By Order of the President

UNCLE ALLAN IS WORRIED THAT YOUR CAR BROKE DOWN. SHALL WE TELL

Major Castillo took a moment to consider his reply to the secretary of homeland security and then quickly typed it.

He read the screen to make sure there were no typos and then pushed ENTER.

Going to the American embassy here would be a waste of time, and it would almost certainly draw attention to him.

Furthermore, he had already read, in Washington, the intel summaries. What the military attache had sent to the Defense Intelligence Agency, what the CIA station chief had sent to Langley, and what the ambassador had sent to the State Department. If there had been significant developments on what happened to the missing 727 while he was on his way to Angola, the secretary would either have indicated that in the e-mail, or, at the least, ordered him to call home.

His job here wasn't to find the airplane but rather, as the president had put it, to find out who knew what and when they knew it.

The German embassy was another matter. Not only would a German journalist be expected to check in with the embassy but Otto had sent them a message saying he was coming. More important, they might know something, or have an opinion, that they almost certainly would not have shared with the Americans.

Castillo unpacked, then had a shower and a shave. He drew the blinds against the early morning sun, lay down on the bed, and went to sleep.

He intended to sleep until nine or thereabouts. When he woke, it was 9:05. He dressed, brushed his teeth, and then went down to the lobby, had a cup of coffee and a croissant in the lobby lounge, and then went out and got in a taxi.

The doorman who put him into the cab asked in Portuguese where he wanted to go and Castillo told him, in what he hoped sounded like Portuguese. The doorman seemed to understand him.

[SEVEN]

The Chief of Mission at the German embassy, whose name was Dieter Hausner, was about Castillo's age. He was thin, nearly bald, and well dressed. His office overlooked an interior garden. It was impersonal. The only picture on the walls was of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, and the furniture was modern, crisp, and efficient. Castillo was not surprised that the chrome-and-leather chair into which Hausner waved him was awkward to get into and would be worse getting out of.

Hausner told him the ambassador was sorry he couldn't receive Herr von und zu Gossinger personally-the press of duty-but he hoped that while Herr von und zu Gossinger was in Angola he would have the chance to offer him dinner.

"That would be very nice," Castillo said.

"You know, although I now consider myself a Berliner, I'm from Hesse myself," Hausner said. "Wetzlar."

"Oh, yes."

"And I'm an Alte Marburger."

The reference was to Phillip's University in Marburg an der Lahn, not far from either Fulda or Wetzlar. Castillo had told people he was a Marburger. He knew enough about the school to get away with it, including the fact that the university usually turned a deaf ear to inquiries about its alumni unless they came from another university. Obviously, he couldn't do that here, and get in a game of "did you know" with Hausner.

"My uncle Wilhelm-Willi-was a Marburger," Castillo said.

"But not you? Where did you go to university?"

I am being interrogated. Why? Because the ambassador wanted to check me out before he fed me dinner? Or is Dieter here really the agency spook? Or the spook or counterspook in addition to his other duties?

So far as I know, I have never done anything to arouse the curiosity of German intelligence, but that doesn't mean they don't have a dossier on Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger.

Would Hausner routinely have run a security check on me when he got Otto's heads-up that I was coming? Or would he presume that if the Tages Zeitung sent me, I was who they said I was? Or will he – if I arouse his curiosity – ask for a security check the minute I walk out of here?

"I went right from Saint Johan's in Fulda to Georgetown, in Washington," Castillo said. "My grandfather was a believer in the total immersion system of learning a foreign language."

"And did it work?"

"I speak fluent American," Castillo said. "And passable English."

Hausner laughed.

"And you're now based in Washington?"

"It was either that or Fulda," Castillo said.

"I understand. Fulda offers about as much of the good life as Wetzlar."

"When I was a kid, I went to the school at the Leitz plant," Castillo said. Leica cameras came from the Leitz factory in Wetzlar. "I used to drink in a gasthaus by the bridge."

"Zum Adler," Hausner furnished. "So did I. So what brings you to Luanda?"

"The missing airplane:"

"Uh-huh," Hausner said.

"And the man who would ordinarily cover the story was unable to come. And I speak a little Spanish, which is a little like Portuguese."

"I understand."

