“It looks like traffic’s not so bad,” Alex said.
Masterson leaned forward to look out the windshield.
They were passing a Carrefour, a French-owned supermarket chain. Masterson, who had served a tour as a junior consular officer in the Paris embassy, and thought he had learned something of the French, refused to shop there.
“You’re right,” Masterson said, just as the driver laid heavily on the horn.
There came a violent push to the side of the BMW, immediately followed by the sound of tearing and crushing metal. The impact threw Darby and Masterson violently against their seat belts.
There came another crash, this one from the rear, and again they felt the painful pressure of the restraints.
The driver swore in rapid-fire Spanish.
“Jesus Christ!” Masterson exploded, as he tried to sit straight in his seat.
“You all right, Jack?” Darby asked.
“Yeah, I think so,” Masterson said. “Jesus Christ! Again! These goddamn crazy Argentine drivers!”
“Take it easy,” Darby said, quickly scanning the situation outside their windows with the practiced eye of a spook.
Masterson tried to open the door. It wouldn’t budge.
“We’ll have to get out your side, Alex,” he said.
“That’s not going to be easy,” Darby said, gesturing toward the flow of traffic on the street.
The driver got out of the car, stepped into the flow of traffic, and held up his hand like a policeman. Masterson thought idly that the driver had probably started his career as a traffic cop.
A policeman ran up. The driver snapped something at him, and the policeman took over the job of directing traffic. The driver came back to the car, and Darby and Masterson got out.
Masterson saw the pickup that had first struck them was backing away from them. It was a four-door Ford F-250 pickup with a massive set of stainless steel tubes mounted in front of the radiator. He thought first that the tubes—which were common on pickup trucks to push other vehicles out of the mud on country roads— were probably going to have a minor scratch or two and the BMW was probably going to need a new door and a new rear body panel.
Then he saw the car, a Volkswagen Golf, that had hit them from the rear. The right side of the windshield was shattered. He went quickly to the passenger door and pulled it open. A young man, well-dressed, was sitting there, looking dazed, holding his fingers to his bloody forehead.
Masterson had an unkind thought: If you didn’t think seat belts were for sissies, you macho sonofabitch, your head wouldn’t have tried to go through the windshield.
He waved his fingers before the man’s eyes. The man looked at him with mingled curiosity and annoyance.
“Let’s get you out of there, señor,” Masterson said in fluent Spanish. “I think it would be better for you to lie down.”
He saw that the driver was an attractive young woman—probably Señor Macho’s wife; Argentine men don’t let their girlfriends drive their cars for fear it will make them look unmanly—who looked dazed but didn’t seem to be hurt. She was wearing her seat belt, and the airbag on the steering wheel had deployed.
“Alex,” Masterson called, “get this lady out of here.”
Then he pulled his cloth handkerchief from his pants pocket, pressed it to the man’s bleeding forehead, and placed the man’s right hand to hold it.
“Keep pressure on it,” Masterson said as he helped the man out of the Volkswagen and to the curb. He got him to sit, then asked, “Need to lie down?”
“I’m all right,” the man said. “Muchas gracias.”
“You’re sure? Nothing’s broken?”
The man moved his torso as if testing for broken bones, and then smiled wanly.
Alex Darby led the young woman to the curb. She saw the man and the bloody handkerchief, sucked in her breath audibly, and dropped to her knees to comfort him.
It was an intimate moment. Masterson looked away.
The big Ford truck that had crashed into them was disappearing into the Carrefour parking lot.
The sonofabitch is running away!
Masterson shouted at the policeman directing traffic, finally caught his attention, and, pointing at the pickup, shouted that he was running away.
The policeman gestured that he understood, but as he was occupied directing traffic, there wasn’t much that he could do.
Goddammit to hell!
Masterson took his cellular telephone from his inside pocket and punched an autodial number. When there was no response, he looked at the screen.
