Hazardous Duty

[ONE]

“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:

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.

Otto still retained fatherly feelings for Charley. He had functioned as a de facto stepfather to him until, shortly before his mother’s death, Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger had been taken to the United States to become Carlos Guillermo Castillo.

And Otto didn’t like Russians generally and hated the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki with a cold passion. Charley had dropped that nugget of information — that Sweaty had been an SVR lieutenant colonel — into his announcement of his pending marriage, deciding that getting that out in the open sooner was better than later.

The term “SVR podpolkovnik” had produced in Otto’s mind the stereotype of a short-haired female with stainless steel teeth who looked like a weight lifter. When Sweaty came down the aircraft door stairs his face had shown his surprise at what he was getting — a spectacularly beautiful redhead — instead of what he had expected.

His biggest surprise, however, was to come shortly after they were loaded into Otto’s Jaguar Vanden Plas, when, with visible effort, Otto produced a smile and inquired, “My dear, now that you’re here in Hersfeld, what would you like to do?”

“Aside from going to the cemetery, which of course my Carlos wants to do before anything else, we’re completely in your hands, Herr Göerner.”

Charley was shamed to painfully remember his reaction to that had been thinking, What the hell is Sweaty talking about?

“Karl wants to go to the cemetery?” Otto had asked incredulously.

“He’s told me what a saint, a truly godly woman, his mother was,” Sweaty went on. “I want to be there when he asks her blessing on our marriage.”

“Karl’s mother was truly a saint,” Otto agreed.

Charley was even more ashamed to remember his reaction to that, his thinking: Jesus Christ, she’s amazing. She hasn’t been in his car thirty seconds and she’s put ol’ Otto in her pocket. Well, you don’t get to be an SVR podpolkovnik without being able to manipulate people.

Proof that Otto was in Sweaty’s pocket had come almost immediately. As soon as they got to the house — several minutes later — Otto turned from the front seat and announced, “There’s no sense in you two going into the house. I’ll have someone take care of your luggage and then Kurt can take you to the cemetery.”

The only reason, Charley remembered with chagrin, that he hadn’t congratulated Sweaty on her manipulation of Otto on the way to the cemetery was because the chauffeur would have heard him.

Sweaty looked up at Charley.

“Aren’t you going to pray?” she asked.

“I’m an Episcopalian,” he said. “We pray standing up.”

That’s bullshit and I know it is. What it is is yet another proof that I’m a shameless liar. I wasn’t praying.

And don’t try to wiggle out of the shameless liar business by saying that you’re a professional intelligence officer trained to instantly respond to a challenge by saying whatever necessary to get yourself off the hook.

Sweaty stood, took his hand, and kissed him tenderly on the cheek.

“I’m glad we came here,” she said.

They started back to the car.

“What exactly did you pray for?” Charley asked.

“That’s between God, your mother, and me.”

“Okay.”

“Okay,” Sweaty said, obviously changing her mind. “I asked God to reward your mother for being such a good mother to you, and to give her everlasting peace now that I’ve taken over for her. And I asked your mother to pray to the Holy Virgin that I will be as good a mother to our baby as she was to you. And you?”

The reflexes of a professional intelligence officer trained to instantly respond to a challenge by saying whatever necessary to get himself off the hook kicked in automatically.

“I asked God to give my mother peace, and prayed for you and our baby,” he heard himself say.

Where the hell did that come from?

It doesn’t matter. If I didn’t actually do that, I should have.

God, if there are really no secrets from You, You know that.

And by the way, thank You for Sweaty and the baby she’s carrying.

When they got back in the car, Sweaty asked, in Russian, “Kurt, do you speak Russian?”

When it became evident that Kurt did not speak Russian, Sweaty said, in German, “I was just curious.”

Then she switched back to Russian.

“Well, what do you think is going to happen tonight? Do we get to fool around in your childhood bed, or is Otto the Pure going to put us in separate rooms at opposite ends of that factory you call a house?”

“Sweaty, I just don’t know.”

God, if You didn’t hear me the first time, thank You for this woman.

[TWO]

When they got to Das Haus im Wald they found the Merry Outlaws, less Master Sergeant C. Gregory Damon, Retired, John and Sandra Britton, and Vic D’Alessandro — whom they had left behind in Budapest to deal with the logistical and other problems of getting into Somalia on some credible excuse — sitting in an assortment of chairs and couches in the top-floor living room of the House in the Woods snacking on a massive display of cold cuts. Castillo saw that Peg-Leg Lorimer was working at his laptop.

Floor-to-ceiling plate-glass windows showed fields green with new growth and what at first glance appeared to be an airfield. The Gulfstream V on which they had flown first from Cozumel to Budapest and then here was parked near a runway beside a Cessna Mustang, the smaller jet bearing German markings. There was also what looked like a deserted control tower, a four-story structure built of concrete blocks, the top floor of which was windowed on all sides.

It was not a deserted aviation control tower, however. It had been built by the hated East German Volkspolizei after the Berlin Wall had gone up to keep an eye on the fence that then had separated East from West Germany, and had run through the Gossinger property.

When the Berlin Wall — and the fence — came down, Castillo, who had been born and spent the first twelve years of his life in Das Haus im Wald as Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger, and now owned the property, ordered that the guard tower be left in place as a monument to the Cold War.

