The Hostage Part 71

"Someone with the authority to give an order like that?"

Castillo nodded.

"And what will happen when, say, your secretary of state or, for that matter, your President learns-as they inevitably will-that someone has given you these orders?"

"That's not going to be a problem, Herr Kocian."

"You're not afraid that you and whoever gave you this order will not be-what's that wonderful American phrase?-'hung out to twist in the wind'?"

"No, I'm not."

"You will excuse me, Herr Gossinger, if I think you are being naive," Kocian said. "Junior intelligence officers-and you're not old enough to be anything but a junior intelligence officer-are expendable."

"So what?" Castillo said.

"I was very fond of your grandfather and your mother. I don't want it on my conscience that I was in any way responsible for Little Karlchen being left hanging out twisting in the wind or, more likely, being strapped into a chair with his throat cut after his teeth were extracted with pliers."

"Why don't you let me worry about that?" Castillo said.

"I just told you, I was very fond of your mother and your grandfather."

"Eric, I'm as concerned as you are that Karl may be hurt, even murdered," Otto Goerner said, in the Viennese patois. "But I have reason to believe that he won't be left hanging in the breeze."

"What reason?"

"Otto," Castillo said. "Stop right there."

"What reason, Otto?" Kocian pursued.

"I know who gave him his orders."

"Otto, G.o.ddammit!" Castillo said.

"He told you who did, or you know know?"

"Let me put it this way, Eric," Goerner said. "I know know he's not as junior an intelligence officer as you might think he is; quite the opposite." he's not as junior an intelligence officer as you might think he is; quite the opposite."

"Are you going to tell me how you know know that?" that?"

"Not unless Karl tells me I can," Goerner said.

"And are you, Herr Gossinger, going to give Herr Goerner permission to tell me?"

"No," Castillo said. Then he chuckled.

"What's funny, Herr Gossinger?" Kocian asked, politely.

"If I told you that, Herr Kocian, I would have to kill you."

Kranz laughed.

"I'm only kidding, Herr Kocian," Castillo said. "That's a special operations joke."

Kocian met Castillo's eyes for a long moment. Then he shrugged and said, almost sadly, "I'd be more comfortable, Karl, if I was sure you were not kidding."

Castillo didn't reply.

"All right. May G.o.d forgive me, but all right," Eric Kocian said. "I will tell you what I know. Come with me."

He started to wade toward the side of the pool, pushing the floating table before him. When he reached the side, he carefully put his cigar in the ashtray, then moved the ashtray to the low-tiled coping surrounding the pool. He did the same thing with his cellular telephone, the metal pitcher, the newspapers, and the copy of the American Conservative American Conservative. Then he pushed the floating table away into the center of the pool and with surprising agility hoisted himself out of the pool and sat with his feet dangling into the water.

Out of the water, Kocian looked his age. The flesh on his arms and chest and legs sagged. His jockstrap was almost hidden by a roll of flesh that sagged down from his abdomen. There were angry scars on his upper shoulder, his abdomen, and his left leg.

"You speak German," Kocian said to Kranz. "I could tell."

"Yes, sir, I do."

"These two don't," he said, gesturing at Fernando and Torine. "You want all these people to hear what I have to say, Karl?"

"Bitte," Castillo said. Castillo said.

"Then I will speak English," Kocian said in English. "Very softly, because speaking English in here will attract attention." He switched back to German and pointed at Kranz. "In each of those cubicles," he went on, pointing, "there is a bucket and a water gla.s.s or two. Go get two buckets and six-no, eight-gla.s.ses, and bring them here."

Kranz hoisted himself out of the pool.

He then switched to English and quietly ordered, "The rest of you get out, and lay close to me-there are towels in the cubicles-and if you have something to say, say it very softly."

In a minute, after two trips to the dressing cubicles lining one wall of the pool, Kranz had arranged on the tile coping two white buckets, capable of holding perhaps a gallon each, and eight water gla.s.ses about six inches high, and everybody was sitting or lying on thick white towels on the tiled floor beside the pool.

"This," Kocian said softly, splashing his feet in the pool, "is the nearly limitless pool of oil under Iraq. It was controlled-owned-by Saddam Hussein. When Hussein was quote President of Iraq end quote, he was more of an absolute ruler than the king of Arabia.

"He had many vices, including greed, which did him in. He wasn't satisfied with what he had. He wanted the oil which lay under the sands of Kuwait . . . down there."

He pointed.

"If Hussein had not invaded Kuwait, we almost certainly would not be sitting here today, but he did.

"This bothered the Americans, and even some members of the United Nations. Some say the Americans rushed to defend poor little Kuwait because they believed that Saddam Hussein was naughty, and needed to have his wrist slapped. Others suggest that they were afraid Saddam also had his eyes on the oil under Arabia . . . over there . . . which was and is essential to the American economy.

