The Hunters (Presidential Agent 3)

“Christ, that’s him? I forgotten his name, if I ever knew it.”

“Well, there’s a lot of Irishmen in the FBI,” Miller said. “Maybe there’s two or more inspectors named John J. Doherty, but I really don’t think so.”

“Show Inspector Doherty in please, Mr. Forbison,” Castillo said. “And Dick, you can stop calling me Ace.”

“You want me to get out of the way?” Delchamps asked.

“No. Stick around, please,” Castillo said.

Inspector Doherty, unsmiling, came through the door sixty seconds later. He was a nondescript man in his late forties, wearing a single-breasted dark gray suit. He wore frameless glasses and his graying hair was cropped short.

Castillo thought, I didn’t like this guy the first time I saw him and I don’t like him now.

“Good morning, Inspector Doherty,” Castillo said. “Thank you for being so prompt, and I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.”

Doherty nodded but didn’t speak.

“This is Mr. Forbison,” Castillo said, “and Major Miller and Mr. Delchamps. These are the people you’ll be primarily working with.”

“Ambassador Montvale wasn’t very clear about what I’m supposed to do,” Doherty said.

“That’s because you don’t have the proper clearance,” Castillo said. “I’m about to grant you that clearance. The classification is Top Secret Presidential. It deals with a Presidential Finding that charges me with locating and rendering harmless the people who murdered Mr. J. Winslow Masterson, of the State Department, and Sergeant Roger Markham, of the Marine Corps, and who kidnapped Mr. Masterson and wounded a Secret Service agent.”

“What does ‘rendering harmless’ mean?” Doherty asked.

“Since there is little chance you will be involved in that, I don’t think that you need to know how I interpret that,” Castillo said. “What you do need to know is that from this moment, you will communicate to no one not cleared for this information—and that, of course, includes anyone in the FBI who is not specifically cleared for it—anything you hear, learn, conclude, or intuit about this operation.”

“I don’t like this at all, I guess you understand,” Doherty said.

“You have two options, Mr. Doherty,” Castillo said. “You can go back to the J. Edgar Hoover Building and tell them you’re unwilling to take this assignment. You may not tell anyone there why you don’t want to do it, what I have just told you, identify me or anyone else you have met here, or of course repeat that there is a Presidential Finding.”

“There’s been talk of a Finding, as you probably know.”

“There’s a lot of talk in Washington,” Castillo said, evenly.

“What’s my second option?”

“You can bring to this operation all the skills Director Schmidt told the President you have. I was there when he made that call. I want you to understand clearly, however, that once you become aware of the details we think you need to help sort everything out, you can’t change your mind. If that happens, I’m going to give you an office where you can sit all day, read The Washington Post, and drink coffee, then send people home with you at night to make sure you don’t see anybody you should not or make any unmonitored telephone calls, etcetera. That will last until we’re finished, however long it takes.”

Doherty looked at him coldly.

“You realize, Colonel, that I was an FBI agent when you were a cadet at West Point and I don’t like being threatened like that.”

“Mr. Delchamps here was a clandestine agent of the CIA when you were a bushy-tailed cadet at the FBI Academy. He’s operating under the same rules. What’s important, Mr. Doherty, is not how old I am but to whom the President has given the authority to execute the Finding. That’s me, and if you can’t live with that feel free to walk out right now.”

They locked eyes for a moment.

“What’s it going to be, Inspector?” Castillo asked. “In or out?”

After a long moment, Doherty said, “In with a caveat.”

“Which is?”

“I will do nothing that violates the law.”

“Well, I guess that means you’re out,” Castillo said. “I’ll do whatever I have to do to carry out my orders and I can’t promise that no laws will be broken.”

Doherty exhaled audibly.