“Temper, temper, Allan. And, no, this couldn’t wait. It’s important, but we’re both on cellulars, okay? So you’re just going to have to trust me. That last fellow you just sent to me? I would like to use him the same way I’m using the first one. Would that be okay with you? More important, if it will get him in any trouble, say so—
“Of course he volunteered.”
Hall handed Miller the telephone.
“Yes, sir?—
“Yes, sir, I understand. Thank you, sir. Yes, sir.”
He handed the phone to Castillo.
“Yes, sir?—
“Yes, sir, I’m fine—
“Yes, sir. I will.”
Castillo handed the cellular to Hall.
“Thank you, Allan. I’ll be in touch when we can talk. Have a nice jog.”
Hall put the cellular back in his pocket.
“What did he say to you, Miller?”
“Sir, he said that, VOCG, I am to place myself at your orders. CentCom orders will be published tomorrow.”
“VOCG?” Hall asked.
“ ‘Verbal Orders of the Commanding General,’ sir,” Miller furnished.
“Okay. I’d forgotten that phrase. If I ever knew it. I never saw a general up close when I was in the Army.”
“It’s SOP, sir,” Charley said, “when there is no time to get a set of orders published.”
Hall nodded.
“I understand your security clearances have been revoked, ” he said to Miller. “So I’m unrevoking them as of right now. Charley, call the office and dictate a memorandum for the record.”
“Yes, sir. What are you going to give him?”
“Everything he had before they were pulled,” Hall said. “In addition, I authorize you to tell him anything you think he needs to know about your orders from the president.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Put that in the memo for record, too,” Hall ordered.
“Yes, sir,” Castillo said and punched an autodial key on his cellular.
“While he’s doing that,” Hall ordered, “see if you can get Commissioner Kellogg on the phone.”
“Yes, sir,” Miller said.
“Thank you, Commissioner,” Hall said. “When you get to the office at eight, Major Miller and my executive assistant, a man named Castillo, will be waiting for you. This is important and I’m grateful for your understanding.”
He saw Castillo’s eyes on him as he pushed the phone’s CALL END button.
“Yeah, you’re going. For several reasons. We obviously don’t have time to get Miller any identification, for one. For another, I want you both out of town for a while.”
“Yes, sir. What if there’s another message from Pevsner? ”
“I thought, if it’s all right with you, that I’d have Joel Isaacson put a man in here, in the apartment. He would know only what he has to know. That if there is a call for you, you’re out of town but can be reached on your cellular and give the caller your number.”
“That’ll work, sir, so far as Pevsner is concerned. But if you put Secret Service people in here, they’ll know I live here. Isn’t that going to cause problems?”
“They already know where you live. And a lot more about you than you probably think. Why do you think your code name is Don Juan?”
“Really?” Miller chuckled.
“And you didn’t think Isaacson and McGuire let me walk over here by myself, did you?”
“I wondered about that, sir. But once they get in here . . .”
“You’re talking about the improbability of your being able to pay the rent on this place on your Army pay?”
“That’s the sort of thing that causes gossip, sir.”
“Why should it? If I know about it, my approval is implied. ”
“Yes, sir.”
“I don’t think I’d have to tell Joel to remind them to keep their mouths shut but I will.”
“When do you want us to go, sir?”
“I’d like you to see what the FBI has on your friend Pevsner, but that can wait until you get back. I’d like to have you out of town before I go to the White House.”
Castillo looked at his watch.
"We just missed the Metroliner,” he said. “There’s another in an hour?”
“That’d do it,” Hall ordered.
Castillo went to the telephone.
“Who’re you calling?” Miller asked.
“The concierge,” Castillo answered and then spoke to the phone: “This is Mr. Castillo. I’ll need two first-class tickets on the next Metroliner to New York, charge them to my room, and have a cab waiting in thirty minutes to take me to Union Station.”
“You said ‘two tickets to New York,’ you know,” Miller said when Castillo had hung up.
“Yeah, I know. I think you were right about the timing of that call from Pevsner’s man. I was thinking that if I wanted information about somebody in a hotel, I would lay lots of long green on the concierge. I think he’s probably the villain. I’m pretty sure that’s how Kennedy found out that Carlos Castillo was not Karl Gossinger’s boyfriend. And I wouldn’t . . .”
“He thought that?” Miller asked, highly amused.
“Yeah, he did. And I wouldn’t be surprised if someone from the CIA asked him about the guy in 404, either. DCI Powell seemed very curious about me.”
“You really think he would order something like that?” Hall asked.
Castillo nodded. “And either promised money or appealed to his patriotism to have him keep an eye on me. Maybe I’m wrong—I’d like to be wrong—but if I’m right, I sort of like the idea of two pairs of spooks—Powell’s and Pevsner’s—frantically searching through the people getting off the train in Penn Station in New York looking for me and whoever’s with me.”
“What have you got against the DCI?” Hall asked.
“I don’t like the way he handled Dick,” Castillo replied. “He told you he wouldn’t do anything to him and then he had him relieved for cause. Once that happens to an Army officer, he might as well resign and he knew it.”
