The Hunters (Presidential Agent 3)

“I don’t think he knew where Lorimer was, Edgar,” Castillo said.

“Why?” Doherty challenged.

“I think if he knew, Lorimer would have been dead when we got there. Alek doesn’t like people who know things about him walking around.”

“And what do you think Lorimer knew about Pevsner?” Doherty asked.

“Change that to ‘Alek doesn’t like people who might know anything the disclosure of which might even remotely inconvenience him walking around.’”

“That include you, Ace?” Delchamps asked. “You know where he is and you’re still walking around.”

“Where is he, Castillo?” Doherty asked.

“The last time I saw him, he was in Argentina,” Castillo said.

“Jesus Christ!” Doherty said. “And what about Howard Kennedy? Where was he the last time you saw him?”

“He was at Jorge Newbery airport when we came back from Uruguay.”

“Doing what?”

“I think Pevsner sent him, to give him an early heads-up in case something had gone wrong.”

“So Kennedy knows where you were and what went down?” Delchamps asked.

“Yeah, I’m sure he does.”

“You told him?” Doherty asked, incredulously. “You’re operating on a Presidential Finding and you told that turncoat sonofabitch all about it?”

“I didn’t tell him anything. That he found out from either Pevsner—or, more likely, from Munz, who had been hit and was on happy pills—is something I couldn’t control.”

“That doesn’t worry you?” Doherty asked.

“No. Kennedy works for Pevsner. He knows what happens to people who talk. What does worry me is Chief Inspector José Ordóñez of the Uruguayan police, who has figured out—but can’t prove—that I used Pevsner’s Ranger and that special operators put down the Ninjas.”

“What’s he going to do with that information?” Delchamps asked.

“He’s a good friend of Munz, knows that I’m a good friend of Munz, and would probably prefer that the whole episode would go away. If anything, if I had to bet I’d bet he’d go along with the drug dealer theory advanced by Ambassador McGrory.”

“The drug dealer theory?” Doherty asked, incredulously.

“Ambassador McGrory has developed the theory that Lorimer was, in his alter ego as Jean-Paul Bertrand, antiquities dealer, actually a big-time drug dealer and got whacked—and had his money stolen—when a deal fell through.”

“I don’t understand that,” Doherty said. “Presumably, the ambassador in Uruguay knew about this operation. What’s this drug deal nonsense? Disinformation?”

“He didn’t know—doesn’t know—anything about it,” Castillo said.

Doherty shook his head in disbelief.

“You said something about money,” Doherty said. “What money?”

“Lorimer had about sixteen million dollars in three Uruguayan banks. That’s a fact. Whether he skimmed it from the oil-for-food payoffs he was making—which is what I think—or whether it was money he was going to use for more payoffs, I don’t know.”

“Where’s the money now?”

“We have it,” Castillo said.

“You stole it?”