The Hunters

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Ambassador Montvale made it pretty clear, however, that you’re the man in charge. What would you like me to call you?”

  “How do you feel about first names? Mine is Charley.”

  “I’d be more comfortable with Mr.,” Kilgore said.

  “That’s fine with me.”

  “What can NSA do for you, Mr. Castillo?”

  “This is a covert and clandestine operation authorized by a Presidential Finding and the classification is Top Secret Presidential.”

  “Understood.”

  “I’m going to need some intercepts,” Castillo said. “The priority is a wire transfer into the Merchants National Bank of Easton, Pennsylvania, from a numbered account in the Caledonian Bank and Trust Limited in the Cayman Islands. The amount was $1,950,000. What I need is who that Cayman account belongs to, what monies have been transferred into it, when and by whom.”

  “If NSA provided you with that information, it would be in violation of several sections of the United States Code, as I’m sure you’re aware, and even if we gave it to you it could not be used as evidence in a court of law.”

  “Didn’t Ambassador Montvale tell you, Colonel, that you are—NSA is—to give me whatever I asked for?”

  Kilgore did not respond directly.

  “Just a question to satisfy my curiosity, Mr. Castillo,” he said. “If a messenger left an envelope here with only your name on it, would you get it? No matter the hour? Twenty-four/seven?”

  “I would.”

  “And no one else?”

  “No one not cleared for this operation,” Castillo said.

  “While of course we are both agreed that you would not ask NSA to provide intercepts of this nature if doing so would violate any part of the United States Code, and that even if you did NSA would not provide data of this nature to you under any circumstances…”

  “I understand, Colonel.”

  “Speaking hypothetically, of course, if NSA happened to make an intercept of wire transfers into or out of, say, a foreign bank in Mexico, that’s all it would have. The amount, the routing numbers, and the numbers of the accounts involved in both banks. There would be no way to identify the owners of the accounts by name.”

  You get me the numbers, Colonel Kilgore, and my man Yung will get me the names.

  “Understood,” Castillo said. “Speaking hypothetically, of course, how does this work?”

  “I really don’t know,” Kilgore said, “but I’ve heard that what happens is that just about everything is recorded in real time and then run through a filter which identifies what someone is interested in. The more information that’s available for the filter…bank routing numbers, the time period in which the data sought was probably being transmitted…”

  Castillo took his laptop computer from under his desk, turned it on, and called up the data he’d gotten from Secret Service Agent Harry Larsen in Pennsylvania. He then turned the computer around so Kilgore could see it.

  Kilgore studied it, nodded, and said, “Certainly I’ll excuse you while you meet the call of nature, Mr. Castillo. I know how it is. When you’ve gotta go, you’ve gotta go. And while you’re gone, I don’t suppose there’s a telephone, preferably a secure one, I could use? I’d like to check in with my secretary, let her know I’ll be a little late getting to the office.”

  Castillo stood up.

  “The red one’s connected to the White House switchboard,” he said and went into the private restroom off his office.

  Kilgore was sitting behind Castillo’s desk when three minutes later—as timed by Castillo’s watch—Castillo came out of the restroom.

  “That’s an interesting handset,” Kilgore greeted him. “The small black one. It looks like something AFC would make.”

  “And so it is,” Castillo said.

  “You know much about AFC?” Kilgore asked.

  “I even know Mr. Casey.”

  “Interesting man, isn’t he? Among my other duties, I’m the liaison officer between NSA and his research facilities in Las Vegas.”

  “I’ve even been there.”

  “Well, that would explain, I suppose, why some people in Fort Meade are reporting a stream of gibberish coming out of here, absolutely unbreakable.”

  “Who in a position to use your services would be interested in anything coming out of here?”

  “I wouldn’t know, of course, but the agency is one possibility,” Kilgore said.

  “I suppose it would be,” Castillo said.

