W Griffin - Hunters

"Jesus Christ, Agnes!" C. G. Castillo said.

"You like?"

"I don't know what the hell to say," Castillo said. "What am I supposed to do with all this?"

The tour had been of the suite of offices newly assigned to the Office of Organizational Analysis of the Department of Homeland Security in the Nebraska Avenue Complex, which is just off Ward Circle in the northwest section of the District of Columbia. The complex had once belonged to the Navy, but it had been turned over in 2004 by an act of Congress to the Department of Homeland Security when that agency had been formed after 9/11.

"You need it now," she said. "And the way things are going, I don't think it will be long before we'll be cramped in here." Until very recently, Mr. Forbison had been one of the two executive assistants to Secretary of Homeland Security Matt Hall. When the Office of Organizational Analysis had been formed within the Department of Homeland Security, Mr. Forbison had been-at her request-assigned to it.

She had known from the beginning that the Office of Organizational Analysis had nothing to do with organizational analysis and very little to do with the Department of Homeland Security. Secretary Hall had shown her the Top Secret Presidential Finding the day after it had been issued.

Agnes, who had been around Washington a long time, had suspected that Secretary Hall was going to have to have an in-house intelligence organization-Homeland Security was the only department that didn't have one-if for no other reason than to do a better job than she and her staff were capable of doing, sorting through the daily flood of intelligence received from the entire intelligence community.

And she had suspected, when the President had gone to Biloxi to meet the plane carrying the bodies of Masterson and the sergeant and given his speech-"…to those who committed the cowardly murders of these two good men, I say to you that this outrage will not go unpunished…"-that Charley Castillo was going to be involved in that punishment. He not only had found the stolen 727 when the entire intelligence community couldn't, but had stolen it back from the terrorists.

It would have been in character for the President to send Charley off as his agent to find the people who had killed Masterson and the sergeant, much as he'd sent him off to locate the stolen 727.

But she hadn't expected the Presidential Finding. With a stroke of his pen-actually, the secretary of state's pen-the President had given Castillo a blank check to do anything he thought he had to do "to render harmless" the people responsible for the murders. And he had to answer to the President alone, not even Secretary Hall. And the Finding had given him an organization to do it with.

When Secretary Hall had shown her the Finding, she'd read it, then handed it back and said, "Wow!"

"You don't think he's up to it?" Hall had asked.

"I think he can handle the terrorists, but I'm not so sure about Washington," she said. "Top Secret Presidential or not, this is going to get out, and as soon as it does so do the long knives. The FBI and the CIA are going to have a fit when they hear about this. And Montvale-especially Montvale-he is not going to like this at all."

"Would you, if you were the ambassador? He's supposed to be in charge of all intelligence and the President makes an exception-for a young major answerable only to him?"

"Montvale can take care of himself," she said. "It's Charley I'm worried about."

"You think he needs some mentor, wise in the ways of Washington back-stabbing? Like you, for example?"

"Like you, of course," she said. "But, yeah, like me, too."

"Then you would not consider being transferred to the Office of Organizational Analysis as, say, deputy chief for administration, as an indication that I was less than satisfied with your performance of your duties and, since I couldn't fire you, promoted you out?"

"That has a nice ring to it, 'Deputy Chief for Administration, '" Agnes said.

"Then, since I have no authority over this new organization-or him-I will suggest that to Charley." Agnes now said to Castillo, "What I did, boss-"

"I'd rather be called Charley," Castillo said.

"I'd rather be called 'My Beauty, ' 'My Adored One, ' but this isn't the place for that. This is where the boss gets called 'boss' or 'sir.' Your choice."

"Okay, okay."

"What I did, boss, was move everybody off the floor but the secretary's office. And since he uses that for about twenty minutes once a month, that means there will not be a stream of curious people getting off the elevator. I'm also having the engineer put in one of those credit-card-swipe gadgets in the lobby and in the garage, for what will be our elevator. When he gets that in, he'll rig the other elevators so they can't come up here."

"You're amazing," Charley said.

"And, as we speak, they're putting in additional secure telephones. You and Dick and I will have our own, of course, and so will Tom McGuire. And there will be one in the conference room. I told our new liaison officer, Mr. Ellsworth, that I will get him one just as soon as I can. No telling how long that will take."

"What do you think of Mr. Ellsworth?"

"He's smart, tough, and experienced, which is to be expected of someone who has worked for Ambassador Montvale for a longtime."

Miller snorted.

"Why am I not surprised?" Castillo asked.

"And he requests an audience with you, boss, as soon as you can fit him in."

"Can I stall him for today? I'm going to Europe-Paris, Fulda, and Budapest, and maybe Vienna-tomorrow. Maybe by the time I get back, I'll have thought of some clever way to send him back to Montvale."

"I can stall him," she said. "But not indefinitely. How long will you be gone?"

"Just a couple of days. I'd go right now, but I have to talk to Hall. He sent for me, but he won't be back until late this afternoon." He paused. "The silver lining in that black cloud is that maybe I can talk to him about this Mr. Ellsworth."

"Charley," Agnes said, hesitantly, and then went on: "Charley, you're going to have to understand that you don't work for Matt Hall any longer."

"If Matt Hall says he wants to see me, he will see me standing there at attention."

"That's your choice. But you don't have to. And the black lining in that silver cloud is that it wouldn't really be fair of you to ask Hall to fight your battles with Montvale. Since he no longer has authority over you, he has no responsibility for you."

"She's right, Charley," Miller said. "Like I said, get used to being a hotshot, hotshot."

"Oh, Jesus," Castillo said.

"And you're going to have to get used to, as of yesterday, playing that role," Agnes said. "That's the reason for the fancy office and the Secret Service Yukon. Those are D.C. status symbols, Charley. Middle-level bureaucrats get a parking space with their name on it. One step up from that is getting to ride around town in a government car, but not back and forth to work. One up from that is having a Yukon but your people drive it, not the Secret Service. At the top of the heap is a Secret Service Yukon at your beck and call. That's why Tom McGuire set that up. He knows how the game is played and you better learn quick."

Castillo shook his head, then asked, "Where is Tom?"

There was no time for a reply. There was a tinkling sound and a red light on the red telephone began to flash.

"That one you answer yourself," Agnes said.

Castillo walked over to the huge desk and picked up the telephone.

"Castillo."

"Natalie Cohen, Charley."

"Good morning, Madam Secretary."

"I just got off the phone with Ambassador Lorimer," she said. "I called Mr. Masterson first and told him that Mr. Lorimer had been found, and the circumstances, and asked how a call from me would be received."