The Hunters
Page 56
“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 José Ordóñez 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!”
“What do I have to do,” Castillo said, coldly, “remind you that you’re not going to tell ‘most of the senior people in the bureau’—for that matter, anybody in the FBI—about any of this?”
“He already knows too much,” Miller said, forcing a serious tone. “We’re going to have to kill him.”
Doherty looked at Miller in shocked disbelief, even after he realized his chain was being pulled, and even after he saw the smiles on Castillo’s and Delchamps’s faces.
“It’s an old company joke, Jack,” Delchamps said. “The special operators stole it.”
“And you think it’s funny?” Doherty said.
“I guess that depends on the company,” Castillo said, not very pleasantly. “Okay. I have reminded you before witnesses that you have been made privy to information you are not to disclose to anyone in the FBI. Are we clear on that, Inspector Doherty?”
“We’re clear on that, Colonel,” Doherty replied, stiffly.
“Now, so far as your blackboards are concerned,” Castillo went on, “you will write ‘Putin’ on them whenever you wish to make reference to Pevsner and ‘Schmidt’ whenever you wish to make reference to Howard Kennedy. I don’t think those young women will make the connection, and maybe it’ll even sail over Agnes’s head. Clear?”
“The director of the FBI is named Schmidt, as you goddamned well know,” Doherty said. “And you use it to describe someone like Howard Kennedy? What is it with you, Colonel? You have some deep psychological need to really piss people off?”
“This is the truth,” Castillo said. “We are already using those code names in Argentina. At the time—before I had any suspicion that we would be dealing with a very senior FBI officer—they seemed appropriate. Now I readily admit ‘Schmidt’ doesn’t, but it’s too late to change it.”
“Let me say something, Jack,” Delchamps said. “Nothing disrespectful in this, but I’ve always felt that the FBI could use a little humor. Castillo wasn’t being disrespectful. Irreverent, sure. But what’s so wrong with that?”
Doherty looked at Delchamps for a long moment and then, without replying, turned to Castillo.
“Are we through in here, Colonel? Or can I get back to my blackboards?”
[TWO]
Conference Room
Office of the Chief of Operational Analysis
Department of Homeland Security
Nebraska Avenue Complex
Washington, D.C.
1925 11 August 2005
Inspector John J. Doherty, visibly exhausted, suddenly turned from the blackboard on which he was working and announced, “Sorry, but my brain just went on automatic shutdown. We’ll have to pick this up again in the morning. Half past seven, something like that?”
Castillo nodded. He’s right. You’re only fooling yourself thinking you can push yourself when you’re wiped out. And I’m wiped out. We’re all wiped out.
“Fine with me,” Castillo had quickly agreed.
Juliet Knowles and the English girl—he finally had learned her name was Heather Maywood—had been wiped out when they quit at half past four, thirty minutes after normal quitting time. Since then, Castillo and Miller had been manning the laptops.
Surprising Castillo, Doherty had not wanted to talk to anyone at the safe house in the Mayerling Country Club. When he saw the look on Castillo’s face, he offered a terse explanation.
“We’ll start with what I get from you here. Then we’ll get what they have and start looking for both confirmation and anomalies.”
With no enthusiasm at all, Castillo had decided that he had no choice but to let Doherty do whatever the hell Doherty was doing the way Doherty wanted to do it.
Castillo had given Delchamps the printouts of the material Eric Kocian had given him in Budapest as soon as they had been ready. He had read them with one eye, keeping the other on the blackboards until immediately after lunch—paper cartons of allegedly Chinese food, the remnants of which
filled a wastebasket—for Langley to see, as he put it, “First, if Montvale really got me in over there and, second, if he did, to see what I can find in the file-and-forget cabinets that matches this stuff.”
At four o’clock, Yung had called saying he was about to get on an airplane in New Orleans and did Castillo want him to come to the office or what?
Castillo had told him there was nothing for him do right now, he didn’t “have the data yet”—by which he meant the intercepts from NSA, which at that point he didn’t expect until the next day—but to come to the Nebraska Complex at eight the next morning.
Delchamps had called a little after six and reported that “the door was really open, to my surprise,” but that he’d had enough and was quitting for the day. He had refused Castillo’s offer of supper, saying he was going to his room in the Marriott and get on the horn to some other dinosaurs to see what they remembered, and would see them in the morning.
