The Hunters

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Which was?”

  “If you succeed, he can claim credit. If you fail, he can say it wouldn’t have happened if you worked for him.”

  Castillo grunted.

  “And he was right,” Naylor went on. “You do need his influence and authority. The FBI and the CIA—and everybody else—are afraid of him. And with good reason. Once it becomes known, as it soon will, that he’s standing behind you, people will think very carefully before knifing you in the back.”

  “I thought I had the President standing behind me,” Castillo said.

  “You do. But the President is a decent fellow. The ambassador, on the other hand, is well known as a follower of the Kennedy philosophy.”

  “Sir?”

  “Don’t get mad, get even,” Naylor said. “He is not a man to be crossed. But on the other hand, I think he’s a man of his word.”

  Castillo looked at his wristwatch.

  “I’ve got to change out of my uniform and get out to Dulles,” he said. “But before I do, I really would like another drink.”

  “After that, we both need one,” Naylor said. “But there’s one thing you have to do before that.”

  “Sir?”

  Naylor took out his cellular telephone and punched an autodial number.

  “Allan Naylor, Doña Alicia,” he said a moment later. “I’m sitting here in the Army-Navy Club in Washington with Lieutenant Colonel Castillo and we thought we’d call and say hello.

  There was a pause.

  “Yes, ma’am, that’s what I said.”

  He handed the cellular to Castillo.

  “Your grandmother would like a word with you, Colonel.”

  An hour and a half later, as Air France flight 9080 climbed to cruising altitude somewhere over Delaware, Herr Karl Gossinger, the Washington correspondent of the Tages Zeitung, accepted a second glass of champagne from the first-class cabin attendant—and suddenly startled her by bitterly exclaiming, “Oh, shit!”

  It had just occurred to him that he had not only not gone to see Special Agent Elizabeth Schneider in her hospital bed but had not even called her to tell her why he couldn’t.

  [TWO]

  Suite 222

  InterContinental Paris

  3 rue de Castiglione

  Paris, France

  1230 5 August 2005

  The bellman placed Castillo’s suitcase on the nicely upholstered stand next to the dresser, graciously accepted his tip, and left, pulling the door to the suite quietly closed behind him. Castillo made a beeline for the toilette, voided his bladder, then sat down on one of the double beds. He picked up the telephone and dialed a number from memory.

  “United States embassy,” a woman’s pleasant voice answered.

  “Monsieur Delchamps, s’il vous plaît.”

  The Paris CIA station chief answered on the second buzz: “Delchamps.”

  “My name is Gossinger, Mr. Delchamps. Perhaps you remember we met recently in the Crillon?”

  Delchamps hesitated just perceptibly.

  “Oh, yes. Mr. Gossinger, is it? I’ve been expecting your call. You’re in the Crillon again?”

  “The Continental. I was wondering if you were free for lunch.”

  “Yes, I am. How does a hamburger sound?”

  “You’re not suggesting McDonald’s?”

  “No. What you get in McDonald’s is a frenchified hamburger. You can still get a real hamburger in Harry’s New York Bar. It’s right around the corner from the Continental. You want to meet me in the lobby? I can leave here right now.”

  “A real hamburger sounds fine. I’ll be waiting. Thank you.”

  “Your wish is my command, Herr Gossinger,” Delchamps said and hung up.

  Delchamps—a nondescript man in his late fifties wearing a some what rumpled suit—came around the corner from the rue de Rivoli ten minutes later.

  He offered Castillo his hand.

  “Nice to see you again, Mr. Gossinger. How may I be of service?”

  “Why don’t we wait until we get to Harry’s?” Castillo replied.

  “Whatever you wish, sir,” Delchamps said.

  Castillo eyed him a moment. My chain is being pulled. What’s he up to?

  “The Continental has an interesting history, Mr. Gossinger,” Delchamps said as they started down rue de Castiglione toward the Ritz and the Place de l’Opera. “Are you interested?”

  “Fascinated,” Castillo said, smiling and playing along.

