Covert Warriors (Presidential Agent 7)

“Mrs. Ferris and their kids are also in the Willard, about to get in the limousine that will take them out to Arlington. After the interment, they’ll come here. We’re going to have a few drinks, and then, later, dinner.

“So, Madam Secretary, as much as I really hate to tell you no to anything you ask of me, I’m going to be at Arlington when Danny’s buried.”

“I’ll have you stopped at the gate to Arlington,” Montvale said.

“Shut up, Charles,” Secretary Cohen said. She looked thoughtful for a moment, then said, “I think it’s possible that Mr. McCarthy may have considered the possibility that there are some people the President would rather not come to Arlington . . .”

“That would be another great story for Wolf News and The Washington Times-Post,” Castillo said. “‘Brawl Mars Funeral at Gate to Arlington.’ Some enterprising journalist might even dig into what it was all about.”

“How are you going to move your friends out there?” she asked.

“We have four stretch limousines,” Castillo replied. “In case some other friends of Danny show up out there and need a ride back here.”

“And you’re paying for all this?” she asked. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked that.”

“The LCBF Corporation is paying for everything. We just turned a tidy profit selling an airplane we got for a bargain to the CIA for a lot of money.”

She smiled at him.

“May I ask you a question I probably shouldn’t ask?” Castillo asked.

She nodded.

“What ever happened to that Mexican police Black Hawk that was ‘found at sea’ and then unloaded on the dock at Norfolk? Dare I hope you showed it to the Mexican ambassador and asked him how he thought it got there?”

She shook her head.

“You know I couldn’t do anything like that, Charley,” she said.

“So what happened to it?”

“That’s not any of your business, and you know it.”

“But you’re going to tell me anyway, right? Is it still there?”

“Frank Lammelle wanted it for the CIA. I okayed it, but I don’t know whether he’s done anything about it. It’s probably still covered up on the dock or in a hangar somewhere.” She paused, then asked, “Charley, did you ever consider the consequences if you had been caught stealing that helicopter from the Mexican police?”

“I didn’t steal it. Didn’t Frank tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“That the Mexicans reported that the helicopter had crashed—total loss—in their unrelenting war against the drug trade?”

“No,” she said simply. “Then . . . how was it ‘found at sea’?”

“You mean how did I get it?”

She nodded.

“I bought it from an officer of the Policía Federal. I think he thought I was in the drug trade and was going to use it to move drugs around.” He paused. “That’s the question I hoped you were going to ask the Mexican ambassador. ‘I thought you told us this helicopter had been totally destroyed. How do you explain its miraculous resurrection?’ ”

“I didn’t know anything about how you acquired that helicopter,” she said. “But even if I had—what I am doing is trying to build better relations with Mexico—I wouldn’t have confronted him with something like that.” She thought for a moment, then said, “Why in the world did you buy it?”

“I needed it to go after the Congo-X and the Tupelov,” Castillo said matter-of-factly.

“I thought you used Special Operations helicopters for that,” Montvale said.

Castillo gave him a dirty look, then saw on Cohen’s face that she was worried he was going to throw Montvale out. He decided that would be nonproductive.