W Griffin - Hunters

"When I sent the wine, I also sent a team of specialists from NSA to install microphones discreetly around the dining room, and to instruct Miller in their use."

My God, he's telling me he bugged Hall's private dining room!

What the hell for?

"Miller, at my orders, was waiting in your office for me when I arrived at the Nebraska Avenue Complex. Mr. Whelan was already in the dining room with Secretary Hall. I shall long remember Miller's response to my question, 'What would you say Mr. Whelan's frame of mind is?'

"Miller said, 'Mr. Ambassador, his face looks like he's happily looking forward to nailing all our nuts to the floor.'

"I then wheeled Miller, his knee again wrapped in far more white elastic gauze than was necessary, into the dining room. Whelan's eyes lit up. They lit up even more when I introduced Miller as your roommate in the Motel Monica Lewinsky.

"Mr. Whelan said, 'I'd like to hear about that. What happened to your knee, Major?'

"'In good time, Harry,' I said. 'I'll tell you everything. But first I'd like, and I'm sure Major Miller would like, one of those.'

"Mr. Whelan was drinking a vodka martini. A large one…"

I don't know where he's going with this, Castillo thought, but he loves telling the tale.

"…made with Polish hundred-twenty-proof spirits. The waiter promptly poured martinis for Miller and myself. Ours were one hundred percent ice water with a twist of lemon and two speared cocktail onions."

"You were trying to get him drunk?"

"Not drunk. Happy. One never knows what a drunk is liable to do," Montvale said.

"And did you get him happy?"

"Oh, yes. First, I complimented him on his piece about Senator Davis in yesterday's Post. The senator has been using an airplane just like yours, belonging to a corporation just awarded an enormous interstate highway construction contract, as if it were his own. That put Harry in a good mood.

"As did the first of what turned out to be three bottles of the Judge's Peak, consumed along with some Chilean oysters.

"And then we had our lunch, the grilled trout with beurre noir, washed down with more of the Chardonnay. By then, Mr. Whelan was telling us of his journalistic career, how he'd started out on a weekly and worked his way up through The Louisville Courier-Journal to the Post. It was a long story, and, fascinated with this tale of journalistic skill and prowess, I naturally kept asking him for amplification.

"Meanwhile, the wine was flowing, and there had not been a mention of Lieutenant Colonel C. G. Castillo."

"And this reporter didn't sense what was going on?"

"Eventually, he suspected he was being manipulated. Or he realized that he had been doing all the talking. In any event, he asked Miller, 'I asked before what happened to your leg and never got an answer.'

"To which I quickly responded, 'Major Miller suffered grievous wounds-he will shortly be retired-in Afghanistan. His helicopter was shot down.'

"Whelan jumped on that. 'So what's he doing here in this Office of Organizational Analysis? And, by the way, what is that? What does it do and for whom?' Etcetera. One question after another.

"I asked him if he had ever heard of the West Point Protective Association," Montvale went on. "To which he replied, 'Of course I have. What about it? What's Miller being protected from? And by whom?'

"At that point, I began to suspect I had him," Montvale said. "I told him that actually Miller was doing the protecting. That was why he was sharing the apartment at the Mayflower.

"To which Whelan replied something to the effect that we were now getting down to the nitty-gritty. What was Miller protecting you from?

"'From himself, I've very sorry to have to tell you,' I replied, and went on. 'Major Milleris assigned, pending his retirement, to the Detachment of Patients at Walter Reed. Now he goes there daily on an outpatient basis for treatment of his knee and his other wounds. When Miller heard that Major-now Lieutenant Colonel-Castillo was in trouble, he asked-unofficially, of course-if he could try to help him. They were classmates at West Point as well as comrades-in-arms in bitter combat. Permission was granted-unofficially, of course.'"

"You told this guy Miller is protecting me?" Castillo asked, incredulously. "From what?"

Montvale ignored the question.

"This announcement caused Whelan to quiver like a pointer on a quail," Montvale said. "He just knew he was onto something.

"'How is this Castillo in trouble?' Whelan asked. 'Something to do with his eleven-hundred-dollar-a-day love nest in the Motel Monica?'

"To which I replied," Montvale went on, "that I wasn't at all surprised that a veteran journalist like himself had found out about your suite in the Mayflower and that I therefore presumed he knew about your Gulfstream."

He told this reporter about the Gulfstream?

Where the hell is he going with this?

"Whelan said that he had heard something about it," Montvale continued, "although the look on his face more than strongly suggested this was news to him.

"I then told him I would fill him in on what few details he didn't know and told him that you had paid seven and a half million dollars for what I was very afraid he would be soon calling your flying love nest. And then I told him the last anyone heard from you, you had flown it to Budapest.

"I thought carefully about telling him about Budapest, but I decided that if I was wrong, and didn't have him in my pocket, and since you acquired it so recently he might find out about the flight there and ask questions. This way, I nipped those questions in the bud."

"I don't know what the hell to say," Castillo said.

"I'll tell you when I want a response from you, Colonel," Montvale said, evenly. "Right now, just listen. We don't have much time."

Much time? For what?

"Sorry, sir."

"So, predictably, Whelan says something to the effect that he hopes I am going to tell him where an Army officer was getting the money to live in the Mayflower and buy a Gulfstream.

"To which I replied something to the effect that I was going to tell him everything, not only because I knew he'd find out anyway, but also because I knew him well enough to trust his judgment, his decency, and his patriotism.

"At that moment, for a moment, I thought perhaps I had gone a bit too far. He was more than halfway into his cups, but, on the other hand, he didn't get where he is by being an utter fool.

"And sure enough, the next words out of his mouth are, 'Why do I think I'm being smoozed?'

"I didn't reply. Instead, I took your service-record jacket from my briefcase and laid it before him…"

My jacket? Where the hell did he get my jacket? They're supposed to be in the safe at Special Operations Command in Tampa where nobody gets to see them.

Montvale saw the look on Castillo's face, knew what it meant, and decided to explain.

"You asked a while back if General Naylor knew of the situation you'd gotten yourself in. He knew, of course, how you'd met Mr. Wilson in Angola and even of your unwise dalliance with her. Still, it required a good deal of persuasion on my part to bring him on board to agree this was the only possible way to deal with this situation and to authorize flying your records up here.

"But that, too, was a fortunate happenstance, because once I'd brought him on board he provided me with a number of very touching details of your life that proved to be quite valuable."

Very touching details? Oh, shit! What does that mean? "To go on: After first reminding Mr. Whelan that the Freedom of Information Act did not entitle him or anyone else to peruse your personal history data, I told him I was going to tell him everything about your distinguished record, which he could verify by checking the records I had just put into his hands."