The Outlaws (Presidential Agent 6)

Office of the Director

The Central Intelligence Agency

Langley, Virginia

0930 10 February 2007

J. Stanley Waters, the CIA’s deputy director for operations, stood looking over the shoulder of DCI John Powell at the screen of a laptop computer. The screen showed an arrow positioned over a map of Budapest, Hungary. A box beside the arrow held the legend HOTEL GELLÉRT, SZENT GELLÉRT TÉR 1 and the local date and time.

“There is our friend Castillo right now,” the DCI said.

“What’s he doing in the Hotel Gellért in Budapest?” Waters asked.

“Does it matter? Just as long as the case officers know where to find him when they get there.”

“It would have been easier, and maybe quicker, to send the plane from Tampa. We know the guys on the plane are good, know the score, and if we had sent it over there the moment we saw he was headed for Europe, they would be there, or almost there, now.”

“So you’ve been saying, five or six times,” the DCI said.

“I stand chastised.”

“And well you should,” the DCI said, only half-jokingly.

When enough time for that to have sunk in had passed, the DCI went on: “And what you can do with this software, Stan—that Casey is really a fucking genius—is program a time lapse into it. Like this.”

He tapped a few keys. The map changed and now showed a map covering the world from near Acapulco to Budapest.

“This arrow is when Castillo started to move from Grandma’s house,” the DCI said. “That was at sixteen-thirty Acapulco time yesterday. I’ll set this thing to show us where he was by the hour.”

He tapped keys.

“There it is . . .”

A series of arrows appeared on a line from Acapulco to Budapest.

“Unfortunately, there was a cloud cover, so we couldn’t get a very good picture of what’s moving. But enough to categorize it as a small jet. One hour later . . .”

He used his finger as a pointer.

“. . . it was almost halfway to Cancún, and two hours later, it was almost in Cancún, telling us it was making about three hundred thirty knots, which suggests that he’s flying the family Lear, which makes sense, as we know the Gulfstream III is in Panama City, Panama.

“An hour after that, having taken on fuel in Cancún, he was about two hundred miles on his way to Panama City.... Watch the arrow jump, Stan. Another hour, another three hundred forty nautical miles, and then another, et cetera, until he reaches Panama City, Panama.

“And there Castillo sat for almost three hours until he boarded Varig Flight 2030 for Madrid.”

“Jack, for Christ’s sake, you’re like a kid with your goddamn computer!”

“Indulge me,” the DCI said. “And there he is in Madrid.”

“Goddamn it, Jack!”

“And finally, courtesy of Lufthansa, there he is in Budapest.”

“What do you think he did with his airplane in Panama City?”

“No telling. We should know by the morning when we get the satellite imagery. It could be sitting on the tarmac there, or that Air Force guy, Torine, could have flown it somewhere. I never understood how that worked. Torine was a pretty senior full colonel, and our boy a very junior lieutenant colonel. So how come Torine works for Castillo?”

“I have no idea. What are you going to do with Lammelle?”