  “I once asked Mr. Casey about a rumor floating around that he’d given Delta Force—and only Delta Force—an encryption logarithm that was really something. He used to be a Green Beret. Did you know that?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do,” Castillo said. “What did he say?”

  “He said that when he was a Green Beret he was almost blown away several times because somebody with a big mouth had listened to things they didn’t need to know and that he was trying to see that that no longer could happen. He said Special Forces was like the Marines. Once a Green Beanie, always a Green Beanie.”

  “I suppose that’s true,” Castillo said.

  “You wouldn’t happen to have a green beret in a closet somewhere, would you, Mr. Castillo?”

  “A souvenir of happier times, Colonel,” Castillo said.

  Kilgore stood up.

  “Well, it’s been a pleasure meeting you, Mr. Castillo. I don’t think we’ll be seeing each other again. But on the other hand, you never know. We may bump into each other at an Association of USMA Graduates meeting and get to sing ‘Army Blue’ together.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Castillo said.

  “I left a number on your computer you can call if you need anything else,” Kilgore said.

  He shook Castillo’s hand quickly but firmly and walked out of the office.

  Castillo started to return to the conference room but Mr. Forbison put her head in the door.

  “One more,” she said. “This one says from the Secret Service.”

  That has to be Tom McGuire. Or maybe Joel Isaacson.

  Castillo made a bring ’em on wave of his hand and went behind his desk, sat down, and started to shut down his laptop.

  “Hello, Charley,” Special Agent Elizabeth Schneider said from the office door.

  Castillo was to remember later that his first reaction was, “Oh, shit, not now!”

  He got some what awkwardly to his feet and was aware of his awkwardness.

  “I thought you’d still be in the hospital,” he said.

  “I’ve been out for almost a week,” she said. “I’m on what they call ‘limited duty.’”

  He looked at her carefully and noticed that although she appeared not to be a hundred percent—he thought he heard a catch to her speech, as if it was some what painful to speak—she was, by all appearances, well on the mend now, nearly three weeks after the ambush in Buenos Aires.

  He then recalled from his experience in the first desert war and in Afghanistan that It was not uncommon for certain people to rebound some what quickly from trauma, particularly ones who had a young strong body on their side.

  And Betty indeed had a young strong body.

  Castillo crossed the room to her, thinking she expected to be kissed.

  He put his hands on her arms and moved his face close.

  She didn’t seem at all eager for his kiss, much less the passionate embrace he thought was likely.

  That’s what’s known as a “chaste kiss.” As between aunt and dutiful nephew.

  Oh, I know.

  She’s pissed. And has every right to be.

  “Baby, I tried to call you. I wanted to call before I went to Paris. I couldn’t. There just wasn’t time.”

  I don’t want to get into a long explanation of what happened that night, my promotion ceremony and the conversation with Montvale at the Army-Navy Club.

  “Not a problem, Charley,” Betty said.

  She smiled some what awkwardly.

&nbs
p; “Congratulations on your promotion.”

  “Thank you. Undeserved, but deeply appreciated nonetheless.”

  “If it was undeserved, they wouldn’t have given it to you,” Betty said.

  “Well, I’m glad to see you,” he said. “And, oh boy, did you arrive at the right time!”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You can type, right? We’ve got a…”

  “Charley, I’m not going to work for you. Where’d you get that idea?”

  “What’s wrong with that idea?”

  “A lot, starting with Joel’s got me a probationary spot in the protection section.”

  “I’m not sure what that means.”

  “It means if I work out and once I get a clear physical, I can be permanently assigned to the protection section. That’s what I want to do.”

  “And you don’t want to work for me?”

  “Be reasonable. That wouldn’t work out and you know it.”

  “What if I promise to keep my hands off you during business hours and to call you Agent Schneider?”

  Agent Schneider visibly did not find that amusing.

  She sighed. “Charley, that wouldn’t work. I had a lot of time to think and…Well, what happened, happened. But there’s no future in it for either of us.”

