The Hunters (Presidential Agent 3)

“A source?” Silvio interrupted.

“Howard Kennedy, a former FBI hotshot who changed sides and now works for Alek Pevsner.”

“I know that name,” Silvio said. “Why would Pevsner tell you? I presume Kennedy wouldn’t have done that without Pevsner’s permission, or, more likely, at Pevsner’s orders?”

“Wouldn’t you prefer to know as little about Pevsner and/or Kennedy as possible?”

“I presume your offer to deny telling me anything is still open?”

“It is. It will stay open,” Castillo said. “Okay. Pevsner has struck a deal with the President. He makes himself useful—I found the missing 727 with his help and I don’t think I could have otherwise—and the President orders the FBI, so long as Pevsner doesn’t violate any U.S. laws, to stop looking for him—and for Kennedy—and orders the CIA to stop trying to arrange Pevsner’s arrest by any other government.”

“That’s very interesting,” Silvio said. “Who else knows about that?”

“Secretary Hall, Secretary Cohen, and Ambassador Montvale know about the deal. The director of the FBI and the DCI know they’ve been ordered to lay off Pevsner. I don’t know how much, if anything, they know about the deal.”

Silvio nodded thoughtfully.

Castillo went on: “What Kennedy told me about Lorimer was confirmed by the CIA station chief in Paris, who told me he was sure that Lorimer was now in little pieces in the Seine or the Danube. From Paris, I went to Fulda—to Görner at the Tages Zeitung—and told him that I needed to have all the information he had about the oil-for-food payoffs. He gave me what he had, on condition I not make it available to the CIA or the FBI or anyone else, and told me that Eric Kocian, the publisher of the Budapester Tages Zeitung, had more information.

“So I went to Budapest and Kocian reluctantly, and with the same caveat that I couldn’t share anything with the FBI or the CIA, gave me what he had. Kocian also believed that Lorimer had already been eliminated.

“Then I came back here—actually, to Montevideo—to see what Yung might have in his files about any of it. He had a file on Jean-Paul Bertrand, a Lebanese national and a dealer in antiquities—who was, of course, Lorimer, and who was alive on his estancia. So I set up the operation to grab Lorimer/Bertrand and repatriate him.

“And you know what happened at the estancia. We were bushwhacked. Lorimer and one of my men were killed and Colonel Munz wounded.”

“Doesn’t ‘bushwhacked’ imply you walked into a trap?” Silvio asked.

“I’ve thought about that. It’s possible, but I think it was more likely just a coincidence. The people Lorimer was running from—and they’re good—found him, and they got to the estancia right after we did.”

“There’s no one who could have told them about your operation? Where did you get the helicopter?”

“I got the chopper from Pevsner.”

“Pevsner’s here?” Silvio asked, surprised. “In Argentina?”

“If I don’t answer that question, you can swear both that you don’t know where Pevsner is and that I refused to tell you where he is.”

Silvio nodded. “Consider the question withdrawn.”

“I had to threaten Pevsner with the withdrawal of his presidential protection to get the chopper. He doesn’t want to lose that. The CIA really would like some other—any other—government to catch him, and either bury him in a prison for the rest of his life or take him out.”

“Why?” Silvio asked.

“The CIA used him to move things around, bought weapons from him. They’d like that buried. No, Alek Pevsner didn’t set us up. It would not be in his best interests and he never puts anything above his best interests.”

Castillo started to say something, then stopped and took out his cigar case. He offered it to Silvio, who nodded his thanks, and they both carefully lit up. It was obvious that both were thinking.

“We took the contents of Lorimer’s safe with us,” Castillo said, finally. “Among them were sort of cashier’s checks for nearly sixteen million dollars that he had in three Uruguayan banks.”

“Can I say something?” Silvio asked.

“Please.”

“Ambassador McGrory knows about that money. It’s the basis of his theory that Lorimer was a drug dealer. You’re saying you have it?”

Castillo nodded.

He puffed his cigar, exhaled, then said, “I will deny telling you this: Ambassador Montvale suggested, and the President went along with him, that we should take the money and use it to fund the Office of Organizational Analysis. Most of it is in a bank in the Cayman Islands. I call it the ‘Lorimer Charitable and Benevolent Fund.’”