Castillo went to see how Peg-Leg was coming with his SitRep, saw that he was nearly finished, and then inquired, “What time is it in Washington?”

“Peg-Leg’s finished?” Lieutenant Colonel Allan B. Naylor asked.

“How does that translate to hours and minutes?” Castillo asked.

Allan gave Charley the finger, then said, “Five minutes after ten in the morning.”

Peg-Leg pressed a button, and a printer began to whine, purr, and ultimately began to spit out printed pages.

He handed them to Castillo, who read them, then handed them to Naylor.

“Nice job, Peg-Leg,” he said.

“What happens now?” Lorimer asked.

“You get to ride to Berlin in the Mustang, where you will take these magnificent documents to the embassy for transmission. Meanwhile, Colonel Naylor and I will take Sweaty and whoever else wants to go on a tour of where we were innocent children together.

“Tomorrow, presuming the Somali experts finally get here, we will drive to Cologne, where we will board Die Stadt Köln, a five-star river cruiser which we have chartered to ensure our conversations will not be overheard by the forces of evil, and sail up and down the Rhine River for four days.”

“Wait until Lammelle gets the bill for that,” Dick Miller said.

Naylor said, “Charley, I think it would be better if I went to Berlin with Peg-Leg.”

Castillo considered that a moment, and then said, “Yeah. That’s not a shot at you, Peg-Leg. What I’m thinking is that an active duty light colonel from Central Command is liable to get more cooperation from the military attaché than some retired warrior such as you and me. And I don’t want that stuff delayed.”

[THREE]

The secretary of State, on occasions like this, was extremely jealous of both Truman C. Ellsworth, the director of National Intelligence, and A. Franklin Lammelle, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. It had to do with their freedom of schedule and of travel.

If they wanted to go somewhere, they got in their airplanes and went. With the exception of the President, no one had the authority to ask them where they were going or why. No one had that authority vis-à-vis the secretary of State, either, but the secretary of State was a public figure, and by definition the DCI and the DNI were the opposite. No one was supposed to know what they were doing.

For most of her life, until she had become secretary of State, Natalie Cohen had really believed that lying and deception had been not only wrong but counterproductive. She had learned that from her father, an investment banker. It had attracted her to Mortimer Cohen, also the son of an investment banker, whom she had married three months after graduating from Vassar.

Two sons had quickly followed, and she had tried — and thought she had succeeded in — instilling in them the high moral principles of her father and their father. She had been, she believed, a good Jewish mother to her boys, devoting her life to them until the youngest had gone off to preparatory school. The question then became what to do with the rest of her life.

She was well schooled in economics — it had been her major in college — and she had learned a good deal more about finance, in particular international finance, from both her father and her husband.

But neither, for reasons she understood, was happy with the prospect of her leaving her empty nest to join either of their firms. She was determined, however, to leave that empty nest, and the first thing she did was volunteer her services to various charitable organizations, including, for example, the United Jewish Appeal.

She immediately proved herself to be very good at two things: the raising of money, and the straightening out of the often out-of-kilter administration of such organizations. She moved from good works to the State Department when the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, a Princeton classmate of Mortimer’s, asked her to join his staff as financial adviser.

She moved from the UN to the State Department itself, where she was appointed deputy assistant secretary of State and given responsibility for doling out the taxpayers’ money to various foreign governments for various reasons. She held that position until there was a change of administration. She resigned when it became apparent to her that the new President posed a real threat to the United States, and she could not in good conscience work for him.

She devoted the next three years and some months raising money for the campaign of the man who was to become Joshua Ezekiel Clendennen’s predecessor. During that period, she got to know him well, and Mortimer joked that when he gave speeches on international monetary and economic problems and their solutions, the candidate sounded like Natalie.

As it became increasingly apparent that her guy was going to move into the White House, Natalie, who by then was familiar with the way Washington worked, knew that there was going to be some sort of reward for all the millions she had raised.

And that worried her because the most likely reward was for her to be appointed the President’s ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to the State of Israel. Considering, as she did, Israel as her spiritual homeland was not the same thing as being overjoyed at the prospect of moving there for four years.

She had been to Tel Aviv often enough to know that it was hot, muggy, noisy, and crowded. Furthermore, the ultraorthodox Jews who had so much power in Israel made her uncomfortable. Finally, the ambassador’s residence there was not nearly as comfortable as either their house in Washington or their apartment in New York. And equally important, she was about to become a Jewish grandmother, and eagerly looking forward to that.

The man-who-was-to-be-President elected to learn the election results in the Plaza Hotel in New York. Before going there, there was a really small dinner — designed primarily to give him a little rest so that he would be better prepared for whatever happened — at the Cohens’ apartment two blocks away on Fifth Avenue.

Natalie and Mortimer had seriously considered not going to the Plaza at all. Watching the returns on Wolf News in their living room with their feet on the coffee table held far more appeal than did the Plaza. But the candidate insisted.

“I need you around me, Natalie,” he said.

So they went with him.

And thirty seconds after Andy McClarren of Wolf News called the election, the President-elect said, “Natalie, my first appointment will be my secretary of State. Guess who?”

“I have no idea, Mr. President-elect.”

