Covert Warriors (Presidential Agent 7)

Why the hell did I drink that goddamn vodka?

“Frank, calm down. Consider the possibility that I’m pulling your chain.”

“You sonofabitch! You have a sick sense of humor!”

“So I have been told,” Castillo said.

He saw Sweaty making an exaggerated punching motion with her index finger.

He knew what it meant—turn on the loudspeaker function—and ignored her.

“So are you going to tell me what’s so important or not?” Castillo asked.

There was a pause, suggesting Lammelle was getting his temper under control.

“Forty-five minutes ago, I had a call from General McNab,” he began. “He’s on his way to Afghanistan.”

“So? Half of SPECOPSCOM is in Afghanistan; he goes there all the time.”

“I think maybe I should start at the beginning,” Lammelle said.

“Yeah. Why don’t you?”

“The people you had at Arlington—and you, too—walked out on the President’s remarks.”

“Actually, we got in our limos and went to the Mayflower. So what?”

“You having those Delta and Gray Fox guys at Arlington pissed the President off. And then you walked out on his remarks. That pissed him off even more. And your party at the Mayflower pushed him over the edge.”

“What does that mean?”

“I told you before, in the last conversation we had, that Clendennen sent the FBI to the Mayflower to take pictures of everybody there. And among those there were Porky Parker and Roscoe Danton, and that really pissed him off.”

“And do you now know why he did that?”

“So that he would have proof.”

“Of what? You sound as if you’ve been at the sauce.”

“After FBI Director Mark Schmidt had personally identified each and every partygoer for him . . .”

“It wasn’t a party, for Christ’s sake. In our last conversation, you will recall, I told you it was more like a wake. We stood around drinking, telling Danny Salazar war stories—”

“I remember,” Lammelle interrupted him, and then went on, “. . . he gave them to Beiderman with orders to give them to Naylor, with orders for Naylor to show them to McNab and tell him that he—the President—knew, quote, what McNab was up to, close quote, but that if McNab applied for immediate retirement it, quote, would be the end of it, close quote.”

“What does he think McNab was . . . is . . . up to?”

“He apparently believes McNab is in a conspiracy to get him out of the Oval Office and Montvale into it. If I have to say this, he thinks you’re a coconspirator.”

“That’s crazy!”

“Please remember later, if you are asked under oath, that I did not introduce that word into this conversation. You did.”

“Jesus Christ,” Castillo muttered, then exhaled audibly, and said, “The first thing that comes into my mind—unwilling as I am to accept crazy—is that he’s into the bottle. A secret tippler. Was our beloved Commander in Chief sober when he did all this?”

“Yes, he was. He’s a teetotaler. The boozers in his family are his mother and mother-in-law.”

“Where are you getting all this, Frank?”