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“Probably late into the night, sir. This is difficult to do—
“No. Chief Inspector Kramer made it pretty clear that Dick would do much better at this than me. Dick’s black.
“No, sir. I’m not really needed for this—
“Fort Bragg? What for?—
“Yes, sir. I don’t know how long it will take me to get there. Probably Philly-Atlanta-Fayetteville. I’ll call you—
“What time will it get to Philly, sir?—
“It’ll take me that long to pack and get out to the airport, sir—
“Yes, sir. Mr. Secretary, could I stay here until Dick finishes doing what he’s doing? Maybe he’ll come up with something—
“Yes, there is the telephone, sir. But it’s not secure. And I really hate to just leave Dick—
“Yes, sir. I understand. Secretary Beiderman’s now in the loop, is he?—
“Yes, sir. I’ll call you when I get there. If Dick comes up with something while I’m in the air—
“Yes, sir. I understand.”
As Castillo put his cellular into his pocket, he realized that Betty Schneider had pulled the BMW to the curb and stopped.
She was looking at him.
“The secretary of defense now knows what’s going on,” Castillo said, “and thinks I should go to Fort Bragg to meet with General McNab. So I’m going to Fort Bragg. Right now. My boss has sent his plane here to pick me up.”
“Dick will be all right, Charley,” Betty said. “We have him pretty well covered. The risk is really to the undercover cops.”
“Yeah,” he said.
“You really are worried about him, aren’t you? I would have thought . . .”
“What?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Macho stuff. Green Berets can do anything. But you really care.”
“Dick and I go back a long way. And he doesn’t have any experience with anything like this.”
“And you’ve always taken care of him, right?”
“Meaning what?”
“His mother told me what you did in Afghanistan. No wonder she hugged you the way she did.”
Castillo met her eyes for a moment.
“Can you take me someplace where I can catch a cab?”
“I can do better than that,” she said and took out her cellular and punched an autodial key.
“Tom, I need to transport our guest first to the Warwick and then to the airport. And right now.”
She looked at Castillo.
“My big brother,” she said.
