Castillo bowed toward the window and then got in his car, a Mercedes-Benz 220, which Gorner decided he had rented at an airport.
Gorner had mixed feelings on seeing Castillo. On one hand, he was-and had been since Castillo's birth-extremely fond of the boy born to the sister of his best friend. He had long ago realized that there was little difference between the paternal feelings he had for Karlchen-"Little Karl"-and those he felt for his own children.
If Erika von und zu Gossinger would have had him, either when it first became known that the seventeen-year-old girl was pregnant with the child of an American helicopter pilot she had known for only four days or, later, until the hour of her death twelve years later, he would have married her and happily given the child his name.
But Erika would not have him as her husband, although she had been perfectly willing for him to play Oncle Otto to the boy as he grew up.
And over the last three or four days, Gorner had been genuinely concerned about Castillo's safety-indeed, his life. Karlchen had called from the States and suggested Gorner "might take a look at the Reuters and AP wires from Uruguay starting about now."
Gorner had done so, and the only interesting story-about the only story at all-from Uruguay had been a Reuters report that the Lebanese owner of a farm, a man named Jean-Paul Bertrand, and six other men, unidentified, had been found shot to death on Bertrand's farm.
There had been no question at all in Gorner's mind that Bertrand was Jean-Paul Lorimer, for whom he knew Karlchen had been looking. Confirmation of that had come yesterday, with an Agence France-Presse wire story that Dr. Jean-Paul Lorimer, Chief, European Directorate of UN Inter-Agency Coordination in Paris, had been murdered during a robbery while vacationing in Uruguay.
He had not been surprised to learn that Lorimer was dead. He had been in Budapest with Karlchen when Billy Kocian had told both of them that he thought Lorimer was probably fish food in either the Danube or the Seine and he didn't believe the robbery spin at all. Lorimer had been killed because he knew too much about the oil-for-food scandal.
But Uruguay? What was that all about?
He wondered how Karlchen had learned what had happened to Lorimer so quickly.
His thoughts were interrupted when Frau Gertrud Schroder put her head in the door and cheerfully announced, "Karlchen's here. They just called from the lobby."
"Warn my wife, lock up anything valuable, and pray," Gorner said.
"You're as glad to see him as I am," she said.
"Yes. Of course," Gorner agreed with a smile.
That's only half true. I am glad to see him, but I don't think I'm going to like what he tells me, or giving him what he asks for.
Castillo came to the door forty-five seconds later.
He hugged Frau Schroder and kissed her wetly on the forehead.
She beamed.
"Do I call you 'colonel'?" Gorner said.
"Not only do you call me colonel but you pop to attention, click your heels, and bow," Castillo said as he went to Gorner and hugged him. He would have kissed him on the forehead, too, had Gorner not ducked. Then he added, "How did you hear about that?"
"You're an oberst, Karlchen?" Frau Schroder asked.
"Oberstleutnant, Frau Schroder," Castillo said.
Gorner went behind his desk and sat down.
The old man was Oberstleutnant Hermann Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger at Stalingrad. The first time I met him, I was terrified of him. And now his grandson is one. In the American Army, of course. But an oberstleutnant. The old man would have been ecstatic.
"I'm so proud of you, Karlchen!" Frau Schroder said.
"Thank you," Castillo said.
He looked at Gorner and asked again, "How did you hear about that?"
"The American embassy called. A man who said he was the assistant consul general said he had reason to believe Lieutenant Colonel Castillo would be coming here and, if you did, would I be good enough to ask you to call?"
"We have a name and a number?"
Gorner nodded, lifted the leather cover of a lined tablet on his desk, and then flipped through several pages. By the time Frau Schroder had walked to the desk, he had found what he was looking for and had his finger on it.
She punched in numbers on one of the three telephones on Gorner's desk.
A moment later, she said in almost accentless English, "I have Colonel Castillo for you, Mr. Almsbury. Will you hold, please?"
She handed the handset to Castillo.
He spoke into it:
"My name is Castillo, Mr. Almsbury. I'm returning your call.