“I’ll give you a hint. She just fed me dinner.”

That marked, she often thought, the end of her innocence. She had quickly learned that while lying and deception were still wrong, she could not honestly argue that they were counterproductive. The exact opposite now seemed inarguably to be the case.

Some of the proofs of this were major, and some relatively minor, as her current problem showed.

The basic, major problem was that Joshua Ezekiel Clendennen was as mad as a March hare. There was no question in Secretary Cohen’s mind about either that, or that he posed a genuine threat to the security of the United States.

The law provided a solution to that problem. But it was very complicated. The Cabinet and certain other officers, in a meeting presided over by the secretary of State, would hear the evidence in the matter. Presuming they agreed that the President’s mental state was such that he could not perform the duties of his office, that committee would inform the Vice President and speaker of the House of their judgment, and that the Vice President — who was also president of the Senate — now was in charge, pending action by Congress.

So many things could go terribly wrong, producing chaos in the country even exceeding the chaos and paralysis of the government the impeachment proceedings of President Nixon had caused, that Secretary Cohen had decided it would be undertaken only as the absolute last resort.

And she was very much, even painfully, aware that the decision whether or not to remove President Clendennen was hers alone. The makeup of the “committee” that she chaired under the law was not precisely defined in the law.

Frederick P. Palmer, the attorney general, had told her — unofficially — that it could be interpreted to mean that her authority to convene the committee carried with it the authority to decide which senior officials should be on it.

She had run with this. The committee she was about to convene now included Palmer, Secretary of Defense Frederick K. Beiderman, DNI Ellsworth, DCI Lammelle, FBI Director Mark Schmidt, and two men who she realized had no right to be on the committee except for her decision to include them. They were General Allan B. Naylor and Lieutenant General Bruce J. McNab.

McNab had insisted the meeting be held. President Clendennen’s appearance at Fort Bragg convinced him the Chief Executive was over the edge and had to go.

Cohen had included Naylor because she concurred that he was, as Wolf News’ Andy McClarren had dubbed him, “the most important American general.” If the absolute worst scenario — civil insurrection — happened, he would be the man best able to apply martial law and — equally important — to end it when that became possible.

When she telephoned Naylor to tell him they needed to meet, she had to be evasive to the point of not telling him that they were going to the Greenbrier. Frank Lammelle had told her that even encrypted conversations over the White House circuits were intercepted and decrypted by the NSA at Fort Meade, and that an astonishing number of people in many intelligence agencies had access to the intercepts — including outside contractors on occasion.

The one thing that absolutely could not be allowed to happen was for President Clendennen to learn of the meeting.

She had had the same problem when she spoke with the FBI director, the secretary of Defense, and the attorney general. But not when she talked to Lammelle or McNab. Charley Castillo had equipped the latter, as he had Cohen, with CaseyBerry telephones. The interception equipment at Fort Meade had been designed and installed and was maintained by Aloysius Casey, Ph.D., and his design of the CaseyBerry ensured that the computers at Meade could not decrypt anything sent over the CaseyBerry network.

The secretary had just finished her last call — with Defense Secretary Beiderman — setting up the travel arrangements for the meeting at the Greenbrier when the Communications Center duty officer appeared at her door.

“Madam Secretary, there is a message from Lieutenant Colonel Naylor.”

“Thank you, Martha.”

The duty officer laid the messages on Cohen’s desk and she read them:

“Will there be a reply, Madam Secretary?”

“Martha, we’ve known each other ever since the UN, and you can’t bring yourself to call me Natalie, even when we’re alone?”

“Oh, I couldn’t do that, Madam Secretary.”

“There won’t be a reply right now, Martha, thank you. If Charlene is out there, would you ask her to come in, please?”

Charlene Stevens, the former Secret Service agent who headed Secretary Cohen’s security detail, came into the office and announced, “Anytime you’re ready, boss.”

“We can’t leave until I deliver this to the President,” Cohen said, holding up the messages.

“I’ll tell them to stand down,” Charlene said. “Any guess as to when we can go?”

“Let’s find out,” Cohen said, and pressed the buttons on her red White House switchboard telephone that would connect her with the President and put the conversation on loudspeaker.

A male voice was on the line in less than ten seconds.

“The President’s line. May I ask who’s calling?”

“Secretary Cohen.”

“Madam Secretary, the President is not available at the moment, and has asked not to be disturbed in less than a Category Two Situation. Would you like me to put you through to the President?”

“No, thank you. Please tell the President I have information for him and that I would like to see him at his earliest convenience.”

“Yes, ma’am. I will pass on to the President that you would like to see him at his earliest convenience.”

“Thank you,” Secretary Cohen said, and broke the connection.

“Well, while obviously important,” Charlene said, “whatever that message says, it doesn’t pose as much of a threat to the nation’s security as getting the First Mother-in-Law back in the loony bin does.”

Natalie shook her head, but didn’t reply.

“You knew he wasn’t there, right?” Charlene asked. “That he’s in Biloxi?”

“I didn’t tell you that.”

“Some of my boys were talking.”

“See if you can get some of your boys to let you know when they have an ETA for him at Andrews. I’d like to be at the White House when he gets back.”

“Done. Anything else?”

