"I can think of two more people you could really use," Mrs. Forbison said.

"Who?"

"Tom, for one."

"I don't think that Tom would like taking orders from me," Castillo replied, "or that Hall would go along with that."

Mrs. Forbison seemed to be collecting her thoughts, and it was a moment before she responded.

"Charley," she said, "you need to learn to make better use of soft intel sources, and executive a.s.sistants such as myself are as good as it gets. Tom confided in me that he would really like to be in on this. Among your arguments for getting him-and there are many-is that you really need someone who knows his way around the dark alleys of federal law enforcement. He told me that, too."

Charley raised an eyebrow, both impressed at her ability to have her finger on the pulse of the department and disappointed in himself at having forgotten that she had her finger on said pulse. "Okay, I'll ask. I'd love to have Tom. And all Hall can say is no. Or probably 'h.e.l.l, no.'"

"Let me handle the boss," Mrs. Forbison said.

"Good luck. Who else?"

"Me."

Castillo looked at her in genuine surprise.

"Why would you want to do that?"

"Well, you know how busy I am here keeping the furniture polished against the remote possibility that the secretary will bring somebody here to dazzle him with his elegant official office. We both know-more important, the boss knows-that Mary-Ellen really runs things for him and that he doesn't need both of us doing the same thing."

Castillo smiled at her.

Mrs. Mary-Ellen Kensington, a GS-15 like Mrs. Agnes Forbison who also carried the t.i.tle of executive a.s.sistant to the secretary of Homeland Security, maintained Hall's small and unpretentious suite of offices in the Old Executive Office Building, near the White House. Hall spent most of his time there. He and the President were close personal friends, and the President liked to have him at hand when he wanted him.

"Mrs. Kellenhamp," Mrs. Forbison went on, "can supervise the furniture polishing as well as I can, and bringing her out here would also get her out of Mary-Ellen's hair."

Mrs. Louise Kellenhamp, a GS-13 who carried the t.i.tleof deputy executive a.s.sistant, worked in the OEOB performing mostly secretarial-type duties.

"You've given this some thought, haven't you?" Castillo asked.

"From the moment I realized the boss, whether he wanted to or not, was going to have to have his own intelligence people. And now that we have, thanks to the President, this 'clandestine and covert' Office of Organizational a.n.a.lysis hiding in the Department of Homeland Security, it seems to me that you're really going to need someone who knows her way around official Washington. And how to push paper around."

"What do we do with him?" Castillo asked, nodding toward Major H. Richard Miller, Jr. "Send him back to Walter Reed?"

"Eventually, he'll get out of that cast," Mrs. Forbison said. "And if he behaves himself, he can try to make himself useful around here until he does."

"G.o.d spare us all from conniving bureaucrats," Miller said piously.

"You know I'm right, Charley," Mrs. Forbison said.

"You think you can talk the boss into this?" Castillo said.

"Consider it done," she said. "The next time the subject comes up, act pleasantly surprised when the boss says 'I've had an idea, Charley, I'd like to run past you.'"

"Mrs. Forbison, you're marvelous," Castillo said.

"I know," she replied. "Now that that's settled, Chief, what's on our agenda this morning?"

"I brought a satellite radio, and an operator, from Fort Bragg. Like we did when we were hunting the stolen 727, the dish has to go on the roof, and the operator's going to need a place to live," Castillo said.

"d.i.c.k," Mrs. Forbison said, "if you'll take care of the operator, I'll deal with the building engineer. His delicate feelings were bruised the last time the chief put that thing on the roof."

"Yes, ma'am," Miller replied, smiling.

"And I need the pa.s.sports," Castillo said.

"They're on the way," Mrs. Forbison said. "Tom's handling that."

"And I have to call Amba.s.sador Silvio or Alex Darby-preferably both-on a secure line." He looked at Miller. "McNab is sending equipment for six shooters down there. I want to make sure it doesn't get lost."

"You'll have to use the one on my desk for that," Mrs. Forbison said. "I ordered one for you this morning, but it won't be in until later today."

"You ordered one for me?" Castillo asked, surprised.

"You're now on the White House circuit, didn't you know?"

"No, ma'am, I didn't."

"Well, you are. Anything else?"

"We'll need someplace to stay in Paris. The Crillon, if we can get in."

"Fancy," Mrs. Forbison said.

"And right next door to the emba.s.sy. Have them bill it to Gossinger. Four rooms."

"Let's talk about that," Mrs. Forbison said. "You, I can put on orders. The colonel, presumably, is already on orders?"

"Yes, ma'am," Colonel Torine said.

"But what about the other operator and Fernando?"

"I'll pick up the bill for the operator," Castillo said. "Then he can pocket the per diem check he gets from Fort Bragg. And I'll pick up Fernando's bill, too."

"If we hire him as a temporary contract employee . . . maybe as an aircraft pilot . . . I can cut orders on him, too."

"Mrs. Forbison, at the risk of repeating myself, you're wonderful," Castillo said.

"At the risk of repeating myself, Chief, I know. But you're going to have to start calling me Agnes."

He looked at her but didn't immediately reply.

"Please don't tell me-I already know-that I'm nearly nearly old enough to be your mother. But you have just become a bureaucratic heavy, Chief, and bureaucratic heavies call their executive a.s.sistants by their first names." old enough to be your mother. But you have just become a bureaucratic heavy, Chief, and bureaucratic heavies call their executive a.s.sistants by their first names."

