W Griffin - Hunters

"We up?" he said into it, and, after there was a reply, he looked at Delchamps and said, "Listen to this, Ed."

He then pushed the speakerphone button and said, "Open it up."

A young man's voice, having made a fifty-four-thousand-mile trip through space, came over the speaker.

"Corporal Bradley speaking, sir."

"Good morning, Lester," Castillo said. "How long will it take you to get Mr. Sieno for me?"

"She's right here, Colonel. She just brought me my breakfast. Hold one, sir."

"Good morning, Colonel," Susanna Sieno said. "You made it there, I guess?"

"Good morning, Susanna," Castillo said. "I'm in my office and so is an old friend of yours. He'd like to say hello."

He extended the handset to Delchamps.

Delchamps, shaking his head, took it. "Hey, sweetie, how are you?"

"Oh, Ed, it's good to hear your voice…"

Castillo pushed the button that turned off the speakerphone function. "Pretty impressive," Delchamps said, ninety seconds later, after the connection was taken down. "What about the garbling?"

"We twenty-first-century spooks call that 'encryption,'" Castillo said. "This system uses a logarithm-ours alone-we think even NSA can't crack."

"Okay," Delchamps said. "I'll hang around long enough to see if I can do you any good. If I can't, I'm off to my vine-covered cottage by the side of the road. Deal?"

"Agnes, get Mr. Delchamps an American Express card," Castillo said. "And see that Gossinger Consultants, Inc., provides him with accommodations suitable for someone we really need."

"Why do I suspect that Gossinger Consultants, Inc., has some sort of connection with the Lorimer Benevolent and Charitable Trust you told me about?" When there was no immediate reply, Delchamps smiled, then asked, "What happens now?"

Castillo said, "The President, at the same meeting, called the director of the FBI and ordered him to send over a senior guy first thing this morning skilled in putting jigsaw puzzles like this one together. I think you'd better stick around and meet him, then get yourself settled in."

"Inspector Doherty is already here," Agnes said. "Shall I bring him in?"

"What was that name again?" Miller asked.

"Doherty," Agnes replied. "Inspector John J. Doherty."

"Oh, this should be interesting," Miller said.

"Meaning what?" Castillo asked.

"You don't remember him, Ace?" Miller asked.

Castillo shook his head.

Miller went on, "He's the guy they sent to you about the turned FBI agent-Whatshisname-Howard Kennedy, your Russian mafioso's pal. When he told you-some what peremptorily, I'll admit-that the FBI expected you to notify them immediately the moment you heard anything about either Pevsner or Kennedy or they contacted you in any way, you told him not to hold his breath."

"Christ, that's him? I forgotten his name, if I ever knew it."

"Well, there's a lot of Irishmen in the FBI," Miller said. "Maybe there's two or more inspectors named John J. Doherty, but I really don't think so."

"Show Inspector Doherty in please, Mr. Forbison," Castillo said. "And Dick, you can stop calling me Ace."

"You want me to get out of the way?" Delchamps asked.

"No. Stick around, please," Castillo said.

Inspector Doherty, unsmiling, came through the door sixty seconds later. He was a nondescript man in his late forties, wearing a single-breasted dark gray suit. He wore frameless glasses and his graying hair was cropped short.

Castillo thought, I didn't like this guy the first time I saw him and I don't like him now.

"Good morning, Inspector Doherty," Castillo said. "Thank you for being so prompt, and I'm sorry to have kept you waiting."

Doherty nodded but didn't speak.

"This is Mr. Forbison," Castillo said, "and Major Miller and Mr. Delchamps. These are the people you'll be primarily working with."

"Ambassador Montvale wasn't very clear about what I'm supposed to do," Doherty said.

"That's because you don't have the proper clearance," Castillo said. "I'm about to grant you that clearance. The classification is Top Secret Presidential. It deals with a Presidential Finding that charges me with locating and rendering harmless the people who murdered Mr. J. Winslow Masterson, of the State Department, and Sergeant Roger Markham, of the Marine Corps, and who kidnapped Mr. Masterson and wounded a Secret Service agent."

"What does 'rendering harmless' mean?" Doherty asked.

"Since there is little chance you will be involved in that, I don't think that you need to know how I interpret that," Castillo said. "What you do need to know is that from this moment, you will communicate to no one not cleared for this information-and that, of course, includes anyone in the FBI who is not specifically cleared for it-anything you hear, learn, conclude, or intuit about this operation."

"I don't like this at all, I guess you understand," Doherty said.

"You have two options, Mr. Doherty," Castillo said. "You can go back to the J. Edgar Hoover Building and tell them you're unwilling to take this assignment. You may not tell anyone there why you don't want to do it, what I have just told you, identify me or anyone else you have met here, or of course repeat that there is a Presidential Finding."

"There's been talk of a Finding, as you probably know."

"There's a lot of talk in Washington," Castillo said, evenly.

"What's my second option?"

"You can bring to this operation all the skills Director Schmidt told the President you have. I was there when he made that call. I want you to understand clearly, however, that once you become aware of the details we think you need to help sort everything out, you can't change your mind. If that happens, I'm going to give you an office where you can sit all day, read The Washington Post, and drink coffee, then send people home with you at night to make sure you don't see anybody you should not or make any unmonitored telephone calls, etcetera. That will last until we're finished, however long it takes."

Doherty looked at him coldly.

"You realize, Colonel, that I was an FBI agent when you were a cadet at West Point and I don't like being threatened like that."

"Mr. Delchamps here was a clandestine agent of the CIA when you were a bushy-tailed cadet at the FBI Academy. He's operating under the same rules. What's important, Mr. Doherty, is not how old I am but to whom the President has given the authority to execute the Finding. That's me, and if you can't live with that feel free to walk out right now."

They locked eyes for a moment.

"What's it going to be, Inspector?" Castillo asked. "In or out?"

After a long moment, Doherty said, "In with a caveat."

"Which is?"

"I will do nothing that violates the law."

"Well, I guess that means you're out," Castillo said. "I'll do whatever I have to do to carry out my orders and I can't promise that no laws will be broken."

Doherty exhaled audibly.

"You want to know what I'm thinking, Colonel?"

"Only if you want to tell me," Castillo said.

"That if I turn you down, they'll send you somebody else, and if he turns you down, somebody else. Until the bureau finally sends you someone who'll play by your rules."

"That sounds like a reasonable scenario," Castillo agreed.

"When I joined the bureau, I did so thinking that sooner or later I would have to put my life on the line. I was 'bushy-tailed' then, to use your expression, and had in mind bank robbers with tommy guns or Russian spies with poison and knives. It never entered my mind that I would be putting my life-my career-on the line for the bureau doing something like this."

He sighed.

"But if the President thinks this is so important, who am I to argue with that? And, being important to me, who's better qualified to keep the bureau from being mud-splattered with this operation than I am?"