"That does sound a little incredible," Miller said. "Where are they going to get it?"
Britton shrugged. "He didn't know. What he did know was they have just bought a farm in Durham."
"North Carolina?" McGuire asked.
"Pennsylvania," Britton replied. "Bucks County. Upper end of the county. A couple of miles off the Delaware River. The reason they bought the place is because of the old iron mines on it."
"Iron mines?"
"They're going to use them as bomb shelters when the nuclear bomb takes out Philadelphia. They're stocking them with food, etcetera."
"Tell me about the iron mines," McGuire said.
"Well, they've been there forever," Britton said. "You remember when Washington crossed the Delaware?"
"I've heard about it. I'm not quite that old," McGuire said.
"He crossed the Delaware in a Durham boat. They were called Durham boats because they moved the iron ore from the iron mines in Durham down the Delaware. They haven't taken any ore out of them for, Christ, two hundred years, but the mines, the tunnels, are still there, because they were hacked out of solid rock."
"You believe this story, Jack?" Miller asked.
"I don't want to believe it, logic tells me not to believe it, but Sy Fillmore tells me the brothers believe it. And I'd like to know where they got the money to buy a hundred-odd-acre farm. That's high-priced real estate up there. They didn't pay for it with stolen Social Security checks."
"Stolen Social Security checks?" Castillo asked.
"That-and ripping off the neighborhood crack dealers-was their primary source of income when I was in the mosque."
"And the cops in Philadelphia?" Castillo asked. "Chief Inspector Fritz Kramer, for example. What do they say?"
"They found Cy wandering around North Philly babbling to himself," Britton said. "It was three days before they even found out he was a cop. And he's been in Friends Hospital ever since, with a cop sitting outside his door, as much to protect Sy from himself as from the AALs. No, Chief Kramer doesn't believe it. He didn't even pass it on to the FBI."
"Where are they going to get a nuke?" Miller asked. "How are they going to move it around, hide it?"
"There were supposed to be thirty-odd suitcase-sized nukes here, smuggled in by the Russians." McGuire said. "They wouldn't be hard to move around or hide."
"You think there's something to this, Tom?" Castillo asked.
"No. But I'm like Jack. Sometimes there's things you just shouldn't ignore because they don't make sense."
"So what do we do, tell the FBI?" Castillo asked.
"Why don't you send Jack back to Philly?" McGuire asked. "I'll call the Secret Service there-the agent in charge is an old friend of mine-and tell him we're interested in why a bunch of American muslims from Philadelphia bought that farm, where they got the money to buy it, and what they're doing with it. And I'll tell him we can't say why we're interested. If and when we get those answers, we can think about it some more."
"Okay, do it," Castillo ordered. "Has anyone else got anything for me?"
Everybody shook their heads.
Castillo went on: "What I am going to do now is go to my apartment and pack. Then I'm going to the Old Executive Office Building to wait for Hall. I was going to ask him what to do about our new liaison officer, but Dick and Agnes have told me that's my problem. Then as soon as he lets me go, I'm going to Philadelphia to see Betty Schneider and then, somehow, I'm going to go to Paris, either tonight or as soon as I can."
"I didn't know anybody went to Paris on purpose," Miller said. "What are you going to do there?"
"Thank you for asking, and I'm not being sarcastic. I want everybody to know what I'm doing," Castillo said. "The agency guy in Paris-Edgar Delchamps-is a good guy, a real old-timer. I'm going to ask him to go with me to Lorimer's apartment. The embassy has been informed that I'm going to look after Lorimer's property for Ambassador Lorimer. Then I'm going to tell him what happened at Lorimer's estancia and see if he has any ideas who the guys who bushwhacked us were or who they were working for.
"Then I'm going to Fulda to make sure there's no problems with all that money in my Liechtensteinische Landesbank account in the Caymans. Maybe there's a better place to have it.
"Then I'm going to Budapest to see a journalist named Eric Kocian, who gave me some names of people in the oil-for-food business. I promised him I wouldn't turn them over to anyone. I want to get him to let me use the names. See if we can figure out where I might have got them, other than from him. I'm also going to ask him to guess who was paying the guys who bushwhacked us.
"Then, maybe a quick stop in Vienna to see what I can pick up there about the guy who was murdered just before Lorimer decided to go missing. Before I come back here, I'm probably going to go to Uruguay and Argentina. I want to go through Lorimer's estancia to see what I can come up with.
"Which reminds me of something else that I probably would have forgotten: Dick, get on the horn to somebody at Fort Rucker, maybe the Aviation Board, and find out the best panel and black boxes available on the civilian market for a Bell Ranger. Get a set of it, put it in a box, and ask Secretary Cohen to send it under diplomatic sticker to Ambassador Silvio in Buenos Aires."
"What the hell is that all about?"
"You wouldn't believe the lousy avionics in the Ranger I borrowed down there. The new stuff is payment for the use of the chopper. And it will be nice to have if I need to borrow the Ranger again."
No one spoke for a moment, then Miller said, "Charley, those avionics are going to cost a fortune."
"We'll have a fortune in the Liechtensteinische Landesbank. So far as I'm concerned, that's what it's for."
Miller gave him a thumbs-up.
"I'll be in touch," Castillo said and walked toward his office door.
He turned.
"Dick, can you come with me? Sure as Christ made little green apples, I've forgotten something." [THREE] Room 404 The Mayflower Hotel 1127 Connecticut Avenue NW Washington, D.C. 1630 4 August 2005 Major H. Richard Miller, Jr., was sprawled on the chaise longue in the master bedroom, his stiff leg on the chair, his good leg resting, knee bent, on the floor. A bottle of Heineken beer was resting in his hand on his chest.
Major C. G. Castillo was standing by the bed, putting clothing into a hard-sided suitcase.
"If I was just coming back here," he said, "I could get by with a carry-on. But if I take just a carry-on, I'll find myself in the middle of winter in Argentina."
"And if you take the suitcase, it will be misdirected to Nome, Alaska," Miller said, lifting his bottle to take a sip of beer. "It is known as the Rule of the Fickle Finger of Fate."
Castillo closed the suitcase and set it on the floor.
"So tell me about that," Castillo said, pointing to Miller's leg. "What do they say at Walter Reed?"
"I am led to believe that my chances of passing an Army flight physical range from zero to zilch. I have been 'counseled' that what I should do is take retirement for disability. One bum knee is apparently worth seventy percent of my basic pay for the rest of my life."
"Oh, shit," Castillo said.
"What really pisses me off is that I have reason to believe that all I have to do to reactivate my civilian ticket-"
"Reactivate?"
"Yeah. It went on hold when I didn't show up for my annual physical. I didn't think I could pass it wearing twenty pounds of plaster of paris on my leg. So my ticket became inactive. They didn't pull it, which is important, but declared it inactive, pending the results of a flight physical. I've looked into that. What that means is I find some friendly chancre mechanic. He sees the scars and I tell him they are from a successful knee operation and show him how I can bend my knee. He will make a note of that for the examiner giving me my flight test. In other words, 'Did his knee operation result in a physical limitation that makes him unsafe in a cockpit?' The examiner will see that I can push the pedals satisfactorily. My tickets as an instrument-qualified pilot in command of piston and jet multiengine fixed-and rotary-wing aircraft is reactivated. Which means I can then fly just about anything for anybody but the Army."