"What do you think happened to that airplane?"

"How much do you know about it?"

"Only what I read in the newspapers. An airplane, a Boeing 727, which had been here for a year, suddenly took off without permission and hasn't been seen since."

"That's about all I know," Hausner said.

"Why was it here for a year? How do you hide an airplane that size? Was it stolen? What do you do with a stolen airplane?"

"You could fly it into a skyscraper in New York," Hausner said. "But I don't think that's what the thief-thieves-had in mind."

"Really?"

"It would be so much easier to steal-what's the term?- skyjack an airplane in the United States-or, for that matter, in London, if they wanted to fly into Buckingham Palace-than it would be to fly an airplane from here to wherever they wanted to cause mischief."

"That's true," Castillo agreed.

It probably is true, but for some reason I remain unconvinced.

"I have a theory-but, please, Herr von und zu Gossinger, I really don't want to be quoted."

"Not even as a 'high-ranking officer, speaking on condition of anonymity'?"

"Not at all."

He liked "high-ranking officer. "

"All right, you have my word."

"Let me put it this way," Hausner said. "I wouldn't be at all surprised if in two or three weeks-or this afternoon-the airplane will be found not more than a couple of hundred miles from here, perhaps even closer, on a deserted field. The empty hulk of the airplane; everything that can be taken off of it-engines, instruments, even the wheels and tires-will have been taken off."

"For resale on the black market?"

"Uh-huh. There's a market all over Africa for aircraft parts."

"That would open the possibility that the owners of the aircraft-you don't know why it sat here for a year?"

"It may have needed parts. Do you know who owned it?"

"A small airplane dealer in Philadelphia," Castillo said, "that probably had it insured and will now place a claim. That may be enough in itself, but if they were involved in having the plane stolen and can sell the parts:"

"Precisely," Hausner said.

"I'd like to see where the airplane was parked all that time," Castillo said after a moment. "Is that going to be difficult?"

"There's not much to see," Hausner said. "A concrete pad in a far corner of the airfield. I've been there. But, no, it won't be a problem. I know the security man at the airfield. I'll give him a call and tell him you're coming."

Hausner opened his desk drawer and took two business cards from a box. He wrote a name on one of them and then handed both to Castillo.

"A small gift for his favorite charity might be a good idea," Hausner said, smiling.

"I think I'll go out there now," Castillo said. "Before it gets hot."

"I'll send you out there in one of our cars," Hausner said. "And then you can take a taxi to your hotel when you've finished."

"That's very kind of you," Castillo said.

"Not at all," Hausner said. He stood up and offered his hand.

[EIGHT]

Hausner was right. There was nothing much to see at the airport, although the "little gift" Castillo gave to the airport security manager for his favorite charity resulted in having that dignitary drive him to the remote parking area in his Citroen pickup truck.

There were four parking pads near the north threshold of the main runway. None were in use. The one the security manager pointed out as where the 727 had been parked was identical to the others-an oil-stained square concrete pad with grass growing through its cracks.

Controllers in the tower across the field would have seen the 727 every time they looked in the direction of the runway's northern threshold.

Taking off without permission would have been simple. All the pilot would have had to do-and almost certainly did do-was call ground control for permission to taxi to the hangar/terminal area. When that permission was granted, all the pilot had had to do was make a right turn off the taxiway onto the threshold, and then another right onto the runway and go. He would have been airborne before any but the most alert controller would have noticed he wasn't on the taxiway.

Castillo ran the numbers in his mind:

If the pilot kept the 727 close to the ground, he would have been out of sight in no more than a minute or two and disappeared from radar in not much more time. If he was making three hundred knots-and he almost certainly would have been going at least that fast-that was five miles a minute. In twenty minutes, he would have been a hundred miles from the airport. In half an hour, he would have been 150 miles from the airfield, and even if he had climbed out by then in the interest of fuel economy he would have just been an unidentifiable blip on the airfield's radar screen. He certainly would not have activated his transponder.