"My father's name was Jorge Alejandro Castillo.
"Who's it from?
"The sender is classified?
"Well, how do I get to see this message?
"And if I can't come to Berlin, then what?
"Well, then, I guess I just won't get to see it.
"Yes, I'll take your assurance that the sender is a very important person. But I still can't come to Berlin and I won't be here long enough for you to come deliver the message.
"I'd rather not share that with you, Mr. Almsbury. What I suggest you do is send a message to the sender that you couldn't get the message to me and that if the message is important that they try to send it to me through my office.
"Yes, I'm sure they know how to get in contact with my office.
"Yeah, I'm sure that this is the way I wish to handle this. Thank you very much, Mr. Almsbury. Good-bye."
He hung up.
"That sonofabitch," he said, shaking his head.
"I don't suppose you're going to tell us what that was all about, Karl?" Gorner asked.
Castillo looked between them and then said, "A couple of years ago-maybe longer-somebody said-maybe wrote a book-saying, 'The medium is the message.'"
"I don't understand," Gorner confessed.
"For the first time, I understand what that means," Castillo said.
"You're talking in tongues, Karl."
"Mr. Almsbury, who is more than likely the CIA station chief in Berlin, has a message for me. For a number of reasons, I think that message is from Ambassador Charles Montvale. You know who he is?"
Gorner nodded.
Frau Schroder said, "Your new chief of intelligence?"
"Close," Castillo replied. "He's the new director of National Intelligence."
"You work for him? Can I ask that?" Gorner said.
"You can ask. No, I don't work for him. He wishes that I did. The President told him no, I told him no, but Montvale doesn't like no for an answer-"
"Karl," Gorner interrupted and then stopped.
Castillo smiled at him. "I read minds, you know. What you were about to ask is, 'Why are you telling us this?' And/or, 'Aren't you liable to get in trouble talking so freely to us?' Am I close?"
Gorner shook his head in disbelief and then nodded in resignation.
"I'm telling you because I think you should know certain things, and because both of you are on my short list"-he held up his left hand with the fingers spread widely and his right hand with three fingers held upward-"of people I trust absolutely. And, no, I won't get in trouble. The President gave me the authority to tell anyone anything I want to tell them."
Gorner met his eyes for a moment and thought: He means that. He's telling the truth. But I now understand there is a third reason. Karlchen has just put both Onkle Otto and Tante Gertrud in his pocket. And I think he knows that. My God, he's so much like the old man!
"And the final reason I'm going to tell you about what I'm doing is because I'm going to need your help and I want you to understand why I need that help; why you're doing what I'm going to ask you to do."
Gorner started to speak, then stopped-Goddamn it, I have to say this-then said what was on his mind: "Karl, what we do here is publish newspapers, newspapers started by your great-great-grandfather. I can't stand idly by while you turn it into a branch of the CIA."
"The simple answer to that, Otto," Castillo said, "is you'r
e right. It's a newspaper. But let's not forget, either, that I own Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H." He let that sink in a moment, then went on: "A more complicated answer is that I've thought about Grosspappa. And the Tages Zeitung newspapers. I'm not turning them into a CIA asset. For one thing, I don't work for the CIA. And from all I remember about him, all I've heard about him, he was a very moral man. I think he would be as annoyed-as disgusted-with the greedy bastards behind this oil-for-food scandal as Eric Kocian is. And I think if he was still alive and Ignatz Glutz came to him with CIA tattooed on his forehead and said he was trying to do something about those greedy, murderous bastards, Grosspappa would have helped. Within certain boundaries, of course. Anyway, that's the way I'm going to play it. Carlos Castillo is going to ask certain things of the Tages Zeitung and if Karl von und zu Gossinger thinks his grandfather would have given Castillo what he's asking for, the Tages Zeitung is going to give it to him."
"It says in the Bible, Karlchen, that a man cannot serve two masters," Gorner said.
"It also says in the Bible that Jonah was swallowed whole by a whale and lived through it," Castillo said. "Aren't you the man who told me to be careful about what you read? Not to believe something just because it's in print?"
