“I’m afraid I don’t follow you, Mr. President.”
“‘Never take counsel of your fears’ is what one of them—now that I think about it, it was MacArthur—said. You never heard that?”
“I’m familiar with it, sir,” Naylor said.
“Mr. President, may I make a suggestion?” General O’Toole asked.
“That’s what you’re here for, General,” the President said.
“As I understand your plan, sir, it is your intention to send U.S. Marshals to establish contact with the Mexican police chief Pena.”
The President nodded, and gestured for O’Toole to get to his point.
“I think it might be best to send a special operator to do that, sir. In addition to setting up the schedule for the exchange, he would be able to reconnoiter the terrain. That would be valuable in case there was trouble.”
“Presumably, you have a specific special operator in mind, General?”
“Yes, sir,” O’Toole said, looked at Naylor, then went on: “I don’t know if General Naylor would agree with sending a special operator, or with my recommendation of who that should be.”
“That’s moot, General,” the President said. “I’m making the decisions here. I think sending a special operator instead of a Marshal is a good idea—hell, send in all of Gray Fox. Now what you have to do is convince me that the man you want to send is the right one.”
“I was thinking of Mr. Victor D’Alessandro, Mr. President.”
“Mister D’Alessandro? That sounds as if he’s a civilian. I don’t want anybody from the goddamn CIA involved in this. Or from the DEA or any other place like that.”
“He’s a retired chief warrant officer, Mr. President, now a DAC—a Department of the Army civilian employee—working for SPECOPSCOM.”
“And in your opinion he would be the best man to send?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I concur, Mr. President,” Naylor said.
“Well, that’s nice to know,” the President said, sarcastically. “We’ve really had entirely too much dissension in the ranks around here lately.”
Clendennen let that sink in, and then went on: “Okay. Then this guy D’Alessandro goes. Mulligan, get Secretary Cohen on the phone. Tell her . . . Hell, tell her to get over here. She can’t be kept out of this; she already knows too much.”
Mulligan picked up the red presidential circuit telephone.
“But that’s all,” the President said. “I don’t want every idiot and his twin brother involved in this. Nobody else is to learn of it unless I personally clear it.” He looked around the room again. “Everybody got that?”
“Mr. President,” Naylor said, “do I correctly infer that you don’t plan to tell the DCI what you’re going to do?”
“Correct.”
“And the director of National Intelligence, Mr. Ellsworth?” Naylor pursued.
“Correct.”
“And Vice President Montvale?”
“Especially not Montvale!” Clendennen flared. “And you damn well know why.”
“I’m afraid, sir, that I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Naylor said.
“The hell you don’t!” the President snapped.
“Sir, I don’t.”