The Hunters (Presidential Agent 3)

“Britton, the Secret Service agent?” Doherty interrupted, turning to point at Britton’s name on one of the blackboards.

Castillo nodded, then said: “When he was a Philadelphia cop, he was undercover in the mosque for more than three years. He doesn’t put much credence in the nuke and neither do others—including Edgar here—who know about things like that. But somebody gave these lunatics two million dollars and I’d like to know who and why. Maybe it’s two separate things, terrorism and the oil-for-food scandal. And maybe they’re connected. I have a gut feeling they are.”

Doherty picked up his yellow felt-tip pen and said, “Spell that mosque for me,” and, when Castillo had and he’d written it on the blackboard, asked: “Can you tie these people to terrorism?”

“They were involved with the theft of the 727 that terrorists were going to crash into the Liberty Bell.”

“You really think they were going to do that?” Doherty asked, his tone making it clear he didn’t think that was credible.

“Yeah, I really think they were going to crash it into the Liberty Bell,” Castillo said. “When Jake Torine and I stole it back from them, it was about to take off for Philadelphia. The fuselage was loaded with fuel cells hidden under a layer of fresh flowers.”

Doherty accepted that but he didn’t apologize, not even to the extent of saying “I didn’t know that.”

“So you’re saying these people are skilled terrorists?” Doherty asked after a moment.

“No, I’m not. I go with Britton and Chief Inspector Kramer of the Philadelphia Police, who refer to them as the AAL, which means African American Lunatics, and which means just that. They have been used by terrorists, and they still may be—probably are—being used. I want to know where they got the money and if there is a reason beyond giving them a place to protect themselves from a nuclear explosion, which we don’t think is going to happen.”

Doherty considered that a long moment and then went off on a tangent.

“We can get back to that in a minute. You used a helicopter on the estancia raid, right?”

Castillo nodded.

“Where did you get it? Delchamps says he doesn’t know and Miller said he doesn’t want to tell me until he talks to you.”

Castillo looked at the two women, who were watching them in fascination.

This, they shouldn’t hear.

“Let’s go in there for a moment,” Castillo said, pointing toward the door of the larger of two small offices opening off the conference room.

Once the door had closed behind him, Miller, Delchamps, and Doherty, Castillo said, evenly, “I borrowed a Bell Ranger from Aleksandr Pevsner.”

“The same Aleksandr Pevsner we’ve talked about before?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Jesus Christ, that opens a whole new can of worms,” Do

herty said. “Did he know what you were going to use it for?”

Castillo had a quick mental image of Doherty writing Pevsner on one of the blackboards, followed by a very large question mark and then an even larger exclamation point.

“Yes, he knew,” Castillo said.

“Has it occurred to you that your pal is the one who tipped the unknown parties to what you were up to? Or that he sent them himself?” Doherty asked and then didn’t wait for an answer, but instead turned to Delchamps and said: “Ed, this Russian mafioso is up to his ears in everything else criminal on both hemispheres, so is it likely he’s involved in either this oil-for-food scam or terrorism?”

Castillo picked up on Doherty’s use of Delchamps’s first name.

So he likes him at least that much? Good!

“Terrorism, no,” Delchamps said. “That’s not saying his airplanes haven’t flown terrorists or supplies—including money—around for the Muslim fanatics. But I say that primarily because his airplanes go to lots of interesting places. He has almost certainly been used by terrorists—who have paid him extremely well for his services—but he’s not one of them.

“And, Jack, from what I know—know—the same thing is true of his association with the oil-for-food maggots. Pevsner’s airplanes flew a lot of food and medicine—like Ferraris and blond Belgian hookers for Saddam’s sons—and nice little hundred-thousand-dollar bricks of hundred-dollar bills into and out of Iraq. But a lot of the same thing—maybe not the Ferraris, but just about everything else—went into and out of Iraq on Air France and Lufthansa and a lot of other airlines. My information is that Pevsner’s airplanes were used when Saddam and company really wanted to be sure the commercial carrier didn’t get curious about what was really in the crates marked ‘Hospital Supplies.’”

“There wasn’t time for Pevsner to tip anybody off about the raid,” Castillo said. “And, anyway, he didn’t know where we were going. He only knew who we were after.”

“Unless he already knew where Lorimer was, Charley,” Delchamps argued. “He could have told someone ‘You’d better take care of that problem before the American gets to him.’”