  “We can just be friends, right?” he asked, sarcastically.

  “Frankly, I don’t even think that, Charley. I don’t trust myself. Or maybe it’s you. I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

  “Have I just been told that I’ve been dumped? Just because I couldn’t get on the horn to tell you I was going to Paris?”

  “One of the things I thought of is how often is that going to happen with you? ‘Sorry, Betty, the movie’s off. I have to catch a plane to Timbuktu and I don’t know when I’ll be back.’”

  “This is what I do for a living. You know that.”

  “I didn’t realize what it meant. Now I know I couldn’t live with a situation like that.”

  “Can we talk about this?” Castillo asked.

  “Sure, after I get settled. But there’s nothing to really talk about.”

  “Let’s give it a shot. You never know. How do I get in touch with you?”

  “When I leave here, I’m going over to Crystal City—near the Pentagon—where another agent is looking for a roommate.”

  “What’s his name?”

  Betty made a thin smile. “A female agent. If that works out, I’ll call Mr. Forbison and give her the phone number.”

  Castillo nodded softly.

  “Okay, Betty, you do that.”

  “Congratulations again on your promotion, Colonel,” Betty said and offered her hand to shake.

  He took it.

  She shook it briefly, turned, and walked to the door.

  There, she turned again and said, “Take care of yourself, Charley.”

  And then she was gone.

  “Oh, shit,” Castillo said, slowly.

  He stared at the empty doorway, shook his head, then walked to the conference room.

  XV

  [ONE]

  Conference Room

  Office of the Chief of Operational Analysis

  Department of Homeland Security

  Nebraska Avenue Complex

  Washington, D.C.

  1015 11 August 2005

  Castillo saw that there were now names and events and dates written all over the three blackboards, most of them marked with symbols, arrows, and question marks and connected by a maze of arrows. Juliet Knowles and the pale-faced girl whose name he didn’t know were sitting with their fingers poised on the keyboards of the laptops.

  Inspector John J. Doherty turned from the blackboard on which he was writing to see who had entered the conference room.

  “I’m beginning to understand, Colonel,” Doherty said, “what I originally thought was your overzealous desire for secrecy.”

  Castillo ignored the remark and looked at Dick Miller.

  “I think we’ll know something from NSA about where that two million dollars came from by tomorrow morning, maybe even sooner. But we’re going to need Yung to make sense out of what they’re going to be able to get for us. How about making sure he comes up here just as soon as he can after the funeral?”

  Miller nodded and picked up one of the telephones.

  “That’s Special Agent Yung of the FBI you’re talking about?” Doherty asked.

  Castillo nodded. “He’s an expert in money moving,” he said.

  “I know,” Doherty said.

  Castillo didn’t like Doherty’s tone of voice.

  “I understand he also knows where the FBI hides their skeletons.”

  “That, too,” Doherty said. “What two million dollars are we talking about?”

  “The two million dollars somebody gave the Aari-Teg mosque in Philadelphia so they could buy a farm in Bucks County in which they are going to hide in old iron mines when someone sets off a suitcase nuke in the City of Brotherly Love,” Castillo rattled off.

  Doherty considered that for a long moment and then exclaimed, “Jesus Christ, is that credible?”

  “Britton doesn’t think so and…”

  “Britton, the Secret Service agent?” Doherty interrupted, turning to point at Britton’s name on one of the blackboards.

  Castillo nodded, then said: “When he was a Philadelphia cop, he was undercover in the mosque for more than three years. He doesn’t put much credence in the nuke and neither do others—including Edgar here—who know about things like that. But somebody gave these lunatics two million dollars and I’d like to know who and why. Maybe it’s two separate things, terrorism and the oil-for-food scandal. And maybe they’re connected. I have a gut feeling they are.”

  Doherty picked up his yellow felt-tip pen and said, “Spell that mosque for me,” and, when Castillo had and he’d written it on the blackboard, asked: “Can you tie these people to terrorism?”

