Black Ops

to.

On Castillo’s part this meant it was frequently necessary to remind the director of National Intelligence of the great difference between Castillo telling Montvale about taking some action and Castillo asking Montvale’s permission—or even Montvale’s advice—about taking some action.

“No, sir. It doesn’t ring a bell. Who is he?”

There was a perceptible pause before Montvale replied: “Kuhl was a deep-cover CIA asset in Vienna and elsewhere in that part of the world.”

“Past tense?”

“I was informed an hour or so ago that he and his wife were found garroted to death behind the Johann Strauss statue in the Stadtpark in Vienna yesterday.”

“They know who did it?”

“I was hoping you might be able to offer a suggestion. I seem to recall that you have some experience with people who are garroted to death.”

“Sorry. I never heard of him.”

There was a moment’s silence while Montvale considered that, then he abruptly changed the subject: “What’s on your mind, Castillo?”

“I’m going to Germany in the morning.”

“Is that so? And are you going to share with me why?”

“Otto Gorner called a few minutes ago to tell me that a Tages Zeitung reporter was found murdered in interesting circumstances.”

“How interesting?”

“The body was mutilated. First, Otto thinks, to make it look as if it was a homosexual lovers’ quarrel— multiple stab wounds.”

“And second?”

“One of the victim’s eyes was cut out.”

“Suggesting the message ‘This is what happens when you look at something you shouldn’t’?”

“That’s what Mr. Delchamps suggests. It follows, as Otto says this reporter was working on the oil-for-food scheme.”

“And your—our—interest in this tragic event, Colonel?”

“Eric Kocian insists on going to the funeral. The man was an old friend of his.”

“He can’t be dissuaded?”

“Not a chance.”

“How hard did you try?”

“Not at all. It would have been a waste of time.”

“The President happened to mention at dinner that he hadn’t seen you since he visited you at Walter Reed, and perhaps there would be a chance to do so over the next few days. What am I supposed to tell him?”

“That in keeping with the accord between us, I told you where I was going and why.”

“How much is this going to delay the investigation?”

“It might speed it up.”

“You need anything, Charley?”

“Can’t think of a thing.”

“Keep in touch,” Montvale said, and broke the connection.

“Anything else, Colonel?” the pleasant young female White House operator’s voice asked.

“That’ll do it. Thanks very much. And Merry Christmas.”

“You, too, Colonel.”

Castillo put the handset back in its cradle and thought hard about what else he had to do.

After a long moment he decided that he had done everything necessary, and that it was highly unlikely that anything else was going to come up and interfere with their Christmas dinner.

That carefully considered prediction proved false about seventeen minutes later, when the cellular in his trousers pocket vibrated against his leg while his grandmother was invoking the Lord’s blessing on all those gathered at the table.

He of course could not answer it while his grandmother was praying.

Sixty seconds later, the White House phone buzzed imperiously. One of the Secret Service agents quickly rose from the table to answer it.

Thirty seconds after that, surprising Castillo not at all, the agent reappeared and mimed that the call was for Castillo.

Dona Alicia looked at him as he rose from the table. He wasn’t sure if she was annoyed or felt sorry for him.

The legend on the small LCD screen next to the telephone read: SECURE JOEL ISAACSON SECURE.

Castillo picked up the handset, said “C. G. Castillo,” waited for the voice recognition circuitry to kick in, then said, “What’s up, Joel?”

Joel Isaacson was the Secret Service supervisory special agent in charge of the protection detail for Homeland Security Secretary Matt Hall. But the tall, slim, forty-year-old Isaacson, who had once been number two on the presidential detail, was de facto more than that.

In the reorganization after 9/11, the Secret Service, which had been under the Treasury Department, was transferred to the newly formed Department of Homeland Security.

The chief of the Secret Service had assigned two old and trusted pals, Supervisory Special Agents Joel Isaacson and Tom McGuire, to the secretary’s protection detail. It was understood between them that their mission was as much to protect the Secret Service from its new boss—new brooms have been known to sweep out the good and keep the garbage—as it was to protect him from Islamic lunatics.

It had worked out well from the beginning. The secretary quickly learned that if he wanted something from the Secret Service—about whose operations he knew virtually nothing—Isaacson or McGuire could get it for him. Similarly, the chief of the Secret Service quickly learned that if he wanted something from the secretary, it was better and quicker to make the request of McGuire or Isaacson than directly of the secretary, who made no decisions involving the Secret Service without getting the opinion of one or the other.

And then when the President issued the Finding setting up the Office of Organizational Analysis—which in the chief of the Secret Service’s very private opinion was not one of his wiser decisions—Tom McGuire was one of the first people assigned to it. The chief did not entirely trust Isaacson’s and McGuire’s opinion that despite his youth, junior rank, and reputation, Major C. G. Castillo was just the guy to run what the chief very privately thought of as the President’s Own CIA/FBI/Delta Force.

The assignment of McGuire to OOA left Isaacson as the chief’s conduit to the secretary, and that was just fine. But he worried about Tom McGuire getting burned when someone burned the OOA, which seemed to the chief to be inevitable.

My God, that crazy Green Beret launched an invasion of Paraguay to rescue a DEA agent the druggies had kidnapped.

That the mission had succeeded did not, in the chief’s opinion, mean the operation was not as lunatic an operation as he had ever heard of, and he’d been around the Secret Service for a long time.

“Jack Britton and his wife are on their way out there, Charley,” Joel Isaacson announced without any preliminaries. “I need you to talk to him. Okay? As a favor to me?”

“Talk to him about what?” Castillo replied, and then: “And his wife?”

“They had to take him off the Vice President’s protection detail. And he’s pretty annoyed.”

“What did he do to get canned?”

“Somebody, most likely those AALs in Philadelphia, tried to take out him, and his wife, yesterday afternoon.”

“Is he all right?”

“They weren’t hit, but the supervisor in Philadelphia told me he counted sixteen bullet holes in Britton’s new