“Not unless you want to sit here and listen to me tell my boys that our golf at the Greenbrier will have to be delayed for a while.”

“I’ll pass, thank you,” Charlene said.

[FOUR]

“Thank you for seeing me on such short notice, Mr. President,” Secretary Cohen said. “But you said you wanted to see Colonel Naylor’s reports as soon as they arrived.”

“Actually, Madam Secretary,” Robin Hoboken said, “what the President said was that he wanted to see Colonel Castillo’s reports as soon as they arrived.”

“I stand corrected,” Cohen said.

“How’d you know I’d be here?” President Clendennen asked. “I just got back three minutes ago.”

“When I called earlier, when I first received these messages, Mr. President, I was told you were unavailable, not that you had gone somewhere.”

“Belinda-Sue’s mother, that saintly old woman,” the President said, “is very ill. She wanted to see me. I could not, of course, turn her down. God alone knows how long she’ll be with us. But I could not in good conscience ask the American taxpayer to pay the enormous expense of my going down to Biloxi in the 747 on a personal matter. So I went, very quietly, in a Gulfstream, taking only Robin and Mulligan with me.”

“How is the First Mother-in-Law?” Natalie asked.

“Not well, but with prayer there’s always hope,” the President said. “Now let me see Colonel Castillo’s report.”

“She doesn’t have Colonel Castillo’s report, Mr. President,” Robin Hoboken said. “She said she had Colonel Naylor’s report.”

“And Mr. Whelan’s redacted news story,” Cohen said.

The President read both.

“Well,” he said, “to judge from this, and other information I have, I think it would be fair to assume my Out of the Box Operation is starting to take shape. Wouldn’t you agree, Madam Secretary?”

“‘Other information,’ Mr. President?”

“Natalie,” he said condescendingly, “I learned a long time ago that the more people who know a secret, the less chance there is that it will remain a secret. Right now, you don’t have the Need to Know about my other information.”

“May I ask, sir, if your other information might result in something that would require my services in the next twenty-four hours?”

“The President just told you, Madam Secretary, that you don’t have the Need to Know,” Robin Hoboken said.

“Why do you ask, Madam Secretary?” the President asked.

“I’d like to run down to the Greenbrier and play a little golf, Mr. President.”

“For how long?”

“I would be back tomorrow afternoon no later than five, sir.”

“Sure, go ahead. All work and no play makes Jack… in this case, Natalie, of course… the dull girl, as I always say.”

“Thank you, Mr. President.”

“Did you know, Natalie, that during the Cold War, they had a great big underground place at the Greenbrier where Congress could meet in case the Russians nuked Washington?”

“I’ve heard that, Mr. President.”

“Robin here told me that only last week. Which made me wonder what else is going on around here that I don’t know about.”

“Mr. President,” Natalie said, “I would suggest that with Hoboken and Mulligan looking after you, there’s very little of that sort of thing.”

“You’re right,” the President said. “I only wish I was as sure of the loyalty of other people around here as I am of theirs.”

Then he added: “Have a good time playing golf at the Greenbrier, Natalie.”

[FIVE]

One of the three cellular telephones Charlene Stevens always carried with her rang — giving off a sound like that of a feline in heat — and she quickly put it to her ear.

She listened and then said, “Thanks. You are now forgiven for not putting out the garbage.”

She turned from the front passenger seat to address Secretary Cohen.

“That was my Lord and Master, boss.”

Secretary Cohen understood Charlene was referring to her husband, Arthur, who was known as “King Kong” to his fellow Secret Service agents, possibly because he stood five feet five inches tall and weighed 135 pounds.

“Arthur said,” Charlene reported, “that Mulligan just called the Presidential Flight Detachment and told them to get a chopper ready for a flight to carry two agents to the Greenbrier Valley Airport.”

“Damn!” Natalie Cohen said.

“And when the Air Force guy said you were getting ready to go there and were usually willing to carry people with you, Mulligan not only cut him off but said he didn’t even want you to know he was sending agents there.”

“Pull off somewhere, please, Tom,” Secretary Cohen ordered the Yukon’s driver as she searched in her purse for her CaseyBerry.

She pushed one autodial button and five seconds later A. Franklin Lammelle came over the phone’s loudspeaker.

“And how may the CIA be of service to the secretary of State?”

“Get on the phone and tell everybody the Greenbrier’s off,” she said.

“What happened?”

She told him.

“Do you think he figured this out himself, or was Mulligan involved?”

“I think he was suspicious — he’s paranoid about a coup — and Mulligan poured gasoline on those embers.”

“So no meeting?”

“Unless we can find someplace else to hold it, I really don’t know what to do.”

“Someplace else isn’t that much of a problem. I’ve got a safe house outside Harrisburg that isn’t in use at the moment.”

“Harrisburg, Pennsylvania?” she asked incredulously.

“Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,” Lammelle confirmed. “And everybody but McNab and Naylor could drive there. And you could tell Naylor to visit the Indiantown Gap Military Reservation, using his airplane and taking McNab with him.”

She considered that a moment. “This safe house of yours is really safe?”

“Who’s going to think there’d be a CIA safe house in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania?”

“Make the calls, please, Frank, and get everybody there after eight o’clock tomorrow night.”

“And what about you, Madam Secretary, as the senior government official?”

