“Quick,” Mr. Hoboken ordered the photographers, “before the President gets in the doorway of Air Force One, get a shot of General Whatshisname, the one in the fancy uniform, welcoming Colonel Whatsisname to Fort Bragg.”
The photographers rushed to comply. As they did so, they trotted past Sergeant Nellis. Somehow, one of Sergeant Nellis’s highly polished “jump boots”—the left one — became entangled with the ankle of the still photographer. Sergeant Nellis of course reached out to catch him as he stumbled. He not only failed to do so, but his right jump boot became simultaneously entangled with the ankle of the motion picture photographer, who then fell on top of the still photographer.
Sergeant Nellis rushed to help them to their feet, and Colonel Caruthers rushed to assist Sergeant Nellis.
By the time both photographers had been pulled to their feet and brushed off, Joshua Ezekiel Clendennen, President of the United States and Commander in Chief of its armed forces, was standing in the door of the Gulfstream.
But it was too late. The opportunity to record General McNab welcoming Colonel R. James Scott to Fort Bragg for posterity was lost forever.
The photographers rushed to record for posterity President Clendennen waving from the door and then as he descended the stair door.
General McNab was waiting for him there, and this time he got the protocol perfect.
He popped to rigid attention, saluted, and barked, “Sir, Lieutenant General Bruce J. McNab reports to the Commander in Chief!”
President Clendennen returned the salute, which annoyed General McNab more than a little, since he believed a salute was something warriors exchanged, and he knew the President had never worn a uniform and that the closest he had come to combat was dodging Mason jars of white lightning thrown at him by the First Mother-in-Law.
But General McNab said nothing through the entire five minutes Robin Hoboken spent posing him and the President for more photographs.
But finally his opportunity came. He came to attention again.
“Sir, how may the general be of service to the President?”
President Clendennen considered the question a moment, and then replied, “General, ask not what you can do for your President, but what your President can do for you.”
“Yes, sir,” General McNab said.
“Make sure you get this,” Robin Hoboken said to the photographers. “It’s important.”
The photographers aimed their cameras.
“Okay, General,” Robin said. “Ask.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Ask the President what he can do for you. He’s waiting.”
“Mr. President, what can you do for me?” General McNab inquired.
“I am here, General, to help you plan the assault on Drug Cartel International Airfield,” President Clendennen said.
“Shit, that sounds bad,” Robin Hoboken said. “We’re going to have to do that again.”
Hoboken waited until the motion picture photographer signaled he was ready to proceed, then called, “Quiet on the set! Rolling! Action! Go ahead, General, ask.”
“Mr. President,” General McNab asked again, “what can you do for me?”
“I am here, General, to help you plan the assault by Clendennen’s Commandos on Drug Cartel International Airfield. I want to be on that Out of the Box Operation from the get-go.”
The President paused, then turned to Robin Hoboken.
“Better?” he asked.
“Much better, Mr. President,” Hoboken said. “I’m glad you remembered Clendennen’s Commandos.”
“Robin, how could I forget my boys?” the President asked chidingly. “They’re like family to me.”
“Excuse me, Mr. President, sir,” General McNab said. “Who are Clendennen’s Commandos?”
“You used to call them Delta Force and Black Coyote,” the President replied. “Robin, who’s really good at this sort of thing, suggested we needed something with more zing to it.”
“No offense, General,” Hoboken said, “but you military people really dropped the ball naming these people—”
“Actually, it’s Black Fox, not Black Coyote,” General McNab said.
“Fox, coyote, what’s the difference?” the President asked.
“Coyotes and foxes are both members of the Canis latrans order of Mammalia, Mr. President,” Robin Hoboken explained. “Coyotes are larger—”
“I meant,” the President said, “that ‘fox’ and ‘coyote’ are really lousy names — not as bad as what they call those sailor boys, of course. Calling them ‘Seals’ make it sound as if they go into battle making funny noises and with fishes in their mouths — but bad enough.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. President,” Hoboken said. “That’s why you wisely decided to rename them.”
“Well, where are my boys, General?” the President asked. “Hard at work preparing things to seize Drug Cartel International as the first operation of Operation Out of the Box?”
“Sir, I only learned of your plans to seize Drug Cartel International yesterday. I don’t even know where it is.”
“It’s in Mexico,” the President said.
“Permit me to rephrase, sir. I don’t even know precisely where in Mexico it is. We can’t plan an operation until we have an exact location.”
“Ask Colonel Castillo. He must know where it is.”
“Sir, I don’t know where Colonel Castillo is, except in the most general terms.”
“What does that mean?”
“The last I heard, sir, he was in Europe, planning the infiltration of his intelligence people into Somalia.”
“Well, tell him to put those goddamn pirates on the back burner; that’ll have to wait.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m really disappointed in you, General,” the President said. “I came all the way down here to see Clendennen’s Commandos getting ready to seize Drug Cartel International, and here you are telling me you don’t even know where it is.”
