The Outlaws: a Presidential Agent novel Read online

  President Clendennen considered that a moment, and then asked, “So where does the Finding fit in all this?”

  “The wife of one of our diplomats in Argentina. The deputy chief of mission, J. Winslow Masterson—‘Jack the Stack’?”

  “I know who he was, Charles. Not only was he the basketball player who got himself run over by a beer truck, for which he collected a very large bundle, but he was the son of Winslow Masterson, who is arguably the richest black guy—scratch black—the richest guy in Mississippi. And they even—surprise, surprise—told me that Winslow’s son had been killed.”

  “Yes, sir. First they kidnapped his wife. The minute the President heard about that, he sent Major Castillo down there. What Castillo was supposed to do was keep an eye on the investigation, and report directly to the President.

  “By the time Castillo got to Buenos Aires, Masterson had eluded the State Department security people who had been guarding him, and gone to meet the kidnappers. They killed him in front of his wife, then doped her up and left her with the body.”

  “What was that all about?”

  “We didn’t know it at the time, but it was connected with the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal. Mrs. Masterson’s brother was not only involved, but had stolen money from the thieves. They thought she would know where he was—she didn’t; there was enormous friction between her husband and her brother—and they told her unless she told them where he was, they would kill her children.”

  “You didn’t know this at the time?”

  “No, sir. But when the President learned that Masterson had gotten away from his State Department guards, and had been assassinated, he went ballistic—”

  “He had a slight tendency to do that, didn’t he?” the President said sarcastically.

  “—and got on the phone to the ambassador and told him that Castillo was now in charge of getting Mrs. Masterson and the children safely out of Argentina.”

  “And?”

  “Which he did. The President send a Globemaster down there to bring Masterson’s body and his family home. And when the plane got to the air base in Biloxi, Air Force One was sitting there waiting for it. And so was the Presidential Finding. The President had found that the national interest required the establishment of a clandestine unit to be known as the Office of Organizational Analysis, which was charged with locating and terminating those responsible for the assassination of J. Winslow Masterson. Major Carlos Castillo was named chief.” He paused. “That’s how it started, Mr. President.”

  “‘Terminating’ is that nice little euphemism for murder, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, that explains, wouldn’t you agree, Charles, why the President didn’t feel I had to know about this? He knew I wouldn’t stand for it. There’s nothing in the Constitution that gives the President the authority to order the killing of anybody.”

  Montvale thought: Well, he knew you wouldn’t like it. But there is nothing you could have done about it if you had known, short of giving yourself the floor in the Senate and committing political suicide by betraying the man who had chosen you to be his Vice President.

  Being morally outraged is one thing.

  Doing something about it at great cost to yourself is something else.

  And if the story had come out, there’s a hell of a lot of people who would have been delighted that the President had ordered the execution of the people who had murdered Jack the Stack in front of his wife. And even more who would have agreed that the murder of any American diplomat called for action, not complaints to the United Nations.

  The only reason Clendennen said that is to cover his ass in case the story of OOA gets out.

  “I never knew a thing about it. When DNI Montvale told me the story, after I had become President—he had been forbidden to tell me before—I was outraged! Ask Montvale just how outraged I was!”

  “The security was very tight, Mr. President,” Montvale said. “The access list, the people authorized to know about OOA, was not only very short, but extraordinarily tightly controlled.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “There were only two people who could clear others for access to OOA information, Mr. President. Major Castillo and the President himself. I was made privy to it, of course, but I was forbidden to share what knowledge I had with anyone else—not even my deputy or my secretary—no matter how many Top Secret security clearances they had.”

  “That isn’t surprising when you think about it, is it, Charles? When you are ordering murder, the fewer people who know about it, the better.”

  Montvale didn’t reply.

  “Just how many bodies did this Major Castillo leave scattered all over the world, Charles?” the President asked.

  “I really don’t know, Mr. President,” Montvale said. “He reported only to the President.”

  “And now that there’s a new President, don’t you think it’s time somebody asked him? Where is he?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. President.”

  “You’re the DNI,” the President snapped. “Shouldn’t you know a little detail like that?”

  “Mr. President, will you indulge me for a moment? I think it would be useful for you to know what happened vis-à-vis the Congo.”

  “I think a lot of people would find it useful to know what happened vis-à-vis the Congo.”

  “On Christmas Eve, Mr. President, there were several assassinations and attempted assassinations all over the world—”

  “By Major Castillo? On Christmas Eve? Unbelievable!”

  “No, sir. Directed against people with a connection to Lieutenant Colonel—by then he had been promoted—Castillo. A newspaper reporter in Germany, for one. An Argentine gendarmería officer, for another. A Secret Service agent on the vice presidential detail—”

  “Which one?” the President again interrupted.

  “His name is John M. Britton, if memory serves, Mr. President.”

  “Black guy,” the former Vice President recalled. “Smart as hell. Funny, too. I liked him. I wondered what happened to him.”

  “Well, sir, immediately after the attempt on his life, he was of course taken off your protection detail.”

  “Why?”

