The outlaws

[THREE]

Old Ebbitt Grill 675 15th Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 1530 2 February 2007 No one is ever really surprised when a first- or second-tier member of the Washington press corps walks into the Old Ebbitt looking for someone.

For one thing, the Old Ebbitt is just about equidistant between the White House-a block away at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue-and the National Press Club-a block away at 529 14th Street, N.W. It's right down the street from the Hotel Washington, and maybe a three-minute walk from the Willard Hotel, whose lobby added the term "lobbyist" to the political/journalistic lexicon.

Furthermore, the Old Ebbitt's service, menu, ambiance, and stock of intoxicants was superb. The one thing on which all observers of the press corps agreed was that nothing appeals more to the gentlemen and ladies of the Fourth Estate than, say, a shrimp cocktail and a nice New York strip steak, plus a stiff drink, served promptly onto a table covered with crisp linen in a charming environment.

This is especially true if the journalist can reasonably expect that someone else-one of those trolling for a favorable relationship with the press lobbyists from the Willard, for example-would happily reach for the check.

Roscoe J. Danton-a tall, starting to get a little plump, thirty-eight-year-old who was employed by The Washington Times-Post-was, depending on to whom one might talk, either near the bottom of the list of first-tier journalists, or at the very top of the second tier.

Roscoe walked into the Old Ebbitt, nodded at the ever affable Tony the Maitre d' at his stand, and walked on to the bar along the wall behind Tony. He continued slowly down it-toward the rear-and had gone perhaps halfway when he spotted the people he had agreed to meet.

They were two women, and they were sitting at a banquette. The one he had talked to said that he would have no trouble spotting them: "Look for two thirtyish blondes at one of the banquettes at the end of the bar."

The description, Roscoe decided, was not entirely accurate. While both were bleached blonde, one of them was far closer to fiftyish than thirtyish, and the younger one was on the cusp of fortyish.

But there being no other banquette holding two blondes, Roscoe walked to their table.

Roscoe began, "Excuse me-"

"Sit down, Mr. Danton," the older of the two immediately said.

The younger one patted the red leather next to her.

Roscoe Danton sat down.

"Whatever this is, I don't have much time," he announced. "There's a press conference at four-fifteen."

"This won't take long," the older one said. "And I really think it will be worth your time."

A waiter appeared.

The older woman signaled the waiter to bring what she and her companion were drinking, and then asked, "Mr. Danton?"

"What is that you're having?"

"A Bombay martini, no vegetables," she said.

"That should give me courage to face the mob," he said, smiled at the waiter, and told him, "The same for me, please."

The older woman waited until the waiter had left and then reached to the fluffy lace collar at her neck. She unbuttoned two buttons, put her hand inside, and withdrew a plastic card. It was attached with an alligator clip to what looked like a dog-tag chain. She pressed the clip, removed the card, more or less concealed it in her hand, and laid it flat on the tablecloth.

"Make sure the waiter doesn't see that, please," she said as she withdrew her hand.

Danton held his hand to at least partially conceal the card and took a good look at it.

The card bore the woman's photograph, the seal of the Central Intelligence Agency, a number, some stripes of various colors, and her name, Eleanor Dillworth.

It clearly was an employee identification card. Danton had enough experience at the CIA complex just across the Potomac River in Langley, Virginia, to know that while it was not one of the very coveted Any Area/Any Time cards worn by very senior CIA officers with as much elan as a four-star general wears his stars in the Pentagon, this one identified someone fairly high up in the hierarchy.

He met Miss Dillworth's eyes, and slid the card back across the table.

The younger blonde took a nearly identical card from her purse and laid it before Danton. It said her name was Patricia Davies Wilson.

"I told them I had lost that when I was fired," Mrs. Wilson said. "And kept it as a souvenir."

Danton met her eyes, too, but said nothing.

She took the card back, and put it in her purse.

"What's this all about?" he finally asked when his silence didn't elicit the response it was supposed to.

Miss Dillworth held up her finger as a signal to wait.

The waiter delivered three Bombay Sapphire gin martinis, no vegetables.

"That was quick, wasn't it?" Eleanor Dillworth asked.

"That's why I like to come here," Patricia Davies Wilson said.

The three took an appreciative sip of their cocktails.

"I was asking, 'What's this all about?'" Danton said.

"Disgruntled employees, Mr. Danton," Patricia Davies Wilson said.

"Who, as you know, sometimes become whistleblowers," Eleanor Dillworth said, and then asked, "Interested?"

"That would depend on what, or on whom, you're thinking of blowing the whistle," Danton replied.

"I was about to say the agency," Patricia Davies Wilson said. "But it goes beyond the agency."

"Where does it go beyond the agency?" Danton asked.

"Among other places, to the Oval Office."

"In that case, I'm fascinated," Danton said. "What have you got?"

"Have you ever heard of an intelligence officer-slash-special operator by the name of Carlos Castillo?" Eleanor Dillworth asked.

Danton shook his head.

"How about the Office of Organizational Analysis?"

He shook his head, and then asked, "In the CIA?"

Dillworth shook her head. "In the office of our late and not especially grieved-for President," she said.

"And apparently to be kept alive in the administration of our new and not-too-bright chief executive. But that's presuming Montvale has told him."

"What does this organization do? What has it done in the past?"

"If we told you, Mr. Danton, I don't think you would believe us," Eleanor Dillworth said.

Danton sipped his martini, and thought: Probably not.

Disgruntled employee whistleblowers almost invariably tell wild tales with little or no basis in fact.

He said: "I don't think I understand."

"You're going to have to learn this yourself," Patricia Wilson said. "We'll point you in the right direction, but you'll have to do the digging. That way you'll believe it."

"How do I know you know what you're talking about?" Danton challenged.

"Before I was recalled, I was the CIA's station chief in Vienna," Dillworth said. "I've been in-was in-the Clandestine Service for twenty-three years."

"Before that bastard got me fired," Patricia Wilson added, "I was the agency's regional director for Southwest Africa, everything from Nigeria to South Africa, including the Congo. You will recall the Congo is where World War Three was nearly started last month."

"'That bastard' is presumably this Mr. Costillo?"

"'Castillo,' with an 'a,'" she said. "And lieutenant colonel, not mister. He's in the Army."

"Okay," Danton said, "point me."

"You said you were going to the four-fifteen White House press conference," Dillworth said. "Ask Porky. Don't take no for an answer."

John David "Jack" Parker, the White House spokesman, was sometimes unkindly referred to-the forty-two-year-old Vermont native was a little on the far side of pleasingly plump-as Porky Parker. And sometimes, when his responses to questions tested the limits of credulity, some members of the Fourth Estate had been known to make oink-oink sounds from the back of the White House press room.

"Okay, I'll do it. How do I get in touch with you if I decide this goes any further?"

Eleanor Dillworth slid a small sheet of notebook paper across the table.

"If there's no answer, say you're Joe Smith and leave a number." [FOUR] The Press Room The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 1715 2 February 2007 "Well, that's it, fellows," Jack Parker said. "We agreed that these would last one hour, and that's what the clock says."

Ignoring muted oink-oink sounds from the back of the room, he left the podium and headed for the door, where he was intercepted by Roscoe J. Danton of The Washington Times-Post.

"Aw, come on, Roscoe, this one-hour business was as much your idea as anybody else's."

"Well, screw you," Danton said, loud enough for other members of the Fourth Estate also bent on intercepting Porky to hear, and at the same time asking with a pointed finger and a raised eyebrow if he could go to Parker's office as soon as the area emptied.

Parker nodded, just barely perceptibly.

Danton went out onto the driveway and smoked a cigarette. Smoking was prohibited in the White House, the rule strictly enforced when anyone was watching. And then he went back into the White House. "What do you need, Roscoe?" Parker asked.

"Tell me about the Office of Organizational Analysis and Colonel Carlos Costello. Castillo."

Parker thought, shrugged, and said, "I draw a blank."

"Can you check?"

"Sure. In connection with what?"

"I have some almost certainly unreliable information that he and the Office of Organizational Analysis were involved in almost starting World War Three."

"One hears a lot of rumors like that about all kinds of people, doesn't one?" Parker said mockingly. "There was one going around that the Lambda Legal Foundation were the ones behind it; somebody told them they stone gays in the Congo."

"Shame on you!" Danton said. "Check it for me, will you?"

Parker nodded.

"Thanks." [FIVE] The City Room The Washington Times-Post 1365 15th Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 2225 2 February 2007 Roscoe Danton's office was a small and cluttered glass-walled cubicle off the large room housing the "city desk." Two small exterior windows offered a clear view of a solid brick wall. He had wondered for years what was behind it.

His e-mail had just offered him Viagra at a discount and a guaranteed penis enlargement concoction. He was wondering whether he could get away with sending either or both offers to the executive editor without getting caught, when another e-mail arrived. FROM: White House Press Office ‹parker@whpo.gov› TO: Roscoe J. Danton ‹rjdanton@washtimespost.org› SENT: 2 Feb 19:34:13 2007 SUBJECT: Costello/Castillo Roscoe

After you left, I had a memory tinkle about Costello/Castillo and the Office of Organizational Analysis, so I really tried-with almost no success-to check it out.

I found a phone number for an OOA in the Department of Homeland Security with an office in the DHS Compound in the Nebraska Avenue complex. When I called it, I got a recorded message saying that it had been closed. So I called DHS and they told me OOA had been closed, they didn't know when. When I asked what it had done, they helpfully told me my guess was as good as theirs, but it probably had something to do with analyzing operations.

At this point, I suspected that you had been down this route yourself before you dumped it on me.

So I called the Pentagon. You would be astonished at the number of lieutenant colonels named Castillo and Costello there are/were in the Army. There is a retired Lt Col Carlos Castillo, and he's interesting, but I don't think he's the man you're looking for. This one is a West Pointer to which institution he gained entrance because his father, a nineteen-year-old warrant officer helicopter pilot, posthumously received the Medal of Honor in Vietnam.

The son followed in his father's footsteps, and before he had been out of WP a year had won the Distinguished Flying Cross flying an Apache in the First Desert War. He went from that to flying in the Special Operations Aviation Regiment, most recently in Afghanistan. He returned from there under interesting circumstances. First, he had acquired more medals for valor than Rambo, but was also a little over the edge. Specifically, it was alleged that he either had taken against orders, or stolen, a Black Hawk to undertake a nearly suicidal mission to rescue a pal of his who had been shot down. Nearly suicidal, because he got away with it.

Faced with the choice of giving him another medal or court-martialing him, the Army instead sent him home for psychiatric evaluation. The shrinks at Walter Reed determined that as a result of all his combat service, he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder to the point where he would never be psychologically stable enough to return to active service. They medically retired him. His retirement checks are sent to Double-Bar-C Ranch, Midland, Texas.

I suggest this guy was unlikely to have tried to start World War III from the psychiatric ward at Walter Reed.

Sorry, Roscoe, this was the best I could do. If you get to the bottom of this, please let me know. My curiosity is now aroused. Best, Jack The message gave Danton a number of things to think about. He would not have been surprised to receive a one-liner-"Sorry. Nothing. Jack."-and this one meant that Porky had spent a lot of time, of which he understandably had little, coming up with this answer.

Possibility One: His curiosity had been piqued and there had been time to do what he said he had done.

Possible but unlikely.

Possibility Two: This was a carefully thought-out ploy to get Danton off the track of a story which might, if it came out, embarrass the President, the White House, the department of State, or the Pentagon. Or all of the above.

Possible but unlikely. There was a hell of a risk, as Porky damned well knew, in intentionally misleading (a) The Washington Times-Post and/or (b) Roscoe Danton personally.

A short "Sorry. Nothing. Jack." e-mail maybe. But not a long message like this one. Including all the details of this Castillo character's military service.

So what do I do?

Forget it?

No. I smell something here.

The thing to do is find this Castillo character and talk to him; see if he has any idea why Meryl Streep and the other disgruntled whistleblower, whose thigh "accidentally" pressed against mine twice in the Old Ebbitt, are saying all these terrible things about him.

But only after I talk to Good Ol' Meryl and her pal, to see what else I can get out of them.

He tapped keys on his laptop, opened a new folder, named it "Castillo," and downloaded Porky's e-mail into it. Then he found the piece of paper on which Good Ol' Meryl had given him her phone number. He put this into the "Castillo" folder and entered it into his BlackBerry.

Then he pushed the CALL key. [ONE] La Casa en el Bosque San Carlos de Bariloche Patagonia Rio Negro Province, Argentina 1300 3 February 2007 "I believe in a democratic approach when having a meeting like this," Lieutenant Colonel Carlos G. Castillo, USA (Retired), announced. "And the way that will work is that I will tell you what's going to happen, and then everybody says 'Yes, sir.'"

It was summer in Argentina, and Castillo, a well-muscled, six-foot-two, one-hundred-ninety-pound, blue-eyed thirty-six-year-old with a full head of thick light brown hair, was wearing tennis whites.

There were groans from some of those gathered around an enormous circular table in the center of a huge hall. It could have been a movie set for a motion picture about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. When this thought had occurred to Sandra Britton, Ph.D., Dr. Britton had thought Castillo could play Sir Lancelot.

Two people, one of each gender, gave Castillo the finger.

"We told quote unquote those people in Las Vegas that we would give them an answer in three weeks," Castillo said. "Three weeks is tomorrow."

"Go ahead, Ace. Let's get it over with," Edgar Delchamps said. He was a nondescript man in his late fifties. The oldest man in the room, he was wearing slacks with the cuffs rolled up and a dress shirt with the collar open.

"I would like to suggest that we appoint a chairman for this, and a secretary, and I recommend Mr. Yung for that," Castillo said.

"Cut the crap, Ace," Delchamps said. "Everyone knows you're calling the shots, but if you're going to make Two-Gun something, I more or less respectfully suggest you make him secretary-treasurer."

Men who have spent more than three decades in the Clandestine Service of the Central Intelligence Agency tend not to be impressed with Army officers who had yet to make it even to West Point while they themselves were matching wits with the KGB in Berlin and Vienna.

"Two-Gun, you're the secretary-treasurer," Castillo said to David William Yung, Jr.

Yung was a round-faced, five-foot-eight, thirty-six-year-old, hundred-fifty-pound Chinese-American whose family had immigrated to the United States in the 1840s. In addition to a law degree, he held a master's degree in business administration from the University of Pennsylvania, and was fluent in four languages, none of them Asian.

Before he had become a member of the OOA, he had been an FBI agent with a nearly legendary reputation for being able to trace the path of money around the world no matter how often it had been laundered.

Before his association with OOA, Yung had never-except at the Quantico FBI base pistol range-taken his service pistol from its holster. Within days of being drafted into the OOA, he had been in a gun battle and killed his first man.

But the "Two-Gun" appellation had nothing to do with that. That had come after Delchamps, who was not authorized at the time to be in possession of a firearm in Argentina, had Yung, whose diplomatic status at the time made him immune to Argentine law, smuggle his pistol across the border. Yung thus had two guns and was thereafter Two-Gun.

Two-Gun Yung signified his acceptance of his appointment by raising his balled fist thumbs up, and then opening up his laptop computer.

"First things first, Mr. Secretary-Treasurer," Castillo said. "Give us a thumb-nail picture of the assets of the Lorimer Charitable and Benevolent Fund."

Two-Gun looked at his computer screen.

"This is all ballpark, you understand," he said. "You want the history?"

"Please," Castillo said.

"We started out with those sixteen million in bearer bonds from Shangri-La," Yung said.

Shangri-La was not the mythical kingdom but rather Estancia Shangri-La, in Tacuarembo Province, Republica Oriental del Uruguay. When Castillo had led an ad hoc team of special operators there to entice Dr. Jean-Paul Lorimer to allow himself to be repatriated, Lorimer was shot to death by mercenaries seeking to recover from him money he had stolen from the Iraqi oil-for-food scam, for which he had been the "bagman" in charge of paying off whomever had to be paid off.

His safe had contained sixteen million dollars' worth of what were in effect bearer bonds, which Castillo had taken with him to the U.S. When this was reported to the then-President of the United States, the chief executive managed to convey the impression-without coming right out in so many words-that justice would be well served if the bearer bonds were used to fund the OOA.

The following day, the Lorimer Charitable amp; Benevolent Fund came into being.

"Into which Charley dipped to the tune of seven and a half million to buy the Gulfstream," Yung went on. "Call that eight million by the time we fixed everything, and rented the hangar at Baltimore/Washington. Et cetera.

"That left eight, into which Charley dipped for another two point five million to buy the safe house in Alexandria. That left five point five million."

The house in Alexandria was used to house members of the Office of Organizational Analysis while they were in the Washington area, and also to conduct business of a nature that might have raised eyebrows had it been conducted in the OOA's official offices in the Department of Homeland Security compound in the Nebraska Avenue complex in the District of Columbia.

"To which," Two-Gun went on, "Mr. Philip J. Kenyon the Third of Midland, Texas, contributed forty-six point two million in exchange for his Stay Out of Jail card."

Mr. Kenyon had mistakenly believed his $46,255,000 in illicit profits from his participation in the Iraqi oil-for-food scam were safe from prying eyes in a bank in the Cayman Islands. He erred.

The deal he struck to keep himself out of federal prison for the rest of his natural life was to cooperate fully with the investigation, and to transfer the money from his bank account in the Cayman Islands to the account of the Lorimer Charitable amp; Benevolent Fund in the Riggs National Bank in Washington, D.C.

"There have been some other expenses, roughly totaling two million," Yung continued. "What we have left is about fifty point five million, give or take a couple of hundred thousand."

"That don't add up, Two-Gun," Edgar Delchamps challenged. "There shouldn't be that much; according to your figures, we've got two point something million more than we should have."

"There has been some income from our investments," Two-Gun said. "You didn't think I was going to leave all that money in our bank-our banks plural; there are seven-just drawing interest, did you?"

"Do we want to start counting nickels and dimes?" Colonel Castillo asked. "Or can we get to that later?"

"'Nickels and dimes'?" Sandra Britton, a slim, tall, sharp-featured black-skinned woman, parroted incredulously. "We really are the other side of Alice's Looking Glass, aren't we?"

Possibly proving that opposites attract, Dr. Britton, who had been a philologist on the faculty of Philadelphia's Temple University, was married to John M. Britton, formerly of the United States Secret Service and before that a detective working undercover in the Counterterrorism Bureau of the Philadelphia Police Department.

"I was going to suggest, Sandra," Charley Castillo said, "that we now turn to the question before us. Questions before us. One, do we just split all that money between us and go home-"

"How the hell can Jack and I go home?" Sandra interrupted. "Not only can I not face my peers at Temple after they learned that I was hauled off by the Secret Service-with sirens screaming-but the AALs turned our little house by the side of the road into the O.K. Corral."

Dr. Britton was making reference to an assassination attempt made on her and her husband during which their home and nearly new Mazda convertible were riddled by fire from Kalashnikov automatic assault weapons in the hands of native-born African-Americans who considered themselves converts to Islam and to whom Dr. Britton referred, perhaps politically incorrectly, as AALs, which stood for African-American Lunatics.

"If I may continue, Doctor?" Colonel Castillo asked.

Dr. Britton made a gesture with her left hand, raising it balled with the center finger extended vertically.

"I rephrase," Castillo said. "Do we just split that money between us and go our separate ways? Or do we stay together within what used to be the OOA and would now need a new name?"

"Call the question," Anthony "Tony" J. Santini said formally.

Santini, a somewhat swarthy, balding, short, heavyset man in his forties, until recently had been listed in the telephone book of the U.S. embassy in Buenos Aires as an assistant financial attache. He had been, in fact, a Secret Service agent dispatched to Buenos Aires to, as he put it, "look for funny money." Before that, he had been a member of the vice presidential protection detail. He had been relieved of that assignment when he fell off the ice-covered running board of the vice-presidential limousine. He had been recruited for the OOA shortly after it had been established, to "locate and eliminate" the parties responsible for the murder of J. Winslow Masterson.

"Second the motion," Susanna Sieno said.

She was a trim, pale-freckled-skin redhead in a white blouse and blue jeans. She looked like she and the man sitting beside her-her husband, Paul-should be in a television commercial, where the handsome young husband comes home from the office and chastely kisses his charming young bride after she shows how easy it had been for her to polish their kitchen floor with Miracle Glow.

Actually, between the Sienos, they had more than four decades in the Clandestine Service of the CIA-Paul having served twenty-two years and Susanna just over twenty-which had been more than enough for the both of them to have elected to retire, which they had done ten days before.

"The motion having been made and seconded," Castillo said mock-formally, "the chair calls the question: 'Do we disband and split the money?' All in favor raise your hand and hold it up until Two-Gun counts."

"Okay," Castillo said a moment later, "now those opposed, raise your hands."

Yung again looked around the table.

"I make it unanimously opposed," Yung said. "OOA lives!"

"OOA's dead," Castillo said. "The question now is, what do we do with the corpse?"

Delchamps said, "Sweaty, Dmitri-excuse me, Tom-and Alfredo didn't vote."

"I didn't think I had the right," Alfredo Munz, a stocky blond man in his forties, said.

Munz, at the time of Masterson's kidnapping, had been an Argentine Army colonel in command of SIDE, an organization combining the Argentine versions of the FBI and CIA. Embarrassed by the incident and needing a scapegoat, the interior ministry had, as a disgusted Charley Castillo had put it, "thrown Munz under the bus." Munz had been relieved of his command of SIDE and forced to retire. Castillo had immediately put him on the OOA payroll.

