By Order of the President
Page 31
“Well, let me see what’s going on,” Charley said and took out his cellular telephone.
“Where the hell have you been?” Miller asked.
Castillo put up his hand to tell him to wait.
"Sir, this is your personal FedEx international courier,” he began. “I have your Sacher torte for you—
“Yes, sir. I just walked into my apartment—
“Yes, sir. He’s here. If I can have twenty minutes for a shower and a shave, I’ll be right over—
“Sir, I can come over there—
“Yes, sir. I’ll be waiting for you.”
He hung up and turned to Miller.
“Get your ass off the chair and try to look respectable. My boss is on his way over here. And before he gets here, I need a shower.”
“You want me here?” Miller asked.
“I think he wants to see you, too,” Charley said after a just barely perceptible hesitation.
Castillo, freshly shaved and wearing crisp trousers and a dress shirt, opened the door to Secretary Hall.
“Good afternoon, sir.”
“I tried to call you in Vienna,” Hall said. “I had all kinds of second thoughts about you and Pevsner. And all the Bristol would tell me was that you had checked out early this morning. I was really getting worried, Charley.”
Hall saw Miller.
“I’m Matt Hall, Major Miller,” he said, putting out his hand.
“How do you do, sir?”
“Now that our friend is back, in one piece, I’m feeling a lot better than I was a half hour ago. Did he tell you where’s he’s been, what he was trying to do?”
“No, sir,” Miller said. “I picked up on ‘Vienna.’ ”
Charley walked into the bedroom and came back with the Sacher torte from Demel’s.
“Here you go, sir,” he said. “One cake of fourteen raspberry layers.”
“I was kidding, Charley!”
“You sounded serious to me, sir. And it’s fresh. I picked it up on the way to the airport this morning.”
Hall took the box and shook his head.
“How’d you get it into the country?”
“A customs service captain at BW is one of your admirers. He said to tell you, one Vietnam sergeant to another, that he hopes you enjoy it.”
“You told him you worked for me?”
“It was either that or go to jail. I was in custody. Two armed females and a beagle. The beagle sniffed the cake.”
Hall shook his head but chuckled.
“My God, Charley!” he said. “But thank you. What do I owe you?”
“My pleasure, sir. I was happy to do it.”
“We’ll argue about that later,” Hall said. “Right now all I want to say is that I’m glad you had second thoughts about trying to meet with Pevsner, too.”
“Sir?”
“He’s really a dangerous character, Charley. I asked Joel Isaacson if he knew anything about him and got a five-minute lecture. All frightening.”
“He’s a frightening man,” Charley agreed.
“The FBI is sending me his dossier,” Hall went on, and then he thought aloud: “Which I should have had by now. Anyway, I’m glad you missed him.”
“I met with Pevsner, sir.”
“You met with him?”
“Yes, sir. I’ve got a long story you’re going to have a hard time believing. I’m not sure I believe it myself.”
“Well, let’s hear it, Charley.”
“Sir,” Miller asked, “would you like me to make myself scarce?”
Hall looked at him.
“No,” he said after a moment. “It was your filing, after all, that started this whole thing.” He paused. “And I have the feeling that what one of you knows, so does the other. So, no, Major Miller, don’t make yourself scarce.”
He looked at Charley.
“The bottom line,” Castillo began, “is that he said he didn’t steal the 727 . . .”
“Which is precisely what one would expect him to say,” Hall said.
“. . . and that he’s going to help us find it,” Charley said. “In exchange for which he wants you to use your influence to get the government to . . . reduce the attention it’s paying to him.”
The telephone rang. Castillo looked at Hall for guidance.
“Answer it,” Hall said.
Charley walked to the telephone and picked it up and said, “Hello.”
He was silent a moment, then replied, “Yes, it is—
"The Drei Hussaren—
"No. Wait.”
He patted his chest, and finding no pen, gestured to Miller to give him something to write with. Hall beat Miller to it.
