W Griffin - Hunters

Doherty considered that a long moment and then went off on a tangent.

"We can get back to that in a minute. You used a helicopter on the estancia raid, right?"

Castillo nodded.

"Where did you get it? Delchamps says he doesn't know and Miller said he doesn't want to tell me until he talks to you."

Castillo looked at the two women, who were watching them in fascination.

This, they shouldn't hear.

"Let's go in there for a moment," Castillo said, pointing toward the door of the larger of two small offices opening off the conference room. Once the door had closed behind him, Miller, Delchamps, and Doherty, Castillo said, evenly, "I borrowed a Bell Ranger from Aleksandr Pevsner."

"The same Aleksandr Pevsner we've talked about before?"

"Uh-huh."

"Jesus Christ, that opens a whole new can of worms," Doherty said. "Did he know what you were going to use it for?"

Castillo had a quick mental image of Doherty writing Pevsner on one of the blackboards, followed by a very large question mark and then an even larger exclamation point.

"Yes, he knew," Castillo said.

"Has it occurred to you that your pal is the one who tipped the unknown parties to what you were up to? Or that he sent them himself?" Doherty asked and then didn't wait for an answer, but instead turned to Delchamps and said: "Ed, this Russian mafioso is up to his ears in everything else criminal on both hemispheres, so is it likely he's involved in either this oil-for-food scam or terrorism?"

Castillo picked up on Doherty's use of Delchamps's first name.

So he likes him at least that much? Good!

"Terrorism, no," Delchamps said. "That's not saying his airplanes haven't flown terrorists or supplies-including money-around for the Muslim fanatics. But I say that primarily because his airplanes go to lots of interesting places. He has almost certainly been used by terrorists-who have paid him extremely well for his services-but he's not one of them.

"And, Jack, from what I know-know-the same thing is true of his association with the oil-for-food maggots. Pevsner's airplanes flew a lot of food and medicine-like Ferraris and blond Belgian hookers for Saddam's sons-and nice little hundred-thousand-dollar bricks of hundred-dollar bills into and out of Iraq. But a lot of the same thing-maybe not the Ferraris, but just about everything else-went into and out of Iraq on Air France and Lufthansa and a lot of other airlines. My information is that Pevsner's airplanes were used when Saddam and company really wanted to be sure the commercial carrier didn't get curious about what was really in the crates marked 'Hospital Supplies.'"

"There wasn't time for Pevsner to tip anybody off about the raid," Castillo said. "And, anyway, he didn't know where we were going. He only knew who we were after."

"Unless he already knew where Lorimer was, Charley," Delchamps argued. "He could have told someone 'You'd better take care of that problem before the American gets to him.'"

"I don't think he knew where Lorimer was, Edgar," Castillo said.

"Why?" Doherty challenged.

"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 Jose Ordonez 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?"