“I’ll get back to Washington at five or a little after, let the President know I’m back—”

“Back from where?”

“Playing golf at the Greenbrier,” she replied, “and then I’ll drive up there. How do I find it?”

“I suppose Brünnhilde the Bodyguard is with you?”

“Up yours, Frank,” Charlene said.

“I’ll see that Art has a map by the time you need it,” Lammelle said.

“Fine,” Charlene said.

“You’re really going down there and play golf?”

“That’s what I told the President I was going to do. How could I not go? Call me and let me know what’s going on.”

“Yes, ma’am, Madam Secretary,” Lammelle said.

Cohen broke the connection.

“Agent Stevens, I wasn’t aware that you and Director Lammelle were so intimately acquainted,” she said.

“He and Art went through the FBI Academy together,” Charlene said. “They decided that they didn’t want to spend their lives investigating white-collar crimes, so Art went into the Secret Service, and Frank into the Agency. Frank was Art’s best man when we got married, and I held Frank’s hand through both of his divorces.”

“You never said anything.”

“Yeah, well,” Charlene said. “That doesn’t mean we don’t talk about you.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that Frank thinks you’re the cat’s pajamas, boss.”

Natalie shook her head, then pressed another autodial button and then shut off the loudspeaker function. Charlene heard only one side of the conversation:

“I hope you didn’t have big plans for tomorrow, sweetheart…

“Put enough clothes in your bag for a fancy dinner tonight, and then take your golf clubs and get in a cab and go out to Teterboro. I’m about ten minutes from taking off from Andrews for Teterboro…

“Because we’re going to the Greenbrier to play golf…

“Of course you can make time for something like that. Your call, sweetheart. Would you rather have a romantic dinner with me tonight, and eighteen holes tomorrow, or the next time your Aunt Rebecca wants me to talk to the girls at the Beth Sinai Home have me tell her to go suck on a lemon…?

“That’s what my mother said about you, too, darling. That I would regret marrying you. See you at Teterboro…”

[SIX]

Charley Castillo’s CaseyBerry sounded “Charge!” and he picked it up, saw who was calling, and put it to his ear.

“Hey, Paul.”

“Charley, are you really in the middle of the Rhine River, or did you tell Aloysius to send out spurious GPS data again?” Paul Sieno asked.

“Not exactly in the middle; we’re about to tie up in Koblenz. How are things in sunny Cozumel?”

“Getting interesting, which is why I called.”

“How so?”

“You’ll never guess who’s here.”

“But you are going to tell me, right? I’m so exhausted from my labors that I’m not up to playing guessing games.”

“Grigori Slobozhanin.”

“Who the hell is he?”

“He’s the chief coach of the Greater Sverdlovsk Table Tennis Association, and he brought a half-dozen of his better Ping-Pong players here with him. Plus a couple of dozen Cuban Ping-Pongers.”

“Okay, Paul, I give up.”

“Before he took up table tennis, he was known as General Sergei Murov.”

Castillo was suddenly very serious.

“Paul, get with Juan Carlos Pena as soon as you can—”

“Way ahead of you, Charley,” Sieno interrupted.

“I know Juan Carlos doesn’t exactly look like that suave Mexican actor,” Castillo went on, stopping when he couldn’t recall the actor’s name, and then, when he had partial recall, continuing, “Antonio Bandana, or whatever the hell his name is, but he’s not only one damned smart cop but one of my oldest friends.”

“Gringo, if I can have ‘one damned smart cop’ in writing, I’ll pretend I didn’t hear your unflattering comparison of me to Antonio Whatsisname,” Juan Carlos Pena said.

“How are you, Juan Carlos?” Castillo asked.

“I hope we interrupted something important,” Pena said.

“You did. I was sitting here in a deck chair drinking wine and watching Sweaty sunbathe in a bikini.”

“You both better stay there,” Pena said. “Why don’t you go to Las Vegas and get married in the Elvis Presley Wedding Chapel, like normal people?”

“Instead of Cozumel, you mean?”

“I have enough trouble in Cozumel already. I don’t need another river of blood scaring the tourists away because the Cuban DGI doesn’t like you.”

“What makes you think the Cuban DGI doesn’t like me?”

“When Paul told me that General Sergei Murov was here with his Ping-Pong players, and General Jesus Manuel Cosada was here with a dozen of his Ping-Pong players—”

“Who?”

“I can hear your abuela saying, ‘Carlos, you have to learn not to interrupt your betters when they’re talking, otherwise people won’t like you.’”

“My abuela was talking about adults, Juan Carlos, and if you recall, I’m three weeks older than you are.”

“As I was saying, when I heard General Jesus Manuel Cosada, who became DGI after Raúl moved up to be president when ol’ Fidel retired from public life, was here, the really wild thought that it might be connected with you just sort of popped into my mind.

“Then, when Paul told me he’d seen several DGI heavyweights in addition to the general, and happened to mention you were planning to tie the knot here, things that were happening began to make sense.”

“What sort of things were happening?”

“Well, the DGI guys immediately began finding employment at the Cruise Ship Terminal and several of the hotels, including the Grand Cozumel Beach and Golf Resort, which seemed a little odd.”

“The Grand Cozumel hired some of them?”

