylor said. “Actually, what I was doing was rethinking whether I wanted to tell General McNab what I’m about to tell you both.”
“Which is?”
“The President seems to believe that whatever happened that saw Ambassador Montvale named Vice President was the first step in a coup d’etat.”
“That’s absurd. I admit that it has a certain appeal, but that anyone was planning a coup is simply not true,” McNab said.
“People believe what they want to believe,” Naylor said. “Do I have to say whom he views as coconspirators?”
“Where did you get this, Allan?” McNab asked softly.
And again there was a long pause before Naylor replied.
“Natalie Cohen,” he said finally. “And I ran it past Frank Lammelle. He confirmed it.”
“He’s insane,” McNab said. “Not Lammelle. Clendennen.”
Naylor didn’t reply to that.
“What Natalie suggests is that all of us do nothing that could possibly give him a chance to ask for-demand-our resignations.”
“Natalie always keeps her head.”
“Natalie suggests that his plan is to get rid of us one by one, and says that John David Parker was the first one to go.”
“That seems pretty clear,” McNab said.
“It seems pretty clear, Bruce, that you’re next on the list,” Naylor said. “Beiderman made it obvious that he would support me if I relieved you at SPECOPSCOM, or even announced your retirement.”
“What does he think of this coup d’etat nonsense?”
“I don’t know if he knows about it or not, or if he does know, his reaction to it. I think his primary motivation is to keep his job. Which brings us to, what do I tell him about Charley and your people being at Arlington, where they walked out on the President’s speech?”
“To get me out of here would require that you have proof I did something I should not have done, or not done something I should have done. And my skirts are clean here, Allan.
“I have not been in touch with Charley-I told you this before-since before Danny Salazar was murdered. I did not suggest that he go to Arlington. I knew he probably would be there, sure, but I had nothing to do with his going.”
“Bruce, what about the Delta Force people? How do I explain to Beiderman that fifteen or twenty of your people showed up there without your knowledge?”
“When all else fails, tell the truth. Those men-some of them commissioned officers, some of them warrant officers, and the rest senior noncoms-are not PFCs who have to knock on the orderly room door to ask the first sergeant for a pass. So long as they are available for duty-depending on their alert status-immediately, or on one hour’s notice, or six hours, or twenty-four hours-they are free to go anywhere they please.
“Now, I don’t know this, and you might not want to tell Beiderman this, but what I strongly suspect happened here is that after you shoved burying her husband at Arlington down Mrs. Salazar’s throat-”
“That was not my idea, Bruce. The President, to use your phraseology, shoved it down Secretary Beiderman’s throat, and he shoved it down mine.”
“Whereupon, you obediently shoved it down Mrs. Salazar’s. And after you did, I think that she called Charley. And Charley-never forget he’s one of us, Allan-decided that the best thing all around-‘for the good of the service’ comes to mind-was to resist what must have been a hell of a temptation for him to tell her to tell you and the President to go to hell and insist that her husband be buried in San Antonio National Cemetery.
“He probably told her he was going to be at Arlington, and that if any of the people in the Stockade wanted to go, he’d have them picked up at the Fayetteville Regional Airport by Jake Torine or Dick Miller and flown back there when the interment was over. He has several airplanes, and the wherewithal to charter more. So I suspect that the reason they left Arlington right after the funeral was to get to the airport so that they could come back here.”
After a long silent moment, Naylor said, “I’ll buy everything but hurrying to the airport. What they did was go to that suite Charley keeps at the Mayflower. They’re having sort of a wake. As we speak, according to Beiderman, the party’s still going on. And, again according to Beiderman, Roscoe Danton and John David Parker are among the mourners.”
“Which will tend to convince the President even more of the coup d’etat conspiracy,” McNab said.
“Precisely. Well, that’s what I will tell the secretary of Defense. That you knew nothing about Charley Castillo’s presence at Arlington, and haven’t been in touch with him since before this mess started. I don’t have much hope that he’ll believe me.”
“Your skirts are clean, Allan. You issued the orders you were told to issue, and made sure they were carried out.”
“It isn’t that black-and-white though, is it?” Naylor asked thoughtfully.
“Very little is ever either black or white, Allan.”
There was another pause, and then Naylor said, “You said something before. .”
“What?”
“You suggested the President was insane.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, that was a figure of speech, and you know it.”
Naylor didn’t reply.
“I have, Allan, on many occasions, going all the way back to our unhappy days at Hudson High, called you chickenshit. You knew I didn’t think you were really fecal matter excreted from the anus of a Gallus domesticus. When I accused our lunatic President of being crazy, I was-”
“What if he is, Bruce?” Naylor asked softly.
