The Hunters

by W. E. B Griffin

  That material, including an encrypted address book, was now being evaluated in Washington.

  And, of course, Ordóñez’s men had conducted their own search of the house. If they had found anything interesting, Ordóñez wasn’t saying.

  Most of the search was spent going through Lorimer’s rather large library one book at a time to see if he had hidden something in the books. Or in the bookcase.

  And going through his closets and bureaus, all that turned up was proof that Lorimer had spent a lot of money on luxury clothing.

  Onan impulse, thinking of the crudely sewn corpse in the British Hospital, Yung took a Louis Vuitton suitcase from a shelf and put in it a nearly black custom-made Italian suit, handmade Hungarian shoes, and a shirt, socks, and underwear, all silk and all bearing labels: SULKA, RUE DE CASTIGLIONE, PARIS.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Howell asked, softly.

  “Taking this stuff to the undertaker’s in Montevideo.”

  “Why?”

  “The last time I saw Lorimer—we saw him—he was naked.”

  “So what? There’s not going to be an open-casket viewing. Who’ll know?”

  “I will.”

  “Yung, you’re something!” Howell said. He said it with admiration.

  Yung had thought of the admiration in Howell’s voice on the flight back to Montevideo.

  And of other things:

  Artigas no longer thinks of me as a jerk, either. I told myself I didn’t give a damn what the other FBI guys thought of me before all this happened. I was doing my job and doing it well, even if I couldn’t let them know.

  But I guess the truth is, I did mind.

  And now, after I’m gone, instead of remembering me as the little Chink who was a flaming pain in the ass they’ll wonder.

  Artigas won’t tell them what he suspects happened at the estancia, but they will all conclude that I was somehow involved in something important that they don’t know about.

  And Castillo, too. He didn’t make much of a secret that he thought I was some sort of FBI goody-goody. The only reason he sent me back down here is that I was the only one who could hide the tracks of that sixteen million he made off with.

  But he was right about that, too. I can never go back to the FBI. They gave me sort of a pass on being close to Howard Kennedy before he changed sides, sending me to Uruguay for the State Department.

  But they won’t give me another pass after this. They’re going to want to know everything I know about Castillo, and since I won’t—couldn’t even if I wanted to—tell them anything about a Presidential Finding mission that’ll be it. I really would, like Castillo said, wind up investigating parking meter fraud in Kansas for the rest of my career.

  Working for Castillo—the Office of Organizational Analysis—now that I think about it, won’t be as bad as I originally thought.

  It would seem, really, that I have a talent for that sort of thing. I would have given odds that I would have broken out in a cold sweat when I saw where I dropped that Ninja. I didn’t.

  The sonofabitch had a submachine gun he would have used on me if I hadn’t blown him away. Why should I feel guilty about taking him down?

  Castillo may not be thrilled about having me. Okay. But he’s stuck with me. All I’ll have to do is play my cards right and eventually he’ll accept me. I can do a lot for OOA. They need somebody like me. And they know when something goes down, I can hold my own. I proved it.

  Fuck the FBI!

  “You want to get a drink somewhere?” Artigas asked as they walked from the helicopter to their cars.

  All of their cars were parked nose up against the Policía Federal hangar. Howell had picked up Artigas that morning and driven him to the airport. Both lived in apartments not far from the embassy on the Rambla. Ordóñez had met them at the airport. Yung had driven to the airport in his own car from his apartment in Carrasco.

  “My ass is dragging,” Yung replied. “I’m going to get in a shower and then go to bed. I’ll see you at the embassy about nine, okay?”

  “Your call. Goodnight, Dave,” Artigas said, touched Yung’s shoulder, and opened the passenger’s door of Howell’s car.

  “Thanks for everything, Ordóñez,” Yung said. “I really appreciate all you’ve done.”

  “Di nada, mi amigo,” Ordóñez said. “I’ll probably see you tomorrow.”

  “Absolutely.”

  And you won’t learn anything more tomorrow than you did today.

  Yung put the Louis Vuitton suitcase in the backseat of his Chevy Blazer and got behind the wheel.