Doherty had left immediately. Castillo and Miller had stayed until NSA technicians had swept the room and Department of Homeland Security maintenance personnel had cleaned it up. Then they had set up a security officer outside the door to the conference room from the corridor, locked the door to it from Castillo’s office, and were driven to the Mayflower in a Secret Service Yukon XL.
In the SUV, they confessed to one another that they had no idea where Doherty was headed with his blackboard, but that he obviously did and maybe they could make sense of them in the morning when their heads were clear.
They went to the suite, ordered club sandwiches and beer from room service, and went to bed before ten, both of them first having fallen asleep watching television in the living room.
[THREE]
Conference Room
Office of the Chief of Operational Analysis
Department of Homeland Security
Nebraska Avenue Complex
Washington, D.C.
0555 12 August 2005
Castillo nearly didn’t pick up when the red bulb flashed on the White House telephone on the conference table. For one thing he seriously doubted that the President of the United States wished to speak personally to him—especially at this hour—and he didn’t want to talk to anyone else—especially Ambassador Montvale—who was authorized to use the system.
What he wanted to do—and had, in fact, ninety seconds earlier begun to do—was study the half dozen blackboards in the room to see if he could make any sense out of Doherty’s symbols, arrows, and question marks.
And he knew that if he didn’t pick up the red handset, Miller would.
But he picked it up anyway.
Before he could open his mouth, a male voice said, “Not bad. I understand the protocol requires a pickup in thirty seconds or less. That took you twenty-two.”
“Who’s this?” Castillo asked, although he had suspicions.
The reply came in a voice which would not win any amateur night contests, softly singing a song from Castillo’s past: “We’ll bid fare-well to Kay-det Gray, and don the Army Blue…”
“How can you be so cheerful at this hour?” Castillo asked.
“I’ve been up since three,” Colonel Gregory J. Kilgore said. “That’s when the fisherman called to tell me he’d hooked a whopper. And by the time I got over here, about four, he was waiting to tell me he’d hooked all kinds of things. And more have been caught in the net since then. I’m separating the shellfish from the trash fish right now.”
“And you’re going to tell me what?”
“I’m not going to tell you anything,” Kilgore said. “I thought that was understood between us. But a fleet-footed messenger—actually, he’s driving a Mini Cooper—is headed your way as we speak bearing some of the initial catch. Watch out for him.”
“This is a secure line…” Castillo began but stopped when he realized Kilgore had broken the connection.
Twenty-five minutes later, a red-and-black Mini Cooper pulled up in the curved driveway of the building. A trim young man in a gray suit got out and walked toward the door.
There was little question in Castillo’s mind that he was Kilgore’s “fleet footed messenger,” but he resisted the temptation to intercept him.
Let’s see what he does with the envelope.
The young man surprised Castillo by walking to him the minute he was inside the building.
“Mr. Castillo?” he asked, politely.
“How’d you know?”
“You were described to me, sir,” the young man said. “May I see some identification, please?”
The only thing Castillo had to show him were his Secret Service credentials.
The young man examined them carefully, said, “Thank you, sir,” and took a large white manila envelope from his jacket pocket and handed it to Castillo.
“This is for you, sir.”
Castillo saw that the young man was wearing a West Point ring.
“Thank you,” Castillo said. “Do you want me to sign for this?”
“That won’t be necessary, sir. Good morning, sir.”
The young man walked quickly out of the building, got in his little car, and drove off.
Castillo went to the elevator bank, ran his card through the reader, and rode up to his office. Only when he was in the conference room did he open the envelope.
It contained a sheaf of paper and an unmarked compact disc.
When he fed the CD to his laptop he saw that it contained a document in Microsoft Word format. He opened it.
