The Hostage

by Griffin, W. E. B.

  “I’ll take care of it,” Darby said. “We’ll be in touch.”

  The connection was broken.

  “Thank you,” Pevsner said.

  “For what?”

  “For Maschwitz.”

  “If I think anyone is unusually curious about where I’ve been, or with whom, I’ll drop your Austro-Hungarian grand duke into the conversation,” Castillo said. “That’ll lead them on an interesting expedition.”

  Pevsner smiled.

  “Alex, I have to get back to Buenos Aires.”

  “I understand. You want me to send Howard with you?”

  “That’s not necessary. I just need a ride to the embassy.”

  Charley’s cellular buzzed as they approached Buenos Aires.

  “Hello?”

  “Mr. Castillo?”

  Castillo recognized Darby’s voice.

  “Alexander Darby here, Mr. Castillo.”

  “What can I do for you?”

  “Mr. Castillo, Ambassador Silvio wonders if you would be free to come to his office at nine-thirty tomorrow morning.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Thank you. I’ll see you then.”

  The connection was broken.

  It didn’t take you long to tell the ambassador about me, did it, Alex?

  And why do I suspect you made that call in his presence?

  And that you told him simply that I had identified myself to you, and not that we knew each other in Afghanistan?

  An American who did not identify himself in any way— making Castillo reasonably confident that he was a CIA agent who worked for Darby—was waiting just outside the fence at the employee entrance to the embassy grounds with Castillo’s visitor’s pass and Secret Service credentials.

  “If you’ll come with me, please, Mr. Castillo?”

  [SIX]

  The Communications Center The United States Embassy Avenida Colombia 4300 Buenos Aires, Argentina 2230 22 July 2005

  There was a “phone booth” in the embassy communications room, too. As the man Castillo now thought of as “Darby’s guy” led him to it, most of the eight or ten people in the room looked at him with frank curiosity. One of them was the Oriental FBI agent, Yung.

  The guy who looked at me in the brainstorming center with what I thought was a little too much interest. He’s either fascinated with my good looks and manly charm, or the Secret Service, or he knows something about me. Or suspects something.

  Oh, Jesus! Has there been an FBI back-channel, no copies, burn before reading, “Let us know if a guy named Castillo shows up anywhere and what he’s doing. He has embarrassed the director and we would really like to burn his ass”?

  Castillo closed the door of the phone booth and sat down before a tiny desk, more of a shelf built into the wall, on which sat the secure telephone. It looked— except for the much thicker than usual cords to the wall, and from the base to the handset—like an ordinary phone. There was also a lined notepad, which had a sheet of aluminum under the top page to keep whatever was written from making an impression on the pages beneath, two sharpened pencils in a water glass, and a red-striped Burn Bag hanging from the wall.

  Castillo picked up the telephone.

  “Operator,” a male voice said.

  He sounds young. Probably a soldier.

  “My name is Castillo. I need a verified secure line.”

  “Yes, sir. You have been cleared. The number, please?”

  It’s a little after ten-thirty here; half past nine in Washington. Hall may or may not be in the office. I’ll let the switchboard find him.

  Castillo gave the White House switchboard number to the operator.

  “Sir, that’s the White House,” the operator said.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Sir, you’re not cleared to call the White House.”

  “Who has to clear me?” Castillo asked, and at the last split second added, “Sergeant.”

  “Either the ambassador or Mr. Masterson, sir.”

  Well, he took the Sergeant without any reaction. That may be helpful.

  “Well, I don’t want to bother Mr. Masterson, Sergeant, so I suppose you’d better get the ambassador on the horn. I need to put this call through.”

  “Sir, Mr. Darby has the authority to clear calls to the White House. Would he know if you’re authorized?”

  “Yes, he would. Give him a yell, Sergeant.”

  Thirty seconds later, “Commercial Attaché” Darby gave the operator permission to put Mr. Castillo’s call through to the White House switchboard.