No bars! I am in the only fucking place in Buenos Aires where there’s no cellular signal!
Darby saw the cellular in Masterson’s hand and asked, “You’re calling the embassy?”
“No goddamn signal.”
Darby took his cellular out and confirmed that.
“I’ll call it in with the radio,” he said, and walked quickly to the BMW.
A minute later he came back.
“Lowery asked if we’re all right,” he said. “I told him yes. He’s sending an Automobile Club wrecker and a car. It’ll probably take a little while for the car. The demonstrators are still at it.”
“The sonofabitch who hit us took off,” Masterson said.
“Really? You’re sure?”
“Yes, goddammit, I’m sure.”
“Take it easy, Jack. These things happen. Nobody’s hurt.”
“He is,” Masterson said, nodding at Señor Macho.
“The cops and an ambulance will be here soon, I’m sure.”
“Betsy’s going to shit a brick when I’m late,” Masterson said. “And I can’t call her.”
“Get on the radio and have the guard at Post One call her at the Kansas.”
Masterson considered that.
“No,” he decided aloud. “She’ll just have to be pissed. I don’t want the guard calling her and telling her I’ve been in another wreck.”
[FOUR]
Restaurant Kansas Avenida Libertador San Isidro Buenos Aires Province, Argentina 1925 20 July 2005
Elizabeth “Betsy” Masterson, a tall, slim, well-groomed thirty-seven-year-old, with the sharp features and brownish black skin that made her think her ancestors had been of the Watusi tribe, was seated alone at the bar of Kansas—the only place smoking was permitted in the elegant steakhouse. She looked at her watch for the fifth time in the past ten minutes, exhaled audibly, had unkind thoughts about the opposite sex generally and Jack, her husband, specifically, and then signaled to the bartender for another Lagarde merlot, and lit another cigarette.
Goddamn him! He knows that I hate to sit at the bar alone, as if I’m looking for a man. And he said he’d be here between quarter to seven and seven!
Jack’s embassy car had been in a fender bender— another fender bender, the second this month—and was in the shop, and he had caught a ride to work, and was catching a ride home, with Alex Darby, the embassy’s commercial attaché. Jack had called her and asked if she could pick him up at Kansas, as for some reason it would be inconvenient for Alex to drop him at the house.
The Mastersons and the Darbys, both on their second tours in Buenos Aires, had opted for embassy houses in San Isidro, rather than for apartments in Palermo or Belgrano.
Their first tours had taught them there was a downside to the elegant apartments the embassy leased in the city. They were of course closer to the embassy, but they were noisy, sometimes the elevators and the air-conditioning didn’t work, and parking required negotiating a narrow access road to a crowded garage sometimes two floors below street level. And they had communal swimming pools, if they had swimming pools at all.
The houses the embassy leased in San Isidro were nice, and came with a garden, a quincho— outdoor barbecue—and a swimming pool. This was important if you had kids, and the Mastersons had three. The schools were better in San Isidro, and the shopping, and Avenida Libertador was lined with nice shops and lots of good restauran
ts. And of course there were easy-access garages for what the State Department called Privately Owned Vehicles.
The Masterson POV was a dark green 2004 Chrysler Town & Country van. With three kids, all with bicycles, you needed something that large. But it was big, and Betsy didn’t even like to think about trying to park what the Mastersons called “the Bus” in an underground garage in the city.
When she went to Buenos Aires, to have lunch with Jack or whatever, she never used a garage. The Bus had diplomat license plates, and that meant you could park anywhere you wanted. You couldn’t be ticketed or towed. Or even stopped for speeding. Diplomatic immunity.
The price for the house and the nice shops, good restaurants, and better schools of San Isidro was the twice-a-day thirty—sometimes forty-five—minute ride through the insane traffic on Libertador to the embassy. But Jack paid that.
Her bartender—one of four tending the oval bar island—came up with a bottle of Lagarde in one hand and a fresh glass in the other. He asked with a raised eyebrow if she wanted the new glass.
