The Outlaws (Presidential Agent 6)

The chief of staff was going to hear about it, Naylor had said, and he wasn’t going to find any humor in it.

And then he’d had an even more disquieting thought. He didn’t like C. Harry Whelan, Jr., but it was possible that he was right about this, too. It seemed to be a truism that whoever commanded the most troops was de facto, if not de jure, the most important general officer.

The President asked, “Would you agree with that assessment, General?”

“Sir, since the chief of staff gives me my orders and writes my efficiency reports—”

“Well, this is one of those rare occasions on which I fully agree with Mr. Whelan,” the President said. And then went on: “Does the name ‘Sergei

Murov’ mean anything to you, General?”

“The SVR rezident in the Russian embassy, sir?”

The President nodded. “And I believe you know Frank Lammelle, the deputy director of the CIA, pretty well?”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“Mr. Powell, will you please tell General Naylor of the meeting Lammelle had with Murov in the Russian compound on the Eastern Shore?”

“Yes, sir,” Powell said, and did so.

When Powell had finished, Naylor said, “Very interesting.”

“I have never liked traitors,” the President then announced, more than a little piously. “And so I have decided to give the Russians these two. What are their names again, Jack?”

“Colonel Dmitri Berezovsky and Lieutenant Colonel Svetlana Alekseeva, Mr. President,” the CIA director furnished.

“Mr. President, do we have them?” Naylor asked. “I was under the impression that—”

“That Lieutenant Colonel C. G. Castillo,” the President said, “who snatched them away from our CIA station chief in Vienna, has them?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I understand, General, that you are personally acquainted with Lieutenant Colonel Castillo.”

“Yes, sir, I am.”

During the Cold War, there had been a custom in the regiments of the United States Constabulary in occupied West Germany called the “Dining In.” Once a month, the officers of the regiments met for dinner in their regimental officer’s club. These were formal affairs, ones presided over by the regimental commander, with seating at the one large table arranged strictly according to rank. Dress uniform was prescribed. Officers’ ladies were not invited.

A splendid meal was served, with appropriate wines at each course. After the food had been consumed, and the cigars and cognac distributed, one of the officers—in a rigidly choreographed ritual—rose to his feet, and said, “Gentlemen, I give you the President of the United States.”

Whereupon all the other officers rose to their feet and raised their glasses in toast.

The toasting then worked its way down the chain of command until it had reached the regimental commander.

And then the officers got down to some serious informal drinking and socializing, the intention of which was to raise the awareness of officers—particularly officers just reporting for duty—of their role in the Army, the Army of Occupation, the United States Constabulary, and their regiment.

It was at his first Dining In that newly arrived Major Allan B. Naylor, Armor, had first heard about the Gossinger family. The event had been held at the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment Officer’s Club in Bad Hersfeld, which was in Hesse, very close to the border between West Germany and East Germany.

The 11th ACR—“The Blackhorse Regiment”—had the mission of patrolling the border between East and West Germany. Their patrols ran through the Gossinger family’s farmlands, which had been cut by the barbed-wire fence and the minefields erected by East Germans at Soviet direction to separate the East and West Germanys. Most of the Gossinger farmlands had wound up in East Germany.

By the time the story of the princess in Castle Gossinger came up, both alcohol and tradition had eased much of the formality of the Dining In. It was now time to tell war stories and other kinds of stories, the idea being more to entertain those who had not heard them than to present an absolutely truthful version of the facts.

For example, the story went that the barbed-wire fence and the minefields had been erected to keep Americans and West Germans from escaping into the Heaven on Earth of the Communist world.

As far as the Gossinger castle was concerned, the good news was that the Gossinger family—the full family name, identifying them as highly ranked in the Almanach de Gotha, was “von und zu Gossinger”—had lucked out: After the fence had gone up, their castle was in West Germany.

The bad news was that the Gossinger castle didn’t look at all like Neuschwanstein Castle, the one built—damn the expense—by Mad King Ludwig in Bavaria. It instead more resembled a tractor factory.