In the taxi-this one a Peugeot-to El Presidente Hotel, Castillo decided that he was not going to learn much more in Luanda than he already knew. The CIA and DIA and State Department intel filings would have the details of who was suspected of flying the plane off, who serviced the plane so that it would be flyable after sitting there for so long, and so on. There was no sense wasting time duplicating their efforts himself now. When he'd assembled and collated everybody's filings, he would know which of the agencies had made the same sort of decision to let another agency develop something they should have developed themselves. This is one of the things the president had said he wanted to know.

The airplane was bound to show up. When that happened, he would probably be able to determine who had done the best job of finding out what had happened, and, more important, who had not learned something that should have been learned. Plus, of course, who had made the best guess about what was going to happen.

The president had made it clear he wanted to know who had known what and when. And who had done or not done something others had done.

Castillo decided that what he would do was go to his room and write a story for the Tages Zeitung. He would e-mail it both to Germany and to Hall. The secretary would understand from the Tages Zeitung filing that he hadn't learned anything that hadn't already been reported.

Afterward, he would spend the afternoon hanging around the hotel bar. Striking up conversations with strangers often produced an amazing amount of information. If something new-or even the suggestion of something new-came up, he would run it down. If not, he'd go back to Germany, and from Germany home. Until the plane showed up, there was really nothing else he could do, and the plane might not show up for weeks. Unless, of course, he thought wryly, he went back to Washington, where the 727 would show up when he was halfway across the Atlantic.

And, as a corollary of this reasoning, Castillo decided he would stay away from Miss Patricia Wilson. For one thing, she wasn't what she announced herself to be and that made a dalliance with her, if not actually dangerous, then an awkward situation very likely to explode in his face. For another, he had the feeling she was not the sort of female who could be lured into his bed in the little time he planned to be in Luanda.

[NINE]

There was no blinking green light in the locking mechanism of Castillo's hotel room door when he slid the plastic "key" into it.

He tried reinserting it in all possible ways, simultaneously working the lever-type doorknob. He had just inserted it, as he thought of it, wrong side out and upside down, when the door was opened from the inside.

As a reflex action, he jumped away and flattened his back against the corridor wall.

There was no explosion, either per se, or of persons bursting into the corridor with weapons ready.

Instead, a chubby, smiling, very black face looked around the doorjamb into the corridor. He recognized it immediately. It belonged to Major H. Richard Miller, Jr., Aviation, U.S. Army, a USMA classmate of Castillo's. The major was wearing a not-very-well-fitting, single-breasted black suit, a frayed-collar white shirt, and a somewhat ragged black tie.

He looks like those drivers at the airport, Castillo thought. And that's probably on purpose.

What the hell is he doing here?

"We're going to have to stop meeting this way, Charley," Miller said, softly. "People will start to talk."

"You sonofabitch!" Castillo said. "You scared hell out of me!"

He quickly entered his room and closed the door.

The two men looked at each other for a moment.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Castillo asked.

"That's what I was about to ask you," Miller, who was fifty pounds heavier and four inches taller than Castillo, replied. "Plus, who the hell are you?"

"Oh, shit," Castillo said, and then the two embraced, in the manner of brothers. They had last seen one another, in less than pleasant circumstances, eighteen months before, in Afghanistan.

"Sorry about the door," Miller said when they broke apart.

"What the hell did you do to it?"

Miller took an unmarked black aluminum box, about the size of a cellular telephone, from his pocket.

"I give this thing ten seconds to find what it's looking for and then I hit the emergency button. That opens the lock, but sometimes it upgefucks the mechanism. Which, apparently, my dear Major Whatever-the-Hell-Your-Name-Is-Today, is what happened in the present instance."

Castillo shook his head.

"I suppose the lock on the minibar is similarly destroyed?"

"No. That's a mechanical lock. I opened that with a pick. All the wine is French, which of course as a patriotic American I don't drink. But there is-or was-Jack Daniel's and several kinds of scotch."

"How long have you been here?" Castillo asked as he opened the minibar.

"About an hour. Which gave me plenty of time to sweep the room. It's clean."

Castillo nodded, then held up two miniature whiskey bottles, one scotch and one Jack Daniel's. Miller pointed to the bourbon and Castillo tossed it to him.

He opened the scotch and poured it into a glass as Miller did the same with his still-half-full glass.

Castillo walked to him and they touched glasses.

"It's good to see you, Dick," Castillo said.

