Castillo had kept looking at his watch and when fifteen minutes had passed he decided to wait one more minute before calling Secretary Hall and telling him there had been no contact from the FBI.
He was actually watching the sweep second hand on his wristwatch waiting for it to go back to twelve when the interview room door opened.
"Chief," one of the Homicide Bureau detectives said, "there's a guy from the FBI out here looking for a Secret Service Agent Castillo."
Kramer looked at Castillo, who made a wry face, and then gestured to the detective to bring him in.
A moment later a middle-aged, somewhat portly man with a plastic badge with FBI in large letters on it hanging from the breast pocket of his suit came into the room. He was neatly dressed, but he needed a shave.
He looked around the small room, taking a close look at everybody.
"Hello, Chief Inspector," he said, smiling at Kramer.
Kramer nodded at him.
"I'm looking, Chief, for a Secret Service man, Supervisory Special Agent Castillo. I was told he was in here."
Kramer pointed at Castillo.
"You're Castillo?" the man said. He obviously did not expect to see a supervisory Secret Service agent in an Army officer's uniform.
"Yes, I am," Castillo said. "Who are you?"
"I'm Alexander Stuart, the Philadelphia FBI SAC."
"Be right with you, Mr. Stuart," Castillo said as he took out his cellular and pushed an autodial key.
"Castillo, Mr. Secretary. The Philadelphia FBI SAC just walked into the room "I haven't had a chance to talk to him, Mr. Secretary "Yes, Mr. Secretary, I'll get back to you just as soon as I've had a chance to talk to him."
He put the telephone back in his pocket and looked at SAC Stuart.
"It would seem, Mr. Castillo, that there's been some sort of a misunderstanding," Stuart said.
"No misunderstanding. I needed some information and I needed it right then. Your duty officer wouldn't-or couldn't-give it to me and your counterterrorism man told me he'd talk to me when he came in in the morning. I couldn't wait that long so I called Washington."
"Apparently, it wasn't made clear to either of my agents how important this matter actually is," Stuart said. "What's it all about?"
"What this is all about is that I asked for some information and your people wouldn't give it to me. I need those names, Mr. Stuart, and I need them now."
"Special Agent Lutherberg, who heads my counterterrorism section, is on his way to the office. If he's not there already. I'll have those names for you very shortly."
Castillo grunted.
"I need some additional cooperation from the FBI," Castillo said.
"Which is?"
"As soon as we have the names, and the photographs, I want to run them-right now-past the Spartan School of Aeronautics in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I need to know (a) if they were students there about the time Chief Inspector Kramer gave you the surveillance photos he had made of them and (b) if they were students at Spartan, what sort of training they had; specifically, if they received training in Boeing 727 aircraft."
"Oh, so that's what this is about! That airliner that went missing in Africa."
Castillo ignored the remark.
"Now, can you get in touch with your Tulsa office directly, send them the photos and the names over your net, and have them go out to Spartan or am I going to have to do that through Washington?"
"I can contact them directly, of course," Stuart said.
"Would I offend you if I suggested you call your duty officer and get that started right now?"
Stuart met his eyes.
"That doesn't offend me, Mr. Castillo," he said. "But the language you used to my duty officer offends me. Offends me very much, frankly. Are you aware that we record all incoming calls after duty hours?"
"I didn't think that was legal unless the calling party is advised that his call will be recorded," Castillo said. "But if you've got a tape of my conversation with your duty officer, why don't you send itthe entire conversation, not just my intemperate language -to Director Schmidt?"
Stuart tried and failed to stare Castillo down, then looked away, to Chief Inspector Kramer. "Chief, is there a telephone I can use?"
"Schneider," Chief Kramer said.
Sergeant Betty Schneider, with a wholly unintended display of her upper thighs, slid off the table.
"Right this way, Mr. Stuart," she said.
When the door had closed after them, Detective Jack Britton pointed to Castillo, looked at Miller, and said, admiringly, "Hey, bro, your white boy pal is a real hard-ass, ain't he?"
[FIVE]
Office of the Commissioner
Police Administration Building
8th and Race Streets
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
0345 10 June 2005
Police Commissioner Ralph J. Kellogg walked into his outer office, said good morning to Chief Inspector Kramer, Majors Castillo and Miller, Detective Jack Britton, and Sergeant Betty Schneider, who were sitting in chairs waiting for him, and waved them into his office.
Captain Jack Hanrahan, Kellogg's executive officer, waited until everybody was inside, then pulled the door closed.
Both Kellogg and Hanrahan were shaven, wearing suits and stiffly starched white shirts, and were obviously fully awake, although it was less than twenty minutes since Chief Inspector Kramer had called the commissioner at his home and suggested they needed to talk.
"Okay, Dutch," Kellogg said, "where are we?"
"Between Britton and Castillo, Commissioner, and with the somewhat reluctant cooperation of the FBI, we've IDed the people we think stole the airplane. They were here, at Britton's mosque."
"Is that going to help you find the airplane?" Kellogg asked Castillo, but then, before Castillo could reply, asked: "What's with the uniform? First step in declaring martial law?"
"I've been at Fort Bragg, Commissioner-and I'm about to go back there-to explain the uniform. And I have reason to believe we have located the airplane."
"You either have or you haven't. Which?"
"A source which has previously been right on the money has told me he's almost certainly located it. What I'll be doing at Fort Bragg is helping to set up the operation to neutralize it."
"What source?"
I was afraid you were going to ask that.
"Not to go farther than this room, Commissioner?"
Kellogg considered that.
"No. That's over. As I understand the plan, Matt Hall will be here at eight o'clock. Shortly after that, as soon as we've compared notes we're going to see the mayor. I want to be in a position to lay everything on the table in front of him. I now think promising to hold off telling until four this afternoon was a mistake. From now on, starting when Hall gets here, I'm going to tell the mayor everything I know. You understand? Now, what is the source of your information that the airplane has almost certainly been located?"
"Sir, you're going to have to get that from Secretary Hall. I can't give it to you."
"Great!" Kellogg said, visibly angry.
"Commissioner," Chief Inspector Kramer said, "Britton also tells us that there's a lot of talk at his mosque about something going to happen to the Liberty Bell and Constitution Hall."
"You mean the lunatics know?"
"Commissioner, there have been no details," Detective Britton said. "Just nonspecific talk."
"They must know something," Kellogg said. "Which means they know more than I do and a hell of a lot more than the mayor does." He paused and then went on, "Were you able to come up with a connection between Britton's mosque and the people who cleaned airplanes at Lease-Aire?"
"No, sir," Sergeant Betty Schneider said. "We haven't been able to find a direct connection. None of the names connected. So what they're working on now is relatives and known associates."