He reasoned that Dr. Casey, as a Special Forces veteran, might be willing to make substantial financial contributions to the patriotic activities of Those People. And Dr. Casey, when approached, had been happy to do so.
Hotelier didn’t ask any questions about — and Dr. Casey did not volunteer any information about — Dr. Casey’s current and ongoing involvement with the intelligence or Special Operations communities.
It never entered Hotelier’s mind, either — or the minds of the other Those People — that Casey regarded them as no more than well-meaning amateurs whose money sometimes came in handy.
This came to a head when Casey learned that some of Those People had concluded that President Clendennen’s somewhat cold-blooded solution to a serious problem made sense.
The problem was that not all of an incredibly lethal biological warfare substance known as Congo-X had been destroyed when President Clendennen’s predecessor, shortly before his untimely death, had ordered the obliteration of a twenty-square-mile area in the former Belgian Congo on which was situated the laboratory that invented Congo-X and the manufactory, operated by former East Germans.
The President had ordered the use of every explosive weapon, except nuclear, in the American arsenal to be used for this purpose. It hadn’t worked. There wasn’t a tree left standing in the target area, but the Russians soon provided proof they still had some Congo-X. They proposed, in the spirit of international love and brotherhood, that they would turn over all they had and swear on all they held dear never again to make any.
In exchange, all they asked for was the return to the motherland of two SVR officers, Colonel Dmitri Berezovsky and Lieutenant Colonel Svetlana Alekseeva, who had defected from their posts as the SVR rezidents in Berlin and Copenhagen, respectively, and promptly told the American intelligence officer who had arranged their defection all about Congo-X. The Russians wanted him, too. His name was Lieutenant Colonel Carlos G. Castillo.
President Clendennen thought this seemed like a reasonably fair deal and ordered that the swap be made. Some of Those People thought the President had made the right decision.
Before the people sent to find Castillo and the two Russians and to load them onto an Aeroflot aircraft could do so, Castillo learned that the Congo-X that the Russians had sent to the Army’s Medical Research Laboratory at Fort Detrick, Maryland, had been flown to the Western Hemisphere aboard a Tupolev Tu-934A, which was then sitting on the tarmac of an airfield on Venezuela’s La Orchila Island with the last liter of Congo-X aboard.
About a week later, the Tupolev landed at Andrews Air Force Base flown by Jake Torine and Charley Castillo. On board, in addition to the last liter of Congo-X, were some people, including General Vladimir Sirinov of the SVR, whom President Putin had personally put in charge of the operation, and Mr. Roscoe J. Danton, of the Washington Times-Post Writers Syndicate.
While they were waiting for the CIA to write the check for the $120 million bounty they had offered for a Tupolev Tu-934A, the Merry Outlaws, as President Clendennen disparagingly had dubbed them, went to the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas to talk to Those People about their agreeing with President Clendennen’s decision to throw Charley, Sweaty, and her brother Dmitri on an Aeroflot airplane.
With an effort, Charley rejected Edgar Delchamps’s suggestion — which had Sweaty’s enthusiastic support — on how to deal with Those People. This was to “throw them all in the great white shark aquarium at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino and let Neptune sort them out.”
At the confrontation, Annapolis gave Charley his word of honor that he had been dead set against President Clendennen’s solution from the start and would not have permitted it to happen. As a former member of the Corps of Cadets at the U.S. Military Academy, Castillo knew that he could accept without question the word of honor of a former member of the Brigade of Midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy.
Radio & TV Stations surprised everyone by backing up his statement that he had told Those People that they would load Charley on a Moscow-bound Aeroflot aircraft only over his dead body by revealing not only that he had been an Army helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War — it would be a toss-up between Radio & TV Stations and Lester Bradley as to which looked less like a warrior — but that Charley’s father, shortly before he was killed, had rescued him from certain death at great risk to his own life.
But the biggest surprise of the confrontation had been that between Hotelier and Edgar Delchamps.
“Actually,” Hotelier said, “I thought Clendennen was right.”
That, Castillo and Casey decided instantly, meant Hotelier wasn’t going to live long enough to go swimming with the great white sharks in the Mandalay Bay aquarium. Delchamps was going to throw him out the window right there in the fortieth-floor Venetian penthouse.
“How’s that?” Edgar asked softly.
“Odds are my business,” Hotelier replied. “What would you say the odds were that Colonel Castillo was going to get away with his Venezuelan incursion?”
“Hundred to one against?” Delchamps asked.
“I’d have taken the bet at two hundred to one against,” Hotelier said. “And that being the case, I started wondering how — or who — could get the Congo-X and Castillo and the others away from the Russians.”
“Once they got Charley, Sweaty, and Dmitri on the nonstop to Moscow, that would be close to impossible. Even taking a shot at it would take a hell of a lot of money.”
“I have a hell of a lot of money,” Hotelier said.
Delchamps had looked at Hotelier for a long moment and then turned to Castillo.
“Ace, I trust this guy,” he said. “And since you trust these two, I guess only the others go swimming with those big fishes as we discussed.”
“If I may make a suggestion?” Hotelier had asked.
“Why not?” Delchamps had replied.
“As hard as you might find this to believe,” Hotelier said, “some of the guests in my places of business try to cheat. When we catch them doing so, we reason with them, point out they have made a bad decision, and tell them what’s going to happen if they ever again make such a bad decision or even think about doing so.
“If we — you and I, Mr. Delchamps — went to the gentlemen we’re talking about and reasoned with them, I’m sure they would recognize how gross an error they have made, and would be willing to offer their solemn assurance they would never do so again. If we did this, we would not be shutting off, so to speak, the money spigot.”
“Yeah,” Delchamps said. “Why don’t you call me Edgar?”
Despite the satisfactory resolution of the Confrontation, Aloysius still felt he had let down Castillo — had not covered his back — as he should have and resolved never to let that happen again.
To accomplish this he designed, built, tested, and then installed in the House on the Hill a miniature version of the interception system he had designed, built, tested, and installed for the NSA at Fort Meade.
The system he had installed at Fort Meade had several acres of computers to perform its tasks, but the one Casey installed at home was not designed to intercept messages of all kinds but only those going through the CaseyBerry Communications System; it fit in a small case about the size of two shoe boxes stacked one upon the other, which he kept in what had been Mary-Catherine’s wardrobe.
The best way to explain its capabilities is by example:
For example, when the system heard Mr. Lammelle ask, “Well, what thinks the Queen of Foggy Bottom?” it automatically went into Record/Alert mode as the words “Queen,” “Foggy,” and “Bottom,” in any combination, were in the filter database.