“Okay,” Charley said. “Now I need some paper.”
Miller picked up The Washington Post from the couch and handed it to Castillo.
“Okay,” Castillo said into the receiver. “Shoot.”
He made notes on the newsprint, then said, “Let me make sure I have that right. I spell Able-Baker-Echo-Charley-Hotel -Echo. Right? Hello? Hello? Shit.”
He put the phone back in the cradle.
“He hung up.”
“Come on, Charley,” Hall said, gesturing for details.
“It was a man. American accent. He asked if I was Major Castillo. I said I was. He said he had a message from Alex, if I would tell him where I had dinner last night. I told him. He said that as of 1700 last night, the 727 was on the ground in Abéché, Chad.”
“Alex being Pevsner?” Hall asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Why would he refer to you as Major Castillo?”
“He knew who I was before he called Otto Görner,” Charley said. “That’s why he agreed to the interview. Before he knew I’m me, he was going to take out Gossinger.”
“He told you that?” Hall asked.
“The way he put it was that Gossinger was going to get an Indian beauty mark,” Charley said. “That’s a small red circle in the middle of the forehead.”
“Jesus!” Hall said. “And he was serious, right?”
“I believed him,” Charley said.
“I never should have let you go over there. At least not alone.”
“If I hadn’t been alone, I don’t think he would have met with me.”
“Permission to speak, sir?” Miller asked.
Hall gave him a strange look but said, “Permission granted.”
“Two things,” Miller said. “I don’t think it was a coincidence that phone call came fifteen minutes after Charley walked in here. That’s the first time it’s rung since I’ve been here. Which means they have somebody here, are paying a bellman or someone.”
“Yeah,” Castillo grunted his agreement.
“Two,” Miller went on, “Pevsner would know where the 727 is because he put it there.”
“I don’t think he stole it,” Charley said. “He told me he has airplanes. That he just bought a nearly new 767 from an Argentine airline that went belly-up.”
“Charley, I think you should take it from the top,” Hall said.
“Yes, sir.”
“And you, Miller, if you have any questions while he’s telling us ask them.”
“Yes, sir,” Miller said.
“Sir, I sent an e-mail saying he didn’t show at the Sacher the first night,” Charley began. “So I went back the next night—that’s last night—and . . .”
“So how did you handle the woman who went to your room?” Hall asked with a smile. “You left it that she showed up at your door with a bottle of cognac and then drove you to the airport in the morning.”
“I was hoping you wouldn’t ask, sir,” Charley said.
“You dumb sonofabitch, Charley!” Miller said.
“Agreed,” Charley said. “And that brings up the equally embarrassing fact that I was at least half drunk, which should be factored into this.”
“You think Pevsner purposefully got you drunk?” Hall asked.
“We all had a lot to drink,” Charley said. “But do I thi
nk there was a conscious effort to get me drunk? No. He was drinking cognac when I met him on the Cobenzl, offered me some, which I didn’t think I should refuse, and I kept up with him. He had as much to drink—for that matter, so did Kennedy—as I did.”
“And how reliable do you think this information is—that the 727 is or was last night in Chad?”
“I think Pevsner thinks it is,” Charley said. “I don’t think he would take a chance, at the beginning of the ‘long and mutually profitable association’ he says he wants, by giving me anything that was doubtful—and certainly he wouldn’t give me anything false.”
“Okay. That means we’re going to have to tell Powell,” Hall said.
He took his cellular telephone from his jacket pocket and pressed one of the autodial numbers.
“Matt Hall for the DCI, please,” he said.
“John, I’m on my cellular, but I wanted to get this to you as soon as possible. The thing we’re looking for was, according to information I consider reliable enough to pass on to you, at a place called Abéché—Able-Baker-Echo-Charley -Hotel-Echo—Chad last night at five o’clock—
“No, not over a cellular I’m not. I’ll tell you more in the situation room tonight. What I’m doing is giving you information I consider reliable enough for you to really look into—
“Okay. Again. Able-Baker-Echo-Charley-Hotel-Echo. Got it?—
“I’ll see you shortly.”