  It was a ten-minute drive from the airport to Yung’s apartment.

  He lived in a three-story building, two apartments to a floor, on Avenida Bernardo Barran. All the apartments had balconies overlooking the beach. He thought his—the right-hand apartment on the third floor—had the best view, and he thought that he would probably miss the apartment when he was back living in D.C., where the rents were astronomical and he couldn’t afford anything this nice.

  Well, fuck it. Maybe working for Castillo, I won’t be spending all that much time in Washington.

  The garage was in the basement of the building. There was a clicker-activated solenoid that opened the steel-mesh door most of the time when you pushed the button after you pulled off the street and into the steeply slanted driveway.

  If the clicker didn’t work, you had to get out of the car and open the door with a key.

  The clicker didn’t work.

  Shit!

  He turned the ignition off, took the keys from the ignition, and opened the Blazer’s door.

  As he squeezed past the front fender, he noticed two things. First, the floodlight that went on when you pushed the clicker—even if the goddamned door didn’t open—hadn’t come on.

  What the hell!

  And then he noticed that a bag, a cloth—something—was covering the clicker receiver.

  What the hell!

  And then in the same split second, he saw that a man was coming quickly down the driveway and that a car was entering the drive.

  Backward! What the hell?

  He pushed his jacket aside and took out his pistol.

  There was a sudden burst of light, from a large handheld floodlight.

  “Policía!” a voice shouted.

  The car—he saw now that it was a small Fiat van—started up the driveway, its tires squealing.

  The man coming down the driveway shielded his eyes from the floodlight. Then he put his other hand to his eyes. That hand held a pistol.

  “Don’t shoot him!” Yung screamed, in Spanish.

  There came three shots—booms rather than cracks, telling Yung they were from a shotgun and not a pistol—and the man who had been shielding his eyes looked as if something had shoved him hard against the concrete driveway wall. He slid down it.

  Yung dropped his pistol and raised his hands over his head. He started screaming, “Policía! Policía! Policía!”

  Something warm dripped onto his face.

  In a moment, he realized that he was bleeding.

  A Uruguayan policeman, a sergeant with his pistol drawn, came down the driveway.

  “Are you all right, Señor Yung?”

  How the hell did he know my name?

  “May I put my hands down?”

  “Of course, Señor,” the sergeant said, then added, “You’ve been hit, Señor Yung!”

  Yung looked at his left hand. It looked as if someone had gouged a two-inch-long, quarter-inch-deep channel across it. It was starting to bleed profusely.

  Yung thought: There are usually twelve pellets, with a total weight of 1.5 ounces, in a 00-Buckshot cartridge. Each pellet has roughly the knockdown power of a .32 ACP bullet.

  Wyatt Earp fired three times. That translated to thirty-six pellets, each with roughly the knockdown power of a .32 ACP slug bouncing around in the OK Corral here. I guess I’m lucky I got only one of them.

  He leaned against the wall and t
ook out his handkerchief.

  When he applied the handkerchief as a pressure bandage to his hand, he saw there were at least a half dozen holes in the glass and metal of the Blazer.

  IX

  [ONE]

  Aeropuerto Internacional Jorge Newbery

  Buenos Aires, Argentina

  0720 8 August 2005

  Castillo had flown in the right seat on the last leg from Recife, Brazil, with Torine in the left seat. But as they had approached Jorge Newbery, Torine had said, “If you have your ego under control, First Officer, you may land the aircraft.”

  And then, when they had shut down the Gulfstream on the tarmac in front of the JetAire hangar, Torine had two more comments.

  “You came in a little long, Charley.”

  “I know.”

  “The less the gross weight, the harder these are to get on the ground.”

  “I’ll remember.”

  Torine handed him the plastic envelope holding the aircraft documents.

  “Dealing with the local authorities is beneath the dignity of the captain,” Torine said.

  “Yes, sir,” Castillo said.

  When he came down the stair door, Castillo saw that in addition to the Argentine customs and immigration authorities a Mercedes Traffik van also was there to meet the Gulfstream.

