“Charles, go get yourself a cup of coffee,” the President said.
“Excuse me, Mr. President?”
“Come back in ten minutes—if you have your mouth under control by then.”
Montvale didn’t know what to do. He hesitated, and then decided he’d wait when he heard the speakerphone come alive with a new voice.
“Colonel Castillo?” Colonel Hamilton asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“If this, your being with the President, is one more manifestation of that odd sense of humor of yours . . .”
“This is POTUS speaking, Colonel. I have just been told that you are our preeminent expert regarding biological and chemical warfare.” It was a statement but sounded more like a question.
“Good day, Mr. President. Yes, sir. There are some who have said that, sir.”
“Colonel, have you come across anything that suggests there is a laboratory or factory—”
“Mr. President,” Hamilton interrupted, his officious voice hitting a deadly serious tone, “it indeed is a far more dangerous situation than even Colonel Berezovsky suggested.”
“Colonel Berz—you don’t mean the Russian?”
“Yes, sir. What I have found here is far worse than Colonel Berezovsky suggested, Mr. President. I am not a religious man, but what I have seen here in the most elementary of investigations is an abomination before God.”
“You have proof of this, Colonel?” the President asked softly.
“Yes, sir. The first samples will be sent out via Tanzania just as soon as the natives finish construction of the parrot cages.”
“Excuse me?”
“We—I should say Mr. Leverette, sir, who is known as Uncle Remus and who is a genius of ingenuity—are covering our incursion by posing as dealers in African grey parrots. He feels sure, and I have every confidence he’s right, that when we truck out the first fifty parrots later today no one will look in their cages as they cross the border.”
“And what will happen to them in Tanzania?”
“Well, Mr. President, I was going to suggest to Colonel Castillo, who is running the tactical end of Operation Fish Farm for me, to see if he can’t have another aircraft sent into Kilimanjaro to pick them up, either an Air Force fighter or perhaps something from an aircraft carrier. That way, the samples could get to Fort Dietrich much more quickly than they could aboard our aircraft, and doing so would leave our aircraft there. I am trying to think of some way to get some of the human bodies to Fort Dietrich so that thorough autopsies can be performed. The first problem there is to get them to Tanzania without them contaminating human and plant life along the way. And, of course, we can’t hide them in the parrot cages.”
The President flashed a concerned look at everyone in the room, particularly the DCI and DNI. When no one had anything to offer, Castillo thought that the look changed to a simmering anger.
“Colonel, please think your answer over before replying. In your judgment, should the laboratory—this factory, fish farm, whatever you want to call it—should it be destroyed?”
Colonel Hamilton did not think his answer over long.
“Mr. President, what we have here is a fairly large and well-supplied laboratory and an even bigger manufacturing plant. I would recommend the immediate destruction of both—I repeat, both—sir. I am amazed that the processes involved have not already gotten out of control. If that happens, Mr. President, it will be a hundred times, perhaps a thousand times, more of a disaster than Chernobyl. Living organisms are far more dangerous than radiation.”
“Colonel, I’ll be talking to you soon. Thank you very much.”
“Mr. President, it has been an honor to speak with you.”
“Uncle Remus,” Castillo said, “get the colonel’s samples in Jake’s hands as quickly as you can.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Castillo out.”
“Colonel Castillo,” the President said. “From your . . . I guess ‘tone of command,’ one would suppose that you consider yourself still in charge of this . . . what did Hamilton call it? ‘Operation Fish Farm’?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Sadly, that is not to be the case. You’re just too dangerous a man to have around. Too many people have their knives out for you, and some of them have involved the press. I can’t involve the press in this. You understand me, Colonel?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You are relieved as chief, Office of Organizational Analysis. You will go someplace where no one can find you, and you will not surface until your retirement parade. Understood?”
Loud and clear, sir.
And so the other shoe finally fucking drops. . . .
It took Castillo a moment to find his voice. “Yes, sir.”
“After your retirement, I hope that you will fall off the face of the earth and no one will ever see you or hear from you again. Understood?”
“Yes, sir. I’ve been thinking of learning how to play polo. Or golf.”
“The same applies to everyone in the Office of Organizational Analysis. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I don’t know how much of that sixty million dollars you had is left, but it should be enough to provide reasonably adequate severance pay to everyone. If it isn’t, get word to me and we’ll work something out.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Since we understand each other, Colonel, before you disappear, I think you have the right to hear this.”
“Hear what, sir?”
“Mr. Secretary of Defense, you are ordered to take whatever steps are necessary to get Colonel Hamilton’s samples from where Colonel Castillo will tell you they are to the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute at Fort Dietrich as quickly as possible.”
“Mr. President,” Cohen interjected, “you can’t just fly warplanes—”
“I’ll get to you in a moment, Madame Secretary. Right now I’m giving orders, not seeking advice.”