"Don't be silly," Castillo said. "You took a bullet for us. You're as much a part of us as anyone else."

Munz had been wounded during the Estancia Shangri-La operation.

"Hear, hear," Yung said.

"I didn't say the Argentine Kraut didn't have every right to vote," Delchamps said. "I simply stated that he, Sweaty, and Tom didn't vote."

"If I have a vote," Sweaty said, "I will vote however my Carlos votes."

"Sweaty," also in tennis whites, sat next to Castillo. She was a tall, dark-red-haired, stunningly beautiful woman, who had been christened Svetlana. Once associated with this group of Americans, "Svetlana" had quickly morphed to "Svet" then to "Sweaty."

Susanna's eyebrows rose in contempt, or perhaps contemptuous disbelief. In her long professional career, she had known many intelligence officers, and just about the best one she had ever encountered was Castillo.

The most incredibly stupid thing any spook had ever done was become genuinely emotionally involved with an enemy intelligence officer. Within twenty-four hours of Lieutenant Colonel C. G. Castillo having laid eyes on Lieutenant Colonel Svetlana Alekseeva of the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki-the SVR, the Russian Service for the Protection of the Constitutional System, renamed from "KGB"-on a Vienna-bound railroad train in Germany, she had walked out of his bedroom in a safe house outside Buenos Aires wearing his bathrobe and a smug smile, and calling him "my Carlos."

Dr. Britton smiled fondly at Sweaty when she referred to Castillo now as "my Carlos." She thought it was sweet. Sandra Britton knew there really was such a thing as Love at First Sight. She had married her husband two weeks after she had met him and now could not imagine life without him.

Their meeting had occurred shortly after midnight eight years before on North Broad Street in Philly when Jack had appeared out of nowhere to foil a miscreant bent on relieving her of her purse, watch, jewelry-and very possibly her virtue. In the process, the miscreant had suffered a broken arm, a dislocated shoulder, testicular trauma, and three lost teeth.

Britton had then firmly attached the miscreant to a fire hydrant with plastic handcuffs, loaded the nearly hysterical Dr. Britton in her car, and set off to find a pay telephone.

There were not many working pay telephones in that section of Philadelphia at that hour, and to call the police it had been necessary to go to Dr. Britton's apartment.

After Britton had called Police Emergency to report that the victim of an assault by unknown parties could be found at North Broad and Cecil B. Moore Avenue hugging a fire hydrant, one thing had led to another. Sandra made Jack breakfast the next morning, and they were married two weeks later.

"I don't think I have a vote," Tom Barlow said. "But if I do, I'll go along with however Sweaty's Carlos votes."

Barlow, a trim man of about Castillo's age and build, whose hair was nearly blond, and who bore a familial resemblance to Sweaty-he was in fact her brother-until very recently had been Colonel Dmitri Berezovsky, the SVR rezident in Berlin.

Castillo and Sweaty gave Barlow the finger.

"I would say the motion has been defeated," Yung said. "I didn't see any hands. And I have the proxies of Jake, Peg-Leg, the Gunnery Sergeant, Sparky, and Miller. They all like the idea of keeping OOA going."

Jake and Sparky were, respectively, Colonel Jacob S. Torine, USAF (Retired), and former Captain Richard Sparkman, USAF. Torine had been in on OOA since the beginning, when he had flown a Globemaster to Argentina to bring home the body of Jack the Stack Masterson, and his family. Torine had been quietly retired with all the other military members of OOA who had more than twenty years' service when OOA had shut down.

Sparkman, who on active duty had served under Torine on a number of black missions of the Air Force Special Operations Command, had been flying Washington political VIPs around in a Gulfstream and hating it when he heard (a) of OOA and (b) that Colonel Torine was involved. He made his way through the maze designed to keep OOA hidden in the bushes, found Torine, and volunteered to do whatever was asked, in whatever Torine was involved.

He had been accepted as much for having gotten through the maze as for being able to fill the near-desperate need OOA had for another pilot who (a) knew how to keep his mouth shut and (b) had a lot of Gulfstream time as pilot in command.

When OOA was shut down, Sparky didn't have the option of retiring, because he didn't have enough time in the service. He also realized that he really couldn't go back to the Air Force after having been tainted by his association with OOA. He knew the rest of his career in the Air Force would have been something along the lines of Assistant Procurement Officer, Hand-Held Fire-Extinguishing Devices.

He had resigned. There was an unspoken agreement that Sparky would go on the payroll as a Gulfstream pilot, details to be worked out later, presuming everybody was still out of jail.

Gunnery Sergeant Lester Bradley was in a similar situation. Another gunny, one in charge of the Marine guard detachment at the American embassy in Buenos Aires, had sent then-corporal Lester Bradley-a slight, five-foot-three, twenty-year-old Marine who could be spared most easily from more important duties-to drive an embassy GMC Yukon XL carrying two barrels of aviation fuel across the border to Uruguay.

Thirty-six hours later, the Yukon had been torched with a thermite grenade. Bradley, who had been left to "watch" the Yukon, had taken out-with head-shots firing offhand from a hundred meters-two mercenaries who had just killed Jean-Paul Lorimer, Ph.D., and then started shooting their Kalashnikovs at Castillo.

Inasmuch as Castillo thought it would be unwise to return Corporal Bradley to his embassy duties-where his gunnery sergeant would naturally be curious to learn under what circumstances the Yukon had been torched-he was impressed into the OOA on the spot.

The day that OOA ceased to exist, the President of the United States had asked Castillo, "Is there anything else I can do for you before you and your people start vanishing from the face of the earth?"

Castillo told him there were three things. First was that Corporal Bradley be promoted to gunnery sergeant before being honorably discharged "for the good of the service."

The second thing Castillo had asked of the President was that Colonel Berezovsky and Lieutenant Colonel Alekseeva be taken off the Interpol warrants outstanding for them. When they had disappeared from their posts in Berlin and Copenhagen with the obvious intention of defecting, the Russian government had said their motive had been to escape arrest and punishment for embezzlement.

The third thing Castillo asked was that he and everybody connected with him and OOA be taken off the FBI's "locate but do not detain" list.

The President had granted all three requests: "You have my word."

The first thing Castillo thought when he heard that the President had dropped dead was that his word had died with him. The chances that President Clendennen-especially with Director of National Intelligence Montvale whispering in his ear-would honor his predecessor's promises ranged from zero to zilch.

The retirements of Major H. Richard Miller, Jr., Avn, USA, who had been the OOA's chief of staff, and First Lieutenant Edmund "Peg-Leg" Lorimer, MI, USA, had posed no problem, although neither had twenty years of service.

Miller, a United States Military Academy classmate of Castillo's, had suffered grievous damage to his leg when his helicopter had been shot down in Afghanistan. Lorimer had lost a leg to an improvised explosive device in the same country. They would receive pensions for the rest of their lives.

As Castillo amp; Co. had begun to fulfill their part of the agreement with POTUS-disappearing from the face of the earth-they had made their way to Las Vegas, where they were the guests of Aloysius Francis Casey-president, chief executive officer, and chairman of the board of the AFC Corporation.

Castillo had first met Casey when Castillo had been a second lieutenant, freshly returned from the First Desert War working as aide-de-camp to just-promoted Brigadier General Bruce J. McNab at Fort Bragg when Casey showed up there. Casey announced that he had been the communications sergeant on a Special Forces A-Team in the Vietnam War and, further, told McNab and his aide-de-camp that he had done well after being discharged. Not only had Casey earned a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but he had started up-and still owned more than ninety percent of-the AFC Corporation, which had become the world's leading developer and manufacturer of data transmission and encryption systems.

Aloysius Casey, Second Lieutenant Castillo had immediately seen, was not troubled with excessive modesty.

Casey said that he attributed his great success to Special Forces-specifically what he had learned about self-reliance and that there was no such thing as impossible.

And he said he had decided it was payback time. He was prepared to furnish Delta Force, free of charge, with his state-of-the-art communications and encryption equipment.

"It's three, four years ahead of anything anybody else has," Casey had announced. McNab had sent Castillo with Casey to Las Vegas-on AFC's Learjet-that same day to select what AFC equipment Delta Force could use immediately, and to brainstorm with Casey and his senior engineers on what advanced commo equipment Delta could use if somebody waved a magic wand and created it for them.

The latter devices had begun to arrive at Delta Force's stockade at Fort Bragg about two months later.

When OOA had been set up, Castillo had naturally turned to Casey-who now called him "Charley" rather than, as he had at first, "The Boy Wonder"-for communications and cryptographic equipment, and Casey had happily produced it.

When Charley had bought the Gulfstream, Casey had seemed a little annoyed that Charley had asked if Casey would equip it with the same equipment. Charley at the time had thought that maybe he had squeezed the golden goose a little too hard and vowed he would not be so greedy the next time.

When they got the Gulfstream back from the AFC hangar at Las Vegas's McCarran International Airport, it had not only the latest communications and encryption equipment installed, but an entirely new avionics configuration.

"I figured you needed it more than Boeing," Casey said.

His annoyance with Charley was because Castillo had been reluctant to ask for his support.

"For Christ's sake, Charley, you should have known better," Casey said.

The Gulfstream was again in Las Vegas, not for the installation of equipment, but to get it out of sight until a decision could be made about what to do with it.

Charley had flown the Gulfstream to Las Vegas the same day he had received his last order from the President: "You will go someplace where no one can find you, and you will not surface until your retirement parade. And after your retirement, I hope that you will fall off the face of the earth and no one will ever see you or hear from you again. Understood?"

Charley had said, "Yes, sir," and walked out of the room. After a quick stop at Baltimore/Washington International to pick up Major Dick Miller, he had flown to Las Vegas with newly promoted (verbal order, POTUS) and about to be discharged Gunnery Sergeant Lester Bradley and Mr. and Mrs. Jack Britton.

Immediately on arrival, Castillo had learned that providing equipment to Special Operations people free of charge had not been Aloysius Casey's only contribution to the national security of the nation.

Limousines met them at McCarran, and drove them to the Venetian Hotel and Casino, where they were shown to a private elevator which carried them to a duplex penthouse.

At the foot of a curving glass-stepped staircase which led to the lower floor, Castillo saw Dmitri Berezovsky-now equipped with a bona fide Uruguayan passport in the name of Tom Barlow-Sergeant Major Jack Davidson, Aloysius Francis Casey, and about a half-dozen men Castillo could not remember having seen before sitting on a circular couch that appeared to be upholstered with gold lame.

Casey waved him down. Max, Castillo's hundred-plus-pound Bouvier des Flandres, immediately accepted the invitation, flew down the stairs four at a time, barked hello at the people he knew, and then began to help himself from one of the trays of hors d'oeuvres.

Not understanding what was going on, Castillo had gone down the stairs slowly. As he did, he realized that he did in fact recognize a few of the men. One of them was a legendary character who owned four-Maybe five?-of the more glitzy Las Vegas hotels.

But not this one, came a flash from Castillo's memory bank.

Another was a well-known, perhaps even famous, investment banker. And another had made an enormous fortune in data processing. Castillo had remembered him because he was a Naval Academy graduate.

"Everybody pay attention," Casey had said, laughing. "You don't often get a chance to see Charley with a baffled look on his face."

"Okay, Aloysius, you have pulled my chain. What the hell is going on around here?"

"Colonel," the Naval Academy graduate said with a distinctive Southern accent, "what we are is a group of people who realize there are a number of things that the intelligence community doesn't do well, doesn't want to do, or for one reason or another can't do. We try to help, and we've got the assets-not only cash-to do so. We've been doing this for some time. And we're all agreed that now that you and your OOA associates are-how do I put this?-no longer gainfully employed-"

"How did you hear about that?" Castillo interrupted.

The Naval Academy graduate ignored the question.

"-you might want to come work for us."

"You've got the wrong guy," Castillo said simply. "The intel community hates me, and that's a nice way of describing it."

"Well, telling the DCI that his agency 'is a few very good people trying to stay afloat in a sea of left-wing bureaucrats' may not have been the best way to charm the director, even if I happen to know he agrees with you."

"Colonel," the man who owned the glitzy hotels said, "this is our proposal, in a few words: You keep your people together, keep them doing what they do so well, and on our side we'll decide how to get the information to where it will do the most good, and in a manner that will not rub the nose of the intelligence community in their own incompetence." He paused. "And the pay's pretty good."

"Right off the top of my head, no," Castillo said. "My orders from the President are-"

"To go someplace where no one can find you," the investment banker interrupted him, "until your retirement parade. And after that fall off the face of the earth. Something like that?"

How could he-they-possibly know about that?

Nobody had been in that room except the secretaries of State and Defense and the director of the CIA-the President had told Montvale to take a walk until he got his temper under control.

Does that mean these people have an in with any of them?

Or with all of them?

Of course it does.

Jesus H. Christ!

"I think we would have all been disappointed, Colonel," the Naval Academy graduate said, "if, right off the top of your head, you had jumped at the proposition. So how about this? Think it over. Talk to the others. In the meantime, stay here-no one can find you here, I can personally guarantee that-until your retirement parade. And then, after you fall off the face of the earth, call Aloysius from wherever that finds you, and tell him what you've all decided." In compliance with his orders, Castillo had stayed out of sight at the Venetian-it could not be called a hardship; Sweaty had been with him, and there is no finer room service in the world than that offered by the Venetian-until very early in the morning of his retirement parade.

Then he and Dick Miller had flown Sergeant Major Jack Davidson and CWO5 Colin Leverette in the Gulfstream to Fort Rucker. After some initial difficulty, they had been given permission to land. They had changed into Class A uniforms in the plane.

There was some discussion among them about the wisdom under the circumstances of removing from their uniforms those items of insignia and qualification which suggested they had some connection with Special Operations. But that had been resolved by Mr. Leverette.

"Fuck 'em," Uncle Remus said. "This is the last time we're going to wear the suit. Let's wear it all!" There was a sea of red general officers' personal flags on the reviewing stand. The four-star flag of General Allan Naylor, the Central Command commander, stood in the center of them, beside the three-star flag of Lieutenant General Bruce J. McNab, who commanded the Special Operations Command. There were too many two- and one-star flags to be counted.

Among the two-star flags were those of Dick's father, Major General Richard H. Miller, Sr. (Retired), and Major General Harold F. Wilson (Retired). General Wilson, as a young officer during the Vietnam War, had been the co-pilot of WOJG Jorge Alejandro Castillo-right up until Castillo, Charley's father, had booted Wilson out of the Huey that would be shot down by enemy fire, ending Castillo's life and finding him posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.

The band played as it marched onto the parade ground before post headquarters, and those persons to be decorated marched front and center and were decorated and the retirement orders were read and the band played again and the troops passed in review.

And that was it.

They had been retired from the Army.

The four of them got into a waiting Dodge Caravan and were driven back to Cairns Field.

Then, as Castillo was doing the walk-around and as Miller was returning from filing their flight plan, two Army Chevrolet sedans and two Army Dodge Caravans drove onto the tarmac in front of Base Operations.

General Allan Naylor got out of one of the sedans and Lieutenant General McNab got out of the other. Major General (Retired) Miller got out of one of the Caravans, and Major General (Retired) Wilson, and his grandson, Randolph Richardson III, got out of the other.

It was an awkward moment all around.

"I wanted to say goodbye and good luck," General Naylor said.

There was a chorus of "Thank you, sir."

"Well, I suppose if you castrate too many bulls," General McNab said, "you're going to get gored, sooner or later. Don't let the doorknob hit you in the ass on your way out."

General Naylor looked askance at General McNab.

General Miller took his son to one side for a private word.

General Wilson took his grandson and Castillo to one side for a private word. General Wilson had known all along that Castillo was the natural father of his grandson. The boy and Castillo had learned of their real relationship only recently.

"Sir," Randolph Richardson III asked, "where are you going?"

"Randy, I just don't know."

"Am I ever going to see you again?"

It took Castillo a moment to get rid of the lump in his throat.

"Absolutely, positively, and soon," he managed to say.

Randy put out his hand.

Castillo shook it.

Fuck it!

He embraced his son, felt his son hug him back, and then let him go.

He wanted to say something else but this time the lump in his throat wouldn't go away.

"Your mother's waiting lunch for us, Randy," General Wilson said, and led the boy back toward the Caravan. Gulfstream 379 broke ground about four minutes later. It flew to Louis Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans, where it took on fuel and went through Customs and Immigration procedures, and then flew to the seaside resort city of Cancun on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula.

Colonel Jake Torine and Captain Dick Sparkman, who had been retired that day from the USAF with considerably less panoply-each had received a FedEx package containing their retirement orders and their Distinguished Service Medals-were already there. Gunnery Sergeant Lester Bradley, USMC, had received a similar package from the Department of the Navy.

The Gulfstream refueled, Torine and Sparkman took off for Las Vegas, where the plane came to be parked in one of the AFC hangars until a decision about its future could be reached.

At the moment, Gulfstream 379 was leased "dry" from Gossinger Consultants, a wholly owned subsidiary of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H., of Fulda, Germany, which had bought the aircraft from Lopez Fruit and Vegetables Mexico, a wholly owned subsidiary of Castillo Agriculture, Inc., of San Antonio, Texas, whose president and chief executive officer was Fernando Lopez, and whose corporate officers included one Carlos Castillo.

That status would have to be changed, Two-Gun Yung had announced, no matter what decision was reached about the offer of "those people" in Las Vegas.

At Cancun Airport International several hours later, CWO5 Leverette (Retired) and Sergeant Major Davidson (Retired) boarded a Mexicana flight to Mexico City. There, Leverette, now traveling on a Honduran passport under another name, would board a Varig flight to Sao Paulo, Brazil, and Davidson, traveling under his own name on an Israeli passport, would board a Mexicana flight bound for Lima, Peru.

Castillo had watched the takeoff of the Mexicana flight to Mexico City from the tarmac on the cargo side of the Cancun airfield. Then he had climbed into a Peruaire 767 cargo plane.

The 767 had flown up that morning from Santiago, Chile, with a mixed cargo of Chilean seafood and Argentine beef, citrus fruits and vegetables. The food was destined for Cancun Provisions, Ltda., and would ultimately end in the kitchen of The Grand Cozumel Beach and Golf Resort, and in the galleys of cruise ships which called at Cancun.

PeruaireCargo, Cancun Provisions, Ltda., The Grand Cozumel Beach and Golf Resort, and at least four of the cruise ships were owned-through a maze of dummy corporations, genuine corporations, and other entities at least twice as obfuscatory as the ownership of Gulfstream 379-by a man named Aleksandr Pevsner.

In the late Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, Pevsner had been simultaneously a colonel in the Soviet Air Force and a colonel in the KGB, responsible for the security of Aeroflot worldwide.

When the KGB was faced with the problem of concealing its wealth- hundreds of billions of dollars-from the people now running Russia, who were likely to put it in the state treasury, they decided that the wealth-much of it in gold and platinum-had to be hidden outside Russia.

And who better to do this than Colonel Aleksandr Pevsner? He knew people-many of them bankers-all over the world.

Pevsner resigned from the Air Force, bought several ex-Soviet Air Force cargo aircraft at distress prices, and soon began a profitable business flying Mercedes automobiles and other luxury goods into Moscow. The KGB's gold, platinum, precious stones, and sometimes cash-often contained in fuel barrels-left Moscow on the flights out.

For the latter service, Pevsner had been paid a commission of usually ten percent of the value. His relationship with the KGB-its First Chief Directorate now the SVR-had soured over time as the SVR had regained power under Vladimir Putin. The new SVR had decided that if Pevsner were eliminated, he could not tell anyone where their money had gone, and they might even get back some of the commissions they had paid him.

There had been a number of deaths, almost entirely of SVR agents, and Pevsner was now living with his wife and daughter in an enormous mansion on a several-thousand-hectare estate in the foothills of the Andes Mountains, protected by a security force Castillo called Pevsner's Private Army.

The mansion-which had been built during World War II-bore a remarkable similarity to Carinhall, Reichsmarschall Hermann Goring's estate in Germany. Not really joking, Pevsner and Castillo said it had probably been built by either admirers of the Number Two Nazi-or even for Goring-when the Nazi leadership was planning to keep Nazism alive under the Operation Phoenix program by fleeing to Argentina.

Castillo had met Pevsner-more accurately, Pevsner had arranged to meet Castillo-when Castillo thought Pevsner was a likely suspect in the disappearance of the 727 from Aeroporto Internacional Quatro de Fevereiro in Luanda, Angola.

Pevsner had learned of Castillo's suspicions from his chief of security, a former FBI agent. Castillo had been snatched from the men's room of the Hotel Sacher in Vienna and taken to the Vienna Woods at gunpoint.

On meeting Castillo, Pevsner decided the wisest path for him to follow was to help Castillo find the missing aircraft. He really didn't like to kill people unless it was absolutely necessary-incredibly, he was a devout Christian-and killing Castillo would certainly draw more American attention to him and his business enterprises.

The missing airplane was found with his help, and there was no sudden burst of activity by the Americans looking into Pevsner and his affairs.

