“I did. But Jake Torine and I flew the Mexican bird onto the island.”
“You and Torine? Why?” Cohen asked.
“Because on an assault like that, the lead bird generally takes fire. My original idea, presuming that happened, was just to leave it on the island, which would then have had Hugo Chavez angrily asking the Mexicans how come one of their Policía Federal choppers was on his island.”
“Devious,” Montvale said admiringly.
“But then the Night Stalkers suppressed the antiaircraft, and the Mexican bird didn’t get hurt, so I decided to fly it back out to the Bataan, and told her captain to take it to Norfolk.”
“Where I would ask the Mexican ambassador to the U.S., ‘I thought you reported this aircraft was totally destroyed’?” Cohen asked.
Castillo looked at her, smiled, and nodded.
“You’re right, Charles, he is devious. Maybe he should have been a diplomat, or a politician.”
“Devious and dangerous,” Montvale said, smiling.
What happened? Castillo thought. Have we kissed and made up?
No. That smile is the smile of mutual admiration one shark gives to another.
“Turning to the problem at hand,” Secretary Cohen said
, “which is that Charley cannot be dissuaded from going out to Arlington with all his friends, how do we deal with that?”
“Where are those limousines you mentioned, Charley?” Montvale asked.
“In the hotel garage, waiting for me to call them. Which I am going to do in the next sixty seconds or so.”
“I think you’re right, Natalie,” Montvale said. “McCarthy—and/ or Mulligan—probably has people at the gate of Arlington to keep out people who might embarrass the President. But I think they’ll just wave our convoy through.”
“So we put Charley’s limousines in our convoy?” she asked. “That makes sense.”
Montvale walked to the bedroom door. He opened it and then looked around until he found Tom McGuire.
“Tom, may I see you for a moment?”
After the secretary of State had disappeared into the lobby elevator, nothing much happened in the next ten minutes.
Herb Kramer announced he was going to stretch his legs.
“I’ll go with you,” Bob Dabney said.
“Stay out of the bar,” Delores said. “You don’t want to go to the Ways and Means Committee smelling of alcohol.”
“I’m going to go outside and have a puff on a cigarette,” Herb said. “You can’t smoke in here.”
He pointed to a NO SMOKING sign to make his point, and then he and Bob walked down the lobby toward Connecticut Avenue.
They had just about reached the revolving door when two things happened almost at once. A burly man in a business suit stepped in front of the door to keep them from using it, and another burly man came out of one of the elevators and quickly walked down the lobby toward Connecticut Avenue.
He looked as if he were talking to his lapel.
“I’m going down there,” Delores said to Kate. “Something’s going on!”
The burly man who had been talking to his lapel went through the revolving door, but when Delores and Kate approached it, the burly man who had kept Herb and Bob from going outside stepped into their path.
He flashed some sort of credentials in their face. “United States Secret Service. Would you ladies please stand over there for just a minute?”