McNab took a long time to reply.
“Well, that would certainly explain a hell of a lot, wouldn’t it?”
“Jesus H. Christ!” Colonel Caruthers said softly. “If you think about it. .”
“Not only this coup d’etat nonsense,” McNab said. “But. .”
“I think we had all better stop right here,” Naylor said.
“That won’t work, I’m afraid, Allan,” McNab said. “You’ve let a very ugly genie out of your bottle. He’s not going to go back in.”
There was another long pause, and then McNab said, “Allan, I don’t think I’d mention this part of our conversation to Secretary Beiderman.”
“What I think we should all do is
wipe the last ninety seconds of this conversation from our minds,” Naylor said.
“That won’t work, either, I’m afraid,” McNab said. “For two reasons. First, I don’t think any of us could. Second, we’ve all taken an oath to defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. And I think a President who has done what this one has done-is doing-can be fairly characterized as a threat to the Constitution.”
Another long pause ensued before Naylor asked, “For the time being, can we agree this conversation goes no further than it has?”
“Yes, sir,” McNab said.
“Yes, sir,” Caruthers said.
“Thank you,” Naylor said.
The red LED stopped blinking.
VI
ONE
Hacienda Santa Maria Oaxaca Province, Mexico 1515 16 April 2007
As soon as Castillo took off his headset, Lester Bradley, who was sitting with Max in the backseat of the Cessna Mustang, handed him the headset from Castillo’s Brick. Castillo put it to his ear.
“Yeah, Frank?”
“Something wrong with the net? The new net?” Lammelle asked. “It took me almost four minutes to get you to answer.”
“I try not to talk on a cell phone when I’m flying fifteen feet above the ocean,” Castillo said. “It tends to distract me.”
“Where the hell are you?”
“I just landed at the family ranch in Mexico; about fifty miles from Acapulco. What’s up?”
“You free to talk?”
“Nobody here but Sweaty and Lester, and they both know all-well, almost all-of my secrets.”
“I have to know. Why were you flying fifteen feet above the ocean?”
“Because that way, the radar at Xoxocotlan and Bahias de Huatulco international airports can’t see me landing at the family ranch. Next question?”
“Makes sense,” Lammelle said.
“My answers generally do. Now, is there something else you’d like to chat about before I get out of my airplane?”
“Mark Schmidt came to see me just now. He needed my help, he said, to identify some of the people in the pictures his intrepid agents took on the tenth floor of the Mayflower yesterday afternoon and early this morning.”
“The FBI took pictures of people at the wake? What the hell’s that all about?”
“The President ordered it. Schmidt is to identify everyone who was in the hotel-emphasis on the guys from Bragg-down to name, rank, serial number, and organization, and deliver same-with their pictures-to the President. Personally. And to tell no one.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but the last time I heard, being at a private party is not against the law.”
“I don’t know what Clendennen is up to, Charley. The point here, I think, the reason Schmidt came to me, was not to get me to identify anybody, but to let me know what the President had ordered him to do. Follow?”
Castillo thought a moment, and then said, “I have never been able to really figure Schmidt out.”
“He wanted me to know about this nutty order, but he didn’t want to tell me. Anyway, I identified you and Torine and Miller and other people I would be expected to know, but I couldn’t seem to recognize any of the Gray Fox or Delta guys.”
“It just occurred to me that Clendennen will now have an unclassified box of pictures of about a third of the guys in the Stockade. I don’t like that.”
“If you can figure it out, let me know. But, speaking of pictures-this is the real reason I called-there is a new senior cultural affairs officer at the embassy of the Russian Federation in Bogota. His name is Valentin Komarovski.”
“Oh?”
“The reason they’re calling him the senior cultural affairs guy is that he will supervise their cultural affairs guys in Venezuela, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala.”
“So who is he really, Frank?”
“Sergei Murov. I believe you know him.”
“Are you sure?”
“Senor Komarovski traveled to his new duty station via Havana, on Iberia, where his picture was taken by a disaffected Castroite and passed on to our guy in the Uruguayan embassy. Our guy wondered why a senior Russian dip didn’t travel Aeroflot to Miami, and make his connection there-catch the Colombian airline, Aero Republica-instead of waiting ten hours to catch the next Cubana flight to Bogota. Maybe he didn’t want to pass through Miami and be recognized?”
Castillo grunted.
Lammelle went on: “So by the time Senor Komarovski arrived in Bogota, our guy at the airport there had plenty of time to make sure the lighting was in place to take pictures of him arriving. The images were here minutes later, and one of the guys in the lab recognized him from Murov’s days as the rezident here. He brought the pics to me-‘Is that who I think it is?’
