By Order of the President

by W. E. B Griffin

  “The stockade?”

  “Delta Force is in what had been a stockade. Makes sense. It was already surrounded by large fences and barbed wire.”

  “You got involved with Delta Force?”

  “You’ve just heard all I can tell you about Delta Force,” Castillo said, and then went on: “. . . and other places he felt he should keep an eye on. Sometimes, we even got to eat lunch. It was a blue-ribbon day if we happened to be flying near the Fort Bragg Rod and Gun Club, out in the boonies, and the general decided he would like one of their really first-class hamburgers.”

  “Speaking of food . . .”

  “Getting hungry?”

  “All I had was two bowls of pistachios,” Fernando said.

  “So am I, I just realized. There’s a Morton’s of Chicago across the street.”

  “A little fancy, no?”

  “They have huge lobsters. And nice steaks. I suspect I will be able to get neither where I’m going.”

  “And where is that?”

  “Luanda, Angola.”

  “And where is that?”

  “On the west coast of Africa.”

  “Looking for this missing 727?”

  “Yeah. Let me check on my flight and then we’ll go. I’ll even buy,” Castillo said. He took a notebook from his jacket, found the number he wanted, and dialed it.

  “Guten abend, heir is von und zu Gossinger, Karl,” he began and then inquired into the status of his business-class reservation, Dulles to Frankfurt am Main.

  He hung up and looked at Fernando.

  “I’m going on Lufthansa,” he said. “It leaves at one-thirty in the morning.”

  “As Karl von und zu Gossinger?” Fernando asked.

  “He’s the Washington correspondent of the Fulda Tages Zeitung,” Castillo said. “Accredited to the White House and everything. Charming fellow. People say he has quite a way with the ladies.”

  He reached into his jacket again and tossed a German passport to Fernando, who looked at it.

  “That’s who it says you are, Gringo. You going to tell me what that’s all about?”

  “The passport is legitimate. Since I was born in Germany, so far as the Germans are concerned I’m a German citizen. Nobody likes journalists . . .”

  “You own those newspapers and you admit to such a thing?”

  Castillo chuckled.

  “And every week or so, I write something for it. I generally steal it from The American Conservative magazine. That way, if somebody checks on Karl there’s his picture, beside his latest story from Washington. And if they look closer, the masthead says it was founded by Hermann von und zu Gossinger in 1817. As I was saying, nobody likes journalists but they’re expected to ask questions. When an American army officer asks questions, people tend to think he’s in the intelligence business.”

  “Gringo, why are you suddenly telling me all this? For the last . . . Christ, I don’t know . . . the last ten years, you’ve been like a fucking clam about what you do.”

  “I won’t tell you anything you shouldn’t know.”

  “Why are you telling me anything?”

  “Straight answer?”

  Fernando nodded.

  “Because I’m sometimes not sure who I am. I used to be able to unload on General McNab, but that . . . hasn’t been possible lately. And that leaves only four people I can really trust.”

  “Only four? That’s sad, Gringo.”

  “Abuela, General Naylor, Otto, and you,” Castillo said. “I can’t tell her what I do, obviously; Otto, I’m sure, has a good idea, but I can’t talk to him for different obvious reasons . . .”

  “He doesn’t know?” Fernando interrupted. “I wondered about that.”

  “I’m sure he has a damn good idea, but we’ve never talked about it,” Castillo answered, and then went on, “General Naylor knows, but if I let him know that I sometimes get a little confused, a little shaky, he’d jerk me.”

  “Jerk you?”

  “Send me back to the Army. ‘Thank you for your services and don’t let the doorknob hit you in the ass on your way out.’ ” He paused. “That left you. And you, thank God, know how to keep your mouth shut.”

  “Christ, what’s wrong with going back to the Army? You said they’re going to make you a light colonel.”

  “Because I’m very good at what I do,” Castillo said. “And if I went back to the Army, what would I do?”

  “Be a lieutenant colonel. Hold parades. Berate lieutenants. Fly airplanes.”

  “It wouldn’t work. For a number of reasons.”

  “Come home to Texas. Make an honest woman out of the most deserving of your harem. Breed rug rats.”

  Castillo appeared about to respond to that but didn’t.

  “Let’s go eat,” Castillo said.

  [TWO]

  Washington Dulles International Airport Sterling, Virginia 0115 1 June 2005

  The stewardess, a trim redhead, led Castillo into the first-class compartment of the Boeing 767-300ER and smilingly indicated his new seat.

  “Ich danke innen vielmals,” he said.

  “Keine Ursache, Herr von und zu Gossinger,” she replied, flashed him a very cordial smile, and then went down the aisle.

  Castillo had once known another redheaded stewardess, who had worked for Delta. He had blown that brief but fairly interesting dalliance because he had been unable to remember that she was a member of the cabin crew who flew for Delta. In her mind—Dorothy was her name—the distinction was very important, and anyone oblivious to it was obviously a male chauvinist not worthy of being admitted to her bed.

  Occupied with memories of Dorothy mingled with thoughts of the trim Lufthansa stew who had just bumped him up to first class—and who had a very attractive tail, indeed —and with putting his laptop briefcase in the overhead bin, Castillo did not notice who was going to be his traveling companion until he actually started to sit down.