“This is fine, thank you,” Betsy said in Spanish.
The bartender filled her glass almost to the brim.
I probably shouldn’t have done that, she thought. The way they pour in here, two glasses is half a bottle, and with half a bottle in me I’m probably going to say something— however well deserved—to Jack that I’ll regret later.
But she picked the glass up carefully and took a good swallow from it.
She looked up at the two enormous television screens mounted high on the wall for the bar patrons. One of them showed a soccer game—what Argentines, as well as most of the world, called “football”—and the other was tuned to a news channel.
There was no sound that she could hear.
Typical Argentina, she thought unkindly. Rather than make a decision to provide the audio to one channel, which would annoy the watchers of the other, compromise by turning both off. That way, nobody should be annoyed.
She didn’t really understand the football, so she turned her attention to the news. There was another demonstration at the American embassy. Hordes of people banging on drums and kitchen pots, and waving banners, including several of Che Guevara—which for some reason really annoyed Jack—being held behind barriers by the Mounted Police.
That’s probably why Jack’s late. He couldn’t get out of the embassy. But he could have called.
The image of a distinguished-looking, gray-bearded man in a business suit standing before a microphone came on the screen. Betsy recognized him as the prominent businessman whose college-aged son had been a high-profile kidnapping victim. As the demands for ransom went higher and higher, the kidnappers had cut off the boy’s fingers, one by one, and sent them to his father to prove he was still alive. Shortly after the father paid, the boy’s body—shot in the head—was found. The father was now one of the biggest thorns in the side of the President and his administration.
Kidnapping—sometimes with the participation of the cops—was big business in Argentina. The Buenos Aires Herald, the American-owned English-language newspaper, had that morning run the story of the kidnapping of a thirteen-year-old girl, thought to be sold into prostitution.
Such a beautiful country with such ugly problems.
The image shifted to one of a second-rate American movie star being herded through a horde of fans at the Ezeiza airport.
Betsy took a healthy swallow of the merlot, checked the entrance again for signs of her husband, and returned her attention to the TV screen.
Ten minutes later—well, enough’s enough. To hell with him. Let him stand on the curb and try to flag a taxi down. I’m sorry it’s not raining— she laid her American Express card on the bar, caught the bartender’s eye, and pointed at the card. He smiled, and nodded, and walked to the cash register.
When he laid the tab on the bar before her, she saw that the two glasses of the really nice merlot and the very nice plate of mixed cheeses and crackers came to $24.50 in Argentine pesos. Or eight bucks U.S.
She felt a twinge of guilt. The Mastersons had lived well enough on their first tour, when the peso equaled the dollar. Now, with the dramatic devaluation of the peso, they lived like kings. It was indeed nice, but also it was difficult to completely enjoy with so many suffering so visibly.
She nodded, and he picked up the tab and her credit card and went back to the cash register. Betsy went in her purse and took out a wad of pesos and pulled a five-peso note from it. For some reason, you couldn’t put the tip on a credit card. Five pesos was about twenty percent, and Jack was always telling her that the Argentines were grateful for ten percent. But the bartender was a nice young man who always took good care of her, and he probably didn’t make much money. Five pesos was a buck sixty.
When the bartender came back with the American Express form, she signed it, took the carbon, laid the five-peso note on the original, and pushed it across the bar to him.
“Muchas gracias, señora.”
“You’re welcome,” Betsy said in Spanish.
She put the credit card in her wallet, and then the wallet in her purse, and closed it. She slipped off the bar stool and walked toward the entrance. This gave her a view of the kitchen, intentionally on display behind a plate-glass wall. She was always fascinated at what, in a sense, was really a feeding frenzy. She thought there must be twenty men in chef’s whites tending a half-dozen stainless steel stoves, a huge, wood-fired parrilla grill, and other kitchen equipment. All busy as hell. The no-smoking dining room of the Kansas was enormous and usually full.
