Black Ops (Presidential Agent) Read online

  Proof that the system worked came twenty seconds later when a male voice answered, "Boy, it didn't take long for Munz to call you to tell you, did it, Charley?"

  "And a merry, merry Christmas to you, too, Tony. It didn't take Munz long to call me to tell me what?"

  "You haven't heard about your Irish pal Duffy?"

  "What about him?"

  "They tried to take him out about seven o'clock last night. He had his wife and kids with him. Out in Pilar. He's one pissed-off Irishman."

  "Anybody hurt?"

  "No. Thank God."

  "They get the people that did it?"

  "No. But this is not the time to be on the roads in a Ford F-150 pickup with a dented rear end. Duffy rammed his way through what was supposed to be a stop-and-shoot ambush. Every gendarme in Argentina is working Christmas looking for it."

  "Is Alfredo looking into who did it?"

  "I thought it was probably him on the phone just now."

  "Have him send what he finds out to Miller."

  "Done."

  "What I called about, Tony: You remember Jack Britton?"

  "Sure."

  "Party or parties unknown--probably those Muslims he was undercover with--tried to take him and his wife out yesterday afternoon."

  "Well, so long Protection Detail. Is he all right? His wife? Where are they going to send him? I could sure use him down here when they're through with him."

  "How about as soon as I can get them on a plane?"

  "That's a little unusual, isn't it?"

  "He said unkind things to the supervisory special agent in charge when he told him he was off the detail. Isaacson turned him over to me just before they were going to handcuff him. I need to put him on ice."

  "He told off the SAC? Good for him! I wish I had."

  Delchamps laughed.

  "Who was that?" Santini said.

  "Edgar Delchamps," Delchamps said. "Ace has you on speakerphone, Tony. We've got a whole host of folks at the Christmas dinner table working on this."

  "Glad to hear it," Santini said.

  "Why do you need Britton, Tony?" Castillo said.

  "I keep hearing things like there's a raghead connection with our friends in Asuncion that we didn't pick up on. He can pass himself off as a raghead, I seem to recall."

  "I don't want him going undercover."

  "Why not?"

  "Say, 'Yes, sir, Charley. I understand he's not to go undercover.' "

  "Yes, sir, Charley."

  Castillo thought he heard a mix of annoyance and sarcasm in the reply. He knew he saw gratitude in Sandra Britton's eyes.

  "Okay," he went on, "as soon as we have the schedule, we'll give you a heads-up. Put them in Nuestra Pequena Casa. If Munz wants to tell Duffy, fine. Otherwise, not. I have a gut feeling."

  "Yes, sir, Charley, sir."

  Castillo ignored that. He said, "Alex Darby presumably knows about Duffy?"

  "Yeah, sure. And anticipating your next question, Alex called Bob Howell in Montevideo so that he could give a heads-up to the China Post people sitting on the ambassador at Shangri-La. He told me that Munz had already called Ordonez to give him a heads-up. I'd say all the bases are pretty well covered. But what the hell's going on, Charley?"

  "I wish I knew. You'll be among the first to know if I ever find out. I'll be in touch, Tony. Take good care of the Brittons."

  "Anybody who says rude things to a SAC is my kind of guy, Charley. Try to stay out of trouble."

  Castillo broke the connection.

  He looked at Britton.

  "Masterson's mother and father--ambassador, retired--lost their home in New Orleans to Hurricane Katrina. They're now living on the estancia in Uruguay--Shangri-La--which he inherited from his late son, who was the bagman for the oil-for-food cesspool. I couldn't talk the ambassador out of it. And I really had a hard time getting him to agree to having four guys from China Post--even on our payroll, not that he couldn't have easily afforded paying them himself--to go down there to sit on him."

  " 'China Post'?" Mr. and Mrs. Britton asked in unison.

  "Some people think that Shanghai Post Number One (In Exile) of the American Legion," Davidson explained, "is sort of an employment agency for retired special operators seeking more or less honest employment."

  "What Santini just told me," Castillo said, "was that Alex Darby, the CIA station chief in Buenos Aires, has given Bob Howell, the station chief in Montevideo, a heads-up, and that Alfredo Munz, who works for us . . ."