But the real reason Pevsner was able to feel he had really made the right decision not to kill Castillo came when Pevsner was betrayed by the former FBI agent, who set up an assassination ambush in the basement garage of the Sheraton Pilar Hotel outside Buenos Aires.

The team of SVR assassins found themselves facing not only Janos, Pevsner's massive Hungarian bodyguard, but a number of members of the OOA, who had learned what was about to happen.

In the brief, if ferocious, firefight which ensued, Janos was seriously wounded and all four of the SVR would-be assassins had been killed. One of the Russians had been put down by Corporal Lester Bradley, USMC, with a headshot at thirty meters' distance from Lester's Model 1911A1.45 ACP pistol.

That had, of course, made Aleksandr Pevsner think of Charley Castillo as a friend, but there had been another unexpected development. Shortly after they had been struck with Cupid's arrow, Sweaty had told her Carlos that the reason they had wanted to come to Argentina was because she and her brother had a relative living there. They were cousins. His mother and the mother of Sweaty and Tom were sisters. They didn't know where he was, and she hoped her Carlos would help her find him.

His name, Sweaty had said, was Aleksandr Pevsner. Behind the flight deck of the PeruaireCargo 767 there was a small passenger area equipped with a table, a galley, and six seats which could be converted to beds at the press of a switch.

Castillo sat down beside Sweaty, and a stewardess showed him a bottle of Argentine champagne, her eyes asking if it met his pleasure. He nodded and she poured champagne for him and Sweaty and for Tom Barlow and Two-Gun.

"Randy came to my retirement parade," Castillo told Sweaty. "He asked if he was ever going to see me again."

"Oh, my poor Carlos," Sweaty said, and took his hand and kissed it.

Max, who seemed to understand his master was unhappy, put his paws on Castillo's shoulders and licked his face. The PeruaireCargo 767 flew nonstop from Cancun to Santiago, Chile.

For some reason, the Chilean immigration and customs officials, who had a reputation for meeting all incoming aircraft before the doors were open, were not on the tarmac.

Castillo, Sweaty, Tom, Two-Gun, and Max were thus able to walk directly, and without attracting any attention, from the 767 to a Learjet 45 which was conveniently parked next to where the 767 had stopped. The Learjet began to taxi the instant the door had closed.

A short time later, it landed at the San Carlos de Bariloche airport in Argentina, just the other side of the Andes Mountains. Coincidentally, the Argentine immigration and customs authorities, like their brothers in Santiago, seemed not to have noticed the arrival of the Learjet. No one saw its passengers load into a Mercedes sedan and, led and trailed by Mercedes SUVs, drive off.

Forty-five minutes later, Charley was standing on the dock on the edge of the Casa en el Bosque property and looking out across Lake Nahuel Huapi.

"What are you thinking, my darling?" Sweaty asked, touching his cheek.

"That I just have, in compliance with orders, dropped off the face of the earth." "Okay," Castillo said, "the motion to split the money and run having failed, we're still in business. But as what?"

"We're going to have to form a corporation," Two-Gun said.

"What are we going to call the corporation?" Castillo pursued.

"Do what Aloysius did. Use the initials," Sergeant Major (Retired) Davidson suggested. "The Lorimer Charitable and Benevolent Fund becomes the LCBF Corporation."

"Second the motion," CWO5 Colin Leverette (Retired) said. "And then when everybody agrees, I can go fishing."

He and Davidson had made their way to Bariloche the day before. Their passports had not attracted any unwelcome attention.

"Any objections?" Castillo asked, and then a moment later said, "Hearing none, the motion carries. It's now the LCBF Corporation. Or will be, when Two-Gun sets it up. Which brings us to Two-Gun."

"Uh-oh," Two-Gun said.

"I suggest we appoint Two-Gun, by any title he chooses to assume, and at a suitable wage, as our money and legal guy. I think we should hire Agnes to keep running administration and keep Dianne and Harold on at the house in Alexandria."

Mrs. Agnes Forbison, a very senior civil servant (GS-15, the highest pay grade) had been one of the first members of OOA, as its chief of administration.

Dianne and Harold Sanders were both retired special operators. They had been thinking of opening a bed-and-breakfast when Uncle Remus Leverette told them Castillo needed someone to run a safe house just outside Washington. They had jumped at the opportunity, and Castillo had jumped at the opportunity to have them. He'd been around the block with Harold on several occasions, and Dianne, in addition to being an absolutely marvelous cook, was also an absolutely marvelous cryptographer.

"Okay," Leverette then said, "after we approve that, can I go fishing?"

Castillo said, "Then there's the final question: What do we do about the offer from those people in Las Vegas?"

"I was afraid you'd bring that up, Ace," Delchamps said. "I have mixed feelings about that."

"We told them we'd let them know today," Castillo said.

"No, they told us to let them know by today," Delchamps said. "I'm not happy with them telling us anything."

"Call them up, Charley," Jack Britton said, "and tell them we're still thinking about it."

"Second the motion," Davidson said.

"Why not?" Castillo said. "The one thing we all have now is time on our hands. All the time in the world. Any objections?"

There were none and the motion carried.

"I'm going fishing," Leverette said, and grabbed his fly rod from where he'd left it on a table, then headed for the door. [TWO] Office of the Managing Editor The Washington Times-Post 1365 15th Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 1605 3 February 2007 The managing editor's office was across the newsroom from Roscoe Danton's office, substantially larger and even more crowded. The exterior windows opened on 15th Street, and the interior windows overlooked the newsroom. The latter were equipped with venetian blinds, which were never opened.

Managing Editor Christopher J. Waldron had begun smoking cigars as a teenager and now, at age sixty-two, continued to smoke them in his office in defiance of the wishes of the management of The Washington Times-Post and the laws of the District of Columbia. His only capitulation to political correctness and the law had been the installation of an exhaust fan and a sign on his door in large red letters that said: KNOCK BEFORE ENTERING!!!!

This served, usually, to give him time to exhale and to place his cigar in a desk drawer before any visitor could enter and catch him in flagrante delicto, which, as he often pointed out, meant "while the crime is blazing."

There had been complaints made about his filthy habit, most of them from the female staff but also from those of the opposite and indeterminate genders, but to no avail. Chris Waldron was about the best managing editor around, and management knew it.

Roscoe Danton knocked on Waldron's door, waited for permission to enter, and, when that came, went in, closing the door behind him.

Chris Waldron reclaimed his cigar from the ashtray in his desk drawer and put it back in his mouth.

He raised his eyebrows to ask the question, Well?

Danton said, "I am fully aware that I am neither Woodward nor Bernstein, but-"

"Thank you for sharing that with me," Waldron interrupted.

"-but I have a gut feeling I'm onto a big story, maybe as big as Watergate, and I want to follow it wherever it goes."

"And I had such high hopes that you'd really stopped drinking," Waldron said, and then made two gestures which meant, Sit down and tell me about it. "So what do we know about these two disgruntled employee whistleblowers?" Waldron asked.

"The younger one, Wilson, was an agricultural analyst at Langley before she got married to Wilson, who's a career bureaucrat over there. The gossip, which I haven't had time to check out, is that he's light on his feet. He needed to be married, and she needed somebody to push her career. Anyway, she managed to get herself sent through The Farm and into the Clandestine Service. They sent her to Angola, and then she got herself sent back to Langley. A combination of her husband's influence and her vast experience-eleven months in Angola-got her a job as regional director for Southwest Africa, everything from Nigeria to the South African border. She was where she wanted to be, back in Washington, with her foot on the ladder to greater things. She was not very popular with her peers."

"What got her fired?"

"According to her, this Colonel Castillo said terrible things about her behind her back about her handling of that 727 that was stolen. Remember that?"

Waldron nodded. "What sort of things?"

"She didn't tell me, not that she would have told me the truth. But anyway, that got her relieved from the Southwest Africa desk, and assigned to the Southern Cone desk-"

"The what?"

"Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile-otherwise known as the Southern Cone."

"From which she got fired?" Waldron asked, and when Danton nodded, asked, "Why?"

"I got this from a friend of mine who's close to the DCI and doesn't like her. Somebody sent the DCI a tape on which our pal C. Harry Whelan, Jr., proudly referred to her as his 'personal mole' in Langley."

C. Harry Whelan, Jr., was a prominent and powerful Washington-based columnist.

"That would do it, I guess. You check with Harry?"

Danton nodded.

"And did he admit knowing this lady?"

"More or less. When I called him, I said, 'Harry, I've been talking with Patricia Davies Wilson about you.' To which he replied, 'Don't believe a thing that lying bitch says.' Then I asked, 'Is it true somebody told the DCI she was your personal mole over there?' And Harry replied, 'Go fuck yourself, Roscoe,' and hung up."

"I can see where losing one's personal mole in the CIA might be a trifle annoying," Waldron said. "But-judging from what you've told me about this lady-might one suspect she is what our brothers in the legal profession call 'an unreliable witness'?"

"Oh, yeah," Roscoe agreed. "But the other one, Dillworth, is different."

"How different?"

"Well, for one thing, everybody I talked to liked her, said she was really good at what she did, and was sorry she got screwed."

"How did she, figuratively speaking of course, 'get screwed'?"

"She was the CIA station chief in Vienna. She had been working on getting a couple of heavy-hitter Russians to defect. Really heavy hitters, the SVR rezident in Berlin and the SVR rezident in Copenhagen, who happen to be brother and sister. Dillworth was so close to this coming off that she had had Langley send an airplane to Vienna, and had them prepare a safe house for them in Maryland."

"And it didn't come off?"

"Colonel Castillo showed up in Vienna, loaded them on his plane, and flew them to South America."

"She told you this?"

"No. What actually happened was that Dillworth said she wasn't going to tell me what had happened, because I wouldn't believe it. She said she would point me in the right direction, and let me find out myself; that way I would believe it."

"Is this Russian defectors story true?"

"There's an Interpol warrant out for"-Roscoe stopped and consulted his organizer, and then went on-"Dmitri Berezovsky and Svetlana Alekseeva, who the Russians say stole several million euros from their embassies in Germany and Denmark."

"And you know that Castillo took these Russians to South America? How do you know?"

"My friend who is close to the DCI and doesn't like Ambassador Montvale told me that Montvale told the DCI that he was going to South America to get the Russians. And that when he got down there, Castillo told him the Russians had changed their minds about defecting."

"And you believe this?"

"I believe my friend."

"So what happened is that when Castillo stole the Russians from Dillworth, blew her operation, the agency canned her?"

"That got Dillworth in a little hot water, I mean when the Russians didn't come in after she said they were, but what got her recalled was really interesting. Right after this, they found the SVR rezident in Vienna sitting in the backseat of a taxi outside our embassy. He had been strangled to death-they'd used a garrote-and on his chest was the calling card of Miss Eleanor Dillworth, counselor for consular affairs of the U.S. embassy."

"Curiouser and curiouser," Waldron said. "The agency thought she did it?"

"No. They don't know who did it. But that was enough to get her recalled from Vienna. She thinks Castillo did it. Or, really, had it done."

"Why? And for that matter, why did he take the Russians? To Argentina, you said? He was turned? We have another Aldrich Ames? This one a killer?"

Aldrich Hazen Ames was the Central Intelligence Agency counterintelligence officer convicted of selling out to the Soviet Union and later Russia.

"I just don't know, Chris. From what I've been able to find out about him, Castillo doesn't seem to be the traitor type, but I suppose the same thing was said about Ames until the FBI put him in handcuffs."

"And what have you been able to find out about him?"

"That he was retired at Fort Rucker, Alabama-and given a Distinguished Service Medal, his second, for unspecified distinguished service of a classified nature-on January thirty-first. He was medically retired, with a twenty-five percent disability as the result of a medical board at Walter Reed Army Hospital. That's what I got from the Pentagon. When I went to Walter Reed to get an address, phone number, and next of kin from the post locator, he wasn't in it.

"A diligent search by another friend of mine revealed that he had never been a patient at Walter Reed. Never ever. Not once. Not even for a physical examination or to have his teeth cleaned."

"And being the suspicious paranoid person you are, you have decided that something's not kosher?"

"I suppose you could say that, yes."

"What do these women want?"

"Revenge."

"Is Dillworth willing to be quoted?"

"She assures me that she will speak freely from the witness box, if and when Castillo is hauled before Congress or some other body to be grilled, and until that happens, speak to no other member of the press but me. Ditto for Mrs. Patricia Davies Wilson."

"She has visions, in other words, of Senator Johns in some committee hearing room, with the TV cameras rolling, glaring at this Castillo character, and demanding to know, 'Colonel, did you strangle a Russian intelligence officer and leave him in a taxicab outside the U.S. embassy in Vienna in order to embarrass this fine civil servant, Miss Eleanor Dillworth? Answer yes or no.'"

Senator Homer Johns, Jr. (Democrat, New Hampshire), was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and loved to be on TV.

Roscoe laughed, and added, "'Would you repeat the question, Senator?'"

Waldron laughed, then offered his own answer: "'Senator, I don't have much of a memory. I've been retired from the Army because I am psychologically unfit for service. I just don't recall.'"

"'Well, then, Colonel, did you or did you not steal two Russians from under Miss Dillworth's nose and fly them to Argentina?'"

Roscoe picked it up: "'Two Russians? Senator, I don't have much of a memory,' et cetera."

Waldron, still laughing, reached into another drawer of his desk and came out with two somewhat grimy glasses and a bottle of The Macallan twelve-year-old single malt Scotch whisky.

He poured.

"Nectar of the gods," he said. "Only for good little boys and naughty little girls."

They tapped glasses and took a sip.

"That's not going to happen, Roscoe," Waldron said, "unless we make it happen. And I'm not sure if we could, or even if we should."

"In other words, let it drop? I wondered why you brought out the good whisky."

"I didn't say that," Waldron said. "You open for some advice?"

Roscoe nodded.

"Don't tell anybody what you're doing, anybody. If there's anything to this, and I have a gut feeling there is, there are going to be ten people-ten powerful people-trying to keep it from coming out for every one who'd give you anything useful."

Roscoe nodded again.

"I can see egg on a lot of faces," Waldron said. "Including on the face of the new inhabitant of the Oval Office. He's in a lose-lose situation. If something like this was going on under his predecessor, and he didn't know about it, it'll look like he wasn't trusted. And if he indeed did know there was this James Bond outfit operating out of the Oval Office, stealing Russian defectors from the CIA, not to mention strangling Russians in Vienna, and doing all sorts of other interesting, if grossly illegal, things, why didn't he stop it?"

"So what do you want me to do?"

"One thought would be for you to go to beautiful Argentina and do a piece for the Sunday magazine. You could call it, 'Tacos and Tangos in the Southern Cone.'"

Roscoe nodded thoughtfully, then said, "Thank you."

"Watch your back, Roscoe. The kind of people who play these games kill nosy people." [THREE] U.S. Army Medical Research Institute Fort Detrick, Maryland 0815 4 February 2007 There were three packages marked BIOLOGICAL HAZARD in the morning FedEx delivery. It was a rare morning when there wasn't at least one, and sometimes there were eight, ten, even a dozen.

This didn't mean that they were so routine that not much attention was paid to them.

Each package was taken separately into a small room in the rear of the guard post. There, the package-more accurately, the container, an oblong insulated metal box which easily could have contained cold beer were it not for the decalcomania plastered all over it-was laid on an examination table.

On the top was a black-edged yellow triangle, inside of which was the biological hazard indicator, three half-moons-not unlike those to be found on the tops of minarets of Muslim houses of worship-joined together at their closed ends over a circle. Below this, black letters on a yellow background spelled out DANGER! BIOLOGICAL HAZARD!

Beside this-in a red circle, not unlike a No Parking symbol-the silhouette of a walking man was bisected by a crossing red line. The message below this in white letters on a red background was AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY!

This was apparently intended to keep curious people from opening the container to have a look at the biological hazard. This would have been difficult, as the container was closed with four lengths of four-inch-wide plastic tape, two around the long end and two around the short. The tape application device had closed the tapes by melting the ends together. The only way to get into the container was by cutting the tape with a large knife. It would thus be just about impossible for anyone to have a look inside without anyone noticing.

Once the biological hazard package was laid on the table, it was examined by two score or more specially trained technicians. It was X-rayed, sniffed for leakage and the presence of chemicals which might explode, and tested for several other things, some of them classified.

Only after it had passed this inspection was the FedEx receipt signed. The package was then turned over to two armed security officers. Most of these at Fort Detrick were retired Army sergeants. One of them got behind the wheel of a battery-powered golf cart, and the other, after putting the container on the floor of the golf cart, got in and-there being no other place to put them-put his feet on the container.

At this point the driver checked the documentation to the final destination.

"Oh, shit," he said. "It's for Hamilton personally."

J. Porter Hamilton was the senior scientific officer of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute. It was said that he spoke only to God and the commanding general of the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute, but only rarely deigned to do so to the latter.

Although he was triply entitled to be addressed as "Doctor"-he was a medical doctor, and also held a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Oxford and a Ph.D. in molecular physics from MIT-he preferred to be addressed as "Colonel." He had graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point with the class of 1984 and thought of himself primarily as a soldier.

Colonel Hamilton had the reputation among the security force of being one really hard-nosed sonofabitch. This reputation was not pejorative, just a statement of the facts. Colonel Hamilton-a very slim, very tall, ascetic-looking officer whose skin was deep flat black in color-showed the security guards where he wanted the biological hazard container placed on a table in his private laboratory.

After they'd left, he eyed the container curiously. It had been sent from the Daryl Laboratory in Miami, Florida. Just who they were didn't come to mind. They had paid a small fortune for overnight shipment, which also was unusual.

He went to a closet, took off his uniform tunic, and replaced it with a white laboratory coat. He then pulled on a pair of very expensive gloves which looked like normal latex gloves, but were not.

"Sergeant Dennis!" he called. Dennis was a U.S. Army master sergeant, a burly red-faced Irishman from Baltimore who functioned as sort of a secretary to Colonel Hamilton. Hamilton had recruited him from the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Hamilton, doing what he thought of as his soldier's duty, often served on medical boards at Walter Reed dealing with wounded soldiers who wanted-or who did not want-medical retirement. Dennis had been one of the latter. He did not wish to be retired although he had lost his left leg below the knee and his right arm at the shoulder.

There was no way, Hamilton had decided, that Dennis could return to the infantry. On the other hand, there was no reason he could not make himself useful around Building 103 at Fort Detrick, if that was the option to being retired. He made the offer and when Dennis accepted, he'd asked, "Can you arrange that, Colonel?"

"I can arrange it, Sergeant Dennis. The chief of staff has directed the Army to provide whatever I think I need for my laboratory. Just think of yourself as a human Erlenmeyer flask." Dennis appeared. "Sir?"

"What do we know of the Daryl Laboratory in Miami, Florida?"

"Never heard of it, sir."

"Good. I was afraid that I was suffering another senior moment. Right after we see what this is, find out who they are and why they sent me whatever this is."

"You want me to open it, Colonel?"

"I want you to cut the tape, thank you. I'll open it."

Dennis took a tactical folding knife from his pocket, fluidly flipped open the stainless-steel serrated blade, and expertly cut the plastic tape from the container.

Hamilton raised the lid.

Inside he found a second container. There was a large manila envelope taped to it, and addressed simply "Colonel Hamilton."

Hamilton picked up the envelope and took from it two eight-by-ten-inch color photographs of six barrel-like objects. They were of a heavy plastic, dark blue in color, and also looked somewhat like beer kegs. On the kegs was a copy of The Miami Herald. The date could not be read in the first shot, but in the second photograph, a close-up, it was clearly visible: February 3, 2007.

"My God!" Colonel Hamilton said softly.

"Jesus Christ, Colonel," Sergeant Dennis said, pointing. "Did you see that?"

Hamilton looked.

The envelope had covered a simple sign, and now it was visible: DANGER!!! BIOHAZARD LEVEL 4!!!

Of the four levels of biological hazards, one through four, the latter posed the greatest threat to human life from viruses and bacteria and had no vaccines or other treatments available.

Hamilton closed the lid on the container.

"Go to the closet and get two Level A hazmat suits."

"What the hell's going on?" Dennis asked.

"After we're in our suits," Hamilton said calmly.

Two minutes later, they had helped each other into the Level A hazmat suits. These offered the highest degree of protection against both direct and airborne chemical contact by providing the wearer with total encapsulation, including a self-contained breathing apparatus.

The suits donned by Colonel Hamilton and Master Sergeant Dennis also contained communications equipment that connected them "hands off" with each other, as well as to the post telephone system and to Hamilton's cellular telephone.

"Call the duty officer and tell him that I am declaring a potential Level Four Disaster," Hamilton said. "Have them prepare Level Four BioLab Two for immediate use. Have them send a Level Four truck here to move this container, personnel to wear Level A hazmat gear."

A Level Four BioLab-there were three at Fort Detrick-was, in a manner of speaking, a larger version of the Level A hazmat protective suit. It was completely self-contained, protected by multiple airlocks. It had a system of highpressure showers to decontaminate personnel entering or leaving, a vacuum room, and an ultraviolet-light room. All air and water entering or leaving was decontaminated.

And of course "within the bubble" there was a laboratory designed to do everything and anything anyone could think of to any kind of a biologically hazardous material.

Colonel Hamilton then pressed a key that caused his cellular telephone to speed-dial a number.

The number was answered on the second ring, and Hamilton formally announced, "This is Colonel J. Porter Hamilton."