  “White House.”

  “This is the U.S. Embassy, Buenos Aires,” the operator said. “Would you verify the line is secure, please?”

  That took about fifteen seconds.

  “The line is secure,” the White House operator announced.

  “This is C. G. Castillo. I need to speak with Secretary Hall. I have no idea where he is.”

  “Oh, I think we can find him for you. Hold one.”

  “Hall.”

  “I have a secure call for you, Mr. Secretary, from Mr. Castillo in Buenos Aires.”

  “Put Mr. Castillo through, please,” Hall said.

  In the presidential apartment in the White House, the President looked across the table in the breakfast room at his wife, and Matt Hall’s wife, and made a decision.

  “Put that on the speakerphone, Matt,” he ordered, “but don’t tell him.”

  “You there, Charley?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We’ve been expecting to hear from you before this.”

  “Sir, there’s not much to report that you probably haven’t heard already.”

  “Well, take it from the top, Charley. You never know.”

  “Yes, sir. Joel’s pal Tony Santini met me at the airport. Really good guy, sharp as a tack. Tony took me to the hotel, the Hyatt—which is now the Four Seasons, by the way. He told me what he knew, essentially that Mrs. Masterson was grabbed in the parking lot of a restaurant called Kansas in an upscale neighborhood called San Isidro. She was waiting for her husband, and when he didn’t show went to her car and was grabbed.

  “He said there had been no word from the kidnappers—this was at maybe seven this morning, and there still has been no word, as of now. Tony said the Argentines were keeping it out of the papers, so if I went there as Gossinger, they would (a) wonder how I heard about it, and (b) tell me zilch.

  “So I went there as a Secret Service agent who just happened to be in town. Apparently that happens all the time. Tony introduced me to the embassy security guy, Lowery, nice guy, but a lightweight—”

  “Why do you say that, Charley?” Hall interrupted.

  “The way Tony Santini put it, most of his investigations have been of some diplomat fooling around with some other diplomat’s wife. Nothing like this.”

  “Okay,” Hall said.

  “While I was in his office, Masterson came in. A really nice guy, and really upset. You know the story of his getting run over and—”

  “Getting a fifty-million-dollar settlement? Yeah, I know it.”

  “The figure I heard was sixty million. Anyway, I was introduced to him as a Secret Service agent, and he asked me to go to a brainstorming session with all the players. The CIA station chief—more about him in a moment— the DEA people, and two FBI guys from Montevideo who are supposed to have some experience with kidnappings. One of them looked at me strangely. Then, and just now when I came in the commo room.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “If I were paranoid, and I am, I would suspect that there’s been a deniable bulletin from the J. Edgar Hoover Building telling everybody to keep an eye open for that sonofabitch Castillo.”

  “You really think that, Charley?”

  “I can’t prove it, but I got the same look from the CIA station chief, a guy named Darby—he’s as sharp as a tack, too—and I know he knew who I was. Am.”

  “How do you know that?”

 
“After the brainstorming session—which came up with nothing—he offered to show me the restaurant, and when we got in his car, he told me the last time he’d seen me was in Zaranj, Afghanistan—he was station chief there—and that he’d put two and two together and concluded I was the guy involved in getting the 727 back.”

  “So is he going to tell the ambassador? Or anyone else?”

  “For auld lang syne he said he would wait until tomorrow morning, but that he would have to tell him. About two hours ago, I told him to go ahead and tell him. I wanted to get on a secure line, rather than screw around with e-mails. So he knows. As I was coming into town, Darby relayed a very polite request from the ambassador that I come to his office at half past nine in the morning.”

  “What about the ambassador?”

  “Both Santini and Darby think he’s first class. Anyway, after having a very nice lunch in the Kansas which really made me feel guilty, I went nosing around by myself, and came up with zilch, except the possibility that the kidnappers are American. When I passed this on to Darby, he said the Argentine cops had already— ‘delicately,’ he said—offered this possibility. Outside this phone booth, the FBI—including Yung, the FBI guy I think has made me—is sending the names of all Americans who’ve come down here in the past thirty days to the NCIC.”

