By Order of the President (Presidential Agent 1)

The pilot ordered that the passenger compartment be readied for flight.

When they turned the cabin lights on the next morning, Castillo opened his eyes and saw Patricia Wilson was still asleep beside him. She had her seat all the way back—it was one of the new seats that went almost horizontal. She was straight in the seat, with the small airline pillow in the nape of her neck.

She looked good. A lot of women, he thought, did not look good first thing in the morning, especially after they had spent most of the night flying across an ocean. Some of them slept with their mouths open. And some snored, which he found amusing, if not very attractive.

He unstrapped himself and got up carefully so as not to disturb her and then took his laptop briefcase from the overhead bin and went to the toilet. He urinated and then closed the toilet seat and laid the laptop briefcase on it. He went quickly through his morning toilette, which concluded with splashing cologne on his face and examining it in the mirror as he swished Listerine around in his mouth.

That done, he opened the computer section of the briefcase and removed one of the computer-cushioning pads.

It appeared to be simply a black plastic cushion. It was not. He pried apart what looked like a heat-welded seam and then tugged on the Velcro inside until it separated. Then he arranged all the documents which identified him as Carlos Guillermo (or C. G.) Castillo—his Army AGO card, his Supervisory Special Agent Secret Service credentials, his Department of Homeland Security identification, building pass, and business cards, and his MasterCard, Visa, and American Express credit cards—inside against what looked like a random pattern of the plastic.

The lines on the pattern were actually of a special plastic that would both keep the documents from shifting around, thus making a lump in the cushion pad, and also present a faint, baffling pattern to X-ray machines.

He carefully closed the cushion pad, put it back in the briefcase, zipped everything up, and went back to his seat.

Patricia Wilson was not only awake but sitting up and sipping at a glass of tomato juice. There was another glass of tomato juice on the small flat area between their seats.

She pointed to it.

“You didn’t strike me as the canned orange or grapefruit juice type,” she said. “Okay?”

“You’re a mind reader,” he said. “Which will probably get me in trouble.”

She smiled but did not respond directly.

“Let me get out and go where you have been,” she said. “And then you can sit down. Take my seat, if you like.”

[THREE]

Frankfurt International Airport Frankfurt am Main, West Germany 0900 2 June 2005

When the Lufthansa 767 touched down at Frankfurt International Airport—which he always thought of as “Rhine-Main,” as it was known to American military personnel—Castillo remembered, somewhat painfully, the first time he’d come there twenty-four years ago, at age twelve.

He’d said good-bye to his mother three hours before. He had understood that she was close to dying and didn’t want him to see her last days. But leaving her had really been tough; they had both known it was really good-bye forever.

Otto Görner had driven him and Abuela and Grandpa down from Bad Hersfeld in his mother’s Mercedes. Major Naylor and his wife and Colonel Lustrous’s wife had met them in the Pan American VIP lounge. There had been a man from the American consulate there, too, to make sure things went smoothly. It had been the first proof of what his mother had said about Grandpa. That he was “a man of in fluence.”

The Naylors and Mrs. Lustrous had told him they would see him in America. He hadn’t believed them. Otto had made him promise to write, and to get on the phone if he ever needed anything, or just to talk.

Mrs. Naylor and Mrs. Lustrous had kissed him. Major Naylor had hugged his shoulders. Otto had shaken his hand. And then he and Abuela and Grandpa had gotten on the first-class -passengers-only bus, which carried them to the 747. It was not only the largest airplane he had ever seen but the first airplane he’d ever been inside of.

He had stared out the window, fighting back tears, as they taxied to the runway and then taken off. He had been surprised how little time it had taken before Germany disappeared under them.

Pat Wilson went with Castillo while he rented a car. She was on her way to Berlin, she had told him, and coming the way she had, even though it meant changing planes after a two-hour wait in Frankfurt, would get her there faster than either waiting for a direct Dulles-Berlin flight or catching one in New York would.

They had exchanged telephone numbers and promised to call whenever one of them was in the other’s city—Forbes was published in New York City. He intended to call her the next time he had some free time in Manhattan, but the number he gave her was that of one of the answering machines in his suite in the Mayflower. He never answered the machines. The Karl von und zu Gossinger machine announced in his voice, in English and German, that Herr von und zu Gossinger was out of town but would return the call as soon as possible if the caller would leave a name and number at the beep.

He didn’t want to see her in Washington. She was a journalist and there was too much in his life there that would ignite her curiosity.

Seeing her in New York was something else again. Or anywhere but Washington, for that matter. Maybe he could coincidentally find himself wherever her journalistic duties took her.

As Castillo drove away from the Hertz lot in an Opel Kapitan, he was surprised to realize he really wanted to see more of Patricia Wilson.

[FOUR]

Executive Offices Der Fulda Tages Zeitung Fulda, Hesse, West Germany 1045 2 June 2005

Castillo took the A66 Autobahn to Schultheim, where it turned into Highway 40, and continued on that until he came to the A7 Autobahn to Fulda. Once out of the Frankfurt area traffic, he made good time. He kept the speedometer needle hovering around 120 kilometers per hour, which meant he was going about 75 miles per hour, which seemed both fast enough and safe on the four-lane, gently curved superhighway.