Chapter 557

When I keyed up the MTAC call, Dick James - the Secretary of State - was already on the split screen with Troy and the President on the other side.

“What are you doing in Portugal?” the President asked.

“I am fulfilling contract obligations in our State Department contract, plus investigating complaints from my security teams. You are not going to like the results of the investigation report; there are serious problems to be addressed connecting embassy personnel to terrorists,” I replied.

“The Portuguese Ambassador is raising hell that you are holding meetings with other foreign dignitaries and that they were not notified or invited. He is on his way over here now demanding answers and to file an official complaint. What kind of meetings did you conduct at the airport?” Dick asked.

“We were all in the customs area waiting to go through the process and they recognized me and wanted to talk and take pictures. I didn’t think it proper to tell them to go to hell; after all they do vote with us some of the time at the UN. It was just general conversations about general topics,” I replied.

“When are you coming back?” Troy asked.

“Not for a week; I have three other embassies in the area with the same style complaints to check out, along with a courtesy visit and sightseeing tour of historic Israel before I head home. I intend to leave here and go to Spain after I interview the evening security team,” I replied.

“I have to step away to take a call from the Prime Minister of Portugal; stay on the line,” the President said.

While he was gone I gave a brief overview to the Secretary of State about what the investigation had reveled. He was as unhappy about the proceedings as I was.

“An operations assessment team just completed their work two months ago of the Portuguese embassy. There were minor problems but nothing reported like this,” Dick said.

“Who did your team interview? My men would have requested guidance from our office if they had been interviewed, especially if they thought they were going on the record. Our procedure is that they report operational concerns to us before they initiate actions there. Issues at one embassy certainly can involve other embassies. I received no request for guidance,” Vicky replied.

“I don’t know! If the directive was viewed as for leadership only, then the ball was dropped and we have horrible gaps in the assessment making it worthless. This assessment was result of the Korean embassy problem your people reported months ago. It was supposed to correct the problems that were brought to light there, yet problems continue it seems,” Dick said.

I did not tell Dick that I had with - the exception of a few - the videos of the interviews that Deputy Ambassador Barakat had done and green lighted their trip to America. I wanted Robert and the task force to run all of that through the systems. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a lot of the names already on the watch list.

We were still discussing the problem and how to deal with it when the President came back on the line, only to be interrupted.

Ambassador Taylor came busting through the door slamming it against the door stops, rattling the pictures on the wall into the MTAC center, “WHERE IN THE HELL IS THAT STUPID ASS BOSS OF YOURS AT?”

He came to a stop in front of the MTAC camera and screen; horrified when he realized who was on the screens.

“Just which boss do you want to talk to since you interrupted a classified private conversation?” I asked.

“Karl does the in-use light work on the outside of the door?” I asked.

“Yes Ma-am, checked at the beginning of each shift,” he replied.

I started to stand up.

Troy was yelling from behind the President, “BJ, don’t hurt him! He did not use any of the four letter words, just rough him up a little.”

“Taylor, sit down and shut up,” Dick ordered him.