“So I called her, and she hadn’t been invited.
“So I spent the next hour or so on the telephone, setting things up. Jake Torine and Dick Miller, who are almost as pissed about this as I am, have been flying around the country picking up people who want-and have every right-to watch Danny get his military funeral. The guys-and several women-are scattered between here and the Willard.
“Mrs. Ferris and their kids are also in the Willard, about to get in the limousine that will take them out to Arlington. After the interment, they’ll come here. We’re going to have a few drinks, and then, later, dinner.
“So, Madam Secretary, as much as I really hate to tell you no to anything you ask of me, I’m going to be at Arlington when Danny’s buried.”
“I’ll have you stopped at the gate to Arlington,” Montvale said.
“Shut up, Charles,” Secretary Cohen said. She looked thoughtful for a moment, then said, “I think it’s possible that Mr. McCarthy may have considered the possibility that there are some people the President would rather not come to Arlington. .”
“That would be another great story for Wolf News and The Washington Times-Post,” Castillo said. “‘Brawl Mars Funeral at Gate to Arlington.’ Some enterprising journalist might even dig into what it was all about.”
“How are you going to move your friends out there?” she asked.
“We have four stretch limousines,” Castillo replied. “In case some other friends of Danny show up out there and need a ride back here.”
“And you’re paying for all this?” she asked. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked that.”
“The LCBF Corporation is paying for everything. We just turned a tidy profit selling an airplane we got for a bargain to the CIA for a lot of money.”
She smiled at him.
“May I ask you a question I probably shouldn’t ask?” Castillo asked.
She nodded.
“What ever happened to that Mexican police Black Hawk that was ‘found at sea’ and then unloaded on the dock at Norfolk? Dare I hope you showed it to the Mexican ambassador and asked him how he thought it got there?”
She shook her head.
“You know I couldn’t do anything like that, Charley,” she said.
“So what happened to it?”
“That’s not any of your business, and you know it.”
“But you’re going to tell me anyway, right? Is it still there?”
“Frank Lammelle wanted it for the CIA. I okayed it, but I don’t know whether he’s done anything about it. It’s probably still covered up on the dock or in a hangar somewhere.” She paused, then asked, “Charley, did you ever consider the consequences if you had been caught stealing that helicopter from the Mexican police?”
“I didn’t steal it. Didn’t Frank tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“That the Mexicans reported that the helicopter had crashed-total loss-in their unrelenting war against the drug trade?”
“No,” she said simply. “Then. . how was it ‘found at sea’?”
“You mean how did I get it?”
She nodded.
“I bought it from an officer of the Policia Federal. I think he thought I was in the drug trade and was going to use it to move drugs around.” He paused. “That’s the question I hoped you were going to ask the Mexican ambassador. ‘I thought you told us this helicopter had been totally destroyed. How do you explain its miraculous resurrection?’ ”
“I didn’t know anything about how you acquired that helicopter,” she said. “But even if I had-what I am doing is trying to build better relations with Mexico-I wouldn’t have confronted him with something like that.” She thought for a moment, then said, “Why in the world did you buy it?”
“I needed it to go after the Congo-X and the Tupelov,” Castillo said matter-of-factly.
“I thought you used Special Operations helicopters for that,” Montvale said.
Castillo gave him a dirty look, then saw on Cohen’s face that she was worried he was going to throw Montvale out. He decided that would be nonproductive.
“I did. But Jake Torine and I flew the Mexican bird onto the island.”
“You and Torine? Why?” Cohen asked.
“Because on an assault like that, the lead bird generally takes fire. My original idea, presuming that happened, was just to leave it on the island, which would then have had Hugo Chavez angrily asking the Mexicans how come one of their Policia Federal choppers was on his island.”
“Devious,” Montvale said admiringly.
“But then the Night Stalkers suppressed the antiaircraft, and the Mexican bird didn’t get hurt, so I decided to fly it back out to the Bataan, and told her captain to take it to Norfolk.”
“Where I would ask the Mexican ambassador to the U.S., ‘I thought you reported this aircraft was totally destroyed’?” Cohen asked.
Castillo looked at her, smiled, and nodded.
“You’re right, Charles, he is devious. Maybe he should have been a diplomat, or a politician.”
“Devious and dangerous,” Montvale said, smiling.
What happened? Castillo thought. Have we kissed and made up?
No. That smile is the smile of mutual admiration one shark gives to another.
“Turning to the problem at hand,” Secretary Cohen said, “which is that Charley cannot be dissuaded from going out to Arlington with all his friends, how do we deal with that?”
“Where are those limousines you mentioned, Charley?” Montvale asked.
“In the hotel garage, waiting for me to call them. Which I am going to do in the next sixty seconds or so.”
“I think you’re right, Natalie,” Montvale said. “McCarthy-and/ or Mulligan-probably has people at the gate of Arlington to keep out people who might embarrass the President. But I think they’ll just wave our convoy through.”
“So we put Charley’s limousines in our convoy?” she asked. “That makes sense.”
Montvale walked to the bedroom door. He opened it and then looked around until he found Tom McGuire.
“Tom, may I see you for a moment?”
After the secretary of State had disappeared into the lobby elevator, nothing much happened in the next ten minutes.
Herb Kramer announced he was going to stretch his legs.
“I’ll go with you,” Bob Dabney said.
“Stay out of the bar,” Delores said. “You don’t want to go to the Ways and Means Committee smelling of alcohol.”
“I’m going to go outside and have a puff on a cigarette,” Herb said. “You can’t smoke in here.”
He pointed to a NO SMOKING sign to make his point, and then he and Bob walked down the lobby toward Connecticut Avenue.
They had just about reached the revolving door when two things happened almost at once. A burly man in a business suit stepped in front of the door to keep them from using it, and another burly man came out of one of the elevators and quickly walked down the lobby toward Connecticut Avenue.
He looked as if he were talking to his lapel.
“I’m going down there,” Delores said to Kate. “Something’s going on!”
The burly man who had been talking to his lapel went through the revolving door, but when Delores and Kate approached it, the burly man who had kept Herb and Bob from going outside stepped into their path.
He flashed some sort of credentials in their face. “United States Secret Service. Would you ladies please stand over there for just a minute?”
He pointed to where Herb and Bob were standing, looking through a window beside the revolving door onto the sidewalk. Kate and Delores moved beside them. After a moment, Kate tapped Herb on the shoulder, and he politely let her move in front of him so that she could get a better look.
There was a taxi stand on Connecticut Avenue with four cabs lined up in it. A uniformed policeman gestured impatiently for them to move. When they had done so, a Yukon with red and blue lights flashing behind its grille pulled up, not into the space just vacated, but into the lane-the street-just outside it.