“She’s on her way to Singapore, sir?”
“Apparently. And she did not choose to share with me her reasons for not making use of the communications system aboard her aircraft.”
“Sometimes it doesn’t work, sir.”
“I suppose that’s true. In any event, Major, I regret not being able to be of greater service.”
“I understand the problem, sir. Thank you for your effort.”
“This will, I am sure, be resolved shortly. When it is, Major, I will get back to you. As you might imagine, my own curiosity is now aroused.”
“Thank you, sir.”
There was a very clear click, and Castillo realized he was no longer speaking with the director of national intelligence.
And then Secretary Hall’s voice came back from space.
“Charley, I have absolutely no idea what’s going on. I suggest we wait until we see what Montvale can get out of Natalie.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Let me know what you find out in Budapest.”
“Yes, sir, I will.”
“Anything else we can do for you?”
“Dick, you still there?”
“Yes, sir, Chief.”
“Will you send some flowers to the hospital for me, please?”
“That’s a done deed, Chief,” Agnes Forbison said. “She should have them by now.”
“Thank you very much, Agnes.”
“I like her, too, Charley.”
“Is that about it?” Miller asked. “Break it down, Mr. Secretary?”
“Break it down,” Hall ordered.
As he watched Kranz close the laptop, Göerner asked, “Who are you sending flowers to, Karl?”
“One of my agents was shot in Buenos Aires,” Castillo said.
“That’s bullshit, Otto,” Fernando said. “One of his agents was shot, but it’s anything but the professionally platonic relationship he’s trying to foist off on you.”
“You sonofabitch!” Castillo said.
“Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free,” Fernando responded. “Her name is Betty Schneider, Otto, and the two of them are like lovesick teenagers.”
“Wunderbar!” Otto said.
XVI
[ONE]
Danubius Hotel Gellért Szent Gellért tér 1 Budapest, Hungary 0930 28 July 2005
When they walked up to the registration desk of the hotel, the manager on duty said that Herr Göerner had a call, and led him around the corner of the marble desk to a bank of house telephones.
Castillo watched him impatiently.
Göerner returned after a minute wearing a wide smile.
“That was Eric Kocian,” he announced, “and what we’re going to do now is go to our rooms, put on our robes, and visit the baths.”
“I don’t have time for a swim or a steam bath,” Castillo said. “I came here to see this man Kocian.”
“To accomplish the latter, Karl, I’m afraid you must do the former.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“In a way I’m looking forward to this,” Göerner said, smiling. “What is that line, ‘What happens when the irresistible force meets the unmovable object’? I think we are about to see.”
“Are you going to explain that? Or keep talking in riddles with a smug smile on your face?”
“Eric has the habit at this time of day of visiting the baths,” Göerner said. “He suggested that we could talk there. The alternative is to meet him for lunch at the Kárpátia at half past one. That’s on Ferenciek tere, in the—”
“I know where it is,” Castillo cut him off. “Jesus Christ!”
Wrapped in thick white terry cloth robes, their feet in slippers, and their genitals contained in small—and, Castillo was convinced, transparent-when-wet—cotton swimming pouches, Castillo, Göerner, Fernando, Torine, and Kranz entered the thermal baths of the hotel.
“Fancy,” Sergeant Kranz said. “Looks like something from ancient Rome.”
“It was intended to look like ancient Rome,” Göerner said. “They say there has been a thermal bath here for centuries.”
“Where’s Kocian?” Castillo asked.
“About halfway down the pool,” Göerner said. “See the man with the float?”
There were perhaps fifteen people in the water, their individual conversations unintelligible as the hard acoustics of water and tile created a sort of deep-toned white noise. Halfway down the steaming pool, in water reaching almost to his neck, a head covered with luxuriant silver hair was almost hidden behind a floating table. On the table were a metal pitcher, an ashtray, several newspapers and magazines, two books, and a cellular telephone.
The man was looking at them without expression, his jaws clamped around a large, black cigar.
“What do we do, just jump in and swim up to him?” Castillo asked.
“It would be more polite if you slowly lowered yourself into the water and waded to him,” Otto said. “This is a bath, Karl, not a swimming pool.”
Göerner tossed his robe on a marble bench, slid out of his slippers, and went slowly into the pool by a flight of underwater stairs.
I never thought I would be a prude, Castillo thought, but the only word to describe Otto with his privates in that tiny jockstrap is “obscene.”
When Otto reached the bottom of the stairs, he was in water just over his waist.
Well, at least his crotch and far-from-athletic buttocks are now concealed from public view.
Castillo shook his head, quickly tossed his robe on a marble bench, and very quickly went down the stairs into the water and then waded across the pool after Göerner.
Fernando, Torine, and Kranz took off their robes, looked at each other, shook their heads, and then, as if someone had barked “Ready! Run! Dive!” took running dives into the water.
The bushy white eyebrows on Eric Kocian’s ruddy, jowly face rose in amazement at this display of bad manners.
“Good morning, Eric,” Göerner said, when he’d waded close.
“Grüss Gott, Otto,” Kocian replied in a thick Viennese accent.
“This is Karl Gossinger, Eric,” Göerner said. “Do you remember him?”
“The distinguished Washington correspondent of the Tages Zeitung? That Karl Gossinger?”
“Guten morgen, Herr Kocian,” Charley said.
“I was fond of your mother and your grandfather,” Kocian said. “I never thought much of your uncle Willi. You look a lot like Willi.”
“Thank you for sharing that with me,” Castillo said in German and then switched to Viennese gutter dialect. “Can we cut the bullshit, Herr Kocian? I don’t have time to play games with you.”
“I’m crushed,” Kocian said. “I know you have time to play games with Otto and our readers.”
“Excuse me?”
A hand came out of the water and a pointing finger dripped water on one of the magazines. It was The American Conservative.
“There’s a reason for that,” Castillo said.
“It’s easier to steal someone else’s story than to write your own?”
“There’s a reason for that,” Castillo repeated.
“I’d love to know what it is,” Kocian said.
“Because being the Washington correspondent for the Tages Zeitung is a cover for what I really do,” Charley said.
“Which is?”
“I’m an Army officer.”
Kocian considered that long enough to puff twice on his cigar.
“An Army intelligence officer, you mean?” he asked.
Castillo nodded.
Kocian looked at Otto Göerner, who nodded.
“You’ll have to forgive me, Herr Gossinger. I’m an old man, my brain is slowing down, and for the life of me I can’t understand why an American Army intelligence officer would confess that. To anyone, much less a real journalist.”
“Because Otto has led me to believe we’re on the same side.”
“The same side of wh
at, Mr. Intelligence Officer?”
“I’m after the people who are willing to kill to keep it from getting out that they’ve profited from the oil-for-food arrangement. Isn’t that what you’re doing?”
“You told him that, did you, Otto?” Kocian asked.
Göerner nodded.
“And what are you going to do if you learn who these people are?”
Castillo didn’t immediately reply. He looked around and saw that they had an interested audience in Torine, Fernando, and Kranz.
Kranz may, just may, understand the Viennese patois. But Torine and Fernando don’t. All they see is that the old guy and I are sparring, and not very politely.
“I’m unable to believe the U.S. government doesn’t already know who they are,” Kocian went on. “And that there are political considerations involved that have kept it from coming out.”
“We don’t know who murdered our chief of mission in Buenos Aires, a very nice young Marine sergeant, and seriously wounded one of my agents.”
“Okay. Let’s talk about that. If you find out who these people are, then what?”
“I’ll deal with them.”
“ ‘Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,’ Herr Gossinger.”
“My orders are to deal with them.”
“Your orders from who?”
“Someone who remembers that the Bible also says, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ ”
“Someone with the authority to give an order like that?”
Castillo nodded.
“And what will happen when, say, your secretary of state or, for that matter, your President learns—as they inevitably will—that someone has given you these orders?”
“That’s not going to be a problem, Herr Kocian.”
“You’re not afraid that you and whoever gave you this order will not be—what’s that wonderful American phrase?—‘hung out to twist in the wind’?”
“No, I’m not.”
“You will excuse me, Herr Gossinger, if I think you are being naïve,” Kocian said. “Junior intelligence officers—and you’re not old enough to be anything but a junior intelligence officer—are expendable.”
“So what?” Castillo said.
“I was very fond of your grandfather and your mother. I don’t want it on my conscience that I was in any way responsible for Little Karlchen being left hanging out twisting in the wind or, more likely, being strapped into a chair with his throat cut after his teeth were extracted with pliers.”
“Why don’t you let me worry about that?” Castillo said.
“I just told you, I was very fond of your mother and your grandfather.”
“Eric, I’m as concerned as you are that Karl may be hurt, even murdered,” Otto Göerner said, in the Viennese patois. “But I have reason to believe that he won’t be left hanging in the breeze.”
“What reason?”
“Otto,” Castillo said. “Stop right there.”
“What reason, Otto?” Kocian pursued.
“I know who gave him his orders.”
“Otto, goddammit!” Castillo said.
“He told you who did, or you know?”
“Let me put it this way, Eric,” Göerner said. “I know he’s not as junior an intelligence officer as you might think he is; quite the opposite.”
“Are you going to tell me how you know that?”
“Not unless Karl tells me I can,” Göerner said.
“And are you, Herr Gossinger, going to give Herr Göerner permission to tell me?”
“No,” Castillo said. Then he chuckled.
“What’s funny, Herr Gossinger?” Kocian asked, politely.
“If I told you that, Herr Kocian, I would have to kill you.”
Kranz laughed.
“I’m only kidding, Herr Kocian,” Castillo said. “That’s a special operations joke.”
Kocian met Castillo’s eyes for a long moment. Then he shrugged and said, almost sadly, “I’d be more comfortable, Karl, if I was sure you were not kidding.”
Castillo didn’t reply.
“All right. May God forgive me, but all right,” Eric Kocian said. “I will tell you what I know. Come with me.”
He started to wade toward the side of the pool, pushing the floating table before him. When he reached the side, he carefully put his cigar in the ashtray, then moved the ashtray to the low-tiled coping surrounding the pool. He did the same thing with his cellular telephone, the metal pitcher, the newspapers, and the copy of the American Conservative. Then he pushed the floating table away into the center of the pool and with surprising agility hoisted himself out of the pool and sat with his feet dangling into the water.
Out of the water, Kocian looked his age. The flesh on his arms and chest and legs sagged. His jockstrap was almost hidden by a roll of flesh that sagged down from his abdomen. There were angry scars on his upper shoulder, his abdomen, and his left leg.
“You speak German,” Kocian said to Kranz. “I could tell.”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
“These two don’t,” he said, gesturing at Fernando and Torine. “You want all these people to hear what I have to say, Karl?”
“Bitte,” Castillo said.
“Then I will speak English,” Kocian said in English. “Very softly, because speaking English in here will attract attention.” He switched back to German and pointed at Kranz. “In each of those cubicles,” he went on, pointing, “there is a bucket and a water glass or two. Go get two buckets and six—no, eight—glasses, and bring them here.”
Kranz hoisted himself out of the pool.
He then switched to English and quietly ordered, “The rest of you get out, and lay close to me—there are towels in the cubicles—and if you have something to say, say it very softly.”
In a minute, after two trips to the dressing cubicles lining one wall of the pool, Kranz had arranged on the tile coping two white buckets, capable of holding perhaps a gallon each, and eight water glasses about six inches high, and everybody was sitting or lying on thick white towels on the tiled floor beside the pool.
“This,” Kocian said softly, splashing his feet in the pool, “is the nearly limitless pool of oil under Iraq. It was controlled—owned—by Saddam Hussein. When Hussein was quote President of Iraq end quote, he was more of an absolute ruler than the king of Arabia.
“He had many vices, including greed, which did him in. He wasn’t satisfied with what he had. He wanted the oil which lay under the sands of Kuwait . . . down there.”
He pointed.
“If Hussein had not invaded Kuwait, we almost certainly would not be sitting here today, but he did.
“This bothered the Americans, and even some members of the United Nations. Some say the Americans rushed to defend poor little Kuwait because they believed that Saddam Hussein was naughty, and needed to have his wrist slapped. Others suggest that they were afraid Saddam also had his eyes on the oil under Arabia . . . over there . . . which was and is essential to the American economy.
“Whatever the reasons, there was a war. Iraq lost. Some of you may remember that.”
“We were all there, Herr Kocian,” Castillo said. “Can we get to the end of the history lesson?”
“I’m surprised that no one has taught you, Karl, that those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it,” Kocian said. “Would you like me to go on?”
“Sorry,” Castillo said.
“It was not a total victory,” Kocian resumed. “President Bush the First decided he did not need to occupy Baghdad to win the war. Ten years later, President Bush the Second decided that it would take American flags flying over Saddam Hussein’s castles to win that war.
“At the end of the first Iraqi war, to make Saddam Hussein live up to what he promised to do at the armistice, and of course did not do, the Americans got the UN to place an embargo on the sale of Iraqi oil. That meant Iraq would have no money from the sale of their oil.
“France and Russia primarily, with
some other nations, were suddenly deeply concerned with the helpless women and children of Iraq. Without some income to buy food, the French and the Russians cried, Iraqi babies would starve. Without medicine and medical supplies for Iraqi hospitals, Iraqi women and the elderly would die in agony.
“Oil for Food was born. Iraq would be permitted to sell enough of its oil to buy food and medicine. The United Nations would monitor the sale of the oil, and ensure that nothing entered Iraq that wasn’t food or medicine.
“United Nations inspectors were stationed—primarily at Basra on the Persian Gulf . . . down there . . . and in other places—to count the barrels of oil—the allocations—that would be shipped out for sale, and to make sure that nothing was shipped into Iraq that wasn’t supposed to be.”
Kocian examined the two buckets Kranz had fetched for him.
He dipped the larger bucket in the pool and hauled it out.
“This is how much oil it would take to buy food and medicine. You will notice that when I took it out, it did not noticeably lower the level of the water in the pool.”
He leaned forward, took his cigar from the ashtray, relit it, puffed on it, examined the coal, took another puff, and went on.
“Saddam found himself sitting on—swimming in?—a sea of black stuff that was worthless to him, but considered black gold by the rest of the world. All he had to do was figure some way to get it out of Iraq, past the wall the UN had set up.”
He tapped the tiled coping.
“First, he tried diplomacy. He would get the UN to relax or remove the embargo. To do this, he would have to have important friends in the UN. How does one acquire friends? Give them something. He arranged to have the oil allocations assigned to people he thought might become his friends. Many of these were French and Russians, but there were others, too.
“To keep this simple, what he did was arrange—by bribing a UN official—for his oil allocations to come into the hands of these people at prices lower than the going price for crude oil. Say, fifty cents a barrel lower. Fifty cents a barrel becomes a lot of money when one is dealing in terms of, say, two million barrels of oil—one tanker full of oil.
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