“Could that be arranged?”
“It’ll take me a minute or two to set it up,” she said. “You’ll have to go to the commo room.”
“I understand. Thank you very much.”
“Not a problem,” Grunblatt said as she pushed herself out of her chair.
“And while I’m on the phone, Mizz Grunblatt, do you suppose you could rustle up another car for me? All we have is a Yukon, and we’re stuffed into it like sardines.”
“The call I can do. The car I can’t. All of our vehicles are out of town with the ambassador. Tomorrow afternoon, if he returns as scheduled, it should be no problem at all.”
Is that Cuban sonofabitch capable of that? Taking all the cars with him, so that I have to ride around town like a fish in a can?
“Secret Service, Claudeen.”
“This is the State Department switchboard. I have Ambassador Montvale on a secure line for the senior agent on duty.”
“Hold one, please, for Supervisory Special Agent McGuire.”
“It will be a moment, Ambassador Montvale.”
“Not a problem.”
Montvale knew Supervisor
y Special Agent Thomas McGuire. He had once been in charge of the presidential protection detail.
A good man.
More important, he knows who I am.
“McGuire.”
“Tom, this is Charles M. Montvale.”
“Good afternoon, Mr. Ambassador. How are you, sir?”
“Much better now that I’ve got you on the phone, Tom. I need someone with a grasp of the situation.”
“What situation is that, sir?”
“There are two facets of it, Tom. I’m sure you know what happened to the Office of Organizational Analysis?”
“That’s not much of a secret, sir.”
“And you’ve heard, I’m sure, about what’s been going on in the last few days at Fort Detrick?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, I’m in Buenos Aires. The President sent Mr. Ellsworth and me down here to locate Colonel Castillo to make sure he understands that he is not to go anywhere near that problem. I am to personally relay that presidential order to Castillo, once I find him.”
“Castillo’s in Argentina, sir?”
“I don’t know where he is. But I’ve come across a lead. One of the members of the now-disbanded OOA was an agency officer named Alexander W. Darby. He retired when Castillo got the boot. Now, I can’t find him. But I have reason to believe his wife ... Got a pencil ...?”
“Yes, sir.”
“. . . is in a house at seventy-two hundred West Boulevard Drive in Alexandria.”