  “Guten abend,” he said to the good-looking, lanky blonde sitting in the window seat, and then switched to English. “Or should it be ‘Good morning’?”

  “I think that’s up for grabs,” the lanky blonde said, in English, with a smile.

  “I think I should warn you I don’t belong up here in the front of the bus,” Castillo said. “Lufthansa took pity on me and gave me an upgrade.”

  “Then we’re both usurpers,” she said. “Me, too.”

  Another member of the cabin crew, this one a wispy male of whose masculinity Castillo had immediate doubts, came and offered a tray of short-stemmed glasses.

  “Will you have some champagne, madam?” he asked, in German.

  The lanky blonde replied, in not bad German, “Yes, thank you, I will.”

  The steward offered the tray to her and then to Castillo, who wondered, Why is “steward” okay and “stewardess” some sort of slam? and then said, in German, “You will go to heaven because you have just saved my life.”

  The lanky blonde smiled.

  He raised his glass to the blonde.

  “To a pleasant flight,” he said.

  “To a pleasant flight,” she parroted and touched glasses with him.

  “Why do you think Lufthansa picked you for an upgrade? ” he asked.

  Goddamned pity I’ll be in Germany only long enough to change planes.

  “I’m a journalist,” she said.

  Oh, shit.

  “Really?”

  “I work for Forbes. The magazine? It happens a lot if I make sure they know I work for Forbes.”

  “I know,” he said. “Same thing.”

  “You’re a journalist? Who do you work for?”

  “The Fulda Tages Zeitung,” Castillo said. “A small newspaper in Hesse. I write mostly about American business.”

  “There or here? I couldn’t help but notice that your English is just about perfect.”

  “I’m based in Washington,” he said. “And I’ve been here a while.”

  “Going home on vacation?”


  “I vacation whenever I can find something to write about in Florida,” he said. “That way the paper pays for it. No, I’m going because they sent for me. They do that every once in a while to make sure I’m not being corrupted by you decadent Americans.”

  Jesus, it would be nice if just once when I met a good-looking female I could tell her the truth about who I am and what I do.

  But to do that, I would have to have a job that I could talk about.

  “Well, I’m a district sales manager for Whirlpool. You know, washing machines?”

  “You don’t look as if you would be easy to corrupt,” she said.

  “Oh, you’re wrong,” Castillo said. “I can only hope you won’t take advantage of me.”

  She laughed at that, displaying a nice set of teeth and bright red gums.

  “No promises,” she said and offered her hand. “Patricia Wilson. Pat.”

  Her hand was warm and soft.

  “My name is Karl, but I try to get people to call me Charley,” he said.

  “Nice to meet you, Charley.”

  The pilot ordered that the passenger compartment be readied for flight.

  When they turned the cabin lights on the next morning, Castillo opened his eyes and saw Patricia Wilson was still asleep beside him. She had her seat all the way back—it was one of the new seats that went almost horizontal. She was straight in the seat, with the small airline pillow in the nape of her neck.

  She looked good. A lot of women, he thought, did not look good first thing in the morning, especially after they had spent most of the night flying across an ocean. Some of them slept with their mouths open. And some snored, which he found amusing, if not very attractive.

  He unstrapped himself and got up carefully so as not to disturb her and then took his laptop briefcase from the overhead bin and went to the toilet. He urinated and then closed the toilet seat and laid the laptop briefcase on it. He went quickly through his morning toilette, which concluded with splashing cologne on his face and examining it in the mirror as he swished Listerine around in his mouth.

  That done, he opened the computer section of the briefcase and removed one of the computer-cushioning pads.

  It appeared to be simply a black plastic cushion. It was not. He pried apart what looked like a heat-welded seam and then tugged on the Velcro inside until it separated. Then he arranged all the documents which identified him as Carlos Guillermo (or C. G.) Castillo—his Army AGO card, his Supervisory Special Agent Secret Service credentials, his Department of Homeland Security identification, building pass, and business cards, and his MasterCard, Visa, and American Express credit cards—inside against what looked like a random pattern of the plastic.

  The lines on the pattern were actually of a special plastic that would both keep the documents from shifting around, thus making a lump in the cushion pad, and also present a faint, baffling pattern to X-ray machines.

  He carefully closed the cushion pad, put it back in the briefcase, zipped everything up, and went back to his seat.

  Patricia Wilson was not only awake but sitting up and sipping at a glass of tomato juice. There was another glass of tomato juice on the small flat area between their seats.

  She pointed to it.

  “You didn’t strike me as the canned orange or grapefruit juice type,” she said. “Okay?”

  “You’re a mind reader,” he said. “Which will probably get me in trouble.”

  She smiled but did not respond directly.

  “Let me get out and go where you have been,” she said. “And then you can sit down. Take my seat, if you like.”

  [THREE]

  Frankfurt International Airport Frankfurt am Main, West Germany 0900 2 June 2005

  When the Lufthansa 767 touched down at Frankfurt International Airport—which he always thought of as “Rhine-Main,” as it was known to American military personnel—Castillo remembered, somewhat painfully, the first time he’d come there twenty-four years ago, at age twelve.

