The Hunters (Presidential Agent 3)

“Mr. Castillo,” the CIA man announced, “I have been instructed to tell you that Ambassador Montvale wants to talk with you as soon as possible.”

“And behind one of these doors is a secure phone?” Castillo asked.

The CIA man nodded.

“Okay,” Castillo said. “And while I’m talking to Montvale, please get me a weapon. Black. Preferably an Uzi, with a spare magazine.”

Görner’s eyes widened for an instant.

“I’m not sure that I can do that, Mr. Castillo,” the CIA man said.

“You don’t have a Uzi?”

“Provide you with a weapon.”

“You can either check that out with the ambassador or wait until I have Ambassador Montvale on the line and he will tell you that you can.”

“May I ask why you need a weapon?”

“No,” Castillo said, simply.

The two locked eyes again for a moment, then the CIA man took a ring of keys from his pocket and unlocked one of the steel doors. It opened on a small room furnished with a table and a secretary’s chair. On the table were two telephones—one of them with a very heavy cord—a legal tablet, a water glass holding half a dozen pencils, and an ashtray. Hanging from a nail driven into a leg of the table were a dozen or more plastic bags of the sort used by grocery stores. BURN was printed all over them in large red letters.

The CIA man waved Castillo into the room and, when Castillo had sat down, picked up the telephone with the heavy cord.

“This is Franklin,” he said. “I am about to hand the phone to Mr. Castillo, who has been cleared to call anywhere.”

He handed the telephone to Castillo.

“Thank you,” Castillo said. “Please close the door.”

“Certainly.”

And don’t let the doorknob hit you in the ass.

If I were this guy, I would now go into the commo room, which is certainly behind one of those other doors, put on a set of earphones, turn on a recorder, and listen to what this Castillo character is going to talk to Montvale about.

Fuck him. Let him listen. The only thing he’s going to learn from this conversation is that I don’t work for Ambassador Charles W. Montvale.

Castillo waited fifteen seconds and then put the handset to his ear.

“You on there, Franklin?” he asked, conversationally.

There was no reply. Castillo hadn’t expected one.

But he was doing more than giving Franklin a hard time. If Franklin was listening and recording the conversation—and the more he thought about it, the more convinced he was that Franklin would be—he was almost certainly using one of the recorders in the commo room. Castillo was familiar with most of the recorders used. They shared one characteristic. The recordings were date and time-stamped, down to one-tenth of a second. That data could not be changed or deleted.

Franklin, therefore, could not pretend if he played the recording for someone—or, more likely, sent it to Langley, or, even more likely, to Montvale himself—that he had not been asked if he was listening. The embassy was U.S. soil; therefore, the laws of the United States applied. Without a wiretap authorization issued by a federal judge, it is a felonious violation of the United States Code to record a conversation unless one of the parties to the conversation is aware that the conversation is being recorded.

He could of course make a written transcript of the conversation, leaving out the “You on there, Franklin?” That not only would look odd but he would be asked, “What happened to the recording itself?”

“If you are on there, Franklin,” Castillo said, still conversationally, “you should not be. You are advised that this communication is classified Top Secret Presidential and you do not have that clearance.”

“Sir?” a male voice came on the line.

Castillo knew it had to be whoever was in charge of the communications room.

“My name is C. G. Castillo. Get me the White House switchboard on a secure line, please.”