She ignored him.

"We've had a call. We're going to meet those people we talked about in forty-five minutes."

"Where?" General Miller asked.

Betty Schneider looked at Castillo for guidance.

"I've been bringing General Miller up to speed on what's happening," Castillo said.

"A couple of blocks from the North Philadelphia station," she said. "But we're going to have to change cars."

"Change cars? Why?" Castillo asked.

"Because on West Seltzer Street-where we'll do the meet-a new Ford is either a fool from the Main Line trying to score dope or an unmarked car," Betty said. "We're trying not to attract attention, Major."

"I thought you agreed to call me Charley," Castillo said.

"Now we're working, okay? And this is my turf."

"Oddly enough, Sergeant," General Miller said, "I really didn't think you were from the Visitors' Bureau."

The presence of Sergeant Betty Schneider of the Philadelphia Police Department had been explained with a rather convincing fabrication, loosely based on the facts but not touching in any way on the possibility that the Liberty Bell was about to be the target of a terrorist attack.

Castillo had told Mrs. Miller, and the rest of the family, that the Department of Homeland Security, to which he had been assigned for some time as a liaison officer between the department and Central Command, and to which Major Miller had just been assigned, wanted to establish a closer relationship with the Philadelphia Police Department, in particular the Counterterrorism Bureau and the Organized Crime and Intelligence Unit. Commissioner Kellogg, more as a courtesy to Secretary Hall than to Castillo or Miller, had arranged for the Visitors' Bureau-which dealt with visiting movie stars and the like-to provide them with a car and a driver, Sergeant Schneider, to escort them around and answer what questions she could.

Castillo smiled at Betty Schneider.

"You may tell him, Sergeant," he said.

"I'm with the Organized Crime and Intelligence Unit, General," she said.

"And we got lucky with the commanding officer of the Counterterrorism Bureau, General," Castillo explained. "He served with Special Forces. He 'asked' the commanding officer of Organized Crime and Intelligence if he could spare Sergeant Schneider to help us."

"There's one more thing, Major," Betty said. "Chief Inspector Kramer strongly suggests that Major Miller do the meet, not you. And that he dress appropriately."

"Because of where you're going?" General Miller asked.

She nodded and said, "White men, like new Ford sedans, on West Seltzer Street, after dark:"

"Dress appropriately?" General Miller asked.

"Work clothes, preferably dirty and torn," Betty said.

"I think we have what you need in the garage," General Miller said.

"You said change cars," Castillo said. "Where do we do that?"

"Internal Affairs has been told to give us whatever we want," she said. "They have a garage full of them, mostly drug bust forfeitures. Dungan Road. Downtown. Not far from where we're going."

"Is there a weapon Dick can have, General?" Castillo asked.

"Is he going to need one?" General Miller asked, looking at Betty Schneider.

"You never need a gun unless you really need one, General," she said.

General Miller opened the center drawer of his desk and took out what looked like a cut-down Model 1911A1. 45 ACP semiautomatic pistol. He ejected the clip, racked the action back to ensure the weapon was not loaded, and then handed it to Betty.

"They used to make these at the Frankford Arsenal," he said, "cutting down a standard Model 1911A1. Shorter slide, five- rather than seven-shot magazine, etcetera. They were issued to general officers; the American version, so to speak, of the general officer's baton-swagger stick-in other armies."

She examined it carefully.

"Very nice," she said, then raised her eyes to his. "I can put this in my purse and give it to him later," she said.

"Why don't you do that?" General Miller replied, handing her the clip he had ejected and a second one, also loaded with five rounds, he pulled from the drawer. "And when you do, please tell him that if at all possible I'd like it back in the same condition it is now."

"Yes, sir," she said, but she was obviously confused by the remark.

"That is, never fired in anger," General Miller said.

[THREE]

Camp David

Catoctin Mountains, Maryland

1755 9 June 2005

"May I speak freely, Mr. President?" Beiderman asked several minutes later.

The president held up both hands, palms upward, yielding the floor.

"Until about thirty seconds ago," the secretary began, "I wasn't buying your argument that you were justified, or fair, in not bringing me in on this from the git-go. I am the secretary of defense. I have the right to know what's going on."

"And what happened thirty seconds ago?" the president asked, softly.

"I realized that I was letting my delicate ego get in the way of reality," Beiderman said. "The two pertinent facts-maybe it's only one fact-here are that you're the president and the commander in chief of the Armed Forces of the United States. The Constitution lays the defense of the nation on your shoulders. You have all the authority you need to do any goddamned thing you want to do that.

"Once I got past that, what I had decided was the dumbest idea you've had in a long time, sending a goddamned major-a major, for Christ's sake-to check on how all the generals and the top-level civilians are doing their jobs, didn't seem so dumb after all.

"It made a hell of a lot more sense than setting up one more blue-ribbon panel-particularly after the 9/11 commission's report-which would have taken three months to determine that what wasn't working the way it should-what was wrong-was the other guy's fault.

"And, knowing you as well as I do, I knew that what you had against using a commission or panel or something of the ilk to find out what's wrong had nothing to do with the other-perhaps the most significant-thing that panels are good for, giving your political enemies ammunition to use against you."

"The truth, Fred," the president said, "is that forming a blue-ribbon panel never entered my mind. All I wanted to do was quietly find out who knew what and when they knew it. I thought this would put us ahead of the curve. Using Major Castillo to that end seemed to be the way to do that very quietly. No one was going to pay attention to a major. It just got out of hand, is all."

"Out of hand, Mr. President?" Beiderman said. "I don't follow that."

"I've stirred up a hornet's nest. If you've learned about this Gray Fox operation-and you were, you admit, furious when you did-wait until the DCI and the director of the FBI find out."

"Excuse me, Mr. President. And with all respect, so what? You found out-this Major Whatsisname found out:"

"Castillo," Secretary Hall interrupted. "Major Carlos G. Castillo."

": among other things," Beiderman went on, "that the DCI was prepared to hang another major out to dry for doing his job in Angola and was far more interested in covering his ass about his connections with this Russian arms dealer than getting the intelligence that was apparently there for the asking."

The president looked at him with a raised eyebrow but said nothing.

"And without Charley, Mr. President," Hall interjected, "we would never have found out about Kennedy. Schmidt damned sure wasn't going to volunteer that information."

"About Kennedy?" Beiderman asked. "Who's he?"

"A former FBI agent who now works for Pevsner," the president said. "We don't know how important he was in the FBI before he left but, to judge from Mark Schmidt's reluctance to come up with his dossier when Matt asked for it, I don't think he was a minor functionary."