"Yeah, you, too, Charley," Miller said. "I never got a chance to say, 'Thanks for the ride.' "

Castillo made a deprecating gesture.

"You were pretty much out of it, Dick," he said.

"Now I know why the Mafia shoots bad mob guys in the knee," Miller said. "It smarts considerable."

"How is it?"

"That depends on who you ask," Miller said. "So far as I'm concerned, it's fine. I have so far been unable to convince even one flight surgeon of that. But hope springs eternal, or so I'm told."

"So what are you doing here?"

"You knew they sent me to the agency when I got out of the hospital?"

"I heard you were training nice young men to be spooks at the Farm."

"That didn't last long. I strongly suspect that my boss called in all favors due to have me reassigned elsewhere. Anywhere elsewhere."

"So they sent you here? To do what?"

"On paper, I'm the assistant military attache."

"But, actually, you're the resident spook, which you can't talk about?"

Miller nodded.

Jesus, I wish I had known that. It would have saved me the trip over here.

"Actually, being the resident spook is a real pain in the ass," Miller said.

"Why?"

"You met her," Miller said. "My boss."

"Excuse me?"

"Who sent me to find out who you really are. The lady suspects there is something fishy about you, my German journalist friend."

"You're talking about the blonde on the airplane?"

Miller nodded.

"Who is she?" Castillo asked.

"Her name is Wilson. Mrs. Patricia Davies Wilson:"

"She's not wearing a wedding ring," Castillo interrupted.

"Ah, so you haven't lost your legendary powers of observation," Miller said. "At the airport, I wasn't sure."

"Meaning?"

"I did everything, Charley, but blow you a kiss," Miller said.

"I didn't see you," Castillo admitted. "So who is this: married: woman?"

"The company's regional director for Southwest Africa," Miller said. "Everything from Nigeria-actually, Cameroon, not including Nigeria-to South Africa, but excluding that, too. And halfway across the continent. None of the important countries. She's spook-in-charge of what in a politically incorrect society one might think of as the African honey bucket."

Castillo smiled. In military installations, the fifty-five-gallon barrels cut in half and placed as receptacles in "field sanitary facilities"-once known as "latrines"-are known as honey buckets.

"She told me she works for Forbes magazine," Castillo said.

"That's what they call a cover, Charley," Miller said, dryly.

"And who is Mr. Wilson?"

"A paper pusher at Langley, middle level, maybe twenty years older than she is. One unkind rumor circulating is that he's a fag with an independent income and married the lady to keep the whispers down. Having met him, I'm prone to believe the unkind rumor."

"And what's her background?"

"She was an agricultural analyst at Langley before she was smitten by Cupid's arrow. Shortly after her marriage, she managed to get herself sent through the Farm, reclassified as a field officer, and has worked herself up to where she is now. Which she sees as a stepping-stone, which is what makes her a genuine pain in the ass, to get back to that."

"How so?"

"Her underlings make all the mistakes, and, when something is done right-that actually happens once in a while-she takes the credit. I personally know three nice young guys who quit because they couldn't take any more of her bullshit."

"And she thinks I'm fishy?"

"Either that or she wants to really make sure you're who you told her you are before she lets you into her pants."

"She has a reputation for that, too?"

"Charley, she's certainly not getting what she so obviously needs at home," Miller said. "There have been whispers."

"Sounds like the girl of my dreams," Castillo said.

"So how do you want me to handle this, Charley?"

"Except for letting her know we know each other, run me," Castillo said. "I'd like to know what can be turned up about Gossinger."

"Like I said, the lady is a bitch," Miller said. "What if she finds out, now or later, that we know each other?"

"I can cover that," Castillo said. "You are hereby ordered not to divulge that we are acquainted."

"You have that authority, Charley?"

"Dick, I was sent on this excursion-and you are hereby ordered not to divulge this either-by a guy who lives part-time in a Gone With the Wind-style, mansion that overlooks the Atlantic Ocean near Savannah."

"No kidding?"

Castillo nodded.

"So what's the excursion all about? Can you say?"

"The guy I'm talking about wants to know, and I quote, 'who knew what, and when they knew it,' end quote, about this missing 727."

"I think they call that 'internal review,' " Miller said.

