By Order of the President (Presidential Agent 1)

He looks like those drivers at the airport, Castillo thought. And that’s probably on purpose.

What the hell is he doing here?

“We’re going to have to stop meeting this way, Charley,” Miller said, softly. “People will start to talk.”

“You sonofabitch!” Castillo said. “You scared hell out of me!”

He quickly entered his room and closed the door.

The two men looked at each other for a moment.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Castillo asked.

“That’s what I was about to ask you,” Miller, who was fifty pounds heavier and four inches taller than Castillo, replied. “Plus, who the hell are you?”

“Oh, shit,” Castillo said, and the

n the two embraced, in the manner of brothers. They had last seen one another, in less than pleasant circumstances, eighteen months before, in Afghanistan.

“Sorry about the door,” Miller said when they broke apart.

“What the hell did you do to it?”

Miller took an unmarked black aluminum box, about the size of a cellular telephone, from his pocket.

“I give this thing ten seconds to find what it’s looking for and then I hit the EMERGENCY button. That opens the lock, but sometimes it upgefucks the mechanism. Which, apparently, my dear Major Whatever-the-Hell-Your-Name-Is-Today, is what happened in the present instance.”

Castillo shook his head.

“I suppose the lock on the minibar is similarly destroyed? ”

“No. That’s a mechanical lock. I opened that with a pick. All the wine is French, which of course as a patriotic American I don’t drink. But there is—or was—Jack Daniel’s and several kinds of scotch.”

“How long have you been here?” Castillo asked as he opened the minibar.

“About an hour. Which gave me plenty of time to sweep the room. It’s clean.”

Castillo nodded, then held up two miniature whiskey bottles, one scotch and one Jack Daniel’s. Miller pointed to the bourbon and Castillo tossed it to him.

He opened the scotch and poured it into a glass as Miller did the same with his still-half-full glass.

Castillo walked to him and they touched glasses.

“It’s good to see you, Dick,” Castillo said.

“Yeah, you, too, Charley,” Miller said. “I never got a chance to say, ‘Thanks for the ride.’ ”

Castillo made a deprecating gesture.

“You were pretty much out of it, Dick,” he said.

“Now I know why the Mafia shoots bad mob guys in the knee,” Miller said. “It smarts considerable.”

“How is it?”

“That depends on who you ask,” Miller said. “So far as I’m concerned, it’s fine. I have so far been unable to convince even one flight surgeon of that. But hope springs eternal, or so I’m told.”

“So what are you doing here?”