The shooters pa-4

by W. E. B Griffin

  "And we have the two dead FSB lieutenant colonels," Castillo said.

  "Ed somehow neglected to mention two dead FSB officers," Weiss said.

  "I didn't think you needed to know," Delchamps said.

  Weiss rolled his eyes.

  "Who were they?"

  "One of the colonel's crack pistol marksmen, a chap named Bradley," Delchamps said with a straight face, "took down Yevgeny Komogorov-"

  "Of the FSB's Service for the Protection of the Constitutional System and the Fight Against Terrorism?" Weiss asked drily.

  Delchamps nodded as he went on: "-in the Sheraton Hotel garage in Pilar, outside Buenos Aires. Colonel Komogorov was at the time apparently bent on whacking a fellow Russian by the name of Aleksandr Pevsner-"

  "Pevsner?" Weiss asked, incredulously.

  With an even more imperious gesture than Castillo had given, Delchamps held up his hand to signal he didn't want to be interrupted.

  Castillo laughed.

  Delchamps went on: "-when Bradley put a.45 round in his cheek"-he pointed to a spot immediately below his left eye-"and then Lieutenant Colonel Viktor Zhdankov was found beaten to death in the Conrad Casino and Resort in Punta del Este."

  Weiss's face showed surprise, and perhaps revulsion.

  "Not by us, Milton," Delchamps said. "Do I have to tell you that?"

  "By who?"

  "He was found in the company of a man named Howard Kennedy, who also had been beaten to death. There's a rumor going around that Kennedy was foolish enough to have tried to arrange the whacking of his employer, Mr. Pevsner."

  "Either one of them could have been running Vincenzo," Castillo said thoughtfully.

  Weiss considered that, then nodded.

  "All of this seems to fit very nicely together," Weiss said. "But the bottom line is that nothing is going to be done about it. The Cubans-if they said anything at all-would say that Vincenzo hasn't been in the Direccion General de Inteligencia for years. The Russians will say they never heard of either Zhdankov or Komogorov."

  "What's your point?" Castillo asked.

  "The name of the game is to make the other guys hurt," Weiss said.

  "Okay. But so what?" Castillo said.

  "Let me return to Basic Drugs 101," Weiss said, "since bringing these bad guys before the bar of justice just isn't going to happen. Neither of you has any idea what happens to the heroin once it gets to Argentina, do you?"

  Delchamps and Castillo shook their heads.

  "The intellectually challenged station chief in Asuncion has figured that out," Weiss said. "Has either of you ever wondered how many filet mignon steaks are in the coolers of a cruise ship like, for example, the Holiday Spirit of the Southern Cruise Line? I'll give you a little clue. She carries 2,680 passengers, and a crew of some twelve hundred."

  "A lot, Milton?" Delchamps asked innocently.

  "Since she makes twelve-day cruises out of Miami about the sunny Caribbean, each of which features two steak nights, and filet mignon is an ever-present option on her luncheon and dinner menus, yeah, Edgar, 'a lot.' "And has either of you ever wondered where they get all this meat-or the grapefruits and oranges from which is squeezed the fresh juice for the 2,680 breakfasts served each day, etcetera, etcetera?"

  "Argentina?" Castillo asked innocently.

  "You win the cement bicycle, Charley," Weiss said. "And have either of you ever wondered how all those filet mignons make their way from the Argentine pampas to the coolers of the Holiday Spirit and her many sister ships?"

  Castillo and Delchamps waited for him to go on.

  "I left out the succulent oysters, lobsters, and other fruits of the sea sent from the chilly Chilean South Pacific seas to the coolers of the Holiday Spirit and her sister ships," Weiss said.

  "You're forgiven," Delchamps said. "Get on with it."

  "Air freight!" Weiss said. "Large aircraft-some of them owned by Aleksandr Pevsner, by the way-make frequent, sometimes daily flights from Buenos Aires to Jamaica loaded with chilled but not frozen meat and other victuals for the cruise ship trade."

  "Jesus!" Castillo said, sensing where Weiss was headed.

