The Outlaws (Presidential Agent 6)

“May I ask questions?” General Naylor said.

“Yes, sir. Of course,” Castillo replied.

“Danton is the reporter?”

“Yes, sir. That was Sweaty’s idea. I’ll get into that in a minute.”

“And General McNab? Has he also given you his parole?”

“Charley never asked me for it, General,” McNab answered for him.

Thirty seconds later, one of the Russians led Roscoe J. Danton into the room.

“Please have a seat, Mr. Danton,” Castillo said. “I presume you know everybody?”

“I don’t know who these gentlemen are,” Danton said, indicating Colonel Brewer, Allan Junior, Vic D’Allessando, and Aloysius Francis Casey.

“My name is Casey,” Aloysius said.

“Colonel Brewer is my senior aide-de-camp,” General Naylor said. “And that’s my son, Lieutenant Colonel (Designate) Allan Naylor, Junior.”

“I try very hard to keep my name out of the newspapers, Mr. Danton,” D’Allessando said. “Think of me as a friend of Charley’s. You can call me Vic.”

“And was that Frank Lammelle they just carried into my cell?”

“Yes, it was,” Castillo said. “And I’m crushed that you think of that lovely room with an en suite bath and such a lovely view as a cell.”

“If there’s a guy with a submachine gun at the door keeping you inside,” Danton said, “that’s a cell.”

“Point taken,” Castillo said. “I think I should begin this by telling you, Mr. Danton, that General Naylor, Colonel Brewer, and Lieutenant Colonel (Designate) Naylor are not here voluntarily. They have given me their parole.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It means that under the Code of Honor, they will—”

“What ‘Code of Honor’?” Danton interrupted.

“I don’t really know. I think of it as the Code of Honor,” Castillo said, and looked at General Naylor. “Is there a more formal name, sir?”

“I don’t really know,” Naylor said. “What it means, Mr. Danton, is that I—personally and on behalf of my staff—have given Colonel Castillo our parole, which means that we will neither attempt escape nor undertake any hostile action without first notifying him that we have withdrawn our parole.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?” Danton asked, and when Naylor nodded, said, “You take that Code of Honor business seriously? Incredible!”

“I don’t think that’s the only thing you’re going to hear, or see, in the next couple of days that you may find incredible,” Castillo said.

Two Russians appeared with a huge thermos of coffee and a tray with cups, cream, and sugar.

Castillo waited until the fuss caused by that dissipated and then rapped his spoon against the thermos. Everybody looked at him.

“Here we go,” he said. “While I am a graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff School—where one learns how to write a staff study—I have to confess that when it was time for me to actually go to Fort Leavenworth, either they really couldn’t find room for me, or an unnamed senior officer decided I could make a greater contribution to the Army by running his errands. So he pulled some strings, the result of which was that I took the course by correspondence—in addition to my other duties—rather than in the academic setting of Leavenworth.”

General Naylor realized he was smiling, and when he looked, he saw General McNab—the unnamed senior officer—was, too.

“The result of that was I cannot come up with as good a staff study as most people can. But as General McNab has told me so many times over the years, you gotta go with what you got.

“Statement of the Problem: The Russians and the Iranians, probably with a lot of help from former East Germans and maybe the Czechs and even the Japanese, none of whom find anything wrong with using biological weapons on soldiers and civilians, came up with a substance we now call Congo-X, because it was manufactured in a laboratory in the Congo.

“Our own expert in this area, Colonel J. Porter Hamilton, cutting to the chase, describes Congo-X as ‘an abomination before God.’