  “There was once a monastery where it now stands,” Delchamps said. “Louis XVI and his girlfriend—‘Let them eat cake’ Marie Antoinette—were staying there just before they were taken over to the Place de la Concorde and had their heads removed in the name of liberty.”

  “You don’t say?”

  “It’s absolutely true.”

  “Thank you for sharing that with me.”

  “My pleasure, sir,” Delchamps said. “But let me continue since you seem to find this of interest.”

  “Please do,” Castillo said.

  The conversation was momentarily interrupted by the sight of an incredibly beautiful, long-legged blonde coming out of the Hotel Ritz. She was surrounded by four muscular men who might as well have had SECURITY stamped on their large foreheads. She got into the rear seat of a Maybach, in the process revealing a good deal of thigh. One of the gorillas with her got in the front seat of the car, another trotted quickly to a Mercedes in front of it, and the other two trotted to an identical Mercedes behind it. The convoy rolled majestically away toward the rue de Rivoli.

  “I regret being unable to identify that young woman for you, Mr. Gossinger, as I can see you are really interested,” Delchamps said after they had passed the entrance to the Ritz. “But I’m sure she’s someone famous.”

  “Either that or a high-class hooker,” Castillo said.

  “The two possibilities are not mutually exclusive,” Delchamps said.

  Castillo chuckled.

  “But I was telling you about the Continental, wasn’t I?” Delchamps asked and then went on without waiting for a reply. “And it was in the Continental—I seem to remember in 1880, but don’t hold me to that—that what many regard as the advertising coup of all time took place.”

  “I’ve always been interested in advertising,” Castillo said. “Tell me about that.”

  “Tourism was just beginning to blossom and become big business,” Delchamps said. “The British, the Italians, the Germans, and of course the French were in hot competition for the Yankee tourist dollar. There was hardly a building on Manhattan Island without a billboard urging the Yankees to come to England, Italy, Germany, or France. There were so many of them that not one of them really caught people’s attention. And the advertising was really expensive, which really bothered the French.

  “The matter was given a great deal of thought, and, in studying the problem the French realized that the ideal advertisement would be something that incorporated novelty. Edison had just given us the lightbulb, you will recall, so the new advertisement had to include one of those. Yankees, the French knew, also liked amply bosomed females, so the advertisement would have to have one of those, too. How about an amply breasted woman holding an electric light over her head?”

  Castillo laughed aloud.

  “You sonofabitch, you had me going. The Statue of Liberty.”

  Delchamps smiled and nodded.

  “And if we give it to the Yankees, the clever Frogs realized, call it a ‘gift of friendship’ or something, not only will the Yankees never take it down but—desperate as they are to have people like them—they’ll put it someplace where it can’t be missed. And if we give it to them, they’ll pay to maintain it. If we play our cards right, we can probably even get them to pay for part—maybe most—of it.”

  “God, isn’t history fascinating?” Castillo said.

  “That meeting took place right in your hotel,” Delchamps said. “And here we are on rue Danou, site of the legendary Harry’s New York Bar. Wou
ld you be interested to learn that Ernest Hemingway used to hang around in Harry’s?”

  “Absolutely,” Castillo said as Delchamps held open the door to the bar for him.

  “Paris was known in those days as the intellectual center of the world. The truth is that before we sent Pershing over here to save their ass, they had emptied the French treasury and wiped out a generation of their male population in a standoff with the Krauts…”

  He paused to direct Castillo, pointing to the stairway to the basement. When he had followed Castillo down the narrow, winding stairway and they had taken stools at the bar, he picked up where he had left off.

  “And, presuming you had the Yankee dollar, it was one of the cheapest places to live. Not to mention that since most of the young Frogs had been killed in the trenches, there was no shortage of places for you to hide your salami.”

  The bartender appeared.

  “They have other stuff, but they make a really good hamburger,” Delchamps said.

  “Sounds fine,” Castillo said.

  Delchamps ordered—in fluent Parisian French, Castillo noted—the hamburgers, medium rare, and two bottles of Dortmunder Union beer.

  “Do you find it interesting, Herr Gossinger, that your tail is resting where very possibly Hemingway’s tail once rested?”

