The Hostage

by Griffin, W. E. B.

  “Major,” Castillo ordered. “Everybody in here. They can deal with the luggage later.”

  The major nodded and walked to the now-stopped Gulfstream, its engines winding down.

  The door opened, and a stocky man in a business suit appeared in the doorway. The major handed him the second umbrella. The major pointed to the bus, and the man nodded, opened the umbrella, and started toward the bus.

  Special Agent Elizabeth Schneider appeared next in the doorway.

  Major Castillo’s heart jumped.

  Special Agent Schneider looked around, saw the bus, saw Major Castillo in it, smiled, and gave a little wave.

  Major Castillo’s heart jumped again. Harder.

  Jossman held the umbrella for Special Agent Schneider and walked with her to the bus. They got there as the stocky man came through the door.

  “My name is . . .” he started to say, but then noticed Agent Yung. “Well, hello, Dave.”

  Yung looked up from his lined yellow pad.

  “Hey, Paul,” he said, then, “Mr. Castillo, this is Special Agent Paul Holtzman.”

  “I’m supposed to report to you, sir,” Holtzman said. “I’m the senior agent.”

  He didn’t offer his hand.

  “Hand your umbrella to the major, please,” Castillo said. “And take a seat. I’ll save what I have until everyone’s on board.”

  It had been Major Castillo’s firm intention to greet Special Agent Schneider formally.

  She blew this plan out of the water by smiling at him again, then sitting down next to him, innocently resting her hand on his shoulder in the process, and saying, “Hello, Charley,” so close to him that he could smell her breath.

  Peppermint. They had apparently issued chewing gum to counter the pressure differential that occurs when an aircraft makes a rapid descent from cruising to approach altitude.

  So the plan to greet Special Agent Schneider with “Good to see you again, Schneider,” or words to that effect, was replaced with, “Jesus, I’m glad to see you.”

  As he also became aware of Special Agent Schneider’s perfume, he became simultaneously aware that Special Agent Yung hadn’t missed a thing.

  It took several minutes for the umbrella shuttle to get everybody off the Gulfstream into the bus, including the crew. Special Agent Jack Britton was about the fifth man to climb onto the bus, and for a moment Castillo didn’t recognize him. The last time Castillo had seen him, Britton had been wearing a somewhat straggly beard and the Philadelphia conception of Arabic robes, and his hair had been both cornrowed and embedded with beadery.

  Now his hair was neatly cut. He wore a well-fitted suit. He looked, Castillo thought, like Colin Powell.

  Britton’s grip was firm.

  “I don’t know the protocol—am I supposed to call you ‘sir’?—but it’s good to see you.”

  “Charley’s fine, Jack. It’s good to see you, too. Ready to go to work?”

  “I would like to visit a gentleman’s rest facility first; the one on the airplane went on the fritz somewhere over Brazil. And if possible, I’d like to get something to eat.”

  “There’s probably a men’s room in the hangar. You want to take a chance? What’s going to happen here won’t take long. And then it’s about ten minutes to the hotel.”

  Britton looked at the driving rain and said, “I think I’ll wait.”

  While this was going on, Castillo was more than a little aware that Special Agent Schneider’s upper leg was pressed against his, no doubt only because the seats in the Mercedes Traffik seemed to have been designed for midgets.

  Finally, everyone was aboard.

  Castillo stood up and faced the rear of the bus.

  “May I have your attention, please?” he began, and when he had it, went on: “My name is Castillo. As I understand you have been informed, I have been placed in charge of the American investigation into Mr. Masterson’s murder, and the abduction of Mrs. Masterson. Additionally, I have been given responsibility for the safety of the Masterson family while they are in Argentina.

  “The investigation itself is being conducted by Argentine authorities, under the overall control of SIDE, and I think you all know what SIDE is.”

  There was a tug on his jacket, and he looked down and saw first that Agent Schneider’s eyes were even deeper and more lovely than he had remembered, and also that she was shaking her head just enough to indicate she didn’t know what SIDE was.

  “I’ll brief you and Agent Britton separately later, Agent Schneider,” he said, and then went on. “It has been decided that this investigation, and any prosecution resulting from it, will be done by the Argentine authorities.”

  “Who the hell decided that?” Special Agent Holtzman demanded.

  “I did, and Ambassador Silvio concurred,” Castillo replied. “And let me bring you up to speed on what else the ambassador and I have decided. There will be no communication of any sort by any means with any federal agency in Washington or elsewhere without the prior approval of Ambassador Silvio or myself. I want that clearly understood. Are there any questions about it?”

  An agent in the back said, “You mean I can’t call my wife and tell her I got down here all right?”

  “You can call anyone you wish, as long as there is no reference to the situation here. Clear?”

  There were murmurs.

  “Nothing is going to happen tonight. Special Agent Yung will take you to your hotel and get you fed, et cetera. In the morning, I will inform him, or you, Agent Holtzman, your call, where you can meet with the Argentine authorities. They have agreed to make you privy to what they have learned so far, but I want it kept in mind this is their investigation, and things will be done their way. We’re here to help, that’s all.

