It turned on the Secondary Recording function, which went to the Primary Recording system, which operated all the time in a Run & Erase mode, and copied from it everything that had been recorded from a point in time ten seconds before the system had been triggered by hearing “Queen” and transferred it to the Secondary Recording function.
It added a date and time block, identified the parties to the call as Mr. Lammelle and Secretary Cohen, and found and stored their locations. But so far it didn’t do a thing to Mr. Casey’s CaseyBerry.
When, however, DCI Lammelle inquired of the secretary of State whether or not they should tell Truman Ellsworth that Charley was not in Budapest, “Charley,” or variations thereof, being the number one search filter, Mr. Casey’s CaseyBerry burst into life.
It vibrated, buzzed, and tinkled pleasantly to get his attention, and when he pushed ACTIVATE BUTTON #3, flashed on its screen the names of the parties to the call, their locations, and Charley’s location. When he pushed ACTIVATE BUTTON #4, it played back the entire conversation.
In a similar manner, Mr. Casey was made privy to Mr. Lammelle’s second call to Secretary Cohen; Mr. Lammelle’s call to General McNab in which he told McNab to expect General Naylor to stop by; General McNab’s call to Charley; General McNab’s second call to Charley, during which Sweaty threatened to castrate General McNab with an otxokee mecto nanara (including the translation of this phrase from the Russian language); Lammelle’s call to Colonel Torine, ordering the charter of a Panamanian Executive Aircraft Gulfstream on the CIA’s dime to be held ready to fly to Argentina; and finally Lammelle’s call to Mr. D’Alessandro telling him when the DCI’s Gulfstream was expected to arrive at Pope Air Force Base.
At that point, Mr. Casey pushed another button, which connected him with Hotelier.
“Listen to this,” he said, “and tell me what you think.”
He punched a button that transmitted all of the intercepts to Hotelier’s CaseyBerry, whereupon Hotelier listened to them.
“I would hazard the guess Clendennen has somehow gotten out of his straitjacket,” Hotelier said.
“I’m worried that Lester will hear about this and rush down there to protect Charley,” Casey said.
“Aloysius, as you have so often told me, acquiring as much intelligence as one can has to be the first step before taking any action. Now, who in Washington has the best access to what our President is up to at any given moment?”
“Roscoe Danton.”
Casey pushed a button and learned that Mr. Danton was in The Round Robin Bar of the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C.
“And who do we have in Washington who can best extract this information from Mr. Danton?”
“Delchamps? Or maybe Yung?”
“Precisely. One or the other, preferably both.”
“Thank you. I’ll keep you in the loop.”
“Please do.”
Casey pushed the appropriate buttons and learned that Mr. Yung was in his office in the Riggs National Bank building and Mr. Delchamps was across the Potomac River at Lorimer Manor, an assisted living facility at 7200 West Boulevard Drive in Alexandria, Virginia.
He pushed the button that would connect him with the latter.
[TWO]
When David W. Yung and Edgar Delchamps walked in, Roscoe J. Danton was sitting at the bar about to sip at his third serving — at $27.50 per serving — of Macallan’s twenty-four-year-old scotch whisky. The intoxicant was being provided to him by the lobbyist for the American Association of Motorized Wheelchair Manufacturers, who was delighted to provide a journalist such as Mr. Danton with anything at all he wished to drink.
If he did so, the lobbyist reasoned, it was possible — not likely, but possible — that Mr. Danton’s columns might not echo the scurrilous stories going around that the furnishing of products of the AAMWCM, which cost an average of $4,550, absolutely free of charge to mobility-restricted Social Security recipients was near the top of the list of outrageous rapes of the Social Security system.
“Well, there he is,” Mr. Yung said.
“How are you, ol’ buddy?” Mr. Delchamps added.
Mr. Danton turned from the bar to see who was talking to him. As he did so, Mr. Delchamps offered his hand. In a reflex action, Mr. Danton took it.
“Your car is here, Roscoe,” Mr. Yung said.
“Parked illegally, so we’ll have to hurry,” Delchamps said. “Say goodbye to the nice man, Roscoe, and come along.”
Intending to say, “I’m not going anywhere with you,” he got only as far as “I’m not…” before an excruciating pain began in his hand and worked its way quickly up his arm to his neck.
Mr. Delchamps had grasped Mr. Danton’s hand with an ancient grip he had learned from an agent of the Chos-n’g-l, the North Korean Department of State Security, whom he had turned during his active career in the Clandestine Service of the CIA.
No lasting damage was done to the gripee’s body, the agent had taught him, but as long as pressure was applied, gripees tended to be very cooperative.
Waiting in the NO STANDING ZONE outside the street door of The Round Robin was a black, window-darkened Yukon Denali SUV bearing the special license plates issued by the Commonwealth of Virginia to the physically handicapped. On the door was lettered in gold LORIMER MANOR HANDICAPPED TRANSPORT # 2.
The rear door was open. Through it one could see the driver, who looked like an actress sent over from Central Casting in response to a call for “an elegant grandmother type in her seventies,” and, sitting on his haunches in the captain’s chair beside her, a dog, a 125-pound Bouvier des Flandres.
Mr. Yung quickly climbed in, and then Mr. Delchamps, still clutching Mr. Danton’s hand, assisted him in getting in, then got in himself.
“Where we going?” the driver inquired.
“We might as well go home,” Delchamps said. “This might take some time.”
Home to Mr. Delchamps was Lorimer Manor, a large house — it could be fairly called a mansion — on an acre of manicured lawn on West Boulevard Drive in Alexandria. There was a tasteful brass sign on the lawn:
LORIMER MANOR
ASSISTED LIVING
NO SOLICITING
Lorimer Manor was also home to eleven other people — including the elegant grandmother in her seventies driving the Yukon — who were all also retired from the Clandestine Service of the CIA.
It had been originally purchased by the Lorimer Charitable & Benevolent Fund — using the funds from Dr. Lorimer’s safe, hence the name — in the early days of the Office of Organizational Analysis as a safe house.
On the demise of that organization, the question of what to do with the property was initially solved by Mr. Delchamps, who said he needed a place to live, and would rent it from the LCBF Corporation temporarily.
Word spread quickly among the Retired Clandestine Community — known disparagingly by many newcomers to the CIA as “the Dinosaurs”—that ol’ Edgar Delchamps was holed up comfortably in a big house in Alexandria. Perhaps there would be room for one more of them?
The place was shortly full up, and there was a waiting list. It was of particular interest to females who had retired from the Clandestine Service. They were uncomfortable living, for example, in the Silver Springs Methodist Retirement Home for Christian Ladies, and places of that nature.
Mr. David W. Yung — he was good at this sort of thing — had quickly set up a nonprofit corporation to handle the administration of the facility. A housekeeper — herself a retired Special Operations cryptographer married to a retired member of Delta Force — was engaged, rates were set, a board of directors established, and so on, and soon Lorimer Manor was off and running, so to speak.