One of the three cellular telephones Charlene Stevens always carried with her rang — giving off a sound like that of a feline in heat — and she quickly put it to her ear.
She listened and then said, “Thanks. You are now forgiven for not putting out the garbage.”
She turned from the front passenger seat to address Secretary Cohen.
“That was my Lord and Master, boss.”
Secretary Cohen understood Charlene was referring to her husband, Arthur, who was known as “King Kong” to his fellow Secret Service agents, possibly because he stood five feet five inches tall and weighed 135 pounds.
“Arthur said,” Charlene reported, “that Mulligan just called the Presidential Flight Detachment and told them to get a chopper ready for a flight to carry two agents to the Greenbrier Valley Airport.”
“Damn!” Natalie Cohen said.
“And when the Air Force guy said you were getting ready to go there and were usually willing to carry people with you, Mulligan not only cut him off but said he didn’t even want you to know he was sending agents there.”
“Pull off somewhere, please, Tom,” Secretary Cohen ordered the Yukon’s driver as she searched in her purse for her CaseyBerry.
She pushed one autodial button and five seconds later A. Franklin Lammelle came over the phone’s loudspeaker.
“And how may the CIA be of service to the secretary of State?”
“Get on the phone and tell everybody the Greenbrier’s off,” she said.
“What happened?”
She told him.
“Do you think he figured this out himself, or was Mulligan involved?”
“I think he was suspicious — he’s paranoid about a coup — and Mulligan poured gasoline on those embers.”
“So no meeting?”
“Unless we can find someplace else to hold it, I really don’t know what to do.”
“Someplace else isn’t that much of a problem. I’ve got a safe house outside Harrisburg that isn’t in use at the moment.”
“Harrisburg, Pennsylvania?” she asked incredulously.
“Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,” Lammelle confirmed. “And everybody but McNab and Naylor could drive there. And you could tell Naylor to visit the Indiantown Gap Military Reservation, using his airplane and taking McNab with him.”
She considered that a moment. “This safe house of yours is really safe?”
“Who’s going to think there’d be a CIA safe house in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania?”
“Make the calls, please, Frank, and get everybody there after eight o’clock tomorrow night.”
“And what about you, Madam Secretary, as the senior government official?”
“I’ll get back to Washington at five or a little after, let the President know I’m back—”
“Back from where?”
“Playing golf at the Greenbrier,” she replied, “and then I’ll drive up there. How do I find it?”
“I suppose Brünnhilde the Bodyguard is with you?”
“Up yours, Frank,” Charlene said.
“I’ll see that Art has a map by the time you need it,” Lammelle said.
“Fine,” Charlene said.
“You’re really going down there and play golf?”
“That’s what I told the President I was going to do. How could I not go? Call me and let me know what’s going on.”
“Yes, ma’am, Madam Secretary,” Lammelle said.
Cohen broke the connection.
“Agent Stevens, I wasn’t aware that you and Director Lammelle were so intimately acquainted,” she said.
“He and Art went through the FBI Academy together,” Charlene said. “They decided that they didn’t want to spend their lives investigating white-collar crimes, so Art went into the Secret Service, and Frank into the Agency. Frank was Art’s best man when we got married, and I held Frank’s hand through both of his divorces.”
“You never said anything.”
“Yeah, well,” Charlene said. “That doesn’t mean we don’t talk about you.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that Frank thinks you’re the cat’s pajamas, boss.”
Natalie shook her head, then pressed another autodial button and then shut off the loudspeaker function. Charlene heard only one side of the conversation:
“I hope you didn’t have big plans for tomorrow, sweetheart…
“Put enough clothes in your bag for a fancy dinner tonight, and then take your golf clubs and get in a cab and go out to Teterboro. I’m about ten minutes from taking off from Andrews for Teterboro…
“Because we’re going to the Greenbrier to play golf…
“Of course you can make time for something like that. Your call, sweetheart. Would you rather have a romantic dinner with me tonight, and eighteen holes tomorrow, or the next time your Aunt Rebecca wants me to talk to the girls at the Beth Sinai Home have me tell her to go suck on a lemon…?
“That’s what my mother said about you, too, darling. That I would regret marrying you. See you at Teterboro…”
[SIX]
Charley Castillo’s CaseyBerry sounded “Charge!” and he picked it up, saw who was calling, and put it to his ear.
“Hey, Paul.”
“Charley, are you really in the middle of the Rhine River, or did you tell Aloysius to send out spurious GPS data again?” Paul Sieno asked.
“Not exactly in the middle; we’re about to tie up in Koblenz. How are things in sunny Cozumel?”
“Getting interesting, which is why I called.”
“How so?”
“You’ll never guess who’s here.”
“But you are going to tell me, right? I’m so exhausted from my labors that I’m not up to playing guessing games.”
“Grigori Slobozhanin.”
“Who the hell is he?”
“He’s the chief coach of the Greater Sverdlovsk Table Tennis Association, and he brought a half-dozen of his better Ping-Pong players here with him. Plus a couple of dozen Cuban Ping-Pongers.”
“Okay, Paul, I give up.”
“Before he took up table tennis, he was known as General Sergei Murov.”
Castillo was suddenly very serious.
“Paul, get with Juan Carlos Pena as soon as you can—”
“Way ahead of you, Charley,” Sieno interrupted.
“I know Juan Carlos doesn’t exactly look like that suave Mexican actor,” Castillo went on, stopping when he couldn’t recall the actor’s name, and then, when he had partial recall, continuing, “Antonio Bandana, or whatever the hell his name is, but he’s not only one damned smart cop but one of my oldest friends.”
“Gringo, if I can have ‘one damned smart cop’ in writing, I’ll pretend I didn’t hear your unflattering comparison of me to Antonio Whatsisname,” Juan Carlos Pena said.
“How are you, Juan Carlos?” Castillo asked.
“I hope we interrupted something important,” Pena said.
“You did. I was sitting here in a deck chair drinking wine and watching Sweaty sunbathe in a bikini.”
“You both better stay there,” Pena said. “Why don’t you go to Las Vegas and get married in the Elvis Presley Wedding Chapel, like normal people?”
“Instead of Cozumel, you mean?”
“I have enough trouble in Cozumel already. I don’t need another river of blood scaring the tourists away because the Cuban DGI doesn’t like you.”
“What makes you think the Cuban DGI doesn’t like me?”
“When Paul told me that General Sergei Murov was here with his Ping-Pong players, and General Jesus Manuel Cosada was here with a dozen of his Ping-Pong players—”