He put the cellular in the palm of his hand and pressed another autodial key.
“Matt Hall for Director Schmidt, please—
“I’m fine, Mark. Thank you. Yourself?—
“Mark, I never got the FBI’s dossier on Aleksandr Pevsner I asked for. Is something holding it up?—
“Well, if it’s on your desk, I can’t read it, can I?—
“What do you mean, you weren’t sure I still wanted it?” The tone of Hall’s voice changed and both Miller and Castillo looked at him. His face showed that he didn’t like what he was hearing.
“Well, Mark, first the DCI has not found time in his busy schedule to tell me he doesn’t think there’s much to ‘this Pevsner nonsense scenario from that loose cannon Special Forces guy in Luanda,’ but that doesn’t really have anything to do with this, does it?—
“Yes, of course, I still want it—
“As soon as I can have it. Send it over by messenger right now—
“Yes, of course, I realize it’s classified—
"Then I’ll send one of my Secret Service agents to get it—
“I sound like I’m angry? I can’t imagine why—
“Actually, I’m not in my office. I’m in Room 404 at the Mayflower. But if that’s going to cause any problems, I can have a Secret Service agent in your office in five minutes—
“Okay. Fine. I’ll be looking for him. And while I’ve got you on the line, Mark, there’s something else I need as soon as I can have it. I want the dossier on one of your special agents, maybe an ex-special agent. A man named Howard Kennedy—
“That’s right. Howard Kennedy—
“Well, if you have probably a half dozen agents named Howard Kennedy I guess you’ll have to send me the dossiers on all of them—
“I don’t mean to sound confrontational, Mark, and I’m sorry you feel that way. I don’t suspect for a moment that you and the DCI are deciding together what to send me in response to Dr. Cohen’s memo, because that would probably make me confrontational, but I am getting more than a little curious why this is turning into a problem—
“What would you call it, Mark?—
“How long is it going to take you to assemble the dossiers on how ever many Howard Kennedys are, or were, FBI special agents?—
“Frankly, I don’t think I should have to wait that long. If there’s some reason I can’t have the Kennedy dossiers by nine tomorrow morning, why don’t you send me a memo for record that I can show Dr. Cohen?—
“Yes, I think you’re right. We do seem to be having a communications problem. I’ll be waiting for the Pevsner dossier. Nice to talk to you, Mark.”
He pushed the END CALL button and put the phone in his pocket.
“The turf war has begun,” he announced. “I was afraid of that.” He turned to Major Miller and said, “I hope you’ll understand I have to ask this.”
“Sir?”
“Did you make a pass or anything that could be construed as a pass at Mrs. Wilson?”
“No, sir, I did not.”
"When you had dinner with her, how much did you have to drink?”
“I have never had dinner with Mrs. Wilson, sir.”
“Did you have drinks with her?”
“No, sir.”
“I did,” Charley said.
“You did?” Hall asked, and, when Charley nodded, asked, “And did you make a pass at her?”
“It was more that she made a pass at me,” Charley said.
“And?”
“I was in a receptive mood, sir,” Charley said.
“Jesus Christ!” Miller said. “I told you she was dangerous! ”
“You also told me she wasn’t getting what she needed at home. And she is a very attractive female. At the time, I was supposed to believe her story that she was a reporter for Forbes and she thought I was a fellow journalist named Gossinger.”
“But you knew who she was?” Hall pursued.
“Yes, sir. Dick told me who she was.”
“And that ‘she wasn’t getting what she needed at home.’ Just what did you mean by that, Miller?”
“Sir, the fact is that Mrs. Wilson is twenty years or so younger than her husband. The rumors going around have it he likes young men and married the lady as a beard.”