  The driver was leaning against the van. Castillo recognized him. He was a CIA agent named Paul Sieno. He had met him the morning they had found J. Winslow Masterson’s body. And when he looked closer at the van, he saw another man he recognized, Ricardo Solez, of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

  Jesus, I hope Fernando doesn’t take one look at him, get carried away, and pick Ricardo up in a bear hug!

  Sieno walked over and in heavily accented English said, “We are from the estancia, señor, when you have finished with these officers.”

  “Thank you,” Castillo said and turned to the Argentine officials. “Where would you like us to put our luggage for exam—”

  Max came bounding down—more accurately, over—the steps in the stair door and headed for the nose gear, where he raised his leg.

  The Argentine customs officer smiled.

  “That won’t be necessary, sir. If we can go aboard, we’ll deal with the passports.”

  “You are very kind,” Castillo said.

  He went quickly back into the fuselage.

  “Passports, please, everybody,” he called. “And then please board the van, which will take us to the estancia.”

  Eric Kocian’s bushy white eyebrow rose at that, but he said nothing. He handed the immigration officer his passport as if it identified him as the personal representative of, if not God, then at least the pope.

  “Welcome to Argentina, señor,” the immigration officer said.

  Five minutes later, everyone was in the van and had left the airport.

  Where’s this estancia we’re going?” Castillo asked Sieno when it seemed to him the van was not headed for any of the highways leading to the countryside.

  “In Belgrano,” Sieno replied, chuckling. “Fifteen-sixty-eight Arribeños.”

  Belgrano was one of Buenos Aires’s upscale neighborhoods.

  “What’s there?”

  “My apartment, Major,” Sieno said. “Sixteenth floor.”

  “Your apartment?”

  “The Cuban embassy is on the next corner. We use the apartment to take pictures of people going into the embassy and to grab their radio transmissions. Not exactly a safe house, but there’s a steel door and TV monitors, and Alex Darby figured it will do until you decide what you really need.”

  “He’s a colonel now,” Solez called from the backseat, and added for Castillo, “Doña Alicia sent me an e-mail.”

  “You and Doña Alicia have big mouths,” Castillo said and then asked Sieno, “Where is Alex Darby?”

  “I’m hoping he’ll be at the apartment when we get there.”

  “And Tony Santini?”

  “Your Major Miller called Darby, Maj—Colonel—and asked him to have somebody meet the seven twenty-five American Airlines flight from Miami. Tony said he’d do it. I overheard enough of the conversation to think that the corporal—from the Marine guard detachment at the embassy—you took to the States and some other military type, a replacement for the guy you lost, will be on it.”

  I wonder what the hell that’s all about? Castillo thought, and then said it: “What’s that about?”

  “I don’t have any idea, but Alex should be at the apartment when we get there and he’ll know.”

  “Paul, can you get out of the habit of calling me Colonel? My name is Charley.”

  “Sure.”

  “And you, Ricardo, get in the habit of keeping your mouth shut.”

  “You going to tell Abuela that, Colonel Gringo?” Fernando asked, coming to Ricardo’s aid.

  Castillo ignored him and asked, “Where’s Sergeant Kensington?”

  “All alone—except for his radio, of course—in that luxury suite of yours in the Four Seasons,” Solez said.

  “Darby decided keeping him there, and the radio linkup, was more important than worrying about what that’s costing,” Sieno said. “At least until he heard from you.”

  “I am often known as the last of the big spenders,” Castillo said.

  He had a sudden flash of memory: Betty Schneider in his arms in the enormous bed in the master bedroom of the El Presidente de la Rua suite at the Four Seasons Hotel.

  And then these bastards shot her.

  And I didn’t—as promised—go to see her before I started this round of the Grand Tour of Europe and South America.

  I’m either a dedicated professional who allows nothing to get in the way of carrying out the mission or a four-star, world-class prick.

  And if Betty believes the latter, who can blame her?

  Well, I’ll get on my knees, apologize, and beg for forgiveness when I see her.

