“It was my intel that set the wheels turning.”
“Okay. So what?”
“My boss sent me here, sir, to both get your report . . .”
“I already gave my so-far report to your Uncle Allan. You’re talking about Secretary Hall?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Excuse me, sir,” Captain Brewster said. “It was Dr. Cohen, the national security advisor, who telephoned General Gonzalez and said you were coming here at the personal order of the president.”
The delay was just perceptibly a little longer before Mc-Nab ’s reply came.
“That sounded like Brewster. Is your boss there, too?”
“No, sir. He’s in his quarters.”
“That figures. He’s got you babysitting Castillo?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay, Charley, what do you want?”
“I think we may soon know where the airplane is, sir, and I’d like to discuss with you plans to deal with it.”
“You’re in on my schedule? Won’t that wait until I’m back?”
“Yes, sir. Of course. But there’s something else.”
“Like what?”
“I need three radios like these and people to operate them.”
“Jesus Christ, Charley, you of all people should know how scarce they are!”
“One for my boss, one for Dick Miller, who’s in Philadelphia, and one for me.”
“What’s Miller—I thought he was in Angola or some other hellhole—doing in Philadelphia?”
“Sir, we think the intention is to crash that airplane into the Liberty Bell. Miller’s been working with the cops to come up with a connection. A little while ago, he told me he had found connections. He couldn’t tell me what over cellular phone. We need secure commo.”
The delay before McNab replied now was conspicuous.
“Where the hell am I? In the twilight zone? The Liberty Bell?”
“Yes, sir. What I would like to do is take a radio to Miller—and to my boss—so they have them up by the time you get back here.”
“You’ve got a plane to do that?”
“Yes, sir,” Charley said. “Or I’m pretty sure I will have.”
“Just ‘pretty sure’?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You want me to call Naylor and make sure you have an airplane?”
“I don’t think that will be necessary, sir.”