"What about room service?" Britton asked.
"Sure. Is that what you want to do?"
"Are the rooms big enough for all three of us to have dinner?" Special Agent Schneider asked. "I don't like to eat sitting on a bed."
"Mine is," Castillo said.
"Why don't we do that?" Britton asked. "Could you order dinner for us while we shower? Neither of us speaks Spanish that well."
"What do you want?"
"Anything, as long as it's warm and comes with a double Jack Daniel's," he said.
Special Agent Schneider laughed and got onto the elevator.
"Make that two," she said, and handed Castillo his jacket.
Major Castillo happened to notice that with the jacket no longer covering her, Special Agent Schneider's rain-soaked dress now clung to her body like a coat of varnish. He averted his eyes.
"I'm in fifteen-hundred," he announced as they got off the elevator. "At the far end of the corridor. I'll order us something to eat."
The elevator triggered a memory of Howard Kennedy.
Shit, I didn't call him with the names.
He felt in his jacket for the sheet of lined paper Yung had given him. It was soaked, but it was legible.
He carefully laid the soggy sheet of paper on the glass-topped coffee table in the sitting room, then went into his bedroom and stripped off his clothing.
Four years of practicing West Point Class 202- Personal Hygiene, or How to Take a Shower in No Time at All-paid off. Five minutes after entering his bedroom he came out of it, showered and dressed in slacks and a shirt.
First he called room service and ordered dinner, plus a bottle of Jack Daniel's and, after a moment's thought, a bottle of Famous Grouse and two bottles of Senetin cabernet sauvignon. He had shared a bottle of that with Ambassador Silvio at lunch, and, as the ambassador had said, it was really first class.
Then he called the valet and told him he had a soaking wet suit that he absolutely had to have dried and pressed and back by six-thirty in the morning. That posed no problem for the valet, which made Castillo suspect the drying and pressing service of the Four Seasons was probably going to cost as much as the suit had when he'd bought it at the annual Brooks Brothers sale at thirty-five percent off the tag price.
Finally, he sat down on the couch and punched Kennedy's autodial button on his cellular.
They could barely hear each other, which was explained when Kennedy said he'd never seen so much goddamn rain in his life. The rainstorm had apparently moved the fifteen miles or so between Jorge Newbery and Aeropuerto Internacional Ministro Pistarini de Ezeiza and was interfering with the cellular signals.
He was down to the last name on the list of FBI agents-he'd had to spell each one phonetically, sometimes twice-when the doorbell chimes bonged.
When he opened it, Special Agent Schneider, a lady who was probably from the valet service, and a man in a bartender's white jacket pushing a rolling table with the whiskey, wine, and the accoutrements were standing there.
Special Agent Schneider was wearing blue jeans and a sweater. Her hair looked damp.
He motioned them all into the room.
"Fix yourself a drink," he said. "Food's on the way."
He signed the bill for the drinks, then motioned the lady from the valet service into the bedroom and pointed out the waterlogged suit to her.
All of this while simultaneously spelling Daniel T. Westerly's name phonetically to Howard Kennedy for the third or fourth time, and being very much aware that Special Agent Schneider filled out both her sweater and her blue jeans in an incredibly delightful way. She wasn't wearing makeup, not even lipstick, and Castillo thought she looked fine without it.
Kennedy finally could hear Westerly's name spelled out phonetically.
"Westerly. Okay. He's a fingerprint guy. Damned good at it, too. He once lifted two eight-point digits from a used condom."
"That's it, Howard, that's the last of the names."
"All of them are on the major crimes team."
"Should any of them be of special interest to me?"
"No. Yung's the one who interests me. Watch yourself with him, Charley."
"I will. And you will inquire about Mr. Lorimer for me, right? Just as soon as you get where you're going?"
"The way it's raining, Charley, I may never get out of here."
That's two-no, four-sentences that came through intact.
"Howard, I like you. I'm going to make the rain stop."
"What?"
"Trust me, Howard, in ten minutes, fifteen tops, it will stop raining. I have issued the order. Have a nice flight, and remember to call."
He pushed the END button and laid down the cellular. "What was that all about?" Special Agent Schneider asked.
"Not that I'm not delighted to see you, but I thought women took longer to shower and dress than men."
"That means you're not going to tell me, right?" Betty replied. "To answer the second question, Jack's calling his wife."
"You really don't want to know," Castillo said.
She raised her glass of bourbon.
"You're not drinking?"
"I'm going to have the wine."
"On your good behavior, are you?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"This quote room unquote looks like a set for a movie," she said. "And mine's not exactly a slum, either. The whole bathroom is marble. Which raises the question, how do we pay for all this?"
"Wait until you see the view," he said and went to the windows and found the switch for the opening mechanism.
"That's beautiful!" she said and walked and stood beside him. "But it doesn't answer the question about the bill."
"When we get back to Washington, Agnes-Mrs. Forbison, who runs things in the Nebraska complex- will show you how to fill out the forms for travel expenses outside the country. When you get the check, sign it over to me."
"What I think that means is that you intend to pick up the difference between what the Secret Service will pay and what you will."
