The Hunters (Presidential Agent 3)

“I like to think of it as having converted it to a good cause,” Castillo said.

Delchamps and Miller chuckled.

“Does Yung know about this?”

“Yung’s the one who told us how to ‘convert’ it,” Miller said.

“I don’t think I want to hear any more about this,” Doherty said.

“Good, because I can see no purpose in telling you any more than that. And I wish Miller hadn’t been so helpful just now.”

“You realize, don’t you, Castillo, that Yung’s FBI career is really down the toilet?”

“I thought it was already—guilt by association with Howard Kennedy—pretty much down the toilet.”

“So far as I’m concerned, and most of the senior people in the bureau are concerned, Yung couldn’t be faulted for trusting Kennedy—a fellow FBI agent—too much to believe he was even capable of doing what he did. But after this, Jesus Christ!”

“What do I have to do,” Castillo said, coldly, “remind you that you’re not going to tell ‘most of the senior people in the bureau’—for that matter, anybody in the FBI—about any of this?”

“He already knows too much,” Miller said, forcing a serious tone. “We’re going to have to kill him.”

Doherty looked at Miller in shocked disbelief, even after he realized his chain was being pulled, and even after he saw the smiles on Castillo’s and Delchamps’s faces.

“It’s an old company joke, Jack,” Delchamps said. “The special operators stole it.”

“And you think it’s funny?” Doherty said.

“I guess that depends on the company,” Castillo said, not very pleasantly. “Okay. I have reminded you before witnesses that you have been made privy to information you are not to disclose to anyone in the FBI. Are we clear on that, Inspector Doherty?”

“We’re clear on that, Colonel,” Doherty replied, stiffly.

“Now, so far as your blackboards are concerned,” Castillo went on, “you will write ‘Putin’ on them whenever you wish to make reference to Pevsner and ‘Schmidt’ whenever you wish to make reference to Howard Kennedy. I don’t think those young women will make the connection, and maybe it’ll even sail over Agnes’s head. Clear?”

“The director of the FBI is named Schmidt, as you goddamned well know,” Doherty said. “And you use it to describe someone like Howard Kennedy? What is it with you, Colonel? You have some deep psychological need to really piss people off?”

“This is the truth,” Castillo said. “We are already using those code names in Argentina. At the time—before I had any suspicion that we would be dealing with a very senior FBI officer—they seemed appropriate. Now I readily admit ‘Schmidt’ doesn’t, but it’s too late to change it.”

“Let me say something, Jack,” Delchamps said. “Nothing disrespectful in this, but I’ve always felt that the FBI could use a little humor. Castillo wasn’t being disrespectful. Irreverent, sure. But what’s so wrong with that?”

Doherty looked at Delchamps for a long moment and then, without replying, turned to Castillo.

“Are we through in here, Colonel? Or can I get back to my blackboards?”

[TWO]

Conference Room

Office of the Chief of Operational Analysis

Department of Homeland Security

Nebraska Avenue Complex

Washington, D.C.

1925 11 August 2005

Inspector John J. Doherty, visibly exhausted, suddenly turned from the blackboard on which he was working and announced, “Sorry, but my brain just went on automatic shutdown. We’ll have to pick this up again in the morning. Half past seven, something like that?”