Hall looked at him for a long moment but didn’t respond. Instead, he turned to Castillo.
“Tell me, Charley. And the truth, please. The cow is out of the barn, so to speak. Why did you take Mrs. Wilson to bed?”
“In hindsight, sir, it was irresponsible. What happened was that she wanted to look at my story . . .”
“Why?”
“Probably to see if I really had a story; was, in fact, a journalist. She smelled something; she sent Dick to check me out. And then, presuming I had a story, she wanted to know what I had found out and was reporting about the missing 727.”
“What’s that got to do with taking her to bed?”
“I told her she could have the story just as soon as the Tages Zeitung went to bed. She replied, ‘Why not as soon as we do?’ ”
“Whereupon you shut off your brain and turned on your dick,” Miller blurted, almost in disbelief.
“You could put it in those terms, I suppose,” Charley said.
“That strikes me as a succinct summing-up, Charley,” Hall said, shaking his head. “A little crude but right on the money. I hope she was worth it. That—little dalliance—is likely to turn out to be costly.”
Hall looked at his wristwatch.
“I don’t know how soon the FBI will show up, but I don’t think I can risk going back to the office. I very much doubt if they’d give the Pevsner dossier to you. Could we get coffee and something to munch on, do you think?”
“Coffee and a large hors d’oeuvres coming up, sir,” Charley said, heading for the telephone.
“Sir, am I allowed to make a suggestion?” Miller asked.
Hall considered that before replying, “Sure, why not?”
“What Pevsner said—or the ex-FBI agent, one of them—about there being a Philadelphia connection?”
Hall nodded his understanding.
“Sir, I might be useful in running that down.”
“How?”
“My father and the police commissioner are friends, sir. Commissioner Kellogg?”
“Miller, I’m going to pass on to the FBI what Charley heard in Vienna. They’ll certainly look into it, including asking the police what they might have.”
“Sir, sometimes the cooperation between the FBI and the police isn’t all that it sh
ould be.”
“Meaning?”
“I’m sure the cops will answer any specific questions put to them by the FBI. But probably not very quickly. And I’m also sure they’re not going to volunteer anything that might give up their snitches, or if they have somebody undercover with the Muslims, his identity. Or . . .”
“And you think they’d confide in you?”
“More than they would in the FBI,” Miller said. “Particularly if Commissioner Kellogg knew I was asking the questions for you.”
Hall exhaled and shook his head.
“Charley, did you hear this?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“That wasn’t really the question, Charley, and you know it. What do you think?”
“I was thinking, sir, that if the president . . . may I talk about that?”
Hall studied Miller a moment, then turned to Castillo. “He knows you’re working by order of the president, doesn’t he?”
“I think he’s figured that out, sir.”
“Since the cow is out of the barn . . .” Hall said, gesturing for Castillo to continue.
“Sir, if the president wants to know who knew what and when, and the cops in Philadelphia know something, isn’t he going to want to know when the FBI found out about it?”
Hall looked at him a long moment.
Charley thought, He’s thinking, but not about Miller going to Philadelphia.
“I just had a Washington bureaucrat’s thought that I’m a little ashamed of,” Hall confessed. “I was thinking, My God, if we find the 727 before anyone else does a lot of people are going to have egg on their face and really be annoyed with us. We can count on payback.”
“So Miller doesn’t go to Philadelphia?” Charley asked.
“That depends,” Hall said. He took his cellular telephone from his pocket again and pressed an autodial key.
“Matt Hall for General Naylor—
“Well, I have to talk to him, and now.”
He turned to Castillo and Miller.
“The commander in chief of Central Command is out jogging on the beach,” he announced with a smile.
The commanding general of Central Command is never out of touch; it took fewer than ninety seconds to get a telephone to Naylor.
“You sound a little winded, Allan,” Hall said. “And what about sunburn? At your age . . .”
The commanding general was apparently not amused. Hall smiled.