“Just to be sure, I ran them through the comparison lab. It’s Murov, all right, or the Russians are now cloning people. So you have your heads-up, Charley. I don’t think he likes you, and I know he doesn’t like your girlfriend.”
“I’m more worried, Frank, about the pictures of the guys from the Stockade getting out; I’d really hate to think I was responsible for that happening.”
“You can’t do anything about that, Charley. You can’t stop the President from doing anything he wants to with those pictures.”
“What the hell does he want them for? He’s too smart a politician to try to punish a bunch of soldiers for holding a wake for one of their own. He doesn’t want Roscoe going on Wolf News with a story like that.”
“I don’t think anyone knows what Clendennen will do next, or why,” Lammelle said. “But in this case, I think maybe he’ll show them to the secretary of Defense. Get Beiderman to lean on Naylor to get rid of McNab, who commands the people who (a) went to Arlington when he had made it clear he didn’t want that, and (b) insulted POTUS by walking out on his speech.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“A good deal POTUS does doesn’t make sense, if you think about it, Charley.”
Castillo didn’t reply.
“Well, as I said, you’ve got your heads-up about Murov. Stay in touch.”
“Whoa,” Castillo said. “Natalie Cohen told me she told you that you could have that Policia Federal Black Hawk that miraculously appeared on the dock at Norfolk.”
“Why do I think I’m not going to like what comes next?”
“Could you move it to a secure location-not too secure-in Texas? Near San Antone, maybe?”
“What are you planning, Charley?”
“At the moment, not a thing. But life is full of surprises, isn’t it? You never know what’s going to happen, do you?”
“Good-bye, Colonel Castillo, Retired. Nice talking to you.”
“I’ll take that as a yes. Thank you, Frank.”
“I’m beginning to understand why Clendennen wanted to load you on an Aeroflot flight to Moscow.”
The LED stopped flashing.
TWO
Hacienda Santa Maria Oaxaca Province, Mexico 1725 16 April 2007
The sprawling, red-tile-roofed house with a wide, shaded veranda all around it sat on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. A circular drive led to it from the acres of grapefruit trees running as far as the eye could see to the east.
The house was known as “Don Fernando’s House,” but the reference was to Don Fernando Lopez the Elder, rather than to the Don Fernando Lopez who now sat on the veranda facing away from the Pacific, holding a bottle of Dos Equis beer in his massive fist.
Beside him, on cushioned wicker couches and chairs, were his cousin, Carlos Castillo; Don Armando Medina, a swarthy, heavyset sixty-odd-year-old who was el jefe-“the boss” and general manager-of Hacienda Santa Maria; Sweaty; Stefan Koussevitzky; and Lester Bradley. They were all-except for Lester, who had a Coke-drinking wine, a Cabernet Sauvignon, from Bodegas San Felipe, which happened to be a subsidiary of Hacienda Santa Maria. Max lay beside Sweaty, gnawing on a grapefruit he held between his paws.
Manuel and Maria Elena Lopez had three children: Fernando, Graciella, and Juanita.
Don Fernando Castillo had strained relations with the Lopez family, into which his daughter had married, but had been exceedingly fond of his grandson Fernando. He and Dona Alicia had agreed that on their deaths, Hacienda Santa Maria would go to Fernando, and everything else would be given to charity and the Alamo Foundation.
“I don’t want to spend all of eternity spinning in my grave thinking of the Lopez wetbacks squandering all our money,” he declared.
All of that had changed a quarter century before, when an Army officer, then-Major Allan B. Naylor, appeared in Dona Alicia’s office in the Alamo Foundation building with the photograph of a twelve-year-old blond, blue-eyed boy, and said there was good reason to believe he was the out-of-wedlock son of the late Warrant Officer Junior Grade Jorge Alejandro Castillo.
Don Fernando Castillo’s first reaction to this was that some Kraut Fraulein-Don Fernando had been Major F. J. Castillo of Combat Command A, 3rd Armored Division during World War II and had had some experience with Kraut Frauleins in the immediate postwar period-had learned who the Castillo family was, and intended, like the Lopez wetbacks, to get her hands into the Castillo cash box by passing off somebody else’s bastard son as the fruit of their Jorge’s loins.
Dona Alicia had had no such doubts. One look at the boy’s eyes had been enough to convince her that she was looking at a picture of her grandson. On hearing from Major Naylor that the boy’s mother was in the final stages of pancreatic cancer, she picked up the telephone and called Lemes Aviation, ordering them to ready the company Learjet so that she and Major Naylor could make the Pan American flight from New York to Frankfurt late that same afternoon.