W. Griffin - The Hostage

"In a closet somewhere," Delchamps said. "Or under a bed. Jean-Paul Lorimer was a wimp. He didn't have the balls to be a criminal."

"You knew him?"

"I saw him around. I'm the cultural attache at the embassy. I can put the opera, et cetera, on the expense account.And I get invited to all the parties. The Corps Diplomatique loves to have Americans around so they can tell us how we're fucking up the world." He paused. "Okay, that's what I know. Anything you think I missed?"

"I'd like to see all your files on Lorimer," Castillo said.

"So they can disappear into the black hole?"

"Photocopies would do. That way you'd still have the originals."

"You're not asking for the originals?"

Castillo shook his head. "Photocopies would be fine. How long would it take you to make copies?"

"Which you would then turn over to Montvale-or somebody in the agency, maybe-so they could message me to 'immediately transfer by courier the originals of the documents listed below and certify destruction of any copies thereof'?"

"I don't have to give Montvale anything," Castillo said, "and right now I can't think of anything I want to give him. And as far as the agency is concerned, I am on Langley's Fuck the Bastard If Possible list. I want the copies for me."

Delchamps inclined his head, obviously in thought. Then he took another sip of his coffee. Finally, he leaned back in his chair and lit a small cigar.

"Odd that you should ask about photocopies of my files on Lorimer, Mr. Castillo. By a strange coincidence, I spent most of the afternoon and early evening yesterday, starting right after Ambassador Montvale called me, making photocopies of them. At the time, I was thinking of retiring and writing a book, What the CIA Didn't Want to Get Out About Oil for Food."

"What about the 'my lips are sealed forever plus three weeks' statement you signed? You could get your tail in a crack doing something like that."

"You ever run into a guy named Billy Waugh?"

Castillo nodded.

"I thought you might have," Delchamps said. "Billy wrote a book called I Had Osama bin Laden in My Sights and the Wimps at Langley Wouldn't Let Me Terminate Him-or something like that-and nothing ever happened to Billy."

"They were probably afraid that Billy would write another one, CIA Assholes I Have Known," Castillo said.

Delchamps chuckled. "I thought about that," he said. "And I figured they'd probably come to the same conclusion about me."

He pushed himself out of the chair and held his hand out with his thumb and index finger held wide apart. "It makes a stack about this big," he said. "I'll go next door and get them."

"Thanks," Castillo said. "One more question. Why did you change your mind? About telling me anything?"

"Straight answer?"

"Please."

"Like I said, I'm a dinosaur. I've been doing this a long time. When I was a kid, starting out in Berlin, we had guys there who had been in the second war, Jedburghs, people like that. I even knew Bill Colby. One of them told me if you couldn't look into a man's eyes and size him up you'd better find something else to do. He was right. You-the three of you-have all got the right look."

Delchamps nodded at Fernando and Torine and walked out of the room.

When the door had closed, Fernando said, "So Lorimer's dead. So now what, Gringo?"

"We don't know that he's dead," Castillo said. "From what Delchamps said, if Lorimer was grabbed, it was around the twelfth of this month. They didn't even abduct Mrs. Masterson until the twentieth, or blow Masterson away until the morning of the twenty-third. That's several days. I think they would have heard, in that time, if somebody had blown Lorimer away."

"Okay," Fernando said. "Same question. What now?"

"Go get Sergeant Kranz out of bed," Castillo said. "Tell him to get packed."

Sergeant First Class Seymour Kranz, a Delta/Gray Fox communicator, had been one of the two communicators they'd picked up-together with their satellite communications equipment-at Fort Bragg. Colonel Torine had told Kranz he had been chosen to go with them to Europe, rather than the other communicator, who had set up at the Nebraska Avenue Complex, because Torine devoutly believed that when flying across an ocean every pound counted. Kranz was barely over the Army's height and weight minimums. The real reason was that Kranz had been with Torine and Castillo when they were searching for the stolen 727 and proved that you don't have to be six feet tall and weigh two hundred pounds to be a first-rate special operator.

"Where are we going?" Torine asked.

"We're going to see my uncle Otto," Castillo said, and walked to the couch and sat down and picked up the telephone on the coffee table in front of it. [TWO] Executive Offices Die Fulda Tages Zeitung Fulda, Hesse, Germany 0805 27 July 2005 Frau Gertrud Schroeder was a stocky-but by no means fat, or even chubby-sixty-year-old Hessian who wore her gray hair done up in a bun. She had been employed by the Tages Zeitung since she was twenty, and had always worked for the same man, Otto Goerner.

Otto Goerner had joined the firm shortly after he graduated from Philipps University in Marburg an der Lahn, in part because he was Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger's best friend. Wilhelm was the son and heir apparent to Herman Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger, the managing director and just about sole stockholder in Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H.

When Gertrud joined the Gossinger firm, it had been a medium-sized corporation, not nearly as large as it had been before World War II, or was now. The firm's prewar holdings in Hungary and what had become East Germany-timber, farms, newspapers, breweries, and other businesses-had been confiscated by the communist East German and Hungarian governments.

By 1981, Otto Goerner had risen in the corporate hierarchy to become Herman Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger's-the Old Man's-assistant. The title did not reflect his true importance. He was the de facto number two man. But clearly stating this would have been awkward. Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger was supposed to be number two in the family firm.

It had been Gertrud's very privately held opinion at the time that the issue would be resolved when Otto married Frau Erika von und zu Gossinger. Frau Erika had never married; she was called "frau" out of respect for the family's sensitivities. As a very young girl, Erika had made a mistake, with an American aviator of all people, the result of which was a boy, Christened Karl Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger. At the time, no one knew where the father was. Gertrud knew the Old Man could have found him if he wanted to, and concluded the Old Man had decided that no father at all was better, for the time being, than an American who might get his hands on Gossinger money.

The time being, in Gertrud's judgment, meant until the Old Man could arrange a marriage between his daughter and his assistant. He-everyone-knew that Otto Goerner was extraordinarily fond of Frau Erika and Little Karlchen, and that the Old Man thought Goerner would be both a good husband to Erika and a good father to his only grandson, whom he adored.

And once they were married, of course, it would be entirely appropriate for Otto Goerner, now a member of the family, to hold any position within the family firm.

The issue was resolved that year-but not in the way Gertrud hoped-when a tire blew on Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger's Mercedes as he and his father were on their way home from Kassel. The police estimated the car was traveling in excess of 220 kilometers per hour when it crashed through the guardrails of a bridge on the A7 Autobahn and fell ninety meters into the ravine below.

That meant that Frau Erika became just about the sole stockholder of Gossinger Beteiligungsgesellschaft, G.m.b.H. What shares she did not now own were in a trust fund the Old Man had set up for Karlchen, who was then twelve. As expected, Otto Goerner became the managing director of the firm. Frau Gertrud believed it was now simply a matter of waiting for an appropriate period of time of mourning-say, six months-to pass before Frau Erika married Otto.