"I wanted to keep you and Jack separate from the FBI," Castillo said. "This is the only answer I could come up with on short notice."
The chimes bonged again.
This time it was Jack Britton and two waiters pushing two room-service carts loaded with food covered by stainless-steel domes. Britton was wearing a sports jacket, slacks, and a shirt and tie.
"I thought you didn't want to get dressed up for dinner," Castillo said.
"I changed my mind when I saw my room. Do you always live this good?"
"Whenever I can. Fix yourself a drink, Jack. And as soon as they've set up the food, I'll tell you what's going on."
"Just out of idle curiosity, what does this place cost by the night?"
"I really have no idea," Castillo said.
"Why am I not surprised?" Betty said, and there was an unpleasant sarcastic tone in her voice.
"I really don't know how this works in the Secret Service," Castillo said. "But I don't think the presidential protection detail people stay in the economy motel ten blocks from where the President is staying to save the government money. I intend to find out. I don't want to spend my money to buy things I've bought to carry out what I've been ordered to do. The government is not on my list of favorite charities."
Britton nodded.
"I wanted to keep you two away from the FBI," Castillo said.
"They don't like you much, either," Britton said. "I picked that up on the airplane."
Castillo found an excuse not to get into that when he saw one of the waiters opening a bottle of the cabernet.
"I'll do that, thank you," he said in Spanish. "And we'll serve ourselves." By the time Castillo had finished relating what had happened, and why he had asked that they be sent to Argentina, and what he expected of them, they had finished what had turned out to be an enormous meal.
And as they talked, Castillo had the feeling that his moral dilemma had solved itself. Special Agent Schneider was in
fact a cop, and a smart one, and this was business, not romantic fantasy. And there was no question in his mind that if he made the first preliminary pass at Schneider, she would turn it down. Gently and kindly, probably, because Schneider was a good guy, but turn it down.
And it was after two A.M.
"Let's knock it off," he said. "I want to get started early in the morning. You want to eat here-we may think of something we missed-or do you want to meet in the restaurant downstairs at, say, quarter to seven?"
"If you don't mind, here," Special Agent Schneider said. "For personal reasons: I want to look out your windows in the daylight."
"Okay, here at quarter to seven," Britton said. "My ass is dragging."
He got up from the table and walked to the door. Special Agent Schneider followed. Both waved a good-night, but neither said anything.
Three minutes after they had gone, Castillo was in bed. And then-he had no idea how much later-the door chimes bonged.
Oh, shit! The floor waiter wants to get the goddamn dishes!
Not quite knowing why he did so, he picked up the Beretta from the bedside table and held it behind his back as he stormed out of the bedroom and across the sitting room to the door and jerked it open.
Special Agent Schneider was standing in the corridor.
"I seem to have dropped my handkerchief," she said.
He didn't reply.
"May I come in?"
He stepped out of the way.
"I thought it was the floor waiter," he said.
"Were you going to shoot him?" Special Agent Schneider asked.
He held up both hands-one of them holding the Beretta-helplessly.
She walked to the table and poured wine into a glass.
"I'm not sure this is a very good idea," he said.
She walked to him and handed him the glass and smiled.
"There stands the legendary Charley Castillo, in his underwear with a gun in one hand and a glass of wine in the other," she said, and shook her head, and then went back to the table and poured another glass of wine.
With her back to him, she said, "I thought of you all the way down here on the airplane. I thought of you at other times, of course, but I thought of you all the goddamned time I was on the airplane."
Castillo saw her take a healthy swallow of the cabernet.
"One of the things I thought about," she went on, speaking softly, "was how I was going to handle the pass the man whose Secret Service code name is Don Juan was certainly going to make at me."
"I wouldn't dare make a pass at you," Castillo said, jocularly. "Not only would your brother break both my legs-"
"Let me finish, please, Charley," she interrupted firmly.
"Sorry."
"I had to be very careful, so as not to hurt your feelings-which I didn't want to do-or to piss you off, because you might get your masculine ego in an uproar and do something crappy and screw me up with the Secret Service. From what I've seen so far, I like the Secret Service, and when I took the appointment, I burned my bridges with the department in Philadelphia."
"Christ, I wouldn't-"
"Goddamn you, Charley, let me finish."
She turned to glare at him. He nodded, and she turned her back to him again.
She took another swallow of the cabernet, shook her head, and went on: "So then what happened was that you didn't make a pass at me, and my initial reaction to that was, 'Thank God!' and then I realized that you were being responsible, you were being the upstanding guy who would never make a pass at somebody who worked for him.
"And my reaction to that was, what the hell is the difference? He's not going to make a pass at you, so that's it. Relax.
"And then when I left here and I saw you sitting at the table, I thought that's the loneliest guy in the world. And then I got in bed and faced the facts. The truth."
"Which is?" he asked softly.
"That what I really wanted to do was come back," she said, and turned her head to look at him, and then quickly looked away.
He didn't move or say anything.
"Which, obviously, was a pretty dumb thing," she said. "Sorry."
She turned and walked quickly toward the door.
He caught her arm and she tried to break loose, but he held on.
"What?" she asked.
"I don't think you've been out of my mind for more than thirty consecutive minutes since the last time I saw you in Philadelphia."
