The Hostage Part 9

"The Hyatt."

"It's now the Four Seasons, formerly Hyatt Park. They sold it."

"I guess n.o.body told my travel agent," Castillo said.

"You heard that, Antonio?" Santini asked. "The Four Seasons?"

"Si, senor."

The Volkswagen started off.

It was a thirty-minute drive from the airport to the hotel. First down the crowded but nonetheless high-speed autopista toll road, and then onto Avenida 9 Julio, which Castillo remembered was supposed to be the widest avenue in the world.

As they came close to the Four Seasons, formerly Hyatt Park, Castillo saw that it was next to the French emba.s.sy, an enormous turn-of-the-century mansion. He'd forgotten that.

A top-hatted doorman welcomed him to the Four Seasons and blew a whistle, which caused a bellman to appear.

"Find somewhere to park," Santini ordered Antonio. "I'll see that Senor Gossinger gets settled."

Room 1550 in the Four Seasons was a small suite, a comfortable sitting room and a large bedroom, both facing toward the Main Railroad Station-which Castillo remembered was called "El Retiro"-and the docks and the River Plate beyond. There was something faint on the far horizon.

Castillo wondered aloud if they were high enough so that he was looking at the sh.o.r.e of Uruguay.

"Clear day," Santini replied. "Could be. Why don't we go out on the balcony and have a good look?"

"Why not?"

When they were out on the small balcony, Santini took a small, flat metal box from his pocket and ran it over the walls, then over the tiny table and two chairs, and finally over the floor.

"Clean," he announced. "But it never hurts to check."

Castillo smiled at him.

"Joel tells me there's a warrant out for you in Costa Rica," Santini said with a smile. "Grand Theft, Airplane."

"Joel's mistaken. The name on the warrant is 'Party or Parties Unknown.'"

Santini chuckled, then asked, "What's going on with you here?"

"I was sent to find out about our diplomat's wife who got herself kidnapped."

"When did kidnapping start to interest Special Forces?"

"Joel told you about that, too, huh? To look at him, you wouldn't think he talks too much."

"Your shameful secret is safe with me, Herr Gossinger."

"I guess you know I'm on loan from the Army to Matt Hall?" Santini nodded. "The President told him to send me down here to, quote, find out what happened and how it happened before anybody down there has time to write a cover-his-a.s.s report, end quote."

Santini nodded, then offered: "Mrs. Elizabeth Masterson, nice lady, wife of J. Winslow Masterson, our chief of mission. Nice guy. She was apparently s.n.a.t.c.hed from the parking lot of a restaurant called Kansas, nice place, in San Isidro, which is an upscale suburb. So far, no communication from the kidnappers. I'm thinking that they may have been very disappointed to find the lady has a diplomatic pa.s.sport; I wouldn't be surprised if they turn her loose. On the other hand, they may decide that a dead woman can't identify anybody."

"You give it good odds that they'd kill her?"

"They kidnapped a kid not so long ago-not a kid. He was twenty-three. In San Isidro, where they grabbed Mrs. Masterson. He was the son of a rich businessman. They cut off his fingers, one at a time, and sent them to Poppa, together with rising demands for ransom. Poppa finally paid, three hundred thousand American. That's roughly nine hundred thousand pesos, a fortune in a poor country. And shortly thereafter, they found the kid's body, shot in the head."

"Why'd they kill him?"

"Dead men tell no tales," Santini said, mockingly. "Hadn't you heard?"

"Wouldn't that discourage other people from paying ransom?"

"When they've got junior or the missus, you pay and hope you get them back alive. The only thing that may keep Mrs. Masterson alive is if the bad guys are smart enough to realize that killing her would really turn the heat up. That would embarra.s.s the government." He paused, and then, mimicking the sonorous tone of a condescending professor, added, "My experience with the criminal element, lamentably, suggests that very few of them are mentally qualified to be able to modify their antisocial behavior and become nuclear physicists."

