By Order of the President (Presidential Agent 1)

rid of your file.”

Miller considered that for ten seconds before replying, “I will give that solemn thought, Charley.”

He stood up and put out his hand.

“Thanks for the booze, Charley,” he said. “Why don’t you give me three minutes to get to the service elevator, then go outside and find there’s something wrong with the lock on your door?”

Castillo nodded.

“Okay,” he said, then: “Dick, I’m pretty well covered. But you’re really sticking your neck out . . .”

“I know,” Miller interrupted. He touched Castillo’s shoulder and walked toward the door.

Castillo looked at his watch, punched the timer button, and precisely three minutes later went into the corridor, closed the door, and tried again to open it with the plastic key.

When again it wouldn’t work, he walked down the corridor to the bank of elevators, where he had seen a house phone.

The concierge said that he would send someone right up.

[TEN]

It took five minutes for a bellman to show up on the fifteenth floor, and another five minutes for him to prove to himself that there was something wrong with the lock at the door to Suite 1522, whereupon he went back to the house phone by the elevator bank and reported this to someone.

Five minutes later, an assistant manager and the bell captain got off the elevator on the fifteenth floor. They spent another five minutes proving to themselves that there was something wrong with the lock on the door to Suite 1522. Then the bell captain went to summon further assistance while the assistant manager stayed behind to assure Herr Gossinger that this sort of thing almost never happened and that it would be put right in short order.

Five minutes after that, a hotel engineer and his assistant showed up with a device that was supposed to open door locks in situations such as this. And after another five minutes, they managed to get the lock to function partially. In other words, it would permit the door to be opened, but, once closed again, the lock again refused to function with the plastic key.

The engineer and the assistant manager then held a whispered conference, after which the assistant manager went to Herr Gossinger and said that he certainly didn’t wish to alarm him but in the opinion of the engineer someone might have tried to gain access to Herr Gossinger’s room. When the engineer opened the door again, it would probably be a good idea to see if anything was missing.

Furthermore, the entire lock was going to have to be replaced, which would take some time, and, if Herr Gossinger had no objections, probably the best thing to do was move him to another suite of rooms.

Herr Gossinger had no objections.

The assistant manager went to the telephone, conferred with the front desk about available rooms, and then told whoever he was talking to to immediately send bellmen, plural, to Herr Gossinger’s room.

“Fifteen-thirty-four is available, Herr Gossinger,” he said. “It is a very nice suite not far from here. Perhaps you would like to check your property to make sure you have everything?”

As Castillo went through his luggage, the assistant manager paid close attention. Castillo wondered if this was simply a manifestation of his great professional interest in a guest’s potential problems or whether he had other reasons.

Castillo reported that he seemed to have everything.

By that time, there were three bellmen hovering by the door. The assistant manager snapped his fingers and pointed. The bellmen carried Castillo’s possessions out of the suite and down the corridor to 1534, which was identical to 1522, and placed everything in the new room where it had been in the old.

The assistant manager apologized once again for the inconvenience Herr Gossinger had been caused and suggested, in almost a whisper, that if the locks had been of German manufacture this probably wouldn’t have happened.

Castillo finally got rid of him, and plugged his laptop into the high-speed Internet connection.

There were two e-mail messages in his mailbox at castillo.com. One was from Fernando, who had obviously received the enlarge-the-size-of-your-member advertisement Castillo had forwarded to him, and had replied:

THEY DON’T SEND ME ADVERTISEMENTS LIKE THIS, BECAUSE THE WHOLE WORLD KNOWS I DON’T NEED SOMETHING LIKE THIS. MAYBE YOURS WOULD GROW TO A NORMAL SIZE IF YOU DON’T ABUSE IT SO MUCH.

The second message had no subject and only “herewith” as the message. It contained, however, a 203-kb download.

Castillo downloaded it, then signed off before going through the decryption process. It was simple. All he had to do was type “bullshit” and then press ENTER.

Miller’s satburst appeared, and below it the analysis he had prepared and not sent.

SECRET