  He’d said good-bye to his mother three hours before. He had understood that she was close to dying and didn’t want him to see her last days. But leaving her had really been tough; they had both known it was really good-bye forever.

  Otto Görner had driven him and Abuela and Grandpa down from Bad Hersfeld in his mother’s Mercedes. Major Naylor and his wife and Colonel Lustrous’s wife had met them in the Pan American VIP lounge. There had been a man from the American consulate there, too, to make sure things went smoothly. It had been the first proof of what his mother had said about Grandpa. That he was “a man of in fluence.”

  The Naylors and Mrs. Lustrous had told him they would see him in America. He hadn’t believed them. Otto had made him promise to write, and to get on the phone if he ever needed anything, or just to talk.

  Mrs. Naylor and Mrs. Lustrous had kissed him. Major Naylor had hugged his shoulders. Otto had shaken his hand. And then he and Abuela and Grandpa had gotten on the first-class -passengers-only bus, which carried them to the 747. It was not only the largest airplane he had ever seen but the first airplane he’d ever been inside of.

  He had stared out the window, fighting back tears, as they taxied to the runway and then taken off. He had been surprised how little time it had taken before Germany disappeared under them.

  Pat Wilson went with Castillo while he rented a car. She was on her way to Berlin, she had told him, and coming the way she had, even though it meant changing planes after a two-hour wait in Frankfurt, would get her there faster than either waiting for a direct Dulles-Berlin flight or catching one in New York would.

  They had exchanged telephone numbers and promised to call whenever one of them was in the other’s city—Forbes was published in New York City. He intended to call her the next time he had some free time in Manhattan, but the number he gave her was that of one of the answering machines in his suite in the Mayflower. He never answered the machines. The Karl von und zu Gossinger machine announced in his voice, in English and German, that Herr von und zu Gossinger was out of town but would return the call as soon as possible if the caller would leave a name and number at the beep.

  He didn’t want to see her in Washington. She was a journalist and there was too much in his life there that would ignite her curiosity.

  Seeing her in New York was something else again. Or anywhere but Washington, for that matter. Maybe he could coincidentally find himself wherever her journalistic duties took her.

  As Castillo drove away from the Hertz lot in an Opel Kapitan, he was surprised to realize he really wanted to see more of Patricia Wilson.

  [FOUR]

  Executive Offices Der Fulda Tages Zeitung Fulda, Hesse, West Germany 1045 2 June 2005

  Castillo took the A66 Autobahn to Schultheim, where it turned into Highway 40, and continued on that until he came to the A7 Autobahn to Fulda. Once out of the Frankfurt area traffic, he made good time. He kept the speedometer needle hovering around 120 kilometers per hour, which meant he was going about 75 miles per hour, which seemed both fast enough and safe on the four-lane, gently curved superhighway.

  A steady stream of cars, an occasional Audi or Porsche or Mercedes but mostly Volkswagens and other small cars, passed him as if he were standing still.

  He told the burly guard—almost certainly a retired cop— at the entrance to the Tages Zeitung parking lot that his name was Gossinger and that he had an appointment with Herr Görner, which wasn’t exactly true but got him into the parking lot.

  By the time he entered the building—which had been built in the late nineteenth century, destroyed in World War II, and then rebuilt to prewar specifications afterward—and went up the wide staircase to Otto’s office, Otto was standing at the head of the stairs waiting for him.

  Otto Görner was a Hessian, but he looked like a post-card Bavarian. Plump, red-cheeked, and radiating gemütlichkeit. He was wearing a dark gray vested suit he’d probably had made in Berlin, but he would have looked just as much at home in lederhosen and a green
hat with a tassel waving a liter mug of beer.

  “Ach, der verlorene Sohn,” Otto said. “You should have let me know you were coming. I’d have had someone meet you.”

  You mean, you would have been waiting for the prodigal son at Rhine-Main.

  “I rented a car, no problem,” Castillo said.

  Otto put his arm around Castillo’s shoulders when Castillo reached the head of the stairs, hugged him briefly, and then waved him into the suite of executive offices.

  The two women and one man in the outer office stood up as they entered. Castillo smiled and shook hands with each of them.

  They knew who he was, and thought they knew what he did. He was the owner, and was the Washington correspondent, of the Gossinger G.m.b.h newspapers. Read: Play-boy /Remittance Man.

  Otto followed him into his office and waved him into one of the leather armchairs facing his desk.

  “I was just thinking about you, actually,” Otto said.

  “I’m flattered.”

  “I just got your monthly bill from the Mayflower,” Otto said. “I’ve got to come see you and see what all that money is buying.”

  “On the other hand, you’re not paying me a salary,” Castillo said. “We should not forget that. Especially since you’re sending me all the way to Africa.”

  “Is that where I’m sending you?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What story is that?” Otto asked and then answered his own question. “That missing airplane? The missing 727?”

  Castillo nodded.

  “I’ve been following that yarn on Reuters,” Otto said. “Actually, I think we ran sort of a wrap-up in the Sunday editions.”