  “Yes, I find that interesting,” Castillo said.

  “And would you be interested in hearing the true story of Hemingway’s war service as an officer?”

  “I would be interested.”

  “He drove an ambulance in the Italian Army Medical Corps,” Delchamps said. “Normally, as you know, Herr Oberst, ambulance drivers are privates. Oh, every once in a while there’s a PFC, and maybe even a corporal after long and faithful service, but usually a private.”

  “I suppose that’s true,” Castillo said.

  “Hemingway was a lieutenant,” Delchamps said. “The Italian government decided it wouldn’t be good if all the starry-eyed American boys who rushed to do their part in the war to end all wars wrote home to Mama about how privates driving ambulances in the Italian Army were treated and fed, so they made them all second lieutenants.”

  “Really?”

  “True story. You found it interesting, I hope?”

  “Absolutely! But you know what I would really find interesting to know?”

  “And what is that?”

  “Please tell me if you deliver these fascinating, interesting lectures on little-known facts of history to everyone who comes to Paris or if you have some interesting—possibly nefarious—purpose in relating them to me.”

  “In your case, Herr Oberst Gossinger, I was ordered to do so,” Delchamps said as he took a sheet of paper from his pocket.

  That’s the second time he called me “Herr Oberst.” I wonder what’s that all about?

  “This came in at six this morning, Colonel,” Delchamps said, handing the paper to Castillo, “making it necessary for me to get out of bed at that obscene hour and go to the fucking embassy to get it. I was, as you can imagine, more than a little pissed, for several reasons.”

  Castillo unfolded the sheet of paper and read it.

  * * *

  TOP SECRET

  URGENT

  DUPLICATION FORBIDDEN

  DELIVER IMMEDIATELY TO EDGAR J. DELCHAMPS ONLY AND REPORT TIME OF DELIVERY OR REASONS FOR FAILURE TO DO SO

  FROM: DIRECTOR NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE

  TO: EDGAR J. DELCHAMPS

  CIA STATION CHIEF PARIS

  COPIES TO: (EYES ONLY) SECSTATE, SECHOMELANDSEC; DIRCIA

  COLONEL C. G. CASTILLO, USA, IS PRESENTLY EN ROUTE PARIS ON A MISSION FOR THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES WHICH HE MAY AT HIS SOLE DISCRETION ELECT TO CLARIFY FOR YOU.

  COLONEL CASTILLO WILL BE FURNISHED WHATEVER ASSISTANCE AND INTELLIGENCE HE REQUESTS, TO INCLUDE, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, ACCESS TO AGENCY-OWNED AVIATION ASSETS. FURTHER, IT IS DIRECTED THAT YOU FURNISH HIM WITH ANY INTELLIGENCE NOT SPECIFICALLY REQUESTED BUT IN WHICH YOU FEEL HE MAY BE INTERESTED.

  CHARLES W. MONTVALE

  DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE

  TOP SECRET

  * * *

  “When Montvale called the last time you came here, he told me you were a major, Ace,” Delchamps said, accusingly.

  “I’m a lieutenant colonel as of yesterday,” Castillo said.

  “Then permit me to be among the very first to congratulate you.”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with this,” Castillo said, handing the message back. “But it does explain the interesting history lectures, doesn’t it?”

  “You going to tell me about this presidential mission you’re on or are we going to fuck around with each other in the dark?”

  “It’s more than a mission. There’s been a Presidential Finding,” Castillo said. “The bottom line of which is, I’m supposed to find and ‘render harmless’ whoever whacked Jack the Stack Masterson in Buenos Aires.”

  “And you’re working for who? Montvale directly?”

  “The President directly. Montvale thinks I should be working for him.”

  “Well, that explains that little middle-of-the-night billet-doux, doesn’t it?”

  “He makes me feel like a sixteen-year-old virgin with some thirty-year-old guy chasing me who won’t take no for an answer.”

  “I take your point, even if I don’t think you were ever a sixteen-year-old virgin,” Delchamps said. “The UN notified the embassy that Lorimer was killed during a robbery in Uruguay, of all goddamned places. That’s obviously bullshit. You have the real skinny on that?”

