“Yes, sir?”
“Tell Boca Chica airfield to be prepared to receive the Black Hawks, and order them to keep their mouths shut about it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll get back to you, Albert. General McNab needs the phone.”
“Sir, how do I get in touch with you?”
“You don’t. I’ll check in with you periodically. Naylor out.”
“Lester,” McNab then said. “Get me the One-Sixtieth Special Operations Aviation Regiment at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Make it look like I’m calling from Washington.”
“Yes, sir.”
General Naylor looked around the room. “Why do I feel I’m basking in the approval of a number of people who five minutes ago thought I was a chicken-shit sonofabitch?”
“Dad,” Lieutenant Colonel (Designate) Allan Naylor, Jr., said, “why don’t we all try to forget what you were five minutes ago?”
[TWO]
The President’s Study
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C.
0905 12 February 2007
“Good morning, Mr. President,” John Powell, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, said as he walked into the room.
“You’re here to tell me that the Russians and Castillo are now en route to Moscow, right?”
“No, sir, I regret that I am not. But there have been some interesting developments, Mr. President, that suggest we’re a good deal closer to that solution of the problem tha
n we were at this time yesterday.”
“Let’s hear them. Before a National Park Service policeman finds another beer barrel of that stuff at Nine Hundred Ohio Drive, Southwest.”
“Mr. President, Nine Hundred Ohio Drive?”
“The Lincoln Memorial, Jack. You don’t know where it is?”
The President looked very pleased with himself.
“Jack,” he went on, “we promised that Russian sonofabitch . . . what’s his name, the rezident?”
“Murov, sir. Sergei Murov.”
“We promised Murov his two traitors and Castillo several days ago. If I were this guy, I would be wondering why that hasn’t happened, and if I were this guy, I think I would be tempted to leave another barrel of this stuff somewhere—say, at Nine Hundred Ohio Drive, Southwest—as a little reminder. You heard what that Fort Detrick scientist . . . what’s his name, the black guy . . . ?”
“Colonel Hamilton, sir. Colonel J. Porter Hamilton.”
“. . . had to say about how dangerous this stuff is.”
“Yes, sir, I did.”