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“What do you mean, do with him?”
“You are going to tell him that Castillo is in Budapest?”
“I could tell Frank, but he would have to tell General Naylor, and General Naylor would naturally want to know how Lammelle, or the CIA, knows where Castillo is. The truthful answer to that would be that, courtesy of Aloysius Francis Casey, those people in Las Vegas are tracking Colonel Castillo through a GPS transmitter in his laptop. And we don’t want to reveal that, do we?”
“So Frank just sits at MacDill?”
“Unless McNab thinks he has found Castillo, and they all rush off to the wrong place to put them in the bag. You wouldn’t believe, Stan, how low our director of National Intelligence has sunk in the President’s esteem as a result of his wild-goose chase in Argentina. It would be unfortunate if Lammelle came to be known as a Wild-Goose Chaser in the mold of Ambassador Montvale, but that’s the way the ball just might bounce. If that should happen, of course, it would tend to eliminate Frank as a replacement for me when Clendennen gives Montvale the boot and I become the DNI. I would recommend you to replace me if it were not for your unfortunate tendency to mock my interest in Casey’s electronic toys.”
“I can reform, Jack.”
“You had fucking well better, Stan.”
[TWO]
Office of the Commanding General
United States Army Central Command
MacDill Air Force Base
&n
bsp; Tampa, Florida
1605 10 February 2007
“Vic needs a minute, General,” Command Sergeant Major Wes Suggins said from McNab’s door.
Naylor did not like the rapport that had developed almost immediately between his sergeant major and D’Allessando, but he both understood it—Sergeants major are in fact the backbone of the Army and that’s especially true with men like these two, who function at the highest levels of the service—and he knew that he couldn’t warn Suggins against D’Allessando, who was in fact at this moment not a trusted member of the team but the enemy.
He motioned for Suggins to admit D’Allessando, and called, “Come on in, Vic.”
“Afternoon, General,” D’Allessando said. “Call for you.”
He handed Naylor what looked like a BlackBerry but was in fact a CaseyBerry.
Naylor took it.
“General Naylor.”
“General McNab, General. And how are things on beautiful Tampa Bay this afternoon?”
The sonofabitch has this thing on LOUDSPEAKER.
And I will be damned if I will give him the satisfaction of knowing I don’t know how to turn it off.
“I’ve been wondering when we were going to hear from you, General,” Naylor said.
“I can understand that, General.”
“I’m a little surprised you didn’t call on a secure line.”
“This is about as secure a line as you can get, actually.”
“Have you found what you’re looking for?”
“I’m always looking for peace, love, and affluence, but I suspect you’re asking, ‘Did you find Charley?’”
