The Hunters

by W. E. B Griffin

  “But—you said a small refiner in Houston?”

  “I said a small broker in Midland,” Castillo said. “The one we have in mind does have a small refinery in Houston.”

  They heard Kocian grunt knowingly before he went on: “A small broker in Midland with a small refinery in Houston would be aware that your Internal Revenue Service would be looking at his books and might smell the Limburger when they saw he had been buying thirty-dollar-a-barrel oil.

  “So what does he do? He writes a check—actually, has his bank wire—the full, fair price of the oil to, say, the Cayman Islands Oil Brokers Ltd. Now he either owns this business or has a very cozy relationship with it. They acknowledge receipt of the money, take a cut, and put the difference between what he actually paid for the oil and what he’s telling IRS he paid for it into another numbered account. Getting the picture, Karl?”

  “Yeah,” Castillo said, although he was still trying to absorb it all.

  “And here’s where your friends Lorimer and Pevsner enter the picture,” Kocian said. “The UN inspector has to be paid for closing his eyes, the captain of the tanker has to be paid for taking on more crude in Mahashar than he reports to ship’s owner—and who is better able to do this than Dr. Jean-Paul Lorimer, a diplomat of the United Nations who’s always flitting around the world doing good?”

  “Where did Lorimer actually get the cash—I presume we’re talking cash—to make the payoffs?” Castillo asked.

  “Offshore banks simply will not take cash deposits,” Kocian said. “They virtuously want to know where the money comes from.”

  “Okay.”

  “But there are virtually no restrictions on the withdrawal of funds committed to their care. They will happily wire your money to anyplace you designate and there are no export restrictions on cash from a Cayman Islands bank being hauled away on an airplane.

  “I would suspect that Lorimer had one or more accounts in the Cayman Islands—you understand, Karl, I’m just using the Caymans as an example; banks in twenty other places offer exactly the same services—into which money was deposited by wire from some reputable bank and from which he made withdrawals either by wire or in cash.

  “A lot of the cash went to Iraq. In one of the palaces of one of Saddam’s sons, they found a billion—a billion—dollars in brand-new American one-hundred dollar bills, still in the plastic wrappers in which they had come from the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing.

  “I suspect most of the money—the cash—was carried into Iraq on one of Pevsner’s airplanes, although others were probably involved. But Pevsner has the reputation for being reliable in the quiet hauling of large amounts of cash.”

  “Is there a Russian or a Cuban connection?” Castillo asked.

  “Karlchen, I already told you Putin is involved in this up to his skinny little buttocks,” Kocian said. “I just don’t have enough proof to print it.”

  “Which Putin is he talking about, Castillo?” Doherty asked. “Your mafiosipal or the president of the Russian Federation?”

  Castillo hesitated just perceptibly before replying, “He’s not talking about Pevsner.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Doherty said.

  “They’re no longer useful,” Edgar Delchamps said, softly and thoughtfully. “But the hook’s been set so why not reel them in as necessary?”

  “Excuse me?” Castillo said.

  Delchamps raised his voice.

  “Thank you, Úr Kocian,” he said, in Hungarian. “We’ll get back to you. I really want to hear more of this.”

  “Who is that?” Kocian demanded.

  “My name is Delchamps, Úr Kocian. I’m a friend of Karlchen’s.”

  “Well, that makes two,” Kocian said. “May I presume I may now take my breakfast?”

  “Bon appétit,” Delchamps said, then turned to Castillo and, switching to English, said, “I really want to talk to your friend, Karlchen.”

  “Break it down, Neidermeyer,” Castillo ordered and then turned to Delchamps. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, Edgar.”

  Delchamps smiled. “I’ve been trying to make sense of Doherty’s mystic symbols for two days and getting nowhere, and then, the moment I hear about the generous small-time Texas oilman, eureka!”

  Everybody waited for him to go on.

  “Why the hell would a small-time Texas oilman—presumably, a patriotic Texas oilman—suddenly donate two million dollars to a bunch of lunatic wannabe Muslims in Philadelphia? Answer: He’s been converted. Unlikely. Answer: He did not do so willingly. So why would he? Because he’s been turned, the hook is already set in him.”