  "Sort of the OOA station chief," Davidson injected drily.

  ". . . down there has given a heads-up to Chief Inspector Jose Ordonez of the Interior Police Division of the Policia Nacional del Uruguay," Castillo went on. "A really smart cop, even if he doesn't like me very much. One of the first things I want you to do down there is get with him. Bottom line, I think, as Santini said, we have all the bases covered down there."

  "Carlos," Dona Alicia said. "Did I understand correctly that another friend of yours has been attacked? He and his family?"

  He looked at her for a long moment before replying.

  "It looks that way, Abuela. But Liam Duffy is more a friend of Alfredo Munz than mine."

  "Just a coincidence, would you say, Karlchen?" Kocian asked. "Two such incidents on the same day?"

  Plus your friend, Billy. That makes three.

  And the deep-cover asset in Vienna makes four.

  Shit . . . five if you count his wife.

  Castillo said: "What Montvale described as a deep-cover asset in Vienna, a man named Kuhl and his wife--"

  "Kurt Kuhl?" Delchamps interrupted, and when Castillo nodded, he asked, "What the hell happened to him?"

  "Merry Christmas," Castillo said. "The Kuhls were found garroted to death behind the statue of Johann Strauss on the Ring in Vienna yesterday. You knew him?"

  "Yeah, I knew both of them well," Delchamps said.

  "You're talking about Kurt Kuhl who ran the chain of pastry shops?" Kocian asked, and looked at Delchamps.

  "I think it has to be him," Delchamps said. "Them."

  "Then so did I know them," Kocian said. "They were friends for many years." He paused, then asked incredulously, " 'Deep-cover asset'? You're not suggesting he had a connection with the CIA?"

  "For longer than our leader here is old," Delchamps said. "If there's going to be a star on the wall--and there should be two stars; Gertrud was as good as Kurt was--it should be studded with diamonds."

  "I don't understand," Dona Alicia said.

  "There's a wall in Langley, Dona Alicia, at the CIA headquarters, with stars to memorialize spooks who got unlucky."

  "I didn't know," she said softly.

  "Am I permitted to ask what Kurt and Gertrud did for the CIA?" Kocian asked.

  After a moment, Delchamps said, somewhat sadly: "Well, why not? They turned people, Billy. Or they set them up to be turned. . . ."

  "Turned?" Dona Alicia asked softly, as if she hated to interrupt but really wanted to know.

  "They made good guys out of bad guys, Abuela," Castillo said. "They got Russian intelligence people to come to our side."

  "And East Germans and Poles and Czechs and Hungarians," Delchamps said. "What I can't understand is why they were just killed. Excuse me, garroted."

  "Instead of 'interviewing them' at length?" Davidson asked. "Getting a list of names? Some of them, I'll bet, are still being worked."

  "A lot of them are still being worked," Delchamps said matter-of-factly. "I had three in Paris. One in the Bulgarian embassy and two in the Russian."

  "At the risk of sounding paranoid, I think there's a pattern to this," Castillo said.

  "Just because you're paranoid, Ace, doesn't mean that ugly little men from Mars--or from Pushkinskaya Square--aren't chasing you with evil intentions."

  That got some chuckles.

  "Pushkinskaya Square?" Dona Alicia asked.

  My God, Castillo thought. She's not just being polite; she's fascinated with this b
usiness.

  What kind of a man discusses multiple murders--or attempted murders--with his grandmother at the Christmas dinner table?

  "It's in Moscow, Dona Alicia," Delchamps explained. "It's famous for two things: a statue of Pushkin, the Russian poet, and an ugly building that's the headquarters of the SVR, which used to be the KGB."

  "Oh, yes," Dona Alicia said politely, then asked, "Does 'garroted' mean what I think it does?"

  "Why don't we change the subject?" Castillo said. "It's Christmas!"

  "Yes, dear," Dona Alicia said. "I agree. But I'm interested."

  "They put a thing around your neck, Dona Alicia," Delchamps said. "Sometimes plastic, sometimes metal. It causes strangulation. It was sort of the signature of the AVH, the Allamvedelmi Hatosag, Hungary's secret police. When they wanted it known they had taken somebody out, they used a metal garrote."

