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“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll be in touch.”
“Yes, sir.”
McNab replaced the handset and closed the attaché case.
[TWO]
Apartment 606
The Watergate Apartments
2639 I Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C.
0935 12 April 2007
“I would much rather drip ice water in his ear,” Edgar Delchamps said as he stood beside the bed of Roscoe J. Danton. “But we’re a little pressed for time.”
He picked up the foot of Danton’s bed, raised it three feet, and dropped it.
“You sonsofbitches!” Mr. Danton said upon being roused from his slumber.
He sat up suddenly, and then pushed himself back against the headboard.
“Rise and shine, Roscoe,” David W. Yung, Jr., said.
“How the hell did you two get in here?” Danton demanded.
“And good morning to you, too, Roscoe,” Delchamps said.
“The door was open,” Yung said.
Mr. Danton’s door came equipped—in addition to the locking mechanism that came with the knob—with two dead bolts, b
oth of which Danton was sure he had set.
“How did you get through the lobby?” Danton challenged. “Or into the garage?”
“There didn’t seem to be anyone on duty,” Delchamps said. “Up and at ’em, Roscoe. Before we go out to Langley I want to pick up a little liquid courage at the Old Ebbitt Grill. They serve a magnificent Bloody Mary.”
“I’m not going out to Langley,” Roscoe said.
“And we have to talk about your million dollars,” Yung said.
Danton eyed Yung. What did he say?
Roscoe J. Danton was a little embarrassed to privately admit that he was more than a little afraid of both men. While he didn’t think David W. Yung, Jr., was capable of the sort of violence attributed to Edgar Delchamps, on the other hand, Yung’s peers—that was to say, others in Castillo’s Merry Band of Outlaws—called him Two-Gun, and Roscoe didn’t think they’d just plucked that out of thin air.
“Time, Roscoe, is of the essence,” Delchamps said. “Remember to wash behind your ears.”
Roscoe had some time—not much—to once again think his situation over during his ablutions.
He had come close to what President Clendennen derisively called “Castillo’s Merry Band of Outlaws” in the practice of his profession, which was to say running down a story. That was a bona fide journalistic accomplishment; he was the only journalist ever to do so, and Roscoe took some justifiable pride in his having done so.
Among other things, it had resulted in a page-one, above-the-fold story in The Washington Times-Post:BRILLIANT INTELLIGENCE COUP SEES MAJOR CHANGES IN WHITE HOUSE
