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?"
He met Castillo's eyes for a long moment.
"Okay, I'm in. No caveats. Your rules."
"And no mental reservations?" Castillo asked, softly.
"I said I'm in, Colonel. That means I'm in."
"Welcome aboard," Castillo said.
There were no smiles between them.
"Okay, Agnes, where are we going to set up?" Castillo asked.
"I figured the conference room," she said. "It's about as big as a basketball court, and there's already phones, etcetera. And, of course, a coffeemaker."
"Why don't you take Mr. Delchamps and Inspector Doherty in there and let them see it? I need a word with Major Miller and then we'll both have a look." "Well?" Castillo asked the moment the door had closed after Mr. Forbison and the others.
"I don't think Inspector Doherty likes you very much," Miller said.
"I don't give a damn whether he does or not. The question is, is he going to get on the phone the first time he has a chance? 'Hey, guys, you won't believe what this loose cannon Castillo is up to.'"
"I think I would trust him as far as you trust Yung."
"Going off at a tangent, Yung has now seen the light and is really on board."
"Did he see the light before or after these bastards tried to kill him?"
"Britton asked almost exactly the same question," Castillo said, chuckling.
"You know, great minds tread similar paths," Miller replied. "Well?"
"I heard about it after they tried to kidnap him," Castillo said. "But I have the feeling he'd made up his mind before."
"Your charismatic leadership?"
"I think it's more likely that he thought about what I said about spending the rest of his FBI career investigating parking meter fraud in South Dakota and realized that would happen anyway if he ever did get to go back the FBI. With going back then not an attractive option, working for us didn't seem so bad. I don't know. I'm not looking the gift horse in the mouth. Yung is smart and we need him."
"Before you sent him down south, you said you trusted him because he was moral," Miller said.
Castillo nodded. "And I think Doherty is moral. The difference between them is that Doherty's a heavy hitter in the bureau."
"But he knows (a) he's here because the President set it up and (b) that if anything leaks to the FBI and we hear about it, we'll know he's the leaker because he's the only FBI guy who's being clued in."
"Except Yung, of course," Castillo said. "What did you think of Edgar Delchamps?"
"I think he likes you," Miller said. "I think the reason he was really pissed-and really pissed he was-was because he thought his friend Castillo had stabbed him in the back."
"You think he still thinks that?"
"I think he's giving you a second chance," Miller said.
Castillo nodded. "I really like him. And a dinosaur like him is just what we need."
"I wonder how he and the inspector are going to get along?"
"Jesus, I didn't even think about that," Castillo said. "And there's one more guy coming. A heavy hitter from NSA. He won't work for us, but he will get us whatever we want from NSA."
"When's he coming?"
"He should be here now," Castillo said. "Let's go look at what Agnes has set up." The conference room wasn't nearly as large as a basketball court, as Agnes had described it, but it was enormous. There was an oval table with more than a dozen spaces around it, each furnished with a desk pad, a telephone, a small monitor, and a leather-upholstered armchair. And there was room for more. One narrow end of the room had a roll-down projection screen and flat-screen television monitors were mounted in a grid on the walls. Two wheel-mounted "blackboards"-the writing surfaces were actually blue and they came with yellow felt-tip markers instead of chalk-were against one wall, and there was room for a half dozen more.
"This place looks as if we're going to try to land someone on the moon," Miller quipped.
Castillo and Agnes chuckled.
Delchamps and Doherty didn't even smile.
"Colonel," Doherty asked, "are you open for suggestions on how to do this?"
"Your call, Inspector."
"Okay, first the basics. If this room hasn't been swept sweep it, and sweep it daily."
"NSA is supposed to send a man here to get us what we need from NSA," Castillo replied. "I presume that means technicians. That sound okay?"
Doherty nodded, then went on, "And seal this room. Never leave it empty, and make sure nobody gets in here who shouldn't be. If it gets so we can't walk through the clutter on the floor, we'll shut down for an hour or so, turn the blackboards around, and have it cleaned."
"Not a problem, Inspector," Agnes Forbison said.
"And speaking of blackboards," Doherty said, "two's not half enough. Get another four-better, six-in here."
"When do you want them?" Agnes said.
"Now."
"The first will be here in five minutes," Agnes said. "It'll probably take a couple of hours to get another five."
"The sooner, the better," Doherty said.
"What's with all the blackboards?" Castillo asked.
"Inspector Doherty shares with me," Delchamps said, "the philosophy that if you're going to use a computer, use the best one."
"What about computers, Agnes?" Castillo asked.
"I can set up pretty quickly whatever you and the inspector tell me you need."
"We are referring, Colonel," Delchamps said, "to the computers between our ears."
"Then you've lost everybody except you and the inspector," Castillo said.
"Computers, Colonel, are only as good as the data they contain," Doherty said. "You know what GIGO means?"
Castillo nodded. "Garbage in, garbage out."
"Right. So anything we put into our computers, the kind you plug in the wall-and I'll get with you shortly, Mr. Forbison, about what we're going to need: nothing fancy-has to be a fact, not a supposition, not a possibility. The possibilities and the suppositions and the theories go on the blackboards. With me so far?"
"I think I understand," Castillo said.
"We'll probably save time if you watch to see how it's done," Doherty said.
"Let's try that, then," Castillo said.