  “Sir, if someone was trying to kill Special Agent Britton and he was guarding you, standing beside you ...”

  The President stopped him with a gesture. He had the picture.

  “What was Jack Britton’s connection to Castillo?”

  “Britton was a Philadelphia Police Department detective, working undercover in the Counterterrorism Bureau, when Castillo was running down the Philadelphia connection to the stolen airliner. Castillo recruited him for OOA.”

  “Then how did he wind up in the Secret Service on my protection detail?”

  “I believe you know Supervisory Special Agent Tom McGuire, Mr. President?”

  “He used to run the President’s protection detail? Yeah, sure I know Tom. Don’t tell me he has a connection with Castillo.”

  “The President assigned McGuire to OOA to act as liaison between the Secret Service and Castillo. He was impressed with Britton, and when Britton was no longer needed by Castillo and couldn’t return to Philadelphia—his identity was now known to the terrorist community—McGuire recruited him for your protection detail.”

  “And?”

  “Apparently, Special Agent Britton could not understand why an attempt on his life justified his being relieved from your protection detail and being assigned to a desk in Saint Louis. He said some inappropriate things to his supervisors. McGuire decided the best thing to do under the circumstances was send him back to OOA, and he did.”

  “Why did they—and who is ‘they’?—try to kill Britton?”

  “Castillo believed the assassinations and assassination attempts on all the people I mentioned were retaliatory actions ordered by Putin himself.”

  “I find it hard to accept that Vladimir Putin would order assassinations any more than I would,
” the President said. “But on the other hand, once we start murdering people, I think we would have to be very naïve or very stupid—how about ‘stupidly naïve’?—to think the other side would not retaliate.”

  “Yes, sir. Well, Castillo was apparently delighted to have Britton back. He put him on an airplane and sent him and Mrs. Britton to Argentina to get them out of sight and then loaded some—most—of the others on his Gulfstream and flew to Europe.”

  “On his Gulfstream? He had access to an Air Force Gulfstream? Jesus Christ!”

  “Yes, sir. He had access to an Air Force Gulfstream—and he had a document signed by the President that ordered any government agency to give him whatever assets he asked for.”

  The President shook his head in disbelief.

  “But the Gulfstream on which he flew to Europe was a civilian aircraft, leased by OOA,” Montvale said. “He kept it at Baltimore/Washington.”

  “Where did the money for that come from?”

  “Mr. President, I wasn’t in the loop. I just know he had the airplane.”

  The President exhaled audibly.

  “And?” he asked.

  “Well, according to Castillo, shortly after he arrived in Germany he was approached by two very senior SVR officers—”

  “What’s that?” the President interrupted.

  “Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service,” Montvale explained. “The two officers were Colonel Dmitri Berezovsky, the SVR rezident in Berlin, and Lieutenant Colonel Svetlana Alekseeva, the SVR rezident in Copenhagen. They said they wanted to defect.”

  Montvale paused, and then went on. “I have to go off at a tangent here, Mr. President. At this time, our CIA station chief in Vienna, Miss Eleanor Dillworth, a highly respected longtime Clandestine Service officer, and her staff had for some time, and at considerable effort and expense, been working on the defection of Lieutenant Colonel Alekseeva and Colonel Berezovsky. These arrangements had gone so far as the preparation of a safe house in Maryland to house them while they were being debriefed.”

  “So why did they contact Castillo?”

  “According to Castillo, they didn’t trust Miss Dillworth. Castillo said when they came to him, they offered to defect to him in exchange for two million dollars and immediate transportation to Argentina on his plane. This whole transaction apparently took place on a train headed for Vienna. So he made the deal.”

  “Shouldn’t he have gone to the nearest CIA officer, either this Miss Dillworth or some other CIA officer? Was he authorized to make a deal like that?”

  “No, sir, he wasn’t, and yes, sir, he should have immediately contacted either me or someone in the CIA.”

  “Incredible!”

  “Yes, sir, it is,” Montvale agreed. “When this came to my attention—Miss Dillworth reported to CIA Director Powell that the defection of Colonel Berezovsky and Lieutenant Colonel Alekseeva had blown up in her face and that she suspected the presence in Vienna of Castillo had something to do with it—”

  “She knew about Castillo? Who he was?”

  “By then, Mr. President, the existence of the OOA and the identity of its chief was not much of a secret within the intelligence community.”

  President Clendennen nodded and motioned for Montvale to go on.

  “DCI Powell reported the situation to me. I immediately realized that something had to be done.”

  “So you went to the President?”

  “At that stage, Mr. President, Colonel Castillo was the President’s fair-haired boy. I decided the best thing to do was go to General Naylor.”

  “Naylor is a very good man,” the President said. “Please don’t tell me Naylor was involved with the OOA.”

  “Only in the sense that Castillo was a serving Army officer, and that General Naylor had recommended Castillo to the secretary of Homeland Security. There was a legality involved, too, Mr. President. So far as the Army was concerned, Castillo was on temporary duty with the OOA from his regular assignment to the Special Operations Command. The Special Operations Command is under General Naylor’s Central Command.”

