The Hunters

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Mr. Masterson, when I went to West Point what I wanted to do with my life was be what my father was, an Army aviator. At least twice a day, I curse the fickle finger of fate that kept me from doing that.”

  D’Allessando said, “The fickle finger’s name, Charley, as you damned well know, is Lieutenant General Bruce J. McNab.”

  Masterson looked between them.

  “The first time I ever saw Charley, Mr. Masterson, he was a bushy-tailed second lieutenant fresh from West Point. It was during the first desert war. General McNab—that was just before he got his first star, right, Charley?”

  Castillo nodded.

  “Colonel McNab, who was running Special Ops in that war, had spotted Charley, recognized him as a kindred soul, rescued him from what he was doing—probably flying cargo missions in a Huey; he wasn’t old enough to be out of flight school long enough to fly anything else—and put him to work as his personal pilot.”

  “If we’ve reached the end of memory lane, Vic,” Castillo said, “I would like to get on with this.”

  D’Allessando held up both hands in a gesture of surrender.

  “Well, as a father,” Masterson said, “I’m sure that your father is proud of what you do. He does know?”

  “No, sir. My father died in Vietnam.”

  “I’m sorry, Charley,” Masterson said. “I had no way of knowing.”

  “Thank you, sir. If I may go on?”

  “Please.”

  “Once Mr. Lorimer is identified, there’s a number of possibilities. For one thing, he was both an American citizen and a UN diplomat. God only knows what the UN will do when they find out he was murdered in Uruguay. We don’t know what the UN knows about Mr. Lorimer’s involvement with the oil-for-food business, but I’m damned sure a number of people in the UN do.

  “They will obviously want to sweep this under the diplomatic rug. By slightly bending the facts—they can say Lorimer was on leave, somehow the paperwork got lost when we were looking for him to tell him about his sister getting kidnapped, and then about Mr. Masterson being murdered—they can issue a statement of shock and regret that he was killed by robbers on his estancia.”

  “Yeah,” D’Allessando said, thoughtfully.

  “Once it is established that Bertrand is, in fact, Lorimer, an American citizen, our embassy in Montevideo can get in the act. For repatriation of the remains, for one thing, and to take control of his property temporarily, pending the designation of someone—kin or somebody else—to do that. Which brings me to that.

  “Do you think Ambassador Lorimer would be willing to designate someone to do that? The someone I have in mind is an FBI agent in Montevideo, who was in on the operation. Give him what would amount to power of attorney, in other words? I’d really like to really go through the estancia and see what can be found.”

  “I don’t think he would have any problem with that. I don’t think he would want to—in his condition—go there himself, nor do I think his wife or physician would permit it.”

  “And the same thing for the apartment in Paris?”

  “I think so. Now that I have had a chance to think it over, they’d be pleased. Perhaps I can suggest it was offered as a courtesy to a fellow diplomat.”

  “The sooner that could be done, the better. Of course, we have to wait until the scenario I described unfolds. If it does.”

  “It’ll work, Charley,” D’Allessando said. “You’ve got all the angles covered.”

  “You never have all the angles covered, Vic, and you know it,” Castillo said and then turned to Masterson. “This now brings us to the bad guys.”

  “I’m not sure I know what you mean,” Masterson confessed. “We don’t even know who they are, do we?”

  “No, sir, we don’t. I intend to do my best to find out who they are.”

  “And ‘render them harmless’?” Masterson asked, softly.

  Castillo nodded slightly but did not respond directly.

  “What they did was find Mr. Lorimer, which among other things they’ve done suggests that they’re professionals. And what they did was send an assault team to the estancia. I think it’s logical to assume they wanted to make sure he didn’t talk about what he knows of the oil-for-food business and possibly to get back the money he skimmed.