“I’m dealing with that,” Hall said. “I’m . . .”
The door knocker rapped.
It was a bellman with a large tray of hors d’oeuvres and two pots of coffee.
Fifteen minutes later, there was another rapping of the door knocker.
Castillo opened it. There were two men in business suits. One of them carried a briefcase. When Charley glanced down the corridor, he saw Joel Isaacson coming toward the door from one direction and Tom McGuire coming from the other.
There must be something about these two people they think is fishy.
“Yes?” Castillo said.
“We’re looking for Secretary Hall,” the elder of the two men at the door said.
“Who are you?”
The man who had spoken took a leather folder from his pocket and held it up.
“Oh, my, the FBI!” Castillo said, more loudly than was necessary.
He got a smile from Isaacson before Isaacson stopped at a nearby door, and appeared to be slipping a plastic card into its lock.
“Come in, please,” Castillo said. “The secretary expects you.”
“Good afternoon, Mr. Secretary,” the man from the FBI said. “I’m Inspector Doherty from Director Schmidt’s of fice.”
Hall smiled at him and put out his hand.
“Mr. Secretary, we have a dossier for you,” Inspector Doherty said, “but it’s from the director’s personal files and he’d like it back—if possible, he’d like us to take it back now, after you’ve had a chance to read it.”
He handed Hall an expanding cardboard folder. Hall looked at the folder and then at Doherty. The look on his face showed he didn’t like at all hearing that Schmidt wanted his dossier back right away.
“Director Schmidt will have everything xeroxed for you, sir,” Doherty offered.
“In that case, Charley,” Hall said, handing the folder to Castillo, “I think you and Miller had
better have a quick look at the dossier before you go.”
The look on Doherty’s face showed he didn’t like that announcement at all.
“With all respect, sir, do these gentlemen have the proper security clearances?”
Hall didn’t reply. The look on his face was answer enough.
“You understand, sir, I had to ask.”
Inside the expanding folder was the dossier, a thick stack of paper held together with a large aluminum clip.
“There’s coffee, Mr. Doherty,” the secretary said.
“Thank you but no thank you, sir.”
Castillo walked to the couch, laid the dossier on the coffee table, and started flipping through it. After a minute, Miller sat down beside him.
“I hope you, Mr. Secretary—and these gentlemen—understand that some of the material in these files has not been confirmed,” Doherty said.
Castillo closed his dossier.
“Sir, I’ll need more time than Miller and I have,” he said.
“Okay,” Hall said. “Then you better leave. You and Miller can read the Xeroxes when you get back.”
Castillo took the dossier and started to put it back in the expanding file.
“Just leave it there, please,” Hall said. “I’ll read as much as I can before I have to go to the White House.”
“Yes, sir,” Castillo said.
He and Miller went into the bedroom. In five minutes— Castillo now wearing a necktie and suit jacket—they came out carrying suitcases.
Hall looked up from the dossier on the coffee table.
“Keep in touch,” he ordered.
[THREE]
The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, D.C. 1725 8 June 2005
Secretary Hall had heard—and it had not displeased him— that the passengers of only three vehicles were ever exempted from careful scrutiny before being passed onto the White House grounds: the presidential limousine, the vice-presidential limousine, and the blue GMC Yukon XL that he ordinarily rode in.
He thought of that as his Yukon approached the gates and was pleased to realize he enjoyed that little perk and John Powell and Mark Schmidt did not. Right now, he was not very fond of the DCI or the director of the FBI.
And he was therefore surprised, and a little disappointed, when the uniformed Secret Service officer waved the Yukon to stop.
Joel Isaacson rolled down the driver’s window.
“Good evening, Mr. Secretary,” the guard said. “Sir, the president requests you to go to the quarters before you go to the situation room.”
Natalie Cohen was sitting with her legs tucked under her skirt on a couch in the sitting room of the president’s apartment. She raised her hand in a casual greeting when Hall walked in.
The president was sitting slumped in an armchair, holding a crystal tumbler of what was almost certainly his usual bourbon, Maker’s Mark, on the rocks.
“You want one of these, Matt?” he asked, raising the glass. “To give you courage to grovel before Powell?”
“I’m not going to grovel before Powell,” Hall blurted, then remembered to add, “Mr. President, am I?”
“Let me tell you where our little fishing expedition has crashed on the rocks,” the president said.
He pointed at an array of bottles on a sideboard. Hall walked to it, told himself he was in trouble, would need all his wits not a drink, and then poured two inches of the bourbon into a glass and took a sip.
Then he leaned against the sideboard and looked at the president.
“The FBI has learned that Lease-Aire, Inc., has filed a claim for the loss of its airplane, which is now with a seventy percent probability at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.”
“Sir, isn’t that to be expected?”
The president held up his hand as a signal for him not to interrupt.
“The DCI has reported that he found it necessary to relieve the station chief in Luanda for, one, turning over to your major the linguist-classified material that had already been evaluated and found useless by Langley because your major told him he was working for me—this was to be a secret operation, remember?—and, two, incidentally getting shit-faced at dinner—sorry, Nat—”
Dr. Cohen raised her hand in exactly the same way she had raised it when Hall had walked into the room.
