Hunters pa-3

by W. E. B Griffin

  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.

  "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," Doherty 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.

  "I think if he knew, Lorimer would have been dead when we got there. Alek doesn't like people who know things about him walking around."

  "And what do you think Lorimer knew about Pevsner?" Doherty asked.

  "Change that to 'Alek doesn't like people who might know anything the disclosure of which might even remotely inconvenience him walking around.'"

  "That include you, Ace?" Delchamps asked. "You know where he is and you're still walking around."

  "Where is he, Castillo?" Doherty asked.

  "The last time I saw him, he was in Argentina," Castillo said.

  "Jesus Christ!" Doherty said. "And what about Howard Kennedy? Where was he the last time you saw him?"

  "He was at Jorge Newbery airport when we came back from Uruguay."

  "Doing what?"

  "I think Pevsner sent him, to give him an early heads-up in case something had gone wrong."

  "So Kennedy knows where you were and what went down?" Delchamps asked.

  "Yeah, I'm sure he does."

  "You told him?" Doherty asked, incredulously. "You're operating on a Presidential Finding and you told that turncoat sonofabitch all about it?"

  "I didn't tell him anything. That he found out from either Pevsner-or, more likely, from Munz, who had been hit and was on happy pills-is something I couldn't control."

  "That doesn't worry you?" Doherty asked.

  "No. Kennedy works for Pevsner. He knows what happens to people who talk. What does
worry me is Chief Inspector Jose Ordonez of the Uruguayan police, who has figured out-but can't prove-that I used Pevsner's Ranger and that special operators put down the Ninjas."

  "What's he going to do with that information?" Delchamps asked.

  "He's a good friend of Munz, knows that I'm a good friend of Munz, and would probably prefer that the whole episode would go away. If anything, if I had to bet I'd bet he'd go along with the drug dealer theory advanced by Ambassador McGrory."

  "The drug dealer theory?" Doherty asked, incredulously.

  "Ambassador McGrory has developed the theory that Lorimer was, in his alter ego as Jean-Paul Bertrand, antiquities dealer, actually a big-time drug dealer and got whacked-and had his money stolen-when a deal fell through."

  "I don't understand that," Doherty said. "Presumably, the ambassador in Uruguay knew about this operation. What's this drug deal nonsense? Disinformation?"

  "He didn't know-doesn't know-anything about it," Castillo said.

  Doherty shook his head in disbelief.

  "You said something about money," Doherty said. "What money?"

  "Lorimer had about sixteen million dollars in three Uruguayan banks. That's a fact. Whether he skimmed it from the oil-for-food payoffs he was making-which is what I think-or whether it was money he was going to use for more payoffs, I don't know."

  "Where's the money now?"

  "We have it," Castillo said.

  "You stole it?"

  "I like to think of it as having converted it to a good cause," Castillo said.

  Delchamps and Miller chuckled.

  "Does Yung know about this?"

  "Yung's the one who told us how to 'convert' it," Miller said.

  "I don't think I want to hear any more about this," Doherty said.

  "Good, because I can see no purpose in telling you any more than that. And I wish Miller hadn't been so helpful just now."

  "You realize, don't you, Castillo, that Yung's FBI career is really down the toilet?"

  "I thought it was already-guilt by association with Howard Kennedy-pretty much down the toilet."

  "So far as I'm concerned, and most of the senior people in the bureau are concerned, Yung couldn't be faulted for trusting Kennedy-a fellow FBI agent-too much to believe he was even capable of doing what he did. But after this, Jesus Christ!"