W Griffin - Hunters

Ninety seconds later, after writing everything on the blackboard, Doherty said, "Okay. Who shot him and why?"

"We have only theories about why he was shot," Castillo said.

"Then get to them later. Who shot him?"

"There were six guys in their assault party…"

"Whose assault party?"

"We don't know. We have identified one of them positively as Major Alejandro Vincenzo of the Cuban Direccion General de Inteligencia."

"Now, that's interesting," Doherty said. "Who's your source for those facts. How reliable is he?"

"I'm the source," Castillo said. "I was there."

"Why?"

"We were going to repatriate Lorimer."

"To where?"

"Here. He was an American who worked for the UN in Paris."

"How were you going to do that? And why?"

"We were going to snatch him, chopper him to Buenos Aires, load him on a Lear, and fly him here. To find out what we could from him about who might have murdered J. Winslow Masterson, who was his brother-in-law."

"Who's we? Who was there with you?"

Castillo hesitated for a moment, then shrugged and started to tell him. He stopped when a moment later Juliet Knowles and a pale-faced young woman who looked British came into the room, pushing a blackboard mounted on a wheeled frame. Mr. Forbison, carrying a laptop computer, was on their heels.

"Colonel Gregory J. Kilgore of NSA is here, chief," Agnes said as she put the computer on the conference table. "What do you want me to tell him?"

"I better see him," Castillo said. "This is going to take a little while to get organized anyhow." Colonel Kilgore was a tall, slender Signal Corps officer in a crisp uniform.

"Colonel Castillo?" he asked.

"I'm a brand-new lieutenant colonel and I don't wear my uniform around here, sir," Castillo said.

"Ambassador Montvale made it pretty clear, however, that you're the man in charge. What would you like me to call you?"

"How do you feel about first names? Mine is Charley."

"I'd be more comfortable with Mr.," Kilgore said.

"That's fine with me."

"What can NSA do for you, Mr. Castillo?"

"This is a covert and clandestine operation authorized by a Presidential Finding and the classification is Top Secret Presidential."

"Understood."

"I'm going to need some intercepts," Castillo said. "The priority is a wire transfer into the Merchants National Bank of Easton, Pennsylvania, from a numbered account in the Caledonian Bank and Trust Limited in the Cayman Islands. The amount was $1,950,000. What I need is who that Cayman account belongs to, what monies have been transferred into it, when and by whom."

"If NSA provided you with that information, it would be in violation of several sections of the United States Code, as I'm sure you're aware, and even if we gave it to you it could not be used as evidence in a court of law."

"Didn't Ambassador Montvale tell you, Colonel, that you are-NSA is-to give me whatever I asked for?"

Kilgore did not respond directly.

"Just a question to satisfy my curiosity, Mr. Castillo," he said. "If a messenger left an envelope here with only your name on it, would you get it? No matter the hour? Twenty-four/seven?"

"I would."

"And no one else?"

"No one not cleared for this operation," Castillo said.

"While of course we are both agreed that you would not ask NSA to provide intercepts of this nature if doing so would violate any part of the United States Code, and that even if you did NSA would not provide data of this nature to you under any circumstances…"

"I understand, Colonel."

"Speaking hypothetically, of course, if NSA happened to make an intercept of wire transfers into or out of, say, a foreign bank in Mexico, that's all it would have. The amount, the routing numbers, and the numbers of the accounts involved in both banks. There would be no way to identify the owners of the accounts by name."

You get me the numbers, Colonel Kilgore, and my man Yung will get me the names.

"Understood," Castillo said. "Speaking hypothetically, of course, how does this work?"

"I really don't know," Kilgore said, "but I've heard that what happens is that just about everything is recorded in real time and then run through a filter which identifies what someone is interested in. The more information that's available for the filter…bank routing numbers, the time period in which the data sought was probably being transmitted…"

Castillo took his laptop computer from under his desk, turned it on, and called up the data he'd gotten from Secret Service Agent Harry Larsen in Pennsylvania. He then turned the computer around so Kilgore could see it.

Kilgore studied it, nodded, and said, "Certainly I'll excuse you while you meet the call of nature, Mr. Castillo. I know how it is. When you've gotta go, you've gotta go. And while you're gone, I don't suppose there's a telephone, preferably a secure one, I could use? I'd like to check in with my secretary, let her know I'll be a little late getting to the office."

Castillo stood up.

"The red one's connected to the White House switchboard," he said and went into the private restroom off his office. Kilgore was sitting behind Castillo's desk when three minutes later-as timed by Castillo's watch-Castillo came out of the restroom.

"That's an interesting handset," Kilgore greeted him. "The small black one. It looks like something AFC would make."

"And so it is," Castillo said.

"You know much about AFC?" Kilgore asked.

"I even know Mr. Casey."

"Interesting man, isn't he? Among my other duties, I'm the liaison officer between NSA and his research facilities in Las Vegas."

"I've even been there."

"Well, that would explain, I suppose, why some people in Fort Meade are reporting a stream of gibberish coming out of here, absolutely unbreakable."

"Who in a position to use your services would be interested in anything coming out of here?"

"I wouldn't know, of course, but the agency is one possibility," Kilgore said.

"I suppose it would be," Castillo said.

"I once asked Mr. Casey about a rumor floating around that he'd given Delta Force-and only Delta Force-an encryption logarithm that was really something. He used to be a Green Beret. Did you know that?"

"As a matter of fact, I do," Castillo said. "What did he say?"

"He said that when he was a Green Beret he was almost blown away several times because somebody with a big mouth had listened to things they didn't need to know and that he was trying to see that that no longer could happen. He said Special Forces was like the Marines. Once a Green Beanie, always a Green Beanie."

"I suppose that's true," Castillo said.

"You wouldn't happen to have a green beret in a closet somewhere, would you, Mr. Castillo?"

"A souvenir of happier times, Colonel," Castillo said.

Kilgore stood up.

"Well, it's been a pleasure meeting you, Mr. Castillo. I don't think we'll be seeing each other again. But on the other hand, you never know. We may bump into each other at an Association of USMA Graduates meeting and get to sing 'Army Blue' together."

"Thank you, sir," Castillo said.

"I left a number on your computer you can call if you need anything else," Kilgore said.

He shook Castillo's hand quickly but firmly and walked out of the office.

Castillo started to return to the conference room but Mr. Forbison put her head in the door.

"One more," she said. "This one says from the Secret Service."

That has to be Tom McGuire. Or maybe Joel Isaacson.

Castillo made a bring 'em on wave of his hand and went behind his desk, sat down, and started to shut down his laptop.

"Hello, Charley," Special Agent Elizabeth Schneider said from the office door.

Castillo was to remember later that his first reaction was, "Oh, shit, not now!"