She turned to face him and looked up into his eyes.
"Oh, Jesus, Charley!" "Oh, Jesus!" Presidential Agent Castillo said to Special Agent Schneider.
He had just rolled onto his back, breathing heavily, and put his arm over his eyes.
"Yeah," Betty said. After a moment, she shifted around on the bed so that she could rest her head on his chest.
He put his arm around her and ran the balls of his fingers gently up and down her spine.
"What happens now?" Charley asked. "Your brother comes in and breaks both my legs?"
"Well, he'd have no trouble finding us," Betty said. "We left a trail of my clothes from the living room into here."
He chuckled.
"What are you thinking now, Charley? 'I knew all along she'd be easy'?"
"Worse than that. I think-ignore that-I know I'm in love with you."
"You're under no obligation to say something like that."
"'Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free,'" Castillo quoted. "I think John Lennon said that."
She tweaked his nipple.
"That's from the Bible," she said, chuckling.
"Well?"
"Well what?"
"No response? In other words, are my feelings for you reciprocated? Partially reciprocated? Or reciprocated not at all?"
She raised her head and looked down at him.
"My God, couldn't you tell?" she asked, then: "You want me to say it, don't you?"
He nodded.
"Okay. I love you. I guess I knew that when I walked into Counterterrorism and saw the guy who'd thought I was a hooker in the Warwick bar and my heart jumped."
"Oh, boy!" [FOUR] The Buenos Aires Herald Azopardo 455 Buenos Aires, Argentina 0327 24 July 2005 At almost exactly this time-although neither of them cared a whit what hour it was, or even what day, as Charley reached down to pull Betty onto him-a small white Fiat van pulled away from the loading dock at the Buenos Aires Herald building in downtown Buenos Aires.
It drove to the Austral Air Cargo building at Jorge Newbery airfield, where the driver handed over approximately six hundred copies of the Herald, so fresh from the press that the ink had not had time to completely dry.
The newspapers were tied together in sixteen packages, each with a simple address. Most were in fifty-copy packages, but some of the packages contained far fewer-in three instances, only five.
The Austral people put all of them into three large blue plastic shipping containers, and then put the containers on a baggage cart. After all other cargo and passenger luggage had been loaded aboard Austral Flight 622, the containers would be loaded aboard-last on, first off.
Flight 622 would depart Jorge Newbery at 0705 and land in Montevideo twenty-five minutes later. The blue plastic containers would be off-loaded first, and turned over to a representative of the Herald, who would arrange for their further distribution.
He would load two hundred copies in his car. They were destined for downtown Montevideo (150) and for Carrasco, a suburb through which he would pass on his way downtown.
The others he took to the airport's bus terminal, where they were stacked according to their destination. The Route 9 stack would be placed aboard the first morning bus to San Carlos, Maldonado, and Punta del Este, the posh seaside resort on the Atlantic Ocean. The Route 8 stack would see stacks of the newspaper dropped off at Treinta y Tres, Melo, and Jaguarao. The Route 5 bus would drop off newspapers at Canelones, Florida, and then continue across the dam holding back the Lago Artificial de Rincon Del Bonete to Tacuar
embo, where it would drop off the last stack. There were just three copies of the Herald in the last stack.
The manager of the Tacuarembo Bus Terminal-he was paid to do so-would then telephone the manager of a remote estancia to tell him the Herald had arrived. Sometimes it didn't-things happened-and telephoning the estancia manager to tell him that the newspapers had, or had not, arrived saved the manager an hour-long ride down an unpaved highway.
All of this took time, of course, and it was almost three in the afternoon before the Herald was delivered to Estancia Shangri-La and another half hour before it was in the hands of El Patron, who was taking an afternoon siesta with Juanita, a sixteen-year-old maid.
Jean-Paul Lorimer, sitting up in bed, read the front-page banner headline with dismay, and muttered, "?Merde!"
The banner headline read: AMERICAN DIPLOMAT MURDERED IN PORT AREA and showed a photograph of the late J. Winslow Masterson.
Lorimer was of course disturbed and at first frightened. Jack was, after all, his brother-in-law, and this had to be very difficult on poor Betsy.
But there was no reason, to judge from the Herald's rather extensive coverage of the matter, for Jean-Paul Lorimer to think it had anything to do with him.
Jack and his family had been ripe for something like this to happen for years, ever since he had been given that obscenely generous payment for being run over by the beer truck.
And Argentina certainly was the place for it to have happened. Kidnapping there had replaced schools that taught English as the national cottage industry.
He would not-could not-allow what had happened to Jack to force him to change his plans. All this really meant was that it would soon be discovered that Jean-Paul Lorimer was missing in Paris-and that might have already happened.
If he called Betsy to express his condolences, even if he didn't tell her where he was calling from, that would mean that although he had been missing since the thirteenth of July-in other words, for ten days-he'd been alive on the twenty-third.
That didn't even get into the matter of traceable telephone records, which would locate him.
And his expression of condolences would, after all, be hypocritical.
I never liked the arrogant sonofabitch, and am not at all sorry that he got knocked off his high horse with two bullets in the brain.
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