  “By now, they have certainly learned that their operation succeeded only in taking out Mr. Lorimer. And that somebody took out their assault team. And they will have to presume the same people who took out their assault team have what was in the safe: money or information. They don’t know who we are—we could be someone else trying to shut Lorimer up, somebody after the money, or Uruguayan bandits. I don’t think it’s likely that they’ll think an American Special Operations team was involved, but they might.

  “I think it’s likely the people who bushwhacked us are the same people who killed Mr. Masterson, but of course I can’t be sure. But if they are—or even if it’s a second group—and they are professional, I think the decision will be to go to ground.

  “They may be capable of—it wouldn’t surprise me—of keeping an eye on her bank accounts, or yours, to see if they suddenly get sixteen million dollars heavier. But that’s not going to happen.

  “What I’m driving at is there is no longer a reason for them to try to get to Mr. Masterson or the children. Lorimer is out of the picture and she has nothing they want to give them.”

  “You think we can remove Mr. D’Allessando’s people, is that what you’re saying?” Masterson asked.

  “Well, they can’t stay indefinitely,” Castillo said. “And Vic tells me he’s run the retired special operators from China Post past you.”

  “Very impressive,” Masterson said.

  “And very expensive?” Castillo asked.

  “Uh-huh,” Masterson said. “But what I was thinking was that the children—for that matter, Betsy, too—would probably be more at ease with them than they are now with all of Mr. D’Allessando’s people. They must have grown used to private security people in Buenos Aires.”

  “The people I brought over here are good, Mr. Masterson,” D’Allessando said. “And, frankly, a job like this is better than commuting to Iraq or Afghanistan, which is what they’ve all been doing.”

  “Okay, so that’s what I’ll recommend to Betsy,” Masterson said. “When do you want to talk to her, Charley?”

  “Now, if possible, sir. I’m on my way to Texas. I want to see my grandmother, and I can be with her only until they call me to tell me what’s happened in Uruguay.”

  “I’ll get her on the phone,” Masterson said as he reached for it. “And I’ll get you a car to take you to the airport.”

  “That’s not necessary, sir.”

  “Biloxi? Or New Orleans?” Masterson asked.

  “New Orleans, sir.”

  III

  [ONE]

  Office of the Legal Attaché

  The Embassy of the United States of America

  Lauro Miller 1776

  Montevideo, República Oriental del Uruguay

  1150 2 August 2005

  The telephone on the desk of Assistant Legal Attaché Julio Artigas buzzed and one of the six buttons on it began to flash.

  Artigas, a slim, olive-skinned Cuban American of thirty, who had been a Special Agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation for eight years and assigned to the Montevideo embassy for three, picked up the handset.

  “Artigas.”

  “Julio, this is your cousin José,” his caller said in Spanish.

  Thirty-seven-year-old Chief Inspector José Ordóñez, of the Interior Police Division of the Uruguayan Policía Nacional, was not related to Julio Artigas, but they looked very much alike. They had several times been mistaken for brothers. That wasn’t possible without the same surname, but it could have been possible for cousins, and cousins they had become. They also shared a sense of humor.

  “And how goes your unrelenting campaign against evil, Cousin José?” Julio replied. He had arrived in Ur
uguay speaking Cuban-inflected Spanish fluently, and with only a little effort he had acquired a Uruguayan inflection. Many Uruguayans were surprised to learn he was not a native son.

  “I would hope a little better than yours,” José said. “How about lunch?”

  “Is that an invitation? Or have you been giving your salary away at the blackjack tables again?”

  “I will pay,” José said. “I will put you on my expense sheet.”

  “Oh?”

  “I hope you have, or can make, your afternoon free.”

  “If you are paying, my entire week is free.”

  “You are so kind.”

  “Where shall we meet? Someplace expensive, of course.”

  “I’m at the port. How about something from a parrilla?”

  “Great minds travel similar paths. When?”

  “Now?”

  “Get out your wallet.”

  Artigas hung up. He opened a drawer in his desk, took from it a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson “Detective Special” revolver, then slipped the gun into a skeleton holster on his hip.