  “What do you mean turned?” Miller asked.

  Delchamps didn’t reply directly.

  “I also asked myself, What’s with the suitcase nukes?” he went on. “Where did that come from?”

  “I have no goddamned idea where you’re going with this, Edgar,” Doherty said.

  Delchamps ignored him.

  “According to Karlchen here…”

  “Uncle Billy can call me that, Edgar, but you can’t,” Castillo said, evenly.

  “My most profound apologies, Ace,” Delchamps said, insincerely, “according to Ace here, the Ninjas he took down at the Never-Never Land hacienda—”

  “Estancia Shangri-La,” Castillo corrected him without thinking.

  “Whatever,” Delchamps went on, “in far-off Uruguay were professionals. And we have since learned that one of them was a heavy hitter Cuban spook. And Ace tells us the people who tried to snatch Uncle Billy on the Franz Joséf Bridge in romantic Budapest also were pros. As were the two you took down in the Gellért, right, Ace?”

  Castillo nodded. “And they all had garrotes.”

  “They all had what?” Doherty asked.

  “It’s a device—these were stainless steel—not unlike the plastic handcuffs the cops are now using. They put it around your neck and choke you to death,” Castillo said.

  “And what was that about you taking someone down in the Gellért? What’s the Gellért?”

  “It’s a hotel, Jack, on the banks of the Danube,” Delchamps said. “You should take the little woman there sometime. Very romantic.”

  “The man I lost in the Uruguayan operation was killed with a garrote,” Castillo said, softly. “The men who attempted to snatch Eric Kocian on the bridge in Budapest had both garrotes and a hypodermic needle full of a tranquilizer. The two men who went to Kocian’s hotel room in Budapest had garrotes. When Mr. Masterson was kidnapped in Buenos Aires, she was knocked out with a shot in her buttocks…”

  “You had to kill two people in Budapest?” Doherty persisted.

  Castillo nodded and went on: “The garrote was used routinely by only the East German Stasi and the Hungarian Allamvedelmi Osztaly and Allamvedelmi Hatosag…”

  “Which are?” Doherty asked.

  “They were the Hungarian version of the Stasi. Sándor Tor, Kocian’s bodyguard, told his people to find out if the two in the hotel were ex-AVO or ex-AVH. They were to call Dick here if that connection could be made. They haven’t called, which strongly suggests they were not AVO or AVH, leaving only Stasi. It fits, Edgar.”

  “What fits?” Doherty asked.

  “Off the top of your head, Jack,” Delchamps asked, sarcastically, “who—besides the Israelis and Ace here’s intrepid band of special operators—could mount, at just about the same time, professional snatch operations in Argentina, Uruguay, and Hungary?”

  “You’re saying you think the KGB is involved in this?” Doherty asked, incredulously.

  “No, Jack, not the KGB,” Delchamps said. “If we are to believe Mr. Putin, the bad old KGB, which he once led, is dead. It was replaced by the Federalnaya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti Rossiyskoy Federatsii, commonly called the FSB. And, yes, that thought has been running through my head.”

  “It fits, Edgar,” Castillo repeated.

  “Let’s see if great minds really run down the same path, Ace,” Delchamps said. “What
’s your scenario?”

  “Putin’s afraid his role in this is going to come out,” Castillo began. “So get rid of the witnesses. Starting with Lorimer.”

  “Starting with Lorimer’s number two, the guy who got whacked in Vienna,” Delchamps said.

  “Right,” Castillo agreed. “And Lorimer, who suspected he was about to be whacked, put his Plan A into effect the moment he learned his pal was gone.”

  “‘Plan A’?” Miller parroted.

  “Get the hell out of Dodge,” Castillo said. “He already had his alter ego set up in Uruguay. And his nest egg. Plan A was to stay out of sight until they stopped looking for him.”

  “Okay,” Miller said, agreeing.

  “So when he disappeared, how to find him?” Castillo said. “Through his sister.”

  “You don’t really think the FSB keeps dossiers on UN diplomats, do you?” Delchamps said. “Listing next of kin, things like that?”

  Castillo nodded. “Why wouldn’t they?”