She started to say something but didn’t.
“I think we are in this mess because I’ve listened to too much well-meaning advice,” the President went on. “In addition, Mr. Secretary of Defense, you will immediately prepare plans to utterly destroy this hellhole in the jungle.”
“Sir, Colonel Torine has prepared some proposed op orders,” Castillo said.
“Give them to the secretary, please,” the President said. “I’m sure he will find them valuable in preparing the plan, or plans, I want presented to me yesterday.”
Cohen again tried to reason: “Mr. President, you’re not thinking of actually—”
“And what you are going to do, Madame Secretary,” the President interrupted her, “is return to Washington, where you will summon the ambassador of the Democratic Republic of the Congo to your office. You will tell him (a) that you are sorry to have to tell him that without the knowledge or permission of his government this—what did Hamilton call it?”
“ ‘An abomination before God,’ sir,” Castillo offered, earning him dirty looks from the others.
“That this abomination before God has been erected on his soil, but (b) not to worry, because his friend the United States of America is about to destroy it and no one will be the wiser.
“If he gives you any trouble about our airplanes overflying his country—or anything else—tell him his option is that we will destroy this abomination and then take it to the goddamned United Nations.
“Natalie, say, ‘Yes, Mr. President,’ or I will with great reluctance have to accept your resignation, then have the bastard appear in the Oval Office tomorrow and tell him myself. They knew goddamn well it was there. Palms were greased.”
After a long moment, the secretary of State said, “Yes, Mr. President.”
The President turned to Castillo.
“I hope this eases the pain of getting the boot a little, Charley.”
“It eases it a great deal, sir. Thank you.”
“For what? For defending the United States from all enemie
s, foreign and domestic? That’s what I was hired to do.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is there anything else I can do for you before you start vanishing from the face of the earth?”
Castillo had seen this question coming, too, and was prepared for it.
“Yes, sir. Three things.”
The President made a Let’s have it gesture with both hands.
“First, sir, I would like to see Corporal Bradley here promoted to gunnery sergeant in the Marine Corps. He loves the Corps, but obviously, tainted with this, and knowing what he knows, he could never go back. He’ll have to take a discharge.”
The President pointed to the secretary of Defense.
“Do it,” he ordered, then turned back to Castillo. “And?”
“I’d like to see Berezovsky and Alekseeva taken off the Interpol warrants. They didn’t embezzle any money. And three, I would like myself, and anybody else connected to me, to be taken off the FBI’s ‘locate but do not detain’ list—and any other list we may be on.”
The President pointed at the DCI. “You can take care of that. And since the Russians have not defected to the CIA, I want the CIA to take no action to encourage them to do so. Understood?”
The DCI did not appear the epitome of happy. “Yes. Mr. President.”
The President looked at Castillo.
“I’m sorry it turned out like this, Charley. But bad things happen to good people.”
He put out his hand.
Castillo shook it, then he and Bradley walked out of the room.
[THIRTEEN]
McCarran International Airport
Las Vegas, Nevada
1530 14 January 2006
Castillo had made two calls on the AFC from Jack and Sandra Britton’s suite in the Four Seasons.
The first was to Dr. Aloysius Francis Casey. Casey told Castillo that while he’d said no problem to Charley’s request to get Dmitri and Svetlana to Cozumel, he admitted now that he’d instead brought them to Vegas, and what he suggested was that Castillo come, too, until he could straighten things out.
The second call was to Major Dick Miller in the Office of Organizational Analysis. He lied to Miller. He said he would explain the whole thing when he had the chance, but right now the President wanted them both out of sight, and he was going to go out of sight in Vegas, and the way they were going to do that was that Miller was going to meet him at BWI, where they would turn in the Lear, pick up the Gulfstream, and fly out to Nevada.
That had a secondary reaction. Castillo decided that there was no reason Jack and Sandra Britton should not enjoy the cultural advantages of Las Vegas. For that matter, Two-Gun Yung either.
The G-III went wheels-up out of Baltimore and four hours and forty minutes later touched down at McCarran. Somewhere over Pennsylvania, Castillo had called Aloysius again, told him who was now aboard the Gulfstream, and asked that rooms for one and all be arranged.
“Our last excursion, so to speak, on the tab of the Lorimer Charitable and Benevolent Fund.”
“I’ll send somebody to meet you,” Casey said.
What met them at the AFC hangar was a gleaming black Lincoln stretch limousine with THE VENETIAN lettered in gold on the doors.
Sandra was thrilled.
“I’ve always wanted to be mistaken for a rock star with five lovers,” she said.
When they were off-loaded at the Venetian’s grand entrance, there was one assistant manager in gray frock coat and striped pants for each of them.
