— 4- REPORTING TO POTUS WILL BE ON AN IRREGULAR BASIS AS INTELLIGENCE IS DEVELOPED, BUT NOT LESS THAN ONCE EVERY TWO WEEKS.
3-CGC REQUESTS ACCEPTANCE VIA UNDERSIGNED AT US EMBASSY, MONTEVIDEO, WITHIN TWENTY-FOUR (24) HOURS AS CGC MUST CANCEL GSTAAD, SWITZERLAND, SKI RESERVATIONS WITHIN FORTY-EIGHT (48) HOURS OR LOSE HIS DEPOSIT THEREON.
NAYLOR, LTC
TOP SECRET
“Who the hell does he think he is?” the President snapped. “Telling me his conditions?”
He looked at Robin Hoboken in expectation of an answer to his rhetorical question.
When none was forthcoming, the President asked, “What the hell is Sparkling Water?”
“It’s what some people call soda water, Mr. President,” Supervisory Secret Service Agent Mulligan replied. “You know, sir, like scotch and soda.”
In the split second before he was to say something both unkind and rude, the President realized Mulligan had not seen the message.
He turned to DCI Lammelle and said, “You’re the DCI, Lammelle. You’re supposed to know everything. What the hell is Sparkling Water?”
“It’s a contracting firm, sir, one of the better ones.”
“It sounds as if Colonel Castillo wants to build a garage, or put in a swimming pool,” Robin said thoughtfully, “and wants the U.S. government to pay for it. That’s outrageous!”
“Mr. President,” the secretary of State said, “as I’m sure you know, from time to time it is in the best interests of the government, for any number of reasons, not to use a governmental agency, or government employees, to accomplish a specific mission, but rather to turn to the private sector and contract for their services—”
“In other words,” the President interrupted, “Sparkling Water is one of those Rent-a-Spook outfits, right?”
“Yes, sir. You could put it that way,” the secretary said.
“Renting a spook, a good one, that’s pretty expensive, right?” the President asked.
“You get what you pay for, sir,” Lammelle said.
“And this airplane he wants us to rent for him in Panama, that’s going to cost a bundle, too, am I right?”
“I’m afraid so, Mr. President,” Lammelle said.
“And those five-star hotels he wants everybody to stay in,” Robin Hoboken chimed in. “That’s really going to cost a fortune, isn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t say a fortune,” the secretary of State said. “But it will be very expensive.”
“Not a problem,” the President said. “Since this is an intelligence-gathering project, I’ll send the bills to ol’ Truman C. Ellsworth. The director of National Intelligence can figure out who’s going to pay for it — the CIA, the DIA, the FBI, anybody just so it doesn’t come out of the White House budget.”
“Good thinking, Mr. President,” Robin Hoboken said.
“But there are a couple of tiny tweaks to the deal I want to make. First, Colonel Castillo will send me a report not less than once every two days, not less than once every two weeks. And second, tell him he’s going to have to find a seat on that expensive airplane ol’ Truman’s going to rent for him for ol’ Roscoe J. Danton.”
“Excuse me?” the secretary of State asked.
“Wither Castillo goeth, so goeth Roscoe,” the President said. “I made a deal — the nature of which is none of your business — with Danton.” He paused. “You can show these nice people out now, Mulligan.”
[SIX]
A Chrysler van, bearing diplomatic license plates, pulled up before the veranda of the big house, and C. Gregory Damon, who was the chief security officer of the United States embassy in Montevideo, got out. Mr. Damon, who was forty-four years old and a very black-skinned man of African heritage, stood six feet three inches tall and weighed 225 pounds.
He bounded agilely up the steps to the veranda and said, “Good morning, Mr. Ambassador.”
“Damon,” Ambassador Philippe Lorimer, Retired — a seventy-four-year-old very black-skinned man of African heritage who stood five feet four inches tall and weighed 135 pounds — replied. “It’s always a pleasure to welcome you to Shangri-La.”
Mr. Damon walked to Lieutenant Colonel Allan B. Naylor, Junior, said, “You must be Naylor. I know these other three clowns,” and handed him a manila envelope.
The three clowns to whom he referred were Chief Warrant Officer Five Colin Leverette, USA, Retired, a forty-five-year-old, very black-skinned man of African heritage who stood six feet two inches tall and weighed 210 pounds; Major H. Richard Miller, Junior, USA, Retired, a thirty-six-year-old, six-foot-two, 220-pound, very dark-skinned man of African heritage; and Lieutenant Colonel Carlos G. Castillo, USA, Retired, who was not only not of African heritage but whose fair skin didn’t even suggest he might be of Spanish heritage.
Colonel Naylor took the envelope, extracted a single sheet of paper from it, read it, and handed it to Colonel Castillo.
TOP SECRET
WASH DC 0010 9 JUN 2007
FROM SEC STATE
LT COL A.B. NAYLOR, JR
US EMBASSY MONTEVIDEO
REFERENCE YOUR SITREP #2
INFORM CGC POTUS AGREEABLE TO TERMS WITH FOLLOWING CAVEATS:
— 1- REPORTS TO POTUS WILL BE ON A TWO-DAY REPEAT TWO-DAY BASIS NOT REPEAT NOT TWO-WEEK SCHEDULE
— 2- DO NOT BEGIN ANY TRAVEL UNTIL MR. ROSCOE J. DANTON JOINS YOUR PARTY; HE WILL GO WHEREVER YOU GO
COHEN, SEC STATE
TOP SECRET
Castillo read the message and handed it to Mr. Leverette.
“Well, Uncle Remus, now we know what she told us on the CaseyBerry last night,” he said. “But not what this business about Roscoe is all about.”
“I’m sure he will tell us when he gets here,” Leverette said.
“And I’m sure someone is going to tell me what this Southern Cone meeting of the NAACP is all about,” C. Gregory Damon said.
“We really don’t want that word to get out in the State Department, Greg,” Castillo said. “And since you’ve put on those striped pants and thus abandoned your friends in the special ops community…”
“With all possible respect, Colonel, sir,” Mr. Damon said, and gave Castillo the finger.
“We have returned to where it all began to start again,” Castillo said, “for a period not to exceed ninety days. I’m on a recruiting mission. Are you interested?”
“Hell no, I’m not interested. You’ve recruited me before, and every time I went along, people tried to kill me. And what do you mean, ‘where it all began’?”
“If I told you, Greg, I’d have to kill you,” Castillo said. “You know about the rule.”
Leverette shook his head.
“Remember,” he said, “when Jack the Stack Masterson got kidnapped and then whacked?”
Damon nodded. “You and I were in Afghanistan.”
“And Charley and Dick here had just left Afghanistan, Dick on a medical evacuation flight — he’d dumped his bird — and Charley under something of a cloud for stealing a bird and going to pick him up where he’d dumped the bird and after he’d been given a direct order not to try it.”
“I heard about that,” Damon said.
“McNab saved his ass by getting him assigned to the head of Homeland Security in Washington as an interpreter and canapé passer.”
“I hadn’t heard that.”
“Did you know that Jack the Stack was Ambassador Lorimer’s son-in-law?” Leverette asked.