The Hunters (Presidential Agent 3)

“You want to know what I’m thinking, Colonel?”

“Only if you want to tell me,” Castillo said.

“That if I turn you down, they’ll send you somebody else, and if he turns you down, somebody else. Until the bureau finally sends you someone who’ll play by your rules.”

“That sounds like a reasonable scenario,” Castillo agreed.

“When I joined the bureau, I did so thinking that sooner or later I would have to put my life on the line. I was ‘bushy-tailed’ then, to use your expression, and had in mind bank robbers with tommy guns or Russian spies with poison and knives. It never entered my mind that I would be putting my life—my career—on the line for the bureau doing something like this.”

He sighed.

“But if the President thinks this is so important, who am I to argue with that? And, being important to me, who’s better qualified to keep the bureau from being mud-splattered with this operation than I am?”

He met Castillo’s eyes for a long moment.

“Okay, I’m in. No caveats. Your rules.”

“And no mental reservations?” Castillo asked, softly.

“I said I’m in, Colonel. That means I’m in.”

“Welcome aboard,” Castillo said.

There were no smiles between them.

“

Okay, Agnes, where are we going to set up?” Castillo asked.

“I figured the conference room,” she said. “It’s about as big as a basketball court, and there’s already phones, etcetera. And, of course, a coffeemaker.”

“Why don’t you take Mr. Delchamps and Inspector Doherty in there and let them see it? I need a word with Major Miller and then we’ll both have a look.”

“Well?” Castillo asked the moment the door had closed after Mr. Forbison and the others.

“I don’t think Inspector Doherty likes you very much,” Miller said.

“I don’t give a damn whether he does or not. The question is, is he going to get on the phone the first time he has a chance? ‘Hey, guys, you won’t believe what this loose cannon Castillo is up to.’”

“I think I would trust him as far as you trust Yung.”

“Going off at a tangent, Yung has now seen the light and is really on board.”

“Did he see the light before or after these bastards tried to kill him?”

“Britton asked almost exactly the same question,” Castillo said, chuckling.

“You know, great minds tread similar paths,” Miller replied. “Well?”

“I heard about it after they tried to kidnap him,” Castillo said. “But I have the feeling he’d made up his mind before.”

“Your charismatic leadership?”

“I think it’s more likely that he thought about what I said about spending the rest of his FBI career investigating parking meter fraud in South Dakota and realized that would happen anyway if he ever did get to go back the FBI. With going back then not an attractive option, working for us didn’t seem so bad. I don’t know. I’m not looking the gift horse in the mouth. Yung is smart and we need him.”

“Before you sent him down south, you said you trusted him because he was moral,” Miller said.

Castillo nodded. “And I think Doherty is moral. The difference between them is that Doherty’s a heavy hitter in the bureau.”