“May we show you to your suites?” each asked.
Castillo, who still had not shaved, felt a little uncomfortable in the elegance of the lobby, but he reasoned he would soon be alone with Svetlana and right now that was all that mattered.
“The center door, sir. You are expected. Just go right in,” his assistant manager ordered.
Castillo pushed open the door.
“Sweaty?”
“In here, Charley,” Aloysius Francis Casey called.
Shit!
Swapping war stories with Aloysius is not what I had in mind.
He found himself at the head of a set of sweeping glass stairs leading down a floor to a dimly lit sunken living room. Aloysius Francis Casey and half a dozen men he could not remember ever having seen before sat on a circular couch that appeared to be upholstered with gold lamé.
Castillo started down the stairs, then realized he knew two of the men. Tom Barlow and Jack Davidson were sitting with their feet on a piece of furniture in front of the circular couch. And then he heard a familiar whine—Davidson was barely holding back Max.
What the hell is going on? he thought as Max broke loose and ran to him. Then Castillo realized that he did recognize some of the others. One was a legendary character who owned four—maybe five?—of the more glitzy Las Vegas hotels.
But not this one, a voice from the memory bank told him.
Another was a well-known, perhaps even famous, investment banker.
And another had made an enormous fortune in data processing. Castillo remembered him because he was a Naval Academy graduate.
The others he couldn’t place.
“Need a little taste, Charley?” Aloysius asked. “You look like you could use one.”
“Yes, thank you. I do.” He petted Max. “How are you, buddy?”
A butler in striped pants and a gray jacket took his order, and delivered it in a nearly miraculous short time.
“Gentlemen, now that the colonel has his drink,” Casey said, “I propose a toast to Colonel Hamilton, Phineas DeWitt, and the incomparable Uncle Remus. They did the job of getting Operation Fish Farm off the ground better than anyone in this room thought they could.”
Glasses were raised and clinked and there was a chorus of overlapping voices.
“Charley, word has come back-channel that a scrambled sortie comprised of F-16A, F-15E, and F-15C attack aircraft—on a black op devised by one Colonel Torine—has turned a so-called ‘fish farm’ into a flaming crater.”
All these people know about Op Fish Farm?
I can’t believe Aloysius has been running at the mouth.
Or Dmitri or Jack—and what the hell are they doing here?
“Everybody pay attention,” Casey said. “You don’t often get a chance to see Charley with a baffled look on his face.”
“Okay, Aloysius, you have pulled my chain—more than it’s ever probably been pulled. What the hell is going on around here?”
“How many times since you made the acquaintance of Colonel Hamilton have you said dirty words when he told you of ‘his people’?”
“Every damn time. So what?”
“Here we are, Charley. We’re Hamilton’s people. And now that you’re soon to be unemployed, we’d like to be yours.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Colonel,” the Naval Academy graduate said with a Texas twang, “what we are is a group of people who realize there are a number of things that the intelligence community doesn’t do well, doesn’t want to do, or for one reason or another can’t do. We try to help. And we’re all agreed that you’re just the man to administer the program.”
“You’ve got the wrong guy. The intel community hates me, and that’s a nice way of describing it.”
“Well, telling the DCI that his agency ‘is a few very good people trying to stay afloat in a sea of left-wing bureaucrats’ may not have been the best way to charm the director, even if I happen to know he agrees with you.”
“Colonel,” the man who owned the glitzy hotels said, “this is our proposal, in a few words: you keep your people together, keep them doing what they do so well, and on our side we’ll decide how to get the information to where it will do the most good, and in a manner that will not rub the nose of the intelligence community in their own incompetence.” He paused. “And the pay’s pretty good.”
“Carlos,” Dmitri said, “you don’t want to learn to play golf any more than I do. And maybe we can do some good on
another occasion.”
“Think it over, Charley,” Davidson said. “I’m in.”
“Fair enough,” Castillo said. “I will.”
I am being dishonest again.
This sounds almost too good to be true.
“Where’s Sweaty?” Castillo asked.
“Freddy put her in the Tsar Nicholas II Suite,” Casey said. “He thought she’d like it. It’s even got one of those big copper teapots.”
“Samovars,” Castillo corrected him without thinking. “Where is it?”
“You go up the stairs into the foyer. There’s three doors. This is the center. You and Svetlana are in the right one. I’ll give you a call in a couple of hours, and maybe we’ll have dinner and hoist a couple.”
Max was already waiting at the top of the stairs.
Svetlana kissed Charley and held him and told him he needed a shave.
“I usually shave while I’m in the shower, Sweaty.”
“Is that so? How interesting. Can I watch?”
• • •
For a complete list of this author’s books click here or visit
www.penguin.com/griffinchecklist
Black Ops Page 58