“The Grand Cozumel hired seven Cubans and the Terminal six.”

“That’s surprising.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know who runs the Terminal for Aleksandr Pevsner, but Sweaty told me that the guy who runs the Grand Cozumel learned the hotel trade running the SVR dachas in Sochi.”

“The what, where?”

“Sochi, on the Black Sea, is sort of the Mexican Cozumel. I don’t know about the czars, but important Russians from Stalin down—”

“It goes back to the later czars,” Sweaty said. Charley looked at her and saw she had her CaseyBerry to her ear.

Where the hell did she have that phone? There’s not enough material in her bikini to safely blow her nose!

“Starting in the 1860s,” Sweaty went on, “they started developing it as a place for sanatoriums; tuberculosis was a big problem then.”

“Hey, Red, how are you?” Juan Carlos inquired.

“I’m well and my Carlito’s right, Juan Carlos,” Sweaty said. “Pietr Urbanovsky, the general manager of the Grand Cozumel, is ex-SVR. He’s going to be — or should be — very careful about who he hires.”

“Let me tell you how I think that could have happened, Red,” Juan Carlos said. “The Cubans are tight with the drug cartels. So some cartel people went to the barrio where, for example, the people who pick up trash on the beach, polish the marble in the lobby, work in the laundry, people like that, live. They said, ‘Hey, Jose. You’ve been working too hard. Take a vacation. Go to your village. Stay there for a month. Here’s three months’ pay and a bus ticket.’ Then if Jose or Pedro says, ‘Thank you very much, but I like my job and don’t want to risk losing it by not showing up for work,’ Pasquale, the cartel guy, says, ‘Pedro, you either accept our generosity, or we’ll cut your head off and hang it from a bridge over the highway. And then we’ll go to your village and rape your wife, mother, and any daughters you happen to have.’ Then when Pedro and Jose and everybody else doesn’t show up for work, no problem for your pal… What did you say his name was?”

“Pietr Urbanovsky,” Sweaty furnished.

“Your pal Pietr had no trouble filling his vacancies because the Cubans — who probably said they were Mexican — were looking for employment. Getting the picture, Red?”

“I don’t think you’re getting the picture, Pancho Villa,” Sweaty said sweetly. “My Carlito told you Pietr is not stupid.”

“I didn’t say he was, Red. I didn’t mean to imply that he was taken in. What I think your pal Pietr will do is watch the Cubans closely as they pick trash off the beach, polish the marble, et cetera — which of course gets those necessary tasks accomplished — while he looks into his new employees and what happened to the ones who didn’t show up for work.

“Sooner or later, most likely sooner, he will know all. And then he will get rid of his new employees the way he gets rid of employees foolish enough to think they can take home hams and roasts of beef and things they have stolen from the rooms of Grand Cozumel guests by dropping them into garbage cans.”

“How does he do that, Juan Carlos?” Charley asked.

“The rumor going around is that he retrieves the hams and roasts and whatever from the garbage cans and then puts the thieves in them. Then they are loaded aboard one of Señor Pevsner’s cruise ships for disposal with the other garbage on the high seas.”

“Does the Service Employees International Union know about this?” Charley asked.

“The rumor going around is that the union organizers they sent down here also went for a cruise in garbage cans,” Juan Carlos said.

“The reason we called, Charley,” Paul Sieno said, “was to ask whether we should just let things take their natural course, or whether you want to tell Señor Urbanovsky not to put the Cubans in garbage cans right away, so we can keep an eye on them.”

“Keep them alive,” Sweaty answered for him.

“Yeah,” Castillo agreed thoughtfully, after a moment.

“And I called, as I said before, to beg you to join yourselves in holy matrimony in the Elvis Presley Wedding Chapel in Vegas,” Juan Carlos said. “If you try to get married here, there will be bodies and rivers of blood all over the streets, which will greatly distress the Greater Cozumel Area Chamber of Tourism.”

Again, Sweaty answered for Castillo: “We can’t get married until this nonsense with President Clendennen is over. But when it is, I intend to be married in the Grand Ballroom of the Grand Cozumel by His Eminence Archbishop Valentin, assisted by Archimandrite Boris. I don’t think His Eminence would be willing to conduct the service in the Elvis Presley Wedding Chapel.”

“I don’t see it as a problem,” Charley said. “I don’t know how long it will take to dissuade President Clendennen of his notions I should get rid of the Somali pirates and seize Drug Cartel International, but it’s not going to be anytime soon. Another month or six weeks at a minimum, during which I have no intention of going anywhere near the North American continent.”

“I hear and obey, Master,” Paul Sieno said.

“Pancho,” Sweaty said, “as soon as we get off the line, I’ll call my brother and tell him to call Pietr and explain the situation to him.”

“Take care, Red,” Juan Carlos said, and the green LEDs on their CaseyBerrys stopped glowing.

[SEVEN]

“Nice breakfast, Frank,” FBI Director Mark Schmidt said to DCI Lammelle. “Really nice ham!”

“We do it all here on the farm,” Lammelle replied. “Breed the pigs, slaughter them, and cure the hams and bacon in our own smokehouse. We had a Russian — an SVR biological warfare chemist we turned in Africa — in here a couple of years ago who showed us how to do that. Before him, we used to sell the live pigs to an Amish farmer.”