The entrance foyer was crowded with people giving their names to the greeter-girls to get on the get-seated roster. One of the greeters saw Betsy coming and walked quickly to hold open the door for her.
Betsy went out onto Avenida Libertador, and looked up and down the street; no husband. She turned right on the sidewalk toward what she thought of as the Park-Yourself entrance to the Kansas parking lot. There were two entrances to the large parking area behind the restaurant. The other provided valet parking.
Betsy never used it. She had decided long ago, when they had first started coming to the Kansas, that it was really a pain in the you-know-where. The valet parkers were young kids who opened the door for you, handed you a claim check, and then hopped behind the wheel and took off with a squeal of tires into the parking lot, where they proved their manhood by coming as close to other cars as they could without taking off a fender.
And then when you left, you had to find the claim check, and stand outside waiting for a parker to show up so you could give it to him. He then took off at a run into the parking lot. A couple of minutes later, the Bus would arrive with a squeal of tires, and the parker would jump out with a big smile and a hand out for his tip.
It was easier and quicker to park the Bus yourself. And when you were finished with dinner—or waiting for a husband who didn’t show the simple courtesy of calling and saying he was delayed, and who didn’t answer his cellular—all you had to do was walk into the parking lot, get in the Bus, and drive off.
When she’d come in today, the parking lot had been nearly full, and she’d had to drive almost to the rear of it to find a home for the Bus. But no problem. It wasn’t that far, and the lot was well lit, with bright lights on tall poles on the little grassy-garden islands between the rows of parked cars.
She was a little surprised and annoyed when she saw that the light shining down on the Bus had burned out. Things like that happened, of course, but she thought she was going to have a hell of a hard time finding the keyhole in the door.
When she actually got to the Bus, it was worse. Some sonofabitch—one of the valet parkers, probably—had parked a Peugeot sedan so close to the left side of the van that there was no way she could get to the door without scraping her rear and/or her boobs on either the dirty Peugeot or the Bus, which also needed a bath.
She walked around to the right side of the Bus and with some difficulty—for a while
she thought she was going to have to light her lighter—managed to get the key in the lock and open the door.
She was wearing a tight skirt, and the only way she was going to be able to crawl over the passenger seat and the whatever-it-was-called thing between the seats to get behind the wheel was to hike the skirt up to her crotch.
First things first. Get rid of the purse, then hike skirt.
She opened the sliding door and tossed her purse on the seat.
The front door suddenly slammed shut.
What the hell?
She looked to see what had happened.
There was a man coming toward her between the cars. He had something in his hand.
What the hell is that, a hypodermic needle?
She first felt arms wrap around her from behind, then a hand over her mouth.
She started to struggle. She tried to bite at the hand over her mouth as the man coming toward her sort of embraced her. She felt a sting on her buttocks.
Oh, Jesus Chri . . .
Four minutes later, a dark blue BMW 545i with heavily darkened windows and a Corps Diplomatique license plate pulled out of the flow of traffic on Avenida Libertador and stopped at the curb. It was a clearly marked NO PARKING NO STOPPING zone, but usually, as now, there were two or three cars with CD tags parked there.
In the rear seat of the BMW, Jack Masterson turned to Alex Darby.
“Now that your car has joined mine in the shop, how are you going to get to work in the morning?”
“I can have one of my guys pick me up,” Alex replied.
“Wouldn’t you rather I did?”
“I was hoping you’d ask.”
“Eight-fifteen?”
“Fine. You want me to send this one back here after he drops me off?”
“No. Betsy has the Bus. Send this one back to the embassy.” He raised his voice and switched to Spanish. “Make sure the dispatcher knows I need a car at my house at eight tomorrow morning.”
“Sí, señor,” the driver replied.
“That presumes,” Masterson said to Darby, “that I’m still alive in the morning. She who hates to wait is going to be highly pissed.”
The Hostage Page 3