“Sir, what we really came down here for was to record for history you and Clendennen’s Commandos preparing to seize Drug Cartel International.”
“That’s what I just said,” the President said unpleasantly.
“Mr. President, I’m sure General Naylor here—”
“This isn’t General Naylor, for God’s sake,” the President snapped. “Naylor’s the big general with four stars. General O’Nab is the little general with three stars. Maybe you’d better write that down.”
“My name is McNab, sir.”
“Whatever.”
“What I was going to suggest, Mr. President,” Hoboken said, “is that General McNab probably has some of his people preparing to seize something as we speak. That’s what they do, seize things. Either that, or blow them up. Anyway, you could have your picture taken with them. Nobody would know the difference.”
“That’s true, but would that be honest?”
“Trust me, Mr. President, I do things like that all the time.”
The President considered that option for a moment, and then said, “Okay, we’ll do it. But let’s make it quick. Before we go back to Washington, I’ve got to go to Biloxi and get Belinda-Sue’s mother out of ja… where she is and back in the Baptist assisted living place.”
[EIGHT]
Base Operations
Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina
1005 15 June 2007
“Get a couple more shots of General Whatsisname saluting the President farewell, and then we can get out of here,” Presidential Spokesperson Robin Hoboken ordered the photographers.
General McNab saluted the President farewell for the third time and then asked, “Is there anything else I can do for you, Mr. President?”
“You’re really a slow learner, aren’t you, General?” President Clendennen replied. “We’ve already been down that street twice.”
“Excuse me, sir,” McNab said. “Is there anything else the President can do for the general?”
“Th
e President — presuming the general can get Clendennen’s Commandos up and running and seizing Drug Cartel International smoothly — can get the general another star. How does that sound?”
“Just as soon as I can get the precise locality of the airfield, sir, I’ll get right on it.”
“And that process would be speeded up if you could get a little more enthusiasm for getting Clendennen’s Commandos into Clan Clendennen kilts, General.”
“I’ll do what I can, Mr. President,” General McNab said.
“Get Colonel Whatsisname, the Heraldry guy, to give your people a little historical background on kilts in warfare.”
“Yes, sir, I’ll do that.”
“As far as I’m concerned, those green berets you people wear make me think of wimpy Frenchmen. Who else wears a beret? Kilts, on the other hand, make me think of great big muscular, redheaded Scotchmen — like my ancestors in Clan Clendennen — waving great big swords.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, Mr. President,” General McNab said, evenly.
The President went up the stair door. Robin Hoboken and then the photographers and Supervisory Special Agent Mulligan followed him.
Sean O’Grogarty remained on the tarmac.
“Excuse me, sir,” General McNab said, “I think you’re about to get left behind.”
“That’s the idea,” Sean replied. “Special Agent Mulligan said I was to stick around and let him know how you’re doing.”
“Wonderful!” General McNab said, sharply sarcastic. “This just gets better by the moment.”
The stair door closed as the engines started. Sixty seconds later, the C-37A, call sign “Air Force One,” lifted off.
General McNab watched until the departing aircraft had vanished from sight, and then he walked away from the base operations building down a taxiway. When he was halfway to the runway and had looked around to make sure he was out of earshot, he took his CaseyBerry from his pocket and punched an autodial button.
“Good morning, Bruce,” Secretary of State Natalie Cohen said thirty seconds later.
“Madam Secretary, I believe it would be best if no one but you was in a position to hear any part of this conversation.”
“All right,” she said, and he heard her announce to someone, somewhat curtly, “You’ll have to excuse me while I take this call.”
Thirty seconds after that, she said, “I get the feeling this call is important.”
“The President just took off from here, back to Washington, via Biloxi.”
“What in the world was he doing at Fort Bragg?”
“He wanted to have his picture taken with Clendennen’s Commandos before they go to Mexico to seize Drug Cartel International Airport.”
“‘Clendennen’s Commandos’?”
“He has renamed Delta Force and Black Fox.”
“My God!”
“And he wants them to start wearing the kilts of Clan Clendennen.”
“Unbelievable!”
“I respectfully suggest, Madam Secretary, that you convene a conference of the senior officials aware of the problem to discuss bringing the matter to the Vice President and the Cabinet.”
“It looks as if we’re going to have to do that. Is that what you’re saying, Bruce?”
“Yes, Madam Secretary, it is.”
“Your formality is making me nervous, frankly.”
“I beg your pardon, if that is the case.”
“There’s a problem with convening something like that. Who are you thinking of?”
“Mr. Ellsworth, Mr. Lammelle, General Naylor, Attorney General Palmer, and FBI Director Schmidt, Madam Secretary.”
“Not the Vice President?”
“Vice President Montvale, Madam Secretary, came to me privately and said that if the situation ever came to this, he wished not to be involved, so that later there could be no accusations that he had led a coup.”
“He came to me saying the same thing. And he’s right. But if the President learns, as I am very afraid he will, that I have convened these people, he’s going to cry coup. What are we going to do about that?”
