The Hunters

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Jesus H. Christ!” Edgar Delchamps said, disgustedly.

  “Go back to the bathroom, Tubby,” Castillo ordered. “Get some paper towels from the cabinet and clean up your mess.”

  Kenyon raised his handcuffed wrists.

  “I noticed,” Castillo said, as the vile smell spread. “So what? Hurry up. You’re stinking up my aircraft.”

  Kenyon struggled to his feet from the low couch and walked to the rear of the fuselage.

  “Looks like something stung Tubby on the ass, doesn’t it?” Delchamps asked.

  The others laughed.

  Kenyon came back down the aisle with paper towels in his hands, dropped to his knees, and started to mop up his vomitus. No one said a word.

  Yung, a handkerchief over his mouth and nose, went aft and into the head, came out with an aerosol can of air freshener, then emptied it as he came forward in the cabin.

  When Kenyon thought he had finished, he looked at Castillo, who shook his head.

  “Clean, Tubby, means clean,” Castillo said.

  It took Kenyon three more trips to the toilet for paper towels and a lot of scrubbing before Castillo nodded and said, “Sit down.”

  “Okay, where were we before Tubby disgraced himself?” Castillo asked.

  “I didn’t know those people in Philadelphia were terrorists,” Kenyon blurted.

  “I didn’t say you could speak,” Castillo said. “The next time you speak without permission…”

  He mimed shooting the Taser.

  Kenyon recoiled as if Castillo’s finger were the real thing.

  “Are you going to talk to us, Tubby? Or wait for the people waiting for you at Florence?” Castillo asked.

  Kenyon remained silent.

  “Your choice,” Castillo pursued. “What’s it going to be?”

  Kenyon looked off in the distance, thinking. Then he looked long and hard at Castillo.

  “I’ll tell you anything you want to know, but you’ve got to believe me, I didn’t know the people in Philadelphia were terrorists.”

  “Well, we’ll listen to what you have to say,” Castillo said. “Can I have your recorder, Jack?”

  Doherty handed Castillo a small tape recorder.

  Castillo went to Kenyon.

  “Put your knees together, Tubby,” he said, and when Kenyon had complied, Castillo laid the tape recorder on Kenyon’s legs. “If that falls to the floor…” he said and mimed shooting the Taser again.

  Kenyon quickly put his hands out to hold the recorder in position on his knees.

  “Now, before I switch that on,” Castillo said, “there’s something I want to tell you in case you’re thinking that your civil rights have been violated and therefore it doesn’t matter what you tell us, it would not be admissible in court.

  “You’re sitting in a sort of a court. We are your judges and the jury. Let me tell you who we are. You know Fernando, of course, and you remember me, and may even know I’m an Army officer. Special Agent Yung is with the FBI. That’s Edgar Delchamps of the CIA. That’s Inspector Doherty of the FBI. Those two are George Feller and Sam Oliver of the Secret Service. The airplane is being flown by Colonel Jake Torine of the Air Force. The copilot is an Army officer, Major Dick Miller.

  “You’re probably wondering why I’m telling you this. The reason is—presuming you ever get back to Midland or when your lawyer is finally admitted to Florence and you could tell him—that neither your lawyer nor anyone else is going to believe that you were kidnapped by your classmate at Texas A&M and hustled aboard a G-III piloted by an Air Force officer and an Army officer, where you were threatened and humiliated by another Army officer with whom you were once in the Boy Scouts, and then interrogated by a very senior FBI agent, two Secret Service agents, and a CIA officer.

  “Think about it, Tubby. The only chance you have of not spending the rest of your life in a cell at Florence ADMAX is to come clean with us. Do we understand each other?”

  “I told you I’d tell you anything you want to know. But you have to believe me when I tell you I had no idea that was a terrorist group or mosque or whatever in Philadelphia.”

  “So you keep saying,” Castillo said. “He’s all yours, Inspector.”

  Doherty moved from the forward-facing chairs in which he had been sitting and sat down on the couch facing Kenyon. He took out a small notebook and a ballpoint pen, then reached across the aisle and switched on the tape recorder.

