The Hunters (Presidential Agent 3)

“Oh, you are a clever fellow, Robert.”

“My mother always told me that, sir.”

“Here’s what I want to do, Bob. You tell me if I can do it and, if so, how.”

“Yes, sir?”

“I want a secure line wherever possible. I have to make calls to Ambassador Montvale, to a civilian number in Germany, to a civilian number in San Antonio, and another one to a local number here in Argentina—either cellular or a regular phone—and I really don’t want that party to know where it’s coming from.”

“Yes, sir. The ambassador’s no problem at all. We get Miller at the Nebraska Complex on the horn. That’ll be encrypted with our—AFC’s—logarithms. Miller can decrypt and patch you into the White House switchboard and you’ll have a secure line…”

“Instantaneous?”

“Yes, sir,” Kensington said, then reached to the floor beside him and extended a telephone handset to Castillo. “Just like a telephone.”

“And the others? How do I do that?”

“A couple of problems there,” Kensington said. “You’ll be secure as far as the White House switchboard for Germany and San Antonio, but not beyond, and, as far as here goes, the White House can get you secure as far as the embassy here, but I don’t know if they can patch you into the local phone company.”

“No problem,” Susanna said. “But unless we block it, if the person you’re calling has caller ID, they’ll know where it’s coming from, and, if they’re any good at all, they could trace it to the embassy. Override the block, I mean.”

“That’s no problem,” Castillo said. “Let him think I’m calling from the embassy. I mean, we’ll put the caller ID block in, but there’s no real harm if they get around it.”

Kensington finally rose from the recliner. He walked to what looked like a kitchen cabinet, opened the door, squ

atted to examine the AFC radio, then turned and said, “All green, sir. You want the Nebraska Complex now?”

“Please. Put it on speakerphone.”

“You’re up.”

“And how else may I be of assistance to you, Sergeant Kensington?” Major H. Richard Miller’s voice—having been encrypted in Washington, D.C., then sent twenty-seven thousand miles into space to a satellite, then bounced back another twenty-seven thousand miles to earth and decrypted in the dining room of a quincho thirty-odd miles outside Buenos Aires—inquired cheerfully and with such clarity that amazement was on everybody’s face except that of Sergeant Kensington.

“You can first get your bum leg off my desk,” Castillo said, “and then we’ll talk.”

“Oh, good morning, Colonel. I’ve been wondering when we were going to hear from you. Ambassador Montvale is, in his words, ‘quite anxious to chat’ with you.”

“Oddly enough, that’s why I called. Patch me into the White House switchboard and eavesdrop, please.”

“You got it, Charley.”

Twenty seconds later, a pleasant voice announced, “White House. This line is secure, Colonel Castillo. Sir, Ambassador Montvale has been trying to reach you.”

“Will you get him for me, please?”

“Hold one, please.”

“Ambassador Montvale’s secure line,” the now very familiar voice of Truman Ellsworth announced.

The sonofabitch really won’t answer his own phone.

“Lieutenant Colonel Castillo for the ambassador, please,” Castillo said.

“Hello, Charley!” Ambassador Montvale said cheerily a moment later. “And how are you, wherever you are?”

“I’m in Buenos Aires, sir. In three or four hours, I’m leaving for the States.”

“Nice not having to worry about airline schedules, isn’t it?” Montvale said, and, without waiting for an answer, went on: “So I’ll see you in what—twelve hours or so?”