  “What about the local authorities?”

  “From everything I’ve been able to pick up, they’re really doing their best, and with the same result, zilch. So what everybody is doing is waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

  “And that’s about it?”

  “Yes, sir. I feel about as useless as teats on a boar hog. Jesus, I wish the President hadn’t come up with the nutty idea that I’m Sherlock Holmes. I’d really like to help, and I’m in way over my head.”

  “Hold one, Charley.”

  “Sherlock, this is the President.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Castillo blurted.

  “No. Just the President,” the President chuckled. “And I’m glad I did, Sherlock. I could not have asked for a more succinct and comprehensive report, and I know that any report that came close to being as good as the one you just gave Secretary Hall would have taken a lot more time to reach me.”

  “Sir, I’m sorry—”

  “No need to be, Charley. I have just one question.”

  “Sir?”

  “What about Mr. Masterson? Is he—and their children—being protected?”

  “Yes, sir. Mr. Darby—he and Mr. Masterson are close—told me that he’s having some of his people sit on Mr. Masterson, hopefully without his being aware that this is going on. And there’s Argentine cops and SIDE people all over, too.”

  “Their FBI?”

  “Yes, sir. Much like it. Both Mr. Santini and Mr. Darby tell me they’re good at what they do.”

  “When you see Ambassador Silvio in the morning, you might tell him of my concern.”

  “Yes, sir, I will.”

  “Well, I guess that’s it,” the President said. “You’re doing what I sent you down there to do, Charley, and doing it well.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Mrs. Hall wants me to pass on her regards, and I’m sure my wife would like to add hers.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Goodnight, Charley,” the President said.

  “Interesting guy,” the President observed.

  “And a very nice one,” Mrs. Janice Hall said. “You could hear his concern for that poor woman and the family in his voice.”

  “Until she actually met him, Janice could not stand men to whom women are drawn like moths to a candle.”

  “You can go to hell, Matt,” Mrs. Hall said.

  “I think sending him down there was one of my better ideas,” the President said, and then added, “As was leaving him with Matt.”

  “Excuse me?” the first lady asked.

  “When he got that airplane back, my first thought was to bring him into the White House. Then I realized that wouldn’t be smart. Can you imagine what pressure would be on him if he worked here? Everybody in this building would be trying to (a) control him, and (b) keep him off my phone and out of the Oval Office. Having him working for Matt fixes all of that.”

  [SEVEN]

  Room 1550 The Four Seasons Hotel Cerrito 1433 Buenos Aires, Argentina 0625 23 July 2005

  Castillo had left a call for seven—which would give him two hours to get dressed, have breakfast, and get to the embassy by half past nine—and when he glanced at his watch as he reached for the ringing telephone and saw what time it was, he felt a chill. It was too much to hope this call was going to be good news.

  “¿Hola?”

  “Castillo?” It was Darby’s voice, not at all charming.

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t answer your cellular,” Darby accused.

  “What’s up?”

  “There will be a car waiting for you by the time you can get downstairs.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Well, I’ll tell you it’s not good news,” Darby said, and hung up.

  V

  [ONE]

  Avenida Tomas Edison Buenos Aires, Argentina 0640 23 July 2005

  There had been a small gray Alfa Romeo—as far as Castillo could tell, they were identical to Fiats, except for the nameplates—with Argentine civilian license plates waiting on the drive outside the Four Seasons hotel when Castillo pushed through the revolving door.

  As Castillo looked at it, wondering if it was meant for him, the driver pushed open the passenger door. “Señor Castillo?”

  Castillo walked quickly to the car and got in. The car took off with a squeal of its tires before Castillo had time to fasten the seat belt.

  “You speak Spanish, Mr. Castillo?” the driver asked in American English.

