The Hunters (Presidential Agent 3)

“Jesus Christ!”

“Yeah,” Miller said. “Where, one would presume, she would have access to everything that the agency hears—more important, does—down there.”

“Well, I’ll have to do something about that,” Castillo said, almost to himself.

“Short of rendering her harmless, Charley, what?”

“I don’t know. But I don’t want that woman’s nose in what’s happened down there or what may happen.”

“Her nose doesn’t bother me nearly as much as her mouth.”

“Did you say anything to anybody?”

Miller shook his head.

“I’ll go see Matt Hall first thing in the morning,” Castillo said.

“First thing late tomorrow afternoon,” Miller said. “He’s in Saint Louis, and from there he’s going to Chicago. He’s due back here at five-thirty. There’s a reception at the White House—command performance for him.”

“Okay, first thing late tomorrow afternoon,” Castillo said. “Damn! I’m on my way to Europe and I wanted to see Betty in Philadelphia before I left. Now I either don’t get to see her or I leave a day later.”

“Does this mean you’re not going to buy me a drink?”

“I will buy you two drinks,” Castillo said. “Maybe more.”

“In the lobby bar?”

“As I recall that encounter, we were the innocent victims. Why should we be afraid of running into the villain in a bar?”

“Come on, Charley! You know damned well why.”

“I have the strength of ten, because in my heart I’m pure. I am not going to let that ‘lady,’ using the term loosely, run me out of a bar.”

Miller snorted.

[TWO]

Office of Organizational Analysis

Department of Homeland Security

Nebraska Avenue Complex

Washington, D.C.

0825 4 August 2005

Mr. Agnes Forbison, deputy chief for administration of the Office of Organizational Analysis, Major H. Richard Miller, Jr., chief of staff to the chief of the Office of Organizational Analysis, and the chief himself, Major C. G. Castillo, were standing on the carpet in just about the center of the latter’s office. Major Miller was supporting himself on a massive cane.

It was an office befitting a senior executive of the federal go

vernment. There was an oversized, ornately carved antique wooden desk, behind which sat a red leather, high-backed “judge’s chair.”

On the desk were two telephones, one of them red. It was a secure line, connected to the White House switchboard. There were two flags against the wall, the national colors and that of the Department of Homeland Security. In front of the desk were two leather-upholstered straight-backed chairs. There was a coffee table, with two chairs on one side of it and a matching couch on the other. There were two television sets, each with a thirty-two-inch-wide screen, mounted on the walls.

“And that completes the tour,” Mr. Forbison said. “Say, ‘Good job, Agnes.’”

Mr. Forbison, a GS-15—the highest rank in the General Service hierarchy—was forty-nine, gray-haired, and getting just a little chubby.