The Hunters (Presidential Agent 3)

“Colonel Castillo has made it clear that your activities, Yung, are protected by the security classification of the Presidential Finding.”

“I’m almost sorry they are. I wish I could tell the bastards in Professional Ethics that I’m not ashamed of anything I’ve done since I got involved in this and that I like being trusted by Castillo and the people around him. That’s more than I can say for the bureau. They found me guilty by association—‘We can’t trust him anymore; send him to Uruguay or someplace’—with no more justification than a determination to cover their own asses.”

Doherty paled and looked as if he was about to say something.

“Well,” Delchamps said, breaking the silence, “now that the air is cleared and we’re all pals united in a common cause, can we get back to work? I’ve got a lot of paleontological data for your blackboards, Jack.”

“What kind of data?” Doherty asked.

“From dinosaurs,” Delchamps said.

“And I have fifteen pages of mysterious numbers for you to decipher for us, Dave,” Castillo said and gestured for him to sit down at the conference table.

“What NSA has come up with, Charley,” Yung said fifteen minutes later, “is pretty good. It’s a goddamned pity we can’t use it to put some of these bastards in jail.”

“For what?”

“Income tax evasion, most of them. A lot of other charges. But none of this would be admissible in court.”

“Careful, you’re starting to sound like an FBI agent again,” Castillo said without thinking, then heard what he had said and looked to see if Doherty had heard him. His face showed that he had.

Oh, fuck you! Yung was screwed by the FBI—probably by you personally, Doherty—and you know it!

“I don’t give a damn about the IRS,” Castillo went on. “What use is it to us?”

“Well, we know from which account the people in Philadelphia or Easton—wherever the hell it was—got their two million.”

“Didn’t we already know that?”

“What we didn’t know—this is in Appendix 2—was that there was a deposit, the same exact amount, $1,950,000, into the same account at the Caledonian Bank and Trust Limited from which the $1,950,000 was wired to the Merchants National Bank of Easton. I think we can reasonably surmise this was done in anticipation of sending the money to Pennsylvania.”

“Who put that money in that account?” Castillo asked.

“It came from another numbered account in the Caledonian Bank and Trust Limited. And what’s very interesting about that is—this is also in Appendix 2—is that that’s a very substantial account, with just over forty-six million dollars in it.”

“In cash?” Castillo asked, incredulously.

“Five million in cash, the rest in instruments something like the ones Lorimer used in Uruguay—not the same thing, exactly, but something like it. You want me to explain that?”

“First tell me what’s ‘very interesting’ about this second account.”

“There have been no deposits made to it since March 23, 2003. The invasion of Iraq began on March 20, 2003.”

“We know that date,” Miller said. “When Castillo and I were simple, honest soldiers, we were there.”

“Which suggests to you what?”

“The oil-for-food scam ended with the invasion,” Yung said. “That final deposit, nine-point-five million, was probably in the pipeline, so to speak, for that three-day difference.”

“Who owns the account with the forty-six million in it?”

“We don’t know. NSA can’t get data like that,” Yung replied. “But Appendix 3 says that a lot of people are snooping around the Caledonian Bank and Trust Limited, including the FBI. One of them should know.”

“You hear that, Inspector?” Castillo asked.

“I heard it,” Doherty said. “Would you be surprised if my first reaction was to say fuck you?”

“No,” Castillo said. “But?”