  When Delchamps didn’t respond, he went on: “So they snatched his sister and told her they would kill her children if she didn’t locate her brother for them and then murdered her husband to show how serious they were.”

  “So who is they?” Delchamps said. “The KSB? I don’t think so. But just for the sake of argument, let’s say that Putin, out of the goodness of his heart, found some sort of employment for a group of deserving Stasi types who had lost their jobs when the Berlin Wall came down. You never know when you’re going to need a good assassin.”

  “And if something went wrong, no connection with these guys to the KSB,” Miller said. “Clever.”

  “And they were probably very useful when the oil-for-food scam was running,” Delchamps said. “Both in moving money around and removing witnesses to any connection with Putin and Company.”

  “And no paper trail,” Miller said. “Whatever money they were spending was oil-for-food money.”

  “That, too,” Delchamps agreed. “Okay, Ace, then what?”

  “I got lucky,” Castillo said. “Otto Görner heard that some West Germans were moving oil-for-food money to Argentina and Uruguay and told me about it. He also warned me that people who had been curious about this had died and to butt out.”

  “Which of course you were congenitally unable to do,” Miller said, “and you went to Eric Kocian. He pointed you toward South America and then you got lucky with Confucius. He had a file on…what’s the alter ego?”

  “Bertrand,” Castillo furnished, as he glanced at Yung. “Dave, you haven’t said a word. Does that mean you think we’re just pissing into the wind and you’re too polite to say so?”

  “Just before he changed sides, Kennedy was working on something with a Houston connection,” Yung said. “I’ve been trying to remember what It was.”

  “Wouldn’t there be a record of some sort? An interim report of some kind?” Delchamps asked.

  “Kennedy took everything he had with him,” Doherty said, bitterly. “I’m sure your friend Pevsner read it before it was destroyed. Why don’t you ask him?”

  “What were you looking for, Dave?” Castillo pursued. “Was there an oil-for-food scam connection?”

  “Not as such,” Yung said. “We were looking for unusual transfers—wire transfers—of large amounts of money. Money laundering, in other words. There’s two facets of that—more than two, actually. One is income tax evasion. When we came across something suspicious—something, for example, that looked like someone was concealing income or assets—we turned it over to the IRS and let them deal with it. When the source of the money was suspicious—as if it might be drug money, for example, or in the case of politicians, purchasing agents, etcetera that looked like it might be bribes—we worked on that ourselves. The way we were working, I looked for anomalies, and when I found something suspicious Howard looked into it.”

  “And you remember something about Houston?” Castillo asked.

  “Only just that,” Yung said. “I’ve been trying hard to remember the specifics.”

  “Keep trying, Dave,” Castillo said and turned to the others. “Where were we?”

  “At the point where you decided to repatriate Lorimer,” Miller said.

  “Right,” Delchamps said. “Meanwhile, the bad guys found out where Lorimer slash Bertrand was. How?”

  “Well, at first they didn’t know where he was,” Castillo said. “Otherwise, they wouldn’t have taken the risk of kidnaping Mr. Masterson to find out. That was an act of desperation.”

  “So somebody had to tell them,” Delchamps said. “Who knew?”

  “Castillo’s pal, the Russian mafioso, Pevsner,” Doherty said.

  “I don’t think so,” Castillo said.

  “Why do you keep defending that slimeball, Castillo?” Doherty snapped.

  “If he knew where Lorimer was and had told the Ninjas,” Castillo said, “he wouldn’t have let me use his helicopter. He didn’t want me whacked.”

  “Because he likes you, right?” Doherty asked.

  “Because that would kill the deal he has about keeping the FBI and the CIA off his case.”

  “Another possibility is that it was just a coincidence that everybody descended on Never-Never Land at the same time,” Delchamps said. “How the Ninjas found out where he was doesn’t really matter. They did and staged that operation to take him out.”

  “That’s one hell of a coincidence, wouldn’t you say?” Doherty challenged.

  “However it happened,” Delchamps said, “the Ninjas went to the hacienda and were more than a little surprised to find Ace and Company already there.”

  “Why do you think they were surprised?” Doherty asked.

