The Outlaws (Presidential Agent 6)

“We’re going to have to form a corporation,” Two-Gun said.

“What are we going to call the corporation?” Castillo pursued.

“Do what Aloysius did. Use the initials,” Sergeant Major (Retired) Davidson suggested. “The Lorimer Charitable and Benevolent Fund becomes the LCBF Corporation.”

“Second the motion,” CWO5 Colin Leverette (Retired) said. “And then when everybody agrees, I can go fishing.”

He and Davidson had made their way to Bariloche the day before. Their passports had not attracted any unwelcome attention.

“Any objections?” Castillo asked, and then a moment later said, “Hearing none, the motion carries. It’s now the LCBF Corporation. Or will be, when Two-Gun sets it up. Which brings us to Two-Gun.”

“Uh-oh,” Two-Gun said.

“I suggest we appoint Two-Gun, by any title he chooses to assume, and at a suitable wage, as our money and legal guy. I think we should hire Agnes to keep running administration and keep Dianne and Harold on at the house in Alexandria.”

Mrs. Agnes Forbison, a very senior civil servant (GS-15, the highest pay grade) had been one of the first members of OOA, as its chief of administration.

Dianne and Harold Sanders were both retired special operators. They had been thinking of opening a bed-and-breakfast when Uncle Remus Leverette told them Castillo needed someone to run a safe house just outside Washington. They had jumped at the opportunity, and Castillo had jumped at the opportunity to have them. He’d been around the block with Harold on several occasions, and Dianne, in addition to being an absolutely marvelous cook, was also an absolutely marvelous cryptographer.

“Okay,” Leverette then said, “after we approve that, can I go fishing?”

Castillo said, “Then there’s the final question: What do we do about the offer from those people in Las Vegas?”

“I was afraid you’d bring that up, Ace,” Delchamps said. “I have mixed feelings about that.”

“We told them we’d let them know today,” Castillo said.

“No, they told us

to let them know by today,” Delchamps said. “I’m not happy with them telling us anything.”

“Call them up, Charley,” Jack Britton said, “and tell them we’re still thinking about it.”

“Second the motion,” Davidson said.

“Why not?” Castillo said. “The one thing we all have now is time on our hands. All the time in the world. Any objections?”

There were none and the motion carried.

“I’m going fishing,” Leverette said, and grabbed his fly rod from where he’d left it on a table, then headed for the door.

[TWO]

Office of the Managing Editor

The Washington Times-Post

1365 15th Street, N.W.

Washington, D.C.

1605 3 February 2007

The managing editor’s office was across the newsroom from Roscoe Danton’s office, substantially larger and even more crowded. The exterior windows opened on 15th Street, and the interior windows overlooked the newsroom. The latter were equipped with venetian blinds, which were never opened.

Managing Editor Christopher J. Waldron had begun smoking cigars as a teenager and now, at age sixty-two, continued to smoke them in his office in defiance of the wishes of the management of The Washington Times-Post and the laws of the District of Columbia. His only capitulation to political correctness and the law had been the installation of an exhaust fan and a sign on his door in large red letters that said: KNOCK BEFORE ENTERING!!!!

This served, usually, to give him time to exhale and to place his cigar in a desk drawer before any visitor could enter and catch him in flagrante delicto, which, as he often pointed out, meant “while the crime is blazing.”