"Unless, of course, the bank is also in the vertically integrated system."
"You mean they own the bank?"
Weiss nodded.
"And that raised the question, among many others, in the good guys' minds, 'Where did all this come from?' Drug dealers are smart, ruthless, and enterprising, but very few of them have passed through Cambridge and learned to sing 'On, Fair Harvard!' "That suggested something very interesting," Weiss went on, "that it was not a group of Colombian thugs with gold chains around their necks who were running this operation, but some very clever people who may indeed have gone to Harvard and were employed by their government. Two governments came immediately to mind."
"Which?"
"The Democratic People's Republic of Cuba and the Russian Federation."
"Jesus H. Christ!"
"Another thing needed to run this operation smoothly, Charley," Delchamps said, "is discipline. The employees-especially the local hires-had to completely understand that any hanky-panky would get them, and their families, whacked."
"Lorimer told me that Timmons's driver-"
"Timmons?" Weiss interrupted.
Just as Weiss had a moment before, Castillo held up his hand imperiously, signaling he didn't want to be interrupted.
Delchamps chuckled, and Weiss, smiling, shook his head.
"-was garroted," Castillo finished, "with a metal garrote."
"Interesting!" Weiss said. "Stasi?"
"And that might explain what Major Vincenzo and the others were doing at Shangri-La," Castillo said. "Maybe he didn't come from Cuba for that. Maybe he-and the others-were already in Paraguay."
"And," Delchamps added, "since Lorimer wasn't involved with drugs-they wanted to shut his mouth about what he knew of the oil-for-food scam-and Vincenzo was, that suggests there's a connection. Somebody who wanted Lorimer dead was able to order Vincenzo and company to do it."
"And we have the two dead FSB lieutenant colonels," Castillo said.
"Ed somehow neglected to mention two dead FSB officers," Weiss said.
"I didn't think you needed to know," Delchamps said.
Weiss rolled his eyes.
"Who were they?"
"One of the colonel's crack pistol marksmen, a chap named Bradley," Delchamps said with a straight face, "took down Yevgeny Komogorov-"
"Of the FSB's Service for the Protection of the Constitutional System and the Fight Against Terrorism?" Weiss asked drily.
Delchamps nodded as he went on: "-in the Sheraton Hotel garage in Pilar, outside Buenos Aires. Colonel Komogorov was at the time apparently bent on whacking a fellow Russian by the name of Aleksandr Pevsner-"
"Pevsner?" Weiss asked, incredulously.
With an even more imperious gesture than Castillo had given, Delchamps held up his hand to signal he didn't want to be interrupted.
Castillo laughed.
Delchamps went on: "-when Bradley put a.45 round in his cheek"-he pointed to a spot immediately below his left eye-"and then Lieutenant Colonel Viktor Zhdankov was found beaten to death in the Conrad Casino and Resort in Punta del Este."
Weiss's face showed surprise, and perhaps revulsion.
"Not by us, Milton," Delchamps said. "Do I have to tell you that?"
"By who?"
"He was found in the company of a man named Howard Kennedy, who also had been beaten to death. There's a rumor going around that Kennedy was foolish enough to have tried to arrange the whacking of his employer, Mr. Pevsner."
"Either one of them could have been running Vincenzo," Castillo said thoughtfully.
Weiss considered that, then nodded.
"All of this seems to fit very nicely together," Weiss said. "But the bottom line is that nothing is going to be done about it. The Cubans-if they said anything at all-would say that Vincenzo hasn't been in the Direccion General de Inteligencia for years. The Russians will say they never heard of either Zhdankov or Komogorov."
"What's your point?" Castillo asked.
"The name of the game is to make the other guys hurt," Weiss said.
"Okay. But so what?" Castillo said.
"Let me return to Basic Drugs 101," Weiss said, "since bringing these bad guys before the bar of justice just isn't going to happen. Neither of you has any idea what happens to the heroin once it gets to Argentina, do you?"
Delchamps and Castillo shook their heads.
"The intellectually challenged station chief in Asuncion has figured that out," Weiss said. "Has either of you ever wondered how many filet mignon steaks are in the coolers of a cruise ship like, for example, the Holiday Spirit of the Southern Cruise Line? I'll give you a little clue. She carries 2,680 passengers, and a crew of some twelve hundred."
"A lot, Milton?" Delchamps asked innocently.
"Since she makes twelve-day cruises out of Miami about the sunny Caribbean, each of which features two steak nights, and filet mignon is an ever-present option on her luncheon and dinner menus, yeah, Edgar, 'a lot.' "And has either of you ever wondered where they get all this meat-or the grapefruits and oranges from which is squeezed the fresh juice for the 2,680 breakfasts served each day, etcetera, etcetera?"
"Argentina?" Castillo asked innocently.
"You win the cement bicycle, Charley," Weiss said. "And have either of you ever wondered how all those filet mignons make their way from the Argentine pampas to the coolers of the Holiday Spirit and her many sister ships?"
Castillo and Delchamps waited for him to go on.
"I left out the succulent oysters, lobsters, and other fruits of the sea sent from the chilly Chilean South Pacific seas to the coolers of the Holiday Spirit and her sister ships," Weiss said.
"You're forgiven," Delchamps said. "Get on with it."
"Air freight!" Weiss said. "Large aircraft-some of them owned by Aleksandr Pevsner, by the way-make frequent, sometimes daily flights from Buenos Aires to Jamaica loaded with chilled but not frozen meat and other victuals for the cruise ship trade."
"Jesus!" Castillo said, sensing where Weiss was headed.
"We all know how wonderful Argentine beef is, and how cheap. And most cruise ships-just about all of the Southern Cruise Line ships, and there are four of these, the smallest capable of carrying eleven hundred passengers-call at Montego Bay or Kingston, or both, on each and every voyage. Kingston is served by Norman Manley International Airfield, and Montego Bay by Sangster International.
"While the happy tourists-is there a word for the people who ride these floating hotels? Cruisers, maybe?-are wandering through the picturesque streets of Kingston and Montego Bay, soaking up culture and taking pictures for the folks back home, the hardworking Jamaican gnomes are moving loins of Argentine beef from refrigerator plants, and occasionally-if yesterday's flight from Buenos Aires was delayed for some reason-directly from the airplane to the coolers on the cruise ships."
"And under the ice is that day's shipment of heroin," Delchamps said.
"Edgar, you've always been just terrible about thinking such awful things are going on," Weiss said, mock innocently.
"And how do they get it off the ship in the States?" Castillo asked.
"There are several ways to do that," Weiss said. "One is with the ship's garbage and sewage, which now has to be brought ashore, rather than as before, when it was tossed overboard, thereby polluting the pristine waters of the Atlantic. Or, in the wee hours of the morn, as the vessel approaches Miami, it is dumped over the side, to be retrieved later by sportfishermen. Global Positioning System satellites are very helpful to the retrievers."
"And where is the DEA, or the Coast Guard, or whoever is supposed to be dealing with this sort of thing while all this is going on?" Castillo asked.
"So far they don't know about it," Weiss said, and Castillo sensed that suddenly Weiss had become dead serious, that his joking attitude had just been shut off as if a switch had been thrown.
And he made some remark before about Montvale-who was supposed to be on top of everything going on in the intelligence community-not knowing about an "important operation."