  “Interview of Philip J. Kenyon III,” Doherty began, “begun at five-fifty p.m. central standard time, 12 August 2005, aboard an aircraft in the service of the United States somewhere above Texas en route to the Florence ADMAX, Florence, Colorado, by Inspector John J. Doherty, Office of the Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Washington, acting under Presidential Authority. Present are Colonel C. J. Castillo, team chief, Mr. Edgar Delchamps, Office of the Director, Central Intelligence Agency, Special Agents George Feller and Samuel Oliver of the Dallas Office, United States Secret Service, and FBI Agent David W. Yung, Jr.

  “State your name and occupation, please.”

  Kenyon swallowed and then, as if he was having trouble finding his voice, finally announced that he was Philip J. Kenyon III, chairman of the board of the Kenyon Oil Refining and Brokerage Company of Midland, Texas.

  “Mr. Kenyon,” Doherty said. “It is my understanding that you are making this statement voluntarily, without either coercion of any kind or the promise of immunity from prosecution or the promise of special consideration because of your cooperation. Is that true?”

  Kenyon’s eyes glanced at Castillo, then looked at the floor. He exhaled audibly and said softly, “Yes.”

  “A little louder, please?”

  “Yes, that’s true.”

  “Let’s start at the beginning,” Doherty said. “How did you first become involved in illegal transactions connected with the United Nations oil-for-food program?”

  Kenyon exhaled again.

  “They came to me,” he said, finally, “I didn’t go looking for it. They came to me.”

  “Who came to you?”

  “A man named Lionel Cassidy,” Kenyon said. “He came to me and asked if I would be interested in some thirty-two-dollar-a-barrel oil.”

  “Do you have an address for Mr. Cassidy?”

  “No. He always contacted me.”

  “But he was known to you?”

  “I never saw him before the day he came up to me at the bar at the Petroleum Club. The one in Dallas. Not the one in Midland.”

  “But how did he know you?”

  Kenyon shrugged helplessly.

  “I don’t know. But he seemed to know all about me and my business. And he said, ‘I’ve heard you might be interested in fifty thousand barrels at thirty-two-point-five.’ Hell, of course I was. That was ten dollars under market.”

  “You say he seemed to know all about your business?” Yung asked.

  Doherty gave him a dirty look and held up his hand to silence any reply from Kenyon.

  “State your name and occupation and then repeat the question,” Doherty ordered.

  “Special Agent David W. Yung, Jr., FBI, on assignment to the Office of Operational Analysis,” Yung said. “Mr. Kenyon, you say the man, Lionel Cassidy, who came to you seemed to know all about you and your business?”

  “Yes, He did.”

  “I’m going to show you a photograph, Mr. Kenyon, and ask if you can tell me who it is,” Yung said.

  Kenyon looked at the photograph.

  “Yeah, that’s Cassidy all right. The sonofabitch who sucked me into this mess.”

  “This is Inspector Doherty. Special Agent Yung showed Mr. Kenyona five-by-seven-inch clear color photograph of a white male approximately forty-five years of age, approximately five feet eleven inches tall, and weighing approximately one hundred sixty-five pounds. Mr. Kenyon identified the man in the photograph as Lionel Cassidy. The man in the photograph is well known to me, Special Agent Yung, and Colonel Castillo by anoth
er name, which we know is his real name. That name is not germane to this interview.”

  “I’m telling you he told me his name was Cassidy, Lionel Cassidy,” Kenyon said, plaintively. “Why should I lie to you about that?”

  “No one is suggesting that you’re lying, Mr. Kenyon,” Doherty said. “So what did you do when Mr. Cassidy offered you fifty thousand barrels of oil at thirty-two dollars and fifty cents per barrel?”

  “Well, I was suspicious at first, but…”

  “And now we turn to the contribution you made to the Aari-Teg mosque,” Doherty said, a half hour later. “Why did you do that?”

  “Well, I certainly didn’t want to,” Kenyon said. “And I had no idea—I said this before but I’ll say it again—I had no idea there was any kind of a terrorist connection whatever.”

  “So tell me what happened,” Doherty said.

  “It was in Cozumel,” Kenyon said. “I took the family down there for a little sun and sea, you know. And Cassidy was there.”

  “Castillo,” Castillo interjected. “Where in Cozumel was this, Mr. Kenyon?”

  “You mean the hotel?”

  Castillo nodded.

  “Grand Cozumel Beach and Golf Resort,” Kenyon said.

  “Go on,” Castillo said.

  “Well, I saw Cassidy at the beach and at the bar. I know he saw me, but there was no sign of recognition so I left it there. That was fine with me.”

  “Did you happen to notice anyone with Cassidy?”

  “Yeah. He was with a guy, about his age. Talked funny.”

  “A Russian accent, maybe?” Castillo asked.

  “Could be, Charley.”

  “The interview will be suspended,” Castillo said, “for a brief period while Castillo consults a file.”

  Doherty looked at him with mixed curiosity and annoyance.

  Castillo went quickly to the net pouch behind the pilot’s chair and retrieved his laptop. He turned it on, hurriedly searched through it, and then carried it to Kenyon and held it in front of him.

  “Mr. Kenyon, I show you a computer image of a white male and ask you if this is the man you saw with Cassidy in Cozumel,” Castillo said.

  Kenyon shook his head. “No. Never saw that guy before.”

  Castillo held the computer up for Doherty to see it.

  “Colonel Castillo has shown me the same computer image just now shown to Mr. Kenyon, that of a white male known to me from other photographs,” Doherty said. “This man is not known to Mr. Kenyon. May I go on, Colonel?”

  “Please,” Castillo said.

  “Hold it,” Delchamps said, then went on: “Edgar Delchamps, CIA. The interview will be suspended until I can get a photograph to show Mr. Kenyon.”

  Delchamps dug into his briefcase, took a stack of five-by-seven photographs from it, hurriedly searched through them, selected two, and held them out in front of Kenyon.

  “Look familiar?” he asked.

  “That’s the guy,” Kenyon said.

  “And this one?”

  “Same guy.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure. Cassidy was talking to him at the bar just before he all of a sudden recognized me, came over, and told me he needed a favor.”

  “Hold it a second,” Doherty said. “Mr. Delchamps has shown two clear five-by-seven photographs, one color, one black-and-white, of a white male approximately forty-five years of age, approximately five feet eight, approximately one hundred ninety pounds, to Mr. Kenyon, who positively stated the photos were of the same man, and that this man was with Cassidy in the hotel. The man is apparently well known to Mr. Delchamps but not to me or Colonel Castillo.”

  Delchamps turned his back to Kenyon and mouthed the name Sunev.

  Doherty looked momentarily confused until he made the connection. Then he smiled. Then he lost the smile.

  “What do you think of your good pal now, Castillo?” he asked, almost triumphantly.

  “I never said he was a good pal. I just told you I wasn’t going to report on him to you,” Castillo said. Then he looked at Delchamps and announced: “Bingo!”

  “Bingo indeed, Ace,” Delchamps said.

  Doherty turned back to Kenyon.

  “You say Cassidy came and spoke to you at the bar of the hotel?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Did the man in the photograph Mr. Delchamps just showed you come with him?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You said he said he needed a favor? What kind of a favor?”

  “He said he was having a little cash-flow problem and that he needed to make good on a promise he’d made to a mosque in Philadelphia.”

  “And he wanted you to wire them two million, more or less, from your accounts in the Caledonian Bank and Trust Limited?” Delchamps asked.

  “He said it would just be temporary,” Kenyon said. “I knew he was lying. But what could I do?”

  “Indeed. What could you do? If you didn’t oblige him, he’d tell the IRS what a bad boy you’d been? Right?”

  Kenyon shrugged and nodded.

  “And besides, you had forty-six million of oil-for-food money in the Caledonian Bank and Trust Limited. If the IRS got involved, you’d be liable to lose that, too. Right?”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “This interview of Philip J. Kenyon III is terminated, subject to recall, at seven-fifteen p.m. central standard time, 12 August 2005. All parties present at the commencement were present throughout the interview,” Doherty said, then reached over and reclaimed his tape recorder from Kenyon’s knees.

  “Go to the toilet, Tubby,” Castillo ordered. “Close the door and sit on it.”

  “My clothes?”

  Castillo pointed to the toilet.

  Kenyon got awkwardly to his feet and walked naked down the aisle.

  “What do we do with him?” Castillo asked when the toilet door had been closed.

  “You’re asking me, Colonel?” Doherty asked.

  “Why not? You’re in the criminal business, I’m in the terrorist business, and whatever else that miserable shit is I don’t think he’s a terrorist.”

  “He’s a coconspirator,” Doherty said. “And an accessory before and after the fact.”

  “If you say so. So what do you want to do with him?”

  “Anybody interested in what I think?” Delchamps asked.

  “Not that I know of,” Castillo said, seriously.

  “Fuck you, Ace,” Delchamps said, good-naturedly. “Well, now that you’ve asked for my opinion: How about Jack coming up with some really good interrogators and finding out what else Tubby knows, with these two”—he nodded toward the Secret Service agents—“suitably briefed, sitting in on it to ask questions of their own.”

  “Transcripts of the interrogation, copies of everything, to OOA,” Castillo said. “And they don’t go near a United States Attorney until we decide they should.”

  “I don’t like that last,” Doherty said.

  “I didn’t think you would,” Castillo said. “But what does that mean?”

  “We do everything that Edgar said,” Doherty said. “What’s the risk of him getting on the phone and asking somebody for help?”

  “I think we should tell him that his phones are going to be tapped and that he’s going to have a Secret Service buddy with him day and night until we’re through with him and that, if he’s a bad boy, he goes straight to the Florence ADMAX and does not pass Go,” Castillo said.

  He looked at Doherty.

  “Okay,” Doherty said. “And now what? I mean, right now?”

  “We go back to Midland, and tonight we have dinner with my grandmother. And in the morning, we go to Buenos Aires.”

  Doherty nodded.

  Castillo walked forward to the cockpit.

  “How did it go?” Jake Torine asked.

  “Better than I dared hope. But we have to go to Buenos Aires first thing in the morning.”

  “I figured as much. Not a problem.
”

  “How long is it going to take us to get back to Midland?”

  Torine pointed at the ground.

  “As long as it takes this one-legged junior birdman to get us down from thirty thousand feet,” Torine said. “We’ve been flying a nice big circle over North Texas.” He looked at Miller. “Junior Birdman, commence a gentle descent at this time.”

  “Yes, sir, Colonel, sir. My pleasure, sir,” Miller said and reached for the trim control.

  XVII

  [ONE]

  Aeropuerto Internacional Jorge Newbery

  Buenos Aires, Argentina

  1840 13 August 2005

  It was a clear winter night in Argentina and as they made their approach they could see the sea of lights that was Buenos Aires. They could even pick out the bright yellow snake of lights of the superhighway running from the city to Pilar.

  They had left Double-Bar-C ranch at six, after an enormous breakfast Doña Alicia had insisted on getting up to prepare for them.

  Dick Miller’s disappointment at not being able to go with them—Castillo wanted him both to brief Ambassador Montvale on the “interview” of Philip J. Kenyon III and to be available at the Nebraska Avenue Complex to deal with anything that might come up—was more than a little tempered when Colonel Jake Torine got on the horn and arranged for another F-15D “training flight” to pick him up in Midland and carry him to Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington.

  Castillo, concerned about Yung’s wounded hand, had thought of trying to find some way to tactfully leave him behind in the States without killing his newfound enthusiasm for the OOA but in the end had decided that he would be needed in South America, both to lend his expertise to putting the pieces together at the safe house in the Mayerling Country Club and to deal with Chief Inspector Ordóñez in Uruguay if that became necessary.

  Dinner at the Double-Bar-C had turned out to be very pleasant—even Jack Doherty seemed to be having a good time—although Fernando Lopez had nearly choked on his mouthful of wine when Doña Alicia had suddenly announced, “Oh, damn old age! Why didn’t I think of this earlier? You remember Philip Kenyon, don’t you, Carlos? You were in the Boy Scouts together. We ran into him at the Petroleum Club yesterday and, if I hadn’t been asleep at the switch, we could have had him and his family here tonight. I know he would have loved to see you.”