  The pistol was his. It was smaller and lighter than the semiautomatic pistol prescribed for—and issued to—FBI agents, and, technically, he was violating at least four FBI regulations by carrying it.

  But this was Montevideo, where his chances of ever needing a pistol ranged from very slight to none. Many of Artigas’s peers simply went un-armed. The primary mission of the FBI in Uruguay was the investigation of money laundering.

  It was a different story for the DEA guys, who often found themselves in hairy situations. While not necessarily successful in stopping the drug flow, they were very successful in costing the drug merchants lots of money and consequently were unpopular with the drug establishment. They went around heavily armed.

  Artigas had chosen the middle ground. While it is true that you never need a pistol until you really need one, it was equally true there is no sense carrying a large and hard-to-conceal cannon when a less conspicuous means of self-defense is available.

  Artigas walked across the large, open room to the open door of a glass-walled cubicle that was the office of Special Agent James D. Monahan, who was because of his seniority the de facto, if not the de jure, SAC, or Special Agent in Charge, and waited for him to get off the phone.

  “Something, Artigas?” Monahan asked, finally.

  “I have just been invited to lunch by Chief Inspector Ordóñez.”

  “Shit, I was hoping you were going to tell me you know where the hell Yung is.”

  FBI Special Agent David W. Yung, Jr., a fellow assistant legal attaché, was not held in high regard by his peers. He came to work late—or not at all—and left early. His research into Uruguayan bank records produced about half the useful information that came from the next least efficient of the others. And since he was still here—despite several informal complaints about his performance and back-channel suggestions that he be reassigned to the States—it was pretty clear he had friends in high places.

  Another, less flattering rumor had it that Yung had been sort of banished to Uruguay because of his association with Howard Kennedy, the former Ethical Standards Division hotshot who had changed sides and was now working for some Russian mafioso. That rumor had some credence, as it was known that Yung had been assigned to the Ethical Standards Division.

  It is a fact of life that people without friends in high places tend to dislike those who have them and that FBI agents do not like FBI agents whose personal integrity is open to question.

  “Maybe still asleep?” Artigas asked. “It’s not quite noon.”

  “I let his goddamned phone ring for five minutes. That sonofabitch!” Monahan paused. “Ordóñez say what he wanted?”

  “Only that he hoped I could make my afternoon free.”

  “Et tu, Artigas?”

  “He’s got something on his mind, Jim,” Artigas said.

  “Ride it out,” Monahan said. “But if you happen to run into Yung in a bar or a casino somewhere, would you please tell him that I would be grateful for a moment of his valuable time whenever it’s convenient?”

  “I will do that.”

  Artigas went out the front entrance of the embassy, found his car—a blue Chrysler PT Cruiser—got in, and drove to the gate.

  The embassy, a four-story, oblong concrete edifice decorated with two huge satellite antennae on the roof, sits in the center of a well-protected compound overlooking the river Plate.

  A heavy steel gate, painted light blue, is controlled by pistol-armed Uruguayan security guards wearing police-style uniforms. For reasons Artigas never understood, cars leaving the compound are subjected to just about as close scrutiny as those coming into the compound.

  He waited patiently while security guards looked into the interior of the PT Cruiser, looked under it using a mirror mounted on the end of a long pole, and then checked his embassy identification before throwing the switch that caused the gate to slide open sideways.

  He drove a hundred yards toward the water and then turned right on the Rambla, the road that runs along the coast from the port to the suburb of Carrasco where many embassy officers lived, including Artigas and the again-missing Yung.

  Five minutes later, he pulled the nose of the PT Cruiser to the curb in front of what had been built sometime in the late nineteenth century to house cattle being shipped from the port. It now housed a dozen or more parrilla restaurants and at least that many bars.

  He got a very dirty look from the woman charged with collecting parking fees on that section of the street. She had seen the diplomatic license plates on the car. Diplomats are permitted to park wherever they wish to park without paying.