"I was about to send my boss an email. I'll tell him I ran into you and ordered you to keep your mouth shut."

"You e-mail the president directly?"

"No. I work for Matt Hall. The secretary of homeland security?"

Miller's face showed he knew who Hall was, and was surprised that Charley had asked.

": who is a good guy," Castillo went on. "He was a sergeant in Vietnam. He and the president are great buddies. You're covered, Dick."

Miller made a gesture meaning he took Castillo at his word.

"So what have you learned about the airplane that went missing?" Miller asked.

"Some-maybe most-people think it's close to here, being cannibalized for parts. Only a few-very few-people think it will be flown into a skyscraper somewhere. There's also a theory that the pilot put it on autopilot and went out the back door so the owners can collect the insurance."

"And how many people, just for the hell of it, agree with my theory about what happened to it?"

"I don't understand, Dick."

"That Vasily Respin got it."

"Vasily who?"

"The Russian arms dealer. You don't know about him?"

Castillo shook his head.

"And I didn't see his name-or anything about a Russian arms dealer-on either the CIA, DIA, or State intel files, either," Castillo said. "You filed your theory?"

Miller nodded. "You're sure you saw all the files?" he asked.

"I saw everything Hall got, and I saw Cohen's memo that Hall was to get everything," Castillo said. "Which offers all sorts of interesting possibilities."

Castillo thought, but did not say: Hey, maybe that's really what all this is about. So far as many people close to the Oval Office were concerned, there were three things wrong with Dr. Natalie Cohen, the president's national security advisor. In ascending order of importance, they were that she was a woman, brilliant, and a close personal friend of the president.

If someone was trying to stick a knife in her back, she would (a) either sense it, or find out about it, whereupon (b) she would go to the president. The president would then logically decide that Hall was one of the guys at that level who should look into it. For a couple of reasons. Hall was also an absolutely loyal personal friend of the president, and, unlike the other cabinet officers, the secretary of homeland security did not have his own intelligence service.

Asking any of the heavy agencies to look into what was bothering Dr. Cohen would have the CIA pointing a finger at the DIA or the DIA pointing a finger at the State Department -und so viete- anywhere but at someone in their own agency.

Maybe that's what this is all about? Maybe not what it's all about, but it's an element of it certainly.

If the president – and maybe, probably, Hall too – thinks someone is screwing with Cohen, they want to know who it is and the facts about how the various agencies had handled the gone-missing 727 would point them in the right direction.

"Such as?" Miller asked.

"Dick, this may be more important than you know," Castillo said. "Let me make sure I have it right. You have a theory that some Russian arms dealer:"

"Vasily Respin," Miller furnished.

": either stole, or was responsible for the theft of, the 727?"

"I don't think he was in the cockpit, Charley, but I have a gut feeling he's at least involved in this. And I saw some of his people here."

"Tell me about him? Why do you think that?"

"You never heard of him? I'm surprised. There should be a hell of a file on him."

"Who is he? What does he do?"

"Cutting a long story short, Charley, in 1992-when Vasily was twenty-five-he bought three Antonov cargo planes from Russian military surplus. Paid 150 grand for all three, is what I heard. Anyway, the Russian black market had just begun to kick into high gear. The Russians had gold, and the Danes had things-basic things, but luxuries in Moscow-to sell and liked getting paid in gold.

"Respin made a lot of money, and quickly, and within a year he had set up an airline in Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates. Dubai has a duty-free port. Respin-who by then had already expanded his fleet-flew everything from ballpoint pens to automobiles home to Mother Russia. He made a fortune.

"And then he got chummy with Mobutu in the Congo and that brought him to the attention of Langley, who put out the word to watch him, and, shortly afterward, the CIA in Kinshasa was sending photographs of Respin standing by an Ilyushin at a Congolese field in the middle of nowhere while Mobutu's soldiers off-loaded crates of AK-47s and more sophisticated weaponry."

"Okay," Castillo interrupted. "I know who you're talking about. But I thought his name was Aleksandr Pevsner."

"That's one name he uses," Miller said, then looked at Castillo and dead-panned: "It's really astonishing how many people you meet these days who have several names."

"From what I've heard, Pevsner-or whatever his name is-has lots of airplanes. What would he want this one for?"

