For the next fifteen minutes, Castillo sat in the interviewee chair in interview room 3. Sergeant Betty Schneider sat on the table beside Detective Jack Britton. Chief Inspector Dutch Kramer and Dick Miller leaned against the wall as all three—but mostly Castillo—tried to pull from Britton any bit of information that would fill in the blanks. Britton understood what was being asked of him, and why, and pulled all sorts of esoteric information about the mosque and its mullahs from his memory. None of it seemed useful, although Castillo found what Britton told him fascinating.
Castillo had kept looking at his watch and when fifteen minutes had passed he decided to wait one more minute before calling Secretary Hall and telling him there had been no contact from the FBI.
He was actually watching the sweep second hand on his wristwatch waiting for it to go back to twelve when the interview room door opened.
“Chief,” one of the Homicide Bureau detectives said, “there’s a guy from the FBI out here looking for a Secret Service Agent Castillo.”
Kramer looked at Castillo, who made a wry face, and then gestured to the detective to bring him in.
A moment later a middle-aged, somewhat portly man with a plastic badge with FBI in large letters on it hanging from the breast pocket of his suit came into the room. He was neatly dressed, but he needed a shave.
He looked around the small room, taking a close look at everybody.
“Hello, Chief Inspector,” he said, smiling at Kramer.
Kramer nodded at him.
“I’m looking, Chief, for a Secret Service man, Supervisory Special Agent Castillo. I was told he was in here.”
Kramer pointed at Castillo.
“You’re Castillo?” the man said. He obviously did not expect to see a supervisory Secret Service agent in an Army officer’s uniform.
“Yes, I am,” Castillo said. “Who are you?”
“I’m Alexander Stuart, the Philadelphia FBI SAC.”
“Be right with you, Mr. Stuart,” Castillo said as he took out his cellular and pushed an autodial key.
“Castillo, Mr. Secretary. The Philadelphia FBI SAC just walked into the room—
“I haven’t had a chance to talk to him, Mr. Secretary—
“Yes, Mr. Secretary, I’ll get back to you just as soon as I’ve had a chance to talk to him.”
He put the telephone back in his pocket and looked at SAC Stuart.
“It would seem, Mr. Castillo, that there’s been some sort of a misunderstanding,” Stuart said.
“No misunderstanding. I needed some information and I needed it right then. Your duty officer wouldn’t—or couldn’t—give it to me and your counterterrorism man told me he’d talk to me when he came in in the morning. I couldn’t wait that long so I called Washington.”
“Apparently, it wasn’t made clear to either of my agents how important this matter actually is,” Stuart said. “What’s it all about?”
“What this is all about is that I asked for some information and your people wouldn’t give it to me. I need those names, Mr. Stuart, and I need them now.”
“Special Agent Lutherberg, who heads my counterterrorism section, is on his way to the office. If he’s not there already. I’ll have those names for you very shortly.”
Castillo grunted.
“I need some additional cooperation from the FBI,” Castillo said.
“Which is?”
“As soon as we have the names, and the photographs, I want to run them—right now—past the Spartan School of Aeronautics in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I need to know (a) if they were students there about the time Chief Inspector Kramer gave you the surveillance photos he had made of them and (b) if they were students at Spartan, what sort of training they had, specifically, if they received training in Boeing 727 aircraft.”
“Oh, so that’s what this is about! That airliner that went missing in Africa.”
Castillo ignored the remark.