"Encryption Level One active," a metallic voice said three seconds later.

Hamilton then went on: "There was delivered to my laboratory about five minutes ago a container containing material described as BioHazard Level Four. There was also a photograph of some six plastic containers identical to those I brought out of the Congo. On them was lying a photo of yesterday's Miami newspaper. All of which leads me to strongly suspect that the attack on the laboratory-slash-factory did not-repeat not-destroy everything.

"I am having this container moved to a laboratory where I will be able to compare whatever is in the container with what I brought out of the Congo. This process will take me at least several hours.

"In the meantime, I suggest we proceed on the assumption that there are six containers of the most dangerous Congo material in the hands of only God knows whom.

"When I have completed my tests, I will inform the director of the CIA of my findings."

He broke the connection and then walked to the door and unlocked it for the hazmat transport people. He could hear the siren of the Level Four van coming toward Building 103. [ONE] Laboratory Four The AFC Corporation-McCarran Facility Las Vegas, Nevada 0835 4 February 2007 Laboratory Four was not visible to anyone looking across McCarran International Airport toward what had become the center of AFC's worldwide production and research-and-development activity.

This was because Laboratory Four was deep underground, beneath Hangar III, one of a row of enormous hangars each bearing the AFC logotype. It was also below Laboratories One, Two, and Three, which were closer to ground level as their numbers suggested, One being immediately beneath the hangar.

When Aloysius Francis Casey, AFC's chairman, had been a student at MIT, he had become friendly with a Korean-American student of architecture, who was something of an outcast because of his odd notion that with some exceptions-aircraft hangars being one-all industrial buildings, which would include laboratories, should be underground.

This had gotten J. Charles Who in as much trouble with the architectural faculty as had Casey's odd notions of data transmission and encryption had done the opposite of endearing him to the electrical engineering and mathematics faculties.

Years later, when Casey decided that he had had quite enough, thank you, of the politicians and weather of his native Massachusetts to last a lifetime, and wanted to move at least the laboratories and some of the manufacturing facilities elsewhere, he got in touch with his old school chum and sought his expertise.

Site selection was Problem One. Las Vegas had quickly risen to the head of the list of possibilities for a number of reasons including location, tax concessions to be granted by the state and local governments for bringing a laboratory/ production facility with several thousand extremely well-paid and well-educated workers to Sin City, and the attractions of Sin City itself.

At Who's suggestion, just about everything would go to Vegas.

Charley Who, Ph.D. (MIT), AIA, had pointed out to Aloysius Casey, Ph.D. (MIT), that all work and no play would tend to make his extremely well-paid workers dull. It was hard to become bored in Las Vegas, whether one's interests lay in the cultural or the carnal, or a combination of both.

Construction had begun immediately and in earnest, starting with the laboratories that would be under Hangar III. They were something like the BioLabs at Fort Detrick in that they were as "pure" as they could be made. The air and water was filtered as it entered and was discharged. The humidity and temperature in the labs was whatever the particular labs required, and being below ground cut the cost of doing this to a tiny fraction of what it would have cost in a surface building. They were essentially soundproof. And, finally, the deeper underground that they were, the less they were affected by vibration, say a heavy truck driving by or the landing of a heavy airplane. Almost all of Aloysius's gadgets in development were very tiny and quite delicate. Much of the work on them was done using microscopes or their electronic equivalent. Vibration was the enemy.

What Casey was working on now in Laboratory Four, his personal lab-"My latest gadget," as he put it-was yet another improvement on a system he had developed for the gambling cops, or as they liked to portray themselves, "The security element of the gaming industry."

Many people try to cheat the casinos. Most are incredibly stupid. But a small number are the exact opposite: incredibly smart, imaginative, and resourceful. Both stupid and near-genius would-be thieves alike have to deal with the same problem: One has to be physically in a casino if one is to steal anything.

Surveillance cameras scan every inch of a casino floor, often from several angles, and the angles can be changed. The people watching these monitors know what to look for. If some dummy is seen stealing quarters from Grandma's bucket on a slot machine row, or some near-genius is engaged with three or more equally intelligent co-conspirators in a complex scheme to cheat the casino at a twenty-one table, they are seen. Security officers are sent to the slot machine or the twenty-one table. The would-be thieves and cheats are taken to an area where they are photographed, fingerprinted, counseled regarding the punishments involved for cheating a casino, and then shown the door.

The problem then becomes that stupid and near-genius alike tend to believe that if at first you don't succeed, one should try, try again. They come back, now disguised with a phony mustache or a wig and a change of clothing.

Specially trained security officers, who regularly review the photographs of caught crooks, stand at casino doors and roam the floors looking for familiar, if unwelcome, faces.

When Casey had first moved to Las Vegas, he had been very discreetly approached-the day he was welcomed into the Las Vegas Chamber of Gaming, Hospitality and Other Commerce-by a man who then owned three-and now owned five-of the more glitzy hotel/casinos in Sin City.

The man approached Casey at the urinal in the men's room of the Via Veneto Restaurant in Caligula's Palace Resort and Casino and said he wanted to thank him for what he was doing for the "boys in the stockade in Bragg."

"I don't know who or what the hell you're talking about," Casey had replied immediately.

But Casey of course knew full well who the boys in the stockade in Fort Bragg were-Delta Force; their base had once been the post stockade-and what he was doing for them-providing them with whatever they asked for, absolutely free of charge, or didn't ask for but got anyway because Casey thought it might be useful.

"Sure you do," the man had said. "The commo gear. It was very useful last week in Tunisia."

"How the hell did you find out about that?" Casey had blurted.

"We have sources all over."

"Who's 'we'?"

"Like you, people who happen to be in positions where we can help the good guys, and try quietly-very quietly-to do so. I'd like to talk to you about our group some time."

"These people have names?"

They were furnished.

"Give me a day or two to check these people out," Casey said, "then come to see me."

The first person Casey had tried to call was then-Major General Bruce J. McNab, who at the time commanded the Special Forces Center at Fort Bragg. He got instead then-Major Charley Castillo on the phone. Castillo did odd jobs for McNab-both had told Casey that-and he'd become one of Casey's favorite people since they'd first met.

And when Casey had asked, Castillo had flatly-almost indignantly-denied telling anyone about the Tunisian radios mentioned in the casino pisser and of ever even hearing of the man who claimed to own the glitzy Las Vegas hotels.

General McNab, however, when he came on the line, was so obfuscatory about both questions-even aware that the line was encrypted-that Casey promptly decided (a) McNab knew the guy who owned the three glitzy casinos; (b) had told the guy where the radios used in Tunisia had come from; (c) had more than likely suggested he could probably wheedle some out of Casey, which meant he knew and approved of what the guy was up to; and, thus, (d) didn't want Castillo to know about (a) through (c).

That had been surprising. For years, from the time during the First Desert War, when then-Second Lieutenant Castillo had gone to work for then-Colonel McNab, Casey had thought-In fact I was told-that Castillo was always privy to all of McNab's secrets.

Casey prided himself on his few friends, and on having no secrets from them. He had quickly solved the problem here by concluding that having no secrets did not mean you had to tell your friends everything you knew, but rather, if asked, to be wholly forthcoming.

If Castillo asked about these people in Las Vegas, he would tell him. If he didn't ask, he would not.

And, as quickly, he had decided if these people were okay in General McNab's book, they were okay-period.

Unless of course something happened that changed that.

Casey had called the man who owned the three glitzy hotels-and was in business discussions leading to the construction of the largest hotel in the world (7,550 rooms)-and told him he was in.

"What do these people need?" Casey asked.

He was told: secure telephones to connect them all.

While AFC had such devices sitting in his warehouse, these were not what he delivered to the people in Las Vegas. The secure telephones they used thereafter had encryption circuitry that could not be decrypted by even the legendary National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland. Casey knew this because the NSA's equipment had come from AFC Corporation.

And after that, and after writing several very substantial checks to pay his share of what it had cost those people to do something that had to be done-but for one reason or another couldn't be done by the various intelligence agencies-Casey realized that he had become one of the group.

No one said anything to him. He didn't get a membership card.

He just knew.

He became friendly with the man who owned the glitzy hotels, and not only because one of his hotels had a restaurant to which lobsters and clams were flown in daily from Maine. The man who owned the hotels was from New Jersey. Politicians and high taxes, not the cuisine, had driven him from the Garden State. They took to taking together what they thought of as One of God's Better Meals-a dozen steamed clams and a pair of three-pound lobsters washed down with a couple of pitchers of beer-once or twice a week.

One day, en route to the restaurant, Casey had witnessed one of the gambling cops intently studying the face of the man who happened to be walking ahead of Casey.

"What's that all about?" Casey had asked his new friend the casino owner between their first pitcher of beer and the clams, and their lobsters and the second pitcher.

The problem of controlling undesirable incoming gamblers was explained.

"There has to be a better way to do that than having your gambling cops in everybody's face," Casey said. "Let me think about it."

The AFC prototype was delivered in three weeks, and operational a week after that. All the photographs of miscreants in the files were digitalized. Additional digital cameras were discreetly installed at the entrances in such positions that the only way to avoid having one's face captured by the system would be to arrive by parachute on the roof.

The computer software quickly and constantly attempted to cross-match images of casino patrons with the database of miscreants on the security servers. When a "hit" was made, the gambling cops could immediately take corrective action to protect the casino.

The owner was delighted, and ordered installation of the system in all his properties as quickly as this could be accomplished.

But Casey was just getting started. The first major improvement was to provide the gambling cops with a small communications device that looked like a telephone. When a "hit" was made, every security officer in the establishment was immediately furnished with both the digital image of Mr. Unwelcome-or Grandma Unwelcome; there were a surprising number of the latter-and the last known location of said miscreant.

It hadn't been hard for Casey to improve on that. Soon the miscreant's name, aliases, and other personal data, including why he or she was unwelcome, was flashed to the gambling cops as soon as there was a hit.

The next large-and expensive-step had required the replacement of the system computers with ones of much greater capacity and speed. The owner complained not a word when he got the bill. He thought of himself, after all, as a leader in the hospitality and gaming industry, and there was a price that had to be paid for that.

The system now made a hit when a good customer returned to the premises, presumably bringing more funds to pass into the casino's coffers through the croupier's slots. He was greeted as quickly and as warmly as possible, and depending on how bad his luck had been the last time, provided with complimentary accommodations, victuals, and spirits. Often, the gambling cops assigned to keep them happy were attractive members of the opposite gender.

Good Grandmother customers, interestingly enough, seemed to appreciate this courtesy more than most of the men.

The new system soon covered all of the hotels owned by the proprietor. And the database grew as guests' pertinent details-bank balances, credit reports, domestic problems, known associates, carnal preferences, that sort of thing-were added.

For a while, as he had been working on the system, Casey had thought it would have a sure market in other areas where management wanted to keep a close eye on people within its walls. Prisons, for example.

AFC's legal counsel had quickly disabused him of this pleasant notion. The ACLU would go ballistic, his lawyers warned, at what they would perceive as an outrageous violation of a felon's right to privacy while incarcerated. He would be the accused in a class action lawsuit that would probably cost him millions. What Casey was doing when his cellular buzzed in the lab deep beneath Hangar III was conducting a sort of graduation ceremony for a pair of students who had just completed How This Works 101. He had just presented the graduates with what looked like fairly ordinary BlackBerrys or similar so-called smart-phones.

Actually, by comparison, the capabilities of the CaseyBerry devices that Casey had given the two students made the BlackBerry look as state-of-the-art as the wood fire from which an Apache brave informs his squaw that he'll be a little late for supper by allowing puffs of smoke to rise.

The students were First Lieutenant Edmund "Peg-Leg" Lorimer, MI, USA (Retired), and former Gunnery Sergeant Lester Bradley, USMC.

When the Office of Organizational Analysis had been disbanded and its men and women ordered to vanish from the face of the earth, Casey had had a private word with Castillo about them.

Neither Bradley nor Lorimer had a family-perhaps more accurately: a family into whose arms they would be welcomed with joy-and neither had skills readily convertible to earning a decent living as a civilian. There was not much of a market for a one-legged Spanish/English/Portuguese interpreter, or for a five-foot-two, hundred-thirty-pound twenty-year-old who could give marksmanship instruction to Annie Oakley. Further, there was the problem that they, too, were expected to fall off the face of the earth and never be seen again.

Both men, Casey had told Castillo, had become skilled in the use of the state-of-the-art communications equipment that OOA had been using. Casey intended to keep providing similar equipment to Delta Force, and with some additional training, Bradley and Lorimer could assume responsibility for training Delta troopers to operate and maintain it.

So far as their falling off the face of the earth, Casey said, they would be hard to find in Las Vegas and next to impossible to find if they moved in with him at the home Charley Who had built for the Caseys on a very expensive piece of mountainside real estate that overlooked Las Vegas. Now that Mrs. Casey had finally succumbed to an especially nasty and painful carcinoma, there was nobody in the place but the Mexican couple who took care of Casey.

And to keep them busy when they weren't dealing with the equipment for Delta Force, or keeping an eye on the communications network used by those people, they would be welcomed-and well paid-by the gaming industry as experts in the digital photo recognition and data system.

Not thirty seconds after Casey had handed Lorimer and Bradley their new cell phones, vibration announced an incoming message on the peoples' circuit, and Casey thought he had inadvertently pressed the CHECK FUNCTIONING key.

But he checked the screen and saw that there was indeed an incoming message.

It's from Colonel Hamilton.

I wonder what the hell he wants.

When, inside his Level A hazmat gear, Colonel J. Porter Hamilton had pressed the TRANSMIT button for his cellular phone, and given his name, the following had happened:

An integral voice recognition circuit had determined that he was indeed Colonel J. Porter Hamilton and, at about the time a satellite link had been established between Hamilton and Las Vegas, had announced that Encryption Level One was now active.

By the time Hamilton spoke again to report the delivery of biohazardous material to his laboratory and what he planned to do about it, the cell phones in the hands of those people had vibrated to announce the arrival of an incoming call. Their cell phones automatically recorded the message, and then sent a message to Hamilton's phone that the message had been received and recorded.

He had then broken the connection.

When those called "answered" their telephones, either when the call was first made, or whenever they got around to it, they would hear the recorded message. A small green LED on the telephone would indicate that the caller was at that moment on the line. A red LED would indicate the caller was not.

Casey saw that the red LED was illuminated.

Hamilton's off-line.

I wonder what he wanted.

As he touched the ANSWER key, he saw that both Lester and Peg-Leg were doing the same thing.

Hamilton's message was played to them all.

"I wonder what the hell that's all about," Casey wondered out loud.

"He said, 'identical to what I brought out of the Congo,'" Peg-Leg said. "What did he bring out of the Congo?"

Both Peg-Leg and Aloysius looked at Lester, whose face was troubled.

"You know what Hamilton's talking about, Lester?" Casey asked.

Bradley looked even more uncomfortable.

Casey waited patiently, and was rewarded for his patience.

"Colonel Torine would, sir," Bradley said finally.

"How many times do I have to tell you to call me 'Aloysius'?" Casey said.

He pushed a button on his CaseyBerry.

"Jake? Aloysius," he said a moment later. "Got a minute? Can you come to my lab?"

"Captain Sparkman would know, too," Bradley said.

"Sparkman with you?" Casey said to his telephone, and a moment later, "Bring him, too."

Casey pushed another button and said, "Pass Torine and Sparkman," and then looked at Peg-Leg and Lester. "They're in the hangar."

He pointed upward.

Colonel Jacob Torine, USAF (Retired), and Mr. Richard Sparkman (formerly Captain USAF) got off the elevator ninety seconds later.

They were dressed almost identically in khaki trousers, polo shirts, and zipper jackets, and had large multibutton watches on their wrists. Their belts held cases for Ray-Ban sunglasses. They both had clear blue eyes. No one would ever guess that they were pilots.

"What's up?

"Listen to this," Casey said, and handed him his Caseyberry, and motioned for Lester to hand his to Sparkman.

Both listened to Colonel J. Porter Hamilton's message.

Sparkman's eyebrows rose in surprise.

Torine said, "Oh, shit!" and then asked, "When did you get this?"

"Just now."

"Not good news," Torine said. "What is the exact opposite of 'good news'?"

Casey said, "What's he talking about? What did he bring out of the Congo?"

Torine exhaled.

He looked around the laboratory.

"I don't suppose this place is bugged?"

Casey shook his head.

"We went over there in Delta's 727," Torine said. "It was painted in the color scheme of Sub-Saharan Airways-" He stopped. "Why am I telling you this? You know."

"Go on, Jake," Casey said.

"We landed at Kilimanjaro International in Tanzania. Uncle Remus and his crew went by truck to Bujumbura in Burundi. There's an airport at Bujumbura but Castillo decided we'd attract too much attention if we used it, particularly if we sat on the runway for a couple of days, maybe longer.

"Uncle Remus infiltrated Hamilton back into the Congo from Bujumbura. And then when Hamilton found what he found, and the shit hit the fan, we got a message from Uncle Remus to move the airplane to Bujumbura, yesterday, and have it prepared for immediate takeoff.

"We were there about three hours when Uncle Remus, his crew, and Hamilton showed up. They had with them a half-dozen of what looked like rubber beer kegs. Blue."

He demonstrated with his hands the size of the kegs.

"Uncle Remus asked me if we could fly to the States with the HALO compartment depressurized and open."

"I don't understand that," Lester said. "'HALO compartment'?"

"For 'High Altitude, Low Opening' parachute infiltration from up to forty thousand feet," Peg-Leg explained. "The rear half-the HALO compartment-of the fuselage can be sealed off from the rest of the fuselage, and then, where that rear stairway was, opened to the atmosphere."

"Got it," Lester said.

"I told him yes," Torine went on, "and Hamilton said, 'Thank God,' as if he meant it.

"I asked him what was going on, and he told me the beer barrels contained more dangerous material than I could imagine, and extraordinary precautions were in order; he would explain later. He asked me how cold the HALO compartment would get in flight, and I told him probably at least sixty degrees below zero, and he said, 'Thank God,' again and sounded like he meant it this time, too.

"Then he and Uncle Remus and his team loaded the barrels in the HALO compartment. When they came out, everybody stripped to the skin. They took a shower on the tarmac using the fire engine and some special soap and chemicals Hamilton had with him. Then they put on whatever clothing we had aboard, flight suits, some other clothing, and got in the front, and we took off.

"Before we had climbed out to cruising altitude, we got some company, a flight of F/A-18E Super Hornets from a carrier in the Indian Ocean. They stayed with us until we were over the Atlantic, where they handed us over to some Super Hornets flying off a carrier in the Atlantic.

"We headed for North Carolina-Pope Air Force at Fort Bragg. We were refueled in flight halfway across the Atlantic and when the refueling was over, we were handed over to a flight of Air Force F-16s who stayed with us until we got to Pope.

"When we got to Pope, we were directed to the Delta hangar, and immediately towed inside and the doors closed. Then maybe two dozen guys in science-fiction movie space suits swarmed all over the airplane. Some of them went into the HALO compartment and removed the barrels. I later learned they were sealed and then loaded aboard a Citation Three and flown to Washington.

"They took everybody off the airplane and gave us a bath. Unbelievable. Soap, chemicals, some kind of powder. It took half an hour. And then they held us-everybody but Hamilton and Uncle Remus; they went on the Citation with the barrels-for twenty-four hours for observation, gave us another bath, and finally let us go.

"General McNab was waiting for us-did I mention they held us in the hangar?-when they finally turned us loose. He gave us the standard speech about keeping this secret for the rest of our natural lives or suffer castration with a dull knife."

"What was in the barrels, Jake?" Casey asked softly. "Did Hamilton tell you?"

Torine nodded.

"He said two of them contained 'laboratory material' and the other four had 'tissue samples.' When I pressed him on that, he said that two of the barrels contained body parts from bodies he and Uncle Remus dug up near this place, and the other two held the bodies of two people, one black and one white, that Uncle Remus took down when they had to get into the laboratory. He said he needed them for autopsies."

"Jesus!" Casey said.

"And now we learn that not everything was destroyed," Sparkman said. "The word I got was there was nothing left standing or unburned in a twenty-square-mile area. What the hell is this all about?"

"I don't know," Casey admitted. "But I just had this thought: It doesn't matter to you guys. OOA is dead. You've fallen off the face of the earth. You're out of the loop. This has nothing to do with you."

"Why don't I believe that, Aloysius?" Torine asked softly.

"Probably because you're an old fart like me, and have learned that when things are as black as they can possibly get, they invariably get worse." [TWO] U.S. Army Medical Research Institute Fort Detrick, Maryland 0905 4 February 2007 The declaration of a Potential Level Four Disaster at Fort Detrick by Colonel J. Porter Hamilton, MC, caused a series of standing operating procedures to kick in-something akin to a row of dominoes tumbling, one domino knocking over the one adjacent, but in this instance damned faster.

When Master Sergeant Dennis called the post duty officer, he actually called the garrison duty officer. On coming to work for Colonel Hamilton, Dennis had quickly learned that the colonel often had trouble with Army bureaucracy and that it was his job to provide the colonel with what he wanted, which often was not what he asked for.

The garrison duty officer immediately expressed doubt that Master Sergeant Dennis was actually asking for what he said he was.

"A Potential Level Four Disaster? You sure about that, Sergeant?"