“Hold the meeting in secret, Madam Secretary.”
“That would be just about impossible, Bruce, and you know it.”
“Madam Secretary, I suggest we could hold the meeting in secret if we went to Greek Island.”
It took her a moment to reply.
“If we’re talking about the same Greek Island, Bruce, that was shut down shortly after the Berlin Wall came down.”
“It’s still there, Madam Secretary. No longer controlled by the government, but still there.”
“Are you suggesting we go to West Virginia, to the Greenbrier Hotel, and reopen Greek Island? For one thing, how could we get in? If they haven’t bricked up the opening, then they have gutted it.”
“No, ma’am,” McNab said. “When there was no longer a need for a place for Congress to go in case of a nuclear attack, the government stripped the place and turned it back over to its owner.”
“So?”
“The owner is one of Those People in Las Vegas.”
“And?”
“Frank, who was then working in Covert Operations at the Company, and had already started a relationship with Those People, went to them and told Hotelier he could put the place to good use, but it had to be kept quiet.”
“I think I know where you’re going,” Secretary Cohen said.
“It’s an ideal place to conduct interrogations of people we don’t want anybody to know we’re talking to. And to store things the Agency needs.”
“The Agency and Special Operations Command, you mean?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And by people you don’t want anyone to know you’re talking to, you mean people who didn’t want to talk to you in the first place, right? People who didn’t volunteer to come to the United States?”
McNab didn’t answer.
“Sometimes, Bruce, I think that you and Frank Lammelle are as dangerous as President Clendennen.”
“Well, just forget… please… that I even mentioned the hotel.”
“Is that what you call it, ‘the hotel’? Well, that sounds innocent enough, doesn’t it?”
Again McNab didn’t reply.
“The Lindbergh Act doesn’t give either you or Frank an exemption from anti-kidnapping laws. I presume both of you loose cannons know that.”
“Yes, ma’am. We’re aware of that.”
“Well, let’s hear your plan, Bruce.”
“Excuse me?”
“How are we going to get all these people to the hotel without letting anyone — especially the President — know?”
“May I infer, Madam Secretary…”
“Desperate times call for desperate measures. You may want to write that down.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Damn it, Bruce, now that we’re — at least so far — unindicted co-conspirators, the least you can do is stop calling me ‘ma’am.’”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said automatically.
They laughed.
“One more uncomfortable question, Bruce. What are you going to do about the others? If they go to your hotel, they will know about your hotel.”
“They don’t want to know about the hotel. General Naylor’s the only problem I see about that.”
“In other words, everybody knows — or at least suspects — about the hotel except General Naylor, right?”
“Now that you know, he’s the only one who doesn’t.”
“So, what are you going to do about him?”
“Pray that he doesn’t want to see the rest of us go to jail. As you just said, desperate times call for desperate measures.”
“Let’s hear the plan.”
“Frank brings the attorney general, the secretary of Defense, and the FBI director with him from Washington in his Gulfstream. You pick up General Naylor in yours, and then stop here and pick me up.”
After a moment, the secretary of S
tate said, “Okay, General, I’ll see you soon. Should I bring my golf clubs to the Greenbrier?”
PART VIII
[ONE]
Saint Johan’s Cemetery
Bad Hersfeld, Kreis Hersfeld-Rotenburg
Hesse, Germany
1605 15 June 2007
“It’s over there,” Charley said to Sweaty, pointing to the Gossinger plot in the cemetery.
Sweaty headed toward the plot, which Charley had always thought was sort of a cemetery within the cemetery. The whole thing was fenced in by a waist-high barrier of bronze poles between granite posts. In the center was an enormous pillar, topped by a statue of a weeping saint.
He had no idea how many graves were within the barrier, but there were at least fifty. The one they were looking for was near the pillar, under a gnarled thirty-foot tree.
“Over there, under the tree,” Charley said, again pointing.
Sweaty followed his directions and found what they were looking for. A row of granite markers, into one of which was chiseled:
ERIKA VON UND ZU GOSSINGER
7 MAI 1952 — 13 JULI 1982
Sweaty dropped to her knees, bowed her head, and held her palms together.
Charley thought, and almost said, You can knock that off; the chauffeur can’t see you.
And then the epiphany.
Jesus Christ, she’s actually praying!
This was closely followed by the deeply shaming realization that, ever since they had arrived in Hersfeld a half hour before, he had really been a callous, unfeeling bastard, and that it had only been dumb luck that had kept Sweaty from seeing this.
Otto Göerner, the managing director of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H., had met them at the Das Haus im Wald airfield, after they had flown from Budapest. At that point, Charley had been greatly concerned about what Otto’s reaction to Sweaty was going to be; they had never met.
The only reason Otto had not become Charley’s stepfather when Charley was an infant, as his grandfather, the late Oberst Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger, and his late uncle Hermann Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger, had desperately hoped he would was because — despite enormous pressure from her father and her brother — Charley’s mother had refused to marry Otto.
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