Castillo chuckled. "I don't know why I'm laughing," he said, then asked, "What did you say about the Kansas?"

"It's a nice restaurant. She was s.n.a.t.c.hed from the parking lot in back of it. If you want, I'll take you out there for lunch, and you can have a look-see for yourself."

"Thank you. I'd like that. I won't know what I'm looking at, but I have to start somewhere."

"Pardon my ignorance, but why can't you just walk into the emba.s.sy and tell the security guy, Ken Lowery, nice guy, what you're doing down here?"

"That would put me in the system. The whole idea is for me not to be in the system."

"n.o.body knows you've been sent down here? Not even the agency?"

"Especially the agency. I'm on their bad-guy list. Theirs and the FBI's."

Santini thoughtfully considered that.

"But I'd like to know about them. Or is that putting you on the spot?"

"You're okay with Joel. That's good enough for me. Anyway, there's not much to tell. The CIA station chief-his cover, so called, is commercial attache-is a good guy by the name of Alex Darby. From what I've seen, he's okay. There's no FBI at the emba.s.sy, but they sent a couple agents over yesterday from Montevideo to see if they could be useful. I just barely know them. Typical FBI agents."

"You think-what did you say his name is? Darby?- you think Darby's in tight with SIDE and/or the local cops?"

"You know what SIDE is?"

"The Argentine versions of the CIA and the FBI combined in one, right?"

Santini nodded, then asked, "You've been here before?"

"Yeah."

"n.o.body at the emba.s.sy knows you?"

"I don't think so. I've never actually been inside the place."

Santini nodded, accepting that, and then answered the question: "I would say Darby's tight with SIDE and Lowery's tight with the cops." He paused, and then asked, "What's going to happen if-when-they find out you're down here? Nosing around down here? I'm not going to say anything, but . . ."

"I really hope they don't. It would put Natalie Cohen on the spot with the amba.s.sador for not telling him. She knows I'm down here, and why."

"You call the secretary of state by her first name?"

"No. I call her 'ma'am,'" Castillo said, but then added, smiling: "But she calls me Charley."

"Speaking of names, Joel said Gossinger's a beard."

"My name is really Castillo. Charley Castillo."

He put out his hand. Santini took it.

"Tony," he said, and then in Italian, "You don't look Italian."

Charley shook his head and replied, in Italian, "Half German and half Texan, heavy on the Hispanic heritage."

"You speak good Italian."

"Languages come pretty easy to me."

Santini nodded his acceptance of this, then asked, "How good a cover? If SIDE develops an interest in you, they'll check. They're pretty good at that."

"It'll hold up. Gossinger, who works for a German newspaper, the Tages Zeitung, Tages Zeitung, is here to do a human-interest story on the survivors of the is here to do a human-interest story on the survivors of the Graf Spee. Graf Spee. If my editor at the If my editor at the Tages Zeitung Tages Zeitung hasn't already told the German emba.s.sy I'm here and said I would appreciate all courtesies, he will soon." hasn't already told the German emba.s.sy I'm here and said I would appreciate all courtesies, he will soon."

Santini looked at him a moment.

"Okay, so you speak Spanish, you've been here, you've got what sounds like a pretty good cover. But I still don't know how you can do what you're supposed to do without going to the emba.s.sy."

"I didn't say I wasn't going to go to the emba.s.sy. Charley Castillo's Charley Castillo's not going to the emba.s.sy." not going to the emba.s.sy."

"You're pretty good at this undercover business? Playingmake-believe? You could get away with playing Gossinger at the emba.s.sy?"

"Why not?"

"Can I make a suggestion?"

"I'm wide open."

