Covert Warriors (Presidential Agent 7)

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“A good deal POTUS does doesn’t make sense, if you think about it, Charley.”

Castillo didn’t reply.

“Well, as I said, you’ve got your heads-up about Murov. Stay in touch.”

“Whoa,” Castillo said. “Natalie Cohen told me she told you that you could have that Policía Federal Black Hawk that miraculously appeared on the dock at Norfolk.”

“Why do I think I’m not going to like what comes next?”

“Could you move it to a secure location—not too secure—in Texas? Near San Antone, maybe?”

“What are you planning, Charley?”

“At the moment, not a thing. But life is full of surprises, isn’t it? You never know what’s going to happen, do you?”

“Good-bye, Colonel Castillo, Retired. Nice talking to you.”

“I’ll take that as a yes. Thank you, Frank.”

“I’m beginning to understand why Clendennen wanted to load you on an Aeroflot flight to Moscow.”

The LED stopped flashing.

[TWO]

Hacienda Santa Maria

Oaxaca Province, Mexico

1725 16 April 2007

The sprawling, red-tile-roofed house with a wide, sha

ded veranda all around it sat on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. A circular drive led to it from the acres of grapefruit trees running as far as the eye could see to the east.

The house was known as “Don Fernando’s House,” but the reference was to Don Fernando Lopez the Elder, rather than to the Don Fernando Lopez who now sat on the veranda facing away from the Pacific, holding a bottle of Dos Equis beer in his massive fist.

Beside him, on cushioned wicker couches and chairs, were his cousin, Carlos Castillo; Don Armando Medina, a swarthy, heavyset sixty-odd-year-old who was el jefe—“the boss” and general manager—of Hacienda Santa Maria; Sweaty; Stefan Koussevitzky; and Lester Bradley. They were all—except for Lester, who had a Coke—drinking wine, a Cabernet Sauvignon, from Bodegas San Felipe, which happened to be a subsidiary of Hacienda Santa Maria. Max lay beside Sweaty, gnawing on a grapefruit he held between his paws.

Fernando Lopez and Carlos Castillo were grandsons of Don Fernando Castillo, who had married Alicia Lopez. Hacienda Santa Maria had been her dowry. Don Fernando and Doña Alicia had had two children, Maria Elena, who had married Manuel Lopez—no relation—and Jorge Alejandro, who had been killed in the Vietnam War as a very young—nineteen years old—man.

Manuel and Maria Elena Lopez had three children: Fernando, Graciella, and Juanita.

Don Fernando Castillo had strained relations with the Lopez family, into which his daughter had married, but had been exceedingly fond of his grandson Fernando. He and Doña Alicia had agreed that on their deaths, Hacienda Santa Maria would go to Fernando, and everything else would be given to charity and the Alamo Foundation.

“I don’t want to spend all of eternity spinning in my grave thinking of the Lopez wetbacks squandering all our money,” he declared.

All of that had changed a quarter century before, when an Army officer, then-Major Allan B. Naylor, appeared in Doña Alicia’s office in the Alamo Foundation building with the photograph of a twelve-year-old blond, blue-eyed boy, and said there was good reason to believe he was the out-of-wedlock son of the late Warrant Officer Junior Grade Jorge Alejandro Castillo.

Don Fernando Castillo’s first reaction to this was that some Kraut Fraulein—Don Fernando had been Major F. J. Castillo of Combat Command A, 3rd Armored Division during World War II and had had some experience with Kraut Frauleins in the immediate postwar period—had learned who the Castillo family was, and intended, like the Lopez wetbacks, to get her hands into the Castillo cash box by passing off somebody else’s bastard son as the fruit of their Jorge’s loins.

Doña Alicia had had no such doubts. One look at the boy’s eyes had been enough to convince her that she was looking at a picture of her grandson. On hearing from Major Naylor that the boy’s mother was in the final stages of pancreatic cancer, she picked up the telephone and called Lemes Aviation, ordering them to ready the company Learjet so that she and Major Naylor could make the Pan American flight from New York to Frankfurt late that same afternoon.

Not two weeks later, equipped with a U.S. passport in the name of Carlos Guillermo Castillo, Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger arrived in San Antonio. A week after that, his mother died, and he became the sole heir to the vast business empire known as Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H.

The new situation required modification of the last will and testaments of Don Fernando and Doña Alicia. Legal counsel informed them that there would be problems if Carlos were to inherit half of Hacienda Santa Maria. Mexican law did not permit foreigners to own property in the United States of Mexico.