  "We all know how wonderful Argentine beef is, and how cheap. And most cruise ships-just about all of the Southern Cruise Line ships, and there are four of these, the smallest capable of carrying eleven hundred passengers-call at Montego Bay or Kingston, or both, on each and every voyage. Kingston is served by Norman Manley International Airfield, and Montego Bay by Sangster International.

  "While the happy tourists-is there a word for the people who ride these floating hotels? Cruisers, maybe?-are wandering through the picturesque streets of Kingston and Montego Bay, soaking up culture and taking pictures for the folks back home, the hardworking Jamaican gnomes are moving loins of Argentine beef from refrigerator plants, and occasionally-if yesterday's flight from Buenos Aires was delayed for some reason-directly from the airplane to the coolers on the cruise ships."

  "And under the ice is that day's shipment of heroin," Delchamps said.

  "Edgar, you've always been just terrible about thinking such awful things are going on," Weiss said, mock innocently.

  "And how do they get it off the ship in the States?" Castillo asked.

  "There are several ways to do that," Weiss said. "One is with the ship's garbage and sewage, which now has to be brought ashore, rather than as before, when it was tossed overboard, thereby polluting the pristine waters of the Atlantic. Or, in the wee hours of the morn, as the vessel approaches Miami, it is dumped over the side, to be retrieved later by sportfishermen. Global Positioning System satellites are very helpful to the retrievers."

  "And where is the DEA, or the Coast Guard, or whoever is supposed to be dealing with this sort of thing while all this is going on?" Castillo asked.

  "So far they don't know about it," Weiss said, and Castillo sensed that suddenly Weiss had become dead serious, that his joking attitude had just been shut off as if a switch had been thrown.

  And he made some remark before about Montvale-who was supposed to be on top of everything going on in the intelligence community-not knowing about an "important operation."

  What the hell is going on?

  Weiss met Castillo's eyes for a moment, and Castillo was again reminded of Aleksandr Pevsner.

  "And we don't want them to know about it," Weiss went on.

  "Are you going to tell me about that?" Castillo asked carefully.

  "That's why I'm here, Castillo. I told you, you're in a position to fuck up an important operation. But before I get into that, I want you to understand this conversation never took place."

  "I can't go along with that."

  "You don't have any choice," Weiss said. "I'll deny it. And so will Delchamps."

  "That leaves out the Secret Service guy you ran off," Castillo said. "He saw you here."

  "He saw Delchamps and me taking a walk down memory lane. That's all. Paraguay and Timmons never came up."

  Castillo looked at Delchamps.

  "I gave him my word, Ace. Not for auld lang syne, but because it was the only way I could get him to come."

  "I'm not giving you my word about anything," Castillo said. "And that specifically includes me not going to Montvale and telling him you're withholding intelligence I should have."

  "Before this gets unpleasant, let me tell you about the important operation," Weiss said. "The bottom line, Castillo, is that it'll be your call."

  "Tell me about the operation," Castillo said.

  "There's a hell of a lot of money involved here," Weiss said. "A goodly share of the proceeds go to support the Direccion General de Inteligencia, which means the FSB doesn't have to support it as much as it has been. And that's important, because the FSB's ability to fund clandestine operations, Islamic extremists, etcetera, has been greatly reduced since we went into Iraq and cut off their oil-for-food income.

  "And the DGI is supporting its sister service in the Republic of Venezuela, which I presume you know is abou
t to become the People's Democratic Republic of Venezuela under Colonel Chavez, whose heroes are Fidel Castro, Josef Stalin, and Vladimir Putin.

  "And the profits left over after the DGI gets what it needs go to the FSB's secret kitty, which supports, among other things, all those ex-Stasi and ex-AVO people who are causing trouble all over.

  "Another way to put this is that if it wasn't for all this drug income they're getting, the FSB would have its operations seriously curtailed."

  "Then my question is, why don't you confide in the Coast Guard, the Customs Service, whoever, what you know about this operation and have them stop it?" Castillo said.

  Then he saw Delchamps shake his head, and then the look on Delchamps's face. It said, Not smart, Ace!

  "Because," Weiss said, his face and tone suggesting he was being very patient with a backward student, "even if they did find a cooler full of coke on the Holiday Spirit-and their record of finding anything isn't very good-all that would happen is that we would add a dozen or so people to our prison population."

  "So what's the alternative?"

  "International Maritime Law provides for the seizure of vessels-including aircraft-involved in the international illicit drug trade."

  "You want to grab Pevsner's airplanes?"

  "That, too, but what we want to grab is the Holiday Spirit and her sister ships. Do you have any idea how much one of those floating palaces costs?"

  Castillo shook his head to admit he didn't, then asked, "How are you going to do that?"

  "Prove their owners were aware of the purpose to which they had put their ships."

  "How are you going to that? They're not registered to Vladimir Putin."

  "They're registered to a holding company in Panama," Weiss said. "And proving that Putin controlled that would be difficult, but that doesn't matter. All we have to prove is that the owners knew what was going on; that it was illegal. The owners lose the ship. The Holiday Spirit cost a little over three hundred and fifty million."

  "And how are you going to prove the owners knew?"

  "The operation could not be carried on without the captain being aware of what was going on."

  "But the captains don't own their ships, do they?"

  "No. But they don't get command of a ship except from the owners."

  "Okay."

  "The FSB was not about to entrust a three-hundred-and-fifty-million-dollar ship to some stranger. They wanted their own man running things, and they didn't want him to come from the Saint Petersburg Masters, Mates, and Pilots Union because people might start wondering what the Russians were doing running a cruise ship operation out of Miami.

  "So they provided reliable, qualified masters with phony documents saying they were Latvians, or Estonians, or Poles."

  "That sounds pretty far-fetched."

  "You're a pilot, right? You just flew a Gulfstream Three to Argentina and back, right?"

  Castillo nodded.

  "Anybody ask to see your pilot's license?"

  Castillo shook his head.

  "Anybody ever ask to see your pilot's license?"

  Castillo shook his head again.

  "You're flying an eight-, ten-million-dollar airplane, you're given the benefit of the doubt, right?"

  "Okay."

  "You bring a three-hundred-and-fifty-million-dollar ship into port, everybody's going to say he must be an 'any tonnage, any ocean' master mariner, right? And proved this to the owners-otherwise, they would not have given him their ship, right?"

  Castillo nodded once again.

  "We have proof that the master of the Holiday Spirit and four of his officers gained their nautical experience in the submarine service of the Navy of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and are not Latvians, Estonians, or Poles, or using the names they were born with.

  "Now, all we have to do is prove that the owners knew this, and that said officers were actively involved in the smuggling of controlled substances into the United States…"

  "How are you going to do that?"

  "By having people on the Holiday Spirit. Filipino seamen come cheap. Getting them onto the Holiday Spirit took some doing, but they're in place. And they have been compiling intel-including pictures of the ship's officers checking the incoming drugs, and putting them over the side-for some time. When we're absolutely sure we have enough to go to the Maritime Court in The Hague, we're going to blow the whistle.

  "Unless, of course, you go down there and start making waves causing the system to go on hold. Which would mean we would have to start all over again from scratch."

  "And you don't want me to make waves, is that it?"

  "It's a question of priority."

  "The President wants Timmons freed."

  "So I understand."

  "The only person who can call off my operation is the President," Castillo said simply. "And I don't think he will. And talking about waves, if I go to him with this, and he hears the company is withholding intel like this from Montvale, you'll have a tsunami."

  "You were listening, I trust, when I told you we never had this conversation?"

  Castillo nodded.

  Weiss went on: "Montvale will be pissed on two accounts-first, that he's been kept in the dark, and second, that you let the President know he didn't know what was going on under his nose. When the company denies any knowledge of this, where does that leave you with Montvale? Or the President?"

  "You're suggesting I go down there and go through the motions, but don't really try to get Timmons back?"

  "I'm not suggesting anything, Colonel," Weiss said. "But it's pretty clear to me that if you go down there and pull a professional operation to get this DEA guy back, it's going to tell these people that they have attracted attention they don't want. They'll go in a caution mode, and we don't want that."

  He stood up and looked at Castillo.

  "See you at the briefing tomorrow," he said. "I've been selected to brief you."

  "What you're suggesting, Weiss, is that I just leave Timmons swinging in the breeze."

  "People get left swinging in the breeze all the time," Weiss said. "You know that as well as I do. I told you before, this is your call. One guy sometimes gets fucked for the common good."

  Weiss looked at Delchamps.

  "Always good to see you, Ed. We'll have to do lunch or something real soon."

  And then he walked out of the room.

  Castillo looked at Delchamps.

  "Thanks a lot, Ed."

  "If you want me to, Ace, I'll go with you to Montvale. Or the President. Or both."

  Castillo looked at him with a raised eyebrow but didn't say anything.

  "I said I went back a long way with Weiss. That's not the same thing as saying I liked him then, or like him now. And I don't like the smell of his operation."

  He paused to let that sink in.

  "That being said, I don't think that Montvale will believe you, or me, and his first reaction will be to cover his ass."

  "What if there were three witnesses to that fascinating conversation?" Dick Miller asked, coming into the living room from the den. "I'm a wounded hero. Would that give me credence?"

  "How long have you been in there?" Castillo asked.

  "I got back here just as the Secret Service guy got booted out," Miller said. "And curiosity overwhelmed me."

  "I still don't think that Montvale would believe you, me, or the wounded hero," Delchamps said, "and that his first reaction would be to cover his ass."

  "So what do I do?"

  "You're asking for my advice, Ace?"

  "Humbly seeking same."

  Delchamps nodded and said, "Aside from calling off Jake Torine and Munz, nothing. Give yourself some time to think it over. Hear what Weiss says at the briefing tomorrow."

  "You better call off Munz and Torine," Miller agreed. "I don't think Darby and Solez are a problem. They don't know you've been ordered to get Timmons back. They went to Asuncion to shut mouths; that's to be expected."

&
nbsp; "Let's hope Aloysius's radio works," Castillo said. "I told Torine to go right to Asuncion. They're probably already over the Caribbean."

  He pushed himself out of his chair, picked up his mostly untouched drink, and walked to the den.

  Max followed him.

  VI

  [ONE] 7200 West Boulevard Drive

  Alexandria, Virginia 0630 4 September 2005 Castillo's cell phone buzzed, and on the second buzz, he rolled over in bed, grabbed it, rolled back onto his back, put the phone to his ear, and said, "You sonofabitch!"

  "Good morning, Colonel."

  Castillo recognized the voice as that of his Secret Service driver.

  "It may be for you," Castillo said, "but I have just been licked-on the mouth-by a half-ton dog."

  "I tried to put my head in your door to wake you, but Max made it pretty clear he didn't think that was a good idea."

  "I'll be right down," Castillo said, and sat up.

  Max was sitting on the floor beside the double bed.

  Castillo put his hand on the bed to push himself out of the bed. The blanket was warm. He looked, and saw that the pillow on the other side was depressed.

  "Goddamn it, Max, you're a nice doggie, but you don't get to sleep with me."

  Max said, "Arf."

  Castillo pulled open the door to the front passenger seat of the Denali. Max brushed him aside and leapt effortlessly onto the seat.

  "Tell him to get in the back, Dick," Castillo said.

  Major Dick Miller gave Lieutenant Colonel Castillo the finger and bowed Castillo into the second seat.

  There was a muted buzz and the red LED on the telephone base mounted on the back of the driver's seat began to flash.

  Castillo looked at it. The legend DNI MONTVALE moved across the screen.

  Castillo picked up the handset.

  "Good morning, Mr. Ambassador."

  "Where are you, Charley?"

  "We just pulled into a Waffle House for our breakfast."

  "Are you open to a suggestion?"

  "Yes, sir, of course."

  "Vis-a-vis the briefing this morning: If I sent Truman Ellsworth, representing me, and he announced that you were representing Secretary Hall, I think fewer questions would be raised."