He compared what came onto his monitor with the second page—the first page was blank—of the sheaf of papers. They appeared to be identical. He started to read what was on the screen:
* * *
SYNOPSIS:
IT ALMOST IMMEDIATELY BECAME APPARENT THAT A NUMBER OF ENTITIES HAVE AN INTEREST IN CERTAIN ACTIVITIES OF THE CALEDONIAN BANK & TRUST LIMITED. (SEE APPENDIX 3)
* * *
* * *
SOME OF THE FILTER KEYS USED TO DEVELOP INFORMATION FOR THESE ENTITIES ARE IDENTICAL TO THOSE PROVIDED BY YOU. (SEE APPENDIX 4)
INFORMATION DEVELOPED FROM YOUR FILTERS MAY BE FOUND IN APPENDIX 1, AND INFORMATION WHICH YOU MAY FIND OF INTEREST MAY BE FOUND IN APPENDIX 2.
* * *
Castillo picked up the sheaf of papers and found Appendix 3. Among the entities listed were the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Internal Revenue Service.
That was interesting. Maybe—probably—there was something in files somewhere that would be useful.
He turned back to the laptop and scrolled down to Appendix 1.
Appendix 1 was five pages of data, dates, amounts, and account numbers. It made no sense to Castillo at all.
He went into his office. Miller was behind Castillo’s desk, studying his laptop computer screen, his stiff leg resting on an open drawer.
“Where’s Yung?” Castillo asked.
Miller shrugged. “You told him to come in at eight.”
“Where’s he staying? I need him now.”
Miller shrugged again.
“What have you got?” Miller asked.
Castillo handed him the sheaf of papers. Miller glanced through it, then said, “Yeah, you’re right. You do need him.” He paused. “He’ll be here in an hour, give or take.”
“You’re a lot of goddamned help!”
“It is not nice to be cruel to a cripple,” Miller said, piously.
Inspector Doherty came into the office at seven twenty-five.
“Good morning,” he said without much enthusiasm.
“We’ve heard from NSA,” Castillo said and handed him the sheaf of papers.
Doherty examined them.
“It’s gibberish to me,” he announced. “You need an expert, like Yung. I thought you sent for him.” He looked at Castillo for a moment, his face suggesting he didn’t like what he saw, then said, “Well, back to work,” and went into the conference room.
Castillo motioned for Miller to go with him. Miller
nodded, lifted his bad leg off the open drawer with both hands, and got to his feet.
Mr. Agnes Forbison came to work at seven-forty. She knew where Yung was staying—“at the Marriott by the Press Club. He and Mr. Delchamps are both there.”
“Could you call him and tell him I need him now?”
“Well, if you want me to, I will. But you told him to be here at eight and he’s probably already on his way here.”
“He might have overslept,” Castillo said. “Call him.”
Mr. Forbison was still on the telephone when both David W. Yung, Jr., and Edgar Delchamps walked in together.
She gave Castillo a What did I tell you? expression, then exclaimed, “Look at your hand!”
She was making reference to the bloody damage on Yung’s hand.
“Ol’ Dave,” Delchamps volunteered, cheerfully, “ever the gentleman, tried to hold the elevator door for me. It got him. No good deed ever goes unpunished.”
“We’ll have to get you to a doctor,” Agnes said.
“There’s no time for that,” Castillo said, earning him a dirty look from Mr. Forbison.
“I could use a fresh bandage,” Yung said, “but I don’t need a doctor. All the damned door did was crack the scab.”
“You’re sure?” Agnes asked and, when he had nodded, said, “I’ll get the first-aid kit.”
“I didn’t know you two knew each other,” Castillo said as he watched Agnes tenderly wrap Yung’s hand with a sterile bandage.
“We met in the Round Robin,” Yung said, referring to the ground-floor bar in the Willard Hotel, which is across the street from the Marriott.
“Whence I had gone separately for a little liquid sustenance,” Delchamps said, “the Marriott bar being full of road warriors and ladies offering them solace for a price…”
“I thought you were going to get on the horn to the retired dinosaurs association?” Castillo interrupted.
“…after I had conversed with several gentlemen whose advanced age has fortunately not dimmed their memories,” Delchamps went on. “And there was this Asiatic gentleman, with a bandaged wing, extolling the virtues of Argentine beef to a tootsie at the bar. It could have been a coincidence, but I didn’t think so. I thought I was looking at Two-Gun Yung, the wounded hero of the Battle of the River Plate, whose exploits so shocked Doherty yesterday. So what I did was borrow a sheet of paper from the bartender and sent him a note.”