  [TWO]

  The apartment building at 1568 Avenida Arribeños was on the corner of Avenida José Hernandez, a block off Avenida Libertador. The lobby, behind walls of plate glass, was brightly lit, and Castillo wondered if the Cubans—tit for tat—might be keeping it under surveillance.

  Rule 17: Always give the bad guys more credit for smarts than they probably deserve. If Darby is working on their embassy, they almost certainly know it. They may not be able to do anything to stop the snooping, but they certainly can take pictures of everybody going into the apartment building and pass them around.

  He felt a sense of relief when the Traffik turned off Avenida Arribeños, crossed the sidewalk, and almost immediately disappeared from sight down a steep ramp into a basement garage.

  Castillo spotted surveillance cameras in the garage and another in the elevator, and still another when the elevator opened onto a foyer on the sixteenth floor. He had just decided that the cameras in the basement and elevator were connected with the apartment building’s security system but that the one in the foyer might not be when he spotted a third lens hidden in the tack of a prancing-stallion wall decoration.

  That one goes to a monitor inside the apartment.

  The door from the foyer was steel. Sieno unlocked it by punching in a series of numbers on a small numerical keyboard. When Sieno pulled the door open, Castillo was surprised to see another steel door behind it, and even more surprised when that door opened inward, revealing a trim, pale, freckled redhead in a white blouse and blue jeans who smiled and said, “Welcome!”

  Everyone filed inside.

  “Gentlemen, this is my wife, Susanna,” Sieno said, and then, pointing, “Susanna, this is Mr. Smith, Mr. Smith, Mr. Smith, Mr. Smith, Mr. Smith, and, of course, you know Ricardo.”

  “I’m very pleased to meet you all,” she said. “How are you, Ricardo?”

  Sieno smiled and said, “I was hoping the boss would be here before we got here, so he could make the introductions.”

  “I’m a little surprised that your wife is here,” Castillo said
, not very pleasantly.

  “Well, she both lives here and works here,” Sieno said. “Another reason I was hoping the boss would get here before we did, so he could explain that.”

  “Why don’t I get us all some coffee while we’re waiting?” Mr. Sieno said.

  “Paul, why would I not be surprised to learn your charming wife has a security clearance—clearances—not normally given to diplomats’ wives?” Castillo said.

  “Actually, she has several. Some with names.”

  “Issued here? Or?”

  “In Virginia, as a matter of fact,” Mr. Sieno said.

  “I’ve heard of husband-and-wife teams,” Castillo said. “But this is the first one I’ve ever actually met.”

  “We’re double-dippers,” Susanna Sieno said. “The rule is that both can get paid only if both were field officers before they marched down the aisle.”

  Castillo smiled at her and then said, “Okay. Let me make if official. Anything that you hear here or see here, Mr. Sieno, is classified Top Secret Presidential.”

  “I understand.”

  Castillo thought: Only a Langley chairwarmer who’s never been in the field would be naïve enough to think that Sieno hasn’t told her—she’s not only his wife but a working spook—everything that’s happened from the moment Mr. Masterson was grabbed.

  Including that a hotshot named Castillo showed up down here and started giving everybody, including the station chief, orders.

  That’s why she told me she was a double-dipper, a spook herself, not just married to one.

  “That being understood between us, I’m Charley Castillo. This is Colonel Jake Torine, my cousin Fernando Lopez, Sándor Tor, and Eric Kocian.”

  “And that is Max,” Billy Kocian said in English as he walked to her and—some what startling her—took and kissed the hand she extended to him. “It is my great pleasure, madam.”

  There was the sound of door chimes playing a melody as if one chime didn’t work.

  “That’s probably the boss,” Susanna Sieno said. “The chimes go off when somebody pushes the clicker for the garage door.”

  She turned and opened what looked like a closet door. Behind the door was a bank of monitors. One showed a Jeep Cherokee waiting for the door to the basement garage to open. Others showed the garage, the elevator, the foyer outside, the lobby, the sidewalks outside, and several antennae on the roof.