"Yeah," Delchamps said.
"You're going to have to go to the President, Charley," Torine said.
"Before you do that, let me tell you where I'm coming from," Delchamps said. "And we'll see how this plays out."
"Go ahead," Castillo said.
"I've been in this business a long time," Delchamps said. "Long enough to be able to retire tomorrow, if I want to. I have been around long enough to see a lot of hard work blown-and, for that matter, people killed- because some hotshot with political power and a personal agenda stuck his nose in what was being developed and blew it. I've been working on this scum Lorimer for a long time, years. And it hasn't been easy."
"How so?" Castillo asked.
"Have you got any clue what he's been up to?"
"Yeah," Castillo said, "he's a bagman, maybe the most important bagman, in the Iraqi oil-for-food scheme."
Castillo saw the surprise on Torine's and Fernando's faces. He had not told them what Kennedy had told him, only that they had met and Kennedy didn't know where Lorimer was.
"The skinny is, as you know," Castillo said, "that the French wanted to ease the sanctions on Hussein but the United States-and the Brits-said hell no. So in
its infinite wisdom, the UN security council, in 1996, stepped in with Oil for Food, saying it would keep the Iraqi people alive. It in fact provided Saddam a way to reward his friendly Frogs and Russians and other crooks. Oil allocations totaled some sixty-five billion dollars by the time the United States bagged Baghdad-and with it the program-in 2003. There's plenty to skim off sixty-five thousand million dollars, and Lorimer was there holding the bag and taking names."
"You want to tell me where you got that about Lorimer being the bagman?" Delchamps asked. It was close to a challenge.
"No."
"I'll ask you again, later," Delchamps said. "Maybe you'll change your mind."
"Anything is possible," Castillo said.
"Okay, for the sake of argument, he's been the most important bagman. He knows maybe fifty percent of the people-maybe more-who've been paid off, how much they've been paid off, how, and when. And what for. Some of these people are in the UN, high up in the UN. Therefore, the UN is not interested in having this come out.
"Some of those paid off are French. The French have an interesting law that says the President of France cannot be investigated while he's holding that office. And the Deuxieme Bureau-you know what that is?"
Castillo nodded.
"They regard the agency as a greater threat to La Belle France than the Schutzstaffel ever was, and cooperate accordingly. That's made looking into this difficult."
"I can see where it would," Castillo said.
"Same thing for the Germans," Delchamps went on. "I've still got some friends on the other side of the Rhine-I did some time in Berlin and Vienna in the good old days of the Cold War-and they've fed me some stuff, together with the friendly advice to watch my back as some very important Germans were involved and don't want it to come out.
"There were a lot of Russians involved, too. A lot of the cash we found in Saddam Hussein's closets got there on airplanes owned by a legendary Russian businessman by the name of Aleksandr Pevsner. You ever hear that name?"
"I've heard it," Castillo said.
"He runs sort of a covert FedEx courier service for people who want to ship things around the world without anybody knowing about it. Going off on a tangent with Pevsner, about a month ago I was told-all the station chiefs were told-not to look into anything that sonofabitch was doing without the specific approval of Langley in each case."
"Pevsner was involved with the oil-for-food business?" Castillo asked.
"Not directly, as far as I've been able to figure out. What he did was move the money around-like so much freight-and I suspect that a lot of stuff Saddam Hussein wasn't supposed to get got to Baghdad on his airplanes."
Torine's eyes met Castillo's for a moment.
"Which brings us to the Americans," Delchamps went on. "We had several enterprising businessmen in Houston who were in the oil-for-food racket up to their eyeballs. Forgive me if I sound cynical, but it has been my experience that when rich oil guys make large contributions to politicians, the politicians lend sympathetic ears to them when, for example, they want the agency and the FBI, etcetera, to lay off another businessman, like, for example, this guy Pevsner."
Delchamps paused.
"Can I change my mind about the coffee?"