The Hostage (Presidential Agent 2)

"The ambassador told me that, too. It's embarrassing for them, Mr. President."

"I had an unpleasant thought just before I called you. We don't pay ransom, do we?"

"No, sir, we don't. That's a Presidential Order. Goes back to Nixon, I think."

"So the best we can hope for-presuming that this is just a kidnapping, and not a political slash terrorist act- is that once these people realize they've kidnapped a diplomat's wife and the heat is really going to be on, that they'll let her go?"

"That's one possibility, Mr. President, that they'll let her go."

He took her meaning.

"Jesus Christ, Natalie, you think they'd…"

"I'm afraid that's also a possibility, Mr. President," she said.

"What odds are you giving?"

"Fifty-fifty. That's for their turning her loose unharmed. I would give seventy-thirty that the cops will catch them."

"I told Sawyer I want to be in the loop. Will you keep me advised?"

"Yes, sir. Of course."

"Among other things we don't need is terrorists deciding that kidnapping our diplomats' wives is a good- and probably easy-thing to be doing."

"That thought ran through my head, too, Mr. President. But I don't think we can do anything beyond waiting to see what happens. I just don't see what else anyone can do right now

."

"Keep me in the loop, please, Natalie. Thank you."

"Yes, sir, I will." The President broke the connection with his finger.

"I just thought what else I can do," he said aloud, and took his finger off the telephone switch.

"Get me the secretary of Homeland Security," he said into the receiver to a White House operator.

II

[ONE] Office of the Secretary Department of Homeland Security Nebraska Avenue Complex Washington, D.C. 0840 21 July 2005 In the federal government, the secretary is not that person who answers the telephone, takes dictation, makes appointments, and brings the boss coffee. In Washington, the secretary is someone as high in the bureaucracy as one can rise without being elected President, and is therefore the boss.

In Washington, therefore, those individuals who answer the secretary's telephone, bring the coffee, make appointments, et cetera, have titles like "executive assistant."

The Honorable Matthew Hall, secretary of Homeland Security, had three executive assistants.

The first of these was Mrs. Mary-Ellen Kensington, who was fifty, gray-haired, and slim. She was a GS-15, the highest grade in the career Civil Service. She maintained Hall's small and unpretentious suite of offices in the Old Executive Office Building, near the White House. Secretary Hall and the President were close friends, which meant that the President liked to have him around more than he did some other members of his cabinet. When Hall was in Washington he could usually be found in his OEOB office, so that he was readily available to the President.

The second was Mrs. Agnes Forbison, who was forty-nine, gray-haired, and getting just a little chubby. She was also a GS-15. She reigned over the secretary's office staff in his formal office, a suite of well-furnished rooms in the Nebraska Avenue Complex, which is just off Ward Circle in the northwest of the District of Columbia. The complex had once belonged to the Navy, but it had been turned over in 2004 by an act of Congress to the Department of Homeland Security when that agency had been formed after 9/11.

When the red telephone on the coffee table in the secretary's private office in the complex buzzed, and a red light on it flashed-signaling an incoming call from either the President himself, but more than likely from one of the other members of the President's cabinet; or the directors of either the FBI or the CIA; or the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; or the commander-in-chief of Central Command-Mrs. Forbison was in the process of pouring a cup of coffee for the secretary's third executive assistant, C. G. Castillo.

Castillo, who was thirty-six, a shade over six feet tall, and weighed 190 pounds, was lying on the secretary's not-quite-long-enough-for-him red leather couch with his stockinged feet hanging over the end of it.

Castillo looked at the red telephone, saw that Agnes was holding the coffeepot, and reached for the telephone.

"Secretary Hall's line. Castillo speaking."

"Charley," the caller said, "I was hoping to speak to your boss."