Covert Warriors (Presidential Agent 7)

“To hell with his reasons,” Montvale exploded. “He’s not going out there! I’ll have the Secret Service confine him and the rest of them in the suite until the interment’s over.”

“If you do that, Mr. Vice President,” Castillo said calmly, “it will be on Wolf News and on the front page of the Times-Post. You did see Roscoe Danton out there, didn’t you?”

“Don’t you threaten me, you arrogant sonofabitch! I’m the Vice President of the United States.”

“Get your temper under control, Charles,” Natalie Cohen said calmly. “Charley, why is this so important to you?”

“Yesterday, Mrs. Salazar telephoned me—”

“How the hell did she know where to find you?” Montvale demanded.

Castillo ignored Montvale.

“If I may continue, Madam Secretary?” he asked.

“Please.”

“I’ll answer Mr. Montvale’s question for your background, ma’am. Special Operations, Special Forces generally, and especially Delta Force and Gray Fox—and just about everybody outside who is or has been one or the other or both—is like a family. We take care of each other; we know how to find each other when there is a problem.”

“And Mrs. Salazar had a problem?” Secretary Cohen asked. “She didn’t want her husband interred in Arlington?”

Castillo nodded.

“She told me that General Naylor had telephoned her—and now I know where that order came from—and fed her a line about the great honor it was for Danny to be interred in Arlington, with the President himself attending.

“When she told him thank you but no, thank you—that she wanted Danny buried in San Antonio, where she could visit and tend his grave—Naylor told her that the arrangements had been made, that they were sending a plane to Bragg to pick up her and the kids, and that the President would be embarrassed if she refused his kind offer to plant Danny in Arlington. So she went along.

“But after she thought it over, she went to see General McNab. General McNab told her—out of school; he’s part of the family I mentioned—that he had been ordered by General Naylor not to talk to her about it, and also, incidentally, that he had been ordered to stay away from Arlington himself.”

“And then that sonofabitch told her to call you, right?” Montvale said.

“No, he didn’t,” Castillo said evenly. “And that was the last question you get to ask, Mr. Montvale. If you open your mouth again, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“You can’t do that!” Montvale flared.

“It’s his apartment, Charles,” Secretary Cohen said. “He has the right to ask you to leave.”

“And if you’re thinking about your Secret Service guys,” Castillo added, “a scrap between them and the guys outside would be very interesting. It would also make a hell of a story for Wolf News: ‘Vice President’s Protection Detail Gets Their Ass Kicked in Lobby of Mayflower.’ ”

Cohen said: “All right, Charley. Enough. So what happened when Mrs. Salazar called you?”

“Well, my first reaction to what she told me was to call my beloved Uncle Allan and tell him to butt the hell out of something that was none of his business. But then calm reason prevailed . . .”

The Vice President snorted.

“. . . I realized that as much as I would love to embarrass the sonofabitch . . .”

“You’re speaking of the President, Charley,” Cohen said.

“. . . who tried to turn me over to the SVR.”

He met her eyes for a long moment, and then went on: “I realized there would be unacceptable collateral damage to Maria Salazar and their kids. They didn’t need microphones being shoved in their faces, which would have happened if I told her she didn’t have to go along with the . . . the President’s using Danny’s funeral to get himself reelected. So I told her it was indeed an honor to be buried in Arlington, as it’s for national heroes. And I told her I’d see her at the interment.

“As I was telling her this, I remembered it’s also an honor to be buried in the national cemetery in San Antone. My father’s buried there. And then I wondered if anyone had thought to invite Colonel Ferris’s wife to the interment. I knew she would want to be there.

“So I called her, and she hadn’t been invited.

“So I spent the next hour or so on the telephone, setting things up. Jake Torine and Dick Miller, who are almost as pissed about this as I am, have been flying around the country picking up people who want—and have every right—to watch Danny get his military funeral. The guys—and several women—are scattered between here and the Willard.