By Order of the President (Presidential Agent 1)

“There is nothing to suggest,” the president said, “that any of the agencies looking into the 727 gone missing have either done anything they shouldn’t have or not done something they should have. Or that anyone suspects they will in the future. You should have that clear in your mind from the beginning.”

“Yes, sir.”

“On the other hand,” the president went on, “I can’t help but have in mind that a highly placed officer in the agency who was in the pay of the Russians for years was not even suspected of doing anything wrong—despite his living a lifestyle he could obviously not support on his CIA pay— until, against considerable resistance from the agency bureaucracy, an investigation was launched. You’re familiar with that story?”

“Yes, sir, I am.”

“And then—it came far too belatedly to light—the FBI had a highly placed officer in charge of counterintelligence who had taken a million dollars from the Russians in exchange for information that led to the deaths of people we had working for us in Moscow and elsewhere.”

“Yes, sir. I know that story, too.”

“That’s what the agency would call the worst possible scenario,” the president went on. “But there is another scenario —scenarios—that, while falling short of moles actually in the pay of a foreign intelligence service, can do just as much harm to the country as a mole can do. Are you following me, Major?”

“I hope so, sir.”

“Intelligence—as you probably are well aware—is too often colored, or maybe diluted or poisoned, I learned, by three factors. I’m not sure which is worst. One of them is interagency rivalry, making their agency look good and another look bad. Another is to send up intelligence that they believe is what their superiors want to hear, or, the reverse, not sending up intelligence that they think their superiors don’t want to hear. And yet another is an unwillingness to admit failure. You understand this, I’m sure. You must have seen examples yourself.”

“Yes, sir, I have.”

“Matt . . . Secretary Hall and I,” the president said, “are agreed that in the intelligence community there is too much of a tendency to rely on what the other fellow has to say. I mean, in the absence of anything specific, the CIA will go with what the FBI tells them, or the ONI on what the DIA has developed. You’re still with me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Some of that, obviously, has to do with funding. Funding is finite. One agency feels that if another agency has come up with something, there’s no sense in duplicating the effort, which means spending money. That’s just human nature. ”

“Yes, sir, I understand.”

“And then Secretary Hall came up with the idea that one way to have a look at what’s really going on in the field would be to have a quiet look at an active case where more than one agency—the more, the better—is involved. This gone-missing airplane is a case where not just two or three agencies but most of them are involved. I don’t have to get into that with you, do I, Major? The jealously guarded turf of the various agencies?”

“No, sir. I’m familiar with the Statements of Mission.”

“Okay,” the president said. “In the case of this missing 727 airplane, the agency has primary responsibility. But the State Department has been told to find out what they can. And the Defense Intelligence Agency. And DHS, because one scenario is that the plane was stolen for use as a flying bomb against a target in this country. There is not much credence being placed in that story, but the fact is we just don’t know. What we do know is that we cannot afford to allow it—or any other act of terrorism—to happen again. And certainly not as a result of interagency squabbling . . . or one agency deciding it doesn’t want to spend money because it (a) would be duplication and (b) could be more profitably spent on something else.

“So that gives Secretary Hall reason to send someone to find out what he can. Because the agency and the others are involved, and he will have access—at least in theory—to what intelligence they develop, he will not be expected to send a team, just go through the motions with someone junior who can be spared. You with me, Major?”

“Yes, sir. I think I am.”

“The question then became who could Secretary Hall send on this mission, and he answered that by saying he had just the man, and he thought I would like him because he was just like Vernon Walters. You know who General Walters was, of course?”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

“Well, are you like Vernon Walters, Major? You do speak a number of languages fluently?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Russian?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hungarian?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How many in all?”

“Seven or eight, sir,” Castillo said, “depending on whether Spanish and Texican are counted as one language or two.”

The president chuckled. “How did you come to speak Russian?” he asked.