“May I suggest we get started?” General Allan B. Naylor asked, with an unmistakable tone of annoyance in his voice.

As someone once suggested, the best-laid plans of mice and men “gang aft agley,” which meant they often don’t come to pass. In this case, not everyone who was to participate in what Secretary Cohen was diplomatically calling “the conversation” was able to make it to Green Acres Farm as early as Secretary Cohen had hoped.

The first delayed arrival, that of DCI Lammelle, had been caused by the motion picture star Shawn Ohio, whose portrayal of CIA agent Dirk Eastwood in a series of films had made him the thirty-fourth-highest-paid actor in Hollywood. In his private life Mr. Ohio was somewhat to the left of his screen persona. He was a great admirer of Hugo Chávez, and deeply convinced that Mr. Chávez had been grossly wronged by the CIA.

To bring this outrage to the attention of the American people, Mr. Ohio, wearing a T-shirt, the back of which was emblazoned with the legend GET THE CIA OUT OF VENEZUELA AND GIVE HUGO HIS TUPOLEV BACK!! had covered his hands with Magic Glue and attached himself to the plate-glass doors leading to the foyer of CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

It had taken some time to get Mr. Ohio out of sight of the members of the media — including Mr. C. Harry Whelan of Wolf News — he had brought with him, and into the hands of the Virginia State Police, as it proved to be extremely difficult to separate Magic Glue — covered hands from plate glass. Mr. Ohio, who was really not nearly as stupid as some of his right-wing critics alleged, had learned this technique after he had handcuffed himself to the fence around the White House on two previous occasions of protest. Then it had taken only seconds to detach him with bolt cutters.

His demonstration this time had caused DCI Lammelle to delay his departure for Pennsylvania by nearly two hours. Lammelle did not feel comfortable in leaving until Mr. Ohio was firmly — and safely — in the hands of the state police, as he feared the CIA security officers might not enthusiastically obey his admonition not to hurt the sonofabitch. If that should happen, Mr. Lammelle knew, Mr. Whelan would bring it to the world’s attention on Wolf News, as would the other media members via their respective outlets. The world would love to see and hear the real CIA clubbing a fictional CIA hero into unconsciousness while he was glued to their front door, and the media knew it.

And then Director of National Intelligence Truman Ellsworth had telephoned at nine p.m. to say he was lost somewhere in the vicinity of Intercourse, Pennsylvania, and God only knew when he would be at Green Acres. Secretary Cohen had then decided they would hold off starting the meeting until after breakfast the next morning, when everybody would be there and fresh to deal with the problem.

Gathered around the picnic table set up for breakfast on the veranda of the farmhouse were Attorney General Palmer, Defense Secretary Beiderman, DNI Ellsworth, DCI Lammelle, FBI Director Schmidt, and Generals Naylor and McNab.

Secretary Cohen began the conversation by saying, “General McNab, you have the floor.”

“The President arrived at Fort Bragg unannounced,” General McNab began simply, “and in a C-37A, not in his 737.”

“What’s a C-37A?” FBI Director Schmidt asked.

“A Gulfstream,” DCI Lammelle answered for him, adding, “Mark, for Christ’s sake, if you keep interrupting, we’ll be here all day.”

Schmidt was unrepentant.

“I want to get the facts straight. This is important business we’re undertaking.”

“Please continue, General McNab,” Secretary Cohen said.

“Yes, ma’am,” McNab went on. “With him, the President had…”

Five minutes later, McNab concluded with: “As he left the President implied that I might be promoted if the seizure of the airfield by Clendennen’s Commandos went smoothly, and that my promotion might be further speeded if I showed more enthusiasm for getting Clendennen’s Commandos to wear Clan Clendennen kilts. After the President left, I called Secretary Cohen and reported his visit.”

“He’s bonkers, absolutely bonkers,” Lammelle said.

“You’re speaking of the President of the United States, Mr. Lammelle,” Secretary Beiderman said.

“Unfortunately,” Lammelle said.

“Who, to judge by his sending the Secret Service to the Greenbrier to see if Natalie was really there to play golf, believes there is a plot to remove him from office,” the attorney general said.

“Isn’t there?” Beiderman challenged.

“Let’s talk about seizing the airfield,” Truman Ellsworth said, ignoring the question. “First of all, where is it?”

“It’s in, or on, a dry lake in the middle of Mexico,” Lammelle answered.

“And how difficult would it be to seize, General McNab?”

“I would not accept an order to seize it,” McNab replied.

“But if you were?” Ellsworth pursued.

“Ordered to seize it, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“I would refuse the order.”

“And he would be in his rights to do so,” the attorney general said. “It is not unlawful to refuse to obey an unlawful order.”

“Splitting legal hairs, as we were both taught to do at our beloved Yale School of Law, Freddie,” Ellsworth went on, “that is not precisely the case. Under the War Powers Act — and please correct me if I err — the President can order military action for a period not to exceed thirty days anywhere in the world he feels the need.”

“Point well taken, Ellsworth. I clearly remember Professor Hathaway’s brilliant—”

“Good ol’ Oona,” Ellsworth interjected. “A giant in the law!”

“… lectures on the subject,” the attorney general went on. “I believe that would be ‘giantess of the law,’ Ellsworth.”

