“So I had heard,” McNab said. “Why did you think this?”
“Because both types of laboratory operations, nuclear and chemical, require large amounts of water, for cooling and other purposes. I think this is perhaps where the CIA got the idea the old German facilities are now a fish farm; the cooling tanks, etcetera, I suppose could be used for that purpose.”
“Who did you deal with at the CIA, Colonel? Do you remember his—or her—name?”
“I didn’t deal with anyone at the CIA. I just wrote it up, paper-clipped to it an inter-office memorandum saying it should be sent to the CIA, and put it in my out-box. I’m a scientist, not someone in the intelligence community.”
“So you don’t know if your reports ever got to the CIA?”
“I simply assume they did. I heard back—I forget how—of the CIA fish-farm theory.”
“Colonel,” McNab said, “just now you said you were a scientist. You’re wearing the caduceus of the Medical Corps . . .”
“I’m a physician.”
“And you’re wearing the eagles of a colonel, and you said you were West Point ’84, which would suggest you’re a soldier. Which is it, Colonel?”
“I am a serving officer, a West Pointer, a colonel, who also is a physician. And a bio-chemist, Ph.D. Oxford ’86. And a physicist, Ph.D., MIT ’93.”
McNab nodded. “I’m awed, and there is nothing that should be interpreted as sarcasm in that statement.”
“General, with respect, I think I had better call those people now,” Hamilton said.
“I was about to suggest that very thing. But on my terms, Colonel, not yours. Unless you want to tell me who they are and have me call them myself?”
“Sir, again, with res—”
“Yeah. I know. But before I have Phineas and Uncle Remus throw you on the floor and hold you down while Barefoot Boy pulls out your fingernails to get you to tell me who ‘those people’ are, why don’t we try this: You get on the telephone to ‘those people’ and you say you’re with me and I have the idea that the Iranians and the Russians are up to something nasty in the Congo. Then ask ‘those people’ how much you are allowed to cooperate with me, up to and including telling me just who ‘those people’ are. How about that?”
“Yes, sir,” Hamilton said. “But what about the secure telephone, sir?”
“Tell them you don’t have time to go to a secure telephone. Tell them if they have a number at which you can call them, we’ll put it through the White House switchboard, which is about as secure as it gets.”
“That sounds logical, sir.”
“There’s the telephone,” McNab said, pointing.
“With your permission, sir, I’d prefer to use this,” Colonel Hamilton said.
He took a cellular telephone from his trousers pocket and walked out onto the balcony, closing the sliding door after him. They saw him punch a long number into the phone.
“Memorized,” Dmitri Berezovsky said. “Not autodial.”
“I noticed,” McNab said.
“You were joking about the fingernails, right?” Sandra Britton asked.
McNab looked at her. “If I thought that would work, he would now look as if he was wearing Red Passion nail polish.”
“That is a very interesting man,” Svetlana said.
“That has just earned you the award for Understatement of the Week, Sweaty.”
“ ‘Sweaty’?” she repeated with some obvious displeasure.
“Isn’t that what our Carlos calls you?”
“He calls me ‘Svet.’ That is short for—”
“He got you, Sweaty!” Delchamps said.
“I’m good at that,” McNab said, smiling. “Didn’t our Carlos tell you?”
“He’s spending longer on that telephone than setting up a callback,” Berezovsky said.
“Yeah,” Darby said.
Colonel Hamilton put his cellular telephone back in his pants, slid the door open, and came back into the room.
“They will call me back,” he announced. “But I’m afraid they are going to insist on a secure telephone.”
“While we’re waiting,” McNab said, “why don’t you tell us how you got all those degrees, Colonel?”
Hamilton nodded. “Yes, sir. Well, right after I graduated from the Point, I was a Rhodes Scholar. I went to Oxford—Mansfield College—with the idea of taking the equivalent of an American master’s degree in biochemistry. It was supposed to be for a year.
“It all came surprisingly easy to me, and when they told me I could probably earn a doctorate if I spent another year, I asked the Army for another year.
“And when that was over, I went through the Officer Basic Course at Benning, then applied for and was accepted for jump training. I went through that and was given command of a chemical platoon in the 82nd Airborne at Bragg.”
Castillo met Uncle Remus’s eyes. Both had the same mental image of the faces of the platoon when they learned their new commander was a tall, skinny, black guy with a Ph.D. who spoke with an English accent and who had graduated from jump school just last week.
“While I was at Bragg,” Hamilton went on, “I took some correspondence courses from MIT—”
He stopped when his telephone buzzed.
“Yes?” he said into it, and then, a little surprised, “Very well.”
He handed the telephone to McNab, who—causing a momentary look of shock to appear on Hamilton’s face—pushed the SPEAKERPHONE button.
“General McNab?” a voice said.
“Yes. Who is this?”
“Under the circumstances, General, I think we can dispense with a secure line.”
“Your call.”
“I have just instructed Colonel Hamilton to cooperate in every way but one in your current project.”
“Thank you.”
“He is not authorized to tell you anything about us.”
“Okay.”
“We really wish you well in this project, General.”
McNab held the telephone at arm’s length and looked at it.
“Sonofabitch hung up on me!” He then looked around the room and asked, “Anybody recognize that voice? I’ve heard it before. Goddamn it!”
He slowly walked back and forth in front of the sliding glass doors for thirty seconds or so, obviously searching his audio memory.
Then he turned, put his hands on his hips, and said, “Okay, children. Fun-and-games time is over. Let’s get this show on the road! Hubba hubba!”
“Hoo-rah!” Castillo called.
Lieutenant Colonel Woods laughed.
“You’ll pay for that, Peter!” McNab said, and without another word marched out of the room.
XVI
[ONE]
Double-Bar-C Ranch
Near Midland, Texas
2305 7 January 2006
The runway lights at the Double-Bar-C were lit as the result of a somewhat less-than-loving, not to mention less-than-civil, conversation between cousins—one Lieutenant Colonel Charley Castillo and one Mr. Fernando Manuel Lopez—some thirty minutes previously:
“Hello?”
“Mr. Fernando Lopez, please. The White House is calling.”
“Yeah, sure it is.”
“Are you Mr. Lopez?”
“Guilty.”
“I have Mr. Lopez for you, Colonel.”
“Fernando?”
“Damn it, Gringo. I just this moment fell asleep.”
“Thank you for sharing that with me.”
“What won’t wait until the morning? Or is it already morning?”
“I need the runway lights turned on at the Double-Bar-C.”