W. Griffin - Covert Warriors

“The FBI took pictures of people at the wake? What the hell’s that all about?”

“The President ordered it. Schmidt is to identify everyone who was in the hotel-emphasis on the guys from Bragg-down to name, rank, serial number, and organization, and deliver same-with their pictures-to the President. Personally. And to tell no one.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but the last time I heard, being at a private party is not against the law.”

“I don’t know what Clendennen is up to, Charley. The point here, I think, the reason Schmidt came to me, was not to get me to identify anybody, but to let me know what the President had ordered him to do. Follow?”

Castillo thought a moment, and then said, “I have never been able to really figure Schmidt out.”

“He wanted me to know about this nutty order, but he didn’t want to tell me. Anyway, I identified you and Torine and Miller and other people I would be expected to know, but I couldn’t seem to recognize any of the Gray Fox or Delta guys.”

“It just occurred to me that Clendennen will now have an unclassified box of pictures of about a third of the guys in the Stockade. I don’t like that.”

“If you can figure it out, let me know. But, speaking of pictures-this is the real reason I called-there is a new senior cultural affairs officer at the embassy of the Russian Federation in Bogota. His name is Valentin Komarovski.”

“Oh?”

“The reason they’re calling him the senior cultural affairs guy is that he will supervise their cultural affairs guys in Venezuela, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala.”

“So who is he really, Frank?”

“Sergei Murov. I believe you know him.”

“Are you sure?”

“Senor Komarovski traveled to his new duty station via Havana, on Iberia, where his picture was taken by a disaffected Castroite and passed on to our guy in the Uruguayan embassy. Our guy wondered why a senior Russian dip didn’t travel Aeroflot to Miami, and make his connection there-catch the Colombian airline, Aero Republica-instead of waiting ten hours to catch the next Cubana flight to Bogota. Maybe he didn’t want to pass through Miami and be recognized?”

Castillo grunted.

Lammelle went on: “So by the time Senor Komarovski arrived in Bogota, our guy at the airport there had plenty of time to make sure the lighting was in place to take pictures of him arriving. The images were here minutes later, and one of the guys in the lab recognized him from Murov’s days as the rezident here. He brought the pics to me-‘Is that who I think it is?’

“Just to be sure, I ran them through the comparison lab. It’s Murov, all right, or the Russians are now cloning people. So you have your heads-up, Charley. I don’t think he likes you, and I know he doesn’t like your girlfriend.”

“I’m more worried, Frank, about the pictures of the guys from the Stockade getting out; I’d really hate to think I was responsible for that happening.”

“You can’t do anything about that, Charley. You can’t stop the President from doing anything he wants to with those pictures.”

“What the hell does he want them for? He’s too smart a politician to try to punish a bunch of soldiers for holding a wake for one of their own. He doesn’t want Roscoe going on Wolf News with a story like that.”

“I don’t think anyone knows what Clendennen will do next, or why,” Lammelle said. “But in this case, I think maybe he’ll show them to the secretary of Defense. Get Beiderman to lean on Naylor to get rid of McNab, who commands the people who (a) went to Arlington when he had made it clear he didn’t want that, and (b) insulted POTUS by walking out on his speech.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“A good deal POTUS does doesn’t make sense, if you think about it, Charley.”

Castillo didn’t reply.

“Well, as I said, you’ve got your heads-up about Murov. Stay in touch.”

“Whoa,” Castillo said. “Natalie Cohen told me she told you that you could have that Policia Federal Black Hawk that miraculously appeared on the dock at Norfolk.”

“Why do I think I’m not going to like what comes next?”

“Could you move it to a secure location-not too secure-in Texas? Near San Antone, maybe?”

“What are you planning, Charley?”

“At the moment, not a thing. But life is full of surprises, isn’t it? You never know what’s going to happen, do you?”

“Good-bye, Colonel Castillo, Retired. Nice talking to you.”

“I’ll take that as a yes. Thank you, Frank.”

“I’m beginning to understand why Clendennen wanted to load you on an Aeroflot flight to Moscow.”

The LED stopped flashing.

Hacienda Santa Maria Oaxaca Province, Mexico 1725 16 April 2007

The sprawling, red-tile-roofed house with a wide, shaded veranda all around it sat on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. A circular drive led to it from the acres of grapefruit trees running as far as the eye could see to the east.

The house was known as “Don Fernando’s House,” but the reference was to Don Fernando Lopez the Elder, rather than to the Don Fernando Lopez who now sat on the veranda facing away from the Pacific, holding a bottle of Dos Equis beer in his massive fist.

Beside him, on cushioned wicker couches and chairs, were his cousin, Carlos Castillo; Don Armando Medina, a swarthy, heavyset sixty-odd-year-old who was el jefe -“the boss” and general manager-of Hacienda Santa Maria; Sweaty; Stefan Koussevitzky; and Lester Bradley. They were all-except for Lester, who had a Coke-drinking wine, a Cabernet Sauvignon, from Bodegas San Felipe, which happened to be a subsidiary of Hacienda Santa Maria. Max lay beside Sweaty, gnawing on a grapefruit he held between his paws.

Fernando Lopez and Carlos Castillo were grandsons of Don Fernando Castillo, who had married Alicia Lopez. Hacienda Santa Maria had been her dowry. Don Fernando and Dona Alicia had had two children, Maria Elena, who had married Manuel Lopez-no relation-and Jorge Alejandro, who had been killed in the Vietnam War as a very young-nineteen years old-man.

Manuel and Maria Elena Lopez had three children: Fernando, Graciella, and Juanita.

Don Fernando Castillo had strained relations with the Lopez family, into which his daughter had married, but had been exceedingly fond of his grandson Fernando. He and Dona Alicia had agreed that on their deaths, Hacienda Santa Maria would go to Fernando, and everything else would be given to charity and the Alamo Foundation.

“I don’t want to spend all of eternity spinning in my grave thinking of the Lopez wetbacks squandering all our money,” he declared.

All of that had changed a quarter century before, when an Army officer, then-Major Allan B. Naylor, appeared in Dona Alicia’s office in the Alamo Foundation building with the photograph of a twelve-year-old blond, blue-eyed boy, and said there was good reason to believe he was the out-of-wedlock son of the late Warrant Officer Junior Grade Jorge Alejandro Castillo.

Don Fernando Castillo’s first reaction to this was that some Kraut Fraulein-Don Fernando had been Major F. J. Castillo of Combat Command A, 3rd Armored Division during World War II and had had some experience with Kraut Frauleins in the immediate postwar period-had learned who the Castillo family was, and intended, like the Lopez wetbacks, to get her hands into the Castillo cash box by passing off somebody else’s bastard son as the fruit of their Jorge’s loins.

Dona Alicia had had no such doubts. One look at the boy’s eyes had been enough to convince her that she was looking at a picture of her grandson. On hearing from Major Naylor that the boy’s mother was in the final stages of pancreatic cancer, she picked up the telephone and called Lemes Aviation, ordering them to ready the company Learjet so that she and Major Naylor could make the Pan American flight from New York to Frankfurt late that same afternoon.