  "The sort of thing the Indian assassins, the thugs, used?"

  "So far as I know, they used a rope, a cord, with a ball on each end so that they could get a good grip. What the Hungarians used was sort of a metal version of the plastic handcuffs you see the cops use. Once it's in place, it's hard, impossible, to remove."

  Davidson saw Castillo glaring at Delchamps.

  "What kind of a garrote was used in Vienna, Charley?" Davidson asked innocently.

  Castillo moved his glare to Davidson.

  "How long does it take for someone to die when this happens to them?" Dona Alicia asked.

  McGuire saw the look on Castillo's face and took pity on him.

  "You think there's a pattern, Charley?" McGuire asked, moving the subject from people being garroted. "What kind?"

  Castillo shrugged. "All these hits were on the same day."

  "First," Delchamps went on, "the victim loses consciousness as oxygen to the brain is shut off. After that, it doesn't take long."

  "Is it very painful?" Dona Alicia said.

  "I would suppose it's damned uncomfortable," Delchamps answered. "But I would say it's more terrifying; you can't breathe."

  "How awful!" Dona Alicia said.

  Castillo's cellular rattled on the table as the vibration function announced an incoming call. He looked at the caller identity illuminated on its screen.

  "Quiet, please," he ordered, and pushed the SPEAKERPHONE button. "Homicide. Strangulation Division."

  "I don't suppose you know, Gringo, you wiseass, where Abuela might be?"

  "Abuela," Castillo said. "It's your other grandson. The fat one."

  "That's not kind, Carlos. Shame on you!" Dona Alicia said. "And Fernando, you know how I feel about you calling Carlos 'Gringo.' "

  "Abuela, you could have told me you were going there."

  "I didn't want to bother you, my darling. Merry Christmas!"

  "I was worried sick. There was no answer at the house. I was just about to get in the car and go over there."

  "Nobody answered the phone because I gave everybody the day off. Did you have a nice Christmas dinner?"

  "Very nice, thank you."

  "We had a wonderful dinner," she went on as others around the table exchanged grins. "Billy Kocian is here and he made some sort of Hungarian dessert with cherries, brandy, and brown sugar with whipped cream. It was marvelous! And now we're sitting around chatting. And having a little champagne, if it is the truth you really want. There's no cause for concern."

  "When do you want to come home?"

  "If it wasn't for Carlos going out of town tomorrow, I'd stay awhile. But sometime tomorrow, probably."

  "I'll come pick you up."

  "You're not thinking of coming here in the plane, Fernando?"

  "The plane" was the Bombardier/Learjet 45XR owned by the family company and piloted more often than not by one Fernando Lopez, the company's president and Castillo's cousin and Abuela's grandson.

  "Yes, I am, Abuela."

  "That's very kind, darling, but I know what it costs by the hour to fly the plane; and that there's no way that we can claim it as a business deduction and get away with it. I'm perfectly capable of getting on an airliner by myself. Now, get off the phone and enjoy your family at Christmas!"

  "Fernando?" Castillo called.

  "What?"

  "A penny saved is a penny earned. Try to keep that in mind while you're running our family business."

  "Gringo! You son--"

  " 'Bye, now, Fernando!" Castillo called cheerfully, and quickly broke the connection.

  "You were saying, Edgar," Dona Alicia said, "that being garroted is more frightening than painful?"

  [TWO]

  Signature Flight Support, Inc.

  Baltimore-Washington International Airport

  Baltimore, Maryland

  0725 26 December 2005

  Major (Retired) H. Richard Miller, Jr., chief of staff of the Office of Organizational Analysis, and Mrs. Agnes Forbison, the OOA's deputy chief for administration, were in the hangar when the convoy of four identical black GMC Yukon XLs drove in through a rear door and began to unload passengers and cargo.

  The first passenger to leap nimbly from a Yukon was Dona Alicia Castillo, who had been riding in the front passenger seat of what the Secret Service had been describing on their radio network as "Don Juan Two Four." That translated to mean the second of four vehicles in the Don Juan convoy. Don Juan was the code name of the senior person in the convoy.

