By Order of the President (Presidential Agent 1)

“I speak fluent American,” Castillo said. “And passable English.”

Hausner laughed.

“And you’re now based in Washington?”

“It was either that or Fulda,” Castillo said.

“I understand. Fulda offers about as much of the good life as Wetzlar.”

“When I was a kid, I went to the school at the Leitz plant,” Castillo said. Leica cameras came from the Leitz factory in Wetzlar. “I used to drink in a gasthaus by the bridge.”

“Zum Adler,” Hausner furnished. “So did I. So what brings you to Luanda?”

“The missing airplane . . .”

“Uh-huh,” Hausner said.

“And the man who would ordinarily cover the story was unable to come. And I speak a little Spanish, which is a little like Portuguese.”

“I understand.”

“What do you think happened to that airplane?”

“How much do you know about it?”

“Only what I read in the newspapers. An airplane, a Boeing 727, which had been here for a year, suddenly took off without permission and hasn’t been seen since.”

“That’s about all I know,” Hausner said.

“Why was it here for a year? How do you hide an airplane that size? Was it stolen? What do you do with a stolen airplane? ”

"You could fly it into a skyscraper in New York,” Hausner said. “But I don’t think that’s what the thief—thieves—had in mind.”

"Really?”

“It would be so much easier to steal—what’s the term?— skyjack an airplane in the United States—or, for that matter, in London, if they wanted to fly into Buckingham Palace— than it would be to fly an airplane from here to wherever they wanted to cause mischief.”

“That’s true,” Castillo agreed.

It probably is true, but for some reason I remain unconvinced.

“I have a theory—but, please, Herr von und zu Gossinger, I really don’t want to be quoted.”

“Not even as a ‘high-ranking officer, speaking on condition of anonymity’?”

“Not at all.”

He liked “high-ranking officer.”

“All right, you have my word.”

“Let me put it this way,” Hausner said. “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if in two or three weeks—or this afternoon— the airplane will be found not more than a couple of hundred miles from here, perhaps even closer, on a deserted field. The empty hulk of the airplane; everything that can be taken off of it—engines, instruments, even the wheels and tires— will have been taken off.”

“For resale on the black market?”

“Uh-huh. There’s a market all over Africa for aircraft parts.”

“That would open the possibility that the owners of the aircraft—you don’t know why it sat here for a year?”