  Castillo took a good look at him. He was an olive-skinned, dark-haired man in his thirties in a business suit who could, Castillo decided, easily pass for a porteño, a native of Buenos Aires.

  “Sí,” Castillo said.

  “Say hello to Colonel Alfredo Munz of SIDE,” the driver said, in fluent porteño Spanish.

  The windows of the Alfa Romeo were heavily darkened; Castillo had not seen anyone in the backseat. He turned on his seat and saw a stocky blond man in his forties. Castillo put out his hand.

  “Mucho gusto, mi coronel.”

  Munz’s grip was firm.

  “Mucho gusto,” he replied, adding, “Señor Darby has told me about you, señor.”

  I wonder what he told you?

  The car was now passing the French embassy, its horn blowing steadily in short beeps. The driver ran the red light and nearly got clipped by a Fiat delivery truck going up Avenida 9 Julio. The Alfa Romeo made a squealing left turn onto 9 Julio, and then raced down the autopista in the extreme right lane, reserved for emergency vehicles.

  “What’s happened?” Castillo asked. “Where are we going?”

  “The cocksuckers shot Masterson,” the driver said.

  What did he say? They shot her? Oh, Jesus H. Christ!

  But that sounded as if he meant him.

  “Mrs. Masterson, you mean?”

  “No. Masterson.”

  What the hell?

  “I thought Darby had somebody sitting on him.”

  “Yeah, he did. Me. I fucked up big time.”

  They came to a row of tollbooths. Without slowing, still blowing the horn, the driver went through the right lane, despite the furious arm-waving of a policeman who saw him coming. The policeman jumped out of the way at the last minute and reached for his pistol.

  “SIDE! SIDE! SIDE!” Colonel Munz shouted out his open window.

  Christ, I hope that cop believes him!

  There was no shot.

  At least none that I can hear.

  They came to a T in the road. Running another red light, the driver turned left, dodging between two enormous over-the-road tractor-trailers and then rapidly accelerating.

  Castillo saw they were now
on Avenida Presidente Castillo.

  This is not a very elegant street to be named after a Castillo, El Presidente, or even one from San Antonio.

  It was apparently the main route to the docks, and the roadway showed the effects of heavy—most probably grossly overloaded—trucks. The Alfa bottomed out every thirty seconds or so.

  It was too noisy in the car to ask questions, and it would not have been wise to distract the driver’s attention from the traffic.

  Avenida Presidente Castillo took a bend to the left, then came to a stop sign, which the driver ignored, which almost saw them hit head-on by an enormous Scania tractor pulling a trailer with two containers on it.

  Then another left, and another, and Castillo saw they were now on Avenida Tomas Edison. This was even rougher looking than Avenida Presidente Castillo. It was a two-lane road where the macadam had been mostly worn away from the cobblestones it had at one time covered. On their left were deserted warehouses, and on their right a decrepit port area, lined with rusting, derelict, and half-sunk riverboats.

  And then there was a sea of flashing red-and-blue lights.

  Four Policía Federal stood in the middle of the street, all of them with their hands up to stop them. Castillo saw a half dozen other cops taking barriers from the back of a truck.

  The driver slammed on the brakes, slowing but not stopping.

  Colonel Munz was now halfway out the rear window, waving his credentials and shouting, “SIDE! SIDE! SIDE!”

  The policemen got out of the way; two of them saluted.

  Fifty meters farther down the street an enormous— and enormously confident—Policía Federal sergeant held up his hand in casual arrogance to stop them.

  The arrogance disappeared immediately when he recognized Munz.

  “In there, mi coronel,” he said, pointing to the shell of a deserted warehouse, the entire front of which was open, another thirty meters distant.

  There were three police cars: one Policía Federal; a second from the Naval Prefecture, which has police power in the port; and a third from the Gendarmeria National. There were several unmarked cars, with flashing blue lights on their dashboards, and two ambulances, one from the German Hospital, the second from the Naval Prefecture.