  In the interests of Uruguayan-American relations, Artigas handed her a fifty-peso note, worth a little less than two dollars U.S., and earned himself a warm smile.

  He entered the building. With the exception of one or two women Julio could think of, there was in his judgment no better smell in the world than that of beef—and, for that matter, chicken and pork and a lot else—being grilled over the ashes of a wood fire.

  As he walked to where he knew Ordóñez would meet him—one of the smaller, more expensive restaurants in the back of the old building—his mouth actually watered.

  Chief Inspector Ordóñez was waiting for him and stood up when he saw Artigas coming.

  They embraced and kissed in the manner of Latin males and then sat down at the small table. There was a bottle of wine on the table, a bottle of carbonated water, four stemmed glasses, a wicker basket holding a variety of bread and breadsticks, a small plate of butter curls, and a small dish of chicken liver pâté.

  José poured wine for Julio and they touched glasses.

  “There must be something on your mind,” Julio said. “This is the good Merlot.”

  “How about seven males, six of them dressed in black, shot to death?”

  Artigas thought: I don’t think he’s kidding.

  He took a sip of the Merlot, then spread liver pâté on a chunk of hard-crusted bread and waited for Ordóñez to go on.

  “You don’t seem surprised,” José said.

  “I’m an FBI agent. We try to be inscrutable.”

  A waiter appeared.

  Julio ordered a blue cheese empanada, bife chorizo medium rare, papas frit as, and an onion-and-tomato salad.

  José held up two fingers, signaling the waiter he’d have the same.

  “And where are these deceased Ninja warriors?” Julio asked.

  José chuckled.

  “On an estancia—called Shangri-La—near Tacuarembó.”

  Julio signaled with a quick shake of his head that he had no idea where Tacuarembó was.

  “It’s about three hundred sixty kilometers due north,” José said. “On Highway 5.” He paused. “I was hoping you might go up there with me.”

  “That’s a long ride.”

  “Less long in a helicopter.”

  Julio knew the use of rotary-wing ai
rcraft by Uruguayan police was not common, even for the movement of very senior officers.

  “Am I being invited as a friend or officially?” Julio said.

  “Why don’t we decide that after we have a look around Estancia Shangri-La?” José replied.

  “Okay.” Julio paused. “Tell me, Cousin, would I happen to know—or even have met—the owner of Estancia Shangri-La?”

  “You tell me. He is—was—a Lebanese dealer in antiquities by the name of Jean-Paul Bertrand.”

  Julio shook his head and asked, “And had you a professional interest in Señor…what was his name?”

  “Jean-Paul Bertrand,” José furnished.

  “…Bertrand before he was killed?”

  José shook his head. “He was as clean as a whistle, so far as I have been able to determine.”

  The waiter returned with their empanadas, and they cut off their conversation. They might have returned to it had not two strikingly beautiful young women come in the restaurant.

  They didn’t hurry their lunch, but they didn’t dawdle over it, either. Twenty-five minutes after Julio had taken his first sip of the Merlot, the bottle was empty and José was settling the bill with the waiter.

  When they left the former cattle shed, they walked across the street to the Navy base. Julio saw—with some surprise—that the helicopter waiting for them was not one of the some what battered Policía Nacional’s Bell Hueys he expected but a glistening Aerospatiale Dauphin. The pilot was a Navy officer. Julio suspected it was the Uruguayan president’s personal helicopter.

  That meant, obviously, that someone high in the Uruguayan government—perhaps even the president himself—considered what had happened at Estancia Shangri-La very important.

  [TWO]

  Estancia Shangri-La

  Tacuarembó Province

  República Orientale del Uruguay

  1405 2 August 2005

  As the Dauphin fluttered down onto a field, Julio saw that there were a dozen police vehicles and two ambulances parked unevenly around the main building of the estancia and that there were twenty-five or thirty people—many in police uniform—milling about.