"'Within certain boundaries' covers a lot of ground, Karl," Gorner said, softly. "Who defines those boundaries?"
"I do. But it should also go without saying that if I step over the line, you are free to tell me how I am over that line."
Gorner stared at him intently for a long moment.
"The older I get, the more I believe in genetics," he said, finally. "So I'm going to go with my gut feeling that there's a hell of a lot more of Oberst Hermann Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger running through your veins than there is Texas cowboy, Colonel Carlos Castillo."
Castillo didn't reply.
"Tell me about Ambassador Montvale and his message," Gorner said.
"I have no idea what's in Montvale's message, but if it was really important he would have gotten it to me."
"I don't understand," Frau Schroder said.
"If I go to Berlin to get the message, I'm a cute little dachshund answering its master's whistle. Which is what he wants."
"Oh," she said, and then a moment later said, "But what if there is something important in the message?"
"If something important happened, Dick Miller would know what it was and he would have gotten through to me. But just to be sure, as soon as we get the money straightened out, I'm going to give Dick a call."
"Is that why you're here?" Gorner asked. "About that money in the Liechtensteinische Landesbank?"
"Mostly."
"What else?"
"I want all your notes, all your reporters' notes, on oil for food," Castillo said. "They will go no further than me. I really don't work for the CIA, Otto. Or anybody but the President."
Gorner didn't reply.
"Am I crossing the line, Otto?" Castillo asked, softly.
"Not with that," Gorner said, simply. "I think the Old Man would have given your Mr. Ignatz Glutz his reporter's notes. I'll reserve judgment about the money until I hear whatever you think you can tell me about it."
"I'll tell you everything about it," Castillo said. "We found out that Lorimer had it in three banks in Uruguay. It seems logical to assume that he stole it-the American phrase is 'skimmed it'-from his payoff money. We also found out that it was not on deposit but rather in the form of on-demand notes issued by the bank, something like bearer bonds. We got the notes, and took the money. It's going to be spent finding who killed Mr. Masterson and Sergeant Markham and for other noble purposes, including finding out who sent the men to murder Lorimer."
"You certainly found out about that quickly," Gorner said.
"I was there, Otto. I was just about to tell Lorimer that he was about to be returned to the bosom of his family when somebody stuck a submachine gun through the window. They killed Lorimer and wounded a man with me. Other bad guys killed one of my sergeants by garroting him."
"Karlchen!" Frau Schroder exclaimed.
"Who were they?" Gorner asked.
"I don't know. I intend to find out. The only thing I know for sure was they were not Uruguayan bandits. Spetsnaz, possibly. Maybe Mossad. Maybe even French, from Le Premiere Regiment de Parachutistes d'Infanterie de Marine, known as Rip-em. There's even been a suggestion that they might be from Die Kommando Spezialkrafte. Whoever they were, they were damned good."
"And, I suppose you realize, damned dangerous?" Gorner asked.
"That thought has run through my mind. Let me tell what I'd like to do about the money, then Frau Schroder can explain why that's not possible."
Gorner realized that although it was the last thing he wanted to do, he was smiling.
Castillo said, "I have-that is, Lopez Fruit and Vegetables Mexico has-an account with the Banco Salamander Mexicano in Oaxaca."
"Say that again, slowly," Frau Schroder said as she picked up Gorner's leather-covered legal pad and a pencil. "And you better spell it, too. I don't speak Spanish."
"You don't?" Castillo asked as if deeply shocked. "I thought everybody spoke Spanish."
Gorner realized that he was smiling again at the look on Frau Schroder's face before she realized she was being teased.
Castillo went into his laptop case and took out a sheet of paper and handed it to her.
"Everything's on there," he said, "including account numbers. Fernando tells me we run a lot of money through there."
"That's the Bahias de Huatulco ranch?" Otto asked.
"Used to be cattle, now it's mostly grapefruit, "Castillo confirmed. "Anyway, a wire transfer of ten million dollars wouldn't set off alarm bells, particularly if we spend most of it right away to buy an airplane."