“. . . and making a pass at his boss.”
The president took a sip of his drink and then looked at Hall, waiting for his reaction.
The secretary of Homeland Security, after three seconds of thought, made a profound philosophical decision that he learned in Vietnam, when lives also were at stake: Pick men you trust, and trust the men you pick.
“In my judgment, Mr. President,” Hall said, “there is an almost one hundred percent probability that the missing airplane is not at the bottom of the Atlantic.”
“That’s interesting,” Dr. Cohen said.
“You don’t happen to know where it is, do you, Matt?” the president asked very softly.
“Mr. President, there is an almost eighty percent possibility that as of five o’clock yesterday afternoon it was at a remote airfield in Chad, a place called Abéché. I have so informed the DCI.”
“And the source of your information, Matt?” Dr. Cohen asked, very softly.
“A Russian arms dealer by the name of Aleksandr Pevsner. ”
“And what did the DCI say when you told him you had learned from Mr. Pevsner that the airplane was in Chad?” the president asked, and then, without giving Hall time to reply, asked, “And did Mr. Pevsner happen to tell you what the 727 is doing in Chad?”
“In a short answer, sir, the airplane is being prepared to be flown into the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia by a Somalian group that calls itself the Holy Legion of Muhammad.”
“You told this to Powell?” the president asked.
“No, sir. Only that I had reliable information that the aircraft was at Abéché.”
“He didn’t ask for your source?”
“Yes, sir, he did. But I told him I was on a nonsecure telephone. ”
“This guy Pevsner has come up before,” the president said. “According to Powell, he’s a Russian gangster, the head of the Russian Mafia. Are you aware of that?”
“Did the DCI also tell you, sir, that the agency uses Pevsner ’s fleet of airplanes to move things covertly for them? And as a source for weapons of all kinds?”
“No,” the president said, thoughtfully. “He didn’t happen to mention that.”
“What was your contact with Pevsner?” Dr. Cohen asked. “How did that happen?”
“My contact was through Major Castillo,” Hall said. “You want all the details?”
“Every one of them, Mr. Secretary,” the president said. “Every goddamned last-minute detail!”
It took about ten minutes.
“Okay, Dr. Cohen,” the president said, “you’ve heard this fascinating yarn; you’re my security advisor—advise me.”
“Have I got everything, Matt?” Dr. Cohen said.
“There’s one or two more things, but nothing bearing on the location of the airplane or what the terrorists intend to do with it.”
“Goddammit, I said I wanted every detail, Matt!”
“Yes, sir. Major Miller did not make a pass at Mrs. Wilson. ”
“So he would say, right?”
“Mrs. Wilson made a pass at Major Castillo when she thought he was the German journalist. And he caught it.”
“Interesting,” Dr. Cohen said.
"And ...”
“I’d like to hear that from Major Castillo,” the president said. “I’d like to hear the whole goddamned wild, incredible story again from him.”
“Sir, at the moment he’s on the Metroliner to Philadelphia. I can call him and have him return, but that would take several hours . . .”
“He’s checking into the possible Muslim connection in Philadelphia?” Dr. Cohen asked, and, when Hall nodded, went on: “Mr. President, you’re not going to
have time to check Castillo’s story out yourself. You’re going to have to make a decision and right now.”
“I know that I have to make a decision, Natalie,” the president said. He sounded tired rather than sarcastic. “What I want from you is advice on what that decision should be.”
She did not immediately reply.
“Come on, Natalie. This is why you make the big bucks,” the president said.
“Sir, my advice—your wife’s in Chicago, right?”
The president nodded.
“Sir, what I think you should do is call the Marines and chopper out to Camp David, taking Matt with you. No explanation to anybody.”
“What do I do with Powell?”
“I will go to the situation room and tell him—and Schmidt—that just before you left for Camp David you told me to tell him you really want to know whether or not the missing airplane is—or was—at this place in Chad . . .”
“Abéché,” Hall furnished.
“Thank you,” she said. “And that he is to let me know immediately what he finds out.”
“Why should I go—Matt and I go—to Camp David?” the president asked.
“Because if you were going to ask for Matt’s resignation, that’s where you’d take him to ask for it,” Dr. Cohen said.
“They should know whether that airplane is where Matt thinks it is by morning,” the president thought aloud.
“May I suggest, Mr. President, that you come back here about this time tomorrow?” Dr. Cohen said.
“Okay,” the president said after a moment’s thought. “Let’s do it.”
Dr. Cohen picked up the handset of a multibuttoned telephone on the coffee table and pushed one of the buttons.
“This is Dr. Cohen,” she said. “The president will require Marine One for a flight to Camp David immediately. No prior or post-takeoff announcement. Refer all inquiries you can’t handle to me.”
She put the handset back in the cradle.
“Thank you, Natalie,” the president said. And then he looked at Matt Hall. “Jesus H. Christ, Matt! They really want to crash that airplane into the Liberty Bell?”
[FOUR]
Aboard Marine One The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, D.C. 1810 8 June 2005
By Order of the President Page 32
