W Griffin - Hunters

"Of course."

"And I think he would be even more pleased if I could tell him you said that that would be taken care of very soon."

"How soon is 'very soon,' Truman?"

"Yesterday would be even better than today."

The DCI nodded but didn't say anything. [FIVE] Restaurante Villa Hipica The Jockey Club of San Isidro Buenos Aires Province, Argentina 1340 5 August 2005 Ambassador Michael A. McGrory was not at all pleased with where Ambassador Juan Manuel Silvio had taken him for lunch.

McGrory had suggested they go somewhere they could have a quiet, out-of-school conversation. If Silvio had made a similar suggestion to him in Montevideo, he would have taken Silvio either to his residence or to a restaurant where they could have a private room.

Instead, he had brought them all the way out here-a thirty-minute drive-to a wide-open restaurant crowded with horse fanciers.

Well, perhaps not wide open to every Tom, Dick, and Jose, McGrory thought, surveying the clientele. I suspect membership in the Jockey Club is tied in somehow with the restaurant.

Their table by a window provided a view of the grandstands and there was a steady parade of grooms leading horses-sometimes four or five at a time-right outside the window.

Certainly, a fine place to have lunch if you're a tourist-if they let tourists in-but not the sort of place to have a serious conversation about the business of the United States government!

A tall, well-dressed man with a full mustache approached the table with a smile and a bottle of wine.

"Your Excellency, I was just now informed you are honoring us with your presence," he said, in Spanish.

"I've told you, Jorge," Silvio replied, "that if I want you to call me that, I will wear my ermine robes and carry my scepter." He shook the man's hand and then said, "Jorge, may I present Ambassador Michael McGrory, who came here from Uruguay to get a good meal? Mike, this is Senor Jorge Basto, our host."

"My little restaurant is then doubly honored," Basto said. "It is an honor to meet you, Your Excellency."

"I'm happy to be here and to make your acquaintance," McGrory replied with a smile.

"And look what just came in this morning," Basto said, holding out the bottle.

"You're in luck, Mike," Silvio said. "This is Tempus Cabernet Sauvignon. Hard to come by."

"From a small bodega in Mendoza," Basto said. "May I open it, Mr. Ambassador?"

"Oh, please," Silvio said.

Goddamn it, McGrory thought, wine! Not that I should be drinking at all. I am-we both are-on duty. But these Latins-and that certainly includes Silvio-don't consider drinking wine at lunch drinking, even though they know full well that there is as much alcohol in a glass of wine as there is in a bottle of beer or a shot of whiskey.

I would really like a John Jamison with a little water, but if I ordered one I would be insulting the restaurant guy and Silvio would think I was some kind of alcoholic, drinking whiskey at lunch.

A waiter appeared with glasses and a bottle opener. The cork was pulled and the waiter poured a little in one of the glasses and set it before Silvio, who picked it up and set it before McGrory.

"Tell me what you think, Mike," he said with a smile.

McGrory knew the routine, and went through it. He swirled the wine around the glass, stuck his nose in the wide brim and sniffed, then took a sip, which he swirled around his mouth.

"Very nice indeed," he decreed.

McGrory had no idea what he was supposed to be sniffing for when he sniffed or what he was supposed to be tasting when he tasted. So far as he was concerned, there were two kinds of wine, red and white, further divided into sweet and sour, and once he had determined this was a sour red wine he had exhausted his expertise.

The waiter then filled Silvio's glass half full and then poured more into McGrory's glass. Silvio picked up his glass and held it out expectantly until McGrory realized what he was up to and raised his own glass and touched it to Silvio's.

"Always a pleasure to see you, Mike," Silvio said.

"Thank you," McGrory replied. "Likewise."

Silvio took a large swallow of his wine and smiled happily.

"The wines here are marvelous," Silvio said.

"Yes, they are," McGrory agreed.

"Don't quote me, Mike, but I like them a lot better than I like ours, and not only because ours are outrageously overpriced."

"I'm not much of a wine drinker," McGrory confessed.

"'Use a little wine for thy stomach's sake,'" Silvio quoted, "'and thine other infirmities.' That's from the Bible. Saint Timothy, I think, quoting Christ."

"How interesting," McGrory said.

The waiter handed them menus.

McGrory ordered a lomo con papas frit as-you rarely got in trouble ordering a filet mignon and French fries-and Silvio ordered something McGrory had never heard of.

When the food was served, McGrory saw that Silvio got a filet mignon, too.

But his came with a wine-and-mushroom sauce that probably tastes as good as it smells, and those little potato balls look tastier-and probably are-than my French fries will be.

"You said you wanted to have a little chat out of school, Mike," Silvio said after he had masticated a nice chunk of his steak. "What's on your mind?"

"Two things, actually," McGrory said, speaking so softly that Silvio leaned across the table so that he would be able to hear.

McGrory took the message about FBI Special Agent Yung and handed it to Silvio, who read it.

"Isn't this the chap you sent here when Mr. Masterson was kidnapped?" Silvio asked.

"One and the same."

"You never said anything to me, Mike, about him being on Secretary Cohen's personal staff."

"I didn't know about that," McGrory confessed.

Silvio pursed his lips thoughtfully but didn't say anything.

"Something else happened vis-a-vis Special Agent Yung," McGrory went on. "The same day-the night of the same day-that the bodies were found at what turned out to be Lorimer's estancia, I received a telephone call from the assistant director of the FBI telling me that it had been necessary to recall Yung to Washington, and that he had, in fact, already left Uruguay."

"He say why?"

"We were on a nonsecure line and he said he didn't want to get into details. He gave me the impression Yung was required as a witness in a trial of some kind. He said he would call me back on a secure line but never did."

Silvio cut another slice of his steak, rubbed it around in the sauce, and then forked it into his mouth. When he had finished chewing and swallowing, he asked, "Did you try to call him?"

"I was going to do that this morning when that message came and then I found out the deputy foreign minister, Alvarez, had called my chief of mission and asked if he could come by the embassy for a cup of coffee."

"Sounds like he wanted to have an unofficial chat," Silvio said.

"That's what I thought. So when he showed up, I told him that my man had the flu and I would give him his coffee."

"What did he want?"

"He had Chief Inspector Ordonez of the Interior Police with him," McGrory said. "The man in charge of the investigation of what happened at that estancia. After they beat around the bush for a while, he as much as accused me of not only knowing that there were Green Berets involved in the shooting but of not telling them."

"Were there?" Silvio asked.

"If there were, I have no knowledge of it."

"And as the ambassador, you would, right?"

"That's the way it's supposed to be, Silvio. We're the senior American officers in the country to which we are assigned and no government action is supposed to take place that we don't know about and have approved of."

"That's my understanding," Silvio agreed. "So where did he get the idea that Green Berets were involved?"