The Hostage (Presidential Agent 2)

"I saw him around. I'm the cultural attache at the embassy. I can put the opera, et cetera, on the expense account.And I get invited to all the parties. The Corps Diplomatique loves to have Americans around so they can tell us how we're fucking up the world." He paused. "Okay, that's what I know. Anything you think I missed?"

"I'd like to see all your files on Lorimer," Castillo said.

"So they can disappear into the black hole?"

"Photocopies would do. That way you'd still have the originals

."

"You're not asking for the originals?"

Castillo shook his head. "Photocopies would be fine. How long would it take you to make copies?"

"Which you would then turn over to Montvale-or somebody in the agency, maybe-so they could message me to 'immediately transfer by courier the originals of the documents listed below and certify destruction of any copies thereof'?"

"I don't have to give Montvale anything," Castillo said, "and right now I can't think of anything I want to give him. And as far as the agency is concerned, I am on Langley's Fuck the Bastard If Possible list. I want the copies for me."

Delchamps inclined his head, obviously in thought. Then he took another sip of his coffee. Finally, he leaned back in his chair and lit a small cigar.

"Odd that you should ask about photocopies of my files on Lorimer, Mr. Castillo. By a strange coincidence, I spent most of the afternoon and early evening yesterday, starting right after Ambassador Montvale called me, making photocopies of them. At the time, I was thinking of retiring and writing a book, What the CIA Didn't Want to Get Out About Oil for Food."

"What about the 'my lips are sealed forever plus three weeks' statement you signed? You could get your tail in a crack doing something like that."

"You ever run into a guy named Billy Waugh?"

Castillo nodded.

"I thought you might have," Delchamps said. "Billy wrote a book called I Had Osama bin Laden in My Sights and the Wimps at Langley Wouldn't Let Me Terminate Him-or something like that-and nothing ever happened to Billy."

"They were probably afraid that Billy would write another one, CIA Assholes I Have Known," Castillo said.

Delchamps chuckled. "I thought about that," he said. "And I figured they'd probably come to the same conclusion about me."

He pushed himself out of the chair and held his hand out with his thumb and index finger held wide apart. "It makes a stack about this big," he said. "I'll go next door and get them."

"Thanks," Castillo said. "One more question. Why did you change your mind? About telling me anything?"

"Straight answer?"

"Please."

"Like I said, I'm a dinosaur. I've been doing this a long time. When I was a kid, starting out in Berlin, we had guys there who had been in the second war, Jedburghs, people like that. I even knew Bill Colby. One of them told me if you couldn't look into a man's eyes and size him up you'd better find something else to do. He was right. You-the three of you-have all got the right look."

Delchamps nodded at Fernando and Torine and walked out of the room.

When the door had closed, Fernando said, "So Lorimer's dead. So now what, Gringo?"

"We don't know that he's dead," Castillo said. "From what Delchamps said, if Lorimer was grabbed, it was around the twelfth of this month. They didn't even abduct Mrs. Masterson until the twentieth, or blow Masterson away until the morning of the twenty-third. That's several days. I think they would have heard, in that time, if somebody had blown Lorimer away."

"Okay," Fernando said. "Same question. What now?"

"Go get Sergeant Kranz out of bed," Castillo said. "Tell him to get packed."

Sergeant First Class Seymour Kranz, a Delta/Gray Fox communicator, had been one of the two communicators they'd picked up-together with their satellite communications equipment-at Fort Bragg. Colonel Torine had told Kranz he had been chosen to go with them to Europe, rather than the other communicator, who had set up at the Nebraska Avenue Complex, because Torine devoutly believed that when flying across an ocean every pound counted. Kranz was barely over the Army's height and weight minimums. The real reason was that Kranz had been with Torine and Castillo when they were searching for the stolen 727 and proved that you don't have to be six feet tall and weigh two hundred pounds to be a first-rate special operator.

"Where are we going?" Torine asked.

"We're going to see my uncle Otto," Castillo said, and walked to the couch and sat down and picked up the telephone on the coffee table in front of it. [TWO] Executive Offices Die Fulda Tages Zeitung Fulda, Hesse, Germany 0805 27 July 2005 Frau Gertrud Schroeder was a stocky-but by no means fat, or even chubby-sixty-year-old Hessian who wore her gray hair done up in a bun. She had been employed by the Tages Zeitung since she was twenty, and had always worked for the same man, Otto Goerner.