Gerry’s capable hands. You will be met at the airport in Mexico City and taken to meet Colonel Castillo.”
“And the Russians?”
“Actually, one of the Russians has expressed an interest in meeting you, Roscoe.”
“Where is Castillo, Two-Gun?”
“You will learn that later.”
“And if I say no?”
“Then we shall regretfully have to stuff you in the trunk of your car. And by the time Gerry hears your piteous cries for help—and finally figures out where they’re coming from—Alex and I will have folded our tent and disappeared.”
Goddamn it! I’m smiling again.
“Okay. Give me ten minutes to throw some things in a bag and grab my laptop.”
“No. If we’re going, it has to be right now.”
“Why?”
“There’s about one chance in ten that Alex and I were not as successful as we believe we were in eluding the Secret Service guys surveilling our house, which raises the possibility that there may be some of them outside.”
“What makes you think they won’t see, follow, stop, whatever, us when you and I leave?”
“Because just before we leave, Alex is going to leave the garage as if Satan himself is in hot pursuit. If there are no Secret Service agents waiting for him outside, fine. If there are, Alex will lead them on a tour of the scenic spots of our nation’s capital while you and I make our leisurely way to BaltimoreWashington International.”
“And Harry Whelan won’t be involved, right?”
“I was afraid you would ask that.”
“Meaning he will be?”
“Meaning he will be offered the same opportunity.”
“Can I cut his throat?”
“When you come back, you can do anything you want to.”
“I haven’t a clue why I’m going along with this,” Roscoe J. Danton said as he put the key in the car door.
[ONE]
Office of the Director
The Central Intelligence Agency
Langley, Virginia
0930 10 February 2007
J. Stanley Waters, the CIA’s deputy director for operations, stood looking over the shoulder of DCI John Powell at the screen of a laptop computer. The screen showed an arrow positioned over a map of Budapest, Hungary. A box beside the arrow held the legend HOTEL GELLÉRT, SZENT GELLÉRT TÉR 1 and the local date and time.
“There is our friend Castillo right now,” the DCI said.
“What’s he doing in the Hotel Gellért in Budapest?” Waters asked.
“Does it matter? Just as long as the case officers know where to find him when they get there.”
“It would have been easier, and maybe quicker, to send the plane from Tampa. We know the guys on the plane are good, know the score, and if we had sent it over there the moment we saw he was headed for Europe, they would be there, or almost there, now.”
“So you’ve been saying, five or six times,” the DCI said.
“I stand chastised.”
“And well you should,” the DCI said, only half-jokingly.
When enough time for that to have sunk in had passed, the DCI went on: “And what you can do with this software, Stan—that Casey is really a fucking genius—is program a time lapse into it. Like this.”
He tapped a few keys. The map changed and now showed a map covering the world from near Acapulco to Budapest.
“This arrow is when Castillo started to move from Grandma’s house,” the DCI said. “That was at sixteen-thirty Acapulco time yesterday. I’ll set this thing to show us where he was by the hour.”
He tapped keys.
“There it is . . .”
A series of arrows appeared on a line from Acapulco to Budapest.
“Unfortunately, there was a cloud cover, so we couldn’t get a very good picture of what’s moving. But enough to categorize it as a small jet. One hour later . . .”
He used his finger as a pointer.
“. . . it was almost halfway to Cancún, and two hours later, it was almost in Cancún, telling us it was making about three hundred thirty knots, which suggests that he’s flying the family Lear, which makes sense, as we know the Gulfstream III is in Panama City, Panama.
“An hour after that, having taken on fuel in Cancún, he was about two hundred miles on his way to Panama City.... Watch the arrow jump, Stan. Another hour, another three hundred forty nautical miles, and then another, et cetera, until he reaches Panama City, Panama.
“And there Castillo sat for almost three hours until he boarded Varig Flight 2030 for Madrid.”
“Jack, for Christ’s sake, you’re like a kid with your goddamn computer!”
“Indulge me,” the DCI said. “And there he is in Madrid.”
“Goddamn it, Jack!”
“And finally, courtesy of Lufthansa, there he is in Budapest.”
“What do you think he did with his