W Griffin - Hunters

He let that sink in, then finished, "And the more he knows, the more he will have to tell."

"He's right, Charley," McGuire said. "There's a Puritan streak in the FBI. They like to hire pure people. They start working on them at Quantico that the book is holy, that they have to go by it, and they keep it up afterward. Even before Dick brought it up, I wondered if Yung belonged in here. I'd say send him back to the FBI, but that would remind him even more that we are ignoring the book and he already knows too much to take the risk that he would confess all."

"So, me sending him down there was a mistake?" Castillo asked.

"Not a mistake but risky," McGuire said. "And who else could you have sent?"

"Well, I guess the thing to do is bring him back and sit on him after he makes sure that what we've done with Lorimer's money doesn't get out," Castillo said. "The only comment I have is that I agree that Yung is…what? Highly moral? What's wrong with that? And I think he would love nothing better than to go to somebody in the FBI and tell them what's going on around here. But it is that morality that keeps him from doing that."

"Run that past me again," Miller said.

"You were here, Dick. I asked him if he had any mental reservations and he said-after thinking about it-that he didn't. I think he meant that."

"Keep your fingers crossed, Charley," Miller said, doubtfully.

"But you're right. We can't afford to have him in the loop," Castillo said. "We'll tell him as little as possible." He turned to Britton. "You're in the loop, Jack. We all need to know what you have to say."

Britton shrugged, then said, "Okay. This is one of those damned if you do, damned if you don't things. I heard something in Philadelphia that is probably about as far off the wall as anything ever gets, that logic tells me to dismiss but which I thought I should pass on to you."

"Let's have it," Castillo said.

"I went to see Sy Fillmore in the hospital while I was there. I got it from him."

"Who's he?

"A counterterrorism detective. He was doing what I used to do. He went around the bend and they've got him in the loony bin in Friends Hospital on Roosevelt Boulevard. So my source is somebody they're keeping in a padded room."

"What did he have to say?"

"The brothers in his mosque believe they are about to get their hands on a nuclear bomb."

"That does sound a little incredible," Miller said. "Where are they going to get it?"

Britton shrugged. "He didn't know. What he did know was they have just bought a farm in Durham."

"North Carolina?" McGuire asked.

"Pennsylvania," Britton replied. "Bucks County. Upper end of the county. A couple of miles off the Delaware River. The reason they bought the place is because of the old iron mines on it."

"Iron mines?"

"They're going to use them as bomb shelters when the nuclear bomb takes out Philadelphia. They're stocking them with food, etcetera."

"Tell me about the iron mines," McGuire said.

"Well, they've been there forever," Britton said. "You remember when Washington crossed the Delaware?"

"I've heard about it. I'm not quite that old," McGuire said.

"He crossed the Delaware in a Durham boat. They were called Durham boats because they moved the iron ore from the iron mines in Durham down the Delaware. They haven't taken any ore out of them for, Christ, two hundred years, but the mines, the tunnels, are still there, because they were hacked out of solid rock."

"You believe this story, Jack?" Miller asked.

"I don't want to believe it, logic tells me not to believe it, but Sy Fillmore tells me the brothers believe it. And I'd like to know where they got the money to buy a hundred-odd-acre farm. That's high-priced real estate up there. They didn't pay for it with stolen Social Security checks."

"Stolen Social Security checks?" Castillo asked.

"That-and ripping off the neighborhood crack dealers-was their primary source of income when I was in the mosque."

"And the cops in Philadelphia?" Castillo asked. "Chief Inspector Fritz Kramer, for example. What do they say?"

"They found Cy wandering around North Philly babbling to himself," Britton said. "It was three days before they even found out he was a cop. And he's been in Friends Hospital ever since, with a cop sitting outside his door, as much to protect Sy from himself as from the AALs. No, Chief Kramer doesn't believe it. He didn't even pass it on to the FBI."

"Where are they going to get a nuke?" Miller asked. "How are they going to move it around, hide it?"

"There were supposed to be thirty-odd suitcase-sized nukes here, smuggled in by the Russians." McGuire said. "They wouldn't be hard to move around or hide."

"You think there's something to this, Tom?" Castillo asked.

"No. But I'm like Jack. Sometimes there's things you just shouldn't ignore because they don't make sense."

"So what do we do, tell the FBI?" Castillo asked.

"Why don't you send Jack back to Philly?" McGuire asked. "I'll call the Secret Service there-the agent in charge is an old friend of mine-and tell him we're interested in why a bunch of American muslims from Philadelphia bought that farm, where they got the money to buy it, and what they're doing with it. And I'll tell him we can't say why we're interested. If and when we get those answers, we can think about it some more."

"Okay, do it," Castillo ordered. "Has anyone else got anything for me?"

Everybody shook their heads.

Castillo went on: "What I am going to do now is go to my apartment and pack. Then I'm going to the Old Executive Office Building to wait for Hall. I was going to ask him what to do about our new liaison officer, but Dick and Agnes have told me that's my problem. Then as soon as he lets me go, I'm going to Philadelphia to see Betty Schneider and then, somehow, I'm going to go to Paris, either tonight or as soon as I can."

"I didn't know anybody went to Paris on purpose," Miller said. "What are you going to do there?"

"Thank you for asking, and I'm not being sarcastic. I want everybody to know what I'm doing," Castillo said. "The agency guy in Paris-Edgar Delchamps-is a good guy, a real old-timer. I'm going to ask him to go with me to Lorimer's apartment. The embassy has been informed that I'm going to look after Lorimer's property for Ambassador Lorimer. Then I'm going to tell him what happened at Lorimer's estancia and see if he has any ideas who the guys who bushwhacked us were or who they were working for.

"Then I'm going to Fulda to make sure there's no problems with all that money in my Liechtensteinische Landesbank account in the Caymans. Maybe there's a better place to have it.

"Then I'm going to Budapest to see a journalist named Eric Kocian, who gave me some names of people in the oil-for-food business. I promised him I wouldn't turn them over to anyone. I want to get him to let me use the names. See if we can figure out where I might have got them, other than from him. I'm also going to ask him to guess who was paying the guys who bushwhacked us.

"Then, maybe a quick stop in Vienna to see what I can pick up there about the guy who was murdered just before Lorimer decided to go missing. Before I come back here, I'm probably going to go to Uruguay and Argentina. I want to go through Lorimer's estancia to see what I can come up with.

"Which reminds me of something else that I probably would have forgotten: Dick, get on the horn to somebody at Fort Rucker, maybe the Aviation Board, and find out the best panel and black boxes available on the civilian market for a Bell Ranger. Get a set of it, put it in a box, and ask Secretary Cohen to send it under diplomatic sticker to Ambassador Silvio in Buenos Aires."

"What the hell is that all about?"

"You wouldn't believe the lousy avionics in the Ranger I borrowed down there. The new stuff is payment for the use of the chopper. And it will be nice to have if I need to borrow the Ranger again."