"Major, I just don't know:"

"Call the motor pool, identify yourself as General Gonzalez's aide, and tell them to send a car, or a pickup, a van-something-here right now. And call Delta Force and have them have the senior officer present meet me at the stockade in twenty minutes."

"Major:"

"Alternatively, Captain, get General Gonzalez on the phone. I told you before, I just don't have time to fuck with you."

Without waiting for an answer, Castillo picked up his laptop briefcase and the go-right-now bag and carried them into the bedroom.

He was not going to try to talk the Delta/Gray Fox communications officer out of Mr. Aloysius Francis Casey's latest communication jewels while he was dressed in his Washington middle-level bureaucrat's gray-black suit.

As he unzipped the go-right-now bag, he heard Captain Brewster on the telephone:

"This is Captain Brewster, General Gonzalez's aide. I need a van and driver right now at the VIP guesthouse."

Among other things, the go-right-now bag held a very carefully folded Class A uniform. He hated it. It-and the shirt that went with the tunic and trousers-were sewn from miracle fabrics that didn't pick up unwanted creases. But the by-product of that convenience was that he itched wherever the material touched his skin. If he had the damn thing on for more than six hours, he could count on having a rash around his neck and on his calves and thighs. And the miracle fabrics did not absorb perspiration as cotton and wool did; after wearing it a couple of hours, he smelled as if he hadn't had a shower for a couple of days.

That thought, as he held up the uniform to confirm that it indeed did look amazing crisp, triggered the thought that a lot had happened since he had taken a shower in the Warwick hotel early that morning.

He took fresh linen and the go-right-now toilet kit from the go-right-now bag, stripped off the clothing he was wearing, and marched naked into the bathroom.

Five minutes later, freshly showered and shaved-he had shaved under the shower, a time-saving trick he'd learned at West Point-he replaced the razor in the toilet kit and saw the ring that testified to his graduation from Hudson High with the Class of 1990.

He slipped it on.

Ninety seconds after that, he was sitting on the bed lacing up his highly polished jump boots. And ninety seconds after that, after having walked back into the bath in the unfamiliarly heavy boots, he was examining himself in the full-length mirror on the back of the door.

Something was missing, and, after a moment, he understood what. He went back to the go-right-now bag and took out his green beret. Then he took one more check in the mirror.

He thought: Okay. Major Carlos G, Castillo, highly decorated Special Forces officer, all decked out in his incredibly natty Class A uniform, is prepared to try to talk the Delta/Gray Fox commo officer out of his best radios.

Then he had a second thought.

Shit, my ID card is still in the lid of the laptop briefcase and I'm going to have to have it. Otherwise, I'm likely to get myself arrested for impersonating an officer.

He had the lid open and was extracting his ID card when Captain Brewster knocked on the jamb of the open door.

"Sir, a van is on the way, and Lieutenant Colonel Fortinot will be at the Delta compound when we get there."

"Good," Castillo said and smiled at him.

"That was a quick change," Brewster said.

"I also do card tricks," Castillo said.

[TWO]

Police Administration Building

8th and Race Streets

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

2305 9 June 2005

Two detectives, one a very slim, tall white man, the other a very large African American, came out of the Roundhouse and walked purposefully to an unmarked Crown Victoria, which had just pulled up to the entrance.

The slim white man opened the rear door and got in beside the African American in the backseat.

"Face the other door and put your hands behind you," he ordered matter-of-factly as he produced a set of handcuffs.

"Is this necessary?" Major H. Richard Miller, Jr., asked as he complied.

"No. I just do it for laughs," the detective said as the cuffs clicked closed.

Then he put his hand on Miller's wrists and half-pulled, half-helped him back out of the rear seat.

As soon as Miller was on his feet, the slim detective put his hand firmly on Miller's left arm while the large detective put his hand even more firmly on Miller's right arm and they marched him into the Roundhouse.

Miller expected that he would be led into the entrance foyer of the Roundhouse and then to the elevator bank, as he, his father, and Charley Castillo had entered the building when they'd gone to see Commissioner Kellogg. Instead, he was marched to the right, through a procession of corridors, through a room lined with holding cells, and finally down another corridor to an elevator door guarded by a uniformed police officer.

"You just shut the fuck up!" the larger detective snarled and pushed Miller's arm, although Miller hadn't said a word.

The cop at the elevator shook his head in understanding and put a key in the elevator control panel. The door opened and Miller was almost pushed inside. The door closed.

"Keep to yourself whatever you want to say until we get to Homicide," the larger detective said, conversationally. "You never know who's liable to get on the elevator."

The elevator stopped, the door opened, and a black woman pushed a mop bucket onto elevator, looked without expression at everyone, then pushed the button for the fourth floor.

When the door opened again, Miller was half-pushed off and then down a curved corridor to a door marked HOMICIDE bureau, and then pushed through that. Inside, there was a railing. The slim detective reached over it, pushed what was apparently a solenoid release, and then pushed the gate in the railing open.

Inside a door just past the railing was a large, desk-cluttered room. Against the interior wall were a half-dozen doors, three of them with INTERVIEW ROOM signs on them. Miller was pushed into the center of these.

Sergeant Betty Schneider and a black man wearing a dark blue robe, sandals, and with his hair braided with beads were sitting on a table. The last time Miller had seen the man, who was an undercover Counterterrorism Bureau detective, was three hours before in a room in a bricked-up row house in North Philadelphia. There hadn't been much light, but there had been enough for Miller to decide the undercover cop was a mean-looking sonofabitch.

Seeing him in the brightly lit interview room confirmed his first assessment. The man with the bead-braided hair examined Miller carefully.

What the hell, why not? He didn't get a good look at me, either.

There was a steel captain's chair firmly bolted to the floor. It had a pair of handcuffs clipped to it, one half open and waiting to attach an interviewee to the chair.

Miller felt his handcuffs being unlocked and then removed.

"Thanks, John," Sergeant Schneider said to the black detective. "Anybody see him?"

"Everybody in detention, plus a cleaning woman who rolled her bucket onto the elevator. She may even have really been on her way to mop up the fourth floor."

The detective left the room and closed the door.

"If you promise to behave," the man with the beaded braids said, "we won't cuff you to the chair."

There was a faint hint of a smile on his face. Miller smiled back at him but didn't say anything.

The Homicide detectives left the interview room.

"Schneider tells me you're an Army officer, a major," the detective with the bead-braided hair said.

"That's right."

"Jack Britton," the man with the braided hair said, extending his hand. "Aka Ali Abd Ar-Raziq."

"What do I call you?"