“Not with that,” Görner said, simply. “I think the Old Man would have given your Mr. Ignatz Glutz his reporter’s notes. I’ll reserve judgment about the money until I hear whatever you think you can tell me about it.”
“I’ll tell you everything about it,” Castillo said. “We found out that Lorimer had it in three banks in Uruguay. It seems logical to assume that he stole it—the American phrase is ‘skimmed it’—from his payoff money. We also found out that it was not on deposit but rather in the form of on-demand notes issued by the bank, something like bearer bonds. We got the notes, and took the money. It’s going to be spent finding who killed Mr. Masterson and Sergeant Markham and for other noble purposes, including finding out who sent the men to murder Lorimer.”
“You certainly found out about that quickly,” Görner said.
“I was there, Otto. I was just about to tell Lorimer that he was about to be returned to the bosom of his family when somebody stuck a submachine gun through the window. They killed Lorimer and wounded a man with me. Other bad guys killed one of my sergeants by garroting him.”
“Karlchen!” Frau Schröder exclaimed.
“Who were they?” Görner asked.
“I don’t know. I intend to find out. The only thing I know for sure was they were not Uruguayan bandits. Spetsnaz, possibly. Maybe Mossad. Maybe even French, from Le Première Régiment de Parachutistes d’Infanterie de Marine, known as Rip-em. There’s even been a suggestion that they might be from Die Kommando Spezialkräfte. Whoever they were, they were damned good.”
“And, I suppose you realize, damned dangerous?” Görner asked.
“That thought has run through my mind. Let me tell what I’d like to do about the money, then Frau Schröder can explain why that’s not possible.”
Görner realized that although it was the last thing he wanted to do, he was smiling.
Castillo said, “I have—that is, Lopez Fruit and Vegetables Mexico has—an account with the Banco Salamander Mexicano in Oaxaca.”
“Say that again, slowly,” Frau Schröder said as she picked up Görner’s leather-covered legal pad and a pencil. “And you better spell it, too. I don’t speak Spanish.”
“You don’t?” Castillo asked as if deeply shocked. “I thought everybody spoke Spanish.”
Görner realized that he was smiling again at the look on Frau Schröder’s face before she realized she was being teased.
Castillo went into his laptop case and took out a sheet of paper and handed it to her.
“Everything’s on there,” he said, “including account numbers. Fernando tells me we run a lot of money through there.”
“That’s the Bahias de Huatulco ranch?” Otto asked.
“Used to be cattle, now it’s mostly grapefruit, “Castillo confirmed. “Anyway, a wire transfer of ten million dollars wouldn’t set off alarm bells, particularly if we spend most of it right away to buy an airplane.”
“Excuse me?” Görner asked.
Castillo went back to his briefcase and took out a photocopy of what Görner recognized after a moment as an aircraft specification sheet.
“A twenty-three-year-old Gulfstream III,” Castillo said. “Just the sort of airplane that would be owned—or leased—by a successful Mexican farming operation trying to peddle its wares in Europe and Latin America. And a bargain, Fernando tells me, at seven million five, as it has new engines and all the maintenance is up-to-date. And its new glove-leather interior is sort of the cherry on the cake.”
“Why do you need an airplane like that?” Frau Schröder asked.
“We flew Fernando’s plane—the Bombardier/Learjet—over here, then to South America, and then from Buenos Aires to the States. Two things wrong with that. It’s not designed for long flights—over-the-ocean flights—like that. And, as a corollary, attracts attention when it does. And then when Ambassador Montvale kindly put the CIA’s private airlines at my disposal, I knew I had to have an airplane, the pilot of which is not going to make hourly reports of my location to the ambassador.”
“You’re going to be doing a lot of that, flying across oceans?” Görner asked.
“I’ll be going wherever I have to go and I want to do it quickly, safely, and as invisibly as possible.”
“Can you just go out and buy an airplane like that? And who’s going to fly it?”
“That’s a moot question until Frau Schröder tells me whether I can move the ten million to the account in Mexico.”
He looked expectantly at Frau Schröder.
“That can be done with a telephone call,” she said. “You can count on the money being available within the hour.”
“Well, let’s do that and then we’ll get on the horn to Dick Miller,” Castillo said. “The sooner we get the money into Salamander, the sooner I can—as an officer of Lopez Fruit and Vegetables Mexico—wire-transfer out of it to my account at the Riggs Bank in Washington. I already know how to do that.”