The Hunters (Presidential Agent 3)

“I didn’t have anything to do with this,” Castillo said, handing the message back. “But it does explain the interesting history lectures, doesn’t it?”

“You going to tell me about this presidential mission you’re on or are we going to fuck around with each other in the dark?”

“It’s more than a mission. There’s been a Presidential Finding,” Castillo said. “The bottom line of which is, I’m supposed to find and ‘render harmless’ whoever whacked Jack the Stack Masterson in Buenos Aires.”

“And you’re working for who? Montvale directly?”

“The President directly. Montvale thinks I should be working for him.”

“Well, that explains that little middle-of-the-night billet-doux, doesn’t it?”

“He makes me feel like a sixteen-year-old virgin with some thirty-year-old guy chasing me who won’t take no for an answer.”

“I take your point, even if I don’t think you were ever a sixteen-year-old virgin,” Delchamps said. “The UN notified the embassy that Lorimer was killed during a robbery in Uruguay, of all goddamned places. That’s obviously bullshit. You have the real skinny on that?”

“He was whacked, with a Madsen, at an estancia he owned down there.”

“Your source reliable?”

“I was there. I had just told Lorimer he was about to be returned to the bosom of his family when somebody stuck a Madsen through the window, put two bullets in his head, and wounded one of the guys with me.”

“You do get around, don’t you, Ace?”

“The bad guys also garroted one of my guys, a Delta Force sergeant who wasn’t easy to get to. They were real professionals.”

“Who all unfortunately left this vale of tears before they could tell you who they worked for?”

Castillo nodded. “There were six of them, all dressed in black, no identification.”

“Sounds like Spetsnaz or Mossad,” Delchamps said. “Or maybe even Frogs from Rip-em.”

“From where?”

The bartender delivered their Dortmunder Union. Delchamps waited until he was out of earshot before answering.

“Le premiere Régiment de Parachutistes d’Infanterie de Marine,” Delchamps explained. “Rip-em, from the acronym, are pretty good. The French version of the English SAS, which is where they got started. Rumor has it that they’ve got a bunch of ex-Spetsnaz. From Spetsnaz to Légion Etrangère to Rip-em.”

“French?” Castillo thought aloud.

“Why not? The Frogs were up to their ears in the oil-for-food business and, from what I hear, Lorimer knew which ones.”

“I never even thought of the French,” Castillo admitted.

“You didn’t learn anything from Lorimer? Jesus, how the hell did you find him? In Uruguay?”

“I did find what we believe to be almost sixteen million skimmed from the bribe funds, but, as you put it, he passed from this vale of tears before I could ask him about it.”

“Sit on that, and see who tries to get it.”

“We’ve got it,” Castillo said.

“Good for you!” Delchamps said and took his beer glass and, in a toast, clinked it against Castillo’s.

Delchamps took a sip, then continued: “You were going to tell me how you found Lorimer. I was convinced—as I told you—that he was feeding the fish in either the Seine or the Danube.”

“I have a source, a reporter, who’s been running down the transfer of money from oil-for-food profits from Germany to South America—Uruguay and Argentina—and I got some names from him. I was showing them to an FBI agent in

Montevideo who was working money laundering. He opened one of his files and Jean-Paul Lorimer’s picture was in it. He had another identity—Jean-Paul Bertrand, Lebanese passport, antiquities dealer—and what I’m guessing is that when they stopped looking for Lorimer, he was going to move elsewhere…with the sixteen mil.”