"Yes, sir. Colonel Hamilton said he was declaring a Potential Level Four Disaster."

The garrison duty officer consulted his SOP dealing with disasters, and checked who was authorized to declare one.

There were three people who could on their own authority declare a Potential Level Four Disaster: the garrison commander, Colonel J. Porter Hamilton, and the garrison duty officer.

"Let me speak to Colonel Hamilton, Sergeant," the garrison duty officer said.

"He's on his phone, Major. Now, do you want to send a Level Four van over here, personnel in Level One hazmat suits, or should I call for it?"

"You have that authority?"

"Yes, sir. I do. And I have authority to have Level Four BioLab Two opened and on standby. You want me to do that, too, sir?"

"Why don't you do that, Sergeant, while I bring the garrison commander up to speed on this. And, Sergeant, see if you can have Colonel Hamilton call her."

"Yes, sir," Master Sergeant Dennis said.

The duty officer called the garrison commander.

"Major Lott, ma'am. Ma'am, we seem to have a problem."

"What kind of a problem?"

"Ma'am, Colonel Hamilton's sergeant just called and said the colonel wanted to declare a Potential Level Four Disaster."

There was a pause. Then the garrison commander said, "Let me make sure I understand the situation. You say Colonel Hamilton's sergeant called and told you Colonel Hamilton wants to declare a Potential Level Four Disaster? Is that it?"

"Yes, ma'am. That's it. I thought I'd better bring you up to speed on this, ma'am."

The garrison commander thought: What you were supposed to do, you stupid sonofabitch, was sound the goddamned alarm sirens, get a Level Four van over to Hamilton, get a Level Four BioLab on emergency standby and then-and only then-call me.

And you're a goddamn major?

Jesus H. Christ.

She said calmly: "Listen carefully. What I want you to do, Major, is first sound the alarm sirens. Then send a Level Four van to Colonel Hamilton's laboratory, and when you've done that, get a Level Four BioLab on emergency standby. Got all that?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Then do it," the garrison commander said, and broke the connection.

Major Lott raised the cover of the alarm activation switch and then pressed on the switch. Sirens all over began to howl.

He then consulted the standing operating procedure to see what else was required of him to do-thus knocking over the first of the dominoes.

The provost marshal was notified. The first thing listed on his SOP was to lock down the fort. Nobody in. Nobody out. He did so. The second thing on his list was to notify the garrison medical facility to prepare for casualties. The third thing listed was to notify the Secret Service detachment on the base. He did so, and then continued to work down his list.

The first thing on the Secret Service Detachment SOP was to notify local law enforcement agencies. With Fort Detrick equidistant between Washington, D.C. (forty-five miles), and Baltimore, Maryland (forty-six miles), there was a large number of law enforcement agencies in that area, each of which was entitled to know of the problem at Fort Detrick.

The Secret Service agent instead first called his special agent in charge at the Department of Homeland Security at the Nebraska Avenue complex in the District of Columbia. He told him about the Potential Level Four Disaster, but had to confess that was all he knew.

"I'll handle it," the SAC said.

The Secret Service agent began calling the numbers on his list of law enforcement agencies to be notified.

The SAC at Homeland Security attempted to contact the secretary of Homeland Security but was told he was in Chicago with Mayor Daley. He then got the assistant secretary for enforcement on the telephone and told him about the Potential Level Four Disaster at Fort Detrick.

"I'll be damned," he said. "I'll handle it."

He contacted the garrison commander on a hotline.

"Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Andrews, Colonel," he said. "I understand you've got a little problem over there."

The garrison commander had by then spoken with Master Sergeant Dennis, who had told her about the container that had arrived with the morning FedEx shipment.

When she had told Andrews this, he said, "I'll take immediate action."

Andrews then called the SAC back, told him to get on the horn to his people at Detrick, and have them grab the container and not let anybody else near it.

"How's the quickest way for me to get there?" the assistant secretary asked.

"It would probably be quicker in one of our Yukons than trying to get a chopper, Mr. Secretary. I can have one at your door in ninety seconds."

"Do it."

Five and a half minutes later, a black Secret Service Yukon-red and blue lights flashing from behind its grille and with another magnet-based blue light flashing on the roof-skidded to a stop in front of the main building and picked up Assistant Secretary Andrews. The SAC was in the front seat, where the assistant secretary preferred to ride.

Andrews thought: Ninety seconds, my ass.

That took five minutes plus, and we need to roll.

"Get in the back," he said.

Only then did the assistant secretary remember he had had another option. He could have told the SAC to get out.

But it was too late. He took a seat in the second row and, siren screaming and lights flashing, they were on their way to the Potential Level Four Disaster at Fort Detrick. [THREE] Office of the Presidential Press Secretary The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 1020 4 February 2007 There were a half-dozen television monitors mounted on the wall of John David "Porky" Parker's office, one for each of the major television networks, and the other three for the "major" cable news programs.

The sound of only one was on, the volume low but on.

Porky Parker was more or less addicted to watching/listening to Wolf News. Not because he liked it, but the opposite. He hated it. Wolf News gave him the most trouble. It seemed to be dedicated to the proposition that all politicians, from POTUS down, were scoundrels, mountebanks, and fools, and that it was Wolf News's noble duty to bring every proof-or suggestion-of this to the attention of the American people.

The problem was compounded for Porky by the fact that the people of Wolf News were very good at what they did, and with great skill went after the scoundrels, mountebanks, and fools regardless of political affiliation.

Wolf News used the fourth and final part of Gioacchino Antonio Rossini's (1792-1868) "William Tell Overture" to catch people's attention whenever there was "breaking news." Most people recognized the music as the theme for the Lone Ranger motion picture and television series.

That was happening now, and when Porky faintly heard the stirring music, he reached for the remote control as a Pavlovian reaction and raised his eyes to the screen. He had the sound turned up in time to see and hear the Wolf News anchor-on-duty proclaim, "There is breaking news! Wolf News is on top of it! Back in sixty seconds…"

There then followed a sixty-second commercial offering The Wall Street Journal delivered to one's home for only pennies a day.

Then the screen showed what looked like the scene of a major traffic accident. There were at least thirty police cars, all with their red and blue lights flashing. It had been taken from a helicopter. At the upper right corner of the screen, a message unnecessarily flashed, LIVE! LIVE! FROM A WOLF NEWS CHOPPER!

Porky was a second from muting the sound when the voice of the on-duty Wolf News anchor announced, "What we're looking at, from a Wolf News chopper, is the main gate of Fort Detrick, Maryland. We don't know, yet, what exactly is going on here. But we do know that the post has been closed down, nobody gets in or out, and that the director of the Central Intelligence Agency just choppered in and a 'senior official' of the Department of Homeland Security not yet identified just arrived in a vehicle with a screaming siren…"

In another Pavlovian reflex, Porky reached for his White House telephone and told the operator to get him the commanding general of Fort Detrick on a secure line. "Colonel Russell."

"This is the White House switchboard. This line is secure. Mr. Parker wishes to speak with the commanding general."

"This is the garrison commander."

"Mr. Parker wishes to speak with the commanding general."

"We don't have a commanding general. I'm the senior officer, the garrison commander."

"One moment please."

"Colonel, this is John Parker, the President's press secretary."

"This is Colonel Florence Russell. What can I do for you, Mr. Parker?"

"What's going on down there?"

The garrison commander for a moment considered correcting the pompous political lackey with "What's going on up here, Porky. Fort Detrick is damn near due north of D.C…" but instead said, "We have a Potential Level Four biological hazard disaster, Mr. Parker."

"What does that mean, exactly?

"The operative word is 'potential.' We may have, repeat may have, a biological hazard disaster, Level Four. The most serious kind."

"What happened?"

"All I can tell you, Mr. Parker, is that our chief scientific officer, Colonel J. Porter Hamilton, has declared a Potential Level Four biological hazard disaster, and we have taken the necessary actions to deal with that."

"Colonel Russell, I repeat: What does that mean?"

"Per SOP, we have shut down the post, alerted the hospital, and notified the proper authorities. Until we hear from Colonel Hamilton, that's all we can do."

"May I speak with Colonel Hamilton, please?"

"I'm afraid that's not possible at the moment, Mr. Parker."

"Why not?"

"Colonel Hamilton is in Level Four BioLab Two."

"And there's no telephone in there?"

"There's a telephone. He's not answering it."

"Perhaps if you told him the White House is calling, he might change his mind."

"To do that, Mr. Parker, I would have to get him on the line. And he's not picking up."

"Can you tell me what he's doing?"

"I can tell you what I think he's doing. A package was delivered to him shortly before he declared the potential disaster. I think it's reasonable to presume he's examining the contents of that package."

"To what end, Colonel?"

"To see if what it contains justifies changing the current status from 'potential' to 'actual.' Or from 'Potential Level Four' to a lesser threat designation. We won't know until he tells us."

"The President, Colonel, is going to want to know."

"Colonel Hamilton is not answering the telephone in the laboratory, Mr. Parker."

"I understand DCI Powell is there."

"Yes, he is. Would you like to speak with him, Mr. Parker?"

"Not right now. Colonel, you understand that I'm going to have to tell the President that the only person who seems to know what's going on won't answer his telephone?"

"I suppose that's true," Colonel Russell said.

"I'll get back to you, Colonel," Parker said, and then feverishly tapped the switchhook in the telephone handset cradle to get the switchboard operator back on the line.

"Yes, Mr. Parker?"

"Get me DCI Powell." "Powell."

"Mr. Parker is calling, Mr. Powell. The line is secure."

"Mr. Powell, John Parker. What the hell is going on over there?"

"John…" the director of Central Intelligence began, and then stopped. After a long moment, he resumed: "John, I was just about to call the President. I think it would be best if he decided what to tell you about this."

Parker heard the click that told him Powell had just broken the connection. Porky Parker normally had unquestioned access to the President, anywhere, at any time. But now when he approached the door to the Oval Office, one of the two Secret Service men on duty put on an insincere smile and held up his hand to bar him.

The second Secret Service agent then opened the door, and called in, "Mr. President, Mr. Parker?"

Parker heard President Clendennen's impatient reply: "Not now."

Then he heard another male voice: "Mr. President, may I respectfully suggest that we're going to need Parker."

After a moment, Parker recognized the voice as that of Ambassador Charles M. Montvale, the director of National Intelligence.

There was a brief pause, and then Clendennen, even more impatiently, drawled, "All right. Let him in."

The Secret Service agent at the door waved Parker into the Oval Office.

The President was at his desk, slumped back in his high-backed blue leather-upholstered judge's chair. Ambassador Montvale was sitting in an armchair looking up at the wall-mounted television monitor. Secretary of State Natalie Cohen was sitting sideward on the couch facing Montvale, also looking at the television.

The President looked at Parker and pointed to the television. Parker moved to the opposite wall, leaned on it, and looked up at the television.

Surprising Parker not at all, the President was watching Wolf News.

There was a flashing banner across the bottom on the screen: BREAKING NEWS! BREAKING NEWS!

The Wolf News anchor-on-duty was sitting at his desk, facing C. Harry Whelan, Jr. A banner read: C. HARRY WHELAN, JR., WOLF NEWS DISTINGUISHED CONTRIBUTOR.

Whelan was answering a question, and although he hadn't heard it, Parker knew what the question was: "What's going on at Fort Detrick?"

"Well, of course I don't know, Steven," C. Harry Whelan, Jr., said, somewhat pontifically, "but it seems to me, with the director of Central Intelligence there-plus that unnamed senior official from Homeland Security-that the situation there, whatever it is, is under control. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say we have a case of high-level arf-arf."

"'Arf-arf,' Harry?"

"You don't know the term?" Whelan asked, surprised.

The anchor-on-duty shook his head.

"Well, far be it from me to suggest anything at all that would cast any aspersion whatever on my good friend, Central Intelligence Agency Director Jack Powell-or for that matter on the unidentified senior Homeland Security official-but, hypothetically speaking, if President Clendennen had two dogs-say, a Labrador and a cocker spaniel-and they started chasing their tails, the sound they would be making would be arf-arf."

The camera paused for a moment on Mr. Whelan's face-he looked very pleased with himself-and then a picture of the front page of The Wall Street Journal replaced it and a voice-over deeply intoned, "For only pennies a day…"

The screen went black.

"I hate that sonofabitch," President Clendennen said.

A full thirty seconds later, Porky Parker broke the silence: "May I ask what's going on at Fort Detrick?"

President Clendennen glared at him.

Secretary of State Natalie Cohen came to his rescue.

"Mr. President, you're either going to have to make a statement, or have Jack make one in your name."

"That might prove to be difficult, Madam Secretary," President Clendennen said sarcastically, "as we don't seem to have the first goddamn clue about what's going on at Fort Detrick."

He let that sink in, and then went on: "And if what the DCI has just told me is true, I don't think we should broadcast that little gem from the White House."

"Mr. President, what exactly did DCI Powell say?" Ambassador Montvale asked.

"He said this colonel had gotten word to him that he 'strongly suspects' that the attack we made on the quote unquote Fish Farm in the Congo-the attack that brought us this close"-he held his thumb and index fingers perhaps a quarter of an inch apart-"to a nuclear exchange-did not kill all the fishes."

"You're talking about Colonel Hamilton, Mr. President?" Montvale asked.

The President nodded.

"How could he know that?"

"That's what Powell said; that he got a message to that effect from Hamilton."

"What does Hamilton say?"

"He's not answering his telephone," the President said bitterly, then picked up his telephone.

"Get me Powell," he ordered, and then, not twenty seconds later, said, "Is he still not answering his phone?"

There was a short reply.

"The minute he comes out of that laboratory, put him in your helicopter and bring him here."

He put the telephone handset into its cradle.

"And now we wait," Clendennen said. "The President of the United States, the secretary of State, and the director of National Intelligence wait for some lousy colonel to find time for us…" [FOUR] U.S. Army Medical Research Institute Fort Detrick, Maryland 1035 4 February 2007 Colonel J. Porter Hamilton, Medical Corps, U.S. Army, came through the outer portal of Level Four BioLab Two wearing only a bathrobe. The crest of the United States Military Academy was on the breast, and the legend WEST POINT was on the back.

He found in the room the garrison commander, the director of Central Intelligence, the assistant secretary of Homeland Security, the special agent in charge at the Department of Homeland Security, the Fort Detrick provost marshal, two Secret Service agents, and Master Sergeant Dennis.

"You'll have to pardon my appearance, Colonel Russell," Colonel Hamilton said.

"Not a problem, Colonel," Colonel Florence Russell replied.

Hamilton turned to DCI Powell, and said, "I can only surmise that those people relayed my message to you."

Powell nodded.

"Colonel, my name is Mason Andrews. I'm the assistant secretary of Homeland Security. I would be grateful-"

"First things first," Hamilton interrupted. "Sergeant Dennis, could I impose upon you to take your car and get me a uniform from my quarters? I'm afraid the keys to my car are in there, in my uniform."

"Way ahead of you, Colonel," Dennis said. "Fresh uniform's in the lobby. I'll go get it."

"Good man," Hamilton said. "Mr. Powell and I will be in the locker room."

He looked at Colonel Russell. "Colonel, would it offend you if I suggested that you come with us? You could turn your back while I dress."

"Not at all," she said.

"The President's really curious about what's going on here, Colonel," DCI Powell said. "He wants to see you at the White House. There's a helicopter-"

"Would you prefer to wait until we're at the White House?" Hamilton said. "I have to bring Colonel Russell up to speed on this before I go anywhere."

"I'll go with you and Colonel Russell," Powell said.

"So will I," Assistant Secretary Andrews said.

"I think not," Hamilton said.

"Excuse me?" Andrews bristled.

"I can tell you what you need to know right here: There is no immediate threat." He turned to the provost marshal, and added, "As soon as you can, you're to establish a guard around, one, where the package was originally examined; two, my office; and three, this building, to which no one is to enter without the specific approval of myself, Master Sergeant Dennis, or of course Colonel Russell. And you may lift the shut-down. Colonel Russell will have more details after we have spoken."

"Yes, sir," the provost marshal said.

"You had better impound the golf cart on which the package was moved-bring it and the two security people who drove it here. Dennis will see to their bath. Just a precaution. Better safe than sorry, I always say."

Master Sergeant Dennis came back into the room carrying a plastic bag in his prosthetic hand. He handed it to Hamilton.

"Good man," Hamilton said as he took it. Then he said, "Dennis, they are going to bring the golf cart and the security drivers here. See that they get a complete bath. Then do the same to the golf cart."

"Yes, sir."

"Colonel Russell, Mr. Powell, if you'll be good enough to come with me?"

"Am I correctly inferring, Colonel, that I was not included in that invitation?" Mason Andrews asked icily. He didn't wait for Hamilton to reply, and-obviously on the edge of losing his temper-went on: "Perhaps you didn't hear me, Colonel, when I told you that I am the assistant secretary of Homeland Security."

If he had intended to cow Hamilton, he failed.

"Mr. Secretary… or is it Mr. Assistant Secretary?" Hamilton replied. "I know that Mr. Powell is cleared for this sort of information. I don't know how much the President wants you to know. I am not about to risk the ire of the President by telling you any more than I already have."

Andrews flared: "Now, goddamn it, you listen to me, Colonel-"

"Mr. Andrews," DCI Powell interrupted, "why don't you let the President settle this? You're welcome to ride with us to the White House."

The assistant secretary of Homeland Security took a moment to get his temper under control.

"Perhaps that would be best," he said finally. "Thank you." [FIVE] The Oval Office The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 1205 4 February 2007 "Thank you for coming so quickly, Colonel," President Clendennen said.

The sarcasm was lost on Hamilton.

"I came as quickly as I could, Mr. President," Hamilton said.

"I know. You were on Wolf. We all saw you both taking off from Fort Detrick and landing here. And we all saw C. Harry Whelan, Jr., tell his several million viewers he believes you were coming here to deliver the bad news. Please tell me he's wrong."

"Actually, Mr. President, it's a mixed bag. The news could be much, much worse."

"Well," Clendennen drawled, pronouncing the word whale, "tell me the good news."

"There is no cause for immediate alarm. I told Colonel Russell what was necessary for her to do, and that once she had done that, she could lift the shut-down. I have changed the Potential Level Four Biological Hazard Disaster to Level Two Biological Hazard Incident."

"What does that mean, exactly?"

"That, in my judgment, there is reason to believe that all Congo-X under my control is contained in a safe environment, and there is no immediate risk to the general public."

"'Congo-X'? What is that?"

"It is what I call this virus. Or organism. Or whatever it is. What I brought from the Congo just before the Fish Farm was attacked."

"Which is it, an organism or a virus?"

"I'm afraid I don't really know, sir. More than like a combination of both. An 'organismus,' perhaps. Or a 'virusism.' Those are terms I made up in the last week or ten days. There is no scientific terminology that I know of to describe Congo-X."

"Colonel," Press Secretary John D. Parker said, "did I understand you to say there is no immediate danger to the public?"

"I was speaking with the colonel, Parker," the President said unpleasantly.

"Mr. President, if the colonel can assure us that there is no immediate danger to the public, I think-to counter that comment of C. Harry Whelan, Jr., on Wolf News-you should make a statement to that effect. And as soon as possible. Immediately. We really have to control this before it gets out of hand."

The President glared at Parker.

"Mr. President," Ambassador Montvale put in, "I think Porky's right."

Parker glared at Montvale, which wasn't lost on the President.

"What do you think I should say, Porky?" Clendennen asked.

"Mr. President, if you make any statement, it carries great importance. I mean to suggest that it will give the impression that this situation is more serious than the colonel suggests it is."

"In other words, you want to make the statement?"

"That would be my recommendation, Mr. President."

"I agree with Porky," Ambassador Montvale said.

"That makes it twice, doesn't it?" the President asked, and then went on: "And what would you say, Parker?"

"Sir, something along the lines of this: 'There was an incident early this morning at Fort Detrick that has attracted a good deal of media attention. The President has just spoken with the chief scientific officer at Fort Detrick, who has assured him there is no cause for concern. What it was was the routine triggering of a safety system, erring on the side of caution. To repeat, there is no cause for concern.' Something like that, Mr. President."

The President was thoughtful for a long moment. Then he asked, "Read that back, please."

A female voice came over a loudspeaker and recited Parker's suggested statement.

"At the end of the first sentence, where it says 'has attracted a good deal of media attention,' strike that and change it to 'has apparently caused much of the media to start chasing its tail once again. Arf-arf.' The rest of it is fine. Type that up for Mr. Parker."

"Are you sure you want to do that, Mr. President?" Secretary of State Natalie Cohen asked.

The President ignored her, and gestured for Parker to leave the office. Then he turned to Hamilton.

"Okay, Colonel. Now let's have the bad news."

Hamilton inhaled audibly before he began to speak.

"I think we have to presume, Mr. President, that the attack on the establishment-the laboratory-slash-manufacturing facility-in the Congo was not successful. There is a quantity-I have no idea how much-of Congo-X in unknown hands."

"How do you know that?" the President asked, softly.

"Because a quantity of it-several kilograms, plus another several kilograms of infected tissue-was delivered to me at Fort Detrick this morning. It is identical to the Congo-X and the infected tissue I brought out of the Congo."

"Where did it come from?" the President asked, then interrupted himself: "No. Tell me what this stuff-Congo-X-is and what it does."