  When the director of the Washington-area Secret Service communications network had been directed to add then-Major Castillo to his net, a code name had been required. For example, the secretary of Homeland Security, who was well over six feet and two hundred pounds, was code-named Big Boy, and the director of National Intelligence was Double Oh Seven. Having seen the dashing young Army officer around town--and taking note of the string of attractive females on his arm--the communications director had to think neither long nor hard before coming up with Don Juan.

  Dona Alicia walked quickly to Miller and kissed his cheek. She had known him since he and Castillo had been plebes at West Point.

  The second exitee--from Don Juan Four Four--was Max, closely followed by the Secret Service agent attached to him by a strong leash. Max towed the agent to the nose gear of a glistening white Gulfstream III, where he raised his right rear leg and left a large, liquid message for any other canines in the area that the Gulfstream was his.

  Gulfstream Three Seven Nine actually belonged to 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 honorary chairman of the board was Dona Alicia Castillo, whose president and chief executive officer was Fernando Lopez, and whose officers included Carlos Castillo.

  The Office of Organizational Analysis "dry leased" on an "as needed" basis the Gulfstream from Gossinger Consultants on an agreed price of so much per day, plus an additional amount per flight hour.

  OOA provided the crew and paid fuel, maintenance, insurance, and other costs, such as the hangar rent at Signature Flight Support. The Lorimer Charitable & Benevolent Fund reimbursed the OOA on a monthly basis for all of its aviation expenses involved with providing members of the LC&BF staff with the necessary transportation to carry out their charitable and benevolent duties.

  It was the perhaps immodest opinion of David W. Yung, Jr.--BA, Stanford University, and MBA, Harvard Business School, who enjoyed a splendid reputation within the FBI and the IRS of being an extraordinarily talented rooter-out of money laundering and other chicanery--that if anyone could work their way through this obfuscatory arrangement he had set up, they would have to be a hell of a lot smarter than he was.

  And there was little question in the minds of the cognoscenti that Two-Gun Yung was one smart character. It was he who had first found and then invisibly moved into the LC&BF account in the Riggs Bank in Washington a shade under forty-six million dollars of illicit oil-for-foo
d profits that Philip J. Kenyon III--chairman of the board, Kenyon Oil Refining and Brokerage Company, Midland, Texas--thought he secretly had squirreled away in the Caledonian Bank & Trust Limited in the Cayman Islands.

  That transaction was described, perhaps irreverently, by Edgar Delchamps as selling a slimeball a $46,000,000 Stay Out of Jail Card.

  Castillo, who had been riding in the front passenger seat of Don Juan Four Four, walked to Max at the nose of the Gulfstream.

  "Sit," he ordered sternly in Hungarian. "Stay!"

  Max complied.

  "Okay, Billy!" Castillo called, motioning with a wave of his arm.

  Eric Kocian got out of Don Juan Three Four. He removed Madchen--on a leash--and walked her to the rear of the Yukon. Edgar Delchamps and Sandor Tor next got out somewhat awkwardly, because they each held two of Madchen's pups, and also walked to the rear of the truck. By then the Secret Service driver had gotten out from behind the wheel, gone to the rear, and opened the door.

  He took out a folded travel kennel. He expanded it, but not without some difficulty that bordered on being comical to those who tried not to watch. The pups were placed in the travel kennel, and then, as Billy Kocian and Madchen watched warily, Sandor Tor and the Secret Service agent picked up the kennel and followed Delchamps to the stair door of the Gulfstream.

  Delchamps went up the stairs and into the plane, then turned so he could pull the kennel through the door.

  He swore in German.

  "I could have told you it wasn't going to fit through the door, sweetie," Jack Davidson called in a somewhat effeminate voice from near Don Juan One Four. "If you'd only asked! You never ask. You think you know everything!"

  Delchamps made an obscene gesture to Davidson, which Dona Alicia and Agnes Forbison, who by then had walked over to Castillo, pretended not to see.

  "What this reminds me of is sending Carlos and Fernando off to Boy Scout camp," Dona Alicia said.

  "Yeah," Agnes agreed.

  "You didn't have to come out here, Agnes," Castillo said.

  "No, I didn't," she said. "But I thought you might need a little walking-around money."

  She handed him a zippered cloth envelope marked RIGGS NATIONAL BANK. It appeared to be full.