"Whatever the reasons, there was a war. Iraq lost. Some of you may remember that."

"We were all there, Herr Kocian," Castillo said. "Can we get to the end of the history lesson?"

"I'm surprised that no one has taught you, Karl, that those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it," Kocian said. "Would you like me to go on?"

"Sorry," Castillo said.

"It was not a total victory," Kocian resumed. "President Bush the First decided he did not need to occupy Baghdad to win the war. Ten years later, President Bush the Second decided that it would take American flags flying over Saddam Hussein's castles to win that that war. war.

"At the end of the first Iraqi war, to make Saddam Hussein live up to what he promised to do at the armistice, and of course did not do, the Americans got the UN to place an embargo on the sale of Iraqi oil. That meant Iraq would have no money from the sale of their oil.

"France and Russia primarily, with some other nations, were suddenly deeply concerned with the helpless women and children of Iraq. Without some income to buy food, the French and the Russians cried, Iraqi babies would starve. Without medicine and medical supplies for Iraqi hospitals, Iraqi women and the elderly would die in agony.

"Oil for Food was born. Iraq would be permitted to sell enough of its oil to buy food and medicine. The United Nations would monitor the sale of the oil, and ensure that nothing entered Iraq that wasn't food or medicine.

"United Nations inspectors were stationed-primarily at Basra on the Persian Gulf . . . down there . . . and in other places-to count the barrels of oil-the allocations-that would be shipped out for sale, and to make sure that nothing was shipped into Iraq that wasn't supposed to be."

Kocian examined the two buckets Kranz had fetched for him.

He dipped the larger bucket in the pool and hauled it out.

"This is how much oil it would take to buy food and medicine. You will notice that when I took it out, it did not noticeably lower the level of the water in the pool."

He leaned forward, took his cigar from the ashtray, relit it, puffed on it, examined the coal, took another puff, and went on.

"Saddam found himself sitting on-swimming in?-a sea of black stuff that was worthless to him, but considered black gold by the rest of the world. All he had to do was figure some way to get it out of Iraq, past the wall the UN had set up."

He tapped the tiled coping.

"First, he tried diplomacy. He would get the UN to relax or remove the embargo. To do this, he would have to have important friends in the UN. How does one acquire friends? Give them something. He arranged to have the oil allocations a.s.signed to people he thought might become his friends. Many of these were French and Russians, but there were others, too.

"To keep this simple, what he did was arrange-by bribing a UN official-for his oil allocations to come into the hands of these people at prices lower than the going price for crude oil. Say, fifty cents a barrel lower. Fifty cents a barrel becomes a lot of money when one is dealing in terms of, say, two million barrels of oil-one tanker full of oil.

"All these people had to do to turn a quick profit of a million dollars was sign over their allocation of two million barrels of oil-for-food oil to someone else. Saddam also let it be known that if he were permitted to export more oil, there would be more millions-many more millions-of dollars coming into the hands of those who caused the UN to relax the embargo.

"He also made friends by not complaining when the medicine shipped into Iraq for the poor Iraqi children and women had a high price. Aspirin at five dollars a pill, for example. Flour at twenty dollars a kilo. Und so weiter. Und so weiter.

"Now to do this, of course, he had to have friends among the UN officials who were checking to see that he didn't get anything he wasn't supposed to have. How to make these friends? Give them something. What did he have to give? This black stuff that was worthless to him anyway. How was he going to get it to them? Bribe the UN official checking the outgoing oil. If he happened to be looking the other way when, say, a hundred thousand barrels of oil was mistakenly pumped into a tanker hauling off the legitimate oil-for-food allocation, he could expect to have party or parties unknown drop off a package of crisp brand-new U.S. one-hundred-dollar bills at his grandmother's apartment."

He picked up the water bucket and poured from it into four of the water gla.s.ses. Then he picked up one of the water-filled gla.s.ses and moved it down the tile coping.

"This one goes to the UN official who happened to be looking the other way when the tanker was overloaded," he said.

He picked up a second of the water-filled gla.s.ses, moved it down the tile coping, and explained, "And this one goes to the UN official who sees nothing suspicious about five-dollar-a-pill aspirin, or twenty-dollar-a-kilo flour, and authorizes the bill therefore to be paid."

He picked up the two remaining water-filled gla.s.ses and moved them to a narrow shelf on the pool side of the tile coping. "And these two, now converted to packages of crisp one-hundred-dollar bills, go back across the border to Saddam, where they are thus available to build palaces for his sons and to bribe other people.

"You will notice, again, that filling the gla.s.ses did not appreciably lower the level of water in the bucket."

He paused, looked at everybody for a moment, and then filled the remaining water gla.s.ses.

"There are many refineries in Iraq," Kocian went on, "capable of producing far more gasoline, for example, than Iraq needs. What to do with this?"

