The Outlaws (Presidential Agent 6)

The waiter delivered three Bombay Sapphire gin martinis, no vegetables.

“That was quick, wasn’t it?” Eleanor Dillworth asked.

“That’s why I like to come here,” Patricia Davies Wilson said.

The three took an appreciative sip of their cocktails.

“I was asking, ‘What’s this all about?’” Danton said.

“Disgruntled employees, Mr. Danton,” Patricia Davies Wilson said.

“Who, as you know, sometimes become whistleblowers,” Eleanor Dillworth said, and then asked, “Interested?”

“That would depend on what, or on whom, you’re thinking of blowing the whistle,” Danton replied.

“I was about to say the agency,” Patricia Davies Wilson said. “But it goes beyond the agency.”

“Where does it go beyond the agency?” Danton asked.

“Among other places, to the Oval Office.”

“In that case, I’m fascinated,” Danton said. “What have you got?”

“Have you ever heard of an intelligence officer-slash-special operator by the name of Carlos Castillo?” Eleanor Dillworth asked.

Danton shook his head.

“How about the Office of Organizational Analysis?”

He shook his head, and then asked, “In the CIA?”

Dillworth shook her head. “In the office of our late and not especially grieved-for President,” she said.

“And apparently to be kept alive in the administration of our new and not-too-bright chief executive. But that’s presuming Montvale has told him.”

“What does this organization do? What has it done in the past?”

“If we told you, Mr. Danton, I don’t think you would believe us,” Eleanor Dillworth said.

Danton sipped his martini, and thought: Probably not.

Disgruntled employee whistleblowers almost invariably tell wild tales with little or no basis in fact.

He said: “I don’t think I understand.”

“You’re going to have to learn this yourself,” Patricia Wilson said. “We’ll point you in the right direction, but you’ll have to do the digging. That way you’ll believe it.”

“How do I know you know what you’re talking about?” Danton challenged.

“Before I was recalled, I was the CIA’s station chief in Vienna,” Dillworth said. “I’ve been in—was in—the Clandestine Service for twenty-three years.”

“Before that bastard got me fired,” Patricia Wilson added, “I was the agency’s regional director for Southwest Africa, everything from Nigeria to South Africa, including the Congo. You will recall the Congo is where World War Three was nearly started last month.”

“‘That bastard’ is presumably this Mr. Costillo?”

“‘Castillo,’ with an ‘a,’” she said. “And lieutenant colonel, not mister. He’s in the Army.”

“Okay,” Danton said, “point me.”