"Excuse me?" Gorner asked.
Castillo went back to his briefcase and took out a photocopy of what Gorner recognized after a moment as an aircraft specification sheet.
"A twenty-three-year-old Gulfstream III," Castillo said. "Just the sort of airplane that would be owned-or leased-by a successful Mexican farming operation trying to peddle its wares in Europe and Latin America. And a bargain, Fernando tells me, at seven million five, as it has new engines and all the maintenance is up-to-date. And its new glove-leather interior is sort of the cherry on the cake."
"Why do you need an airplane like that?" Frau Schroder asked.
"We flew Fernando's plane-the Bombardier/Learjet-over here, then to South America, and then from Buenos Aires to the States. Two things wrong with that. It's not designed for long flights-over-the-ocean flights-like that. And, as a corollary, attracts attention when it does. And then when Ambassador Montvale kindly put the CIA's private airlines at my disposal, I knew I had to have an airplane, the pilot of which is not going to make hourly reports of my location to the ambassador."
"You're going to be doing a lot of that, flying across oceans?" Gorner asked.
"I'll be going wherever I have to go and I want to do it quickly, safely, and as invisibly as possible."
"Can you just go out and buy an airplane like that? And who's going to fly it?"
"That's a moot question until Frau Schroder tells me whether I can move the ten million to the account in Mexico."
He looked expectantly at Frau Schroder.
"That can be done with a telephone call," she said. "You can count on the money being available within the hour."
"Well, let's do that and then we'll get on the horn to Dick Miller," Castillo said. "The sooner we get the money into Salamander, the sooner I can-as an officer of Lopez Fruit and Vegetables Mexico-wire-transfer out of it to my account at the Riggs Bank in Washington. I already know how to do that."
"Couple of questions," Frau Schroder said, now all business. "You want to put the Liechtensteinische Landesbank money in a special account or just deposit it?"
"Just deposit it," Castillo said. "Fernando's going to report it as ordinary business receipts."
"Is that wh
at they call 'money laundering'?" Gorner asked, drily.
"This is in a good cause," Castillo replied.
Gorner shook his head. Frau Schroder picked up the telephone.
Three minutes later, she announced, "Ten million dollars will be available in the Lopez account within twenty minutes."
"Thank you, and now see if you can get Dick Miller on there, will you, please? And put it on the speakerphone, please."
"I think I should point out, Karl," Gorner said, "that it's now about half past six in the morning in Washington."
"Until they take the bandages off his leg, Dick's sleeping in the office," Castillo replied. "He'll be there."
Frau Schroder punched in numbers on one of Gorner's telephones and then pushed the button that activated the speaker.
The phone rang twice and then Major H. Richard Miller, Jr., answered it.
"Miller."
"Good news, sweetheart, we won't have to sell the dogs and move in with your mother. The money's in the bank."
"That was quick."
"They don't call me Speedy Gonzales for nothing," Castillo said. "Any word from Jake about the new toy?"
"He and Fernando and the salesman brought it in here, to BWI, last night. Jake said it would have made waves taking it into Reagan. Jake says the bird's okay and where do you want to keep it?"
"Let me think about that. Ask Jake what he recommends. Transfer nine really big ones from Salamander to my account in Riggs and then pay for it."
"That check's not going to bounce, is it?"
"Nope. I have Frau Schroder's personal guarantee. Say, 'Danke schon, Frau Schroder.'"
"Danke shon, Frau Schroder," Miller said.
"How are you, Dick?" she replied.
"Aside from having more gauze bandage on my leg than a mummy, I'm just fine. Say hello to Otto for me when you see him."
"How are you, Dick?" Gorner said.
"You weren't listening in, were you, Otto? If so, did the colonel make you stand at attention?"
"And click my heels," Gorner said.
"God, he's going to be hard to live with."
"He's always been hard to live with."
"Jesus," Miller suddenly said, "before I forget, Charley, remember that you were here all day yesterday."
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