“Right you are! I stand corrected!”

“Let me ask a question,” FBI Director Schmidt asked.

“Certainly,” Ellsworth and Palmer said over one another.

“If the President ordered Secretary Beiderman to seize this airfield, and Beiderman ordered General Naylor to carry it out, and then General Naylor ordered General McNab to conduct the operation, and General McNab refused, then what?”

“In that circumstance, I would resign,” Secretary Cohen said.

“With all possible respect, Madam Secretary,” Schmidt said, “that question was addressed to Secretary Beiderman and General Naylor. What would you do, General Naylor, if you issued an order and General McNab, in effect, said go piss up a rope? Excuse the language, Madam Secretary.”

“If General McNab refused the order—”

“Presumably you think it would be a lawful order?” Ellsworth asked.

“Yes, sir. I believe the President has the authority to issue such an order.”

“And if General McNab refused to accept it?”

“Then I would have no alternative but to relieve him of his command and place him under arrest.”

“And then what?”

“What do you mean, ‘and then what’?”

“What does it sound like, General?”

“Well, charges would be drawn up, and then—”

“I meant to the order to seize the airfield.”

“Oh, I see what you mean. Well, sir, on General McNab’s relief, command would pass to his deputy—”

“Enough!” Natalie Cohen said softly, but with such great intensity that every head around the table turned to her.

“General McNab is not going to be relieved,” she said. “Aside from Frank Lammelle, he’s the only one of you who seems to both comprehend the situation and know what he’s doing.

“Now, I’m going to go around the table and see if there is at least one thing on which we all agree. The question is, ‘Do you believe that the President’s mental state poses a genuine threat to the United States?’ Just that, and I want a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ not a learned, legal hairsplitting. Mr. Attorney General…”

Attorney General Palmer met her eyes for a long moment and then said, “Yes.”

So, one by one, did everyone around the picnic table.

When the last man, General McNab, had spoken, she nodded and said, “Thank you. Now in the same manner, I’m going to ask another question and again want a yes or no answer. The second question is, ‘Do you have a specific course of action you would take if you were in my position, that is, as secretary of State, to keep the President from proceeding with his plan to seize the airfield, which would be an act of war?’ Understand that I am not asking for your opinion about what we should do about the President, just about stopping him from executing his seize-the-airfield plans. And again I’ll start with the attorney general. Mr. Palmer?”

When everyone had answered in the negative, she said, “Thank you,” again, and added, “I am left with no choice but to take whatever action, or actions, I feel are necessary to keep this situation from getting any further out of control. I will accept full responsibility for so doing. The flip side of that coin is that I am not going to ask permission, either individually or as a result of a vote, for what I will do. If this is unsatisfactory to any of you, I will return to Washington and place my resignation on President Clendennen’s desk today. If I hear no objections, I will assume I have your permission to proceed.”

Although several of the men around the picnic table seemed on the verge of objecting, none did.

Director of National Intelligence Ellsworth, however, asked, “May I ask what you plan to do, Madam Secretary?”

She chuckled.

“I’m going to do what President Clendennen said he was going to do. Put the problem before someone who thinks out of the box and see what he has to say.”

“I don’t think I follow you, Madam Secretary,” Ellsworth said.

She didn’t reply, instead taking her CaseyBerry from her attaché case and punching autodial and the loudspeaker button.

“Yes, ma’am, Madam Secretary,” Castillo’s voice came over the line. “And how are you?”

“Colonel, I need you here,” she said.

“Is she talking to Castillo?” FBI Director Schmidt asked incredulously.

“No, ma’am,” Castillo said. “Sorry. The deal I made was I stall You Know Who for as long as it takes, meanwhile staying out of sight, and more importantly out of reach of any claws You Know Who might want to extend toward me.”

“Colonel, I realize that I have no authority to order you to do anything. But if I had that authority, I would.”

“I knew this call would be a disaster when you called me ‘Colonel,’” Castillo said. “What’s happened?”

“If you’re not coming, there’s no point in telling you.”

There was a ten-second — which seemed much longer — pause.

“I’m floating down the Rhine….”

“So the CaseyBerry tells me.”

“It’ll take me three hours, maybe a little more, to get to the airplane. Andrews?”

“Fort Bragg would be better.”

“Does General McNab know I’m—”

“We’re,” a sultry voice injected.

“… know we’re coming?”

“General McNab is with me now. So is Frank.”

“I knew I shouldn’t have answered the damn phone,” Castillo said, and the green LEDs on Secretary Cohen’s phone died.

“And who was the woman who chimed in?” FBI Director Schmidt asked.

“She’s the colonel’s fiancée, Mark,” Lammelle said. “Stunning redhead. In a previous life, she was an SVR lieutenant colonel.”

“You look very thoughtful, General,” Cohen said to McNab. “Is there something you want to say?”

“I was thinking, Madam Secretary, that you and Charley’s abuela are the only people in the world who could get him to come to the States.”

“No, I’m sure he would come if you asked,” she said.

“Not for me?” Lammelle asked.

“Not for you or anyone else,” she said.

She immediately regretted the comment when she saw General Naylor’s face, but it was too late to take the words back, or even try to lamely include Naylor.

And I’m supposed to be a diplomat.