  “So far as interviewing Mrs. Masterson is concerned, for a number of reasons, including that she was drugged by her abductors and is still in the hospital, unless there is some overriding reason for the FBI to question her, all interviews of her will be conducted by Special Agent Santini of the Secret Service, and Special Agent Schneider. If she is interviewed by the FBI, it will be in the presence of one of them, or of Mr. Alex Darby.”

  “Who’s he?” Holtzman asked.

  “He’s the commercial attaché of the embassy. He has the complete confidence of the ambassador, Mrs. Masterson, and myself.”

  “What the hell are we doing down here, then? If we can’t even—”

  “You’re here, Agent Holtzman,” Castillo interrupted, “for the same reason I am. The President has ordered it.”

  “May I ask a question, sir?” a man in an Air Force flight suit with the insignia of command pilot and the silver leaf of a lieutenant colonel asked.

  I wonder how long it will be before Yung confides in the lieutenant colonel that the hotshot in charge is really a lowly Army major?

  “Yes, sir, of course.”

  “How long are you going to need the C-37?”

  “I’ll be able to answer that better in the morning, Colonel. After I get my orders. That’s the best I can give you right now.”

  “Fine. How’s the security here?”

  “That platoon of men in the brown uniforms—the ones with the submachine guns—will guard the Gulfstream, Colonel. They’re Gendarmeria National.”

  “You think that’s enough?”

  Castillo felt the eyes of the SIDE agents on him.

  “I have no problem with them at all, Colonel.”

  “Good enough. Thank you, sir.”

  “That’s all I have. I’ll give Agent Yung my cellular number in case anything comes up, but please don’t call it unless it’s really necessary. I’ve been up since half past six, and I want to go to bed.”

  “I’ll bet,” Special Agent Yung said softly, with a knowing smile.

  You sonofabitch!

  “You have that list of names for me, Agent Yung?” Castillo asked, smiling at him warmly.

  [THREE]

  The rain, if anything, was heavier, and Cas
tillo thought that if the Gulfstream had come in ten minutes later there would have been a real problem.

  Where, other than Ezeiza, was the alternate field? And how much fuel was remaining? It was a long flight nonstop from Andrews.

  Sergeant Roger Markham got himself soaking wet first getting into the bus from the BMW, and then, now armed with a description of it, getting Betty and Jack’s luggage from the other bus into the BMW.

  Betty’s umbrella was blown inside out as she ran for the BMW—Castillo wondered how she had managed to hang on to it at all—and she was soaked, too, when Castillo and Britton made their dash from the bus to the BMW. Britton got in the front seat.

  I didn’t elbow Jack out of the way. This time the fickle finger of fate got me the backseat next to her.

  Hey, stop! An officer and a gentleman does not make passes at his subordinates.

  For Christ’s sake, remember that!

  Major Castillo smiled at Special Agent Schneider. She appeared to be shivering.

  “Cold, Schneider?” he asked.

  “Freezing,” she admitted. “What is it, winter down here?”

  “Yes, it is. They should have told you. Here, let me give you my jacket.”

  The first duty of an officer is to take care of his men.

  And that’s what she is, one of your men. Remember that!

  “Thanks,” she said.

  It was a ten-minute drive from the airport to the Four Seasons. Halfway there the rain seemed to slacken. By the time they rolled up to the Four Seasons it had stopped completely.

  Bellmen appeared and took care of the luggage. “Roger, are you hungry?” Castillo asked.

  “No, s— No. I’m not.”

  “Go home, get a hot shower, and be here at half past seven.”

  Sergeant Markham nodded and got back in the car.

  “Very nice,” Jack Britton said about the hotel.

  “I didn’t want him to catch pneumonia,” Castillo said, gesturing at the departing BMW.

  “Who’s he?” Special Agent Schneider asked.

  “One of the Marine guards.”

  “I noticed the haircut,” she said.

  “So we don’t have wheels to go out to a restaurant—”

  “Can we go inside, please?” Special Agent Schneider said. “It’s cold out here.”

  “Sorry,” he said, and motioned her ahead of him through the door. He saw that water was dripping from the hem of her skirt onto the polished marble floor.

  She found her way to the reception desk by herself, and they handed her her key.

  “So, about dinner,” Castillo said.

  “It’s midnight. Is anything open?” Jack Britton interrupted.

  “This is Argentina. They go to dinner starting at ten,” Castillo said. “There’s the hotel restaurant.”

  “I don’t want to get dressed up enough to go to a restaurant,” Britton said. “You, Betty?”

  “I want to get out of these clothes,” Special Agent Schneider said, triggering mental images in Major Castillo’s mind, “and into a hot shower,” she concluded, triggering additional mental images. “But I’m starved.”

  “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 Senetín 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.