“Well, Louise and I have been sitting around Lorimer Manor — you remember Louise, don’t you, Mr. Lammelle?”
Two assignments after Greece, Lammelle had been sent to Lima, Peru, where Louise Chambers had been the CIA station chief. His orders then had been “to wash dishes, make beds, and do whatever else Miss Chambers tells you to do. And be goddamned grateful for the chance to see her at work.”
“Yes, of course,” Lammelle said.
“Well, as I was saying, Mr. DCI, sir, Louise and I have been sitting around Lorimer Manor having a little taste, watching the grass grow, and wondering if anything interesting was happening at our former place of employment. So we thought we’d give you a call for Auld Lange Syne and ask.”
“I can’t think of a thing, Edgar, but it’s nice to hear your voice.”
“And it’s always a pleasure to hear yours, sir. I guess you don’t consider chartering a Gulfstream from Panamanian Executive Aircraft to fly to Argentina as interesting as Louise and I do.”
“How the hell did you hear about that?” Mr. Lammelle inquired, and then hung up.
Fifteen seconds later, Mr. Delchamps’s CaseyBerry buzzed.
Delchamps said, “I’ll put this on loudspeaker,” and then punched the appropriate buttons.
Mr. Lammelle’s voice on the CaseyBerry loudspeaker picked up the conversation where he had left it: “Casey told you, right?”
“A good Clandestine Service officer, even a retired one, never reveals his sources. I thought I taught you that,” Delchamps said.
When Lammelle didn’t reply, Delchamps went on. “Well, if you’re not willing to share this with us, Mr. DCI, sir — and by this I mean everything, of course — then I guess ol’ Roscoe Danton, who just happens to be sitting here with Louise and me, is going to have to ask Mr. Blue Jay Hoboken, President Clendennen’s—”
“His name is Robin, not Blue Jay,” Lammelle interrupted without thinking.
“Whatever. I’ve never been much of an ornithologist. We’ll just have Mr. Danton ask Mr. Robin Redbreast Hoboken what transpired at the President’s Cabinet meeting that might have an effect on Charley Castillo. You remember Colonel Castillo, don’t you, Mr. DCI, sir?”
“Oh, shit!” DCI Lammelle said, and then, biting the bullet of recognition that he had no other choice, reported all he knew.
When he had finished, and there was no reply from Delchamps, Lammelle said, “Okay, Edgar, now it’s your turn. What do you know that I don’t?”
“Not a thing.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I think we have to wait until we learn what happens in Argentina. I can’t believe Charley would go along with a recall to extended hazardous duty, but he’s surprised me before.”
“That’s all?”
“Why don’t you call Panamanian Executive Aircraft and have them bill the LCBF Corporation for the charter? Why did you volunteer to have the Agency pay for it, anyway?”
“Because I didn’t think Jake would fly his airplane down there pro bono. Why does LCBF want to pay for it? Isn’t that robbing Peter to pay Paul?”
“LCBF isn’t going to pay for it. Casey got Those People to advance us a million dollars for our expenses in this.”
“So Casey is where you got your information?”
“No. I just got it from the CIA. Nice to talk to you, Mr. Director, sir. Let’s take lunch sometime when your busy schedule permits.”
“Edgar, I’m asking as nice as I know how. Please don’t do anything rash.”
“Have I ever done anything rash as long as you’ve known me?”
Lammelle grunted.
“I will pass on to you anything I hear, Edgar, if you do the same. Deal?”
“Deal.”
[THREE]
The Gulfstream 550 touched smoothly down after a five-hour-and-twenty-six-minute flight — mostly at forty-five thousand feet and averaging 475 knots — from Panama City, Panama.
The co-pilot, who had made the landing, was a thirty-six-year-old, six-foot-two, 220-pound, very black native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. When he had taxied the Gulfstream to the visiting aircraft tarmac and started to shut it down, he turned to the pilot, a forty-seven-year-old, six-foot-one, 170-pound, pale-skinned silver-haired native of Culpepper, Virginia.
“Candelaria was the first guy to fly over — I guess, really through—the Andes,” the co-pilot, Major H. Richard Miller, Junior, USA, Retired, announced. “Very large set of gonads.”
“Who was? And he did what?” Colonel Jacob D. Torine, USAF, Retired, asked.
“Lieutenant Luis Candelaria,” Miller clarified. “On April thirteenth, 1918, he took off from Zapala, Argentina, in an eighty-horse Sounier Morano Parasol, and two hours thirty later put it down the other side of the mountains in Cunco, Chile. He was Argentina’s first military aviator.”
“Thank you for sharing that with me, Dick. I always like to begin my day with little nuggets of aviation history.”
“You’re welcome.”
“And you are going to tell me, right, why you chose to enrich my life with that particular nugget at this moment in time and space?”
“Because that’s where we are,” Miller said. “Aeropuerto Internacional Teniente Luis Candelaria.” He pointed to a sign on the terminal building that said so. “The first time I came in here I saw that and figured I’d landed at the wrong airport — the Garmin screen said it was lining me up to land at Bariloche International — so I looked it up.”
“Experienced Air Force pilots such as myself never fully trust computerized navigation systems. I thought I’d taught you that.”
Miller didn’t reply, and instead pointed out the window. “There’s Pevsner’s chopper, Liam Duffy, and the local authorities, but I don’t see either a brass band or our leader.”
A glistening black Bell 429XP helicopter sat on the grass just off the tarmac. Beside it were two official trucks and eight men in an assortment of uniforms.
“I was afraid of that,” Torine said. “McNab told me that when he told Charley we were coming down here to talk about what the President wants him to do, Charley said unless Clendennen wanted to help him commit hari-kiri, he wasn’t interested in doing anything for him. When McNab said we were coming anyway, Charley said we would be wasting our time. And then he said, ‘Nice to talk to you, sir,’ and hung up.”
“So,” Miller interrupted, “when Charley got word we were an hour out, he came here in that 429, loaded Sweaty and Max into that adorable little three-million-dollar Cessna Mustang Sweaty gave him for his birthday, and the two of them took off…”
Torine took up the thought: “… and right about now he is making his approach to Santiago, Chile, or Punta del Este, Uruguay, or some other exotic South American dorf—”
“Where they will register in a nice hotel as Señor and Señora José Gonzales of Ecuador,” Miller finished the scenario.
“I see that our great minds are still marching down the same path,” Torine said. “So what do we do when we learn Charley is not available to be convinced he should trust the Commander in Chief and answer his call to extended hazardous active duty? And incidentally, what’s that ‘hazardous duty’ all about?”
“Hazardous duty pays an extra two hundred a month, and the President thinks that will entice Charley to accept the offer.”
“I forgot that. He must know how desperately Charley needs another two hundred a month. So, what do we do when we can’t find Charley?”