"Even if they swallow you whole at the emba.s.sy as Herr Gossinger, they're not going to tell you anything. For one thing, it hasn't been in the papers or on the tube. The Argentines are embarra.s.sed, and they put a lid on the story. We're not talking about it to the Americans-not the newspaper, not the New York Times, New York Times, n.o.body. The Argentines are hoping that when the bad guys find out they've got a dip's wife they'll turn her loose, and the whole thing can be forgotten. Personally, I think they're p.i.s.sing in the wind, but that's where it is right now. So if Herr Gossinger goes to the emba.s.sy and starts answering questions, Lowery and everybody else are going to wonder how the h.e.l.l Herr Gossinger heard about it." n.o.body. The Argentines are hoping that when the bad guys find out they've got a dip's wife they'll turn her loose, and the whole thing can be forgotten. Personally, I think they're p.i.s.sing in the wind, but that's where it is right now. So if Herr Gossinger goes to the emba.s.sy and starts answering questions, Lowery and everybody else are going to wonder how the h.e.l.l Herr Gossinger heard about it."

"I hope Joel told you I wasn't sent here because I was the best-qualified man all around to conduct an undercover kidnapping investigation."

"Joel said you had two skills: you were one h.e.l.l of a swordsman and pretty good about stealing stolen air-liners back from the bad guys."

"He didn't mention my poker playing?"

"No," Santini said, smiling. "But figure that out. If he told me that, he would be admitting you took him."

"Joel has one flaw in his character," Charley said. "He actually thinks he can play poker."

"He also thinks he can actually play gin," Santini said. "When we were on the presidential detail, waiting, we got to play a h.e.l.l of a lot of gin. I took a lot of his money."

They smiled at each other.

"But we digress, Herr Gossinger," Santini said. "We were talking about my little suggestion."

"Let's hear it."

"If, say," Santini began, "a fellow Secret Service agent just happened to be pa.s.sing through Buenos Aires, and checked in with me at the emba.s.sy, and he and I just happened to b.u.mp into Ken Lowery, and I told Lowery, 'I was just telling Agent Whatsisname here about Mrs. Masterson,' Lowery would understand that-he's always making reference to 'we federal agents' as if he were one-and would probably stumble over his tongue to tell you how he's dealing with the problem."

"Am I detecting you don't think too much of this guy's ability as an investigator?"

"He's a good guy, like I said, but how many times do you think he's had a chance to investigate anything more serious than some dip diddling another dip's wife? Such conduct being detrimental to the foreign service of the United States."

Castillo chuckled, then asked, "What would happen to you if they found out you'd set this up? And they probably would, sooner or later."

"Maybe they would send me home in disgrace," Santini said. "And I could go back to being a real Secret Service agent. Coming down here wasn't my idea. Or maybe you could have told me, as the Presidential Agent, what you were doing and ordered me to keep my mouth shut."

"Consider yourself so ordered," Castillo said. "But I have to tell you the last time I did that-to a guy who had some information I needed-the DCI wasn't impressed and relieved him for cause. He finally wound up with a letter of commendation from the President, but he had a very uncomfortable couple of days before that happened."

"What'll happen will happen," Santini said.

"How come they sent you down here?"

"I hurt myself, and was placed on limited duty, so they sent me down here to look for funny money."

"How'd you hurt yourself?"

"Joel didn't tell you?"

Castillo shook his head.

"If you laugh, I'll break both your arms," Santini said, conversationally. "I fell off the Vice President's limo b.u.mper, and the trailing Yukon ran over my foot."

"I won't laugh, but can I smile broadly?"

"f.u.c.k you, Herr Gossinger," Santini said, smiling.

"What would another Secret Service agent be doing, pa.s.sing through Argentina?"

"Any one of fifty things, it happens all the time, at least once a month. Usually, it's a supervisory special agent b.i.t.c.hing about my expenses; c.r.a.p like that. The only problem I can see would be if somebody asked you to prove who you were."

"Wait one," Charley said.

Less than two minutes later, he handed his Secret Service credentials to Santini.

"Hall got you these?" he asked when he'd examined them.

Castillo shook his head.