cetera, have titles like “executive assistant.”
The Honorable Matthew Hall, secretary of Homeland Security, had three executive assistants.
The first of these was Mrs. Mary-Ellen Kensington, who was fifty, gray-haired, and slim. She was a GS-15, the highest grade in the career Civil Service. She maintained Hall’s small and unpretentious suite of offices in the Old Executive Office Building, near the White House. Secretary Hall and the President were close friends, which meant that the President liked to have him around more than he did some other members of his cabinet. When Hall was in Washington he could usually be found in his OEOB office, so that he was readily available to the President.
The second was Mrs. Agnes Forbison, who was forty-nine, gray-haired, and getting just a little chubby. She was also a GS-15. She reigned over the secretary’s office staff in his formal office, a suite of well-furnished rooms in the Nebraska Avenue Complex, which is just off Ward Circle in the northwest of the District of Columbia. The complex had once belonged to the Navy, but it had been turned over in 2004 by an act of Congress to the Department of Homeland Security when that agency had been formed after 9/11.
When the red telephone on the coffee table in the secretary’s private office in the complex buzzed, and a red light on it flashed—signaling an incoming call from either the President himself, but more than likely from one of the other members of the President’s cabinet; or the directors of either the FBI or the CIA; or the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; or the commander-in-chief of Central Command—Mrs. Forbison was in the process of pouring a cup of coffee for the secretary’s third executive assistant, C. G. Castillo.
Castillo, who was thirty-six, a shade over six feet tall, and weighed 190 pounds, was lying on the secretary’s not-quite-long-enough-for-him red leather couch with his stockinged feet hanging over the end of it.
Castillo looked at the red telephone, saw that Agnes was holding the coffeepot, and reached for the telephone.
“Secretary Hall’s line. Castillo speaking.”
“Charley,” the caller said, “I was hoping to speak to your boss.”
Castillo sat up abruptly, spilling a stack of papers onto the floor.
“Mr. President, the secretary’s en route from Chicago. He should be landing at Andrews in about an hour.”
“Aha! The infallible White House switchboard apparently is not so infallible. I can’t wait to tell them. Nice to talk to you, Charley.”
“Thank you, sir.”
The line went dead. Charley, as he put the phone back in its cradle, exchanged I wonder what that was all about? looks with Agnes.
The phone buzzed again.
“Secretary Hall’s line. Castillo speaking.”
“What I was going to ask your boss, Charley, is if there is some good reason you can’t go to Buenos Aires right now.”
Buenos Aires? What the hell is going on in Argentina?
“Sir, I’m sure the secretary would tell you that I’m at your disposal.”
“Well, I’ll ask him anyway. But you might want to start packing. I’ve just been told the wife of our deputy chief of mission was kidnapped early last night. I want to know how and why that happened, and I want to know now, and I don’t want to wait until whoever’s in charge down there has time to write a cover-his-ass report. Getting the picture?”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
After a moment, Charley realized the President had hung up.
Agnes waited for a report.
“He wants me to go to Buenos Aires,” Charley replied, obviously thinking that over. “It seems somebody kidnapped the deputy chief of mission’s wife. He wants me to find out about it. He’s apparently laboring under the misconception that I’m some kind of a detective.”
“You’re not bad at finding missing airplanes, Sherlock.”
“Jesus, Agnes, that’s a big embassy. They probably have ten FBI agents, plus CIA spooks, plus Drug Enforcement guys . . . not to mention the State Department’s own security people.”
“But the President doesn’t know any of them, Charley. And he knows you. Trusts you,” Agnes said, and then added, “But to buttress your argument, there’s also a heavy hitter Secret Service guy in Buenos Aires. Name of Tony Santini. He’s an old pal of Joel’s. The reason I know is that once a month or so he sends Joel twenty, twenty-five pounds of filet mignon steaks on the courier plane. They’re in a box marked TISSUE SAMPLES.”
“Maybe I can tell the boss that, and get Joel’s pal to find out what happened. I really don’t want to go down there.”
What I really want to do is