"Starting with the obvious, he has-or so the story goes-several, maybe half a dozen 727s. They need parts. Okay? It's entirely possible that this one went directly to Sharjah:"

"It would have to refuel," Castillo interrupted.

"Probably twice," Miller quickly agreed. "No problem, with a little planning. The friendly skies over Mother Africa are pretty open, Charley. And there are probably thirty deserted airstrips in the Congo and Sudan where a 727 can sit down unseen and get itself refueled. For that matter, Respin wouldn't even have to preposition fuel on deserted fields-although my bet is that he did. Whoever was flying this 727 could land and take on fuel at Kisangani in the Congo and Kartoum in the Sudan-with no questions asked in either place-and then take off to Sharjah."

"The satellites didn't spot it-or any unidentified 727-on any airfield anywhere," Castillo argued.

"What's an 'unidentified' 727?" Miller asked. "All they had to do was land the stolen 727 somewhere close to here and do a quick paint-over of the numbers on it, using the numbers of one of Pevsner's 727s conveniently out of sight in a hangar in Sharjah. They would have had plenty of time to do that before Langley could turn the satellite cameras on."

He paused, put his hand on his hip, and, mimicking a light-on-his-feet photo analyst examining satellite downloads, lisped, "Well, that's a 727 all right, Bruce, but it's not the one we're looking for. That 727 belongs to Rag-Head Airways. I have that tail number right here."

"I take your point," Castillo said, chuckling.

"Maybe Pevsner'd use the airplane himself, but, more likely, if he didn't use it for parts he'd sell it to somebody: the Chinese, or any one of the Holy Warrior organizations:"

"How much of this fascinating scenario did you put in your file, Dick?" Castillo interrupted.

"I sent a satburst to Langley-the third one, I think-giving the nut of the scenario. I was in the commo room when we got the acknowledgment, so it should have been on the desk of the regional director for Southwest Africa when she went to work at Langley the next morning. Then I went to work writing what I would send when I got the 'without diverting substantial assets, attempt to develop further' response. It's SOP; I expected that would come in as soon as she read the satburst."

"Let me get this straight. You prepared more than a satburst?"

"A six-page filing," Miller said. "I even read it over very carefully to make sure I had all the big words spelled right."

"I never saw anything like that. When did you send it?"

"I never sent it," Miller said. "I never got the 'develop further' reply."

"Why didn't you send it anyway? If you had it, had done it?"

"I told you, because I never got the 'develop further' response. She wasn't interested."

"She wasn't interested? Why not? You're suggesting she just shot down your idea? Why would she do that?"

"If it was shot down by somebody at Langley, I suspect she was the shooter, but I don't know that."

"What we were supposed to get, Dick, were summaries to date, plus not yet evaluated raw data," Castillo said. "Even if Langley didn't have time to evaluate it, Hall was supposed to get it. And I read everything he got. There was no copy of your satburst, or anything from anybody about a Russian arms dealer."

Miller nodded.

" Alleged arms dealer," Miller said. "That may be it, Charley. You want my gut reaction, with the caveat that-as you may have suspected-I don't like the lady?"

"Yeah."

"Pevsner is smart as hell, and there's no question in my mind-if no proof-that the agency has used his services. He doesn't ask questions about what's in the boxes loaded in his airplanes; all he cares about is the cash up-front."

"Where are you going with this, Dick?" Castillo asked.

"If I strongly suspect the agency used Pevsner, Mrs. Wilson probably knew that the agency did. Okay. So if she passed my file upward, a couple of things could have happened. For one thing, I suspect the African section would have told her to send one of those 'without diverting substantial assets, attempt to develop further' messages to me. In her mind, if I would have looked into it further, there were only two possible results. One, I would have come up with zilch, which would have embarrassed her-one of her underlings was incompetent-or, two, I would have come up with something solid, which would have opened the Pevsner can of worms and pissed off the covert guys. Either way, it would be a speed bump on her path to promotion."

"You don't have a copy of your file, do you?" Castillo asked. "Your satburst and then what you wrote and didn't send?"

