W Griffin - Hunters

"Please tell him I consider myself in his debt and if there is anything I can ever do for him…"

"Tell him yourself, Alek," Castillo said. "He'll be in the Traffik with us and Janos." He paused, chuckled, and went on: "But as a shooter, he has pretty much given up his medical career."

"Similarly, my friend Charley, I am deeply in your debt. And not solely for saving my life."

"You can pay that debt by staying out of my way while I'm running down our great mutual friend Howard Kennedy. I want him, Alek."

"If I knew where he was, I'd tell you."

"I want him without a beauty hole in his forehead, you understand that?"

"With great difficulty," Pevsner said, nodding slowly. "There is only one suitable punishment for a man who enters your life dishonestly and gains your confidence and affection…"

"Got a little egg on your face, do you, Alek?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Aleksandr Pevsner, that great judge of character, trusted the wrong guy and mistrusted the good guy. Good guys, plural."

"I'm not familiar with the expression."

"You know what I mean, Alek."

"I am where I am today because I…"

"By where you are today, I guess you mean hiding under your Mercedes from your good friends in the FSB while they tried to whack you?"

Pevsner's face tightened.

"If that was the case…"

"No 'if' about it, Alek. Edgar Delchamps knew one of the guys in the laundry truck. Lieutenant Colonel Yevgeny Komogorov, deputy to Colonel Pyotr Sunev, director of the FSB's Service for the Protection of the Constitutional System and the Fight Against Terrorism."

Pevsner glared at him.

"That's a mouthful, isn't it?" Castillo asked. "'Service for the Protection of the Constitutional System and the Fight Against Terrorism'? And I guess they define 'terrorist' as anyone who might be able to identify former Lieutenant Colonel Putin of the KGB as just one more maggot in the oil-for-food scam."

"If Putin was involved in that, I don't know about it."

"Sunev and the late Colonel Komogorov must have thought you did. Otherwise, why did they try to whack you?"

Pevsner didn't reply.

"And to whack you, Sunev didn't send some second-rate Cuban-he sent Komogorov."

Pevsner stared icily at Castillo for a long moment.

"Howard Kennedy is not stupid," Pevsner said, finally. "He knew that you were sooner or later going to suspect him of ties-or find ties, as you did in fact-with the FSB, and that if you did, you would probably tell me. I think it's entirely possible that he told Sunev that we were becoming too close, exchanging information…"

"And after all, Kennedy had been really working for Sunev all along, hadn't he? Getting paid-better paid, obviously-to provide just that sort of information?"

"I paid Howard well, but nothing like nearly sixteen million dollars," Pevsner said. "The first suspicion I had of Howard-and, of course, I felt guilty about having it-was when he was so upset about those bank drafts you took from Lorimer's safe. He acted almost as if you had stolen the money from him."

"I really hope I did," Castillo said.

"I think he had a deal with the Cuban. The Cuban would shut Lorimer's mouth, take the bank drafts, give them to Howard, and they would split the proceeds. And you ruined this plan for him, Charley."

"I want him, Alek."

"What will happen to him after you interrogate him?"

"I've given that some thought. The first one I had was to have him sent to a really terrible prison in Colorado where the prisoners spend twenty-three hours a day in solitary cells with no contact with other prisoners. But then an FBI friend of mine said that all we could convict him of is stealing FBI investigation reports. That would put him away for five-to-ten, maybe. He'd be out in a couple of years."

"So you'll just…"

"I would like to, but we don't operate that way. What I think I'll try to arrange for him is to be sent to a medium-security prison where he would be in what they call 'the general population.' Unpleasant things happen to former FBI agents in the general population. There're even rumors that they get raped. Regularly."

There was a shrill whistle and they looked toward the house where Edgar Delchamps was standing in the door to the living room. He was signaling that the convoy was ready.

"One last time, Alek," Castillo said. "Don't get in my way."

"If I find him before you do, I'll tell you where he is. Somehow the notion of Howard being regularly traded as a sexual commodity seems a fitting consequence for his actions."

They started walking toward the house. [SIX] Nuestra Pequena Casa Mayerling Country Club Pilar, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina 1005 14 August 2005 What Castillo thought of as the Philosophers, as opposed to the Shooters, were gathered in the quincho, the main room of which looked very much like a schoolroom complete to blackboards, a teacher, and nine overage eighth-graders raising their hands for permission to offer the teacher their deep thoughts.

The teacher was FBI Inspector Jack Doherty. The Philosophers were Special Agent Yung, Eric Kocian, Alex Darby, Colonel Alfredo Munz, and Mr. and Mr. Paul Sieno. Also present was Colonel Jake Torine, who was included not so much for his knowledge of the situation but for his brains. Castillo and Delchamps sat in, although both regarded themselves far more as Shooters than Philosophers. And there was the class pet, who lay asleep with his head on Castillo's shoe and from time to time made strange, pleased sounds, which Castillo thought might be because he was dreaming of a shapely Bouvier des Flandres of the opposite gender.

Corporal Lester Bradley, technically a Shooter, was manning the radio with instructions to tell anyone who called from Washington that Colonel Castillo was momentarily unavailable but would get back to them as soon as possible.

There were still a lot of pieces to fit together and Castillo didn't want to interrupt that process.

The Shooters-Sergeant Major Davidson, Sergeant Kensington, Sandor Tor, and Ricardo Solez-were on perimeter guard duty, no less efficient because they were seated comfortably in strategically placed upholstered chairs.

Edgar Delchamps not only approved the perimeter guard but suggested that Castillo recruit more Shooters for it. He said that he trusted Aleksandr Pevsner about half as far as he could throw him vis-a-vis not revealing the location of the safe house and pointing out that Pevsner was now aware that just about everybody with knowledge was gathered in one place, which made it one hell of a rich target for somebody who wanted mouths shut permanently.

Delchamps also volunteered the hope that Castillo was not holding his breath waiting for Pevsner to tell him anything about the location of Howard Kennedy. The race was on-and in high goddamned gear-if Castillo wanted to get the sonofabitch before Pevsner did.

Castillo was of two minds.

Professionally, he agreed with Delchamps-and just about everybody else-that Pevsner couldn't be trusted and wouldn't hesitate to have them all killed to protect himself-or, perhaps more important, to reduce or remove a threat to his family.

Personally, Castillo trusted Pevsner, at least to a degree.

But, obviously, he had to go with his professional judgment.

When his cellular went off, he had just about decided that school was going to be in session for a week-or longer-and to tell Bradley to get Dick Miller at the Nebraska Avenue Complex on the horn and to tell Miller to call either General Bruce J. McNab or Vic D'Allessando at Bragg and tell them to get a ten-man A-Team on the next flight out of Miami-put 'em in civvies and tell 'em to make like they're soccer players-and, yeah, we have weapons here.

"?Hola?" Castillo said to his phone.

"You, on the other hand, sound like a Porteno," his caller said.