The Hunters (Presidential Agent 3)

“He said it would just be temporary,” Kenyon said. “I knew he was lying. But what could I do?”

“Indeed. What could you do? If you didn’t oblige him, he’d tell the IRS what a bad boy you’d been? Right?”

Kenyon shrugged and nodded.

“And besides, you had forty-six million of oil-for-food money in the Caledonian Bank and Trust Limited. If the IRS got involved, you’d be liable to lose that, too. Right?”

“What do you want me to say?”

“This interview of Philip J. Kenyon III is terminated, subject to recall, at seven-fifteen p.m. central standard time, 12 August 2005. All parties present at the commencement were present throughout the interview,” Doherty said, then reached over and reclaimed his tape recorder from Kenyon’s knees.

“Go to the toilet, Tubby,” Castillo ordered. “Close the door and sit on it.”

“My clothes?”

Castillo pointed to the toilet.

Kenyon got awkwardly to his feet and walked naked down the aisle.

“What do we do with him?” Castillo asked when the toilet door had been closed.

“You’re asking me, Colonel?” Doherty asked.

“Why not? You’re in the criminal business, I’m in the terrorist business, and whatever else that miserable shit is I don’t think he’s a terrorist.”

“He’s a coconspirator,” Doherty said. “And an accessory before and after the fact.”

“If you say so. So what do you want to do with him?”

“Anybody interested in what I think?” Delchamps asked.

“Not that I know of,” Castillo said, seriously.

“Fuck you, Ace,” Delchamps said, good-naturedly. “Well, now that you’ve asked for my opinion: How about Jack coming up with some really good interrogators and finding out what else Tubby knows, with these two”—he nodded toward the Secret Service agents—“suitably briefed, sitting in on it to ask questions of their own.”

“Transcripts of the interrogation, copies of everything, to OOA,” Castillo said. “And they don’t go near a United States Attorney until we decide they should.”

“I don’t like that last,” Doherty said.

“I didn’t think you would,” Castillo said. “But what does that mean?”

“We do everything that Edgar said,” Doherty said. “What’s the risk of him getting on the phone and asking somebody for help?”

“I think we should tell him that his phones are going to be tapped and that he’s going to have a Secret Service buddy with him day and night until we’re through with him and that, if he’s a bad boy, he goes straight to the Florence ADMAX and does not pass Go,” Castillo said.

He looked at Doherty.

“Okay,” Doherty said. “And now what? I mean, right now?”

“We go back to Midland, and tonight we have dinner with my grandmother. And in the morning, we go to Buenos Aires.”

Doherty nodded.

Castillo walked forward to the cockpit.

“How did it go?” Jake Torine asked.

“Better than I dared hope. But we have to go to Buenos Aires first thing in the morning.”