By Order of the President (Presidential Agent 1)

“I don’t know. I told you, the FBI . . . Mark Schmidt himself was . . . Schmidt gave me a hard time about getting Kennedy’s dossier. I had to really lean on him to get him to promise to get it to me by nine o’clock this morning.” He paused. “And, I’m embarrassed to say, I haven’t checked to see if he actually came up with it this morning.”

“Okay. Try this on. Mark Schmidt, the FBI, knows this Kennedy is a really bad apple. He’s an embarrassment to them. They don’t want you or anybody to know how high this bad apple rose in the bureau or how much trouble he caused.”

“Okay.”

“Okay, so maybe that doesn’t justify Schmidt’s ignoring Natalie Cohen’s memo that you were to get whatever you asked for. That’s a separate issue and I’ll deal with that.”

“Yes, sir.”

“But why should I be expected to believe anything this guy says? Your man . . .”

“Charley Castillo? He’s now my man, is that the way it is?”

“No. Sorry. Bad choice of phrase. I set this up. Castillo is my responsibility. My Major Castillo tells us that the reason Kennedy is being so helpful is that he wants us to stop watching him closely. He sure sounds helpful when he tells us where the 727 is, but, before we can do anything about it, lo and behold he tells us the airplane isn’t in Chad anymore. Why should we believe that it ever was there?”

“All I have, Mr. President, is what Castillo tells me. He believes him, and Charley is very good at separating the truth from the bullshit.”

The president snorted.

“And what is our secret agent doing right now? Where is he?”

“He’s at Miller’s father’s house outside Philadelphia. Miller’s father is a retired two-star general. The counterterrorism people in the Philadelphia police department are going to set up a meeting between Castillo and Miller and some police working undercover with Muslim groups—two kinds, Arab-type Muslims, and converts to Islam, mostly African Americans—to see if they can come up with a Somalian connection.”

The steward came into the room carrying a tray with two large glasses dark with whiskey, together with a bowl of ice and a pitcher of water.

“One very good bourbon for the president,” he said. “And one really cheap scotch for the secretary.”

“Thank you very much,” Hall said, smiling.

“The reason we got it cheap, Mr. Secretary, is that nobody wanted to buy it. Can you believe that stuff sat in a barrel in Scotland for twenty-four years before they could sell it?”

“Now that we know where you stand, Jerry,” the president said, “that means that I am not the only friend Matt Hall has in the whole world.”

The steward left.

“What now, Mr. President?” Hall asked.

“Natalie said I should go back to Washington about now. Maybe with your resignation in my pocket. So what I’m going to do is wait until we hear from General Naylor that the 727 is not in Chad and never has been.”

“Mr. President, I serve at your pleasure,” Hall said.

“Would you like me to prepare my resignation?”

“No. I may have to ask for it eventually, but I don’t like throwing people to the wolves because of my mistakes, especially when they’ve done nothing but their very best to do what I told them to do.”

[FOUR]

Abéché, Chad 2305 9 June 2005

Two men dressed in the loose cotton robes worn by inhabitants of the Chadian desert sat in a small, light tan-colored tent three hundred yards off the end of the runway of the Abéché airfield.

One was Sergeant First Class Frederick Douglass Lewis, a very tall, very thin twenty-six-year-old from Baltimore, in whose home was hung a framed photograph of himself in full uniform. He was shown with his arm around an African—a very tall, very thin Watusi—in a sort of a robe, standing on one leg, sort of supporting himself on a long spear. Both men were smiling broadly at the camera. On closer examination, one might notice both men had the same face. Lewis, who was pretty good at screwing around with digital photographs, had superimposed his face on that of the African tribesman.

He had also superimposed the face of his wife on a photograph of Janet Jackson in a very revealing costume. Mrs. Lewis, whose father was pastor of Baltimore’s Second African Methodist Episcopal Church and still carried a lot of that around with her, had not been amused.

Sergeant Lewis was the Gray Fox team communicator. He sat down with a communications device between his legs, making minor adjustments trying, as he thought of it, to make all the lights go green.

It was taking a little longer than it usually did, but finally all the LEDs were green.