He picked up two of the gla.s.ses and leaned forward to where Torine was lying on the tiles, and set them down by one of Torine's elbows.

"You are now Jordan," Kocian said. "Jordanians don't hate Americans as much as most other Arab countries,possibly because the widow of the late king was the daughter of an American general. And America tends to look less critically at Jordan than it does at other Arab countries. In any event, Jordan has a need for gasoline. There is no pipeline or port, but Iraq has many twenty-thousand-gallon tanker trucks. How to get it across the border? Bribe somebody."

He slid the water gla.s.ses from Torine's elbow to his waist, and picked up one of them. He moved it inside the tile coping. "This one, now miraculously converted to dollars, goes back to Iraq."

"Jesus!" Castillo said.

"Now, there were certain logistical problems to be solved, as well," Kocian went on. "Saddam wanted certain things-his sons, for example, liked Mercedes sports cars and Hustler Hustler magazine-which he could not legally import into Iraq. You may notice I am not even talking about war materiel, aircraft parts, etcetera, which is another story in itself. So, how to do this? magazine-which he could not legally import into Iraq. You may notice I am not even talking about war materiel, aircraft parts, etcetera, which is another story in itself. So, how to do this?

"Bribe a UN inspector into finding nothing suspicious, say, that an X-ray machine intended for an Iraqi hospital came from the Mercedes-Benz plant in Stuttgart. Or that a crate labeled 'Medical Publications' actually was full of p.o.r.nographic videotapes.

"Saddam Hussein International Airport in Baghdad saw a lot of cargo airplanes-many of them owned by a Russian by the name of Aleksandr Pevsner-flying in things like hospital X-ray machines from the Mercedes-Benz plant-"

"Tell me about Pevsner, please, Herr Kocian," Castillo said.

"Tell you what about him?"

"How deep was he in the oil-for-food business?"

"He made a lot of money."

"He was one of those bribed?"

"We're playing semantic games here," Kocian said. "Did somebody hand him some money and say, 'Please defy the UN sanctions and airlift this Mercedes in an X-ray crate to Baghdad?' No. Did he carry an X-ray machine to Baghdad without looking to see what the crate really held? Yes. Did he charge twice or three times-five times-the standard rate for flying X-ray machines to Baghdad? Yes. Did he look to see if a case of ten million aspirin pills really contained aspirin instead of, for example, ten million dollars in U.S. currency? No. Was he bribed? That would be an opinion. Was he paid in cash? Yes. Was the cash he got from Saddam Hussein cash that had come into Saddam's hands for oil that he exported that he wasn't supposed to export? Almost certainly; where else would Saddam have gotten it? Can I prove any of this? No."

"Interesting," Torine said.

"What's your interest in Aleksandr Pevsner, Karl?" Kocian asked.

"The name has come up in conversation," Castillo said. "How were all these bribes paid, Herr Kocian, do you know?"

"In oil or cash, I told you."

"No. I mean, for example, you mentioned that a party or parties unknown would hand somebody's grandmother a stack of cash. Who was that party unknown? Who actually made the payoffs?"

"There was an elaborate system set up to do that," Kocian said. "What's your American name, Karl? 'Charles'?"

"Carlos," Castillo said. "That's Spanish for Karl and Charles."

"Yes, of course. Well, you're going to love this, Carlos Carlos ." ."

"Love what?"

"When this business began to grow, and it became inconvenient to pa.s.s money through banks, laundering it, etcetera, Saddam began looking around for a paymaster. He needed someone, preferably an official of some sort, ideally a diplomat, who traveled around the area, and whose baggage would not be subject to search. The only people who did that routinely were members of the UN. So they started looking around the UN people they already had on the payroll, and they weren't very impressed. Finally they found their man in Paris, working for the UN. He was a UN bureaucrat, not a bona fide diplomat. He worked for-"

"The European Directorate of InterAgency Coordination, something like that?" Castillo interrupted.

"He was the chief of the European Directorate of InterAgency Coordination," Kocian said, looking at him strangely. "Which ent.i.tled him to a UN diplomatic pa.s.sport. The pa.s.sport-which, in addition to getting you through customs and immigration without getting your bags searched, exempts you from both local taxes and taxes in your homeland-is a prize pa.s.sed out to deserving middle-level UN bureaucrats."

"What does the European Directorate of InterAgency Coordination do, Herr Kocian?" Castillo asked. "I've always wondered."

"I don't really know," Kocian said. "From what I have seen of the UN, probably nothing useful. But this fellow had for ten, fifteen years been running all over Europe and the Near East and the United States, doing his interagency coordination, whatever that might be.

"He had other things going for him. He wasn't married, so there would be no wife boasting about what her husband was doing; and he wasn't h.o.m.os.e.xual, so there would be no boyfriend doing the same. And he wasn't very well paid. Even tax exempt, and taking into consideration his travel and representation allowances, his salary wasn't very much.