"I don't know what it is. I'm working on that. As to what it does, it causes disseminated intravascular coagulation, acronym DIC."

"And can you tell me what that means? In layman's terms?"

"DIC is a thrombohemorrhagic disorder characterized by primary thrombotic and secondary hemorrhagic diathesis, usually fatal."

"Try it again, Colonel," the President ordered, not unpleasantly, "and this time in layman's terms."

"Yes, sir. DIC is sometimes called consumptive coagulopathy, since excessive intravascular coagulation leads to consumption of platelets and nonenzymatic coagulation factors-"

The President interrupted Hamilton by holding up his hand and shaking his head.

"You might as well be speaking Greek, Colonel. Try it again, please, keeping in mind that you're dealing with a simple country boy from Alabama."

"Yes, sir," Hamilton said, paused in thought, and then announced, almost happily: "Sir, DIC causes coagulation to run amok."

"Coagulation, as in blood?"

Hamilton nodded.

"Go down that road, Colonel, and see where it takes us," the President said.

"Coagulation is the process, in this connection, which causes liquid human blood to turn into a soft, semisolid mass."

He looked at the President to see if the President was still with him.

The President responded by smiling encouragingly, and making a gesture with both hands for him to continue.

"If you think of the vascular system of the body, Mr. President, as a series of interconnected garden hoses, and of the heart as a pump that pushes blood through that system."

He paused to see if his student was still with him, and when the President nodded, went on: "Imagine, if you will, sir, that the blood is transformed into a very thick mud. The pump cannot push the mass through the vascular system. It is overwhelmed; it stops."

"And death occurs? By what a layman might call a heart attack?"

"That, too, Mr. President," Hamilton said.

"'That, too'?" the President parroted.

"The mud, the now-coagulated blood, then begins to attack the garden hose. As sort of a parasite. It feeds on it, so to speak."

"Eats it, you mean?"

Hamilton nodded. "And when it's finished, so to speak, with the vascular system, it begins to feed on the other tissues of the body. In some sort of unusual enzymatic manner, which I have so far been unable to pin down."

"You'd better run that past me again, Colonel," the President said. "'Enzymatic manner'?"

Hamilton considered for a moment the level of knowledge the President might have.

"Think of meat tenderizer, Mr. President. Do you know how that works?"

"I can't say that I do," Clendennen confessed.

"Meat-and that would of course include human flesh-is held together by a complex protein called collagen. This makes it quite tough to chew in the raw state."

"I've noticed," the President drawled dryly.

"Cooking destroys these proteins, making the meat chewable. But so does contact with certain enzymes, most commonly ones extracted from the papaya. These proteolytic enzymes break the peptide bonds between the amino acids found in complex proteins. Such as flesh."

"What you're saying is that Congo-X is some sort of meat tenderizer?" the President asked. "Why is that so dangerous?"

"Unlike the enzymatic tenderizers one finds in the supermarket, which lose their strength after attacking the peptide bonding between the amino acids of meat, the Congo-X enzymes-if they are indeed enzymes, and I am not yet prepared to make that call-seem to gather strength from the collagens they attack. In a manner of speaking, they are nurtured by it."

"What happens when they run out of meat?" the President asked, and then corrected himself: "Out of something to eat?"

Hamilton didn't answer directly.

"Grocery store tenderizer doesn't work on bones," he said. "Congo-X does. Whenever it finishes turning the meat into sort of a mush-perhaps strengthened by taking nutrition from that process-it attacks bones. They are turned into mush. When the entire process is completed, what is left is a semisolid residue, which then enters sort of a coma. Forgive the crudeness, Mr. President, but what remains bears a strong physical resemblance to what one might pass when suffering from diarrhea: a semisolid brown, or brownish black, mass."

"And what happens to that?"

"It apparently receives enough nutrients from the atmosphere to maintain life-I hesitate to use that term but I cannot think of another-for an indefinite period. If it is touched by flesh, the process begins again."

"The only way it is contagious, so to speak, is if there's physical contact with it? Is that what you're saying?"

"When it is in the dormant, coma stage, yes, sir. But when it is feeding, so to speak, on flesh, it gives off microscopic particles which, if inhaled, also start the degenerative process."

"How can it be killed?"

"My initial tests suggest the only way it can be killed is by thorough incineration at temperatures over a thousand degrees Centigrade. The residue, I am coming to believe, may then be encased in a nonporous container. Glass or some type of ceramic would work, I think, but there one would have the risk of the glass or ceramic breaking. Aluminum seems to form a satisfactory barrier. As a matter of fact, I used simple aluminum foil to isolate the material I brought out of the Congo; I had nothing else. And the Congo-X material that was sent to my laboratory today was wrapped in aluminum foil."

"Like a Christmas turkey?" President Clendennen asked.

"More like, I would say, Mr. President, cold cuts from a delicatessen. Very carefully, so there was little or no risk that the foil could be torn. The people who sent me the Congo-X obviously seem to know what they are doing."

"And who, would you guess, Colonel, were the people who sent you the Congo-X? More importantly, why do you think they did?"

"I've given that some thought, Mr. President," Hamilton said.

"And?"

The tone of impatience in the President's voice was clearly evident.

"They wanted us to know that the attack on the Fish Farm was unsuccessful," Hamilton said. "That they have Congo-X. We have to presume they know a great deal more about it than I have been able to learn in the few days I've had to work with it. They are making the point that the threat which existed before we learned of the Fish Farm and attempted to destroy it exists now."

"Why wouldn't they try to keep that secret, so they would have the element of surprise if they decide to use Congo-X on us?"

"That's the question to which I have given the most thought," Hamilton said. "It was self-evident that they wanted us to know we failed, and that they have Congo-X. The question is, why?"

"That's the question I asked, Colonel," the President said.

"I think they want something from us," Hamilton said, very seriously.

"And what, Colonel, do you think that might be?"

"I have no idea," Hamilton said. "Absolutely no idea."

President Clendennen looked around the Oval Office.

The Honorable Natalie Cohen, secretary of State; Ambassador Charles M. Montvale, director of National Intelligence; the Honorable John J. Powell, director of the Central Intelligence Agency; and the Honorable Mason Andrews, assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, were sitting on the chairs and couches around a glass-topped coffee table. Not one had said a word during the "bad news" exchange between the President and Colonel Hamilton.

"Odd," Clendennen said to them. "I would have bet two bits to a doughnut that y'all would be falling all over yourselves to offer sage political advice and profound philosophical opinions concerning our little dilemma."

No one responded.

The President grunted, then announced: "One, I believe everything Colonel Hamilton has told us about this terrible substance. Two, we are not about to react to this threat the way my predecessor did. We bombed everything in a twenty-square-mile area of the Congo into small pieces and then incinerated the pieces. Since somebody still has enough of a supply of this stuff to share it with us, I think we have to concede that the only thing that bombing did was bring us within a cat's whisker of a nuclear exchange and give those people who don't like us much anyway good reason to like us even less.

"So what we're going to do now is proceed very carefully and only when we're absolutely sure of what we're doing. I will now entertain suggestions as to how we can do this." He paused, and then went on: "You first, Andrews."

There was no immediate reply.

"Well?" the President pursued, not very pleasantly.

"Mr. President," Mason Andrews said. "In addition to the obvious, I think we have-"

"What's the obvious?" the President interrupted.

"Well, we have to decide whether we are going to raise the threat level to orange, or perhaps red. I tend to think the latter."

"Not 'we have to decide,'" the President said. "I have to decide. Somebody tell me why raising the threat level from yellow wouldn't cause more problems than it would solve."

He looked around the Oval Office. "Comments? Anyone?"

There were none.

"What else is obvious?" the President demanded.

"Well, sir, we have to find out who sent this stuff to the colonel," Andrews said.

"First of all, it wasn't sent to Colonel Hamilton," the President said. "It was sent to us. The government. Me, as President. Not to Colonel Hamilton. It was sent through him because these bastards somehow knew he was the only man around who would know what it was. And they knew he would tell me. Secondly, at this moment-and I realize this could change in the blink of an eye-there is no immediate threat. If these people wanted to start killing Americans, they would have already done so."

"Mr. President," Ambassador Montvale offered, "their intention might be to cause panic."

Clendennen nodded.

"That's what I'm thinking. And I'm not going to give them that. That's why the threat level stays at yellow."

The President was then silent, visibly in thought, for a long moment. Then he cocked his head to one side. A smile crossed his lips, as if to signify he was pleased with himself.

He said, "Fully aware that this is politically incorrect, I have just profiled the bastards who sent Colonel Hamilton the Congo-X. I have decided that the Congo-X was sent to the colonel by a foreign power, or at the direction of a foreign power or powers. And not, for example, by the Rotary Club of Enterprise, Alabama, or any sister or brother organization to which the Rotarians may be connected, however remotely."

Ambassador Montvale's eyes widened, and for a moment he seemed to be on the edge of saying something. In the end, he remained silent.

"The ramifications of this decision," the President went on, "are that finding out who these bastards are-and, it is to be hoped, what the hell this is all about-falls into what I think of as the CIA's area of responsibility, rather than that of the FBI or the Department of Homeland Security."

He looked at DCI Powell.

"Those are your marching orders, Jack. Get onto it. I will have the attorney general direct the FBI to assist you in any area in which you need help."

"Mr. President, with all respect," Mason Andrews said, "this crime, this threat to American security, took place on American soil! This situation is clearly within the purview of Homeland Sec-"

"What situation, Andrews?" the President interrupted him. "What threat to American security? No one has been hurt. What's happened is that a securely wrapped package of what the colonel has determined to be what he calls Congo-X was sent to Colonel Hamilton in a container clearly marked as a biological hazard.

"That's all. There has been no damage to anyone. Not even a threat of causing damage. If we had these people in handcuffs, there's nothing we could do to them because they haven't broken any laws that I can think of.

"What we are not, repeat not, going to do is go off half-cocked. For example, we are not going to resurrect my predecessor's private James Bond-what's his name? Costello?-and his band of assassins and give them carte blanche to roam the world to kill people. Or anything like that.

"What we are going to do is have Montvale-he is the director of National Intelligence-very quietly try to find out who the hell these bastards are and what they want. I think Colonel Hamilton is right about that. They want something. That means they will probably-almost certainly-contact Colonel Hamilton again.

"What that means, since we can't afford to have anything happen to him, is that Homeland Security is going to wrap the colonel in a Secret Service security blanket at least as thick as the one around me. That's your role in this, Andrews. That's your only role.

"And then we're going to wait for their next move. No action of any kind will be taken without my express approval."

The President met the eyes of everyone in the Oval Office, and then quietly asked, "Is there anyone who doesn't understand what I have just said?"

There were no replies.

"That will be all, thank you," the President said. [ONE] The Hotel Gellert Szent Gellert ter 1 Budapest, Hungary 2315 4 February 2007 The silver, two-month-old, top-of-the-line Mercedes-Benz S550 drove regally across the Szabadsag hid, and on the other side of the Danube River turned left toward the Hotel Gellert, which was at the foot of the Gellert Hill.

Budapest, which began as two villages, Buda and Pest, on opposite sides of the Danube River, had a long and bloody history. Gellert Hill, for example, got its name from Saint Gerard Gellert, an Italian bishop from Venice whom the pagans ceremoniously murdered there in 1046 A.D. for trying to bring the natives to Jesus.

Buda and Pest were both destroyed by the Mongols, who invaded the area in 1241. The villages were rebuilt, only to suffer rape and ethnic cleansing when the Ottoman Turks came, conquering Pest in 1526 and Buda fifteen years later.

By the time the Szabadsag hid was built in 1894-96, the villages had been combined into Budapest, and Hungary had become part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Emperor Franz Josef personally inserted the last rivet-a silver rivet-into the new bridge and then with imperial immodesty named the structure after himself.

The bridge itself was dropped-like all the other bridges across the Danube-into the river when the Russians and the Germans fought over Hungary during the Second World War. It was the first bridge rebuilt after the war by the Soviet-controlled government and named the Liberty Bridge. When the Russians were finally evicted, it became the Freedom Bridge.

The silver Mercedes-Benz turned off the road running alongside the Danube and onto the access road to the Hotel Gellert, then stopped.

Gustav, a barrel-chested man in his fifties who appeared to be a chauffeur but served as a bodyguard and more, got quickly out from behind the wheel and opened the rear passenger door.

A tall man, who looked to be in his midsixties, got out. He adjusted a broad-brimmed jet-black hat-one side of the brim down, the other rakishly up-and then turned back to the car, bending over, leaning into the car. When he came out, he had two Bouvier des Flandres dogs.

The larger, a bitch, was several times the size of a very large boxer. The other was her son, a puppy, on a leash. The puppy was about the size of a small boxer.

As the man had taken them from the car, another burly man in his sixties had gotten out the other side of the car, carrying an ermine-collared black leather overcoat. The burly man's name was Sandor Tor. In his youth, Tor had done a hitch-rising to sergeant-in the French Foreign Legion. On his return to Budapest, he had become a policeman. He had been recruited into the AVH, the Allamvedelmi Hatosag, Hungary's hated secret police, and again had risen to sergeant.

When the Russians had been driven from Budapest, and known members of the Allamvedelmi Hatosag were being spat on and hung, Mussolini-style, en masse from any convenient streetlight, Tor had found sanctuary in the American embassy.

And only then had the CIA revealed to the new leaders of Hungary the identity of the man who had not only saved the lives of so many anti-Communists and resistance leaders-by warning them, via the CIA, that the AVH was onto them-but also had been one of the rare-and certainly the most reliable-sources of information about the inner workings of the AVH, which he'd gained at great risk to his life from his trusted position within the secret police.

Thus, the best that Sandor Tor could have hoped for had he been exposed was a quick death from AVH torture rather than a slow one.

Tor was decorated by the Hungarian government and appointed as inspector of police.

But that, despite having triumphed over the forces of evil, didn't turn out to be a movie scenario in which he lived happily ever after.

There were several facets of this. For one, his peers in the police, reasoning that if he had been keeping a record of the unsavory activities of the AVH, it was entirely likely that he would keep a record of theirs, both feared and shunned him.

And Tor didn't like being a cop without an agenda. He had done what he had done not only because he hated the Communists generally, but specifically because his mother and father and two brothers had been slowly strangled to death in the basement of the AVH headquarters at Andrassy ut 60.

Getting back at the Communists was one thing; spending long hours trying to arrest burglars-for that matter, even murderers-was something else.

And his wife, Margo, had cancer. They had had no children.

He applied for early retirement and it was quickly granted.

Sitting around the apartment with nothing to do but watch cancer work its cruelty on Margo was difficult.

Then Tor heard of the return to Budapest of the German firm Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H. The company's intention was to reclaim the properties-farms, a brewery, several vineyards, a newspaper business, and other assets-seized from them by the Communists.

He also heard they were looking for someone to head their security.

After he filled out an application form at Gossinger G.m.b.H's newly reopened downtown offices, he heard nothing for three weeks, and had decided that they weren't interested in his services.

Then there was a telephone call saying that if he was still interested, a car would pick him up in an hour, and take him for an interview. He almost didn't go; Margo had insisted and he went.

The car-a new, top-of-the-line Mercedes with Vienna plates-took him to the legendary Hotel Gellert, at Szent Gellert ter 1, overlooking the Danube River from the Gellert Hill.

Tor thought he would be interviewed, probably in the restaurant or the bar, by a personnel officer of the Gossinger organization. Instead, he was led to the elevator which carried him to a top floor apartment, overlooking the Danube, which apparently occupied that entire corner of the building.

An interior door opened and an enormous dog came out, walked to him, sniffed him, then sat down. Normally, Tor was not afraid of dogs. But this one frightened him. He thought it had to weigh well over fifty kilos. Even when the dog offered his paw, he thought carefully before squatting to take it.

"You come well recommended," said a voice in Hungarian with a Budapester accent. "Max usually shows his teeth to people he doesn't like. Often they wet their pants."

Tor had looked up to see a tall silver-haired man who seemed to be in his sixties standing in the doorway.

"My name is Eric Kocian," the man said. "Come in. We'll talk and have a drink."

He opened the door wide and waved Tor inside a spacious and well-furnished apartment.

Kocian walked to a sideboard and turned, holding a bottle in his hand.

"Wild Turkey Rare Breed all right with you?" he asked.

"I don't know what it is," Tor confessed.

"One of the very few things the Americans do superbly is make bourbon whisky. This is one of the better bourbon whiskys. My godson gave me a case for my seventy-seventh birthday."

Seventy-seventh birthday? Tor had thought. My God, he's that old?

"Sir, I don't know. I'm supposed to be interviewed for a job."

"And so you are. Don't you drink?"

"Yes, sir. I drink."

"Good. My experience has been you can't trust people who don't."

Kocian poured him a large, squarish glass half-full of the bourbon whisky.

"This is what they call 'sipping whisky.' But if you want water and ice…"

Kocian pointed to the sideboard.

"This is fine, thank you," Tor said.

"May I ask about your wife? How is she?"

How does he know about my Margo?

"Not very well, I'm afraid."

Kocian waved him into a leather-upholstered armchair and seated himself in an identical chair facing it.

"If you decide to take this position," Kocian announced, "she will be covered under our medical care program. Most German physicians are insufferably arrogant, and tend to regard their patients as laboratory specimens, but they seem to know what they're doing. Maybe they'll have answers you haven't been able to find here."

"Am I being offered the position?" Tor asked, on the cusp of incredulity.

"I have one or two other quick questions first," Kocian said.

"Quick questions? But you don't know anything about me."

"I know just about everything about you that interests me," Kocian said. "Are you still on the CIA's payroll?"

"I was never on their payroll," Tor said.

"That's not what I have been led to understand."

"I never took a cent. If I had been exposed, they promised to try to get Margo out of Hungary and give her some sort of pension, but…"

"You thought before the AVH arrested you, they would have arrested her for her value in your interrogation, so you didn't give it much thought?"

Tor nodded.

"I would have to have your word that you would no longer cooperate with the CIA in any way."

"I haven't talked to anyone in the CIA for over a year."

"That wasn't my question."

"I can promise you that," Tor said. "No cooperation with the CIA."

"Welcome to the executive ranks of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H."

"Just like that?" Tor asked, and then blurted, "We haven't even talked about what I'm going to do. Or how much-"

"What you are going to do is relieve me of keeping Hungarian fingers out of my cash box, prying eyes out of any part of our business, provide such other security as I deem necessary, and keep Otto Gorner off my back. So far as compensation is concerned, I suggest that twice what you were being paid as an inspector would be a reasonable starting salary. There are of course some 'perks,' as my godson would say. Including an expense account and a car."

Tor knew that Otto Gorner was the managing director of the Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H., empire.

But who is this godson?

"You've mentioned your godson twice. Where does he fit in here?"

"His name is Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger. You're a policeman. Is that enough of a clue for you?"

Tor chuckled.

"You know who Otto Gorner is?"

Tor nodded.

"Otto has the odd notion that I have to be protected from myself and others, in particular the Russians. He has managed to convince my godson of this nonsense. It will be your job to convince both of them that you are doing so while at the same time making sure that whomever you charge with protecting me from the Russians and myself are invisible to me."

"Yes, sir."

"Let me top that off," Kocian said.

Tor looked at his glass and was surprised to see that it was nearly empty. He didn't remember taking one sip. Sandor Tor had been director of security for Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H. (Hungary), for six months when Margo died.

The doctors in Germany, with great regret, had been unable to do anything for her. When it was apparent the end was near, Margo asked to be returned from Berlin to Budapest so that she could die in her own bed.

Eric Kocian and a medical team from Telki Private Hospital-Budapest's best-were waiting with an ambulance at the Keleti Palyaudvar railway station. Staff from the kitchen of the Hotel Gellert was waiting at the Tor apartment.

Margo died at four in the morning the next day. At the time, her husband was asleep in a chair at one side of her bed and Eric Kocian was asleep in another chair on the other side of the bed.

Margo was buried the next day, beside Sandor's mother and father in the Farkasreti Cemetery in Buda (the western part of Budapest). Tor had found-not without great effort-where their Communist murderers had disposed of their bodies, and had them exhumed and reinterred in the Farkasreti Cemetery. He never learned what had happened to the bodies of his murdered brothers.

When Margo's crypt had been cemented closed, Eric Kocian had said, "You don't want to go back to your apartment. Come with me and we'll have a drink."

They had gone to the Hotel Gellert and stayed drunk together for four days.

Sometime during that period, Sandor had realized that while he might now be alone in the world except for his employer/friend Eric Kocian, Eric Kocian was similarly alone in the world, except for his godson, whom he apparently rarely saw, and his friend/employee Sandor Tor.

Early in the morning of their fifth day together, Sandor Tor led Eric Kocian to the thermal baths-built by the Romans-below the hotel where they soaked, had a massage, and soaked again. And then they had a haircut and shave.

At noon, they were at work.

Sandor returned only once to the apartment he had shared with Margo. He selected the furniture he wanted to keep, and had it moved to the Gellert, where Kocian had arranged an apartment for him on the floor below his own. Sandor Tor draped the ermine-collared black leather overcoat over Eric Kocian's shoulders.

The bitch, who answered to the name Madchen, headed for a row of shrubbery to meet the call of nature. Kocian led the puppy, named Max, to the shrubbery.