  “He was whacked, with a Madsen, at an estancia he owned down there.”

  “Your source reliable?”

  “I was there. I had just told Lorimer he was about to be returned to the bosom of his family when somebody stuck a Madsen through the window, put two bullets in his head, and wounded one of the guys with me.”

  “You do get around, don’t you, Ace?”

  “The bad guys also garroted one of my guys, a Delta Force sergeant who wasn’t easy to get to. They were real professionals.”

  “Who all unfortunately left this vale of tears before they could tell you who they worked for?”

  Castillo nodded. “There were six of them, all dressed in black, no identification.”

  “Sounds like Spetsnaz or Mossad,” Delchamps said. “Or maybe even Frogs from Rip-em.”

  “From where?”

  The bartender delivered their Dortmunder Union. Delchamps waited until he was out of earshot before answering.

  “Le premiere Régiment de Parachutistes d’Infanterie de Marine,” Delchamps explained. “Rip-em, from the acronym, are pretty good. The French version of the English SAS, which is where they got started. Rumor has it that they’ve got a bunch of ex-Spetsnaz. From Spetsnaz to Légion Etrangère to Rip-em.”

  “French?” Castillo thought aloud.

  “Why not? The Frogs were up to their ears in the oil-for-food business and, from what I hear, Lorimer knew which ones.”

  “I never even thought of the French,” Castillo admitted.

  “You didn’t learn anything from Lorimer? Jesus, how the hell did you find him? In Uruguay?”

  “I did find what we believe to be almost sixteen million skimmed from the bribe funds, but, as you put it, he passed from this vale of tears before I could ask him about it.”

  “Sit on that, and see who tries to get it.”

  “We’ve got it,” Castillo said.

  “Good for you!” Delchamps said and took his beer glass and, in a toast, clinked it against Castillo’s.

  Delchamps took a sip, then continued: “You were going to tell me how you found Lorimer. I was convinced—as I told you—that he was feeding the fish in either the Seine or the Danube.”

  “I have a source, a reporter, who’s been running down the transfer of money from oil-for-food profits from Germany to South America—Uruguay and Argentina—and I got some names from him. I was showing them to an FBI agent in
Montevideo who was working money laundering. He opened one of his files and Jean-Paul Lorimer’s picture was in it. He had another identity—Jean-Paul Bertrand, Lebanese passport, antiquities dealer—and what I’m guessing is that when they stopped looking for Lorimer, he was going to move elsewhere…with the sixteen mil.”

  “Reporter from where?”

  “A German newspaper.”

  “That makes me wonder about Gossinger,” Delchamps said.

  “I was born in Germany to a German mother. So far as the Germans are concerned, that makes me a German forever and eligible for a German passport. It’s a handy cover.”

  “You going to tell me who Castillo is?”

  “My father was a Huey pilot who got killed in Vietnam before he got around to marrying my mother. When I was twelve, my father’s parents found out about me and off I went to the States, with my father’s name on my American passport.”

  Delchamps met his eyes for a moment but didn’t respond directly. Instead, he said, “I would say that maybe the KSK is involved, but—”

  “The KSK?”

  “Die Kommando Spezialkräfte, KSK, German Special Forces. You didn’t know?”

  His German pronunciation is perfect. He sounds like he’s a Berliner. Well, he told me he’d done time in Berlin.

  “Two of the guys in black were black-skinned,” Castillo said. “I never even thought they might be German.”

  Which was pretty goddamned stupid of me.

  Delchamps looked as if he had been going to say something but had changed his mind.

  “Say it,” Castillo said.

  Delchamps looked at him for a moment, then shrugged.

  “Some of the kids—hell, thousands of them—in situations like yours had black fathers whose family didn’t take them to the States. When they grew up—and being a black bastard in Germany couldn’t have been a hell of a lot of fun—they found getting jobs was hard, but they were German citizens and could join the army. A lot of them did. And, by and large, most of them weren’t fans of anything American.”