  “They were involved with the theft of the 727 that terrorists were going to crash into the Liberty Bell.”

  “You really think they were going to do that?” Doherty asked, his tone making it clear he didn’t think that was credible.

  “Yeah, I really think they were going to crash it into the Liberty Bell,” Castillo said. “When Jake Torine and I stole it back from them, it was about to take off for Philadelphia. The fuselage was loaded with fuel cells hidden under a layer of fresh flowers.”

  Doherty accepted that but he didn’t apologize, not even to the extent of saying “I didn’t know that.”

  “So you’re saying these people are skilled terrorists?” Doherty asked after a moment.

  “No, I’m not. I go with Britton and Chief Inspector Kramer of the Philadelphia Police, who refer to them as the AAL, which means African American Lunatics, and which means just that. They have been used by terrorists, and they still may be—probably are—being used. I want to know where they got the money and if there is a reason beyond giving them a place to protect themselves from a nuclear explosion, which we don’t think is going to happen.”

  Doherty considered that a long moment and then went off on a tangent.

  “We can get back to that in a minute. You used a helicopter on the estancia raid, right?”

  Castillo nodded.

  “Where did you get it? Delchamps says he doesn’t know and Miller said he doesn’t want to tell me until he talks to you.”

  Castillo looked at the two women, who were watching them in fascination.

  This, they shouldn’t hear.

  “Let’s go in there for a moment,” Castillo said, pointing toward the door of the larger of two small offices opening off the conference room.

  Once the door had closed behind him, Miller, Delchamps, and Doherty, Castillo said, evenly, “I borrowed a Bell Ranger from Aleksandr Pevsner.”

  “The same Aleksandr Pevsner we’ve talked about before?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Jesus Christ, that opens a whole new can of worms,” Do
herty said. “Did he know what you were going to use it for?”

  Castillo had a quick mental image of Doherty writing Pevsner on one of the blackboards, followed by a very large question mark and then an even larger exclamation point.

  “Yes, he knew,” Castillo said.

  “Has it occurred to you that your pal is the one who tipped the unknown parties to what you were up to? Or that he sent them himself?” Doherty asked and then didn’t wait for an answer, but instead turned to Delchamps and said: “Ed, this Russian mafioso is up to his ears in everything else criminal on both hemispheres, so is it likely he’s involved in either this oil-for-food scam or terrorism?”

  Castillo picked up on Doherty’s use of Delchamps’s first name.

  So he likes him at least that much? Good!

  “Terrorism, no,” Delchamps said. “That’s not saying his airplanes haven’t flown terrorists or supplies—including money—around for the Muslim fanatics. But I say that primarily because his airplanes go to lots of interesting places. He has almost certainly been used by terrorists—who have paid him extremely well for his services—but he’s not one of them.

  “And, Jack, from what I know—know—the same thing is true of his association with the oil-for-food maggots. Pevsner’s airplanes flew a lot of food and medicine—like Ferraris and blond Belgian hookers for Saddam’s sons—and nice little hundred-thousand-dollar bricks of hundred-dollar bills into and out of Iraq. But a lot of the same thing—maybe not the Ferraris, but just about everything else—went into and out of Iraq on Air France and Lufthansa and a lot of other airlines. My information is that Pevsner’s airplanes were used when Saddam and company really wanted to be sure the commercial carrier didn’t get curious about what was really in the crates marked ‘Hospital Supplies.’”

  “There wasn’t time for Pevsner to tip anybody off about the raid,” Castillo said. “And, anyway, he didn’t know where we were going. He only knew who we were after.”

  “Unless he already knew where Lorimer was, Charley,” Delchamps argued. “He could have told someone ‘You’d better take care of that problem before the American gets to him.’”

  “I don’t think he knew where Lorimer was, Edgar,” Castillo said.

  “Why?” Doherty challenged.