"You and Gustav go to bed," Kocian ordered. "I'll see you in the morning."

Tor got back in the Mercedes, which then carried him to the hotel entrance. When Gustav had parked the car-a spot near the door was reserved for it-he followed Tor into the hotel lobby. Gustav got on the elevator to check the apartment out before Kocian got there, and Tor walked to a column and stood behind it in a position from which he could watch Kocian enter the lobby and get on the elevator.

Kocian came through the door four minutes later and walked toward the elevator bank.

A tall, well-dressed man who had been sitting in an armchair reading the Budapester Tages Zeitung suddenly dropped the newspaper to the floor and walked quickly to where Kocian was waiting for the elevator.

Where in the name of the goddamn Virgin Mary and all the fucking saints did that sonofabitch come from?

Tor had almost made it to the bank of elevators when the door opened. Gustav saw him coming and stopped, then stepped back against the elevator's rear wall.

Kocian, Madchen, and Max got on the elevator.

Tor followed.

"I thought I told you to go to bed," Kocian said.

Tor took a Micro Uzi from his under-the-arm holster, held it at his side, and then pushed the button which would send the elevator to the top floor.

"I mean Herr Kocian no harm," the tall, well-dressed man said in German, and then repeated it in Hungarian.

The elevator door closed, and the elevator began to rise.

"Pat him," Tor ordered, now raising the muzzle of the Micro Uzi.

Gustav quickly, but unhurriedly, thoroughly frisked the tall, well-dressed man.

"Nothing," Gustav said, referring to weapons. But he now held a Russian diplomatic passport, a Hungarian foreign ministry-issued diplomat's carnet (a plastic-sealed card about the size of a driver's license), and a business-size envelope.

He examined the carnet, saw that it read, COMMERCIAL COUNSELOR, RUSSIAN EMBASSY, and then handed the carnet to Tor.

"Actually, I'm Colonel Vladlen Solomatin of the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki," the tall, well-dressed man then said in Hungarian, and for the third time said, "I mean Herr Kocian no harm."

"You're from the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki?" Kocian asked in Russian.

"It's the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation," Colonel Solomatin said. "Yes, I am."

"I know what the SVR is, Colonel," Kocian said.

The elevator door opened.

Kocian looked over his shoulder to make sure there was no one in the landing foyer, and then backed out of the elevator, motioning for Solomatin to follow him.

"Put the elevator out of service," Kocian ordered.

"I mean you no harm, Herr Kocian," Solomatin said again.

"You keep saying that," Kocian replied. "What is it you do want from me, Colonel Vladlen Solomatin of the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki?"

"A service, sir. Your help in righting a great wrong."

"Specifically?"

Solomatin turned to the chauffeur, who was still holding Solomatin's diplomatic passport and the envelope. He reached for the envelope.

"May I?" he asked.

Gustav looked to Kocian for guidance. Kocian nodded, and Gustav allowed Solomatin to take the envelope.

Solomatin removed a letter from the envelope and extended them to Kocian.

"I am asking that you get this to Colonel Berezovsky. Or Lieutenant Colonel Alekseeva."

Kocian read the letter: Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki 1 February 2007 Yasenevo 11, Kolpachny Moscow 0101000 Tel: Moscow 923 6213 Second Directorate Colonel V. N. Solomatin My Dear Cousin Dmitri:

God's blessings and the warmest greetings to you, Lora, Sof'ya and Svetlana!!

I am very happy to be able to tell you that the committee has finally reached the only conclusions that they could in the circumstances: 1. That the charges of embezzlement of state funds laid against you and Svetlana were without any basis in fact. 2. That the late Colonel Evgeny Evgenyvich Alekseev, who laid the charges against you both, was at the time bereft of his senses, more than likely suffering from paranoia and had been so suffering for a considerable period of time, possibly as much as a year or even longer. 3. That while it was clearly the responsibility of the both of you to bring your suspicions regarding Colonel Alekseev's instability to the attention of General Yakov Sirinov, your failure to do so in the circumstances, and your vacating your posts without authority, was understandable.

Other points made during the committee hearing by General Sirinov put to rest once and for all the allegation that you defected. "If they intended to defect," the general said, "they would not have left with only the clothing on their backs and what cash they had in their pockets. And if they had wound up in the hands of MI6 or the CIA, even involuntarily, you know our people would have told us."

At the conclusion of the committee hearing, General Sirinov was ordered to do whatever was necessary to locate you, make you aware of what has happened, and to bring you home.

He has delegated that responsibility to me, telling the committee that if he were you or Svetlana, the only person he would trust would be me. I have been given the authority to take any steps I consider necessary.

Embassies of the Russian Federation worldwide have been directed to provide you with whatever you need, including funds, and to facilitate your return to the Motherland.

In this connection, when I suggested to General Sirinov that, considering what injustices had occurred, you and Svetlana might question even my motives, he said he would have no objection to your leaving Lora and Sof'ya wherever they may be for the time being, and directed me to provide funds for their support.

They can join you here when you are satisfied that you have been welcomed home as loyal Russians.

I really hope to see all of you here together soon.

May God protect you both on your return journey! Your loving cousin, Vladlen

As Kocian handed the letter to Sandor Tor, he said, "I have no idea who either of these people are, Colonel."

"Please, Herr Kocian," Solomatin said. "I am really trying to help them; to right an injustice."

"Well," Kocian said dryly, "the Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki does have a certain reputation for causing injustices. But this is the first I've ever heard of them trying to right any." He shook his head. "Sorry, Colonel, I can't help you."

"Herr Kocian, the last confirmed sighting of Colonel Berezovsky, his wife and daughter, and Lieutenant Colonel Svetlana Alekseeva was when they got on Lieutenant Colonel Castillo's airplane at Schwechat airfield in Vienna."

Kocian looked him in the eyes, and said, "Colonel Castillo? Someone else I never heard of."

"The colonel is sometimes still known by the name he was given at his christening, Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger. Inasmuch as you stood as one of his godfathers, Herr Kocian, I find it hard to believe you've forgotten."

Kocian didn't respond.

"Herr Kocian, I swear before God and by all that's sacred to me that I am telling you the truth. And I am begging you to help me."

Kocian said nothing.

"Will you at least get the letter to Colonel Castillo?" Solomatin asked, plaintively.

After a long moment, Kocian said, "Gustav, please be good enough to escort Colonel Solomatin to his car. Give him back his passport and carnet."

"And the letter?" Gustav asked.

Kocian looked at the letter for a long moment, and then folded it and put it in his jacket pocket.

He walked toward the door to his apartment.

"Thank you, Herr Kocian. May God shower you with his blessings," Solomatin said.

Gustav motioned for him to get back on the elevator. When Gustav walked into Kocian's apartment a half hour later, the old man was sitting in a Charles Eames chair with his feet on its footstool, holding a glass of whisky. Madchen lay beside him. Max was sitting beside Tor, his head cocked as if to ask, "What the hell are you doing?"

Tor was sitting on a Louis XVI chair that looked to be of questionable strength to support his bulk. A section of a bookcase that lined that wall of Kocian's sitting room had been swung open, revealing a hidden compartment with a communications device on a custom-built shelf.

Tor had fed the communications device the letter Solomatin had given Kocian, and now took it from the device and walked to Kocian and handed it to him.

"There was no car outside," Gustav said. "I offered him a ride to wherever he wanted to go. He accepted, and said the Russian embassy. A Volkswagen with diplomatic plates got on my tail as we got off the Szabadsag hid and followed us to Baiza. What I think is there were two cars, that one and another-or at least some Russian sonofabitch with a cell phone-here. They were waiting for us at the bridge."

"And what happened at Baiza?" Kocian asked, referencing the embassy of the Russian Federation at Baiza 35, Budapest.

"He got out of the car, and walked to the gate. The gate opened for him before he got there. They expected him. When I looked in the mirror, the Volkswagen that had been on my tail was gone."

Kocian waved the letter Solomatin had given him.

"Did you get a good look at this, Gustav?"

When Gustav shook his head, Kocian handed it to him, and Gustav read it.

"Well?" Kocian said.

Gustav shook his head again.

"I don't have a clue," he said. "Except, if I have to say this, it smells."

"You don't think the SVR forgives defectors?" Tor said sarcastically.

Gustav gestured toward the communications device. "What does Herr Gossinger think?"

"There is one flaw in that miraculous device," Kocian said. "It doesn't work unless the party you're calling answers, which my godson has not yet done." He paused, pointed to the telephone on the table near him, and said, "See if you can get him on the horn, Sandor. Try the house in Pilar."

Tor rose from his fragile-looking chair, walked to the couch by the phone, sat heavily down, then from memory punched in a long number on the keypad. He held the receiver to his ear.

"What time is it in Buenos Aires?" Kocian asked.

"It's after midnight here, so a little after eight," Tor said, then added, "It's ringing," and handed the receiver to Kocian.

Kocian reached over to the table and pushed the phone base's SPEAKERPHONE button.

"?Hola?" a male voice answered.

"With whom am I speaking?" Kocian asked in passable Spanish.

"Who are you calling?"

"I'm trying to get Carlos Castillo. He doesn't seem to be answering his other telephone…"

"You have the wrong number, Senor," the man said and broke the connection.

"Sonofabitch hung up on me!" Kocian said, handing the receiver back to Tor. Tor, turning away so that Kocian would not see his smile, punched in the number again, waited for the ring, and then hit the SPEAKERPHONE button.

"?Hola?"

"My name is Eric Kocian, I need to speak to Carlos Castillo, and don't tell me I have the wrong damn number!"

"How are you, Herr Kocian?" the male voice said politely. "Sorry I didn't recognize your voice."

"I should have given you my name," Kocian said. "Paul Sieno, right?"

"Yes, sir."

"I thought I recognized your voice when you told me I had the wrong number," Kocian said. "Is Carlos handy?"

"Actually, sir, he's not."

"Where is he? Can you give me a better number?"

"I don't have one, sir."

"That's unusual, isn't it?"

"Charley's fly-fishing with his girlfriend in Patagonia, Herr Kocian."

"What did you say?"

"Charley went fishing with his girlfriend, Herr Kocian. In Patagonia. He left word not to bother him unless the sun went out."

"What if I told you this is very important, Paul? And what girlfriend would that be?"

"I can get word to him, Herr Kocian. Maybe tonight, and certainly by morning."

"And the girlfriend?"

There was a long pause, then Paul said, "Herr Kocian, if you don't know about Sweaty, I'm sorry, but you're not going to hear it from me."

"Are you telling me he's drunk and off in the woods with some floozy? Some floozy named Sweaty? That's what you said her name is, right? Sweaty?"

"Well, I can tell you he's probably not drunk, because Sweaty doesn't like him to drink too much. And that I can get word to him to call you, probably tonight, and certainly by morning. Your AFC's working, right?"

"As a matter of fact, Paul, my miraculous AFC communications device is not working at all. The reason I called on the telephone is because nobody we tried to call on it to find Carlos answered."

"Sir, we're not on twenty-four/seven anymore. Just once in the morning-oh-four-twenty-hundred Zulu time-and again in the afternoon at sixteen-twenty Zulu. I'm surprised no one told you."

"By Zulu, you mean Greenwich?"

"Yes, sir."

"Your AFC is working?"

"Yes, sir. I can have it up in a minute."

"There's a document I want Carlos to see. I want to send it in the highest encryption possible."

"Yes, sir, give me a minute to turn on my AFC."

"You can get it to him?"

"In the morning, maybe even tonight."

"I want you and Mrs. Sieno to have a look at it, to see if you can make more sense from it than I can. And tell Carlos what you think."

"Yes, sir."

"It's not addressed to Carlos, Paul. It's addressed to someone else. I don't want that party to see it until after Carlos does."

"This sounds important, Herr Kocian."

"I don't know. It may well be. Is Herr Delchamps available?"

"He's here, but he went out for dinner."

"Show this document to him, too, please, with the same caveat that I don't want the addressee to see it until Carlos has."

"Got it," Sieno said. And then, "There goes the AFC, Mr. Kocian. It shows you as online. I'm ready to receive. Send the message." "It came through fine, Herr Kocian," Paul Sieno said over the encrypted AFC not quite two minutes later. "What the hell is it all about?"

"I don't know, Paul."

"Where did you get it?"

"A Russian who said he was Colonel Solomatin was waiting for me in the lobby of the Gellert when I came in about an hour ago."

"I will be damned! I'll have this in Charley's hands just as quick as I can."

"Thank you, Paul."

"Herr Kocian, I'm sorry I hung up on you before."

"No apology necessary. My best regards to Mrs. Sieno."

"Will do," Sieno said, then gave the AFC the order: "Break it down."

The green LED indicating the AFC was connected to another AFC device at Encryption Level One went out. [TWO] Club America Miami International Airport, Concourse F Miami, Florida 2205 4 February 2007 Roscoe J. Danton of The Washington Times-Post was not in a very good mood. Eagle-eyed officials of the Transportation Security Administration had detected a Colibri butane cigar lighter and a nearly new bottle of Boss cologne in his carry-on luggage and triumphantly seized both.

The discovery had then triggered a detailed examination of the rest of the contents of his carry-on luggage. This had uncovered a Bic butane cigarette lighter in his laptop case and three boxes of wooden matches from the Old Ebbitt Grill in his briefcase/overnight bag. Two small boxes of matches, he was told he should have known, was the limit.

With the proof before them that they had in their hands if not an Al Qaeda terrorist cleverly disguised as a thirty-eight-year-old Presbyterian from Chevy Chase, Maryland, then at the very least what they categorized as an "uncooperative traveler," the TSA officers had then thoroughly examined his person to make sure that he wasn't trying to conceal anything else-a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, for example-in his ear canal or another body orifice.

With no RPG or other potential weapon found, he was finally freed.

Danton-convinced that his near crimes and misdemeanors had probably caused him to miss Aerolineas Argentinas Flight 1007, nonstop service to Buenos Aires-had then run all the way down Concourse F to Gate 17 hoping to be proven wrong. There he learned that "technical difficulties" of an unspecified nature were going to delay the departure of Flight 1007 for at least two hours.

As he walked the long way back down the concourse to the Club America, he recalled that C. Harry Whelan had called Miami International Airport "America's Token Third World Airport."

Say what you want about Harry-and there's a lot, all bad, to be said about Harry-but the sonofabitch does have a way with words.

Which is probably why he's always on Wolf News.

I wonder what they pay him for that?

Roscoe found a seat from which he could have a good view of one of the television sets hanging from the ceiling. Then he made three trips to the bar, ultimately returning to his seat with two glasses of Scotch whisky, a glass of water, a glass of ice cubes, a bowl of mixed nuts, and a bowl of potato chips. Then he settled in for the long wait.

When he looked up at the television, he saw C. Harry Whelan in conversation with Andy McClarren, the anything-but-amiable star of Wolf News's most popular program, The Straight Scoop.

The screen was split. On the right, McClarren and Whelan were shown sitting at a desk looking at a television monitor. On the left was what they were watching: at least two dozen police cars and ambulances, almost all with their emergency lights flashing, looking as if they were trying to get past some sort of gate.

A curved sign mounted over the gate read WELCOME TO FORT DETRICK.

Their passage was blocked by three U.S. Army HMMWVs, each mounting a.50 caliber machine gun. HMMWV stood for "high-mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicle." With the acronym a little hard to pronounce, the trucks were therefore commonly referred to as "Humvees."

"That was the scene earlier today at Fort Detrick, Harry," Andy McClarren said. "Can you give us the straight scoop on what the hell was going on?"

You're not supposed to say naughty words on television, Roscoe thought as he sipped his Scotch, but I guess if you're Andy McClarren, host of the most-watched television news show, you can get away with a "hell" every once in a while.

"A lot of arf-arf," Whelan said.

"What the hell does that mean?"

Careful, Andy. That's two "hell's," probably the most you can get away with. Three "hell's," like three small boxes of wooden matches, will see the federal government landing on you in righteous indignation.

"That's the sound-you've heard it-dogs make when chasing their tails."

"You said that earlier today, didn't you?"

"Yes, I did. To describe various senior bureaucrats rushing around, chasing their tails."

"And so did President Clendennen. Or his spokesman, What's-his-name."

"John David Parker," Whelan offered, "more or less fondly known as 'Porky.'"

"Okay. So, Porky said the press was playing arf-arf, too. Which meant they were chasing their tails, right?"

"And so they were. Andy, do you really want to know what I think went on over there?"

"I want the straight scoop," McClarren said. "That's what we call the show."

"Okay. Take notes. There will be a quiz," Whelan said. "You know, Andy, right, that the United States has vowed never to use biological weapons against our enemies?"

"Uh-huh."

"This was largely because Senator Homer Johns, the junior senator from New Hampshire, thinks that while it is perfectly all right to shoot our enemies, or drop a bomb on them, it is unspeakably evil to use poison gas or some kind of biological weapon on them."

"You think poison gas is okay, Harry?"

"I think poison gas and biological weapons are terrible," Whelan said. "But let's talk about poison gas. In World War One, the Germans used poison gas on us, and we used it on them. It was terrible. In World War Two, the Germans didn't use poison gas, and neither did we. You ever wonder why?"

"You're going to tell me, right?"

"Because between the two wars, the Army developed some really effective poison gas. When we got in the war, and American troops were sent to Europe, so were maybe a half-dozen ships loaded with the new poison gas. We got word to the Germans that we wouldn't use our poison gas first, but if they did, we were prepared to gas every last one of them. They got the message. Poison gas was never used."

"Interesting."

"Then science came up with biological weapons. Our Army, in my judgment wisely, began to experiment with biological weapons. This happened at an obscure little Army base called Fort Detrick. The idea was that if our enemies-we're talking about Russia here-knew we really had first-class biological weapons, they would be reluctant to use their biological weapons on us."

"Like the atom bomb?"

Harry Whelan nodded. "Like atomic bombs, Andy. We weren't nuked by the Russians because they knew that if they did, then Moscow would go up in a mushroom cloud. They called that 'mutual assured destruction.' The same theory was then applied to biological and chemical weapons.

"Then we had a President running for reelection. Senator Johns and his pals thought painting him as a dangerous warmonger would see their guy in the White House. When the incumbent President saw in the polls that this was working, he quickly announced that he was unilaterally taking the United States out of the chemical-biological warfare mutual destruction game. He announced we wouldn't use them, period, and ordered the destruction of all such weapons sitting around in ordnance warehouses.

"This saw him reelected. But Johns wouldn't let him forget his campaign promise. So the Army's biological warfare laboratories at Fort Detrick were closed and the fort became the home of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command. What could be more opposite to biological warfare than medical research?

"Even Senator Johns was satisfied that the forces of virtue had triumphed, and we would never use evil biological warfare against our enemies.

"But Army medical research should, it seemed logical to assume, concern itself with what would happen to our soldiers-even our civilian population-should our enemies use biological warfare against us.

"With that in mind, the medical corps began to study the biological weapons in the Russian inventory. If they knew what the Russians were going to use against us, we could come up with antidotes, et cetera.

"How would we know what biological weapons the Russians had? Enter the CIA."

"Really?"

Harry Whelan nodded again. "They bribed the appropriate Russian scientists, and soon samples of the Russian biological inventory began to arrive at Fort Detrick for evaluation by the medical corps.

"Since it was the CIA's duty to evaluate the efficacy of enemy weapons, and since the best place to determine that was Fort Detrick, and since the medical corps was a little short of funds, the CIA thought it only fair that they pay for the investigation.

"This had the additional benefit-since CIA expenditures are classified-of keeping Senator Johns and his pals from learning what was going on. Getting the picture, Andy?"

"That's a hell of an accusation, Harry."

Whelan did not reply directly.

"And inasmuch as the CIA was interested in knowing how soon the United States could respond in kind to a biological attack, they asked the medical personnel at Fort Detrick to determine how the Russian biological weapons were manufactured, and to estimate how long it would take-should the unthinkable happen-for us to get our manufacture of such up and running. Or even to compare the Russian biological weapons against our own from the bad old days-samples of our own had been retained for laboratory purposes-and see how long it would take to start to manufacture whichever seemed to be the most lethal."

"What you're suggesting, Harry," Andy McClarren said solemnly, "is that the CIA once again was engaged in doing things they're not supposed to. Once again doing things that the Congress had forbidden them to do."

"You sound like Senator Johns, Andy. And once again, you're both wrong. The CIA has the responsibility-given them by Congress-to find out as much as they can about our enemies' capabilities and intentions. That's what they were-are-doing at Fort Detrick. And thank God that they are."

"Give me a for-example, Harry," McClarren said, thickly sarcastic.

"How about a hypothetical, Andy?"

"Shoot."

"Let's suppose that the CIA, which really is not nearly as incompetent as you and people like Senator Johns think it is-or for that matter as incompetent as the CIA wants people like you and Johns and our enemies to think it is-"

"Run that past me again, Harry," McClarren said.

"They call that 'disinformation,' Andy. The less competent our enemies think the CIA is, the less they worry about it. Can I get back to my hypothetical?"

"Why not?" McClarren said, visibly miffed.

"Let's say the CIA heard that the bad guys, say the Russians, were operating a secret biological weapons factory in some remote corner of the world-"

"You're talking about that alleged biological weapons factory in the Congo," McClarren challenged.

Whelan ignored the interruption.