"Of course not, Charley," Miller said. "Maintaining personal copies of classified documents is a serious violation of security regulations. Anyone who does so is liable not only for immediate dismissal from CIA service but subject to criminal prosecution, either under the U.S. Code or the Uniform Code of Military Justice, whichever is applicable. You of all people should know that." Miller paused, looked impassively at Castillo, then asked: "You want to see it?"

"If I go to my boss with this, I'm going to have to have it," Castillo said.

Miller's right eyebrow rose in thought and stayed there for thirty seconds but seemed longer.

Then he took a business card from his wallet, wrote something on it, and handed it to Castillo.

"If I'm going to risk sending my brilliant career down the crapper," he said, "not to mention going to the slam, I might as well go whole hog and use e-mail. Let me have your e-mail address, Charley, and I'll go home and send it to you. It's on my laptop. It'll be encrypted. That's the key."

Castillo looked at the card. Miller had written "bullshit" on it.

"Gringo at Castillo dot-com," he said. "You want to write it down?"

Miller shook his head.

"Dick, once you do this, you might think about getting rid of your file."

Miller considered that for ten seconds before replying, "I will give that solemn thought, Charley."

He stood up and put out his hand.

"Thanks for the booze, Charley," he said. "Why don't you give me three minutes to get to the service elevator, then go outside and find there's something wrong with the lock on your door?"

Castillo nodded.

"Okay," he said, then: "Dick, I'm pretty well covered. But you're really sticking your neck out:"

"I know," Miller interrupted. He touched Castillo's shoulder and walked toward the door.

Castillo looked at his watch, punched the timer button, and precisely three minutes later went into the corridor, closed the door, and tried again to open it with the plastic key.

When again it wouldn't work, he walked down the corridor to the bank of elevators, where he had seen a house phone.

The concierge said that he would send someone right up.

[TEN]

It took five minutes for a bellman to show up on the fifteenth floor, and another five minutes for him to prove to himself that there was something wrong with the lock at the door to Suite 1522, whereupon he went back to the house phone by the elevator bank and reported this to someone.

Five minutes later, an assistant manager and the bell captain got off the elevator on the fifteenth floor. They spent another five minutes proving to themselves that there was something wrong with the lock on the door to Suite 1522. Then the bell captain went to summon further assistance while the assistant manager stayed behind to assure Herr Gossinger that this sort of thing almost never happened and that it would be put right in short order.

Five minutes after that, a hotel engineer and his assistant showed up with a device that was supposed to open door locks in situations such as this. And after another five minutes, they managed to get the lock to function partially. In other words, it would permit the door to be opened, but, once closed again, the lock again refused to function with the plastic key.

The engineer and the assistant manager then held a whispered conference, after which the assistant manager went to Herr Gossinger and said that he certainly didn't wish to alarm him but in the opinion of the engineer someone might have tried to gain access to Herr Gossinger's room. When the engineer opened the door again, it would probably be a good idea to see if anything was missing.

Furthermore, the entire lock was going to have to be replaced, which would take some time, and, if Herr Gossinger had no objections, probably the best thing to do was move him to another suite of rooms.

Herr Gossinger had no objections.

The assistant manager went to the telephone, conferred with the front desk about available rooms, and then told whoever he was talking to to immediately send bellmen, plural, to Herr Gossinger's room.

"Fifteen-thirty-four is available, Herr Gossinger," he said. "It is a very nice suite not far from here. Perhaps you would like to check your property to make sure you have everything?"

As Castillo went through his luggage, the assistant manager paid close attention. Castillo wondered if this was simply a manifestation of his great professional interest in a guest's potential problems or whether he had other reasons.

Castillo reported that he seemed to have everything.

By that time, there were three bellmen hovering by the door. The assistant manager snapped his fingers and pointed. The bellmen carried Castillo's possessions out of the suite and down the corridor to 1534, which was identical to 1522, and placed everything in the new room where it had been in the old.

The assistant manager apologized once again for the inconvenience Herr Gossinger had been caused and suggested, in almost a whisper, that if the locks had been of German manufacture this probably wouldn't have happened.

Castillo finally got rid of him, and plugged his laptop into the high-speed Internet connection.

There were two e-mail messages in his mailbox at castillo. com. One was from Fernando, who had obviously received the enlarge the size of your member advertisement Castillo had forwarded to him, and had replied: