The Hostage

by Griffin, W. E. B.

  “How so?” Castillo asked.

  “Have you got any clue what he’s been up to?”

  “Yeah,” Castillo said, “he’s a bagman, maybe the most important bagman, in the Iraqi oil-for-food scheme.”

  Castillo saw the surprise on Torine’s and Fernando’s faces. He had not told them what Kennedy had told him, only that they had met and Kennedy didn’t know where Lorimer was.

  “The skinny is, as you know,” Castillo said, “that the French wanted to ease the sanctions on Hussein but the United States—and the Brits—said hell no. So in its infinite wisdom, the UN security council, in 1996, stepped in with Oil for Food, saying it would keep the Iraqi people alive. It in fact provided Saddam a way to reward his friendly Frogs and Russians and other crooks. Oil allocations totaled some sixty-five billion dollars by the time the United States bagged Baghdad—and with it the program—in 2003. There’s plenty to skim off sixty-five thousand million dollars, and Lorimer was there holding the bag and taking names.”

  “You want to tell me where you got that about Lorimer being the bagman?” Delchamps asked. It was close to a challenge.

  “No.”

  “I’ll ask you again, later,” Delchamps said. “Maybe you’ll change your mind.”

  “Anything is possible,” Castillo said.

  “Okay, for the sake of argument, he’s been the most important bagman. He knows maybe fifty percent of the people—maybe more—who’ve been paid off, how much they’ve been paid off, how, and when. And what for. Some of these people are in the UN, high up in the UN. Therefore, the UN is not interested in having this come out.

  “Some of those paid off are French. The French have an interesting law that says the President of France cannot be investigated while he’s holding that office. And the Deuxième Bureau—you know what that is?”

  Castillo nodded.

  “They regard the agency as a greater threat to La Belle France than the Schutzstaffel ever was, and cooperate accordingly. That’s made looking into this difficult.”

  “I can see where it would,” Castillo said.

  “Same thing for the Germans,” Delchamps went on. “I’ve still got some friends on the other side of the Rhine—I did some time in Berlin and Vienna in the good old days of the Cold War—and they’ve fed me some stuff, together with the friendly advice to watch my back as some very important Germans were involved and don’t want it to come out.

  “There were a lot of Russians involved, too. A lot of the cash we found in Saddam Hussein’s closets got there on airplanes owned by a legendary Russian businessman by the name of Aleksandr Pevsner. You ever hear that name?”

  “I’ve heard it,” Castillo said.

  “He runs sort of a covert FedEx courier service for people who want to ship things around the world without anybody knowing about it. Going off on a tangent with Pevsner, about a month ago I was told—all the station chiefs were told—not to look into anything that sonofabitch was doing without the specific approval of Langley in each case.”

  “Pevsner was involved with the oil-for-food business?” Castillo asked.

  “Not directly, as far as I’ve been able to figure out. What he did was move the money around—like so much freight—and I suspect that a lot of stuff Saddam Hussein wasn’t supposed to get got to Baghdad on his airplanes.”

  Torine’s eyes met Castillo’s for a moment.

  “Which brings us to the Americans,” Delchamps went on. “We had several enterprising businessmen in Houston who were in the oil-for-food racket up to their eyeballs. Forgive me if I sound cynical, but it has been my experience that when rich oil guys make large contributions to politicians, the politicians lend sympathetic ears to them when, for example, they want the agency and the FBI, etcetera, to lay off another businessman, like, for example, this guy Pevsner.”

  Delchamps paused.

  “Can I change my mind about the coffee?”

  “Absolutely,” Castillo said, and picked up the coffee pitcher.

  Delchamps took the cup, added sugar, and stirred it for a moment.

  “So there I was, a couple of days ago, when this Lorimer business came up.”

  “I don’t think I follow you,” Castillo said.

  “The Secret Service guy here is a pal of mine. You know, two old dinosaurs in a forest of young, politically correct State Department flits. Some pal of his called him up and asked him to find Lorimer, and he came to me because he knew I was working on him.”

  He took a sip of coffee, and then went on: “I knew it was going to go bad, even before the ambassador called me in and asked about Lorimer. He’d had a call from . . . Whatsername, Cohen, the secretary of state herself.”

  “Natalie Cohen,” Castillo furnished.

  “Feisty little broad,” Delchamps said. “I like her. Anyway, there I was, about to really bag the little bastard, when somebody blows the whistle on the whole thing.”

  “You want to explain that?”

  “My somewhat cynical makeup made me suspect that somebody in Langley had a big mouth and told somebody in Foggy Bottom that I was about to finish my report on Lorimer. There are people in Foggy Bottom who deeply regret the current feelings of ill will between the Frogs and the United States—and between some senators investigating the oil-for-food scam and the UN—and think it would be just dreadful if we exacerbated those unfortunate situations by suggesting we had information that the Frogs—all the way up to Chirac, and maybe him, too—were involved, and that the bagman was a UN diplomat.”

  “You thought they were going to kill your report?” Castillo asked.

  “Bury it,” Delchamps said. “The way Lorimer was buried. If he was lucky.”

  “Excuse me?” Castillo said.

  “It’s possible, of course, that he’s in Moscow, or maybe Berlin, telling all he knows about who got paid off besides the Russians or Germans. Knowing where the other guys’ bodies are buried is a very useful diplomatic tool. It keeps them from talking about where yours are.”

  “You’re suggesting that Lorimer has been killed?” Castillo asked.

  “He was lucky if he was killed quick—in other words, just to shut him up. If somebody wanted to know what he knew . . . They did a real job on his pal, a Lebanese named Henri Douchon, in Vienna. To encourage him to answer questions, they pulled two of his fingernails, and half a dozen of his teeth. Then they cut his throat.”

  “When was this?” Castillo asked.

  “A couple of weeks ago.”

  “When was the last time anybody saw Lorimer?” Castillo asked.

  “Going by his American Express charges, he flew to Vienna on the twelfth of this month. The same day, he bought—or somebody bought using his AmEx card—a train ticket from Vienna here. I don’t know if he ever used it; it might be something to throw off anybody looking for him. But he might have come back here. Just don’t know. A scenario that occurs to me is that he was grabbed when he went to see his pal Douchon. Then they took him somewhere to ask him questions, or didn’t. Following either possibility, they cut him up in little pieces and dropped him into the beautiful Blue Danube. Or he came back here, where they grabbed him, and after he answered their questions, what was left of him was dropped into the Seine.”

  “Have you considered he might be in hiding?” Castillo asked.

  “Sure. Don’t think so. My guess is that he’s dead. These are very nasty people who wouldn’t think twice before they took him out.”

  “I heard he might have been skimming from the payoff money,” Castillo said.

  “Could be. I doubt it. He was paid well, of course, but I can’t find any trace of big money.”

  “And you think you would have been able to?”

  Delchamps nodded confidently.

  “I even got into his apartment,” he said. “He had some really nice stuff, antiques, paintings, etcetera. More than he could afford on what the UN paid him, but a lot less, I think, than he would have had had he been stupid enough to try to steal fro
m these guys.”

  “Okay,” Castillo said. “Thanks. But one more question: If, for the sake of argument, he were hiding, where would you guess that would be?”

  “In a closet somewhere,” Delchamps said. “Or under a bed. Jean-Paul Lorimer was a wimp. He didn’t have the balls to be a criminal.”

  “You knew him?”

  “I saw him around. I’m the cultural attaché at the embassy. I can put the opera, et cetera, on the expense account.And I get invited to all the parties. The Corps Diplomatique loves to have Americans around so they can tell us how we’re fucking up the world.” He paused. “Okay, that’s what I know. Anything you think I missed?”

  “I’d like to see all your files on Lorimer,” Castillo said.

  “So they can disappear into the black hole?”

  “Photocopies would do. That way you’d still have the originals.”

  “You’re not asking for the originals?”

  Castillo shook his head. “Photocopies would be fine. How long would it take you to make copies?”

  “Which you would then turn over to Montvale—or somebody in the agency, maybe—so they could message me to ‘immediately transfer by courier the originals of the documents listed below and certify destruction of any copies thereof’?”

  “I don’t have to give Montvale anything,” Castillo said, “and right now I can’t think of anything I want to give him. And as far as the agency is concerned, I am on Langley’s Fuck the Bastard If Possible list. I want the copies for me.”

  Delchamps inclined his head, obviously in thought. Then he took another sip of his coffee. Finally, he leaned back in his chair and lit a small cigar.

  “Odd that you should ask about photocopies of my files on Lorimer, Mr. Castillo. By a strange coincidence, I spent most of the afternoon and early evening yesterday, starting right after Ambassador Montvale called me, making photocopies of them. At the time, I was thinking of retiring and writing a book, What the CIA Didn’t Want to Get Out About Oil for Food.”

  “What about the ‘my lips are sealed forever plus three weeks’ statement you signed? You could get your tail in a crack doing something like that.”

  “You ever run into a guy named Billy Waugh?”

  Castillo nodded.

  “I thought you might have,” Delchamps said. “Billy wrote a book called I Had Osama bin Laden in My Sights and the Wimps at Langley Wouldn’t Let Me Terminate Him—or something like that—and nothing ever happened to Billy.”

  “They were probably afraid that Billy would write another one, CIA Assholes I Have Known,” Castillo said.

  Delchamps chuckled. “I thought about that,” he said. “And I figured they’d probably come to the same conclusion about me.”

  He pushed himself out of the chair and held his hand out with his thumb and index finger held wide apart. “It makes a stack about this big,” he said. “I’ll go next door and get them.”

  “Thanks,” Castillo said. “One more question. Why did you change your mind? About telling me anything?”

  “Straight answer?”

  “Please.”

  “Like I said, I’m a dinosaur. I’ve been doing this a long time. When I was a kid, starting out in Berlin, we had guys there who had been in the second war, Jedburghs, people like that. I even knew Bill Colby. One of them told me if you couldn’t look into a man’s eyes and size him up you’d better find something else to do. He was right. You—the three of you—have all got the right look.”

  Delchamps nodded at Fernando and Torine and walked out of the room.

  When the door had closed, Fernando said, “So Lorimer’s dead. So now what, Gringo?”

  “We don’t know that he’s dead,” Castillo said. “From what Delchamps said, if Lorimer was grabbed, it was around the twelfth of this month. They didn’t even abduct Mrs. Masterson until the twentieth, or blow Masterson away until the morning of the twenty-third. That’s several days. I think they would have heard, in that time, if somebody had blown Lorimer away.”

  “Okay,” Fernando said. “Same question. What now?”

  “Go get Sergeant Kranz out of bed,” Castillo said. “Tell him to get packed.”

  Sergeant First Class Seymour Kranz, a Delta/Gray Fox communicator, had been one of the two communicators they’d picked up—together with their satellite communications equipment—at Fort Bragg. Colonel Torine had told Kranz he had been chosen to go with them to Europe, rather than the other communicator, who had set up at the Nebraska Avenue Complex, because Torine devoutly believed that when flying across an ocean every pound counted. Kranz was barely over the Army’s height and weight minimums. The real reason was that Kranz had been with Torine and Castillo when they were searching for the stolen 727 and proved that you don’t have to be six feet tall and weigh two hundred pounds to be a first-rate special operator.

  “Where are we going?” Torine asked.

  “We’re going to see my uncle Otto,” Castillo said, and walked to the couch and sat down and picked up the telephone on the coffee table in front of it.

  [TWO]

  Executive Offices Die Fulda Tages Zeitung Fulda, Hesse, Germany 0805 27 July 2005

  Frau Gertrud Schröeder was a stocky—but by no means fat, or even chubby—sixty-year-old Hessian who wore her gray hair done up in a bun. She had been employed by the Tages Zeitung since she was twenty, and had always worked for the same man, Otto Göerner.

  Otto Göerner had joined the firm shortly after he graduated from Philipps University in Marburg an der Lahn, in part because he was Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger’s best friend. Wilhelm was the son and heir apparent to Herman Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger, the managing director and just about sole stockholder in Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H.

  When Gertrud joined the Gossinger firm, it had been a medium-sized corporation, not nearly as large as it had been before World War II, or was now. The firm’s prewar holdings in Hungary and what had become East Germany—timber, farms, newspapers, breweries, and other businesses—had been confiscated by the communist East German and Hungarian governments.

  By 1981, Otto Göerner had risen in the corporate hierarchy to become Herman Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger’s—the Old Man’s—assistant. The title did not reflect his true importance. He was the de facto number two man. But clearly stating this would have been awkward. Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger was supposed to be number two in the family firm.

  It had been Gertrud’s very privately held opinion at the time that the issue would be resolved when Otto married Frau Erika von und zu Gossinger. Frau Erika had never married; she was called “frau” out of respect for the family’s sensitivities. As a very young girl, Erika had made a mistake, with an American aviator of all people, the result of which was a boy, Christened Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger. At the time, no one knew where the father was. Gertrud knew the Old Man could have found him if he wanted to, and concluded the Old Man had decided that no father at all was better, for the time being, than an American who might get his hands on Gossinger money.

  The time being, in Gertrud’s judgment, meant until the Old Man could arrange a marriage between his daughter and his assistant. He—everyone—knew that Otto Göerner was extraordinarily fond of Frau Erika and Little Karlchen, and that the Old Man thought Göerner would be both a good husband to Erika and a good father to his only grandson, whom he adored.

  And once they were married, of course, it would be entirely appropriate for Otto Göerner, now a member of the family, to hold any position within the family firm.

  The issue was resolved that year—but not in the way Gertrud hoped—when a tire blew on Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger’s Mercedes as he and his father were on their way home from Kassel. The police estimated the car was traveling in excess of 220 kilometers per hour when it crashed through the guardrails of a bridge on the A7 Autobahn and fell ninety meters into the ravine below.

  That meant that Frau Erika became just about the sole stockholder of Gossinger Beteiligungsge
sellschaft, G.m.b.H. What shares she did not now own were in a trust fund the Old Man had set up for Karlchen, who was then twelve. As expected, Otto Göerner became the managing director of the firm. Frau Gertrud believed it was now simply a matter of waiting for an appropriate period of time of mourning—say, six months—to pass before Frau Erika married Otto.

  That didn’t happen, either. Frau Erika was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. She turned to the U.S. Army to find Little Karlchen’s father. He was located in the National Cemetery in San Antonio, Texas, under a tombstone on which was carved a representation of the Medal of Honor.

  His family was located, too, and to Frau Gertrud it seemed that the Gossinger empire was about to pass into the hands of a Texas family of Mexican extraction, and that Poor Little Karlchen was about to be moved from the family mansion—Haus im Wald—in Bad Hersfeld to an adobe shack on the Texas desert, where his newly found grandfather would doze in the sun with his sombrero over his eyes as flies buzzed around him.

  That didn’t happen, either. Less than twenty-four hours after she learned that her son had left a love child behind him in Germany, Doña Alicia Castillo was at the door of the House in Woods, where she told Frau Erika she had come to take care of her and the boy. She was shortly followed by Don Fernando Castillo, her husband, Little Karlchen’s grandfather, and President and chief executive officer of Castillo Enterprises, Inc. When Gertrud turned to Standard & Poor’s to see exactly what that was, she learned that Castillo Enterprises, Inc., was a privately held corporation with estimated assets worth approximately 2.3 times those of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H.

  Two weeks before Frau Erika died, Don Fernando Castillo took Little Karlchen, now renamed Carlos Guillermo Castillo, to Texas, and left “for the time being, until I can get a handle on what’s what” Otto Göerner as managing director of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H.