"Whatever you say . . . Agnes," Castillo said, and then asked, "What do I do about Secretary Hall?"

"He said that he'd like you, if possible, to come by the OEOB before you leave."

"I'll do it."

Thirty minutes later, after having spoken with both Amba.s.sador Silvio and Alex Darby; after being informed that the Hotel Crillon would be expecting all of them; after having received his new American pa.s.sport and his German pa.s.sport now bearing a departure stamp from the Republic of Argentina; and after having talked to Tom McGuire long enough to be convinced that McGuire really wanted to become a member of the Office of Organizational a.n.a.lysis and was going to have no problems working under a man ten years his junior, Castillo shook hands with d.i.c.k Miller and then went to Mrs. Forbison's office to say goodbye to her.

She gave him a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek and told him to be careful. He and Torine and Fernando were waiting for the elevator when Mrs. Forbison put her head in the corridor.

"Call for you, Chief."

"If you keep calling me chief, we're back to Mrs. Forbison. Who is it?"

"Somebody who wants to talk about Jean-Paul."

"Jean-Paul Lorimer?"

"All he said was Jean-Paul, Charley."

Castillo went into Mrs. Forbison's office and picked up the telephone.

"Castillo."

"You'll have to remember to turn your cellular on," Howard Kennedy said.

"Jesus, it's in my briefcase."

"Then it wouldn't matter, would it, if it's on or off?"

"What's up, Howard?"

"You have really opened a can of truly poisonous worms with that pal of yours, the one you asked me to find."

"What kind of poisonous worms?"

"The kind I have been absolutely forbidden to talk about on the telephone," Kennedy said.

"That bad?"

"Worse than that bad. Where can we meet?"

"Where are you?"

"Answer the question."

"As soon as I can go by the hotel and pack some clothes, and after a stop at Hall's coffee shop on Pennsylvania Avenue, I'm going to get on an airplane for Paris."

"What flight?"

"Air San Antonio, flight seventeen."

"Oh, really? Anybody I know coming with you?"

"The same crew we had in Cozumel. You know both of them."

"Interesting. And where will you be staying in Paris?"

"The Crillon."

"Lovely hotel. Unfortunately, too close for me to some former a.s.sociates of mine who work close by."

Christ, I forgot to tell, or remind, Tom McGuire to find out what Special Agent Yung of the FBI is really doing in Montevideo! Castillo thought, then said, "What do you suggest?" Castillo thought, then said, "What do you suggest?"

"When did you say you're leaving?"

"As soon as we can."

"You can't make it nonstop in that airplane, can you?"

"No. We're going to have to refuel at Gander, Newfoundland, and Shannon, Ireland. I figure it's going to take us, factoring in two one-hour fuel stops, about ten hours."

"Well, it's nearly half past four in Paris," Kennedy said. "If you get off the ground in an hour, that would make it half past five. Five plus ten is three o'clock in the morning. Figure another hour at least to get through customs and immigration, to get to the Crillon from Le Bourget . . . Is that where you're headed, Le Bourget?"

"Yeah," Castillo said.

"It will be five o'clock when you get to the hotel from Le Bourget. Factor in another hour for delays, call it six. See you in the morning, Charley. We really do need to talk."

There was a change in the background noise, and Castillo realized that Kennedy had hung up.

[TWO].

Old Executive Office Building Seventeenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, D.C. 1120 26 July 2005 "The President told me you'd had a little chat," the Honorable Matthew Hall, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said. "You have any questions about that?"

"One big one," Castillo replied. "The soldier in me is uncomfortable not understanding my chain of command."

"The simple answer to that is that you answer to the President directly," Hall said. "But I think I know what you're asking. And proving that I'm learning to be a Washington bureaucrat, let me answer obliquely. When he came up with that finding, I wondered why I had been taken out of the loop. Then I realized I had not been. It all goes to deniability. I can now honestly answer, if someone asks, and someone inevitably will, either as a shot-in-the-dark fishing expedition or because this comes out, what's my relationship to you, that we have none. You don't work for me.

"Similarly, if someone asks the President's chief of staff what he knows about C. G. Castillo or the Office of Organizational a.n.a.lysis, he can honestly say he doesn't know anything about it. If we get caught-which is a real possibility-we can hide behind the President's finding.

"The further you distance the Office of Organizational a.n.a.lysis from the President, the better. That's why he's hiding it in Homeland Security. As far as you working for him directly, there's a lot of captains through colonels-the aides, the guys who carry the football, for example-who work for him directly, and if some enterprising reporter sniffs you out, you can answer the same way they are instructed to. 'Sorry, my duties in the White House are cla.s.sified. You'll have to ask the White House.' Still with me?"

"Sir, what I was really asking was how much of what I'm doing do I tell him. Or you."

"As far as 'or me' is concerned: Whatever you tell me I will tell the President when I think I should when I think I should, and only then and only then. The President is not interested in the means, just the end. That's what puts me back in the loop. I will tell him only those things which may require some action on his part-I'm thinking of 'h.e.l.l no, we can't do that; tell him to stop.'" He paused, then asked, "You understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"Okay. Now is there anything you need?"