By Order of the President (Presidential Agent 1)

“There are three,” Pevsner said. “I really hope you don’t have occasion to use any of them. The one with the 533 pre fix almost always knows how to get in touch with me quickly. The other two are those who will have what information I can come up with about where in Costa Rica you will find the plane. I hope to get that information to you as an in-flight advisory, but, if that doesn’t work, call either of the other two numbers, ask for yourself . . .”

“Excuse me?”

“Ask for Charley Castillo. Better yet, ask for Karl Gossinger . . . you getting this, Howard?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ask for Karl Gossinger and they’ll give you what information they have. If I’m unsuccessful, they will not know who Herr Gossinger is and say so.”

“Thank you,” Castillo said.

“Please don’t call any of them unless it proves necessary. And if the first two have no information for you, that means I haven’t been able to do as much as I would really like to have done,” Pevsner said. “In other words, there would be no point in your trying to call me.”

“I understand,” Charley said.

Castillo felt a hand on his shoulder and turned his head. Howard Kennedy was extending a sheet of notebook paper to him. He took it.

“Try not to lose that, Charley,” Kennedy said. “And when the time passes and you know you’re not going to use any of them, why don’t you burn that? I’d really hate to have those numbers fall into the wrong hands.”

“You think your former associates would be interested in them, do you?”

“Oh, would they ever,” Kennedy said.

Ten minutes later, Aleksandr Pevsner and Howard Kennedy stood by the hood of one of the white Yukons and watched as the Learjet took off.

[THREE]

Aboard USAF C-17 036788 25.418 degrees North Latitude 86.136 degrees West Longitude Above the Gulf of Mexico 1115 10 June 2005

“Miami Center, Air Force Sixty-Seven-Eighty-Eight,” Major Ellwood C. Tanner, USAF, said into his microphone.

“Go ahead, Eighty-Eight.”

“Reporting my position. I’m at flight level three-three-zero, estimating six hundred knots, on a course of one-two- five true.”

“I have you on radar, Eighty-Eight. Be advised, any eastward deviation from your present course may put you in Cuban airspace.”

“Acknowledge advisory. Air Force Eighty-Eight clear,” Major Tanner said and made a note of the conversation on a knee notepad.

“Got a chart I can look at, Major?” a voice asked, and Tanner turned to see Lieutenant General Bruce J. McNab standing in the cockpit between the pilot and copilot positions.

“Yes, sir, of course,” Tanner said. “We’re a hundred miles off the Florida coast, about even with Miami.”

“I saw that,” McNab said, gesturing in the vague direction of a cathode-ray tube that showed the C-17’s position and then holding his hand out for the chart.

Tanner handed it to him and McNab studied it for a moment, then held it out to Tanner.

“See where I’m pointing?” McNab asked.

Tanner looked.

“Yes, sir. Costa Rica.”

“Specifically, Juan Santamaria International Airport in Costa Rica,” General McNab said.

“Yes, sir.”

“Now, what you are going to do, Major, as soon as you think Cuban radar has lost interest in us, is get on the horn and make an announcement that to avoid turbulence you would like to change your course to about one-seventy-two degrees.”