  “Otherwise, the score of that ball game would not have been six to one,” Delchamps said. “They probably thought they’d come on a bunch of local bandits knocking off a hacienda. Not in their league. Not a problem. Just whack everybody, leave the bodies where they fell, and take off. Surprise, surprise, it’s the U.S. Cavalry.”

  “Yeah,” Castillo said, thoughtfully.

  “So what happened when there was no phone call to the embassy of the Russian Federation saying, ‘Mission accomplished’?” Delchamps said. “‘What happened? Who whacked our guys? Does it matter? Lorimer’s dead. Next step, take out Kocian.’”

  “After first finding out just how much he knows,” Castillo said.

  “Which would also apply to Special Agent Yung,” Doherty said.

  “Yeah, it would,” Delchamps agreed. “Which means, as soon as they can find him, they’re going to have another try at Kocian. I really want to talk to him, Ace, before that happens. We might not be so lucky again.”

  “Pevsner is probably on their hit list,” Castillo said.

  “Pevsner probably wrote their hit list,” Doherty said.

  “What do you want to do, Ace?” Delchamps asked.

  “You never got around to telling us where you think the Kenyon Oil Refining and Brokerage Company fits into this, Edgar.”

  “Oh, yeah. Well, this may really be off the wall, but it’s also possible. The Russians know about Kenyon’s involvement with the oil-for-food scam. Maybe they were in it with him, I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter. The oil-for-food scam is over. So nobody needs Kenyon anymore.”

  He paused, visibly organizing his thoughts.

  “You have to think of Putin as being KGB and with a sense of humor,”

  Delchamps then went on, “or maybe he just has evil intentions. Anyway, he’s got Kenyon on a hook. ‘Do what I say or the FBI will find out what a naughty boy you have been.’ Kenyon has all this money in the Caymans. ‘How do I find out how deeply the hook is in him?’ What is laughingly known as the intelligence community knows all about these lunatics in Philadelphia. They’re being watched. ‘The Americans swallowed the hidden nuclear suitcase bombs nonsense hook, line, and sinker once. Let’s see if we can get them to swallow it again. So what I will do is tell the dummy in Midland to send the lunatics t
wo million dollars to buy some tunnels to protect themselves from the nuclear blast in Philadelphia. Since they are being watched, this will come to the attention of the intelligence community. Net result: the American intelligence community runs around like chickens with their heads cut off looking for nuclear suitcases which have never left the warehouse in Siberia. Ha-ha!’”

  He paused, let that sink in, then went on. “Probable benefit two: Putin knows about the forty-six million Kenyon has in the Cayman bank. Putin’s pal, the famous Colonel Pyotr Sunev, now back at work after a teaching sabbatical at Grinnell University, can find many uses for forty-six mil. Or maybe Putin and Sunev will just split it between them.

  “Kenyon probably would not be very anxious to hand it over. But that reluctance was before he sent the two million to the lunatics. Now Putin has him for not only illegally profiting from the oil-for-food scandal—and hiding the money—but also for sending two million to lunatics in Philadelphia known to have terrorist ties. Getting the picture, Ace?”

  “I’m thinking about it,” Castillo said. “It sounds off the wall, but…”

  “Kenyon either gives them the money or goes to jail,” Miller said. “To whom could he complain he was robbed?”

  “Right,” Delchamps said. “So what do you think, Ace?”

  “I think we should go have a talk with Kenyon in Midland. Maybe we can get him to tell us who got him to send the money to Philadelphia.”

  “Maybe?” Miller said.

  “What makes you think he’ll tell you anything at all?” Doherty asked. “All you’ve got is a wild theory.”

  “Jesus, I just remembered Jake went home,” Castillo said.

  Miller immediately took his meaning.

  “Charley, you steer and I’ll work the radios,” he said.

  Castillo looked at him for a long moment before replying.

  “You’re sure?”

  Miller nodded.

  “Okay, get on the horn and have them roll the Gulfstream out of the hangar,” Castillo said.

  “You’re going to Texas right now?” Doherty asked.

  “We’re going to Texas and then Buenos Aires,” Castillo said. “Why don’t you get on the horn to your wife and have her pack a bag and your passport?”