  The President’s face showed that he could easily have done without the clarification.

  “And?” he said impatiently.

  “Well, General Naylor, on being apprised of the situation, agreed with me that the situation had to be brought under control.”

  “By ‘the situation,’ you mean Castillo?”

  “Yes, sir. And General Naylor and I were agreed that our first priority was to spare the President any embarrassment that Castillo’s actions might cause. And the second priority was to get the two Russians into the hands of the CIA.

  “After some thought, it was decided that the best thing to do with Castillo—and incidentally, the best thing for Castillo personally—was to have him retired honorably from the service. A board of officers was quickly convened at Walter Reed. After an examination of his record, it was decided that he was suffering as a result of his extensive combat service—his chest is covered with medals for valor in action—with post-traumatic stress disorder that has rendered him permanently psychologically unfit for continued active service and therefore he should be medically retired. The board awarded him a disability pension of twenty-five percent of his base pay.

  “General Naylor appointed an officer, a full colonel, to present Lieutenant Colonel Castillo with the findings of the board. Taking him with me, I went to Argentina in a Gulfstream with the intention of bringing Castillo home and to place the defected Russians into the hands of the CIA. I took with me two members of my protection detail to guard the Russians, and, frankly, in case Castillo proved obstreperous.”

  “And did he prove to be ‘obstreperous’?”

  “Oh, yes, Mr. President. ‘Obstreperous’ doesn’t half cover it. Our ambassador, Juan Manuel Silvio, told me that he hadn’t heard Castillo was in Argentina, and that he had heard nothing about Colonel Berezovsky or Lieutenant Colonel Alekseeva.

  “The words were no sooner out of his mouth—we were having lunch in a restaurant around the corner from the embassy—when Castillo walked in.

  “I asked him where the Russians were. He said at the moment he didn’t know, but if he did, he wouldn’t tell me, because they had changed their minds about defecting.

  “Letting that ride for the moment, I explained his position to him, and the colonel handed him the document he was to sign which would see him retired.”

  Montvale drained his coffee cup, put it beside the silver pot, then went on: “Castillo said, ‘I will sign that when the President tells me to. And only then.’

  “I told him that that was not an option, and pointed to the Secret Service agents, who were sitting at a nearby table. I informed him that I was prepared to arrest him, and hoped that wouldn’t be necessary.

  “He pointed to some men sitting at a table across the restaurant and said they were officers of the Gendarmería Nacional. He added that, at his signal, they would approach anyone coming near him, and demand their identification. They would not permit his arrest, he announced, and if the people approaching him happened to be armed, Ambassador Silvio would have to start thinking about how to get them out of jail, since the Secret Service has no authority in Argentina and is not permitted to go about armed.

  “Castillo then said a restaurant was no place to discuss highly classified matters, and suggested we move to the embassy—presuming Ambassador Silvio would give his word that he would not be detained in the embassy.”

  “And what did the ambassador do?”

  “He offered us the use of his office, and gave Castillo his word that he would not be detained if he entered the embassy. So we went to the embassy, where Castillo almost immediately told us what the Russians had told him about a chemical warfare laboratory-slash-factory in the Congo. And that he and everybody in OOA believed the Russians.

  “I told him that the CIA had investigated those rumors and found them baseless. He then said, ‘Well, the CIA is wr
ong again.’

  “We then called DCI Powell at Langley, and raised the question to him about a germ warfare laboratory-slash-factory in the Congo. DCI Powell repeated what I had told Castillo. The rumors were baseless—what was there was a fish farm.

  “To which Castillo replied that the CIA was wrong again, and that there was obviously no point in continuing the conversation.

  “I gave him one more chance to turn the Russians over to me and to get on the Gulfstream. When he laughed at me, I turned to the ambassador and said that it was obvious Colonel Castillo was mentally unstable, and therefore, the ambassador could not be held to his word that Castillo could leave the embassy.

  “The ambassador replied that the last orders he had had from the President vis-à-vis Colonel Castillo were that he was to provide whatever assistance Colonel Castillo asked for, and he didn’t think that meant taking Castillo into custody.

  “The ambassador then pushed the secure telephone to me, and said words to the effect that I was welcome to call the President to see if he could be persuaded to change his orders, but that if I made the call he would insist on telling the President that he could detect no sign of mental instability in Castillo—quite the opposite—and that in his personal opinion, I and the CIA were trying to throw Castillo under the bus because they had somehow botched the defection of the Russians and were trying to make Castillo the fall guy for their own incompetence.”

  “My God!” the President said.

  “As I could think of nothing else to say,” Montvale said, “I then returned to Washington.”

  “Let’s call a spade a spade, Charles,” the President said. “‘As I could think of nothing else to say, and I didn’t want the President to know I had gone behind his back, at least until I had time to come up with a credible reason, I then returned to Washington.’”

  Montvale flushed, and realizing he had flushed, was furious, which made him flush even more deeply.

  “The CIA does have a certain reputation for throwing people under the bus, doesn’t it, Charles? Especially those people who have embarrassed it?”