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," Doherty 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.'"
"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 Jose Ordonez 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?"
"I like to think of it as having converted it to a good cause," Castillo said.
Delchamps and Miller chuckled.
"Does Yung know about this?"
"Yung's the one who told us how to 'convert' it," Miller said.
"I don't think I want to hear any more about this," Doherty said.
"Good, because I can see no purpose in telling you any more than that. And I wish Miller hadn't been so helpful just now."
"You realize, don't you, Castillo, that Yung's FBI career is really down the toilet?"