“How’d you find the house, Abuela?”
“I told Fernando I was going to send you a turkey, and he gave me the address.”
“In other words, he doesn’t know you’re here?”
“Probably not,” Doña Alicia Castillo confessed as she stood up. “But the way that works, darling, is that I’m the Abuela and you and Fernando are the grandchildren. I don’t need anybody’s permission.”
“Welcome, welcome, Abuela,” Castillo said, smiling, and wrapped his arms around her, lifting her off the floor.
“I echo the sentiment,” a deep voice with a slight Eastern European accent said. “Until you arrived, Doña Alicia, I was sick with the thought of having to spend the day alone with these barbarians.”
Eric Kocian, a tall, erect man with a full head of silver hair, who also appeared to be in his sixties but was in fact eighty-two years of age, was in a starched white dress shirt, pressed woolen trousers, and a blue-striped chef’s apron. He walked to her and with great formality kissed her hand.
“Count your fingers, Abuela,” Castillo said. “And make sure you still have on your wedding ring.”
“Merry Christmas, Billy,” Doña Alicia said, using his nickname, and rising on her toes to kiss his cheek. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in an apron.”
“When one is being fed by vulgarians, one is wise to keep one’s eye on the cooks.”
“Well, I’m glad to see you. I somehow had the idea you’d gone back to Budapest.”
Kocian sighed dramatically. “I pray daily that I will soon be released from durance vile. So far the Good Lord has ignored my devout pleas.”
“I had no idea you were living here with Carlos.”
“I’m not,” he said a little too quickly. “Mädchen and I—with those few pups Karlchen has not torn cruelly from their mother—are staying in the Mayflower.”
“Four of those adorable pups, as I suspect you well know, Billy, are making this Christmas even more joyous for some very nice people.”
Kocian ignored that. He said, “May I offer you a glass of champagne, Doña Alicia? I took the precaution of bringing some, knowing that if the inhabitants of this monastery had any at all, it would be vinegar.”
“ ‘Monastery’?”
“That’s what they call it,” Kocian said with a nod at Castillo. “Their sense of humor is as perverse as their taste in food and wine.”
“I would love a glass of champagne,” Doña Alicia said, smiling.
“If you would be so kind as to follow me?”
Doña Alicia saw that the kitchen was large—even huge—and that the sliding doors open to the adjacent living room showed that it was sizable, too, causing her to idly wonder what exact purpose this great big house—and all these people—served for her grandson. There were seven people in the kitchen, six men and a woman, not counting Eric Kocian or Charley Castillo. Most were sprawled in chairs holding what could have been glasses of iced tomato juice, but what Doña Alicia knew had to be Bloody Marys. The woman and two of the men were standing at the stove, which was in an island in the center of the room.
There was also another Bouvier des Flandres, this one a third smaller than Max and lying on the floor beside an infant’s crib that held four sleeping puppies. She clearly was the mother—Mädchen—and sat up attentively when the others came into the room.
Castillo gestured toward the woman and one of the men at the stove. Dressed casually in nice blue jeans and sweaters, both were in their forties, a pleasant-looking pair yet average to the point that they would not stand out in a crowd on Main Street, U.S.A.
“Abuela,” Castillo said, “this is Dianne and Harold Sanders. They take care of us. This is my grandmother, Mrs. Alicia Castillo. Have we got enough to feed her?”
“No problem, Colonel,” Harold Sanders said as he stirred some dark sauce in a large pot. He looked at Abuela and nodded once. “It’s our honor to meet you, ma’am.”
“You know everybody else, right, Abuela?” Castillo went on.
“Enough,” she said, and went to Dianne Sanders. “My grandson should have given you Christmas off.”
“Unless we cooked dinner, ma’am,” Harold Sanders put in, “they’d poison themselves and we’d be out of a job.”
“If you say so,” she said with a smile.
She went in turn to the others, kissing the cheeks of the men she knew, shaking the hands of those she didn’t and saying she was happy to get to know them.
These included a young Chinese American whose name was David Yung; a nondescript man in his late fifties, wearing somewhat rumpled trousers and an unbuttoned vest, who introduced himself as Edgar Delchamps; a well-set-up man about Castillo’s age by the name of John Davidson; a ruddy-cheeked, middle-aged man who said he was Tom McGuire; and another middle-aged man whose name was Sándor Tor. Most were wearing suits, but not the jackets thereto.
And there were two others in the house: the muscular young man in the suit who had opened the front door to Doña Alicia, and another muscular young man in a suit who could have been his brother were he not a very dark-skinned African-American.
These two muscular young men were special agents of the United States Secret Service. Their mission was to provide security to the personnel of the Office of Organizational Analysis. While both the Secret Service and the OOA were in the Department of Homeland Security, almost no one knew of the OOA’s existence and even fewer were in fact members, including these special agents.
Of course, there were very good reasons for this—indeed, top secret ones—chief among them that the OOA had come into being only five months earlier at the direction—if not the fury—of the President of the United States:
TOP SECRET—PRESIDENTIAL
THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.
DUPLICATION FORBIDDEN
COPY 2 OF 3 (SECRETARY COHEN)
JULY 25, 2005.
PRESIDENTIAL FINDING.
IT HAS BEEN FOUND THAT THE ASSASSINATION OF J. WINSLOW MASTERSON, CHIEF OF MISSION OF THE UNITED STATES EMBASSY IN BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA; THE ABDUCTION OF MR. MASTERSON’S WIFE, MRS. ELIZABETH LORIMER MASTERSON; THE ASSASSINATION OF SERGEANT ROGER MARKHAM, USMC; AND THE ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION OF SECRET SERVICE SPECIAL
AGENT ELIZABETH T. SCHNEIDER INDICATES BEYOND ANY REASONABLE DOUBT THE EXISTENCE OF A CONTINUING PLOT OR PLOTS BY TERRORISTS, OR TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS, TO CAUSE SERIOUS DAMAGE TO THE INTERESTS OF THE UNITED STATES, ITS DIPLOMATIC OFFICERS, AND ITS CITIZENS, AND THAT THIS SITUATION CANNOT BE TOLERATED.
IT IS FURTHER FOUND THAT THE EFFORTS AND ACTIONS TAKEN AND TO BE TAKEN BY THE SEVERAL BRANCHES OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT TO DETECT AND APPREHEND THOSE INDIVIDUALS WHO COMMITTED THE TERRORIST ACTS PREVIOUSLY DESCRIBED, AND TO PREVENT SIMILAR SUCH ACTS IN THE FUTURE ARE BEING AND WILL BE HAMPERED AND RENDERED LESS EFFECTIVE BY STRICT ADHERENCE TO APPLICABLE LAWS AND REGULATIONS.
IT IS THEREFORE FOUND THAT CLANDESTINE AND COVERT ACTION UNDER THE SOLE SUPERVISION OF THE PRESIDENT IS NECESSARY.
IT IS DIRECTED AND ORDERED THAT THERE IMMEDIATELY BE ESTABLISHED A CLANDESTINE AND COVERT ORGANIZATION WITH THE MISSION OF DETERMINING THE IDENTITY OF THE TERRORISTS INVOLVED IN THE ASSASSINATIONS, ABDUCTION, AND ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION PREVIOUSLY DESCRIBED AND TO RENDER THEM HARMLESS. AND TO PERFORM SUCH OTHER COVERT AND CLANDESTINE ACTIVITIES AS THE PRESIDENT MAY ELECT TO ASSIGN.