The Hunters (Presidential Agent 3)

“Then you’ve lost everybody except you and the inspector,” Castillo said.

“Computers, Colonel, are only as good as the data they contain,” Doherty said. “You know what GIGO means?”

Castillo nodded. “Garbage in, garbage out.”

“Right. So anything we put into our computers, the kind you plug in the wall—and I’ll get with you shortly, Mr. Forbison, about what we’re going to need: nothing fancy—has to be a fact, not a supposition, not a possibility. The possibilities and the suppositions and the theories go on the blackboards. With me so far?”

“I think I understand,” Castillo said.

“We’ll probably save time if you watch to see how it’s done,” Doherty said.

“Let’s try that, then,” Castillo said.

“Okay. Off the top of your head, Colonel, tell me the one name you think is at the center of your problem.”

Castillo thought a moment, then said, “Jean-Paul Lorimer, aka Jean-Paul Bertrand…”

“Just one, just one,” Doherty said. “How do you spell that?”

Doherty went to one of the blackboards and wrote JEAN-PAUL LORIMER in the center of it.

“This is the player’s board,” he said. “This guy had an alias?”

“Bertrand,” Castillo said and spelled it for him.

On the board Doherty wrote AKA BERTRAND.

he said, “We know that for sure? The names?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, when we get a typist and a computer in here we can start a file called ‘Lorimer’ and put those facts in it in a folder called ‘Lorimer.’ When do we get the typist and the computer?”

“Agnes?”

“You want to clear Juliet Knowles for this, Charley?”

“Okay, but her and a typist. You got somebody?”

Agnes nodded.

“Go get them, Agnes. Tell them what’s involved.”

“And start on the other blackboards,” Doherty ordered. He turned to Castillo. “So what about this Lorimer? What do we know for sure?”

“For sure, that he’s dead,” Castillo said. “We also believe that he was the head bagman for the maggots involved in the Iraq oil-for-food scandal.”

“Facts first. He’s dead. When did he die? Where? What of?”

“He died at approximately 2125 hours 31 July at Estancia Shangri-La, Tacuarembó Province, Uruguay, of two 9mm gunshot wounds from a Madsen to the head.”

“Okay, those are all facts, right?”

“Facts,” Castillo confirmed.

/> “Okay,” Doherty replied, matter-of-factly, showing no reaction at all to the manner of Lorimer’s death, “that gives us the first facts in two new folders. One folder is the ‘Time Line,’ the other ‘Events.’ Spell all that for me, Colonel, please.”

Ninety seconds later, after writing everything on the blackboard, Doherty said, “Okay. Who shot him and why?”