"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."
"You let him see my jacket? There's a lot of classified material in there. Missions I was on that are still classified. They keep the goddamned thing in a safe in Tampa!"
"Your entire file is lassified Top Secret. That impressed Mr. Whelan in no small way. I began with going through your decorations-and, I must say, even I was impressed, Colonel-starting with your first DFC and Purple Heart, which I pointed out you had earned when you were a mere boy just months out of West Point, and ending with your last Purple Heart, in Afghanistan.
"When that was over, I knew I had Whelan hooked because he put on his tough, no-nonsense journalist's face and tone of voice and said, 'Okay. Very impressive. But let's get back to the love nests, both of them. And I think you should know that I know all about this Karl Gossinger character.'
"I asked, 'You know everything about Karl Wilhelm Gossinger?' and he replied, 'The eleven-hundred-dollar-a-day love nest in Motel Monica Lewinsky is registered to him. He's supposed to be the Washington correspondent for the Tages Zeitung newspapers. Nobody I know ever heard of him and I haven't been able to find him yet. But I will.'
"I told him that he already had, that you and Gossinger were one and the same…"
"Jesus Christ!"
"…and that you were born out of wedlock and never knew your father. That your mother was a teenage German girl whose name was Gossinger."
"You had no right to get into that!" Castillo flared. "That's my personal business."
"I had, of course, considered your personal business, before I decided I had to deal with Whelan, and concluded that protecting the president of the United States, certain members of his cabinet, and finding out who the people who murdered Masterson are and dealing with them was the most important thing and far outweighed any momentary embarrassment you might feel. You get the picture, Colonel? If you had kept your male member behind its zipper when you should have, you and I would not be sitting here, would we?"
Goddamn him…he's right!
"No, sir. We would not. I apologize for the outburst."
"Fuck the outburst, Castillo. Apologize for not thinking!"
"Yes, sir. No excuse, sir."
Montvale looked coldly at Castillo for a moment, then went on, conversationally, the anger gone from his voice.
"So I told Mr. Whelan that your father was a teenage American helicopter pilot who died for our country in Vietnam without ever knowing he had a son. And, of course, that Warrant Officer Junior Grade Jorge Alejandro Castillo was a true hero, a legend in Army Aviation, in the Army.
"I could tell from the look on his face that while he was impressed, he thought I was laying it on a little thick. Of course I wasn't through.
"I asked him if he knew General Naylor and of course he said he did. And then I told him how General Allan Naylor becomes involved in the saga of Lieutenant Colonel Castillo."
"I really don't want to know what else you told this man, but I realize I should know."
"Yes, you should," Montvale said. "I told Mr. Whelan that when you were twelve, your mother, the sole heiress to the Gossinger fortune-I told him I was sure he knew that the Tages Zeitung newspaper chain was owned by Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft G.m.b.H.; he nodded, although I'll bet he was hearing that for the first time-was diagnosed with a terminal illness. I told him your mother went to the U.S. Army-specifically, to then-Major Allan Naylor, who was stationed nearby-and asked for help to find her son's father in the United States and told him why.
"I told him that Allan Naylor told me he promised some what reluctantly to see what he could do, as he had no respect for an officer who would leave a love child behind him, and was concerned about what would happen when a man of such low character came into the fortune the boy would inherit.
"And, of course, that when he did look into it, he learned that your father was a posthumous recipient of the Medal of Honor, and, not only that, but the only son of a distinguished and equally wealthy family in San Antonio. The question then became would the Castillos, who traced their Texas lineage back to two men who fell beside Davy Crockett and the other heroes of the Alamo, accept their son's illegitimate German son?"
Castillo's anger began to build again. "Why the hell did you tell him all this? I don't want any pity."
"Well, then you're not going to like the rest of this," Montvale said. "By the time I was through, I was nearly in tears myself about poor Charley Castillo."
"Oh, shit!" Castillo said, softly.
"I told him that that hadn't turned out to be a problem. That your grandmother took one look at the picture of you that Naylor had shown her and said, 'He has my Jorge's eyes,' and was on a plane to Germany that night.
"I then painted a touching picture of this poor, illegitimate, parentless boy being suddenly thrust into an alien culture with nothing to hang on to but memories of his late mother and the legend of his heroic father, of his going to West Point and then to war, determined to be worthy of his hero father. I went over your list of decorations…"
"Mr. Ambassador," Castillo interrupted, "I don't think that'll keep this guy from writing just about what he started to write in the first place. In fact, it would appear that he now has a bigger story…"