He went on: "-and they looked into it and found that there was indeed a secret factory in that remote corner of the world."

"Making what?" McClarren challenged, more than a little nastily.

"They didn't know. So what they did was go to this remote corner of the world-"

"Why don't you just say the Congo, Harry?"

"If that makes you happy, Andy. Let's say, hypothetically speaking of course, that the incompetent CIA went to the Congo and, violating the laws of the sovereign state of the Republic of the Congo, broke into this factory and came out with samples of what the factory was producing-"

"Ha!" McClarren snorted.

"-and took it to Fort Detrick, where it was examined by the medical corps scientists. And that these scientists concluded that what the CIA had brought to them was really bad stuff. And let's say that the CIA took this intelligence to the President. Not this one, his predecessor.

"And let's say the President believed what the CIA was telling him. What he should have done was call in the secretary of State and tell her to go to the UN and demand an emergency meeting of the Security Council to deal with the problem.

"Now, let's say, for the purpose of this hypothetical for-example, that the President realized he-the country-was facing what they call a 'real and present danger.' And also that the minute he brought to the attention of the United Nations what the CIA had learned, the bad guys would learn we knew what they were up to.

"By the time the blue-helmet Keystone Kops of the UN went to the Congo to investigate these outrageous allegations-and this is presuming the Russians and/or the Chinese didn't use their veto against using the blue helmets-the factory would either have disappeared, or been converted to a fish farm."

"So he acted unilaterally?"

"And thank God he had the cojones to do so."

"And it doesn't bother you, Harry, that he had no right to do anything like that? We could have found ourselves in a war, a nuclear war! That takes an act of Congress!"

"You're dead wrong about that, too, Andy," Whelan said patronizingly, rather than argumentatively. Whether he did so without thinking about it, or with the intention of annoying-even angering-McClarren, it caused the latter reaction.

The one thing Andy McClarren could not stand, would not tolerate, was being patronized.

His face whitened and his lips grew thin.

"How so?" he asked very softly.

"Under the War Powers Act-I'm really surprised you don't know this, Andy; I thought everybody did-the President, as commander in chief, has the authority to use military force for up to thirty days whenever he feels it's necessary. He has to tell Congress he's done so and if they don't vote to support him within those thirty days, the President has to recall the troops. But for thirty days he can do whatever he wants…"

Damn it! Andy McClarren thought as his face turned red. The President does have that authority under the War Powers Act.

Either this condescending smart-ass just set me up to make an ass of myself, or-worse-without any assistance from him, I just revealed my ignorance before three point five million viewers.

The only thing that can make this worse is for me to lose my temper.

Whelan went on: "So you see, Andy, in this hypothetical for-example we're talking about, the President did have the authority to do what he did."

McClarren knocked over one of the two microphones on the desk. They were props, rather than working microphones. But McClarren's three point five million viewers didn't know this.

McClarren thought: Jesus! What can I do for an encore? Spill coffee in my lap?

Whalen smiled at him sympathetically, and went on: "He didn't have to ask Congress for anything. The whole event was over in three days. What they call a fait accompli, Andy."

McClarren straightened the microphone, and then flashed Whelan a brilliant smile.

"I don't believe a word of that, Harry," he said.

"You weren't expected to," Whalen responded, every bit as condescendingly as before. "It was all hypothetical, Andy. All you were supposed to do was think about it."

"What I'm wondering is what all your hypothetical stuff has to do with all those police cars at the gate of Fort Detrick. Have you got the straight scoop on that, or just more hypothesis?"

He made "hypothesis" sound like a dirty word.

"Well, Andy, my gut feeling-my hypothesis, if you prefer-is that when Porky Parker made his statement, he was doing something he doesn't often do."

"Which was?"

"Porky was telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. There was some kind of accident in one of the laboratories. Somebody dropped an Erlenmeyer flask on the floor. Six white mice or a couple of monkeys escaped their cages. I have no idea what. Something happened. The material in those labs is really dangerous. They did what they were supposed to do: They declared a potential-operative word 'potential'-disaster. The post was closed down until the problem could be dealt with. When it was dealt with, they called off the emergency procedures.

"While all this was going on, the CIA and Homeland Security and every police force between here and Baltimore started chasing their tails-arf-arf-and when the ever-vigilant press got wind of this, they got in their helicopters and flew to Fort Detrick, where they chased their tails in the sky-arf-arf-until they were run off. If there was any danger to anyone at Fort Detrick today, it was from the clowns in the helicopters nearly running into each other. The Army scientists there know what they're doing."

"That could be, I suppose," Andy McClarren said very dubiously. "But what I would like to know is-"

Roscoe J. Danton saw the image of McClarren on the Club America TV replaced with an image of the logotype of Aerolineas Argentinas and a notice announcing the immediate departure of Aerolineas Argentinas Flight 1007, nonstop service to Buenos Aires from Gate 17.

"Christ," Danton complained out loud. "They told me it was delayed for at least two hours."

He stood up, and a firm believer in the adage that if one wastes not, one wants not, drained his drinks.

The Aerolineas Argentinas announcement then was replaced first with the whirling globes of Wolf News, and then by the image of an aged former star of television advising people of at least sixty-two years of age of the many benefits of reverse mortgages.

Roscoe, who had been hoping to get another glimpse of the royally pissed-off Andy McClarren, said, "Shit!"

Then he hurriedly walked out of Club America. [ONE] United States-Mexico border near McAllen, Texas 0730 5 February 2007 "What the fuck is that?" United States Border Patrol agent Guillermo Amarilla inquired in Spanish of Senior Patrol Agent Hector Hernandez as the latter stepped hard on the brakes of their green Jeep station wagon.

The station wagon skidded on the rutted dirt road, coming to a stop at nearly a right angle. On one side of the road was a sugarcane field. On the other was waist-high brush. The brush extended for about one hundred fifty yards, ending at the bank of the Rio Grande. The demarcation line between the United States and the Estados Unidos Mexicanos was at the center of the river, which at that point was just over one hundred yards wide.

The dirt road, ten yards from where the Jeep had stopped, was blocked.

An oblong insulated metal box was sitting on a plank suspended between two plastic five-gallon jerrycans.

Nailed to the plank was a large sign hand-lettered??PELIGROSO!! and??DANGER!!

Amarilla and Hernandez, without speaking, were out of the vehicle in seconds. Both held Remington Model 870 12-gauge pump shotguns. Crouching beside the station wagon, Hernandez carefully examined the brush, and Amarilla the sugarcane field.

"Undocumented immigrants" sometimes vented their displeasure with Border Patrol agents' efficiency by ambushing Border Patrol vehicles.

Amarilla straightened up and continued looking.

After perhaps sixty seconds, he asked, "You hear anything?"

Hernandez shook his head, and stood erect.

"You think that's a wetback IED?" Amarilla asked.

Both men had done tours with their National Guard units in Iraq, and had experience with improvised explosive devices.

"It could be a fucking bomb, Guillermo."

"I don't see any wires," Amarilla said.

"You don't think a cell phone would work out here?"

Hernandez sought the answer to his own question by taking his cell phone out of his shirt pocket.

"Cell phones work out here," he announced.

"Maybe they left," Guillermo offered.

"And maybe they're waiting for us to get closer."

"Should I put a couple of loads in it and see what happens?"

"No. It could be full of cold beer. These fuckers would love to be able to tell the story of the dumb fucks from La Migra who shot up a cooler full of cerveza."

Guillermo took a closer look at the container.

"It's got signs on it," he said.

He reached into the station wagon and came out with a battered pair of binoculars.

After a moment, he said, "It says, 'Danger: Biological Hazard.' What the fuck?"

He handed the binoculars to Hernandez, who took a close look.

He exhaled audibly, then reached for his cell phone and hit a speed-dial number.

"Hernandez here," he said into it. "I need a supervisor out here, right now, at mile thirty-three."

There was a response, to which Hernandez responded, "I'll tell him when he gets here. Just get a supervisor out here, now." Ten minutes later, a Bell Ranger helicopter settled to the ground at mile thirty-three.

Two men got out. Both had wings pinned to their uniforms. One was a handsome man with a full head of gray hair and a neatly trimmed mustache. He had a gold oak leaf pinned to his uniform collar points. In the Army, it would be a major's insignia. Field Operations Supervisor Paul Peterson was known, more or less fondly, behind his back as "Our Gringo."

The second man, who had what would be an Army captain's "railroad tracks" pinned to his collar points, was Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Domingo Garcia. He was known behind his back as "Hard Ass."

Both men walked to Hernandez and Amarilla, who were leaning against their Jeep station wagon.

"What have you got?" Hard Ass inquired not very pleasantly.

Hernandez pointed to the obstruction in the road, then handed the binoculars to Peterson.

Peterson peered through them and studied the obstruction. After a long moment, he said, "What in the fuck is that?" [TWO] Ministro Pistarini International Airport Ezeiza Buenos Aires Province, Argentina 1135 5 February 2007 At the same moment that Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Domingo "Hard Ass" Garcia had put the binocs to his eyes-when it was 0835 in McAllen, Texas, it was 1135 in Buenos Aires-Roscoe J. Danton of The Washington Times-Post stepped off the ramp leading from Aerolineas Argentinas Flight 1007. As he entered the Ezeiza terminal proper, he thought for a moment that he had accidentally gone through the wrong door. He found himself in a large duty-free store, complete with three quite lovely young women handing out product-touting brochures.

"Clever," he said, admiringly and out loud.

Someone down here has figured out a good way to get the traveling public into the duty-free store: place the store as the only passage between the arriving passenger ramp and the terminal.

But screw them. I won't buy a thing.

He started walking through the store.

Fifty feet into it, though, he had a change of heart. He had come to a display of Johnnie Walker Black Label Scotch whisky, and remembered what he had learned as a Boy Scout: "Be Prepared."

Three boxes of his favorite intoxicant were cellophane-wrapped together and offered at a price he quickly computed to be about half of what he paid in Washington, D.C.

He picked up one of the packages and went through the exit cash register, charging his purchase to his-actually, The Washington Times-Post's-American Express corporate credit card. He examined his receipt carefully and was pleased. It read that he had charged $87.40 for unspecified merchandise in the store.

If it had said "three bottles Johnnie Walker Black Label Scotch," there would have been a note from Accounting reminding him that intoxicants could be charged to The Washington Times-Post only when connected to business entertaining, and as he had not identified on his expense report whom he had entertained, it was presumed that the whisky was for his personal consumption and therefore the $87.40 would be deducted from his next paycheck, and in the future, please do not charge personal items to the corporate credit card.

Accounting, he theorized, would probably give him the benefit of the doubt in this instance because it didn't say "whisky" and assume he had purchased, for example, items of personal hygiene, which were considered legitimate expenses when he was traveling.

Or maybe a battery for his-The Washington Times-Post's-laptop computer.

He would not lie on his expense account. But he would take full advantage of the provisions regarding business travel in his employment contract.

He was entitled, for example, to first-class accommodations on airliners when traveling outside the continental United States on a flight lasting six hours or longer. On flights under six hours in length-say, Washington-London-his contract provided for business class.

It was for that reason that he had traveled on Aerolineas Argentinas. When The Washington Times-Post Corporate Travel department had told him that only business class was available on Delta and American, he made them, per his contract, book him first-class seating on the Argentine carrier. His experience had taught him that once he accepted less than that to which he was entitled, the bastards in Corporate Travel henceforth would try to make it the rule.

Danton also was entitled by his contract, when on travel lasting more than twenty-four hours, to a hotel rated at four stars or better and, therein, a two-room suite rather than a simple room.

In the case of this trip, Corporate Travel had suggested they make a reservation for a two-room suite for him at the four-star-rated Plaza Hotel in Buenos Aires. The Plaza wasn't a five-star hotel but boasted that it contained the oldest restaurant in Buenos Aires, a world-famous bar, and was directly across Plaza San Martin from the Argentine foreign ministry. To Danton, that suggested that it wasn't going to be the Argentine version of a Marriott, and he had accepted Corporate Travel's recommendation.

Carrying the Johnnie Walker, he went through the immigration checkpoint without any trouble. His luggage, however, took so long to appear on the carousel that he became genuinely worried that it had been sent to Havana or Moscow. But it did finally show up, and he changed his suspicions toward the officers of the Transportation Security Administration back in Miami, who were, he thought, entirely capable of putting some clever chalk mark on his luggage signaling everyone in the know that it belonged to an "uncooperative traveler" and, if it couldn't be redirected to Moscow or Havana, then to the absolute end of whatever line it was in.

When the customs officials sifted through his suitcase and laptop briefcase with great care-and especially when they asked him if he was sure he was not trying to carry into the Republica Argentina more than ten thousand U.S. dollars in cash or negotiable securities or any amount of controlled substances-he was sure he saw the stealthy hand of the TSA at work.

Corporate Travel had told him that he should take a remise rather than a taxi from the airport to his hotel, explaining that Buenos Aires taxis were small and uncomfortable, and their drivers well-known for their skilled chicanery when dealing with foreigners. Remises, Travel had told him, which cost a little more, were private cars pressed into part-time service by their owners, who were more often than not the drivers. They could be hired only through an agent, who had kiosks in the terminal lobby.

The remise in which Roscoe was driven from Ezeiza international airport to Plaza San Martin and the Plaza Hotel was old, but clean and well cared for. And the driver delivered a lecture on Buenos Aires en route.

When the remise door was opened by a doorman wearing a gray frock coat and a silk top hat, and two bellmen stood ready to handle the baggage, Roscoe was in such a good mood that he handed the remise driver his American Express card and he told him to add a twenty-percent tip to the bill. Ten percent was Roscoe's norm, even on The Washington Times-Post 's dime.

The driver asked if Roscoe could possibly pay in cash, preferably dollars, explaining that not only did American Express charge ten percent but also took two weeks or a month to pay up. He then showed Roscoe the English language Buenos Aires Herald, on the front page of which was the current exchange rate: one U.S. dollar was worth 3.8 pesos.

"If you give me a one-hundred-dollar bill, I'll give you three hundred and ninety pesos," the remise driver offered.

Roscoe handed him the bill, and the driver counted out three hundred and ninety pesos into his hand, mostly in small bills.

Roscoe then got rid of most of the small bills by counting out two hundred pesos-the agreed-upon price-into the driver's hand. The driver thanked him, shook his hand, and said he hoped el senor would have a good time in Argentina.

Roscoe liked what he saw of the lobby of the Plaza-lots of polished marble and shiny brass-and when he got to reception, a smiling desk clerk told him they had his reservation, and slid a registration card across the marble to him.

On the top of it was printed, WELCOME TO THE MARRIOTT PLAZA HOTEL.

Shit, a Marriott!

Corporate Travel's done it to me again!

Roscoe had hated the Marriott hotel chain since the night he had been asked to leave the bar in the Marriott Hotel next to the Washington Press Club after he complained that it was absurd for the bartender to have shut him off after only four drinks.

At the Plaza, though, he felt a lot better when the bellman took him to his suite. It was very nice, large, and well furnished. And he could see Plaza San Martin from its windows.

He took out the thick wad of pesos the remise driver had given him and decided that generosity now would result in good service later. He did some quick mental math and determined the peso equivalent of ten dollars, which came to thirty-eight pesos, rounded this figure upward, and handed the bellman forty pesos.

The bellman's face did not show much appreciation for his munificence.

Well, fuck you, Pedro! he thought as the bellman went out the door.

Ten bucks is a lot of money for carrying one small suitcase!

Roscoe then shaved, took a shower, and got dressed.

The clock radio beside the bed showed that it was just shy of two o'clock. As he set his wristwatch to the local time, he thought it was entirely likely that the U.S. embassy ran on an eight-to-four schedule, with an hour or so lunch break starting at noon, and with any luck he could see commercial attache Alexander B. Darby as soon as he could get to the embassy.

Miss Eleanor Dillworth had told him that Darby was another CIA Clandestine Service officer, a good guy, and if anybody could point him toward the shadowy and evil Colonel Castillo and his wicked companions, it was Darby.

Roscoe took out his laptop and opened it, intending to search the Internet for the address and telephone number of the U.S. embassy, Buenos Aires.

No sooner had he found the plug to connect with the Internet and had turned on the laptop than its screen flashed LOW BATTERY. He found the power cord and the electrical socket. His male plug did not match the two round holes in the electrical socket.

The concierge said he would send someone right up with an adapter plug.

Roscoe then tipped that bellman twenty pesos, thinking that the equivalent of five bucks was a more than generous reward for bringing an adapter worth no more than a buck.

This bellman, like the last one, did not seem at all overwhelmed by Roscoe's generosity.

Roscoe shook his head as he plugged in the adapter. Ninety seconds later, he had the embassy's address-Avenida Colombia 4300-and its telephone number, both of which he entered into his pocket organizer. "Embassy of the United States."

"Mr. Alexander B. Darby, please."

"There is no one here by that name, sir."

"He's the commercial counselor."

"There's no one here by that name, sir."

"Have you a press officer?"

"Yes, sir."

"May I speak with him, please?"

"It's a her, sir. Ms. Sylvia Grunblatt."

"Connect me with her, please."

"Ms. Grunblatt's line."

"Ms. Grunblatt, please. Roscoe-"

"Ms. Grunblatt's not available at the moment."

"When will she be available?"

"I'm afraid I don't know."

"May I leave a message?"

"Yes, of course."

"Please tell her Mr. Roscoe J. Danton of The Washington Times-Post is on his way to the embassy, and needs a few minutes of her valuable time. Got that?"

"Will you give it to me again, please? Slower?" [THREE] The Embassy of the United States of America Avenida Colombia 4300 Buenos Aires, Argentina 1410 5 February 2007 It was a ten-minute drive from the Plaza Hotel to the American embassy.

The taxicab meter showed that the ride had cost fifteen pesos. Roscoe dug out his wad of pesos, handed the driver a twenty-peso note, and waited for his change.

Five pesos is too much of a tip.

Two pesos ought to be more than enough.

The driver looked at the twenty and then up at Roscoe. When Roscoe didn't respond, the driver waved his fingers in a "give me more" gesture.

Roscoe pointed to the meter.

The cab driver said, "Argentine pesos."

He then pointed to the note Roscoe had given him, and said, "Uruguay pesos."

He then held up his index finger, and went on: "One Argentine peso is"-he held up all his fingers-"five Uruguay pesos. You pay with Uruguay pesos, is one hundred Uruguay pesos."

Roscoe looked at his stack of pesos. They were indeed Uruguayan pesos.

That miserable sonofabitch remise driver screwed me!

He counted the Uruguayan pesos he had left. He didn't have enough to make up the additional eighty pesos the cab driver was demanding.

He took a one-hundred-dollar bill from his wallet.

The cab driver examined it very, very carefully, and then first handed Roscoe his twenty-peso Uruguayan note, and then three one-hundred-peso Argentine notes. He stuck the American hundred in his pocket.

Roscoe was still examining the Argentine currency, trying to remember what that sonofabitch remise driver had told him was the exchange rate, when the cab driver took one of the Argentine hundred-peso bills back. He then pointed to the meter, and counted out eighty-five Argentine pesos and laid them in Roscoe's hand.

Roscoe then remembered the exchange rate. It was supposed to be 3.8 Argentine pesos to the dollar, not 3.0.

"Muchas gracias," the cab driver said, and drove off.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," Roscoe said as he began walking toward the small building guarding access to the embassy grounds. "My name is Roscoe Danton," he said to the rent-a-cop behind a thick glass window. "I'd like to see Mr. Alexander B. Darby, the commercial counselor."

"You got passport? American passport?" the rent-a-cop asked in a thick accent suggesting that he was not a fellow American.

Roscoe slid his passport through a slot below the window.

The rent-a-cop examined it carefully and then announced, "No Mr. Darby here."

"Then I'd like to see Miss-" What the fuck was her name? "-Miss Rosenblum. The press officer."

"No Miss Rosenblum. We got Miss Grunblatt, public affairs officer."

"Then her, please?"

"What your business with Miss Grunblatt?"

"I'm a journalist, a senior writer of The Washington Times-Post."

"You got papers?"

Have I got papers?

You can bet your fat Argentine ass, Pedro, that I have papers.

One at a time, Roscoe took them from his wallet. First he slid through the opening below the window his Pentagon press pass, then his State Department press pass, and finally-the ne plus ultra of all press credentials-his White House press pass.

They failed to dazzle the rent-a-cop, even after he had studied each intently. But finally he picked up a telephone receiver, spoke briefly into it-Roscoe could not hear what he was saying-and then hung up.

He signaled for Roscoe to go through a sturdy translucent glass door.

Roscoe signaled for the return of his passport and press passes.

The rent-a-cop shook his head and announced, "When you come out, you get back."

Roscoe considered offering the observation that at the Pentagon, the State Department, and the White House they just looked at press passes and gave them back, but in the end decided it would probably be counterproductive.

He went through the translucent door, on the other side of which were two more rent-a-cops behind a counter, and another sturdy glass door, this one transparent, and through which he could see neatly trimmed grass around a pathway leading to the embassy building itself.

It's just as unbelievably ugly as the embassy in London, Roscoe decided.

Obviously designed by the same dropout from the University of Southern Arkansas School of Bunker and Warehouse Architecture.

The door would not open.

Roscoe looked back at the rent-a-cops.

One of them was pointing to the counter. The other was pointing to a sign on the wall: