“All these people had to do to turn a quick profit of a million dollars was sign over their allocation of two million barrels of oil-for-food oil to someone else. Saddam also let it be known that if he were permitted to export more oil, there would be more millions—many more millions—of dollars coming into the hands of those who caused the UN to relax the embargo.
“He also made friends by not complaining when the medicine shipped into Iraq for the poor Iraqi children and women had a high price. Aspirin at five dollars a pill, for example. Flour at twenty dollars a kilo. Und so weiter.
“Now to do this, of course, he had to have friends among the UN officials who were checking to see that he didn’t get anything he wasn’t supposed to have. How to make these friends? Give them something. What did he have to give? This black stuff that was worthless to him anyway. How was he going to get it to them? Bribe the UN official checking the outgoing oil. If he happened to be looking the other way when, say, a hundred thousand barrels of oil was mistakenly pumped into a tanker hauling off the legitimate oil-for-food allocation, he could expect to have party or parties unknown drop off a package of crisp brand-new U.S. one-hundred-dollar bills at his grandmother’s apartment.”
He picked up the water bucket and poured from it into four of the water glasses. Then he picked up one of the water-filled glasses and moved it down the tile coping.
“This one goes to the UN official who happened to be looking the other way when the tanker was overloaded,” he said.
He picked up a second of the water-filled glasses, moved it down the tile coping, and explained, “And this one goes to the UN official who sees nothing suspicious about five-dollar-a-pill aspirin, or twenty-dollar-a-kilo flour, and authorizes the bill therefore to be paid.”
He picked up the two remaining water-filled glasses and moved them to a narrow shelf on the pool side of the tile coping. “And these two, now converted to packages of crisp one-hundred-dollar bills, go back across the border to Saddam, where they are thus available to build palaces for his sons and to bribe other people.
“You will notice, again, that filling the glasses did not appreciably lower the level of water in the bucket.”
He paused, looked at everybody for a moment, and then filled the remaining water glasses.
“There are many refineries in Iraq,” Kocian went on, “capable of producing far more gasoline, for example, than Iraq needs. What to do with this?”
He picked up two of the glasses and leaned forward to where Torine was lying on the tiles, and set them down by one of Torine’s elbows.
“You are now Jordan,” Kocian said. “Jordanians don’t hate Americans as much as most other Arab countries,possibly because the widow of the late king was the daughter of an American general. And America tends to look less critically at Jordan than it does at other Arab countries. In any event, Jordan has a need for gasoline. There is no pipeline or port, but Iraq has many twenty-thousand-gallon tanker trucks. How to get it across the border? Bribe somebody.”
He slid the water glasses from Torine’s elbow to his waist, and picked up one of them. He moved it inside the tile coping. “This one, now miraculously converted to dollars, goes back to Iraq.”
“Jesus!” Castillo said.
“Now, there were certain logistical problems to be solved, as well,” Kocian went on. “Saddam wanted certain things—his sons, for example, liked Mercedes sports cars and Hustler magazine—which he could not legally import into Iraq. You may notice I am not even talking about war matériel, aircraft parts, etcetera, which is another story in itself. So, how to do this?
“Bribe a UN inspector into finding nothing suspicious, say, that an X-ray machine intended for an Iraqi hospital came from the Mercedes-Benz plant in Stuttgart. Or that a crate labeled ‘Medical Publications’ actually was full of pornographic videotapes.
“Saddam Hussein International Airport in Baghdad saw a lot of cargo airplanes—many of them owned by a Russian by the name of Aleksandr Pevsner—flying in things like hospital X-ray machines from the Mercedes-Benz plant—”
“Tell me about Pevsner, please, Herr Kocian,” Castillo said.
“Tell you what about him?”
“How deep was he in the oil-for-food business?”
“He made a lot of money.”
“He was one of those bribed?”
“We’re playing semantic games here,” Kocian said. “Did somebody hand him some money and say, ‘Please defy the UN sanctions and airlift this Mercedes in an X-ray crate to Baghdad?’ No. Did he carry an X-ray machine to Baghdad without looking to see what the crate really held? Yes. Did he charge twice or three times—five times—the standard rate for flying X-ray machines to Baghdad? Yes. Did he look to see if a case of ten million aspirin pills really contained aspirin instead of, for example, ten million dollars in U.S. currency? No. Was he bribed? That would be an opinion. Was he paid in cash? Yes. Was the cash he got from Saddam Hussein cash that had come into Saddam’s hands for oil that he exported that he wasn’t supposed to export? Almost certainly; where else would Saddam have gotten it? Can I prove any of this? No.”
“Interesting,” Torine said.
“What’s your interest in Aleksandr Pevsner, Karl?” Kocian asked.
“The name has come up in conversation,” Castillo said. “How were all these bribes paid, Herr Kocian, do you know?”
“In oil or cash, I told you.”
“No. I mean, for example, you mentioned that a party or parties unknown would hand somebody’s grandmother a stack of cash. Who was that party unknown? Who actually made the payoffs?”
“There was an elaborate system set up to do that,” Kocian said. “What’s your American name, Karl? ‘Charles’?”
“Carlos,” Castillo said. “That’s Spanish for Karl and Charles.”
“Yes, of course. Well, you’re going to love this, Carlos .”
“Love what?”
“When this business began to grow, and it became inconvenient to pass money through banks, laundering it, etcetera, Saddam began looking around for a paymaster. He needed someone, preferably an official of some sort, ideally a diplomat, who traveled around the area, and whose baggage would not be subject to search. The only people who did that routinely were members of the UN. So they started looking around the UN people they already had on the payroll, and they weren’t very impressed. Finally they found their man in Paris, working for the UN. He was a UN bureaucrat, not a bona fide diplomat. He worked for—”
“The European Directorate of InterAgency Coordination, something like that?” Castillo interrupted.
“He was the chief of the European Directorate of InterAgency Coordination,” Kocian said, looking at him strangely. “Which entitled him to a UN diplomatic passport. The passport—which, in addition to getting you through customs and immigration without getting your bags searched, exempts you from both local taxes and taxes in your homeland—is a prize passed out to deserving middle-level UN bureaucrats.”
“What does the European Directorate of InterAgency Coordination do, Herr Kocian?” Castillo asked. “I’ve always wondered.”
“I don’t really know,” Kocian said. “From what I have seen of the UN, probably nothing useful. But this fellow had for ten, fifteen years been running all over Europe and the Near East and the United States, doing his interagency coordination, whatever that might be.
“He had other things going for him. He wasn’t married, so there would be no wife boasting about what her husband was doing; and he wasn’t homosexual, so there would be no boyfriend doing the same. And he wasn’t very well paid. Even tax exempt, and taking into consideration his travel and representation allowances, his salary wasn’t very much.
“But most important, he was not only American, which would keep the Americans off his scent, but he was an anti-American American. Possibly because he was black. Maybe not. But his being black was something else that would keep the Americans from looking too closely at him.”
; “And his name is Jean-Paul Lorimer,” Castillo said. “And I want to know where he is.”
“Just to satisfy an old man’s curiosity, Karl, how long have you Americans known about Lorimer?”
“Not long. Where is he, Herr Kocian?”
“Possibly out there,” Kocian said, gesturing toward the stained-glass windows lining two walls of the baths.
“You mean in Budapest?”
“I meant in the Danube,” Kocian said. “Or possibly in the Seine.”
“What makes you so sure he’s dead?”
“Or possibly in a cell somewhere, where they are asking him for names, so there will be fewer witnesses around. But if I had to bet, I’d bet on one of the two rivers.”
“What was his connection with Henri Douchon?”
“Ah, now I know why you came to see me. Otto told you about him.”
“That’s part of it. What about Douchon?”
“He was one of Lorimer’s assistant paymasters,” Kocian said. “He handled Lebanon, Egypt, Cyprus, and Turkey . . . maybe some other places, but that’s all I’ve been able to confirm.”
“Who killed him?”
“If I had to bet, I’d say either the French or the Egyptians. Possibly the Germans, or maybe even the Turks. I just don’t know, but I’d bet on the French or the Egyptians.”
“And you think the same people killed Lorimer?”
“The list of people who wanted to silence Lorimer includes all of the above, plus Russians, Syrians, Iranians. . . . It’s a long list, Herr Gossinger.”
“You don’t think Lorimer would be in hiding somewhere?” Castillo asked.
“I think he might have tried to hide, after he saw what they had done to M’sieu Douchon.”
“And you’re sure he knew about that?”
“An old friend of mine in Vienna showed me photos of Lorimer entering and leaving Douchon’s apartment in Vienna. They were taken after someone had pulled his teeth and carved him up. After that, Mr. Lorimer disappeared. It could be, of course, that he was taken bodily into heaven, but I think it far more likely that someone besides the Austrian Geheimpolizei were keeping an eye on that Cobenzlgasse apartment to see if Lorimer might show up, and they grabbed him.”
“We know that somebody bought a train ticket to Paris on his UN American Express card,” Castillo said. “Let’s say it was Lorimer himself. They didn’t grab him in Vienna, in other words. Let’s say they didn’t grab him in Paris, either. If he saw what happened to Douchon, he was watching his back. Let’s say he got on the train, and didn’t go to Paris because he thought they might be looking for him there. So, say he got off the train in Munich. Or didn’t even get on the train to Paris. He could have bought a ticket to Paris on his credit card, then bought another for cash to . . . anywhere. Maybe even to Budapest.”
“That’s possible, of course,” Kocian said. “But I don’t think you’re going to be able to find him.”
“If he was going to hide—and why wouldn’t he have thought of having someplace to hide if something went wrong?—where do you think he might have gone?”
“Anywhere,” Kocian said. “The south of France. Lebanon. Maybe even the United States. Anywhere. Who knows?”
“You didn’t mention South America,” Castillo said. “Argentina or—”
Castillo stopped in midsentence, surprised when Kocian flashed Otto Göerner an angry look. This caused Kocian to look at him.
“Why not South America?” Castillo pursued.
Yeah. Why not? Did these bastards abduct Mrs. Mastersonin Buenos Aires and murder her husband in South America because when they couldn’t find Lorimer here, they figured he might be in South America, and if his sister was there, she would probably know where he was? Or that he was there because she was?
“Otto, have you been talking to our Little Karlchen about South America?” Kocian inquired sarcastically.
“Some,” Göerner admitted. “Not in this context.”
“In what context?”
“I told him of your suspicions—my suspicions, too— that some of this oil-for-food money in Germany might find its way over there.”
“Might find its way over there?” Kocian snapped. “The sun might come up tomorrow.”
“You want to tell me about that, Herr Kocian?” Castillo asked.
“No.”
“But you will, right?”
“No.”
“Kranz, get out the pliers,” Castillo said. “We’re going to do a little dentistry.”
“Karl, that’s not funny!” Otto Göerner said.
“What’s funny, Otto,” Kocian said, seriously, “is that I’m not really sure he’s kidding. I said something before about him looking like Willi. His eyes right now make him look very much like the Old Man. When the Old Man looked at you with that look in his eyes, you knew he was determined to get what he wanted.”
“What I really want is to find Jean-Paul Lorimer,” Castillo said.
“And what I really want is to burn the greedy bastards in Germany who were involved in slimy profits from Oil for Food,” Kocian said. “I’m close to having proof they won’t be able to deny. And I don’t want anyone—you— rushing over there and letting them know I’m getting close and giving them a chance—”
“I’m not interested in greedy German bastards unless I find out they’re responsible for the death of Masterson and Sergeant Markham,” Castillo said.
“Are we back to vengeance?”
“I’m back to following my orders,” Castillo said.
“You heard that a lot at the Nuremberg Nazi trials,” Kocian said. “ ‘All I was doing was following my orders.’ ”
“They said that to justify the murder of innocent people,” Castillo replied. “These bastards are neither innocent nor helpless.”
Kocian nodded. “That’s true.” He looked into Castillo’s eyes. “You never told me exactly what your orders are.”
“I’m to find the people responsible for the murders and render them harmless,” Castillo said.
“ ’Render them harmless’? Is that the same as ‘terminate with extreme prejudice’?” Kocian asked. “Isn’t that the euphemism for assassination you Americans used in Vietnam?”
“My orders are to ‘find them and render them harmless, ’ ” Castillo repeated. “The idea is to make it clear that there are certain things you can’t get away with.”
“And that sounds like vengeance to me. So what does that make you, the agent of the Lord?”
“No. Not of the Lord. It doesn’t say ‘Gott Mit Uns’ on my uniform buckle.”
Kocian nodded at him. “Touché,” he said, and then looked at Göerner. “There’s a lot of the Old Man in him, isn’t there?”
“Yes,” Göerner said, simply. “There is.”
“Your grandfather was a man of his word,” Kocian said. “When he told you something, you could trust him. Are you that way, Karl?”
“I like to think of myself as an officer and a gentleman, if that’s what you mean.”
“That’s what I mean,” Kocian said. “What I’m going to do, Karl, if you give me your word you won’t turn it over to the CIA, or anyone in your government, is give you the names of Germans I believe have both profited from Oil for Food and are now trying to hide that money in Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay . . . all over the southern tip of South America. If you can use this information to find Lorimer, fine. But you give me your word you won’t use it for anything else.”
“You have my word.”
“And that you won’t tell anyone where you got it.”
“Agreed.”
“And that these gentlemen will be similarly bound by our agreement.”
“Agreed. When do I get the names?”
“Once I get to the office, it will take me an hour or more to go through what I have. I want to make sure in my own mind that if you have to render any of these people harmless—that’s a much nicer phrase than ‘terminate with extreme prejudice,’ isn’t it?—that th
ey really deserve such treatment.”
“Fair enough.”
“And I don’t want you—especially Otto—coming to the office and making people curious. So why don’t you meet me at the Kárpátia at noon? You know where it is, Otto.”
Göerner nodded.
“And so do I,” Castillo said. “Not far from the American embassy.”
Kocian nodded. “We can have a nice lunch,” he said and, not without effort, got to his feet. Then, grunting, he bent over and picked up his ashtray, his cellular telephone, and the books and magazines.
Then he waddled down the tiled floor of the bath and disappeared through a door.
“You got more out of him, Karl,” Otto Göerner said, thoughtfully, “than I thought you would. I can only hope that’s a good thing. What he didn’t say was that these people would torture and kill him without thinking twice about it if they knew he knows as much as he does. And unless you’re very careful with those names, they will learn he does.”
Castillo nodded but didn’t reply. Then he stood up.
“Let’s get out of here,” he said, wrapping a towel around his waist. “I want to get on the horn.”
[TWO]
The Embassy of the United States of America Szabadság tér 12 Budapest, Hungary 1105 28 July 2005
Otto Göerner touched Castillo’s arm as they started to get out of the taxi in front of the American embassy, a seven-story century-old mansion.
“You’re not going to need me in there, are you?” Göerner asked.
“No.”
“And it might even be a bit awkward, no?”
“I’ll handle it,” Castillo said.
“Why don’t I keep the cab, go to the Kárpátia, get us a table, get myself a cup of coffee . . .”
“Okay, Otto. This won’t take long. We’ll see you there,” Castillo said, and he and the others got out of the taxi. As Castillo watched it drive away, Sergeant Seymour Kranz touched his arm.
The Hostage Page 49
